“I want my brother back,” Lola says.
“I want Mila back,” Darrel counters.
“Why?” Lola asks, and she feels the flare of Darrel’s anger like a blast of heat.
“The fuck? Why? She was my girl.”
“She fucked you over,” Lola says, her voice even. She is going to float above this particular fight on an emotionless tequila cloud.
“Like hell she did.”
“So you gave your girl a bunch of paper instead of two million in green?”
“Paper? Fuck you talkin’ about?”
“The duffel bag you gave her. We took it.”
“And you best be giving it back.”
Lola removes her car keys from her pocket. “Check my trunk. Bag’s there.” A bluff, but she’s counting on Darrel not wanting to traipse through the house and disturb his mother.
“With the money?”
“With the paper Mila put there. She took the cash.”
Darrel paces now, and Lola pours her own third shot.
“You got a soft spot for traitors,” Lola says. The burning of the alcohol is making her generous. She’s going to give Darrel a piece of advice that might save his life. “Like Sherman outside. He’s asleep.”
“He’s lazy. That doesn’t make him a traitor.”
“No. But waking up and letting me pass does.”
Darrel stops pacing to think. Then he says, “He’s just a kid.”
His loyalty to his asshole soldiers is going to be the death of him, even if she’s not.
“You’re underestimating him. He wants you dead.” Before Lola can get the next shot to her lips, Darrel yanks the cheap glass from her hands and downs it himself.
“You don’t have to believe me. About Sherman or Mila,” Lola says. “But I’m giving you a chance to get your cash back, ’cause I don’t have it.”
“What chance?” Darrel asks, deflating onto the overturned crate. He’s so close to Lola their noses could touch. Or their lips.
“Mila stashed that cash somewhere. You knew her best. Where would she hide it?”
“The fuck should I know? She did this, I don’t know shit about her.”
Lola hears Darrel’s hesitation, his not wanting to believe Lola, but his instincts are sharp enough that he knows something was off in his love for Mila. He knows he loved Mila more than she loved him.
“Where did she go, when she wasn’t with you? She have hobbies and shit?”
“She was a recovering addict,” Darrel says, and Lola can’t tell if he’s answering her question, if Mila’s hobby was recovery, or if he’s hopped his own logic train Lola can only hope will clash with hers. She wouldn’t mind walking out of this meeting with a deal to split the two million in cash only Darrel can help her find. “But I would give her cash. Any cash she needed. I paid for everything—dinners, gym membership, beauty salon bullshit she didn’t need,” Darrel says.
“Mila was recovering, yeah,” Lola starts, “but she was also learning econ, business shit, before she started partying.”
“Yeah?” Darrel says. It’s a question. Get to the point.
“Could be she wanted to start her own thing, get out from under you,” Lola says.
Darrel leans closer to Lola, his head dropping to his hands. He hides like that for a few seconds, not wanting Lola to see him absorb this blow. Then his head snaps to like a soldier on lookout, going from sleep to attention in a half-second jerk.
“You full of shit. Get the fuck out my house.”
“Give me my brother.”
“Kind of woman don’t want her mother,” Darrel spits at her, but Lola doesn’t move. He is having a tantrum in the midst of a business meeting. He is not worth killing.
“What, you don’t wanna keep her?” Lola taunts. “She’s small. Doesn’t eat much. Just gotta watch out for the relapses. That’s when she gets expensive.”
“Fuck you.”
“Where’s Hector?”
“Who says he’s still alive?” Darrel tries, chest puffed in overt bravado.
Lola stares at Darrel, and the silence fills the cold room until Lola can hear ringing. It’s dull at first, but the quiet sharpens it to a point until it’s all she can hear. Then there’s a knock. One. Two. Three. It’s coming from under the floor.
Hector. Alive. Under the floor.
“Let’s make a deal,” Lola says. “You keep my mother and brother here. Go check out Mila’s spots. Gym, nail salon, all that shit.”
“Why would I do that?”
“ ’Cause odds are you’re gonna find two million large,” Lola says.
