Red Tiger

by Sean Black

  “The kid they arrested, there’s no way he’s going to talk to the cops, right?”

  “Correct,” said Ty.

  Lock ran a hand through his hair, fingertips worrying over an old scar. “But we’re not the cops.”

  “Not sure that’s how he’ll see it. Not sure the LAPD would appreciate us getting into the middle of this either.”

  “Not a problem,” said Lock. “We’re not.”

  “So how would we offer him a deal if we don’t speak to him?” said Li.

  Lock dug out his cell phone. He tapped on Carmen’s office number. “Everyone’s entitled to legal representation, right?”

  35

  Keep your mouth shut. Wait for the attorney who will be provided for you. Take what you have coming. If you’re confused go back to rule one: keep your mouth firmly closed.

  Those were the rules that Pony planned on following. Just like he had all the other times he’d been arrested.

  This was hardly his first rodeo. By now he was intimately acquainted with all that the criminal justice system in the State of California had to offer. Arrest, detention, trial, incarceration, release and probation were simple inconveniences. Shotcaller had told him to think of them as operating costs, the price of doing business.

  However, this go-round was different in two respects. The law would treat him as an adult. And kidnapping was a much more serious offense. Throw the word “conspiracy” into the mix, and he knew he could be looking at a solid dime. Ten years inside. And not just any old ten years. Ten prime years.

  The idea scared him. He wouldn’t let it show in here, in this jail cell that was designed to hold twelve men but currently held sixteen. He wouldn’t let it show to the lawyer the gang would send him. No one could ever know the dread he was feeling. But it was there, right in the pit of his stomach, growing like a tumor.

  Pony sat on the edge of the top bunk he had secured for himself, legs dangling over. He rubbed at his wrists, rolled his neck, trying to release the tension from his body.

  There was movement out on the walkway. Two county deputies, one of them female, were walking in a new arrival. No matter what the female deputies looked like, their presence always got a reaction. Guys would hoot and holler, and some would wander in back and masturbate, staring at the deputy as she walked past.

  This time was different. The initial shiver of excitement was the same. But as the deputies passed each cell, the whooping and cat calls quickly fell away to a whisper.

  It told Pony one thing. Whoever they were walking in was heavy. A big deal. A gangster. Someone who commanded the rarest of commodities in a zoo like this: silence.

  With what felt like a strange inevitability, they stopped directly in front of Pony’s unit. He didn’t have a view of the new arrival from where he was. Instead he watched the reaction of the other inmates who could see him.

  The vibe was what Pony imagined a lion enclosure would feel like when the rear gate was opened and a huge wild male, fresh from the savannah, padded in to take his place among those that had been born in captivity and had never had cause to kill their own food.

  There was a palpable and very real shift in body language. Eyes were cast down, either to the floor, a book or a magazine—one of the anomalies of jail Pony had picked up on was that, without access to their screens, people craved old-school paper. Jail was like a time machine where time didn’t just stop, it rolled back a few decades.

  One of the deputies made the call, and the door into the unit rolled open. The new arrival walked in, hands still cuffed behind his back. The door rolled closed. With his back to it, he pushed his hands through the slot. A deputy took off the cuffs. They left.

  This time, as they walked back down the gangway, the shouts and hollers started up again, full-throated.

  “Hey, what’s your name, sweetness?”

  “Come on in here, Mamacita. I got something for you.”

  The new arrival moved with a deliberate slowness to the back of the unit, and Pony got a look at him. He was early thirties, a huge mountain of a Latino with serious ink, and some Zapata-styled facial hair.

  Something about him was familiar to Pony. Had they met? He didn’t think so. Maybe it was that he had met men like this before. Real MS-13 gangsters.

  Suddenly, as the man approached Pony, he felt very small. The guy was huge. Block-the-sun big. Only six feet, if that, but three hundred pounds.

