“Yes?” the scary beautiful one says in English.
“I need some shampoo,” Lola says.
“Are you licensed?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have cosmetology license?” the beautiful one says in haughty accented English. Her question strikes Lola as both harsh and seductive.
“Left it in my car,” Lola says. “I’ll go get it before we buy.”
Lola wants to see the back room. She’s not sure how to do that yet, so she walks Lucy up and down the aisles of expensive shampoo they don’t stock at any ghetto bodega. The prices here are much higher than she would expect, although she guesses it doesn’t matter, since this whole thing is nothing but a front. She wonders why Eldridge would choose something that probably does less cash business than a nail salon or a car wash. Beauticians most likely buy supplies in bulk, and surely it’s a business expense that requires reporting to the IRS.
“Excuse me,” Lola says to the goofy-braces girl, who’s standing in front of her with a smile, feet planted hip width apart when Lola turns a corner. “She needs a restroom.”
Goofy Braces nods and smiles in a way that makes Lola unsure she understood the request. She pads away in clogs that thump against the tile floor. Someone has polished it to a gleam, reminding Lola of New Horizons, Andrea’s husband’s facility, one of the many rehab facilities Andrea told Lola this place funds. Lola wonders if they have the same cleaning crew. Maybe not—this place reeks of chemicals, alcohol and acetone. That shit would not fly at rehab. There, the cleaning fluid smells of lavender-coated vinegar, natural cleansers that are easier on the delicate flower noses of recovering cokeheads and alcoholics.
To Lucy’s credit, she does not dispute Lola’s assertion that she needs a bathroom. Instead, she clasps Lola’s hand in hers, as if she’s the one leading the way. Lola likes the feeling of Lucy taking charge, though of course she can’t allow that with Lucy as a habit. Lucy is her charge. Lola can take care of herself.
Goofy Braces nods at a chipped, gold-knobbed door at the back. The sign on it shows a blob of man next to a blob of woman. Unisex. How many men come here? Probably a suspicious amount, if these ladies are peddling more heroin than hair gel. Next to the restroom, Lola sees another door with a taped paper sign in neat block letters. It reads, EMPLOYEES ONLY. The back.
Goofy Braces bows—Japanese?—and disappears. Lola bets she wouldn’t have gotten as lucky with the scary beautiful woman.
Lucy tugs at Lola’s sleeve. “I do have to go,” she says, knowing the bathroom is a ruse. Lola both admires and fears the girl’s intuition. She doesn’t like making Lucy an accomplice.
Lola swings open the door, discovering a tidy bathroom with a time-release air freshener glued to the wall over the toilet. A plastic flower arrangement stands next to the neat stack of paper towels on the sink. Lola starts to leave Lucy alone, but the little girl pulls her pants down and starts to sit on the toilet without a seat cover.
“Wait,” Lola says, and something tugs in her chest because she knows Lucy doesn’t know what a seat cover is. Lola yanks the thin paper sheet from the dispenser and places it on the toilet seat. Lucy sits, her face red at not knowing how to do one of the most basic of human activities. Lucy might not live to learn, and even if she does, Lola won’t be around to teach her.
Lola’s own face burns red fire now. She is pissed at the fat man outside and his littering hot muscle, the man Lola can only fantasize is an ally, ready to twist both her and Lucy into painful pretzels before shooting them in the head and dissolving their bones in lye so their loved ones can’t identify them. But who are their loved ones? The Amaros, Lucy’s grandparents, have yet to call to ask after her or their daughter. Garcia will be sorry but relieved. Jorge and Marcos will be late to the killing party. Lucy and Lola, the two of them together in this bathroom, are all they’ve got.
They have to survive tonight, and then they have to live.
The back room is long and low, with shelves stretching a length Lola can’t see. Three bare bulbs, spaced equal distances apart, light each row in dim pockets. She spies cardboard boxes, shut with packing tape, stacked on each row of each shelf. She can’t imagine how many bricks of heroin the back room is holding, but the thought of the number causes her to lick her lips. For a moment, she is a queen surveying her kingdom’s product, the wealth and stores for the times of turmoil. Then she remembers this is Eldridge’s stash she’s staking out for the cartel. This shit is above her pay grade.
