“No, but it can’t be worse than what’s in my head right now, so go for it, kid.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Yeah, a kid. Kill me or walk on.”
“Here’s a flash, Moses. We have a family that MS-13 wants dead. Somewhere is a girl named Freedom being raped or worse. We fail? Peter, me, all of us go down, or underground, for the rest of our lives. And you choose this moment to fuck with Sunshine? Fuck you, old man.” He stood there breathing. Talked out. Finally he simply walked out.
After getting dressed very carefully, I dug a number out of my wallet and called Deloris, the Internal Affairs cop. I told him we needed to meet. I took a cab to where we’d left the Tempest and twenty minutes later I was sitting in the bleachers watching a swim meet at the Rose Bowl pools.
“Nice,” Deloris said, sitting down. “Exits every direction and all these kids to ensure we don’t go O.K. Corral on you.”
“You left Carbone out, so either you think he’s dirty, or you are.”
“Or it was his day off.”
“I.A. doesn’t get days off. A man named Zacarías Araya tried to have me die real slow and ugly.”
“He doesn’t fail often.”
“I got lucky. It was his boys with the rocket launcher. His boys took out Titan’s condos.”
“Damn it.” He nodded, but didn’t look surprised. “This motherfucker is out of control.” He took out a cigarette. A swimmer’s mom shook her head and nodded at a no smoking sign. Deloris looked ready to bite her face off. Instead, he nodded and put the cig back in the pack.
“Your Chief is dirty.”
“So the rumor goes. Without proof, we got worse than nothing. Without proof, I have a powerful enemy that I can’t contain.”
“You threatened to put me in a shallow grave.”
“No one would miss you. Him, they would.”
“Think I can scare him into walking away?”
“Not in a million years. You got anything else? Anything that might help me?”
I gave him Peter’s cell number. Told him Peter was close to having the whole story ready for press. Told him the walls were coming down, time was coming to choose a side or get flushed with the rest.
“So you say.” He walked away, never looking back.
No one followed me out of the Rose Bowl parking lot.
In Altadena, I pulled into a liquor store, bought a pack of Camels—fuck menthols—and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. They didn’t stock any single malts, so this would have to do. I had a long drink, smoked a butt.
In the hills above Altadena, I rolled in the dirt and brush. I drank and poured liberal amounts of whiskey into my hair. Between the scabs and road rash and mud and twigs, I knew I’d fit in perfectly where I was headed.
I parked below the 4th Street Bridge. I hid my cash, guns and I.D. in the body panel. I relaxed my bladder and let warm urine run down my leg. The smell of piss is like an invisibility spell; people turn away before even registering you are human. That worked fine for me.
DOWN ON THE nickel, 5th Street below Broadway, I lay flat on my back. A shambling sea of humanity roiled around me. Nobody stopped to ask if I was ok. I wasn’t. I had eaten a couple too many Vics for effect and the world felt shaky.
“On your feet, Lurch.” His face was shadowed by a shiny bill. His partner was slipping on rubber gloves. “No sleeping on the sidewalk after dark.”
“It’s after dark?” I’d been staring at a streetlamp and lost time.
The club hurt when it struck my shoulder. It wasn’t full force, just checking to see if I would get violent.
“On your feet, or do I call backup and haul your giant ass in?”
“What?” He was talking under water.
“Daddy, come on now.” And she was there, arm under mine, lifting me up. She was strong, built like a fireplug. Military short hair and faded desert fatigues. She was definitely ex-military, and hell-bent on remaining all she could be.
“He really your old man, Cam?” the younger cop asked.
“Close enough. They served together.”
I was on my feet, listing but staying upright and generally walking a straight line. The cops parted and let her lead me deeper into skid row.
She took me to a small encampment down by the river. The rain turned it into a torrent this near the channels. Six vets in camos ranging from sane-ish to stone cold, batshit crazy sat around a fire watching the embers.
One, all fucking five foot six of him, jumped up and fronted me. His hair was the color of a penny. “Where the fuck did you serve?”