Darrel licks his lips, and Lola feels the hunger for cash there. A second later, Darrel is shaking his head, the hunger dashed like glass dropped on hardwood. He wants cash, but he wants to believe Mila, his girl, didn’t betray him.
“What’s in it for you?”
“Call it fifty percent.”
“Call it shit. You killed my girl.”
“Your girl straight up fucked you over.”
“We’ll see.”
“So you’ll check it out?”
“Ain’t gonna find nothing. And when I don’t, I’m coming looking for you.”
“Don’t bother. I know where to find you,” Lola says, not adding that she’ll be dead by the time he checks out Mila’s usual haunts for hiding places. Plus, she knows recovering addicts. She knows Mila was bad fucking news, even if Darrel’s heart, mind, and cock have lied to him. She has the sudden urge to tell him she’s the only reason he’s still alive—because she’s reached a verdict. She’s not killing him. She’s sick of taking orders, of being under a man’s thumb, whether he’s a fat Mexican or a clean-cut Venice yuppie with a Mayflower name.
The pounding under the floor gets louder, so that Lola can no longer pretend not to hear it. She sticks out a hand to shake Darrel’s, and he responds in kind. They’ve struck a truce, for now.
“Fuck!” It’s a roar from the floor, a pissed-off male voice that shakes the wood as a fist thunders against it.
“How ’bout you take your brother now?” Darrel says.
Lola smiles. “He being a handful?”
“Motherfucker’s just plain loud. I need quiet to play pool.”
Darrel strides over to the patch of floor that’s rumbling. When he lifts a board, Hector’s head emerges like a demented jack-in-the-box. Dried blood crusts his lip, and he’s sporting one black eye. Lola shoots a look at Darrel, who shrugs.
“He pulled a piece on my front porch.”
Hector, you stupid fuck, Lola wants to say, but she’ll save her punishment for later, when they’re behind closed doors and she’s had time to decide—with her mind, not her heart—what pain Hector should feel.
As Darrel unleashes Hector from his bonds, Lola sees the anger in her baby brother’s eyes. But it’s not directed at Darrel. Hector is looking right at her.
“Why didn’t you come after Mom?”
“Don’t need to talk about this here,” Lola says. Again, she has the feeling of being a parent whose child is having a meltdown in a public place, sinking to the floor in a puddle of tantrum while Lola, the mother, begins the impossible task of gathering up a person going to pieces.
“Like hell we don’t,” Hector continues. His hurt has shifted to disrespect, and Lola can’t have that, especially in enemy territory. To Darrel’s credit, he looks away.
“Hector,” Lola warns.
“Mom deserves better than you. This dude’s been keeping her here, tied up like an animal.”
Darrel starts to interject, but Lola holds up a hand. “He’s full of shit. I know,” she tells her rival before turning to her brother. “We’re gonna go get in the car now.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
“You’re the one can’t forgive Mom. You’re the one ignoring her and shit.”
“Hector.” A warning rings clear in Lola’s voice. She hopes to whatever g
od created this world of hunger and suffering and tarnished children that Hector hears it.
Instead, Hector gets in her face. “I ain’t gotta do shit you tell me. I’m done. I’m here to save Mom. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Hector lunges toward the table. He has grabbed Lola’s blade and pulled it on Darrel before Lola can stop him. She curses this woman’s body, its natural tendency to be slower and weaker than a man’s, even when that man is acting like a child.
Still, she dives as fast as she can onto Hector’s raised hand, her stomach missing the blade by a mere centimeter, and wrestles him to the ground from sheer will. A second later, she’s on top of him, straddling his stomach. But Hector holds fast to the knife, and when Lola tries to wrench it from his hands, he spits in her face.
Lola feels her brother’s saliva wet her cheek before she can absorb what’s just happened. For Hector, there will be no going back from this, and it’s like he knows it, because he stops fighting. They sit there for a second, Lola on top of Hector, Hector staring up at the ceiling. This is it.