Lola looks to Lucy, who walks at her hip, mouth shut tight, eyes wide with the same hunger Lola feels. But Lucy’s longing is for simpler things—love. Safety. Not to be pimped out to strange men before she even knows the proper names for her parts. Also pizza, because everyone likes pizza. Maybe Lola will order one for Lucy tonight. She hasn’t thought about dinner, and maybe she shouldn’t.
Will there be a tonight for her? Lola’s not fool enough to think the fat man’s going to let her live. She’ll do her job—finding the stash—then he’ll dispose of her. And of Lucy. It’s that second part that doesn’t fly.
Lola reaches for the pocket of her cutoffs, but of course there is no blade there. How is she supposed to cut through the tape on the boxes?
“Here,” Lucy says, and when Lola looks over, Lucy is holding a box cutter.
“Jesus.” Lola’s breath whooshes. “Where did you get that?”
Lucy points to a workbench behind the door. Packing tape, cardboard, and shipping labels pepper the top.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asks.
“Yeah…yes,” Lola says. She has to learn to watch her language around Lucy, the way Garcia did, not necessarily for cursing, but for proper, respectful grammar. “This is perfect. You saved us,” Lola says, whispering truth. A box cutter. Holy shit. Is it enough to give them both life, this cheery yellow plastic-sheathed blade?
Lola jabs the sharp metal teeth against the tape of a box. She expects bricks beneath, maybe a little white powder on the tip when she pulls it back. Instead, there is white cream, a milky liquid. Lola sniffs it—rosemary and grapefruit, maybe. She has never heard of heroin cut with grapefruit and rosemary, although it’s not a bad idea, to appeal to the purists, the wild-caughts and non-GMOs and organic cage-free types. Eldridge works the Westside—maybe he knows his customers. Except it’s liquid. In a beauty supply store.
Lola lifts a bottle out of the box—the same bottle she’s cut into. She reads the label—“Rosemary grapefruit daily conditioner for normal to dry hair. Leave-in.” Lola dips two fingers into the bottle and comes out with more cream.
The trunk ride has messed up her hair, ratting several stray strands together. Lola slicks the cream against her matted hair. When she runs her fingers through it, the tangles have disappeared into straight, smooth lines.
Motherfucker. This isn’t the stash. This back room isn’t a front. She can forget pizza for dinner, or even a painless death for her and for Lucy.
“Lola?” The little girl must have seen the thoughts flashing across Lola’s face, sweat springing from her pores as panic sets in. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want that conditioner? Is that why we’re here?”
“No. I thought…I was looking for something else.”
“You mean the powder,” Lucy says, and when Lola’s chin springs up, sharp, to look at Lucy, the little girl is hanging her head, ashamed at her own smarts.
“What do you know about the powder?” Lola asks, keeping her voice even, not happy, not disappointed. Disappointment is worse than anger to a child. Of course, Maria had never been sober long enough to feel disappointment in Lola. Maria didn’t feel anything but fucked up or wanting to be fucked up. How simple. How nice.
“I know it’s worth a lot,” Lucy says.
“Right. And you know you should stay away from it,” Lola says, still even.
Lucy nods. “But we can’t. Not here.”
“There’s no powder here.”
Lola steps toward Lucy, trying to take in the little girl with her head hanging and her left and right sets of toes turned toward each other in un-self-conscious innocence. She tries to memorize her now, the sleek black part right down the middle of her hanging head, the thick eyebrows that will torment her as an adolescent trying to tame her changing body. If she gets that far.
“What do you mean?” Lola asks, her voice taking on a soothing tone as she lifts the girl’s chin out of shame. Lucy looks up at her with solemn eyes.
“It’s in the other room,” Lucy says.
“What other room?”
Lucy points toward the front.
“How do you know that?”
Lucy hangs her head again, fighting the slight force of Lola’s hand on her chin.
