by Lynne Ewing
I wondered if I’d seen her at a club. Some high school girls liked to pick up on gangsters for a night of danger before they returned to their safe homes. More likely, Tony only resembled the ones that I’d watched flirt with Rico and Satch. All good girls looked alike to me with their enthusiastic smiles and bouncy hair.
I trudged over to Rico. “Don’t steal anything,” I said in a harsh whisper. “If the security guards catch you, they’ll find the gun.”
“I’m going to end up in jail if I don’t get killed first, so what does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” I argued before Satch’s voice pulled me back to what he was saying to Tony.
“Jump out of here with me,” Satch murmured to Tony, his thigh pressed against the counter. “I’ll buy you a coffee, one of those sweet mocha things.”
Tony giggled, trapped between desire and fear.
“You drink coffee, don’t you?” Satch bent closer, blocking her view of the exit.
“I love coffee,” she admitted, her blush deepening, as Rico strutted out of the store, wearing the tweed jacket and fedora while waving to the surveillance camera.
I plucked the price tags off the floor and, fanning them for the same camera, carried them up to the checkout counter. I wasn’t going to let Rico get arrested. “I need to check out!”
Tony blinked, seeming surprised to find herself at work.
“Go ahead and take care of business,” Satch said smoothly. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Promise?” she asked shyly.
“Promise,” he said before he left to join Rico.
Tony stepped over to the cash register, the red fading from her cheeks. “I like your friend,” she confided as she took the tags. “He seems really sweet.”
The happiness radiating from her smile annoyed me. “Can you just hurry?” I said, more harshly than I had intended.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
After she scanned the tags, I paid with the money that Trek had stashed in my purse, then took my receipt and change and left.
Rico and Satch were waiting near the entrance. Their conversation stopped when I joined them, but the remnants of their anger hung in the air, and I knew they had been discussing Trek.
“What did you do with the clothes?” I asked Rico, who was no longer wearing the jacket or the hat.
“Do you think I want to get arrested?” He teased and pointed inside. “I took them back.”
The clothes lay under the counter where Tony had been folding sweaters. His theft had been a ruse so he and Satch could talk without me, which made me fume.
“That is so not funny,” I said, trying to swallow the anger that tightened my throat. “I’m not laughing, Rico.”
“Go get your refund,” Satch said, nudging me back to the store.
I stepped inside and, as I started to pick up the clothes, I glanced at Tony, who was leaning against the cash register, reading a store flyer. Her hair extensions fell into her face and, when she lifted her hand to brush them back, the stars tattooed around her wrist peeked out from her cuff.
Cold panic settled into my stomach as my eyes darted to her brow, nose, and lips, and I imagined silver hoops in her piercings, her hair cut short and colored black.
Before she saw me, I dodged back to Satch and Rico.
“Tony was the cashier the night Trek killed Nando and the boy.”
Their eyes shot back to Tony, who looked up and waved, unaware of how close she had come to spending the night in a hospital emergency room.
“You never saw the cashier’s face,” Satch said to me. “So how can you be sure?”
“That night, I saw the stars tattooed around her wrist. The same design is inked into Tony’s skin.”
“Lots of girls probably have that tattoo,” Rico said, studying her with renewed interest.
“I know she was the cashier. She’s trying to change her appearance. She might not have seen the killer, but she knows the killer saw her, and she’s terrified. How did Trek find her? The news never mentioned her name or anything that could have identified her.”
“It would have been easy for Trek to find out who was working the late shift that night,” Satch said. “But after all this time, why’d he even bother?”
“The reward money has him worried,” I said. “He sent us on this mission so we could prove our commitment to him by shooting Tony.”
“Is Trek totally insane?” Rico asked angrily. “If we shot Tony, cops would never stop looking for us.”
“Our word should have been enough,” Satch said. “We left our fingerprints all over that rifle.”
We stared at each other, a thousand questions unspoken.
Satch and Rico had been dressed like church boys that night, and I’d worn a mix of sexy clothes and my school uniform. We’d been wet, our hair plastered to our scalps. But maybe Tony had gotten a good look at one of us even though we hadn’t seen her face.
I flinched. “We have to get out of here before Tony figures out who we are. She’s probably got a detective on speed dial.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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27
The gloom inside the Metro station reinforced my bleak mood. Even Satch looked subdued, his face bloodless and drawn in the gray light. Only Rico, who walked ahead of us, seemed unaffected by the murkiness. We rode the escalator down to the platform and, there, in the stuttering light from the windows of a passing train, stood Babo, a hard-core Lobo, part of the locos crew.
He smiled up at us, his black trench coat billowing in the slipstream. The vato with him was a stranger to me, but the prison tattoos on his neck and shaved head read like a biography that told me he had killed once, served time for robbery but not the murder, and his gang name was Joker. His wide grin let me know he had the locura.
“They’re fools to challenge us here,” I said, though my real warning was for Rico. Toughness was a virtue, but you didn’t act like a killer inside the Metro, where transit police loomed in the tunnels, ready for a throwdown. Moreover, you didn’t do it with only one bullet in your gun.