Lola takes the blade, easy now, from Hector’s limp fingers. The only weapon she can process right now is the spit on her face. She stands and faces Darrel, who has taken the opportunity to open a safe with more guns than Lola can count. Lola sees the extent of the slight Hector has just dealt her in the way Darrel opens and closes his mouth. Shocked.
Lola places her blade next to the near-empty tequila bottle on the table.
“We’re going,” Lola says to Darrel. She heads for the door, and she hears Hector’s boots hitting hardwood. She’s not facing him, but she knows he’s standing up. The boots start walking, one, two, one, two, but they stop before speeding up to a run.
When Lola turns, she sees Hector, good and bad hands raised, ready to close over Darrel’s throat, and Darrel bending toward his gun safe. She sees her puny blade on the table next to the tequila bottle. It takes Lola three steps to reach the table. By then, Darrel has his own hands on a gun, but Lola knows her blade won’t be enough. Before Darrel can aim his gun at her brother, Lola smashes the tequila bottle on the table and shoves the toothed glass edges into Darrel’s neck. Darrel falls against her, his mouth still opening and closing. He is all muscle, too heavy for her to pretend to hold up, so she lets him sink to the floor with a thunk.
Lola grapples for her phone, but by the time her shaking hands have pressed 911, Darrel is staring up at her with lifeless eyes.
“He dead?” Hector.
Lola can’t answer. She knows Darrel is, in fact, dead, but she’s wondering, as sweat springs from her pores in the Los Angeles cold, how Hector can’t see it, too. When she sees that Hector is looking at her and not Darrel’s body, Lola wonders why she’s always the one who has to see the hard things.
“Shit,” Hector says. “Shit. You saved me. Lola, you did this for me.”
No shit, Lola thinks.
“This is my fault.”
No shit, Lola thinks again.
“I gotta make it up to you. I gotta…what can I do?”
Stop fucking up, Lola thinks.
“We have to find Maria,” Lola says aloud. She’s done pretending to care for their mother. She’s done protecting Hector and his feelings. She can even tell the difference between her sweat and his spit, even though they’re mingled now, on her face.
“Think they’re keeping her inside.”
“Find her.”
Hector seems relieved to have a task. He disappears back into the house, and Lola remembers that Darrel’s mother is in there, maybe rinsing plates and glasses, re-covering food with aluminum foil. She doesn’t seem the type to let the dishes wait until morning.
Is it morning? Lola wants to step into the yard, to see for sure, but she feels it’s wrong to leave Darrel’s body here alone. He needs his mother. Lola does not need hers.
When Hector returns, Maria is behind him, rubbing her eyes, a pale blue silk dressing gown over her drifting, ghostlike form. Lola thinks her mother looks like a spirit, something sent from above to haunt or soothe or both.
“Oh, my God,” Maria says when she sees Darrel. “That’s Lorraine’s boy.”
I know, Lola wants to say, but she doesn’t like acknowledging that she’s paying attention to what Maria’s saying.
“You killed Lorraine’s boy,” Maria says, looking from her daughter to Lorraine’s son.
“He was going to shoot Hector,” Lola says.
“Because I went after him,” Hector says.
“Why?” Maria asks her son. “Why would you do that?”
“Because he took you.”
“Yes, but…they were so kind. They took care of me,” Maria says, and Lola hears an accusation there even if Maria doesn’t mean it. They took care of me better than you two. “They were my friends. Shame on you.”
When Maria turns her back on Hector, her only champion, Lola sees the heartbreak on her baby brother’s face. Part of her is glad he is seeing the consequences of his actions. Part of her wants to pull him close to her and say, See. I’m the one who gives you love. Not her.
“Hector. We’re going to fix this,” Lola says instead. “Go get the sleeping kid in the Sentra. Call him Sherman. That’s his name. Tell him his boss is asking for him.”
Hector nods and disappears again. Now it’s just Lola and Maria standing over Darrel. Except Maria’s not standing, she’s kneeling, closing Darrel’s lids over his dead eyes, bowing her head in prayer over someone’s dead child.
“We have to tell her,” Maria says. “We have to help her get some closure.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“He’s her child.”
“Just like you, gettin’ hung up on someone else’s child.”
