Another twenty feet and Lola sees Hector round the slight three-way corner to enter the parking lot. She sees her brother see Mr. X’s meth head disaster of a courier—small, blond, pockmarked. She sees Hector’s step falter, slightly, as if he’s felt a rock in his boot.
Then Lola’s baby brother keeps moving, his pace quicker, striding toward the baby blonde, who stands up straighter, the beginnings of alarm tingling somewhere deep inside her fucked-up nervous system. Why is Darrel King’s courier coming at me like this? she must be thinking.
Slow down, Hector, Lola thinks. Keep cool.
Hector has known both couriers would end up dead at the end of this night, and that that outcome is the best-case scenario. If the Crenshaw Six can keep the body count at two drug- and cash-toting criminals, they will have won. Hector has known, Lola thinks; this is not a surprise to him.
But of course the blond girl is a surprise. She is not a tatted-up, muscled thug with a growl for a greeting. She is slight and vulnerable and fucking dangerous.
Hector is close to Blondie now, and she stands her ground, or tries to, looking back down Electric, the way she came. Looking for someone, Lola thinks, because someone dropped Blondie off somewhere back there in the Venice dark before she emerged from the shadows and started fucking up Lola’s world.
Lola sees her baby brother’s hand go to his waistband. Grab your gun, Lola thinks, trying to will Hector to raise his gun on Mr. X’s courier, to take her and her product so they can get the hell out of this foreign territory.
“Hi,” Lola hears Blondie say to Hector, and the second Lola hears the girl’s voice—high and sweet and broken—she knows it is over.
At least take the drugs, take the drugs. Lola squeezes her eyes shut and tries to exert her will over Hector, just as she did with Watson. This time, it doesn’t work.
Hector’s hand goes from his weapon to his side, and Lola hears the single word he utters to Blondie. “Go.”
Blondie stares up at him, because he’s got a good foot on her, even in her dress-up heels.
Lola is on her feet and sprinting across California as Blondie takes off south on Electric, which borders the other side of the parking lot. Even the meth head girl has the good sense to kick off her heels. She is faster than Lola would have figured for a frail addict. She must know she is running for her life.
Lola feels the woosh of a bullet flying past her ear before the shot rings out, an explosive wake-up call to the balmy night.
Marcos. The thought of the beady-eyed felon pumping bullets into the salty air soothes Lola. Marcos is watching over her.
There is a scream, Watson’s mother the entertainment lawyer, maybe, and Lola knows their time to contain Mr. X’s meth head and retrieve the heroin is limited. There will be a hysterical call to the police inside Watson’s house, and a quick response time because this is a neighborhood that needs to seem safe.
Blondie moves toward the darkness south on Electric, as fast as she can, the heavy gym bag acting as some bizarre shoulder shackle. Lola wonders if Blondie will have the good sense to die with that bag on her shoulder rather than drop it. The meth head loses her boss’s two million in product, she’ll be lucky if all Mr. X does is pump a bullet into her Swiss-cheese brain.
Marcos’s second bullet sings toward the meth head, but, to Lola’s surprise, the girl stops and looks back at the foreclosed house. She must see the buzzing light in the second-story window, she must realize someone up there wants her dead. Yet she doesn’t move. A thousand fucking dark corners of this street, and she just stares up at the window, trying to put it together.
Marcos fires again, and this time, the bullet wakes up Blondie. She sees Lola running toward her, she feels the bullet rocket past her and sink somewhere in the concrete behind her, and she freaks the fuck out.
Blondie the meth head drops the fucking gym bag carrying two million in product, right in the middle of Electric Avenue, and takes off at a sprint. This is one of the many reasons Lola would never hire an addict, she thinks as she strains her eyes, trying to see south on the darkened street, but the blond girl has disappeared. All she sees is the gym bag, resting at the far edge of the dough sign’s sick pallor of light.
Lola is halfway across the parking lot, running diagonally over the asphalt, going for the gym bag, when she remembers Hector. Her baby brother stands in the exact spot where he warned Mr. X’s meth head.
“Come on,” Lola says to him now, and Hector has the good sense to follow her at a sprint.
