by Jodi Compton
Nidia’s green eyes flickered, closed and then open, with an expression that looked like guilt.
Serena went on: “She took two bullets and nearly died down there in Mexico. It wasn’t your fault, but it was because of you and this baby. And after she got better, Hailey didn’t run the other way like most smart people would. She went and fucking found you and got you someplace safe.”
“I know that,” Nidia said softly, her green eyes nervous.
“Yeah, you know that, but what are you doing about it? Nidia, grow up, be a woman. Do what’s gotta be done.”
These were hard words, but I didn’t jump in with anything to soften them, because Nidia’s face was clouded, uncertain, and I thought she might finally be relenting.
Finally she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I understand.”
“And you’ll let Hailey find your baby a safe place to live?”
Nidia nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish there was another way.”
Outside the bedroom, I went immediately to the refrigerator and stood looking at the drinks inside, the RockStar and Red Bull, orange juice and milk, and wished that I hadn’t laid down the law about no drinking or drugs on the mountain. I closed the door without taking anything out.
“Thanks for doing the heavy lifting in there,” I said.
“You weren’t gonna,” Serena said. “You’re too soft, prima.”
Alcohol would have helped me sleep less fitfully that night, so it was probably a good thing there hadn’t been any in the trailer. My light and restless sleep ended a little after midnight, when I raised my head with a sense of the noise that had awakened me: the soft click of the front door being pulled to.
I reached for my SIG, but already I could tell that there was no one in the darkened living room who shouldn’t be: me on the couch, and Serena in a sleeping bag on the floor. Payaso and Iceman had taken the extra bedroom. I wasn’t sure where Cheyenne was: maybe in the master bedroom with Nidia, maybe with Payaso and Iceman. Sleeping arrangments between Trece and the sucias were fluid-except for Serena, of course, who never sexed the guys.
If no one had come in, someone had gone out. I sat up and pulled apart the blinds to look out the window. Outside the trailer was a moving shadow, a slight female form carrying a shapeless bag. Nidia. I should have known she’d given in too easily to Serena’s browbeating.
I sat up and put my head in my hands for a moment. I was very tired, like lead was braided through the fibers of my muscles. But I got up, very quietly so as not to wake Serena, pulled on my sweatshirt, jeans, and boots, and slipped out the door.
Now I knew where Cheyenne was: with the guys. She couldn’t possibly have slept through Nidia’s getting up, packing her things, and leaving the bedroom. Unless, of course, Cheyenne had known that Nidia planned to run away and had become a silent accomplice.
The time it had taken me to get dressed had slowed me down. Nidia was halfway down to the main road when I caught up with her. In the moonlight that filtered through the treetops, I could see that the bag she was carrying was a pillowcase into which she’d stuffed her few possessions.
She heard my boots crunching in the snow and gravel when I was about ten feet behind her, and she turned, raising a gloved hand to her eyes when I switched on my flashlight.
“Go away,” she said, eyes narrowing in a mix of resentment and defensiveness at being caught. “Go back. Leave me alone.” She turned and started walking faster.
I broke into a jog, closed the small distance, and grabbed her arm to stop her.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. “You’re running away from the only safe place you have, by yourself, with no money? Nidia, where do you think you’re going to go?”
“I’ll find someplace,” she said, pulling her arm from mine.
“How?” I demanded. “The only reason we’ve been able to get you this far is because we had a plan and resources. This is crazy. Come back up and we’ll at least talk about this where it’s warmer.”
That last part was only half a negotiation attempt. I really was cold. She had the long parka and gloves that I’d bought her. I was in a sweatshirt and bare-handed.
“No,” Nidia said. “Not until you promise to help me protect my baby, not give it away.”
I stood still, thinking about my options. If I made that promise, I didn’t know how I was going to keep it. If I didn’t promise, I couldn’t just grab an eight-months’-pregnant woman and muscle her back up the hill. And if I let her go, my mission was over and I’d have failed.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to understand. “What’s going on, really, Nidia?” I asked. “Did you love this guy, Adrian? Is that what this is about?”
Her face was pinched, as though I’d touched a sore spot. “No,” she said. “Johnny was the only one I ever loved. But he would understand this. He would want me to stay with this baby and take care of it.”
She’d told me as much back in El Paso, when she said that Johnny would have wanted her to go to Mexico. Because I hadn’t known she was with child, I hadn’t understood what she was really saying.
Now I thought I did. Nidia wasn’t delusional. She knew the baby she was carrying wasn’t Johnny’s, yet in some way it represented the children they were supposed to have had. She’d loved Johnny and then he’d been killed. Then she’d felt something for Adrian, if not love, and he’d died, too. Nidia had suffered a lot of loss. In her mind, this baby was the universe’s gift to her to make up for it. She wasn’t letting go of that.
I wished I didn’t understand what she was feeling, but I did. I knew how powerful love could be when it came at an age little greater than childhood. I’d been first introduced to my cousin around the same age Nidia was when she’d first seen Johnny Cedillo. That was how I knew that if CJ had died, leaving me with the only child who would carry a piece of his soul into the world, I would not let that baby out of my hands. No matter what the cost, I’d find a way to keep it with me and protect it. And with that realization came the unwelcome corollary: If you could do it for yourself, why can’t you do it for Nidia?
