by Jackson Ford
Africa’s story is amazing. Or would be, if he could stick to it. He’s been a cab driver in Portland, New York, Santa Fe. He’s logged in Maine, smuggled gold in France, sold guns in Egypt—or smuggled gold into Maine and sold Egyptian prostitutes while logging in France, depending on what day you ask him. He swears blind that he worked in the secret service for Obama, which is about the only thing he’s never gone back on.
When I first got to LA, China Shop wasn’t quite ready to go. Reggie was there, but she and Tanner were still working out the logistics—Annie, Carlos and Paul hadn’t appeared on the scene yet. Tanner had me shacked up in a shitty motel in Carson, and her instructions to me amounted to staying out of trouble and learning how LA worked. I got the sense she wanted to keep me as far away from the organisational stuff as possible—and what better way to keep someone like me in line than to give me a little bit of freedom? Which was just fine by me. I had things to be. Places to do.
I was under strict instructions not to use Uber or Lyft—after all that time in Waco, Tanner had to explain to me what those were. She gave me a debit card, told me to use cabs only and get to know the city while she set things up. I explored LA, eating in weird places and talking to as many people as I could. I took long walks on the beach in Santa Monica and went up to Griffith Observatory and ate at dozens of restaurants. After the time I’d spent in the grey hell of the federal government’s care while they figured out what to do with me, LA was an injection of pure sugar into my brain. I walked around with my eyes bugging out of my head.
Africa was a dude I gave some change to, a hulking golem on the sidewalk selling old (definitely stolen) records out of cardboard boxes. We got talking. It was one of those weird, freewheeling conversations you have with someone when you’ve got nowhere in particular to be, and you’re pretty sure you’ll never see them again—although I was very, very careful not to mention too much about my past.
He read my palm (he’s never mentioned palm reading again since that first meeting) and said that, according to my lifeline, I was going to live for ever. Then he roared with laughter, cackling and smacking the ground with his open palm. It was hard not to like the guy. Over the next few weeks I found myself thinking about him at odd moments. Seeing that delighted face howling with laughter like we were both in on a joke that only we understood.
And I did see him again. Obviously. Ran into him as I was coming out of a Korean BBQ place. He knew who I was straight away and picked up our conversation right where we left off. His turf was the area around the Mission, and over the past couple of years we’ve run into each other quite a few times.
He’s not a contact in the traditional sense—I’ve never used him to help with China Shop jobs. But he’s not part of Annie’s Army, and I’ve always kept him in the back of my mind. Just in case I should ever be woken up at 4 a.m. and be accused of murder.
There’s a portable radio playing in Africa’s tent as he unzips and clambers in, long legs stretching out behind him. “… latest reports coming in, with marshals saying that they may need to evacuate parts of Burbank and Glendale as fires continue to rage…”
Africa snaps the radio off, beckoning me inside. We squeeze into the tent. It’s not easy, and not just because Africa takes up nearly all the floor space. There’s another pile of bags inside, along with a dirty sleeping bag. The cold sidewalk leaks through the thin base of the tent, despite the growing morning heat.
“OK.” Africa sits cross-legged, gulping down the last of his breakfast. “What you need?”
“You hear anything about what happened at the Edmonds last night?”
He frowns. “Bad things. Bad gris-gris.”
“Right. I need to know who was there. If you saw or anyone around here saw anything.”
“Why you asking?”
I meet his eyes. “I just need to know.”
He makes the sign of the cross, muttering something. “Teggan, why you ask me this?”
“Please, Africa. It’s important.”
He bites his lip. It makes him look like a little kid.
“OK, sure, OK. I ask around. But you gotta do something for me, yaaw.”
“What?” I don’t dare look at my phone to find out how much time I have left.
He digs in one of the backpacks piled against the side of the tent, withdrawing a small battered cardboard box. “There’s a woman on Main and Winston…” He sees the look on my face and gives me a huge grin. “Relax, yaaw? ’S not drugs. Nothing bad.”
His words are drowned out by a helicopter passing above us. LAPD, no doubt, a black-and-white buzz saw, flying low over the city.
“Main and Winston,” says Africa once the chopper is gone. “Her name is Jeannette. She got a red tent. Give to her, then you come back here this afternoon. Maybe have something for you ’bout four clock.”