Lola hears an engine gaining momentum and volume, speeding toward her from California. When she turns, she sees the Crenshaw Six’s minivan, a turquoise-and-tan can of dented and dinged metal, swinging a sharp left onto Electric. Garcia is behind the wheel.
She and Hector are still a hundred feet from the bag Blondie dropped, and now Lola sees headlights flash on two hundred feet south on Electric. Blondie’s getaway car. They need to get to that bag, fast.
“Stop,” she says, stepping into the street. The Crenshaw Six van’s tires squeal on cracked concrete, and Lola sees smoke rising as the old piece of shit struggles to keep from running her over. The fender lands three inches from Lola’s knees.
She slips into the passenger’s seat next to Garcia. She is putting on her seat belt when she sees Hector still in the street, waiting for orders.
The whole van is quiet except for even breathing, and when Lola turns to face the Crenshaw Six soldiers, she sees Darrel’s girl, passed out in the back, the gym bag full of cash zipped up next to her. She sees Jorge sitting with his head in his hands. She sees Marcos’s jaw tight and grinding. They all know Hector fucked up. They all saw it.
Lola speaks to Garcia now. “She dropped the bag.”
“Who?”
“Skinny bitch.”
“Where?”
Lola lifts a finger toward the edge of the neon sign’s light, a hundred yards down the street. The bag looks gray in the sick glow.
Lola feels the entire van quiver with new hope, and she takes the opportunity to throw a “Get in” to Hector. He does, still standing when Garcia’s foot slams the gas to the floor mat.
Lola feels her heart leap up as Garcia nears the bag, and Hector shifts in his place beside the door, a shaking hand on the handle. “I can get it,” he says.
Garcia looks to Lola, his eyes asking if he should trust her brother with this task. Hector wants to prove himself. Lola raises her chin, her version of a yes, and Garcia nods to Hector.
Hector leans forward then back, letting his weight roll the door open so he can lean out, asphalt flashing under him like television static, to grab the bag. Lola watches her baby brother’s fingernails—which she trimmed for the first decade of his life—almost reach the bag’s dusty gray handle. But then she hears it. Another engine, this one lower, more like a purr than the van’s smoker’s rattle. On instinct, Garcia’s foot presses down on the gas. The van jolts. Hector’s fingers fly past the bag’s handle.
“The fuck?” Jorge asks as they all see Blondie’s getaway car, hauling ass north on Electric toward the van, toward the bag, toward them.
Lola doesn’t recognize the man behind the wheel of what she now sees is a Chrysler—he’s a blur of white and blond, a cleaned-up WASP version of the meth head courier. He doesn’t belong with the car. He belongs in a luxury SUV, a Mercedes or a Benz or an Audi, and not the tricked-out, tinted window, lowrider kind. This dude belongs in the for-real, two-and-a-half-kids-toting SUVs parked in two-car garages attached to two-story houses and fake turf lawns.
Blondie the courier has parked her skinny ass in the passenger’s seat, her face awash with blank terror. She’s pointing her own finger toward the bag, but the WASP ignores her. He sees it. And he sees Garcia.
Both vehicles shoot toward each other, and somewhere too far in the distance Lola swears she can hear the exotic dull roar of waves crashing on sand before the familiar humdrum wail of sirens.
“Cops,” she warns Garcia.
Garcia presses harder on the gas. The Chrysler comes at them, high beams scorching Lola’s eyes. Lola reaches for Garcia’s hand. They could be a couple out for a relaxing Sunday drive. Her hair escapes its ponytail in wisps, and her fingers lock with Garcia’s.
Lola hears the crash before she feels it, metal crumpling on metal, and she tucks her head, bracing herself. The impact makes her mind go dark. It’s a few seconds before she can look up to see who won.
When she does, it’s not the Chrysler, spinning and smoking against the minivan’s crumpled hood, that she notices. It’s not the rising wail of an LAPD cruiser’s sirens, or even Watson, the dog whimpering and clawing at his screen door. It’s the edge of the neon sign’s light, still blinking dough, even though the bag of heroin is gone.
