Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  “It’s no big thing,” Luz says. “We’ll take the bus.”

  Malone raises his hand to silence her. “No, now, see, keep even that to yourself,” he says. “I don’t want to know anything.”

  The server brings their drinks, still with that smirk on his face. Luz peels the wrapper off her straw and has a sip of her Coke. The phone is on the table. She picks it up to make sure there’s a signal.

  A man and woman are arguing over a parking space outside, their voices coming muffled through the window.

  “I was waiting for that.”

  “You passed it by.”

  “I did not. I was waiting.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “So open your fucking eyes.”

  “Open your eyes, bitch.”

  Luz resists the urge to duck. It’s as bad up here as it is in Tijuana, people turning on each other over the smallest things.

  “Are you from L.A.?” she says to Malone.

  “Orange County,” he says. “Anaheim Hills.”

  “That’s like all rich over there, isn’t it?”

  Malone shrugs as he spoons whipped cream into his mouth. “They’d say middle class.”

  “I don’t trust rich people,” Luz says.

  “I don’t trust anybody,” Malone says.

  “Me neither,” Luz says.

  “Not even you,” Malone says with a smile.

  Luz smiles too. “Right,” she says. “Not even you.”

  For a second she feels like a normal person sitting in a restaurant, joking with a friend. For an instant it seems like another way the world could be. But then Malone goes dark, sucker punched by the past again, and her arm brushes the backpack lying on the seat beside her, the one containing stolen money and a gun, and she realizes there’s no hope of normal ever. Even the server knows it. He returns with Malone’s fries, still wearing his strange, scornful grin, and the reason comes to Luz like a curtain whisked away: He sees right through them.

  Thacker gets on the 91 and keeps driving until his blood pressure drops and he’s breathing normally. Somewhere around Anaheim he starts feeling like he’s far enough from Jerónimo that the Mex isn’t going to catch up to them. The kid is awake now and a little fussy, so when he sees the giant stucco castle up ahead, King John’s Fun Zone, it seems like the perfect place to make the exchange with her mom.

  He takes the next exit and works his way back on surface streets. The castle is painted white but dyed an ethereal blue by the floodlights shining up at it. Thacker has to wait to get into the busy parking lot. That’s fine. He wanted a place where they’d be part of a crowd. Isabel is wide-eyed as he pulls into an empty slot.

  “Are we going here?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Do you want to?”

  She nods happily, understanding that he’s joking with her.

  “Okay, then,” he says. “But you have to promise to be good.”

  “I promise.”

  She tries to free herself from the seatbelt, but he tells her to hold on, there’s something he needs to do.

  Reaching behind the seat, he brings up Jerónimo’s belongings. He gets out, walks around to the back of the truck, and sets the stuff in the bed. A quick search of the guy’s pants turns up a roll of twenties and hundreds. He pockets the money, then unlocks the toolbox mounted to the cab and lifts out the duffel bag he keeps his civilian clothes in. He takes off his gun belt and uniform shirt and puts on a clean T-shirt, a shoulder holster, and a windbreaker to cover it.

  After stowing the Mex’s gun and clothes in the box, he moves around to help Isabel out of the truck. She won’t let him carry her, says she wants to walk. He says okay as long as she holds his hand. She grabs his index finger and sets off across the lot, dragging him behind her.

  The castle is the centerpiece of a complex containing a mini-golf course, a go-kart track, and an immense arcade. Twenty-five years ago it might have been something, but now the artificial turf is worn and wrinkled, the video games are out of date, and the stucco needs patching and paint. Still, it draws sullen teenagers with nowhere else to go and younger children whose parents are lured by bargain birthday packages.

  Thacker pauses as soon as they enter. The screams of a hundred kids zip around the cavernous space like ricocheting bullets, and he needs a second to get his bearings. Isabel isn’t having it. She yanks him into the midst of the unruliness and makes a beeline for the first flashing lights she sees.

