I turned around and saw Nolo Serrano—many women’s dark and handsome nightmare—dance through the sliding door. No one is as much trouble as a good-looking guy. I’d lived long enough to know that and to remember when fear took the form of dirty old men. Now it’s teenagers who bring on the goose bumps. None of Nolo’s homeboys followed him. The door rolled shut, and he and I were alone on Level Three. My right hand went to my purse, reaching automatically for the piece I wasn’t packing, hoping Serrano didn’t know that.
“Hey!” He held up his hands. “I’m not packin’.”
I didn’t think he’d come down here to pick up his car. So what was it? And why was he alone? I didn’t intend to let Nolo Serrano charm the money out of me. I kept one hand on my keys and the other on my purse. “What do you want?” I asked.
“Just to talk is all. Just want to talk.” He boogalooed a little closer. His movements and speech had a quick and nervous rhythm.
“I can hear you fine from where you are.” And I could also see how pretty he was, even in the harsh underground light. His pale eyes, fringed by thick black lashes, danced with amusement. His hat framed his face in black. The white scar that I’d noticed on his jacket turned out to be an embroidered zipper.
“Okay, okay.” He tried to stand still, but he was too wired. He did a little rubber-soled dance while we talked.
“Laura, she shouldn’t have called you a hoe. You were just doing your job. It’s a tough job, I know. But you and Cheyanne, you did the right thing. She did the crime, hey she should do the time.”
“Just as long as she’s not doing more than her time,” I said.
“She’ll do better on the inside if she stays cool, keeps her mouth shut. There’s some bad people in the D Home, and what you say there can be used against you. Has anybody been bothering her?”
“No. Let’s keep it that way.”
“No problem. The Four O’s inside, they won’t hassle Cheyanne.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m the leader,” said Nolo. He smiled the smile of an actor who wins an Oscar, a mystery writer who gets the Edgar, a lawyer who gets to argue before the Supreme Court. At sixteen or seventeen years old he’d achieved all he’d ever dreamed.
“How’d you get the name Nolo?” I asked him.
“First I was Manuel, then Manolo, now I’m Nolo. You get a new name when you rank in.” His eyes rolled up until the whites were visible under the pupils. “How’d you know my name was Nolo?”
“Deputy DA Saia told me.”
“That guy’s a lawyer too, right?”
“Right.”
“How do you like being a lawyer?”
“It’s okay.”
“Maybe that’s what I’ll be when I grow up.” He smiled.
“Maybe,” I said, but when I looked into his eyes I saw a boy who’d never grow up.
“Can you explain something to me about lawyers?”
“Try me.”
“I see you and that DA in court. You’re on one side. He’s on the other side. Then when it’s over I see you smoking a cigarette together. I see you talking. I see you walking down the street. How can you be enemies on the inside and friends on the outside?”
“That’s the way it is in the professional world.”
He shook his head. “It’s not like that in my world. Someone’s your homeboy or he’s not.”
No shit, I thought. His world was ruled by hormones, drugs, egos and guns. All lawyers had going for us was ego and an ever-diminishing supply of hormones. It’s a crazy society that lets teenagers pack semiautomatics. “Your world is trigger-happy,” I said.
“That’s the truth.”
“I heard you were a musician,” I said, changing the subject, hoping to discover more about Nolo Serrano.
“Who told you that?”
“Saia.” Nolo’s feet continued their restless dance. On the one hand, he didn’t like Saia talking about him. On the other hand, any kind of attention had value because it made his name come out. “Were you a musician?”
“Used to be. Used to be.”
“The man in my life is a musician.”
“What does he play?”
“The accordion.”
“I played the guitar.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“See this?” He pointed to the zipper embroidered on his jacket. “That means I caught a bullet. That’s when I got into gang life. Mi Vida Loca. It’s the crazy life, but it’s my life.” He laughed. “You’ll be seeing Cheyanne?”
“Right.”
“You tell her I’ll be watching out for her.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Bueno. Gotta go. Mucho gusto.”
“El gusto es mio,” I said, watching him dance back to the elevator and wondering how long he’d have wings on his feet.
******
The Kid worked late that night, and by the time he got home I’d had a burrito and a couple of tequilas and gone to bed. He thumped around the house until he tracked me down in the bedroom wearing a pillow over my head. “You’re sleeping, chiquita?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
He sat down on the bed beside me and lifted the pillow. “You never go to bed this early.”
“It was a bad day.”
“You went to court?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Cheyanne was arraigned.”
“You knew that was going to happen, no?”
Count on a man to be reasonable when the problem has nothing to do with reason. “It was worse than I expected. Cheyanne was comatose. Juan’s family was grieving and hostile.”
“They blame you?”
“Probably.”
“It will make them feel better, but after a boy gets in a gang it is already too late for him. I see them come into the shop and I see they are in love with death.”
“The zipper embroidered on the jacket means they’ve been wounded?”
“Right. After that happens they get too tough.”
“One of the Four O’s who was in the courtroom followed me into the parking garage after the arraignment, but very carefully. I didn’t know I was being tagged.”
