Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  She resumed walking. A cop car rolled up, slowing down as it drew alongside her. It should have made her feel safer—who was going to steal the suitcase with the cops fifteen feet away?—but instead dread curdled in her stomach. The money wasn’t her only problem, she realized. There were the fake IDs. The gun. It would actually be better to get robbed than for the police to stop her. Could they make her open the suitcase? Didn’t they need probable cause for that?

  She had no idea.

  The taxi was a few car lengths away. She fixed on that, refusing to look at the police. The wheels of the suitcase seemed stupidly loud as they trundled along and bumped over the cracks in the sidewalk.

  The police sped up and departed about the same time Genevieve reached the taxi. She jumped inside, wedged the suitcase in front of her between her knees, and shut the door.

  A hundred thousand dollars, and suddenly it feels like everybody’s my enemy. She’d be glad when she dumped this shit. It was already making her crazy.

  Then it was her second stop, and her nerves cranked themselves even tighter. As safe and unassuming as the last neighborhood had seemed, this one had the opposite feel. Every shop had bars on the windows, and small clots of people loitered at corners and stop signs. Even the litter had a different character—instead of the occasional Starbucks cup, there were crumpled job sheets, fast food bags, cigarette butts, and even a squashed hubcap that rattled when a car ran over it.

  She tried to ignore the eyes of a group of guys milling around at the edge of the parking lot and walked quickly to the door of the payday loan and check-cashing place.

  Inside, most of the employees were ensconced behind heavy-duty Plexiglas, but there was a black kid sitting behind a sort of receptionist’s desk, watching the monitor. He looked fifteen or sixteen, struggling with his first mustache and losing. She went over there.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Wilkinson,” she said.

  The kid’s eyebrows shot up. “Mr. . . . ?” He looked her over, obviously unsure what to make of her. The black clothes and piercings told one story, the suitcase a different story, and she thought maybe the form of address had been even more confusing. “You a cop?” he asked uncertainly.

  Why does everybody think I’m a cop today? “No. Do I look like a cop?”

  “No.”

  “I’m looking for Clarence Wilkinson.”

  “You a process server?”

  “C’mon, kid. Give me a break. Do I look like a process server, either?”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Some of Mr. Wilkinson’s stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “None of your business. Is he here or not?”

  He stared at her as though he was hoping some explanation was forthcoming, then shrugged. “I’ll go check.” He disappeared through a door into the back office.

  He returned before Genevieve could even lean against the counter and get settled in to wait. “Come on back,” he said.

  Instead of leading her to an office, he led her through, all the way out to the back loading dock, where a thin man with a craggy, worn countenance stood. “Here she is,” the kid said, and then he shut the door, leaving Genevieve alone with the man.

  “You lost?” the man said.

  He had to know better—he wouldn’t have let her in so quickly if he thought this was a mistake. Still, she thought it best to tread carefully. “I don’t know, sir. Are you Clarence Wilkinson?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Can we discuss this inside?”

  “No.”

  She supposed that ought to make her feel better. Out here, even though it was the back of the strip mall, it was open. Exposed. Not the kind of place you shot somebody in broad daylight. Instead, it made her feel as if somebody might be listening, as if she could be overheard.

  “A, uh, friend of mine wants to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “A lot of, uh, recent inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience? That what he’s calling it?”

  At least she didn’t have to worry that the guy didn’t know who she was talking about. “No, he’s not—I mean . . . Is it safe to talk here?”

  “We talking, ain’t we?”

  “Things got a little out of control. Mr. So—” She broke off. Wilkinson said it was safe, but what the hell did that really mean? “He knows some of your people got hurt.”

  “Good people.”

  “He wants to pay restitution.”

  Wilkinson leaned over her, staring right into her eyes. His own eyes were brown, somewhat hazy, the whites yellowed and wet. She got the sense that those eyes were good at spotting the hanging threads, the rough edges, and the corners that didn’t quite line up and revealed a lie for what it was.

  “One twenty,” she said. Everything that remained after the five grand she’d given the shopkeeper and the twenty-five she’d pulled out and set aside on Sobell’s orders. “In the suitcase. It’s yours. For bail if you need it. Keep the rest. A lawyer should already have been in touch.”

  “Yeah. I got a lawyer. What else he want?”

  “He needs help.”

  “Like, make a phone call or two?”

  “Like, people.”

  Wilkinson exhaled through his nose. “My sister’s boy. He ain’t quite right since all that went down. Your man know anything about that?”

  “What do you mean, ‘ain’t quite right’?”

  “Talks to himself a lot. Draws funny pictures. Pulls snakes out of thin air. That kind of thing.”

  That sounded horribly familiar. Somewhere, Anna was probably doing some of the same kinds of things. “I can find out.”

  Wilkinson studied her again, and she wondered if something in her voice had given him grounds for suspicion. “Do that,” he said. “He ain’t the only one.”