  The man lying on the bottom bunk opposite stood, swiftly snatching up his belongings, and vacating what was prime real estate. The giant took his place, easing himself down into a horizontal position, hands behind his head,

  Without thinking, Pony caught his eye. The giant stared at him. Pony tried to hold eye contact for a second, just long enough to show he wasn’t a punk but hopefully not so long that it would be read as a challenge. He found himself unable to break the man’s gaze. It was like there was a line between their pupils, a tractor beam drawing him into a void.

  “What you looking at?” said the giant.

  Pony swallowed. He looked away. He flipped his legs back up and lay down on his bunk.

  His heart was racing. He could feel it in his chest.

  Movement. The giant was getting up. Pony scooched himself so that his back was to the wall. His hand felt under the blanket for the shank he’d taken from a bunk while its owner had gone for a shower.

  He’d use it, if he had to. Damn straight he would.

  The giant was moving towards him. His head loomed over the edge of the bunk. He stared at Pony.

  Pony’s hand tightened around the weapon. It wasn’t much, a piece of melted-down plastic with a razor blade. More for slashing than stabbing and therefore not the tool for taking down a man twice his size. But it was all he had.

  The giant’s face relaxed into a smile. He reached out a fist. “Chill, little homie. We good.”

  It was a sensation of relief like he had never felt before. He returned the smile. He let the shank fall back into the fold of the blanket.

  He withdrew his hand and bumped the giant’s fist. The giant’s smile grew into a grin. His eyes crinkled with warmth.

  “You’re Pony, right?”

  “Yeah, dude, that’s me.”

  “Cool,” said the giant, conjuring a knife into his hand from the sleeve of his loose jail smock.

  Before Pony had the chance to so much as scream, the giant’s arm came up and fell, the point of the knife punching into Pony’s chest. It felt like a blow, a heavy punch, no more than that. It was only the metallic flash, and the spray of blood that told the real story.

  There was a sucking sound as the giant rested an open palm on Pony’s chest and yanked out the blade. He lifted his arm three more times as Pony flailed helplessly on the bunk, the blanket growing sticky with blood.

  His vision began to tunnel. Darkness folded in around him. The last thing he was aware of was the soft feeling of relief edging out the fear and panic. His eyes remained open as the darkness became complete.

  36

  “We need to bounce.”

  Princess tugged at Joker’s sleeve. They were standing in the middle of the living room, a breeze whipping in from the front door. Joker stared at the post-raid chaos but didn’t move. It was if he couldn’t believe it had all unraveled so fast.

  “How did they know?” he’d asked her.

  It was as much as she could do not to slap him across the face. “We used his bank cards, dummy,” was the best she could manage. “You think they wouldn’t notice that? They have cameras on all those machines now.”

  The irony was that, rather than them being arrested, Pony had been snatched up. One more person to wish them dead. Which was why they needed to grab what they’d come for and get the hell out of there, and fast. Before the cops or, worse, one of their own noticed the car outside.

  According to the news reports, it was only by sheer chance that the cops had missed the two kidnap victims: they could have swept down when Shotcaller and his b
uddies had been there to pick them up.

  Joker was still standing there, rooted to the spot. Like some kind of pendejo, which literally meant a single pubic hair but was commonly used to describe an idiot.

  She walked into the bedroom, found a bag, and started throwing clothes into it. She did that until it was bulging.

  They had to split. Now. Every second their car was left out front was a second they couldn’t afford.

  Joker had moved into the kitchen. He was drinking a glass of water. She snatched it from his hand and dropped the glass on the floor. It shattered.

  He stared at her like she was crazy. “What you do that for?”

  “What you do that for?” she sing-songed back at him. “We have to go. Like now.”

  “Where? Where are we going to go?”

  “Anywhere. Somewhere they won’t find us. I don’t know. Arizona. Colorado. Oregon. We have the money to get started somewhere else.”

  He didn’t look convinced. She wasn’t sure she was getting through to him.