The Kid dropped his hand and sat straight up on the edge of the bed. “Who?”
“Nolo Serrano. Do you know him?”
“I know who he is. He has a Fast Five convertible, red and white, muy suave.” Sometimes I heard grudging respect or at least understanding when the Kid talked about gang members, but this time I heard respect for the car, contempt for the driver. “What did that cholo want?”
“He says he’s the leader of the Four O’s. He told me he would make sure nobody hurt Cheyanne in the D Home.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That guy will never last as a leader.”
“Why not?”
“He’s too pretty. Nobody will respect him. He will have to prove how tough he is over and over again. One day he won’t be watching or listening and somebody will kill him,” he snapped his fingers, “like that.”
“He told me that he’d been shot and after that he got into the gang life. He said he played the guitar, but he gave it up after he was wounded.”
“Yeah?” said the Kid. He used to play his accordion in a Norteno band—but he hadn’t been doing it lately.
“It seems like he might have had some potential.”
“Him?” The Kid sneered.
I changed the subject. “Have you had any luck finding Saia’s witness yet?”
“No. You want me to keep looking now that the girl is in prison?”
“Yeah,” I said.
******
The night got off to a smooth start, but later on it turned rough. I drifted in and out of sleep. A day that should have provided closure had only raised questions. A restless wind mirrored my scattered mind. A tree limb skated across the skylight, the dogs in the hood howled and bark
ed, my neighbor’s motion detector light flickered on and off. There were plenty of images that could have disturbed my dreams—handsome teens, ugly teens, rumpled prosecutors, snarling judges in flapping black robes—but the image that haunted me most was the grandmother’s dark eyes.
14
IN THE MORNING I passed the trailer on my way to work, saw Sonia’s car parked in the yard and pulled in beside it. The scratches and dings on the bumper and the hood marked her vehicle as a junker, although the frame around her license plate read THOROUGHBRED TOYOTA.
“Come on in,” she yelled when I knocked on the door. “I knew it was you. I saw your car pull up.” She was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette and cradling the doll Miranda in her arms.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Gettin’ by.”
“Cheyanne told me the school wants Miranda back.”
“They’ve been calling me at work. I’ll take her over there today.” She looked down at the doll. “Cheyanne was a real happy baby, always smiling and laughing. How in the hell did she turn out to be a murderer? Can you answer me that?”
“No.”
“Would it have made any difference if I’d stayed home with her? If I hadn’t worked nights? If I’d cuddled her more?” She stared at me through a filter of smoke.
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t anybody to be giving mother/daughter advice, but I did it anyway. “It might help if you weren’t always turning Danny into the good child and Cheyanne into the bad.”
She took a deep drag and exhaled. “I do that?”
“Yeah. Talk to Cheyanne. Tell her you’re human. That you never took mother lessons. That you make mistakes. You can still change things.”
“I worry about what will happen to her in there…”
So did I. Nolo Serrano’s promises hadn’t changed that.
“I worry about what’s gonna happen when she gets out,” Sonia continued.
“There are plenty of cases of people who commit bad crimes and go on to make something of their lives,” I said. “Anthony Saia told me Leo did time.”
“A year,” Sonia replied, rubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray. “I met him right after he got out. He was tough as nails, but he learned something inside. He finished his GED, started pumping iron, learned to manage his anger—that’s what his probation officer called it—anger management. When Leo gets pissed off now, weightlifting calms him down. We had Danny, he got a job. He’s been a good father to Danny. You watch them on the soccer field sometime if you don’t believe me. He’d do anything to keep Danny out of the gangs. Leo and I split up after Danny was born. When we tried to get back together later it was hard because Cheyanne was older and she was jealous and she didn’t have a father of her own.”
“Is that when she tried to commit suicide?”
“How’d you know about that?” The eyes behind the smokescreen turned wary.
“Saia told me.”
“How’d he find out?”
“The police filed a report on the suicide attempt.”
“Oh, yeah, a cop came to the hospital. Does that Saia know everything there is to know about us? Ain’t there no privacy left in this town?”
“Not after you get into the system.”
“I thought Cheyanne was trying to get attention. She and Leo fought all the time. That’s one reason we don’t live together now. Did you ever meet a kid who got along with a stepparent?”
“Not yet.” She wouldn’t like what I had to say next, but I had to say it. “It’s an explosive situation when there’s a guy and a young girl sharing a house.”
Her hand, which had been reaching for another cigarette, stopped in midair. “What are you saying?”
“Cheyanne has a lot of resentment toward Leo. Leo has a temper. He has a record. They were alone together the night she got beat up.” I shouldn’t be thinking about that night anymore, but it wouldn’t let go of me.
Sonia struck a match, lit the cigarette and blew out the match with the cigarette dangling from her lip. “What kind of a mother do you think I am? You think I’d have a guy in my house who’d mess with my daughter? They weren’t alone anyway. Danny was here.”
True. But Danny was nine years old.
“If you knew Leo better you wouldn’t be making accusations like that.”
Maybe. I’d gone about as far as I could down that highway, so I changed directions. “Did you ever meet a kid named Manuel Serrano who calls himself Nolo?”