“Lola. Are you okay?” Garcia says. Lola sees him through blurry eyes first, then he comes into focus—muscles and bone and cotton. Lola sees the WASP in the Chrysler doing the same thing. How much time has passed? Who could have come and gone when they were all coming to?
The sirens are a piercing, rhythmic shriek now. Lola knows that a black-and-white will take the corner in front of her at a pace not meant for a surface street. When they get here, the cops will undoubtedly pursue the brown people in the shitty minivan first.
The Chrysler’s engine coughs. The WASP is trying to start it, but, to Lola’s surprise, he isn’t swearing. He has one hand on the wheel, one on the key.
Garcia tries the same thing, but the minivan doesn’t bother to sputter. It is dead.
“The fuck we do now?” Jorge says.
Lola hears the Chrysler’s engine turn over, and the WASP slams the car in reverse, shaking it free of the minivan’s collapsed hood. As the Chrysler switches gears, pummeling toward California, Lola sees its passenger door open. Blondie rolls out, tucked in a ball, her knees pulled to her chest, like this is a fucking fire drill. Lola can’t tell from where she sits in the van if the WASP pushed her, or if she was smart and tried to get out herself. The Chrysler has disappeared around the corner by the time Blondie lands on pavement; Lola can see she is shaking and crying. But she is alive.
The black-and-white makes a blistering entrance now, tires squealing and kicking up asphalt pebbles as it appears in front of them on Electric.
The Crenshaw Six is holding a white woman hostage. They have a gym bag with two million in cash and a minivan whose engine won’t start, Baby on Board sticker be damned. They are fucked.
Lola doesn’t have to look at Marcos to be able to read his mind. He’s not going back to prison.
“Give me the bag,” she says, and one of the men hefts Darrel’s girl’s bag up to Lola. If they can scatter some cash, the cops might go after it first.
“We can’t leave that,” Garcia says.
“Gotta distract ’em. You got any better ideas?” Lola says, pissed at herself now for not fucking the fear out of her man. She feels everyone behind her tense. Lola catches Hector looking at his hands. Lola hopes his face is burning with shame. She also hopes these cops have a soft spot for women.
Her hand goes to the passenger’s-side door. She’s ready to emerge and scatter some cash, when Hector reaches through the center console and grabs the gym bag from her. She knows she should stop Hector from fleeing the minivan, but she doesn’t. When he is out, she sees his gun abandoned on an empty square of seat.
Two LAPD officers, one fat, one skinny, emerge from their black-and-white with guns drawn. They yell at Hector to freeze.
Lola draws a sharp breath in the long second between the cops issuing the command and Hector dropping the gym bag in the middle of the street. She doesn’t fault the cops, who see fucked-up shit every day so the rest of the country can live in ignorance. Lola is certain these two officers are responding to a call of shots fired. Now they’ve got a muscled Mexican standing in the street with a gym bag. Hector could be armed. He could have a bomb in there. Instead, he has something much more powerful—cash.
Hector raises his hands above his head in surrender. For a second, it is a standoff, and she is sure her brother is going to prison. You can’t be brown with two million in cash and not be arrested on suspicion of trafficking. She sees the skinny cop holds his gun with a shaking hand. She thinks these guys are rookies, which could be good or bad.
Blondie whines at the side of the street, where she’s collapsed, unnoticed, just outside the scope of a lone streetlight.
“Shit,” Lola hears the fat cop say.
“Check the bag,” the skinny one says to the fat one. “I’ll see who’s over there.”
Lola can see the fat one doesn’t like the skinny one pretending he’s the boss. But the fat cop lets his resentment go and heads for Lola’s brother. He keeps his gun raised on Hector, whose hands remain in the air like a seasoned criminal. Her brother would be good at his job if it weren’t for damaged girls he thought he could save.
“What happened to your car?” the fat cop asks.
“It’s not mine,” Hector says.
“What happened to it?”
“Some white dude hit it and ran.”
Lola is proud of her brother for the partial truth. The fat cop takes it as a smart-ass answer and moves on.
“You wanna tell me what’s in that bag?”
“It ain’t dangerous,” Hector says.