  “I want to do this,” she says, pointing to a game played as best Thacker can tell by jumping up and down on an illuminated platform in time to tinny music. Two oriental boys with spiked hair are bouncing on it now, and a long line of other kids wait for turns.

  “Let’s golf first,” Thacker says. “We’ll come back to this later.”

  He pays for the putters with the Mex’s money.

  The course is outside, away from the worst of the noise. There’s still the muted rattle of go-kart engines and the rumble of the freeway on the other side of a ten-foot sound wall, but at least here Thacker can string two thoughts together. He and Isabel stand at the first hole, waiting for the family in front of them to finish up. Isabel keeps swinging her club at a trashcan, and Thacker keeps telling her to stop.

  “When am I going home?” she says.

  “Soon,” he says.

  “Is this for my birthday?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  When the family moves on, he lets Isabel chase her ball around the Astroturf while he uses Jerónimo’s phone to call Luz.

  “Hello?” she says.

  “Hey there, sexy,” he says. He’s remembering how she looked when he pulled them over at the border. Thin, with long, black hair and a cute mole on her lip. A hot mamacita. Just his type. “You’re still alive.”

  “That’s right,” she replies.

  “What’s up with Jerónimo?”

  “The guy at the gas station? We got away from him.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “He was laying in the street, all messed up.”

  “And my money?”

  “It’s right here.”

  Thacker smiles. Hard to believe, but it’s all working out. “So come get your kid,” he says.

  “Tell me where.”

  Isabel hits her ball too hard, and it ends up lost in the bushes. She turns to Thacker for help. He tosses her his ball to play with.

  “It’s this place called King John’s off the 91,” he says into the phone. “Big white castle. You can’t miss it.”

  “I know where it is,” Luz says.

  “We’ll be playing mini-golf. Look for the Border Patrol cap.”

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  “We?” Thacker says. “No way, baby doll. I only want to see you and the money.”

  “That’s what I meant. Me.”

  “I’m serious. If I even suspect you’re fucking around, the deal is off, and your little girl pays the price.”

  “I’ll be alone. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, I won’t. I’m not the worrying type.”

  Thacker ends the call and watches Isabel kick the ball into the cup, then stand there waiting for something to happen.

  “That’s it, kiddo,” he says to her. “How many strokes?”

  He wouldn’t mind being a grandpa someday, if he ever manages to get back into his sons’ good graces. They’re full of Sunday school superiority right now, but life will kick them in the ass soon enough, and then they can all sit down in the dirt and talk like men.

  A big pink unicorn guards the second hole. Isabel swings away. A security guard approaches, a tall skinny Mexican with a shaved head and baggy uniform. What the fuck is this about? Thacker wonders.

  “How’s it going?” the guard says.

  “Oh, you know,” Thacker says. “Trying to stay cool in this heat.”

  “You Border Patrol?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Your hat,” the guard
says, touching the bill of his own cap. “I’m thinking about applying.”

  “Is that so.”

  “I’m finishing my B.S. in criminal justice at Argosy next semester, and my professor says I shouldn’t have any problem getting hired once I got that.”

  “He’s steering you right. We’re always looking for qualified people.”

  “Where you stationed? San Ysidro?”

  “Campo,” Thacker says, then wishes he hadn’t.

  “I might go to Arizona,” the guard says. He’s doing his damnedest to grow a mustache, but getting only fuzz. “My girlfriend’s family is there and everything, and it’s cheaper to live, too.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Thacker says. Isabel is trying to climb onto the unicorn’s back. “Get down,” he calls to her.

  “I want to play Dance Dance now,” she says.

  “Looks like we’re going inside,” he says to the guard. “Good luck to you.”

  “You never know, maybe we’ll see each other on patrol or something someday,” the guard says.

  “You never know,” Thacker says. Isabel is already skipping toward the arcade, and he heads off in pursuit. He’s pretty sure the guy is just some idiot who’s genuinely excited about joining the patrol, but all the same, he’s nervous. He doesn’t need him hanging around when Luz gets here.