  “It might take some time to figure out. We need help now.”

  “You awfully pushy for somebody asking for help.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked away, squinting against the glare off the pavement. His mouth moved like he was having a short discussion with himself. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “What?”

  “You need help, I need answers. Let’s go see the man.”

  “I don’t . . .” She didn’t what? Think that was a good idea? None of this was a good idea. This was what you did when all the good ideas had burned off like morning fog.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go do that.”

  Chapter 7

  “You sure this is a good idea?” Nail asked.

  Anna gave him a bland look. “It’s been months since we were in the same area code as a good idea. This is just what we’re stuck with.” He had a point, though, she thought. This area was renowned as one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, six square miles with over twenty different regions of overlapping gang turf. You could see the gleaming towers of downtown across the 5, but it might as well have been on another planet. She shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun and scoped out the graffiti on a crumbling block wall. Deadeye Flats. Krazy Eights, crossed out. Del Street, crossed out. A big number 7 somebody had drawn a giant dick over. R. I. P. Banana. More of the same. Gangs and sets, the names of dead kids.

  “I still think we ought to just hit the church.”

  “No way.” She pointed at the graffiti. “This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where you want to be a stranger snooping around.”

  “This is your hood, right?”

  “Are you serious? I don’t come down here no more.” She tried on a smile that felt thin and phony. “Ain’t shit worth stealing. Don’t worry. I just want to check things out, get the lay of the land a little bit. The guy I’m thinking of knows everything worth knowing down here. If he’s still around, he’ll know what’s up. Probabl
y save us a ton of pain.”

  Nail nodded, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in the gesture. Anna understood. She felt the same way about being here at all. She’d spent the first eight years of her life in this neighborhood, before winding up in the foster care system. Didn’t look like it had changed much. Three in the afternoon, and there were kids hanging out on stoops and hassling each other on corners. Not a lot of adult supervision. The meatpacking plant and the garment factory had closed down even before Anna had been moved out, taking most of the neighborhood’s jobs with them, and from the look of things, those jobs hadn’t come back. Everybody who could afford to leave had left. The remaining parents—moms, mostly—lucky enough to have work were probably over in the city or up in the Hills, cleaning houses or working the counters, and the rest were inside out of the sun, a healthy chunk of them pretending their sons and daughters were coming straight home from school.

  The place was a wasteland of cracked concrete and old brick, making a bad joke of the name. Doyle Gardens indeed.

  Anna looked Nail over one more time. Black tank top, army surplus cargo pants. No colors that would get him shot, so that was all good. He might get his ass beat anyway, if his luck was out. Not too many black guys around here, and some of the cholos might take exception to him. He’d said he was cool with that risk. Wouldn’t be the first time, he’d said.

  “Hey, you carrying?”

  He shook his head. “Startin’ to wish I was, though.”

  She didn’t even know what to tell him. If things went to shit, it would likely be many against two, and a gun wouldn’t save them, but a little deterrent in case of a single punk might go a long way. Or escalate a situation that could have been calmed down. Or change a beatdown into a murder. She supposed he’d made the right call, but she still didn’t feel great about it.

  “Well, we’re here now. Let’s go.” She started across the street, and Nail followed. Eyes were on them the whole way. This was the kind of place where everybody knew everybody. Unfamiliar faces were marked.

  A couple of guys under a lamppost shouted catcalls after her. Anger would have been close at hand anyway, but with the demon’s presence, it leaped forward like a huge animal.

  “Fuck off!” she yelled back.

  Laughter followed, but they didn’t hassle her anymore. It didn’t matter. She wanted to waste every one of them, then go over and kick the bloody holes.

  I need to get this under control.

  There was nothing to do about it now, though. This whole stupid exercise was supposed to get it under control, or at least head in that direction.

  She kept walking, thinking she’d forgotten how flat everything here was. Nearly everything was a small single-story box, from the Metro PCS store on the corner to the barbershop to the little house wedged in behind them with its green clapboard siding falling askew in places. Despite everything being open to the sky, it made her want to duck her head, to walk hunched over or even crouching.

  “You okay?” Nail asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you’re freakin’.”

  “I don’t like coming back here.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t like coming here at all.”

  They walked past a couple of houses, one fenced in with metal bars, and the next with sagging chain-link. Clothes hung in the front yard of one, probably washed by hand or brought home wet from the lavanderia so the woman of the house could save a buck fifty in dryer time. It was easy to remember the rules and rhythms of this place once you got started. Anna didn’t want to get started. This was supposed to be alien now. She’d lived in some pretty sketchy apartments with Karyn over the years, but not in neighborhoods where you wondered if you’d be digging stray rounds out of your furniture in the morning, where you could imagine that the Fourth of July happened every month or so if you just pretended that that popping sound was fireworks.

  “Jesus, I’ve come all the way back to start,” she said.

  “We’ll be outta here in an hour. Two, tops. Don’t sweat it.”