“I don’t know, but there was a lot of goddamn sand,” I said. A couple of the older guys laughed at that.
“Two kinds of vets.” The guy speaking had long, silver hair and kept his eyes on the water. “Those with crotch rot from the jungle and thems with sand up their asses. Sandies seem meaner. But that could be age. Cam, bring this tore up bastard down where I can see him.” The silver-haired vet was named Kilroy. His face was latticed with scars and wrinkles. Cam put a flashlight and large magnifying glass in Kilroy’s hands. He searched with cataract-covered eyes to make sense of my busted up mug. Behind us the fire crackled, before us the waters rumbled. No one said shit while he investigated. I was getting a clear picture that if he didn’t like what he did, or didn’t, see I was going for a final swim.
“The Root?” Kilroy asked when he leaned back.
“Yeah.”
“You there when the barracks went down?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Long time ago. Fuck it, right?”
“Fido!” A young man on the edges howled.
“So, do I pass? Am I head-fucked enough to enjoy your fire and personal madness?”
“You crazy enough. Cam!” She knelt at his side. “This man, he is going to get a lot of people killed. Smell it.”
“Dude, that’s piss.”
“Shut up. He smells of death, coming and going.”
“What do I do?” Cam asked, holding the older man’s hand.
“You choose. But hear him out.”
BEERS WERE PASSED around. I sat with Cam and Kilroy, told them everything I knew about MS-13 talking over downtown. About hookers disappearing. Politicians and a Police Chief touting the cleaning up of the streets. Told them about everything but my crew. I left them out.
“Either of you hear of Zacarías Araya?”
“King Araya,” Kilroy said. “Nothing from a dime to a semi load moves down here he don’t get a bite of. Old school Nam warlord shit. Some of his men are Uncle Sam trained. Heard they wear fingers around their necks. Don’t fuck with him.”
“Already did. Killed his lieutenant.”
“See, Cam? See? Death floats all over this man. You see that spooky bitch at his shoulder, in the bloody trench with the razor? Who the fuck is she?”
Cam didn’t see anything beside me. I don’t know if I felt better or worse having Kilroy see Mikayla.
ALL THE LOST boys, spare one, curled up for the night. They always left one on sentry. Their camp was surrounded by wires, cans with stones in them hanging down. Early warning system.
I was relatively sober and ghost free when Cam and I sat down near the rushing water.
“Ask,” she said.
“Ask?”
“Yeah, am I a dyke? Have I seen combat? What’s my story?”
“Truth is, Cam, dyke, straight or bi? Don’t mean shit where we’re going. If you haven’t taken a life, I’d like to know. Could make a hell of a difference in how things play out.”
“Was in Fallujah, intel guidance support. Three men tried to rape me. They didn’t survive.”
“How’d it shake out.?”
“They got buried with full honors and I got kicked to the curb. It fucked my head. Helping this crew keeps me from . . .”
“Hating yourself?”
“No. Hating you and your gender.”
I SLEPT FOR an hour and kept dreaming about El Rancho and the plump Mexican w
oman who said I could fuck her any way I wanted. In the heart of Araya’s kingdom. Had to be sanctioned. I went from dreaming to thinking in my dream to sitting up awake.
“Son of a bitch.”
“What?” I had woken Cam.
“I need to get to a club called El Rancho without being seen.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Ok.”
With a flashlight to guide us, Cam opened a rusted door and led me into a steel room built into the wall. Tunnels ran off under the city in several directions. Cam knew a loose collection of abandoned subway tracks, sewers and passways between buildings. The map lived in her head and she never missed a turn.
“Every city has its veins. They build up and leave lines below.” Her voice echoed off the huge curved access pipe we moved through. “In Vegas, hundreds of people live in the tunnels, storm drains. Some call them mole people. Lot of vets. Lot of broken heroes just searching for a roof and solitude.”
“How many in your crew?”