She removes a bottle of shampoo from behind her back, economy size, so large Lola can’t believe she hasn’t noticed it before.
“I was going to take it,” Lucy confesses. “For you. But it was wrong.”
“I get it. I do. And it was good of you. But you’re right. Stealing is wrong.” Lola has never imagined herself preaching such a sanctimonious black-and-white lesson. It makes her skin crawl now, right versus wrong, good versus evil. All sides are interchangeable—east becomes west depending on where you’re standing.
“No. I mean the weight was wrong.”
Lucy hands the bottle over to Lola, and she’s right—the heft is wrong for a bottle of liquid this size. Lola unscrews the top. The powder is packed so tightly that it spills on the floor, dollars scattering across the concrete.
Holy shit, Lola wants to say. But she can’t, because Lucy is here.
Lola takes Lucy by the hand, rushing her from the back room to the front. When they scurry onto the gleaming tile, the scary beautiful one is waiting for them.
“I call him,” the scary beautiful one says.
“Excuse me?” Lola says, what she imagines to be a polite smile she’s never had occasion to use pasted across her face.
“Mr. Waterston. I call him,” the woman says, and Lola sees the portable phone in her hand. But Lola is confused by her tenses—does she mean she’s already called him, or she’s going to call him? Either way, the woman’s look is fierce, and Lola knows there’s no talking them out of this one.
“We want to buy this shampoo,” Lola says, holding up the now-sealed bottle Lucy was planning to pocket.
“No,” the woman says. “I not listening.”
Lola grabs another bottle from the shelf—dandruff shampoo. She screws off the lid and, as the scary beautiful one gives off a siren’s wail that seems to shake the windows in their frames, dumps the dandruff-white powder onto what used to be the clean floor. Lola does the same with the next bottle and the next, until the three Asian ladies surround her in a circle of screaming. Lola keeps turning her body so she’s always shielding Lucy, even though these women have no weapons other than their shrill voices.
She hears the clanging of the bell on the door. The fat man appears, panting and sweating through his tailored suit. Behind him, the muscleman almost collides with his boss, who stops short to bend over, hands on knees, and recover.
In the next second, the storage room door opens, and a pajama-clad Eldridge appears, Mandy beside him in plaid sleep pants and a gray tank top. They have a baby, Lola remembers. They were probably trying to sleep. They must have woken too abruptly to bother bringing muscle, because they appear to be alone.
“What’s going on, Emily?” Eldridge says to the scary beautiful one.
“Eldridge,” Mandy says, because she’s had time to look at Lola, to look at the fat man, and to see the tall, tough man behind him. She knows this shit is real.
Eldridge zeroes in on the fat man, a light of recognition dancing in his WASP-blue eyes. Then he says, “Juan Gomez.”
The muscleman stands up straighter. The fat man looks indignant. So that’s the fat man’s name, Lola thinks, used so sparingly it stings like a slap.
“And you are?” the fat man asks.
“Eldridge Waterston.”
“Mandy Waterston.”
To his credit, the fat man nods at them both.
“I thought there would only be one of you.”
“We’re a team,” Eldridge says.
“You’re married?”
The fat man looks from man to woman, confused at this feisty chestnut-haired, bump-nosed, would-be beauty with several years on her husband. In his country, in his position, a man does not marry an older woman. The muscleman has lit another cigarette, taking in the scene as he would on a sidewalk outside a bar—slow and lingering, amused, thankful their problems aren’t his.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Juan Gomez says. He looks around the beauty supply store. “Acquiring your product from terrorists.”
“There’s a demand in this town for quality product. There are people with higher standards who don’t buy from you because you cater to a different clientele.”
“Quite well, in fact. We’re merely a niche service,” Eldridge follows up his wife’s statement with some ass-kissing.
Again, Juan Gomez takes stock of the rows of product disguised as shampoo, and he says, “This does not look like a niche service.”
“Our customers are not your customers is what we mean,” Mandy tries.
“I don’t understand.”
Lola has had enough of these people tiptoeing around the race aspect. “She means they sell to white people.”