  Jerónimo lies on one of the beds in the motel room. He’s holding a damp washcloth to the scrape he got on his knee when he fell in the street and staring at a cop show on the television. He’s not paying much attention, but he can tell that the TV cops are smarter than real ones, like they always are in movies.

  He closes his eyes and tries to relax. His foot keeps bouncing, shaking the whole bed. He can’t stop thinking about the fact that every minute he wastes in this room is one more minute his family is in danger.

  Looking on the bright side, nothing is broken, nothing is bleeding too much. He can still run, still scrap if it comes to that, and the pain in his knee will make him meaner and smarter. It wouldn’t matter if he was missing an arm, though, he’d keep chasing Luz. The trigger’s been pulled, the bomb’s been dropped.

  There’s a knock at the door. Jerónimo wraps a towel around his waist and limps over to open it. Looney and some kid, a little vato of fifteen or sixteen, are standing there.

  “Híjole,” Looney says and pretends to hide his eyes. “What kind of party you having?”

  “Hey, ese,” Jerónimo says. “Come on in.”

  Looney steps inside and motions for the boy to follow.

  “You look good,” Jerónimo says.

  “No I don’t,” Looney says. “I’m fat as a motherfucker.” He gestures at Jerónimo’s knee. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Jerónimo says. “I tripped on the stairs.” He closes the door and locks it. “I don’t have any beer or anything. You want some water?”

  “Nah, we’re fine,” Looney says. The kid stands there fidgeting, not knowing where to look. Looney puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “This is my oldest, Ruben Junior. He’s my ride home. Junior, this here’s El Apache.”

  “Hey, Junior, good to meet you,” Jerónimo says.

  “Good to meet you too,” the kid replies in a soft voice, uncomfortable with the formality of the exchange.

  Looney holds out a plastic grocery store bag and says, “Put these on. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Thanks again, holmes,” Jerónimo says. He takes the bag and walks to the bathroom.

  “It’s some of my old stuff,” Looney says. “I didn’t know what size you were, but there’s a belt.”

  The Lakers T-shirt fits okay, but the pants, a pair of gray Dickies, are too short in the legs and too big in the waist. Jerónimo slides the belt through the loops and cinches it tight. He’ll need to make a new hole.

  “You got a filero?” he says to Looney when he steps back into the room. Looney fishes in his pocket, pulls out a folding knife, and tosses it to him. Jerónimo uses the tip of the blade to bore through the leather of the belt. A few seconds later he’s all set.

  “How do I look?” he says to the kid.

  “Better,” the kid says with a shy grin.

  Looney picks up the length of curtain rod that Jerónimo bent and then blacked with oil from a stain in the parking lot. It was supposed to fool Luz into thinking he had a gun when he went down to meet her.

  “What’s this?” Looney says. “Some Escape from Alcatraz shit?” He points it at his son, changes his voice. “Put your hands up, motherfucker.”

  Jerónimo shrugs while the two of them laugh. “It ain’t been my day,” he says.

  Looney sets the curtain rod on the dresser and reaches into his back pocket for something wrapped in a small brown paper bag. He hands it to Jerónimo, who looks inside and sees a pistol.

  “Ain’t nothing but a .25, but it’s clean,” Looney says. “Got six rounds in it, too.”

  “It’ll do fine,” Jerónimo says.

  “Better than that fakie anyway,” Looney says.

  “And you ought to know, right?” Jerónimo says. He’s talking about one night when they were kids and Looney tried to hold up a liquor store with a comb held like a gun. The Korean who owned the place leaped over the counter swinging a collapsible baton and came close to catching him. Jerónimo doesn’t tell the story outright, not knowing how much Looney has revealed to his son about his past, but he sees that Looney is uneasy nonetheless.

  “You’re thinking of that dude Clown, I think,” Looney says.

  “Riiiight,” Jerónimo says like he’s all of a sudden remembering. “That dumbshit.” He shoves the gun, still in the bag, into his pocket.

  “Let me show you this car and get out of here,” Looney says. “My old lady’s like, ‘You better get your ass back in time for dinner.’”