Four? That’s ages away. No point arguing—it’s not like I have a Plan B.
The box is about the size of my palm, the edges weathered and fraying. Inside something rattles. I debate looking, then decide against it.
“Main and Winston? That’s like three blocks from here. Why don’t you just go yourself?”
The cheerful glint in his eyes falls away. For a second there’s something cold and hard looking out.
“You a clean white girl,” he says slowly. “You look like you work at a job. Police don’t like me. Don’t like any of us.” He lifts his hand, waving an imaginary pistol. “They not stop you.”
“But if it’s not drugs…”
His eyes narrow, and I trail off. There’s nothing I could say here that wouldn’t sound wrong.
The silence goes on a little too long. I clear my throat, stuffing the box in my jacket pocket. “Jeannette. Red tent. Got it.”
He grins, the cold look vanishing. “Good, good.”
It takes less than ten minutes to walk the three blocks. The streets are already starting to cook under the early-morning sun. The few businesses in this part of town are starting to roll up their shutters, and there are more cops rolling past. One of their cars is ramped up on the kerb just where Winston meets South Los Angeles Street, a man with dreads bent over the hood as a navy-clad cop frisks him.
Turning the corner from South Los Angeles Street onto Winston, I have a sudden urge to text Nic, to confirm N/Naka, to tell him that I’m sorry about last night—even if I have absolutely no idea how to say it. But of course he’s probably still asleep.
Confirm N/Naka? Yeah, OK. I’ll just wrap up this whole being framed-for-murder thing by half four this afternoon. Hell, if I work really fast, I’ll even have some time to put on make-up.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I almost don’t notice how quiet the street is. There’s exactly one guy behind me—someone I’ve been aware of, but not paying attention to, like the car that was following me last night. I’m aware of the keys and cellphone in his pocket, the chain around his neck—
Chain?
—and the gun in his hand.
I spin round. It’s the Asian guy from before, the one who ignored the homeless man at the edge of Skid Row.
Before I can do anything, he fires.
SIXTEEN
Teagan
I bet you’re thinking, Pfft, big deal. Just stop the bullet in mid-air. Then turn it around and fly it up this idiot’s nose with your mind.
Ha. Oh, ha ha. Let me tell you something. A bullet travels at close to the speed of sound. I’m good, but I’m not that good.
And if it had been a gun he was firing, it would have been goodnight, Teagan. Turns out it’s not a gun. It’s a taser, something I realise a split-second before he fires.
Not that it helps. A taser prong launches at around a hundred and eighty feet per second. Still way too fast for me to stop. The frustrating thing is, I almost do it. In the moment before the guy fires I get the tiniest grip on the taser itself, manage to jerk it just enough that one of the prongs misses me.
The other one? That buries itself in my shoulder
. Direct hit.
Every single cell in my body goes fucking insane.
I snap rigid, body trembling, unable to even blink. Thinking is impossible. Electric agony holds me in a vice grip.
I’m on my back, looking at the sky. The building next to me is a costume shop, painted a cheerful yellow. If I wasn’t in more pain than I’ve ever been in, it’d actually be nice.
This isn’t a mugging. Muggers don’t use tasers. And I can’t defend myself. There are plenty of objects around me, chips of sidewalk concrete, trash in a nearby garbage can, the taser itself, but my PK has checked out. A billion volts will do that to you.
The guy comes into view, looking way too satisfied with himself. He glances up and down the block, checking for cops, probably—and of course there aren’t any because there never are when shit goes really bad. They’re probably off arresting one of Africa’s buddies for being poor.
Police don’t like me. Don’t like any of us. But they not stop you.
Guess he didn’t take into consideration douchebag hipsters with tasers. They’re the ones you really gotta watch out for. The douchebag hipster in question reaches down and rips the taser prong out of my shoulder.
Fucking ow.
He flips me over, working silently, kneeling on my back and pulling my hands behind me. A car screeches to a halt close by. An accomplice maybe, here to take me to God knows where. Who the hell are these people?
