Behold the Child Read online

  "BEHOLD THE CHILD"

  By Harry Shannon

  ________________________________

  “Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law

  Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.”

  Alexander Pope 1688-1744

  1.

  “Please, man, let me go!”

  The terrified girl with the runny nose could have been any age between twenty and forty. Her name was Pearl, or so she claimed. She was skeletal; with badly pocked skin and stringy brown hair. Pearl wore a man’s blue work shirt, filthy jeans and tennis shoes with no socks. She kept scratching at the scabs on her arms. Years of junk and physical abuse had rendered her features generic, although at some point she might have been pretty.

  “Is that Oso’s house?” Kenzie drawled, softly. “The blue one yonder, with an old Ford up on blocks in the front yard?”

  Pearl nodded her head furiously, her breath steaming in the cold air. She tried to shrink down in the passenger seat and disappear. Her voice was thick with fear. “If he comes out and sees I brought you here he’ll fucking kill me, mister, no shit he will just flat fucking blow us both away.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened and an impossibly large, busily tattooed Hispanic man in stained boxers wandered out onto the front porch. He stood there in the yellow light, scratching his balls and watching the sunset. Between the patterns of snakes, gargoyles and prison gang insignia lay a random series of dark, rectangular burn scars. He had a quart of malt liquor in his left hand and a 357 Magnum in his right. Detective Sam Kenzie felt his heart thump and his gut tighten in anticipation.

  “That’s him, right Pearl? That’s the man with the scars, that sold you the speed, the one you said was holding a little girl hostage. That’s Manuel Ortega, also known as Oso?”

  Pearl had her face so far down it looked like she was kissing her ass goodbye. She was whimpering into her cupped palms. Kenzie grabbed her greasy hair and yanked her head back against the seat.

  “I need you to look,” he said. “And tell me if that’s Ortega.”

  Incongruously, Pearl began to rock and whispered the Lord’s Prayer at breakneck speed. Then she nodded. Said: “That’s him. And there’s one other biker in there with him, a prick called Gato.” Kenzie reached across and unlocked her side of the car. He pushed her head back down.

  “Ease on out of here and stay low,” he said, not unkindly. “I do believe this old boy is likely to throw down on me.”

  “You’re fucking crazy, mister.”

  Kenzie smiled. “That’s probably true, Pearl. But if I shoot him it just means you won’t have to testify at a trial.”

  “I already told you I couldn’t do that,” Pearl wailed. “I’d be good as dead.”

  Detective Sam Kenzie watched the scarred, tattooed Ortega pace the porch and drink beer. He looked down at Pearl, twisted her hair again. “Listen to me,” he said. “If we need you, you’re going to be in rehab in Pomona, just like we agreed. You’re anywhere else, I’ll find you and make you sorry. Now get.”

  Pearl slipped out of the car, sank to all fours and crab-walked backwards into some brush. Sam Kenzie watched her ease behind a row of overflowing trash cans and then beat feet down the alley like a track star. He felt his adrenaline kicking in. He slipped his Glock 9 out into his palm, popped the safety and reached for the radio. He paused for a minute; thinking things over, playing out various scenarios in his mind. How many others in the house? Had to be guns all over the fucking place, the prick was running a crank lab.

  The rap sheet on Manuel “Oso” Ortega, also known as The Bear, was longer than the Florida recount. It stated that he had been badly abused by his crack-addicted, prostitute mother and her customers. She had burned him with a hot iron when he misbehaved. So now Oso was psychotic, drug addicted, armed and dangerous. He was also wanted in three states besides California, on charges ranging from assault and battery to grand theft auto; drug trafficking to homicide.

  And he had started kidnapping children; this latest a young girl, apparently for sexual purposes.

  Kenzie knew he was acting like a cowboy, but the capture of Ortega or a righteous shoot-- not to mention the rescue of one of the kidnapped children--would be quite a feather in his cap. He also knew he had an obligation to call for back-up. After all, he was out of his jurisdiction and operating without a partner or even a proper warrant.