  The three of them leave the room and walk downstairs to the parking lot. Looney is talking about a job he’s on, wiring a new shopping center, all the overtime he’s pulling, time-and-a-half, double-time. He doesn’t shut up, doesn’t give Jerónimo the chance to bring up any more old mischief. The car he’s brought is a beat-to-shit Honda Civic with mismatched headlights, a bungee cord holding the hood shut, and a temporary spare on the right rear hub.

  “Don’t get pulled over,” Looney says, dangling a key. “I don’t have the registration. And the brakes are shot too.”

  “That’s cool, that’s cool,” Jerónimo says. “Could you also slide me, like, twenty bucks?”

  Looney makes a face, then takes out his wallet and passes him two tens. It’s funny, him bragging one minute about all the money he’s making and the next giving his old friend that kind of look when he asks for a loan.

  Nonetheless, Jerónimo clasps the big man’s hand and pulls him close, so they’re standing chest to chest.

  “You came through for me, holmes, and I mean it, I’ll take care of you as soon as this job is done,” he says.

  Looney grips him tighter and pulls him closer. Jerónimo feels something poking his stomach and looks down to see a gun, held low, so the kid won’t notice.

  “I don’t want nothing from you,” Looney whispers in his ear. “We’re even now, and you’re gonna forget all about me. Comprendes?”

  Jerónimo’s not angry at him. The guy has a family, a house, a life, and Jerónimo knows what it’s like to lose that.

  “Comprendo,” he whispers back.

  The gun disappears, and Looney slaps him on the back as they separate. “Say good-bye to El Apache,” he says to the kid. “He was a real loco back in the day.”

  Father and son walk to a tricked-out Supra and crawl inside, the kid behind the wheel. Looney sticks his arm out the window as they pull away and flashes Jerónimo a peace sign.

  All of a sudden it’s night. Two kids roll by on skateboards, one of them tossing a cigarette that sparks when it hits the street. Jerónimo takes the bag out of his pocket and opens it to look at the gun again, then gets into the Honda. The seat’s broken, won’t
move forward, but the engine turns over, and the radio works.

  There’s still a line for the dance game Isabel wants to play, so Thacker eases her on to something else, a race car that rocks back and forth when she steers it. The arcade echoes with gunfire and explosions, barked orders, and the recurring groans of the wounded. Across the way two Mexican kids dressed in black aim bright pink pistols at shambling zombies whose heads erupt into mushroom clouds of blood and brain when hit.

  Thacker watches the entrance for Luz. He’ll call her over as soon as she comes in and take the money off her right here. He’s counting on her not trying anything funny, hopes he’s scared her enough. Wait ten minutes, he’ll tell her. I mean it. I have eyes on this place.

  “Excuse me again.”

  The security guard. Snuck up out of nowhere.

  “Is there a problem?” Thacker says, his irritation showing.

  “No problem,” the guard says. “It’s just, I’m thinking of taking the test for the Border Patrol.”

  “Right. You told me that before.”

  “Well, I was wondering, like, if I could get your card.”

  “What for?”

  “I figure it’d be cool if I could say I knew someone when I went down there.”

  Thacker still can’t figure out if the kid is stupid or up to something, but all of a sudden it feels like everyone’s looking at him. Paranoia makes him reconsider his plan. This place was a bad idea. There’s got to be somewhere better to meet Luz.

  “You know what,” he says as he lifts Isabel from the race car, “I’m all out of cards.”

  “I’m not done!” Isabel yells.

  “That’s okay,” the guard says. “Just give me your name, and I’ll write it down.” He reaches into his shirt pocket for a notepad and pen.

  “Johnson,” Thacker says. “Don Johnson.”

  “I want to finish!” Isabel yells.

  “I gotta go,” Thacker says to the guard and carries the kid toward the entrance.

  “Thanks a lot, Agent Johnson,” the guard calls after him.

  Isabel is in the midst of another meltdown by the time they get out to the parking lot.