Rico ignored me and strode over to Babo, the slowness in his stride showing he wasn’t afraid.
“Hey, ese,” Rico said, mocking Babo’s accent. “What are you doing so far from your barrio?”
“Looking for a baile,” Babo said, his smile fierce. He didn’t mean a dance. He was looking for a fight.
The whir of brakes filled the tunnel and the floor lights flashed red as another train arrived. The color pulsed over Babo, who lifted his coat to flaunt the automatic weapon hidden at his side. Though powerful, the gun was a distraction. The real threat came from Joker, who was pulling a pistol from his coat.
Undaunted, Rico lifted his shirt and gripped the gun handle while Satch slipped his hand into his jacket, pretending to reach for a gun.
The train stopped, its doors opened, and passengers swarmed in and out, skimming past each other and clogging the firing field. The Lobos let their coats close, concealing their weapons as they watched Rico and Satch, who dropped their hands to their sides in a momentary truce.
With the crowd still passing in front of them, Satch said something to Rico and, though I couldn’t hear the exchange, I knew what they were planning and braced myself.
The moment the computer voice announced that the train doors were closing, Satch and Rico spun around, grabbed my arms, lifting me between them, and carried me on board. The doors swished together, the rubber edges brushing over my shoes before Babo and Joker could react.
I leaned against Satch, my heart thundering. “I hate it when you guys do that. Can’t you just yell, ‘Run!’?”
“Not as much fun,” he teased, his attention turning to Babo, who raced alongside our window.
Babo flashed our gang sign, adding a vulgar gesture and, before Rico could send a message back, the train sped into the tun
nel.
Passengers, believing the exchange had been nothing serious, settled into the train’s motion, opening books and newspapers and scrolling through messages on their cell phones.
I took a seat and slid over to make room for Satch, who walked past me and leaned against a pole. Rico sat next to me, took my purse, opened it, and dropped his hand inside.
“You’ve got to be more careful with the hammer,” he said, rearranging it. “You don’t want the claw to snag on something when you pull it out in a fight.”
“You’re expecting more trouble?” I asked.
“Do you think Babo was at the station because he wanted to go shopping?”
I shook my head. “He wasn’t surprised to see us so far from our neighborhood, and he should have been. Someone told him we’d be there.”
“Trek did.”
“Why?”
Without answering my question, Rico zipped my purse, set it on the floor in front of me, and eased his arm around me, his face against mine, not kissing me, but seeming to breathe in my essence.
“I’m not afraid of dying, Blaise,” he whispered, “but I don’t want to leave you. I’m going to miss you so damn much.”
I pulled back so I could look at him. “You’re worrying me. Please don’t do something stupid, like another suicide raid into Lobos’ territory, just because Babo—”
“Promise me you won’t hate me after you find out how selfish I’ve been.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Give me that, at least.”
“I could never hate you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, but tell me what you’re planning.”
“Don’t forget this,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes.
The train swerved and started its descent under the Potomac River. The friction between the rails and wheels created a shrill screech that stopped all conversation. I wanted to shake the smile off Rico’s face and nag him until he told me his plan, but I couldn’t question him more unless I shouted over the train’s noise, which would be loud enough for all the passengers to hear.
I stared at our reflection in the window, afraid that Rico was seeing death as his only way out. Some homies got to that crazy, reckless place when they stopped caring if they lived or died. But the death wish was never really about wanting to die. It was about wanting to escape this life and be free from the hate and violence forever.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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28
Plastic bags, caught in the fence and battered by the wind, had stretched into long gray streamers that snapped over our heads when Satch, Rico, and I stopped in the darkness near Tulley’s. The furtive sound of footsteps rushing through the grass had awakened my gangster sixth sense. I tiptoed through the dead weeds near a fire hydrant and peered back down the street in search of shadows that didn’t blend into the night and, though I saw nothing, the impression of danger didn’t leave me.
Unexpectedly, Rico raced up the sidewalk ahead of us and jumped on the stoop of a row house. Bluish light from the TV screen flickered in the windows, the glow flashing over him.
“What’s he doing?” I asked Satch, who stood beside me. “Doesn’t he feel it? You do, don’t you?”
Satch nodded. “Someone’s been following us since we left the Metro station.”
“Why doesn’t Rico sense it?”
“He does. That’s why he’s making himself a target.”
Terror shuddered through me. “Rico!”
He was already racing back to us, clinging to the shadows, concealing himself behind low-hanging branches and tall weeds that shimmered in the breeze.
“If they don’t want to shoot us, then what do they want?” Rico asked when he joined us again.
“We need to find out who they are before we can figure that out,” Satch said.
“Maybe it’s a pack of dopers,” I whispered.
Satch touched my shoulder, cautioning me to listen.
The three of us waited, becoming still. Minutes passed, and then, a lonesome, high-pitched howl echoed into the night. Other voices joined in, coming from several directions, the desolate songs of wolves that didn’t belong in a city. Lobos called their haunting cries gritando. They were surrounding us and wanted us to know that we’d soon feel their bullets.
