by Ryan Gattis
My stomach sinks down into my seat. I’m thinking there’s no fucking way we’ll get through these tapes fast enough, that it’s just—
Something hits the passenger window so hard, I jump.
It’s his fist. He’s knocking.
I smile and reach back for the .38 when he opens his hand and presses a piece of paper to the window. Behind it, he smiles.
I let go of the gun. I roll down the window.
“Here’s the address just in case you decide,” he says, “well, you know. It’s got my number on it too. Right there.”
He points at it like I actually need help figuring out which one is the phone number, then says, “Hey, how old are you?”
I give him a look as I figure out if I should lie or not. I decide not to. I don’t know why.
“Sixteen,” I say.
“Nineteen,” he says and points to himself.
“What’s your name anyway?”
He must’ve figured I was down for the dark side, cuz he says, “Around here they call me Joker.”
“That ain’t no name. What’s your real one?”
“That is my real name.”
If I wanted to push it, I’d ask him how he got his name. I don’t. I knew a Joker once. He got it cuz every time he put his knife in somebody, he laughed. Didn’t matter why, if he was nervous or high or what. He just did. There’s some shit in this life that happens and nobody knows why, not even the people that do it, and that was definitely that.
I say, “That’s not the one your mamá gave you. And that’s the only kind I got, so how else we gonna trade?”
Something cold and hard balls up in my chest then. Just a truth: if this motherfucker right here knew he was looking at Payasa, Lil Mosco’s sister, he’d prolly shoot me in the face. Wouldn’t even hesitate. The spy in me smiles at the power of being someone else. He thinks it’s for him. And that’s good. Useful.
“Ramiro,” he finally says.
“Lorraine,” I say. “With two r’s.”
“Right,” he says and nods. “See you later, Lorraine-with-two-r’s.”
9
Clever’s been a busy man since I been gone. He knows how wide the tire tracks were apart, which means he knows the width of the undercarriage and the type of tire and the rough speed and all that. He says we looking for a Ford Ranchero, prolly 1969, but he’s not totally sure. I tell him that fits with what the nurse said, since she said it had a bed on it. Clever nods. From the ligature marks they used metal wire to tie up Ernesto’s ankles, and he says they tied it to a trailer hitch before they dragged him. That same trailer hitch is prolly what busted my brother’s cheek when they hit the brakes and he flew into the back of the car.
I nod at all that, kind of numb to it, but panic hits me when I spill them tapes out on the kitchen table and I don’t know which ones came out the three VCRs that recorded the most recent footage. It’s stomping in my stomach, hard like body blows, when Clever, Fate, Lorraine, and Apache lean in to look.
“Damn, girl,” Apache says, “this is a serious come-up!”
Serious, sure, but overwhelming is what it is. But when you don’t know what’s what, you just take it all. Better too much than too little, right?
Lorraine bumps me a little like she wants to ask something stupid, like how many tapes there are. I just pop her with a look and she knows better. She’s trained.
I tell Clever, “Three of these are the latest, but I’m not sure which.”
“Easy,” Clever says. He lays them flat now, one after another. “See how none of them are rewound?”
Clever’s right. On every one of them, the left side is nothing but a white spool. The right side of each one is lopsided with black tape though.
“And none of them are fucking marked either,” I say. “Shit’s sloppy.”
Sometimes, Apache wonders shit and blurts it. “They don’t even bother watching these? Just take them out when they’re done and put new ones in? Why?”
“Cuz why bother? Takes work to watch,” Fate says. “And if nothing happened, then it’s work you don’t got to do. But if you caught something, you just turn that shit over to the sheriffs and make them do the work, you know?”
Clever’s nodding at that as he dominoes two more tapes, then three. I help. We flip every last one till the table has a solid layer of black on it and we can see the spools.
“But some you pulled before they were full,” Clever says.
Clever and me snag out the three that don’t match and head to the television. He pops one in and the Cork’n Bottle’s in my living room. It’s the counter area, and it occurs to me then that the other two tapes are different store angles. Static hits my finger as I poke the screen.