“Okay,” I said, capitulating. “I’m going to help you.”
“You are?” She hadn’t expected to win me over. Her hand was on her stomach as though her child needed physical protection from me.
“Yeah. Come back up, and I’ll think this through all over again. I’ll think of something.”
Nidia relaxed, and her hand moved away from her stomach.
We began the walk back up. I blew on my bare fingers to warm them. Nidia noticed and said, “Do you want my coat?” It was the only way she knew to thank me.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
When we reached the mobile home, Serena was sitting on the doorstep, smoking a cigarette, its red cinder glowing. Nidia’s steps faltered, as if she were expecting a tongue-lashing from Warchild, but I said in a low voice, “It’s okay, I’ll handle her.”
When we were in speaking distance, Serena said coolly, “Out for a walk?” But she clearly saw the pillowcase in Nidia’s hand. She understood.
“Not exactly,” I said, and then to Nidia, “Go on inside.”
For a girl as heavily pregnant as Nidia was, she almost ran up the steps, then slipped through the door and closed it softly.
Serena dropped her cigarette into the snow. “What’s up, Insula?” she said.
I drew in a deep breath and released it in a long plume of steam in the air. “This is about Johnny Cedillo,” I said, and explained the conclusions I’d come to.
Serena scowled. “This girl used to want to be a nun, and now her whole life’s about being a mother?” She shook her head.
“I know it’s hard to understand.”
“She’s not being realistic, either,” Serena said. “No matter where her heart’s at, she’s not gonna be able to defend her baby from the Greek and his whole machine.”
“She expects me to do that,” I said. “She th
inks like a child. She was mad at me for not being able to handle everything with no compromise from her. That’s what a kid expects from a parent. And if I can’t, she’ll run away again with no plan, like a kid, and she’ll get herself killed.”
“And you can’t let her do that,” Serena said.
It wasn’t a question, but there was a question inside it, and after a moment, she articulated it. “Hailey,” she said, “why are you doing all this? Some pretty heavy shit has happened to you since you first met this girl. Nobody could have known those guys were going to shoot you in Mexico, but since then… that guy broke your finger, and then you and Payaso did the rescue mission up north, going into the gangster’s house, and you could’ve got hurt there, too-”
“But I didn’t.”
“But you could’ve. Don’t argue with me for the sake of arguing,” she said. “Why are you going all the way for this girl? She seems totally oblivious to the shit that’s come down on you because of her. It’s like she doesn’t care.”
I couldn’t dispute that. I said, “You’re here, too, protecting her. Why do you do it?”
“Not the same thing. I didn’t get shot. I didn’t get my finger broken.”
She was right. I sighed. “Would you believe I didn’t have anything better to do?”
“No.”
“That was only partly a joke,” I said. “My life in San Francisco, even my life before that in L.A., it wasn’t about anything.”
“Whose life is?”
“Mine was supposed to be,” I said. “I was supposed to have a commission by now, troops to command. I was working toward that, and I thought I was doing everything right, but I still got reassigned to Fort Livingroom. This is the only operation I’m ever going to carry out.” I rubbed my arms against the cold. “It might seem extreme to you, the risks I’ve taken, but that’s how I was taught. You don’t protect yourself when there’s a civilian ass hanging out where it’ll get shot. And if Nidia doesn’t fully appreciate what I’ve done, well, civilians rarely do.”
Serena nodded slowly. Then she said, “So what happens next?”
“Tomorrow I have to make a phone call.”
forty-three
The next day dawned quite warm, and everywhere snow was thawing into translucent puddles. Serena and I waded out through it at about ten in the morning, walking out to a quiet place, an empty, slushy meadow at the edge of a ranch.
I stopped and took out my cell phone, leaning on an old-fashioned split-rail fence.
I’d explained it to Serena the night before. “Negotiations,” I’d said. “They may not work, but you’ve always got to try talks before committing to a shooting war.”
She had assumed that I’d want to place this call from a pay phone, but I’d said no. A pay phone, however anonymous, might show its number with an area code on caller ID. My cell phone had an L.A. area code. That was the one I wanted to show up on the screen.
“Then he’ll have your phone number,” Serena said.
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “If you’re thinking he can track my signal, he can’t. The cops could, but not a private citizen.”
I climbed up on the fence and Serena got up next to me, close enough to hear. I pulled up my directory of saved numbers on my cell and found the one for Skouras’s lawyer.
“Good morning, Costa and Fishman, how may I help you?”
“I need to speak to Mr. Costa immediately,” I said. “My name is Hailey Cain, and it’s urgent.”
“He’s in a meeting right now. Can I get your phone number?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Listen, no matter how important his meeting, if you walk in there and say Hailey Cain is on the phone and wants to talk to him about Tony Skouras’s grandchild, I guarantee you he’ll get up and walk out of that room.”
There was a beat of silence, then her voice was stiff as she said, “Please hold.”
And I did, for quite a while. A horse whinnied in the distance. Sweat started to trickle along my spine, under my shearling-lined jacket. Truckee’s part of the Sierras had wide dips between its frigid nights and warm days, and besides, Serena and I were in full sun.