“Kilroy’s Boys, that’s what they call themselves. Depending on who’s locked down or on a run, we bounce between five and twelve. Here we are.”
She led me up a ladder. From a storm grate, we stared out at El Rancho. It was a small joint, could seat maybe seventy-five, hundred max if the Fire Marshal looked the other way. Behind it was a parking lot with roughly four times that many cars.
“Anyone leave their car down here for safekeeping?”
“No one.”
“Then where are the drivers?”
“Give me some time, but my guess is the shuttered four-story between us and the river.” It was decay personified, faded paint covered by fifty years of smog and grime, all the windows boarded over. A tall iron sign had once graced the roof, many letters now missing, it read: MENS F CLOT. That made me smile. Don’t know why, but it did. The back of the building dropped into the fast moving channels of the LA River.
THE SUN WAS coming up when Cam dropped me at a grate a few blocks from the Tempest. She had her mission. I had mine. We had twelve hours to spin the game our direction. Or die. That was always an option.
I LIKE HER. Mikayla drifted into the front seat.
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
Because we are both life takers?
“That, and you’re both willing to go where it goes without apology.”
I made it across LA without having to kill anyone, which was a blessing. Thirty minutes of Mikayla’s revved up death ramble was not.
“So, my dead friend, your plan is we go into a building that may or may not be holding Freedom—hell, it may or may not be a shooting gallery, or the hub of MS-13’s dope operation—but we go in there blazing and die proving what?”
She is there. We get her and kill the bastards who took her.
“We’re both clear, that is not a plan. It’s an ambush, not a plan.”
Ambush got Nika out.
“We got lucky. Now go wherever it is you go when you go. I need to think.”
She went nowhere. Just stared out the window.
CHAPTER 34
Freedom knew exactly how long she had been held in the room with no windows. Long enough to sharpen the tip of a wire hanger into an inch-long, razor-sharp blade. With a pair of metal fingernail clippers and file combo, she fashioned a second blade farther down the wire. The remaining wire folded into a grip. Holding the wire between the two blades, her weapon could sever tendons. Stab. Grab. Pull. She wished she could pick her first kill. She wished she could have picked her first lover. Life chose. She reacted.
On the MP3 player LeJohn had given her was Nicki Minaj. Mistake. Freedom used to hear her easy, cute sexuality. Now it was clear when she said, All these bitches are my sons . . . You ain’t my son, you my motherfucking stepson, it meant Nicki owned them. She would decide. She also sang a song to her alter ego.
Fuck.
They should have killed me, Freedom thought.
Mike, that fat fuck contractor, continued to stop by every night after work. He would pump and sweat onto and into Freedom.
“I hate him, LeJohn, his old, wrinkly, white skin.”
“I know, baby, just ’til we can get free. Then no more. Then you choose.”
“I’ll hold on. But he gets rough, scares me.”
“Baby, we always on the other side of the door.” He snaps a switchblade out, stabbing the air. “Scream and I will cut his pale ass.” That earned him a kiss. Earned him a quick, gentle fuck. Quiet, so the others didn’t hear.
At first she would go away. Now she looked him in the face. Watched his carotid artery pulse. When he came, his eyes dilated. That would be the perfect moment to strike. Just as a man squirts he is at his least focused.
Fifty million years ago she wanted to be a doctor. Evolution was real and fast. She didn’t feel like a monster anymore, more like a lioness planning her kill.
Next night, after the contractor left, taking his stink of tar and sawdust with him, LeJohn found Freedom covering up a bruise on her throat.
“He do this?”
“Who else? Nothing. There, see? All gone.” She covered the bruise she had given herself with more makeup.
“BITCHES FRONT AND motherfucking center.” Zero was home, always the same. He would have the girls circle around him and look at each. Pull lips down, send some to brush their teeth. He would stick his fingers into another, sniff. If he approved he’d lick it, if not he’d send the skank to take a bath. He crooked his index finger at Freedom and led her back into his room. It was lush. A circular bed, satin sheets. A wet bar.
