On The Grind

Chapter 17

"We don't have shit, just a lousy misdemeanor verbal assault. I needed felony battery, Alonzo growled at me. "We also got three kitchen slaves saving Rocky didn't do nothin'. You were supposed to keep the wetbacks out of there."

We were in the small jail facility on the second floor of the Haven Park PD. Rocky w as in the larger of our two interrogation rooms with a video surveillance camera running. On the IV screen I could see the ex-middleweight sitting in the 1-room looking at his shoes. His left hand was chained to a ring in the wall.

"We need to get him on a Class A felony," Alonzo continued. "So you're gonna get a chance to fix your fuckup and do that."

"Calm down. Let's not make this worse than it is," I said.

"Shut up," he snapped. "Here's what you're gonna do. You walk in there, unhook him, then insult his manhood. Beaners can't deal with that. Call him a maricon. Stay away from the table mike and keep your voice down. We don't want the surveillance video to show we provoked him. I know this asshole. He'll throw down. After he's attacked you and we got our felony, I'll be in there and put a big hurt on him."

"It's a bad idea, Al."

"Hey, I'm not coming to you for fucking approval. I'm telling you the way you're gonna do it. This guy is gonna eat a Class A felony and go away for five years. He sure ain't gonna be the mayor of Haven Park from a cellblock in Soledad."

For a minute, I didn't answer. I just stood there trying to come up with a valid reason for not going through with this.

"You gonna become a problem here? I thought you wanted to make it on this department. I'm the guy who has to sign you off probation!"

"Jeez, man. Calm down."

"Get in there and do it." He pulled out his sap and held it up, showing it to me. "You take one punch for the camera and I'll close his show."

It was an impossible situation. I had no choice but to go ahead, because if it wasn't me, I knew Alonzo would just get somebody else to do it. At least if I was in the I-room I might be able to stop him from killing the guy.

"Okay," I said, reluctantly.

Alonzo opened the I-room door. Rocky looked up at me with a malevolent stare as I stepped inside, leaving the door unlatched behind me. Then I reached over and quickly uncuffed him. That got his attention.

"Stay where you are," I said. Alonzo was outside watching this on the monitor. I had to find a way to make it look right, but still keep my partner from killing Rocky with that damn sap.

"I thought I told you to hold it together. What's wrong with you? You stupid or something?" I kept my voice low so it wouldn't record on the surveillance tape.

"Do not talk to me this way," Rocky said.

"Why not, joto?" I whispered. "You gonna do something about it? You're nothing but a jugaclor a los bandos. El maricon."

Chacon exploded up out of the chair and started swinging. I ducked his first shot but caught the second one square in the teeth. It was a clean right, efficiently delivered, and it snapped my head back. Then two or three more combination punches hit me. The guy was lightning-fast. I was trying to cover up, but he was scoring at will. I was getting creamed.

Where the hell is Alonzo? I thought as more blows rained off my shoulders and elbows. He was supposed to be in here after the first punch. just then Rocky caught me on the side of the head with a great left hook, which stunned me. I pawed back at him with a weak right cross that did nothing. Rocky circled right and peppered me with three quick jabs, splitting my lip and bloodying my nose.

"Quien es el joto ahora, flaquito!" Rocky shouted as he circled left, bouncing jabs off my forehead, then delivering a devastating uppercut.

I was getting cut to pieces, so in order to minimize the damage I rushed him and slammed him against the wall, trying to pin his hands to his sides.

At last the door opened and Alonzo came in swinging the sap. He bounced two pounds of leather-wrapped lead off Rocky's head. In an instant the smaller man was down on his knees. Then, before I could intervene, Alonzo kicked him in the stomach and sapped him again. Murder flashed in my huge partner's eyes. He was winding up for a last mighty kill shot when I threw myself at him and knocked him off balance. He swung anyway. The sap whistled through the air but missed both Rocky and me.

"Knock if off! We're code four!" I yelled.

Alonzo finally stopped and looked down at the little Mexican fighter, who was unconscious and prone on the concrete floor.

"That's how we do it Haven Park-style," Alonzo growled.

"We need to get some EMTs in here," I said, spitting out droplets of my own blood as I talked.

Ten minutes later Chacon had been revived by paramedics and was sitting up on a bunk in one of the holding cells. He refused to talk, refused to look at us. He had sustained a concussion, but his eyes were pinpoints of hatred.

"Where the hell were you, Al?" I said as the EMTs iced my split lip and put cotton sticks up my bloody nose.

"I thought you needed a little object lesson in how to take an order. When I say to do something, you need to do what I tell you instead of giving me a bunch a guff. You're lucky I didn't pay you back for the sapping you gave me at the restaurant."

Alonzo held up the videotape of our I-room brawl. "After we file the assault charges I'm gonna leak this to the Courier and some local TV stations. Let them see what a violent, unstable prick their mayoral candidate is."

"I'm not sure showing a tape of Rocky taking on two cops twice his size is going to screw him up with his constituents."

"Yeah? Well, that's why you're stuck down in this shit hole, being retrained by me."

While I wrote up the assault report, Alonzo sat at the desk next to mine and dialed somebody at the Haven Park Courier. After explaining the situation, he added, "He's under arrest right now.

This guy committed felonious assaults on two police officers. Yeah, yeah." He paused and listened a moment before saying, "You bet. I think I can steal a copy of the tape for you guvs. But I'm looking for a nice clean piece. You gotta stop with all this Rocky Chacon, man-of-the-people propaganda and print what really happened."