  But the car in the driveway, a battered Chevy truck with flames painted on the side, had broken tail lights; an old excuse for probable cause. Also, a man known to Kenzie to be on parole was both drinking and packing a fire arm. A witness had now identified Oso and indicated that he had sold her some drugs, not to mention that a kidnapping would be Ortega’s third and final felony strike under California law.

  Yeah, and your wife is pregnant…

  Kenzie sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. He listened to the crickets sorrowing in the weeds and examined the peculiar truth that fatherhood scared him more than a pitched gun battle. His world was a sick and violent place.

  Oso’s mother burned him with a hot iron when he misbehaved…

  Sam Kenzie also wanted to believe Laura’s pregnancy was an accident, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the mere existence of a fetus to have changed his attitude towards his career and his life…But it had. What was that sound?

  “Fuck!”

  The squeal of tires: Bright headlights lit up the car before Kenzie could react and duck out of sight. He had a very brief glimpse of a much older man with a thin face whose eyes went wide at the sight of him. Kenzie had lost the precious advantage of surprise.

  At that same moment Manuel Ortega grinned and started down off the porch towards the vehicle approaching the driveway; now revealed to be a Nissan without plates. But the startled man driving the car honked three times. He gunned the engine and roared away. Ortega, reacting to what was obviously a pre-arranged signal, dropped the quart of beer. He moved back towards the dilapidated blue house, gun up and eyes searching the street. Time began to slow down. Ortega’s mouth narrowed and his face registered rage.

  Kenzie yanked open the driver’s door and rolled out into the street just as a shot splintered the windshield. The sound followed a split-second later; a thumping boom that started dogs barking all over the crime-infested neighborhood. Kenzie felt the lining in his jacket tear and he swore as the sharp gravel sandpapered the skin from his palms. He considered clambering back into the vehicle to use the radio, but a second shot flattened the front left tire, missing him by less than a foot. He rolled, rolled again.

  BLAAAAAM! Oso was down on one knee, trying to track Kenzie under the car and then flat on the dying grass, squinting and squeezing off another round. Kenzie used the engine block for cover, threw his long body over the hood and let fly. Shells flew into the air and tinkled to the ground all around him. Oso watched divots travel up his lawn and decided discretion was the better part of valor. He zigzagged back onto the porch, shrieking something in Spanish to whoever was inside. The situation was becoming seriously messy.

  “The hell is going on?” Somebody was coming down the alley. He saw Kenzie with the gun and ducked back into the encroaching darkness. Kenzie managed to free one hand and dragged out his shield, waved it in the air.

  “Call 911, asshole!”

  Bitter laughter: “Call ‘em yourself, pig!”

  Oso on the porch, Oso in the doorway: Kenzie fired again, and the porch light exploded into fragments. Once more time and blood spurted from Oso’s forearm just as the door slammed shut. Got you, motherfucker…

  Now, what?

  Kenzie wiped sweat from his brow and weighed his shitty options. He heard a siren somewhere to the west; saw the flashing, twirling lights of a black-
and-white as it ripped through rush hour traffic. He jumped back into the car and used the radio to introduce himself and explain the situation. To their credit, the San Bernardino cops didn’t demand much of an explanation beyond a clear Sit-Rep and his exact location. Kenzie swallowed bile, then lied and told them he was at the foot of the front porch.

  Kenzie stared firing at the house and then sprinted away from the safe cover of his car. The kid, I’ve got to get the kid away from them. He ran across the yellowing lawn and threw himself flat at the foot of the steps. His heart was hammering, now. Kenzie realized that he had never been so afraid in his entire life. He thought: God damn, Laura as he huddled there in the dark and changed clips, you made me hesitate.

  A squad car raged down the street. It slammed into a pot hole in the asphalt and bounced, then shrieked itself sideways to block the driveway. Now the air stank of cordite, trash and burning rubber. The two cops placed themselves behind the black-and-white and threw down on the weathered blue house. One looked a little past veteran; the other was a rookie with a huge nose and wide, panicked brown eyes. The partners searched the yard and the porch, found Kenzie’s position and the older one shouted: “Stay down!”

  ‘Fuck that!” Kenzie bellowed. “Cover me.”