“Champagne, Lil’Diamond?”
“Please, Popi. You look exhausted, come here.”
Zero sat, his back to her, as she worked his shoulder muscles. Bury her spike into the base of his neck? Sever the central nervous system and he was lights out. If she missed, he would kill her for sure.
“Zero, you my man. I have to tell you when a rustler is looking at your herd.”
“That cowboy talk makin’ me hard.”
“I’m wet, baby. But keep an eye on LeJohn.” She dropped it before he acted. Played it off as if she had read it all wrong. She was playing a long game. Sowing seeds she would wait to let grow strong.
Zero always fucked her from behind, so he could watch himself in the mirror. He was large. It hurt. Even with lots of spray lube, it still hurt. She bit a pillow to keep from screaming while he pumped into her.
She had an aerosol can just like it beside her bed. Next to a Bic lighter.
This right now hurt.
Soon, they would all hurt.
They really should have killed her when they had the chance.
CHAPTER 35
It was time to hit them. Too many people knew we were sniffing around. These psychos might cut bait and run, might clog the LA River with little girls’ bodies.
Sunshine’s building had a cult compound feel. Gregor’s mother was working a big stew pot in the kitchen, while he taught Anya how to load magazines. Peter and Kenny were laying out maps, connecting pinpointed areas with string. Nika had her eyes on Kenny, helping.
Angel’s was the only greeting I got, a big, sloppy kiss across my dirty, stinky face. Then I got it. They all thought I’d taken a headfirst-dive off the wagon. And, yes, I had, but not like they thought. Fuck them.
I SHOWERED AND shaved. Hell, I even buzzed my hair. Put on a clean Shane MacGowan and The Popes t-shirt. I was as presentable as I’d ever be. I found Sunshine in her armory. She was meticulously cleaning and reassembling a .50 BMG sniper’s rifle.
“Sunshine?”
“Don’t.” She pulled her hand away from my touch. “Big man, I know what you are, knew it the minute I saw you. I just didn’t know how deep under my skin you would get.”
“I love you, Sunshine.”
“Easy words when it doesn’t look like you’ll see another daybreak. You still alive tomorrow, you make a run at me, then we’ll see.”
“That is real far from
a no, babe.”
“Just as far from a yes. Now I got to get this put back right or I might put a hole in you instead of my target.”
BASED ON CAM’S and my findings, Kenny had it down to a couple of buildings. One was owned by Homies Working It Out, Inc.
“And that is owned by a shadow corp of a shadow corp. Two double blinds and a partridge in a pear tree.” Peter was rolling high. “All owned by . . . ta da! Our very own wannabe mayor, District Attorney Henry Rodriguez. Hell of a way to keep the streets clean. Did you ever see Soylent Green?”
“No, why does—”
“‘Soylent Green is people?’ Never mind. Did you link Chief Dobbs to any of it?”
“I spoke to an I.A. cop. No doubt about it, the Chief is dirty.”
“He told you that?”
“No, but he didn’t bat a fucking lash when I said it. This is common fucking knowledge.”
“And without a source we got nothing. Moses, I’m going in there, El Rancho, this afternoon.”
“Tried to talk him out of it,” Kenny called across the room.
“We need eyes on the joint, be sure which building, and I’m the only one here that will pass for straight.”
“No. Fuck no, Peter.”
“You don’t get to say no.”
“Just did. No. These freaks will rip your lungs out and make you eat them. No.”
“Moses, you are neither king nor captain of this anarchistic pirate ship. I’m going in at noon.”
“Kenny?”
“He’s right, Moses, we need the intel.”
I walked away before I bitch slapped the pair of them.
“FUCK THA POLICE” jangled from my pocket. Detective Lowrie.
“This is a strange one, McGuire. That I.A. guy?”
“Deloris?”
“No, the young one, Carbone. He wants me to set up a meet with you, him and District Attorney Henry Rodriguez.”
“No shit. Why me?”
“They seem to think you are about to do a very stupid thing.”
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