“That blueberry shit is right there.”
“Any of that moves,” Clever says, “we’ll see it.”
There’s a knock at the door and Apache moves to get it. We got homeboys outside so there’s no need to take the usual precautions.
He swings it open and Lil Creeper is there, dressed in all-over black: black hoodie, black jeans, black shoes. He sniffs and he’s got a shake to him, one that starts in his left leg and works itself up to his shoulder and back down. There’s a brown paper bag in his left hand too.
He takes one look at me sitting on the couch and starts laughing.
He says, “Is this shit Halloween or something?” When he doesn’t get a reaction, he tries to drag Apache into it. “Why’s she all dressed up like that?”
It’s no use saying shit or looking scary or anything. Lil Creeper has screws loose. He don’t take to no training. We all know this, especially Fate, so he just says, “Gimme the fucking bag.”
Creeper takes a little step back. “Okay, but, Fate, it’s like this: I only got a Glock and thirteen.”
“That makes the price different, don’t it?”
“Like, it could.” Creeper moves the bag from hand to hand for a moment. “I mean, I acknowledge that shit, but there’s got to be some kind of honesty bonus in it too, you know? Cuz, like, I coulda just swapped the bag for the money and run, right? But I didn’t. I stood up like a man and told you before you found out. So that’s worth something, right?”
Fate just has his hand out.
Creeper exhales. “Right?”
Fate’s hand doesn’t move an inch. He never wanted anything but for Lil Creeper to put the bag in it, so Creeper finally does. Fate rips the bag, pulls the piece, and sees that all down the handle it’s wrapped in white athletic tape, which is weird but not a big deal, so long as it works. Fate shrugs at it and makes sure the safety’s on, ejects the clip, counts bullets with his thumb tip, then checks the chamber and the firing pin, before counting out from a wad and folding it.
Creeper says, “That’s everything there was in the safe, Fate.”
“Whose safe?”
Creeper licks his lips and shrugs. “Some fucking guy’s. Who cares?”
“You sure that’s all there was?”
“Yeah.” Creeper bounces up and down a little. “Yeah.”
Big Fate holds the money out. “Take it.”
Glock 17Ls hold seventeen rounds, sixteen in the clip, one in the chamber. Creeper brought us one four bullets short of full. If I end up in a group of people, that’s four less chances to make it out.
Clever and me are straining our eyes at the screen on fast-forward so I don’t see what happens, but I know what happens. Creeper takes the fucking money, bones out, goes and gets high somewhere. Like always.
Inside the Cork’n Bottle, nobody goes near the gum. We burn twenty minutes of real time and nobody goes near the fucking gum. It’s all beer and cigarettes and standing around. It’s nothing.
“What if,” Apache says all serious, “what if the shooter bought this, like, a week ago and only just now chewed it?”
It kills the energy in the room. I look at Clever and Clever looks at me. We both look at Fate. He’s frowning at the Glock on the table. Lorraine’s busy digging
a hole in the carpet with her shiny toes.
Apache’s still going though. “Or, like, what if he didn’t even buy this for himself? What if somebody else bought it for him?”
Nobody says a word then.
It hits us all at the same time how futile this shit could be.
“But it’s what we got,” I say, and I don’t mean for it to come out as angry as it does. “It’s all we got.”
I’m mad on the surface, but underneath I’m giving up.
This is inevitable shit.
We’re out of time. I know it. Everybody does.
We’ve got thirteen minutes before Ray gets home and turns this shit into Desert Storm. Thirteen minutes’s nothing. Less than nothing.
It’s a pit trying to swallow me.
I’m not even looking at the screen anymore. I’m smashing my forehead into the flat of my hand when another knock hits the door, a fast one, like bam-bam-bam.
I know it’s over then. It’s done.
Cuz I know it’s Ray. It has to be. He’s just early. And I got to tell him about Ernie somehow. I’m the one that’s got to make him madder than he’s ever been. But something else occurs to me right as Fate moves to answer it.