As he speaks, Lola catches Hector looking not at the fat cop with a gun trained on him, but at the skinny one approaching Blondie. Jesus Christ. Her brother still wants to protect Blondie. Lola wants him to keep his eyes on what really matters here—again, the cash.
Hector doesn’t move as the fat cop steps forward and frisks him. He’s still watching his addict white girl.
“He’s not armed,” the fat cop announces to his partner, who has found the frail girl and could give a fuck.
“Are you okay?” the skinny cop asks, and Blondie looks up at him with wide eyes.
Lola looks back at Hector, who’s biting his lip in frustration. It seems everyone here wants to save Blondie.
Lola can almost feel the burn of Hector’s cheeks on her own as he watches this scrawny cop lay a blanket across Blondie’s shivering shoulders.
No one is paying attention to the fat cop, who’s on his knees now, unzipping the gym bag with clumsy fat fingers.
“Holy shit,” a man’s voice says as the bag opens. But it’s not the fat cop. It’s Hector, his eyes wide with panic. He’s looking back at Lola, asking her what to do.
“Hector?” she says, not too loud. She wants him to know he can ask her what to do. But she doesn’t want to give the cops his name before they’ve even asked.
“The fuck? This some kind of joke?” The fat cop stands. He’s holding a rectangular stack in his hand, but it’s not green. It’s white. Darrel’s girl wasn’t carrying cash. She was carrying paper.
“Aw, fuck,” Jorge says somewhere behind Lola. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Garcia’s fingers gripping the steering wheel.
The Crenshaw Six has just lost four million in cartel assets.
“She’s hurt!” the skinny cop calls to the fat one. “We need to get her help.”
The fat cop looks over to Blondie, who’s shivering in the balmy night. He looks to Hector, an unarmed idiot carrying around a heavy bag of worthless paper. And he hesitates. Fuck.
“Did you hear me? She needs a medic. Call it in.”
“There were shots fired.”
“And he’s not armed.”
“I need to check the car.”
“Get her help first.”
Lola wants to kiss the skinny cop full on the lips.
“Run,” Lola says, as the fat cop makes his way toward the black-and-white to call in the actual emergency here, a white girl with skinned knees and teary eyes. “Passenger side.”
The entirety of the Crenshaw Six, minus Hector, emerges stealthily from the minivan on the passenger’s side. Just because the cops can’t prove they took a shot or arrest them for carrying around a gym bag
of paper, they are packing heat. And they don’t want to end up on any LAPD radar. At least not before they’ve had the opportunity to recoup their millions in losses. Like an army, they move through the overgrown weeds of what Lola imagines is some hippie surfer’s yard. Marcos has Darrel’s girl gathered in his arms like she weighs no more than a newborn. He can move silently even with a heavy load, and the way he’s carrying Darrel’s girl looks almost romantic.
“Abbott Kinney’s one block over. Lots of bars. We can break up. Disappear,” Lola says to Garcia.
Garcia nods agreement, and like that, they break up and disperse. Lola hears the skinny officer telling the fat one to bring him the first aid kit.
Hector is still standing in the street, and Lola backtracks to the van and steps around it to look at him. Her baby brother sees her, and Lola mouths, Go.
He obeys, running toward her, knowing he should not choose now to beg forgiveness.
“Abbott Kinney,” she says to him, thankful she took time this afternoon to case the neighborhood. She and Hector duck into an alley that smells of piss and trash, just like any other alley, and Lola finds solace in the fact that rich and poor shit stinks the same.
Then, as they emerge onto Abbott Kinney, they almost collide with a white woman tossing a cashmere wrap over her shoulder and tucking her arm under that of her male companion. Lola and Hector both mutter their apologies, but the couple continues at their relaxed pace, early for a dinner reservation Lola hears them say, so they’ll sit at the bar and have a drink first. Why not?
Because, Lola thinks, the Crenshaw Six just lost four million dollars in cartel cash and heroin. The best they can hope for tonight is not to go to prison.
“Lola?” she hears Hector say.
“Yeah,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and she realizes they, too, have fallen into the relaxed pace of the Venice nightlife.
Lola Page 5