“I don’t think so. What does he look like?”
“He’s around sixteen or seventeen. He wears a black hat that says BROWN POWER, and he has a zipper embroidered on his jacket.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“He stopped me after the arraignment and told me he’d look after Cheyanne in the D Home.”
“How’s he gonna do that?”
“He says he’s the leader of the Four O’s.”
“If he says he can protect her, I’m not gonna say no.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a roll of bills and handed them to me. “I did good last night,” she said. “I’ll pay you more when I can. All right?”
“All right.”
She yawned. “Gettin’ past my bedtime.”
And past time for me to go to work. I put the bills in my purse and told Sonia I’d let her know when the next hearing was scheduled.
******
While we waited for the psychiatric evaluation and for Judge Joseph to make his decision, I fell back into the real estate and divorce routine, which didn’t seem so bad compared to a case as ambiguous as Cheyanne Moran’s. Divorce may seem ambiguous to the participants, but to the observer it isn’t—especially when you’ve seen as many as I have. Cheyanne was as comfortable in the D Home as could be expected. Actually, she seemed more comfortable than I would have expected. When I told her I’d met Nolo Serrano and that he’d said he was looking out for her, her response was to study her bitten-down fingernails.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“I’ve met him.”
“Do you think he can make good on his promise?”
“No one’s been hassling me so far except for that psychiatrist. That guy wants to know everything.”
“Are you cooperating?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of is not good enough. You have to work with him.”
“Okay, okay.”
Cheyanne was looking better. The swelling had receded from her eyes and the colors had faded. The cuts on her face were healing. The stitches had been taken out, so she didn’t have that rag doll look anymore, but it was too early to tell whether she’d have permanent scars. If she did, the scars would be close enough to the hairline that they could be concealed—if she chose to conceal them.
When I’d said what I had to say, the guards took her back to her room and let me out through the triple doors and electronic gate. The usual collection of tough guys was standing by the entrance showing their colors.
******
Cheyanne was surviving in the D Home. The Kid and I were getting by in my home, making the adjustments it takes to live together: deciding when to get up, what to watch on television, divvying up the chores. We could tolerate the same level of messiness, so cleaning wasn’t a conflict. I did as little gardening as possible, he did none. We both chased the gray cat away. He liked baseball (and Walker, Texas Ranger), I liked crime shows (except for Walker, Texas Ranger), but the different types of programs we liked hardly ever aired concurrently. Food was no problem; we both liked it hot. Cooking and dishwashing were easy. We got takeout and the plastic dishes and utensils went in the garbage. The Kid didn’t care for the garbage detail, so I walked it down the driveway every week. The tradeoff was he made the coffee and he got up early so that I woke to the smell of coffee brewing. Usually he was gone by the time I got out of bed, but that was okay; neither of us were morning talkers. We both worked hard—me with my mouth and my brain, he with his hands. Some people mi
ght think that made us incompatible, but I didn’t feel that the fact that his work wasn’t verbal made him inferior or dumb. I’d never thought there was that much status in being a lawyer; half the population might admire you, but the other half hates your guts. To me it’s attitude that counts, and the Kid’s attitude toward work was good. We didn’t get as far as mentioning the big C word—commitment—but were working on the little one—consideration—which helps if you’re trying to live together. Life was still a dangerous place, but it was gentler when he was around.
Occasionally I saw Danny ride by on his bike. I didn’t see Sonia, Leo or Patricia, and Tabatoe stayed away, frightened off by the gray cat.
Anna and her boyfriend, known to me as the stereo king for the power of his car speakers, were drag-racing down the breakup road, playing chicken on the highway of love. This guy had never learned anger management, and he vented his rage by driving by the office and pounding the pavement with his speakers, or by calling and hanging up if I answered, yelling if Anna did. That drama kept the office from becoming too boring.
One night on my way home from the Women’s Bar Association meeting I saw a nearly full moon climbing over the back of the Sandias. The Kid’s truck was parked in my driveway, but I wasn’t ready to go home or to bed, so I kept on driving. There are times when driving comes easier than falling asleep. I headed north on Fourth Street past the old adobes, the new subdivisions and the church at Alameda. I watched the moon rise and listened for what it had to say. In New Mexico the moon speaks. There was a box in my glove compartment that spoke too, in a raspy, seductive voice, but I focused on the moon and ignored it.
I passed El Pinto restaurant, which seemed to be expanding at the same astronomical rate as the city. Where Fourth Street turned to Roy and headed east toward the Sandia Casino, I went north on 85 through Sandia Pueblo. Sandia is the place where urban sprawl becomes the big empty. One side of Roy is city, the other is land. Albucrazy doesn’t peter out into suburbia—it ends at the Sandia Pueblo on the north, the Isleta Pueblo on the south, the mountains and the Cibola National Forest on the east. The only way it can expand is west of the Rio Grande, and that’s what it’s doing. Maybe the Petroglyph National Monument would form a barrier on that side. Maybe not. Still, you could go fifteen minutes in any direction and be out of the city, which was what made living in it possible for me.
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