  “This is it,” she said, digging out a bunch of fresh fifty-dollar bills and fanning them in front of him. “This is our one shot.”

  “Let me go get some clothes.”

  She grabbed his wrist as he turned. “I already did that. Anything you need we can buy when we’re out of here. We’ll need to switch the car too.”

  “What about Pony?” he asked. “Don’t we owe him?”

  “He’ll be fine,” said Princess. “They know this wasn’t on him. They’ll take care of him.”

  She didn’t want to tell Joker that Pony was dead. She’d been sent that news a few minutes ago, with a warning that they’d be next if they didn’t get in touch with Shotcaller and make things right. Like that was possible. She knew that as soon as the others found them they’d be as dead as Pony. Only it wouldn’t be as quick. Shotcaller and the others would be looking to send a message. Their deaths would be slow and torturous.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like running away. Leaving Pony behind to face the music.”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  Every minute that passed came with an increasing level of danger. Almost certainly someone had let Shotcaller know they were here. He, or one of the others, would be on his way. If they were caught there would be no escape. At least if they were in the car they had a chance if someone saw them. Right now they were sitting ducks.

  “I dunno,” said Joker, nudging an empty beer bottle with his toe.

  “What is there to know?”

  She was losing patience with him.

  “Pony wouldn’t bail on us like this.”

  Princess took a deep breath. “Pony’s dead.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  She pulled up the text message and handed her phone to Joker, so he could see for himself.

  She watched his expression cloud.

  “We’re next if we don’t bounce. Like right now.”

  “Okay,” said Joker.

  Finally, thought Princess. She nodded at the bags. “Grab that one. I’ll get the other.”

  “But where are we going to stay?”

  She felt a fresh wave of exasperation. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. The main thing is that we’re not here.”

  He grabbed the bag. “Okay, let’s hit it.”

  She picked up the other. Their two lives didn’t amount to much in the end. The contents were easily thrown together. But they’d amount to even less if they hung around.

  “We going to be okay?”

  Princess squeezed out a reassuring smile. What was it with boys like Joker? They came off tough, but deep down they could be real pussies. “We’ll be better than okay. I promise.”

  A rat-a-tat-tat knock at the front door. The kind of knock that might sound casual on a regular day, but right now carried all the threat of someone leaping out of a closet in the dead of night.

  They both froze in place. Princess felt a sudden surge of raw fear. Her nerves pulsed. Her stomach did a back flip.

  They were here. Sooner than she’d expected. She stared at Joker with something approaching hate. All these minutes she’d spent trying to talk him round. They could be out on the road by now, merging into the vast ocean of cars and people.

  She nodded silently towards the back of the house. It was the longest of long shots, but perhaps they could sneak out that way, climb the fence and make a run for it.

  It had to be a better option than sitting here and becoming living, breathing—no, make that living, screaming autopsy practice for some crazy MS-13 sicario. Princess knew what they did to traitors.

  Joker just stood there. Not moving. She wanted to slap him. But he wasn’t even worth that.

  She told herself to calm down. Maybe it wasn’t who they thought it was. Maybe it was cops, come back to check on the scene. Or perhaps it was a delivery. Or some kind of religious person. If it was, she’d gladly leap into their arms, beg for salvation and a place to hide.

  Princess walked swiftly over to the window. She pulled back the edge of the blind, trying to get an angle on the stoop.

  No one was there. She scanned the street. Their car was still parked out front where they had left it. Everything appeared normal. Or what passed for normal in this neighborhood. She had a sudden unwelcome flashback to the streets of Arcadia with its trash-free, pristine sidewalks, and empty corners.

  Another noise, this time at the rear of the house, brought her back to the moment. The terror that had ebbed flooded back into her as she heard the door being forced open and heavy footsteps fall onto the kitchen floor.

  Joker seemed to snap out of it. He moved to the table, and picked up his handgun, a small snub-nosed revolver Shotcaller had given him that had become his most prized possession.