Joker could’ve followed me home.
10
I got this pain ripping through my stomach when the door opens. I’m eyeing the Glock on the table like it’s too far away. The sound of the VCR whirs behind me as two people step in the house, the Serrato kid from before and a hina I recognize from Will Rogers Elementary School, Elena Sanchez.
I sigh some relief at that.
I mean, it was stupid of me to think it’d be Joker. If it’d been him, it wouldn’t have been no knock, and we would’ve heard them coming. Guess that’s just my guilt acting up for not telling Fate about what happened outside the Cork’n Bottle. There just wasn’t time.
Elena swings a look around the house. She used to have blond hair about seven years ago, badly bleached. It’s her natural brown now, nice and light, with just the right kind of wave in it. And that’s not all she lost. Her baby fat’s nowhere to be seen in cuffed black jeans and white T-shirt with a lace neck on it. She looks real fine now. No doubt about that. Lorraine sees the look on my face and hunches up like she’s mad.
Fate talks at the kid, “You need something, lil homie?”
“I asked around about the gum like you said,” the Serrato kid says. “Asking everybody, and, uh, she has something to tell you.”
Elena says, “I know all about the motherfucker you’re looking for who chews that blueberry gum.”
You’d think the hair on the back of my neck would get tired of standing straight up but it doesn’t. It reaches right for the ceiling. Next to me, Clever scrambles to his feet. Apache even takes a step forward.
We all need to hear this.
Right the fuck now.
“Couple months ago, I was with this dude who always chewed that shit. Met him at a party, and you know I thought he was all that. Big smile, smooth talk. A good kisser. Kissing him was like kissing candy. I swear he had the worst sweet tooth . . .”
Fate gives her a look like she needs to speed her shit up. Now.
“We go seeing each other a lot more and you know he was always like, ‘baby, me and you’ and ‘love of my life’ and all that. And we even talked about getting married. He talked about that shit all the time. But you know that was before I found out he knocked up Elvia, that’s my best friend! When I flew at him about that shit, he said he didn’t mean to, that he was drunk and she trapped him into it, but when I asked him—”
Jealous bitch that she is, Lorraine interrupts, “You ever think that maybe you deserved it?”
Elena’s on it. She takes a hard step at Lorraine and pops off, “Who the fuck are you, bitch?”
I get Lorraine’s wrist in my grip and twist. She yelps.
Elena smiles when she sees it.
Apache nods up and says, “This dude have a name?”
“His name’s Ramiro,” she says. “He trying to make a name for himself, but really he’s just a lame-ass leva. He’s got to go.”
Ramiro. My cheeks light up like someone set fire to them.
I never felt so stupid as in that moment. As I’m remembering how he stood, how scared I was, what he smelled like, one thought claws its way up to the top: he was an arm’s length away from me.
That’s it. Maybe three fucking feet.
I had the .38. I could’ve snapped it out and done him right there.
I could’ve already avenged Ernesto.
“Joker.” I whisper that shit like it hurts.
Cuz it does.
Elena puts a look on me like maybe she’s jealous, but definitely like she needs to know how I know.
She narrows her eyes before finally saying, “Yeah, that’s him.”
Shit. Fate wants to know how I know the dude’s name too.
I say, “You know anything about the guys he runs with? Two of them?”
She knows they’re into some serious bad shit, but no, she don’t know their names. “The both of them think they’re models or something. Always wearing sunglasses at night like a couple of idiotas.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking how that fits with what Gloria said, but at the Cork’n Bottle they weren’t wearing them. “That’s them.”
Fate looks at me sideways to see if I’m done with her.
When I nod, he says, “We appreciate you coming.”
“Like I said, he needs to go,” Elena says one more time to Fate. “And before he does, you tell that disloyal motherfucker I told you who it was. You tell him it was me. Elena. I want my name on his brain when you put a bullet through that shit.”