“Not the child. The child is dead,” Maria says, summoning the sign of the cross from some deep Catholic well inside her. The sight of her addict pimp of a mother performing a blessing over Darrel’s dead body makes Lola feel a surge that’s equal parts impatience and guilt.
“You done yet?”
“Lola. You know better than this,” Maria says, and Lola knows her mother is right. Goddamn her.
“What do you want, Maria?”
“We need to tell his mother. That’s all.”
It’s the “that’s all” that worries Lola. Maria is good at starting shit—a heroin addiction, for example. It’s the stopping that her mother has never mastered.
“You’re so worried, you tell her,” Lola says, arms crossed, at a stalemate over Darrel’s body.
“Okay,” Maria says, lifting the edges of her gown so it doesn’t collect man cave dirt from the concrete floor. Fuck.
Lola finds herself following Maria across the yard. She feels she is scurrying in a panic, trying to dart ahead of Maria, who is gliding, so slow, yet Lola can’t seem to catch her.
“You stay out here,” Maria says as she reaches the back door.
“Fuck no,” Lola says. Although she doesn’t think Maria would sell out her own children sober, Lola has learned the one constant about her mother. She is unpredictable.
From here, Lola can see Lorraine sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming mug. The image shifts something inside her. Lola wants to run to Lorraine, to confess her sin, to explain that it was in defense of her brother, and she wishes she’d killed Hector instead.
Lola has the door open and is striding toward Lorraine, who sets her mug on the table and stands.
“What is it?” Darrel’s mother asks. She is looking right at Lola.
Then Lola feels a hand on her shoulder and a soothing whisper. “Lola. No.” It’s Maria, telling her daughter not to confess.
With her mother’s touch, all the truth inside Lola falls somewhere deep in her stomach, where the bile and acid start to churn it to nothing. Fear of getting caught hasn’t quashed her urge to confess to Lorraine. Lola’s sudden silence is because Maria has reminded her she doesn’t know how to tell a mother her child is dead.
Befor
e Lola knows it, she has stepped aside to let her mother stand between her and Lorraine. Lola watches her mother take Darrel’s mother’s hand.
“Lorraine,” Maria says, “it’s Darrel.”
It is a mother-to-mother language Maria is speaking now, because those two words are all she has to say for Lorraine to lurch toward the back door. Darrel’s mother moves so fast it’s like she’s been stung scared by a bee. She knows her son is dead, and Maria knew she would know.
In an instant, Lola is after Darrel’s mother, sprinting across the yard, wanting to get ahead so she can control the situation before Lorraine has to see it. But again she can’t seem to reach the older woman. At least now Maria is trailing her daughter, meandering across the grass like she’s got nowhere to be. Besides, Darrel is dead. There is no amount of damage control Lola can do that will make that okay.
By the time Lola arrives in the man cave, she finds Lorraine already standing still over her son’s dead body. Lorraine looks up and sees Lola seeing her.
“I know who did this,” Lorraine says.
Lola feels her heart seize up so tight with fear she can’t imagine it’s bigger than a walnut.
“Him,” Lorraine continues.
It’s only then Lola sees Sherman Moore, the dead-eyed corner boy, standing to her left. The deadly man boy, unaffected by the accusation, has his hands in his pockets, his feet shifting in a bored shuffle beneath him, when Lorraine jumps on him, pummeling his chest and asking him how could he.
“Let’s go,” Lola hears Maria’s voice behind her, and it’s only then Lola realizes her mother has saved her ass.
With forty-eight hours to live, Lola lies in bed, curtains lowered so the morning sun frames the window in a dull glow. Darrel King is dead. Maria Vasquez protected her daughter, not over Darrel’s dead body, but in the kitchen where she kept Lola from confessing everything to Lorraine. Garcia has taken Lucy to the park with Valentine so that Lola can rest. Alone in the dark, Lola can’t sleep. Her mind won’t sit still. She has passed Eldridge’s loyalty test. He’ll give her keys to the kingdom, show her the stash, she’s in.
Lola Page 25