“Yet you attempted to supply one of my largest customers with your product. A product you claim is too good for the ghetto,” Juan Gomez says, and for a second, Lola is on his side, brown against white, even though she knows as soon as he’s done with these two, he’ll slit her throat at best.
“We were foolish. It won’t happen again,” Mandy says. Lola notices at the same time as Eldridge’s wife that all the Asian women have disappeared. Lola wonders if she can do the same, but she is no longer a shadow leader. She has made herself matter, and now she can’t escape.
“Give me the heroin your police officer stole, plus another two million in interest, and we have a deal.”
Eldridge and Mandy look at each other. Lola wonders if one of them will cave first and give up Bubba, or if they will stay a team until their respective painful ends.
“We don’t know where he took it,” Eldridge says.
“You are his boss, and you don’t know where he put your heroin?”
“We don’t know. That’s the truth,” Mandy says, in a tone that lets Lola know it is. But isn’t Bubba on their payroll? Didn’t he swoop in when he heard the drop got fucked up to rescue the gym bag with its two million in product before anyone could log it into evidence? Isn’t Bubba their contingency plan?
“Enough,” the fat man says. “Tie them up.”
The muscleman flicks his cigarette butt onto the clean floor, and Lola sees Mandy frown. Is she sad that he’s marred her sparkling tile? The muscleman takes her first, and Lola watches with admiration as Mandy fights this losing battle, kicking her legs out from under her so that the muscleman is lifting her in the air by her wrists.
Eldridge lunges at the fat man, churning out expletives Lola has never heard any white man use. But the muscleman is on him in an instant, Mandy’s wrists and ankles already bound, and he wrestles her husband to the tile in under ten seconds.
Together, Mandy and Eldridge yell and sob underneath their multimillions in heroin. They have no muscle of their own with them now. But Lola has Lucy here with her, watching. She can’t just let this screaming couple across from her die. She’s going to have to fight their battle for them.
Lola eyes the muscleman’s discarded cigarette butt, seeing a tiny flicker of flame rising up from the ash. A baby dragon drawing its first breath.
In one quick movement, she swipes a bottle of nail polish remover from the shelf. Its packaging is clear, its contents liquid. The acetone slosh is
not a front. It’s the real thing, and it’s flammable. To her, right now, this two-dollar economy-size bottle is worth more than all the heroin in this place. She starts for the cigarette butt, but when she turns, Lucy is holding it out to her in two open palms, as if she’s letting a butterfly fly free.
Lola is too thankful for the little girl’s worldliness to let the panic for Lucy’s bright future fighting cartel leaders and drug kingpins overpower her relief.
Lola strikes flame to alcohol and casts the concoction atop the pile of heroin on the floor. The fire that sparks there shoots up, high as Eldridge is tall. The fat man jumps back, shouting his own curses at the muscleman in Spanish—moron, death, pain, idiot, asshole.
Lola uses the time his curses have bought her to take the box cutter to the duct tape around Mandy’s wrists and ankles. The fat man is still cursing at the muscleman as she goes for Eldridge, pushing Lucy behind her every few seconds.
“Run,” Lola tells Mandy as she moves on to Eldridge. Mandy doesn’t move. She’s not looking at her husband, though. It’s Lucy she sees, a child surrounded by growing flames. Mandy reaches out a hand to the little girl. When Lucy looks to Lola for permission to go with this strange, kind, fierce woman, Lola nods. She knows somewhere deep in her gut that Mandy will not hurt her child. “There’s a door in back,” Lola says.
Mandy gives her husband one last look, then she and Lucy are gone, flames springing up behind them as the fire transitions from warmth and light to certain death, feeding on the air and the acetone, growing.
The fat man and the muscleman have started stocking their arms with beauty bottles—shampoo, conditioner, hairspray. They are pocketing as much of the stash as they can before it burns. The drugs take precedence, over her, over Lucy, over Eldridge. Lola still has to save him, though.
“Gotta get the fuck out,” Lola says to Eldridge as she cuts his bonds.
Lola Page 31