  “No, I mean, this . . .” She wasn’t sure how to say it. This sense that the other shoe was about to drop, that any calm you experienced today was just a breather before the next catastrophe, the next bad news. That was how she lived now. What did the location matter? “It’s still not getting better,” she said. The horrifying thought hit her that maybe the last twenty years had just been a breather. A false alarm. It wasn’t too late to end up like Dana, hooked on whatever she could get her hands on, waiting for the next visit from a boyfriend or the cops, the next beating or the next shakedown, while her kid hid under the bed and prayed a bullet would somehow change things.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” Nail said. He sounded like he didn’t believe it, either.

  “Where are your folks at?” Anna asked.

  Nail looked at her sidelong for a long time. “I don’t do nostalgia,” he said.

  She laughed bitterly. “I get that. Me either. You end up somewhere different from them?”

  “Yeah. So far.”

  “Somewhere better?”

  “Now you’re freaking me out.”

  She kicked a plastic bottle into the road. “Just answer the question.”

  “I guess so. Different, for sure. Better . . . Man, I don’t know. My pops never had to sit in front of the feds and try to keep outta prison. Course, he swept floors for thirty years, never had two dimes to rub together.” A white car—vintage 1991, or thereabouts—drove by, bottomed out on wrecked shocks. “How about you? Where are your people?”

  “My parents? One’s dead. Wasn’t really another one.”

  “I guess you ain’t ended up in the same place, then.”

  She checked his expression, suddenly convinced he was making fun of her, but saw nothing but sincerity. “Yeah,” she said. “‘So far.’”

  They kept walking. At the corner, a fifteen-year-old kid in a Clippers jersey asked them what they needed. Anna just shook her head.

  “I don’t need to be thinking about this shit,” she muttered to Nail.

  “Then don’t.”

  “Oh, now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Hey, if—”

  A series of dull pops sounded from somewhere up ahead, the sound echoing off the houses. Like firecrackers, Anna thought. A moment later, a rapid burst answered, and a loud bang followed on the heels of that.

  Anna ducked into the nearest building, a carniceria with bars on the windows. Nail stayed right on her heels the whole time. Once inside, they both dropped to the floor. An odd peace came over her. There was the other shoe. She could stop waiting for it to drop.

  “Shoulda come packing,” Nail said.

  “Chill out, big guy. Be over in a minute.” She thought about popping up to have a look, then thought better of it. “Thought this was your thing.”

  “I like to be on the other end of the gun.”

  “Nobody’s shooting at us.”

  “Yet.”

  “Just chill,” she said. There had been no more shots. Maybe no more were forthcoming. Nonetheless, Nail didn’t move. Anna didn’t, either. Couldn’t hurt to give it a minute. She counted to a hundred without hearing another shot.

  “All clear?” she asked.

  “The fuck should I know? Can’t sit here forever, though.”

  Behind the counter, a Latino guy in an apron stood. Anna figured he’d know better than she would when it was safe to come out. She got up.

  “Todos los días,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head.

  Anna gave him a tight-lipped smile of acknowledgment and walked to the door. Outside, hesitant movement had resumed. A couple of scared kids—nine years old, at most—walked down the street, one wiping tears away. The group of teenagers at the corner did their best t
o appear tough and unfazed, but one of them paced nervously, constantly looking left and right. One of the others threw a rock at him and shouted something disparaging.

  “Come on,” Anna said. She went out.

  Normal street activity had already resumed. A couple of women chatted over a fence, and groups of middle school kids traveled in tight groups along the sidewalk.

  “This business as usual down here?” Nail asked.

  “I don’t know. You hear what the butcher said? ‘Every day.’ It used to be bad, but not that bad. And the middle of the day, right when school lets out? Kids all over the street? I don’t remember that ever happening.”

  “Everything’s going to hell.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.” It bothered her, a disruption to the rhythm she’d thought she’d remembered. “Come on,” she said again.

  Another couple of blocks, another turn. They passed an elementary school surrounded by what seemed like miles of chain-link fence atop a brightly painted concrete base.

  “No sirens,” Nail said.

  “Pretty normal. They’ll get here when they get here.”

  She stopped halfway across the street, one foot planted and the other trailing to a halt with a gentle scrape, and pointed. “What is that?”

  “I don’t—oh.”

  “Yeah.” The drawing on the corner of the building ahead was unmistakable. Anna didn’t know what it did—couldn’t, in fact, even hazard a guess—but she’d seen enough to know an occult diagram when she saw one. This one was in an oddly clear spot amid a tangle of graffiti, the arcs amazingly precise for spray paint. It was large, nearly as tall as she was, and wider than the span of her outstretched arms. She wished Genevieve were here to give her some idea of what it was all about. Gen would have names for all the bits—that star-shaped thing at the bottom, the thing on either side that looked like an evil smiley face if you squinted and cocked your head.