  He took a deep breath, gathered his legs and scrambled up the front steps on his elbows and knees. The front door was still open a few inches. Time expanded and then contracted again, everything slowed to a crawl. Kenzie saw a ratty green sofa and chair, a fat joint burning uselessly in an overflowing ashtray; magazines in piles next to an incongruously new wide-screen television set with surround-sound speakers. He crawled, moving a little closer; the 9 mm Glock clenched in his sweaty hands, then peered through the foot of the door into the hallway.

  Motorcycle boots, fat legs in blue jeans. Kenzie fired even as his eyes traveled up the body to take in the long beard, wild “tweaker” eyes and pierced brows. The legs exploded into gore and bare bones. The biker wailed and went down. Another shot blew his jaw away. then he went silent. The shotgun he’d been holding fell uselessly to the wooden floor. Hey, Gato, nice to meet you.

  Bear, from down the hall, probably in one of the back bedrooms: “Gato? Ese, are you okay, man?”

  Kenzie went into the living room, gun up and searching every corner; heart in his throat and pulse throbbing painfully. He eyed the body, kicked the shotgun away and shifted to the left of the hall just as Oso fired two shots at the front of the house. Part of the door disappeared, and the living room was bathed in an eerie, shifting light as the cop cars arrived from all angles and focused their floods.

  “Manuel Ortega? This is Detective Sam Kenzie, LAPD. Let’s cool it for a minute and talk things over.”

  After a long pause, Oso answered, which Kenzie knew to be a good sign. He was panting, breathing heavily; high as a weather balloon on meth. “Talk what over, man? I ain’t going back inside, ese, I promise you that.”

  “So let’s talk.”

  “Talk about what, cop? Huh?”

  “Hey, who cares,” Kenzie said. He forced his voice to stay casual. “First, about how I’m getting too old for this shit. I’m nearly fifty, Oso. Don’t make me chase you, okay?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay, how about it’s not too late to help yourself, here.”

  “The fuck you mean? Huh? Help myself how, cop? I can’t take it any more, man. I can’t stand the pain.”

  “What pain, Oso?”

  “The pain. I can’t stand it, man. And no more of this I poke death bullshit, either! You know what I mean?”

  Kenzie didn’t, but played along. “Yeah. Sure. The I poke death thing.”

  He willed himself to stay calm, sound confident. He edged closer to the doorway. “I know something you can do about it,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. And what’s that, ese?”

  “You can let the kid go,” Kenzie said. “That would sure make you look good. Then you get a bad-ass lawyer and you never know, right?”

  “What kid you talking about?” Oso taunted. “You see some kids around here, or something? Huh?” But his response had taken a few seconds too long. Oso was thinking it over.

  “Oso?”

  “What kids, cop? Huh? Fuck off, man. I can’t stand the pain.”

  He had the girl right there in the room with him. Kenzie just knew that somehow. He had always trusted his instincts.

  And he also knew that Oso had just decided to kill her.

  “Cop?”

  Kenzie took a deep breath. He slid around the corner, gun up and at the ready, and started inching down the hall. The deep voice had come from the right and towards the back of the house. The junkie had said there were only two men inside. Kenzie knew he had to take his chances, or the little girl was dead. He approached the first bedroom, risked a peek. No one there.

  “Come here,” Oso growled softly. Someone whimpered; someone with a very high and fragile voice. They were in the back bedroom. A floorboard squeaked beneath his foot and Kenzie winced.

  “Cop? You out there?”

  “I’m coming in now,” Kenzie said. “Let’s not shoot each other, okay?”

  He spun around the corner and stepped into the bedroom, the 9 mm cocked and ready. His hands were shaking, but he still managed to draw a bead on Oso’s perspiring forehead. The huge man held a girl in a death grip, despite his wounded arm. She was a horrified, small-boned teen with her hair in a pony tail. She seemed astonishingly tall. The 357 was aimed right at the back of her skull. Time swirled into a black hole as the two men stared, unblinkingly, into each other’s eyes. Oh, shit, oh shit…

  Kenzie finally registered that the girl was standing on a chair. Oso was using her body as a shield. She wore a white blouse with cut-off blue jeans, and her thin legs were trembling. She reminded him of his sister.