“We didn’t escape them,” Satch said, a trace of surprise in his voice. “One of their homies must have boarded the train at the mall and called the others when we got off near here.”
“This is creepy,” I said as the wails continued to pervade the dark.
Rico smiled slyly. “They won’t look for us in their own neighborhood. I know a place.”
I glanced at Satch, unsure about hiding out in Lobos territory.
“We can’t stay here,” he said, ducking low and pulling me with him. “They’ll close in on us soon.”
We slipped into the shadows, letting the night enshroud us, and stole east toward the Anacostia River. Satch curled his arm around me as we followed Rico through a narrow passageway where homeless men slouched against the walls.
Near a loading dock behind a small grocery store, we entered the Lobos’ neighborhood, where rival gang members from Mass 5 had crossed out the Lobos’ graffiti and had written their own inscriptions, claiming the alley belonged to them.
“Lobos must have caught Mass 5 before they finished tagging,” Satch said, pointing to the bullet holes in the bricks.
“They left their paint when they ran.” Rico picked up one of the cans that littered the ground and pressed the nozzle. A spray of gold hissed into the air.
Satch waved the mist away. “Dump the paint.”
“I got plans.” Rico gathered more cans and, clutching them in his arms, led us into the courtyard of an apartment complex where a mural memorialized the Lobos’ homeboys. I read the roll call of the dead. Some I had known, boys my age and younger.
“Hide,” Rico whispered.
Though I had heard nothing, I trusted his instincts and eased into a brightly lit alcove, the entrance to someone’s home. Moths batted my hand as I gripped the light bulb, the heat searing my fingers, and unscrewed it from its socket.
Moments later, footsteps scuffed down the sidewalk. Three gangbangers strolled past me, dressed alike in bagged-out khaki work pants. They had slit open the long pant legs to free their feet for running, and eight inches of excess material dragged on the concrete behind their shoes. They continued on, unaware that their enemy had ventured so deep into their homeland. The one nearest me had his gun out, held at his side, ready to fire.
I left the light bulb on the doormat, my fingers stinging, and met Satch and Rico in the courtyard. We crept onward, spread far apart this time, three targets instead of one, down yet another alley and onto a vacant lot that was used as an illegal dump site, next to an abandoned factory on the banks of the Anacostia River.
“We’ll be safe here,” Rico said. “Lobos only patrol this area once a night, usually near dawn.”
On the side of the factory, Lobos had painted Rifamos, bragging that they were unsurpassed, the fiercest gangsters in Washington, D.C. The closing inscription, P/V, was an abbreviation of por vida, their promise to rule this part of the District forever.
Paint vapors settled over me, cold in the night air, as Rico began blotting out the Lobos’ graffiti with black paint.
“They’re already gunning for you, Rico,” I said. “Can’t you just leave it?”
“Impossible,” he explained. “I got to show Babo that he can’t hit me up and get away with it.”
“It could cost you your life. Is it worth it?”
Grinning, he pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his nose and began spraying gold paint.
I slogged through the knee-deep trash toward Satch, who sat on the end of a weathered wharf. The smaller rats scuttled away from my f
ootsteps, but the larger ones ignored my intrusion and continued gnawing on chicken bones and apple cores.
Near the river, the smells of tar and mud replaced the sour garbage odor. When I crossed the wharf, the wood planks rasped and sagged beneath my steps, sounding close to breaking.
“Big day, huh?” I said, sitting beside Satch, careful where I set my purse.
“It doesn’t get worse than this,” he assured me, sensing the anxiety behind my smile. “This is the bottom.”
I nodded, my body starting to relax as I listened to the water lap at the piles. I glanced at Satch and caught him watching me. The way he was looking at me was messing with my head. Was he smiling to encourage me? I touched his arm and let my fingers linger.
Instantaneously, he shifted away, my hand dropping between us as he glanced back at Rico, who was still spraying paint. Satch turned back and stared out at the trash floating downstream.
“You’re always running away from me,” I whispered, not even sure he could hear me over the water.
“I never mean to hurt you, Blaise. I swear. That’s all you need to know.”
“No, that’s not enough,” I said, clenching the edge of the wharf for support. “You and Rico taught me to trust my gut, because that was the only way to survive. Do you know what my instincts are telling me right now?”
“Don’t say it, Blaise,” he said without looking at me.
“Why?” I demanded.
He turned abruptly, startling me, his eyes fierce when he stared into mine. “It can’t be more than friendship. I’m sorry, but it will never be more than that.” He glanced back at the warehouse. “Damn.”
He jumped up, the wharf swaying precariously, and ran back to Rico. I thought he was deserting me the way he always did, until the hum of a car engine became louder than the sloshing river.
Lobos, I thought, grabbing my purse. I stood, a rush of air escaping my lungs. Rico had painted his name in shimmering gold letters across the factory wall. He was going to take a bullet for what he’d done.
I raced back to the lot in time to see a black Cadillac Escalade turn the corner. My heart slid into my stomach. Rico was running toward the car.