  Princess had a moment of clarity. While he dealt with whoever was in back, she could make a run for their car. She could wait to see if Joker made it out. If he didn’t appear, she’d take off.

  The thought brought her guilt. Did she have another betrayal in her? She was torn. None of what she had done had brought them here. This was all on Joker. But he was still her friend.

  A sudden cry of pain from the kitchen. It died away, then started up again, this time as a plaintive sob. “My wrist. You broke my wrist, dog,” Joker wailed.

  Princess slowly stepped towards the bag she’d packed. She grabbed for the handles.

  What was she thinking? She didn’t need extra cargo. She needed to make a run for the door. Now.

  “Ching chong, asshole.”

  Joker again.

  The words stopped Princess halfway to the door, the bag abandoned.

  Ching chong?

  It wasn’t Shotcaller who’d just broken Joker’s wrist. Or any of his crew. It was someone Asian. Either a cop or maybe someone who’d come searching for Emily and Charlie.

  Something approaching confidence returned. One Asian person. That she could handle, even if Joker had crumbled.

  Choking sounds from the kitchen. They grew louder. The sound of Joker gasping for air.

  Princess turned around, her back to the front door. She took a step toward the kitchen as the gasping grew louder.

  She had made her decision. She would stand her ground. What had happened back in Arcadia? The two Chinese kids had made a show of defiance. But it had come to nothing more than a bunch of barking.

  This would be the same. She felt in her pocket for a blade. She took another step, her hand closing around the handle.

  Joker appeared suddenly in the doorway. Or some version of him did. One of his eyes dangled at cheek level from its socket. The other blinked furiously. His feet danced six inches off the ground.

  A man’s forearm was closed around his neck, the hand cupping his shoulder. The barrel of a shotgun poked out between Joker’s arm and his side. It was pointed straight at Princess. The man’s head was pressed cheek to cheek against Joker’s face.

  He was a large Asian man. Over six feet tall and
bulky. Late forties. He was wearing a suit and black dress shoes, like someone who worked in an office.

  Joker thrashed some more. The dangling eyeball jiggled off his nose, a tiny mirror of the larger, macabre puppet show playing out less than six feet from her.

  His one good eye rolled back in his head. The lid stayed open, but she could see that he had passed out. The man didn’t let go. He kept holding Joker off the ground.

  Finally, he spoke. His accent was strong, but he spoke in English.

  “Lie down,” he told her, a jab of the shotgun barrel emphasizing that it wasn’t a request so much as an order.

  She stared at him. It was like looking down into some black abyss. It was the look Shotcaller sometimes had, only deeper and more malevolent.

  She knew what she had to do. She should turn, take her chances. A shotgun blast in her back would finish this, or she would make it outside.

  That was what she had to do. Only problem was that she couldn’t move. The man’s black eyes seemed to pull her into him.

  Slowly, Princess lowered herself face down onto the floor. As soon as she was there she knew that she had made the biggest wrong turn of them all.

  But it was already too late. Hands cinched plastic ties around her wrist. They snapped tight.

  She was rolled onto her side. Joker lay a few feet away, his body convulsing with shock, his hand feeling across his face for the eye that had been popped out.

  “You can’t leave him like that,” Princess pleaded, her question directed to the man’s sleek black shoes.

  She turned another inch, trying to get a better view of him. He drew Joker’s snub-nose gun from a pocket, walked over to him, pressed the gun into the empty socket and pulled the trigger twice.

  37

  “I have bad news,” said Carmen.

  “That figures,” said Lock, staring at the picture of her that had come up on his phone when she called. He glanced at the two patrol cars sitting outside the house. Ty was busy talking to one of the cops as a small group of people from the block gathered on the sidewalk. Carl Galante had called him and Ty a half-hour before to say that something else had gone down at the house where it was believed Emily and Charlie had been held. Something bad. The body of a young Hispanic man who matched the description of the second male kidnapper. The third kidnapper, the female, was still unaccounted for.