  Kenzie took a long moment, then said: “Oso, I think we have us a difficult situation, here.”

  Oso was wild-eyed, amped, soaring on methamphetamines and nearly psychotic. His jailhouse tattoos pulsed with blood and twitched from adrenaline. He cackled and held the girl closer, his snarling face next to hers so that Kenzie couldn’t shoot. “Fucking difficult? No shit! Give me your fucking gun.”

  Sweat burned in Sam Kenzie’s left eye. He blinked it away without once closing his right. “You know I can’t do that,” he said.

  “I poke death, man. Now give me your fucking gun, or I do the girl!”

  Kenzie didn’t move. “And then I shoot you,” he said. “What good is that?”

  “I don’t even fucking care, cop!”

  The girl who looked like his sister Jenny whimpered and Kenzie forced a smile. “Take it easy, honey,” he said. “I think we can still work something out.”

  Kenzie felt his vision telescope. He fixated on the smallest of details; the miniscule distance between Oso’s head and the girl’s face, the tremble in Oso’s hairy trigger finger, the cars arriving outside to surround the house. He sniffed and took in the odor of some kind of gas. The crystal meth lab! Suddenly Kenzie realized Oso only wanted to stall until the inevitable spark from gunfire would immolate them all. He was running out of time.

  Oso’s eyes widened slightly, as if he were reading Kenzie’s mind. “Don’t even think about it asshole. I’ll kill her first.” Talking made his head move half an inch further away from his captive’s.

  Kenzie took the shot. He stole a deep breath, released it part way and squeezed the trigger; unfortunately just a split second after someone outside tried to use the bullhorn. The resulting screech caused Oso to turn slightly towards the window. The 9 mm slug neatly removed his left eye, his wide nose and part of his sinus cavity. A fine mist of crimson and grey sailed high in the air behind him. Then the bullet ricocheted out of Oso’s skull and traveled down into the trembling neck of the young girl, who looked startled and mildly upset, as though someone else had rudely passed gas in an elevator. A crimson fount shot out of her carotid artery. She immediately went pale
and began to sink to the floor.

  Kenzie cried: “No!”

  Meanwhile, what was left of Oso’s mind finally directed his fat, hairy finger to pull the trigger of the 357 Magnum. Kenzie, horrified by the death of the girl, had already fired once more, hitting Oso in the chest. Then he managed to cover his balls in a useless defensive maneuver before the hollow-point bullet went right through his splayed fingers, tore the thin webbing of skin between two of them and viciously penetrated his lower intestines. There it spun, end over end, creating tremendous internal injury and releasing fecal matter into his bloodstream. What was left of Oso dropped like a sack of bricks.

  Sam Kenzie fell to his knees, then sideways onto the floor. He felt thirsty and hot and his groin felt like it was on fire. He heard the cops storming the house, someone screaming for an ambulance, and he wondered if they would be too late to save him. Suddenly he was cold and shivering and the pain was unbearable. He watched the young girl bleed out onto a cheap, coffee-stained throw rug.

  2.

  Sam Kenzie dreams: He is a boy again, back in Twin Forks, suffering the blistering heat of the Nevada desert; walking aimlessly in search of water. He tries to force open a cactus to get a drink, but has no knife. The angry green needles puncture his hands. He shades his little eyes and looks around.

  There is a shack of some kind, an inner tube on a rope that hangs from a weathered barn door. He sees some pale, badly deformed children playing nearby. They are taunting an aroused scorpion with a sharp, wooden stick. They pause to watch Kenzie and then laugh at him, shouting cruel-sounding words he cannot quite comprehend. One has the haunted face of his sister Jenny, who died in childhood. He wants to speak to her…But just then a sandstorm kicks up, stinging his eyes.

  Kenzie walks away from the sullen children until they are swallowed up by the dust. He discovers some large rocks, then a cool cave. He goes down deep in the earth, trying to hide himself from the wind and dirt. He is desperate to escape from his agony, but before too long it finds him again. I can’t stand the pain, ese! Kenzie tries to scream, but discovers that he has no face and can not make a sound.