It was coming down evening on a hot and smoggy September day, and I wheeled a dusty white Ford Ranger pickup truck with bald tires and no air-conditioning through moderate traffic on the southbound 605 freeway. The asphalt was tinged blood-red by a sinking sun. This section of freeway carved through a surreal, heat-blasted moonscape of an alluvial fan near the confluence of the nearly dry San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers. I was on my way back home from Johnny Gato’s ranchita in Irwindale, and I carried just enough drugs to warrant a solid felony charge. The big, white, pissed-off, gimp-legged Long Island duck that I had secured in a cardboard box was escaping its makeshift cell and it was going to be one fucked-up situation if—or, more likely, when—it broke free in the tight confines of that cab. The white head and yellow beak had already crowned. I regretted passing up Johnny Gato’s offer to seal the box with duct tape and I regretted even more the decision to let the duck, that I named Quacky, ride up front.