“Miss Cain, this is Nicolas Costa,” a man’s voice on the line said. “You’ve been leading everyone on quite a chase.”
“Had to,” I said.
“Actually, that’s not true,” he said, his voice more animated. “That’s the funny thing about all this. Nobody on our end can figure out how you got involved. You have no discernible link to Nidia Hernandez or anyone else in this matter.” When I didn’t say anything, he prodded, “You have no response to that?”
“It wasn’t a question,” I said. “Mr. Costa, I’m calling to ask you a question: What’s it going to take for Nidia and her baby to be allowed to live together? She’s the mother. She has a right to that. There has to be a way that can happen.”
When he didn’t answer right away, I added, “This line’s not tapped, and I’m not recording this conversation for anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I never thought you were working with law enforcement,” Costa said. “Your unorthodox methods make it clear that you’re not. In fact, I think you have no better position here, in terms of the law, than we do. You came into a private home with guns, assaulted one of our employees, and took a defenseless young woman away with you. And then, if I’m reading news reports correctly, you tried to kill a California Highway Patrolman.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Let’s stop wasting time here,” he said. “You called to find out what it’s going to take for Skouras to give up on having his grandchild. The answer is, nothing. Our position is completely nonnegotiable. We will call with instructions for where you can bring Miss Hernandez, and in exchange, you and she will be allowed to live. If we have to track her down ourselves, Miss Hernandez will be killed, as will you. Quentin, the young man you unwisely taunted in Gualala, has expressed some interest in spending some private time with you, and Mr. Skouras has already given his approval for that.”
Next to me, I felt Serena stiffen.
Costa said, “You do understand the implications of the words ‘private time,’ don’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s a rape threat,” I said. “Excuse me if I don’t worry about it too much. He and I spent a little time together that day in Gualala, and he came out of it second best.”
“Spare me the youthful bravado. You’re in over your head, firstie. I’ll call in twenty-four hours with instructions. If you don’t accept them on receipt, the mother’s survival and your survival are off the table.”
He hung up.
“Holy shit, Insula,” Serena said.
“Yeah.” I jumped off the fence. “Well, we’ve got a little time to think.”
As we were heading back down to Julianne’s trailer, she said, “Why’d that guy call you thirsty?”
“He didn’t,” I said. “He was calling me a ‘firstie.’ It’s a fourth-year student at West Point, or a cadet first class. It’s a good thing I didn’t wash out in my third year. I’d be stuck at ‘cow.’”
forty-four
“No fucking way,” Payaso said.
We were back at the trailer, on the porch, and I’d just let him in on my conversation with Costa, including the callback in twenty-four hours with further instructions. Payaso’s face was again a mask, but an angry mask, not the least bit clownish. Iceman was sitting nearby. It was another war council.
“We’re running out of options,” I said. “Nidia wants to keep her child; Costa says Skouras will never stop coming after her, and furthermore, if we don’t at least agree to give up the baby when he calls back tomorrow, the stakes go up. Nidia’s life and mine are going to be forfeit.”
Payaso was still shaking his head. “He’s not getting the kid.”
“My question, though,” I said, “is how we’re going to deal with him. We can’t just throw Nidia and the baby on a Greyhound and hope for the best. She’s not
capable of protecting herself and her child.” My throat felt dry from so much talking, first with Costa, now here. “And we can’t keep guarding her and the kid around the clock, long-term.”
Everyone was silent. We could hear the faint throb of music from inside Julianne’s bedroom, where Nidia was with Cheyenne, like yesterday. I said, “Nidia should be a part of this conversation.”
“No,” Payaso said. “She’s pregnant and under a lot of stress. I don’t think she should have to think about things like this.”
Serena said, “It’s her baby and her life. If Nidia shouldn’t have to be in on this, who the hell should?”
Payaso ignored her. “You said that she and the baby would have to be separated until the old man dies, right?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “And who knows, that could be soon.”
“What if it was really soon?” He smiled slyly. “Like, extremely soon.”
Iceman smiled. Before that, he’d been as impassive as an Easter Island statue.
I had to swallow before I could speak. “You mean an assassination.”
“You saying he doesn’t deserve it?” Payaso asked. “You know he does. If you want to keep your hands clean, Trece and I can TCB on this. You wouldn’t have to be involved, except in the planning, like you did with finding Nidia. But not in the actual-” He made a gun of his thumb and finger and mimicked shooting.
He was making a good point, in his way. If Trece went after Skouras and succeeded in killing him, it wasn’t like the old man wouldn’t have brought it on himself. Everybody knew what happened when you lived by the sword.
But there was a problem. “I doubt you could get near him,” I said. “He knows a Hispanic gangbanger was involved in the mission in Gualala. He’ll spot one of your homeboys a mile away. You guys aren’t gonna blend in, not in Skouras land.”
“Guys? Maybe not.” Another sly smile. “But a nice innocent Mexican girl, dressed like a maid or a janitor? One of Warchild’s homegirls could walk right up to him and blast away. Some of them are as good with a gun as my homeboys.”