She used to be so shy in elementary. She had glasses. Liked to read. Wouldn’t say shit to teachers. Wouldn’t say shit to anybody.
“Damn.” Apache tosses a look at Clever. “A woman scorned and all that, right?”
Elena’s eyes flash at him with a hard kind of hate.
“Yup,” she says.
After she leaves with the kid, I tell Fate how I know what I know.
I tell him about the Cork’n Bottle too. I hand him the piece of paper with the address and the phone number on it.
Apache pops first. “Wait, what? Like, what are the odds of that? I mean you’re like the luckiest—”
Fate cuts him off. “Small town, primo.”
He says it cuz he’s talking to Apache.
But he’s looking at me.
He says, “Ready to ride?”
11
Clever’s driving Apache’s Cutlass, Big Fate’s up front, and Apache’s next to me in the backseat. We talk it out on the way. We talk up the idea of me calling Joker and being all sexy while asking him to meet me somewhere, but then Clever says if we did that, he might come alone and we miss our chance to get the other two that did Ernesto. And that’s not acceptable. Not to anybody.
Somebody says something about it being better just to show up and use my element of surprise. And then Clever says what I been thinking all night, that I’m like a spy or something. It’s still true.
I’ve changed and everything. Lorraine moped around when she was done getting mad at me about Elena, then she just sniffled a lot, trying not to cry as she put me in some sort of chiffon thing that feels like I’m wearing a droopy umbrella around my waist. Only battle I won on was shoes. I got white chucks. Flat soles so I can run. I lost on everything else.
Like, I’m wearing pearls. I’m wearing little white gloves that end in a lace kind of frill around my wrist like I’m some quincé princess who wants to be Cinderella or some shit. The gloves are important though. No fingerprints.
Fate’s not so sure about sending me in alone. I can tell by how quiet he is. He wants everybody. All in. Special Forces shit.
But I say, “Ain’t no safe option, Fate. If it’s me, then it’s my time. That doesn’t mean it’s got to be everybody else’s too.”
I don’t have to say that Ernest
o wasn’t a player, that dude had no juice. That he’s mine to get back for. And I definitely don’t say me going in is better than Ray scaring up an AK-47 from some big brothers and putting a whole bunch of air holes in somebody’s house and then another, and another.
So we put our heads together.
Fate says, “You go in. You mark them. Hang back a bit if they’re not together. Blend in with the crowd. See if you can’t wait to get them together in a clump so you can get them close. Harder to miss then. And a lot easier to get it done quicker.”
We pull up to a house I never seen before and a dude fast-walks off the porch to the car. When Apache puts his hand out the window, the dude drops something in Apache’s hand and turns back around.
It’s four bullets, all 9 millimeter.
I see them glint up and then Clever pulls out and we’re gone, headed to that address Joker gave me, the address where he’s supposed to be.
Apache hands the bullets to Fate and I watch him load the Glock full before he hands it to me. I squeeze it and the taped handle feels weird in my hand, grippy. Fate shows me where the safety is and how to click it off with my thumb, so I do.
There’s all kinds of rules for how to do this. It’s almost a list.
When I pop, I gotta count the rounds.
“Keeps you focused,” Fate says. “Keeps you from just squeezing till you’re out.”
No cowboy shit. Close range is best.
Don’t aim for the head first. Aim for the body. It’s bigger.
Cluster for the heart. Finish in the head if you got time. If you’re close.
When I’m done—when it’s done—I drop the weapon. No excuses.
Apache will have my back then, and then we run, and then Fate has our backs, like a chain almost, and then we hit the car.
That’s the plan cuz Fate says so.
I stare at the thing in my hands. It’s the heaviest pistol I ever held, all black and shiny on top and white from its tape on the grip. And right then I think how some poor bastard is going to get his house raided tonight or tomorrow or whenever people quit rioting in the fucking streets and the sheriffs have time to figure out it was his gun used in a shooting. Soon enough anyway. Vikings always come.