Everything is fuzzy. I can’t focus. There’s the sound of duct tape being pulled from a roll. If I don’t do something soon, I’m toast. If they know what I can do, they’ll have more permanent ways of keeping me under control. If they don’t, and I do use my PK around them, I’ll just get tasered again. Being tasered, I can now officially confirm, sucks.
But that thought is followed by another. Tasers aren’t guns. They don’t have clips. You have to reload them after each shot. Which means I have a very, very short window where they can’t zap me.
I have to move. Right fucking now.
It’s like trying to jump-start a car on a freezing Wyoming morning. He’s got my hands now, getting ready to tape them up. I bite my lip, focusing on the sharp jolt of pain, and buck him off. Or try to. He’s got me jammed down, and my move is less of a buck and more of a wiggle, like a pinned snake.
No. The hell with that. I try again, determined to get rid of him. Of course I can be as determined as I want, but I am also recovering from a taser hit. So all I get is another feeble little wiggle.
He plants an elbow in the centre of my back, leans on it. “Don’t move.”
Duct tape sticks to my right wrist. I try one more time, squeezing my eyes shut and putting everything I can into just rolling over. Let me look this dickhead in the eye. Make him work for it.
This time I catch him at just the right moment. He loses his balance, has to put out a hand on the ground to steady himself, and with one more lurch, he’s off my back. I manage to roll over, a pained grunt forcing its way out of my throat, morphing into a hacking cough before it’s halfway out.
OK. Now what?
The glare from the hot blue sky makes me wince. The hipster is back almost immediately, knees planted either side of me. A look of annoyance crosses his face, and it’s not just me this time. He assumes the same position without thinking, and of course he now has to flip me back over to get to work on my wrists again.
I work my mouth, lips trembling, trying to get enough saliva to the front so I can hock it into the guy’s face. He sees what I’m doing and gives me a pitying smile. “Spit all you want,” he says.
And at that moment, right when his attention is distracted, I drive a knee into his scrotum.
Drive is maybe a little too strong. I’m still in beached-fish mode, and there’s not a lot of muscle control going on. But what I’m doing is a little like golf. It might be a very dumb sport, but golfers have at least one thing right: sometimes, angle beats power. And when I jackhammer my right knee up towards my head, my angle is perfect.
He sucks in a gulp of air, hissing, leaning back automatically. His hands fly to his injured manhood. I buck, and he topples off me.
With more effort than I’ve ever summoned in my entire life, I scramble to my feet. I’m leaning forward now, like a runner out of the blocks, body trembling. The street blurs, my vision doubling.
What if the other guy has a taser? Or—shit—what if there’s a back-up shot? Some tasers have that now, don’t they? I didn’t think about it before, my mind too fuzzy to work on the details. Nothing I can do now. If they taser me, they taser me.
I put my head down and run.
I get about ten feet before I collide with a large squashy pointy thing. It’s a tent, with someone inside it yelling at me to get off. I roll away, stumble to my feet just as a skeleton with thinning white hair pokes its head out of the tent door, fixing me with a bug-eyed glare. “What the fuck?” it screeches.
No time to apologise. Two blurs are racing up behind me, one with a red shirt and a yellow taser-shaped object in his hand. I lurch away, hyperventilating, teeth chattering like I’m freezing cold.
Suddenly there’s a goddamn horse.
It’s looming up in front of me, and it doesn’t look like any horse I’ve ever seen. It’s ten feet tall and bright yellow and has teeth the size of clenched fists. Next to the horse someone has written DECOLONISE AND CHILL.
It’s a mural, painted on the wall that doglegs off Winston Street. I lurch into it, doing my zombie-with-a-broken-leg impression. If I keep going onto Main, there might—might—be people who will intervene before these dickheads drag me away. In the alley there won’t be, but that’s better. There’ll be nobody around to witness me beat these idiots to death with a flying brick or two.
Assuming I actually have enough energy to make them fly in the first place.
Despite the blue sky, the alley itself is deep in shade. There’s more graffiti, a little less coherent than our woke yellow horse, along with dumpsters and endless stacks of cardboard boxes. Along one side, a high wall is bordered by a fence covered in razor wire. The alley smells of pee and fryer oil, and there are no tents, no homeless people—no sign of anybody. And no cameras that I can see. Perfect.
But when I reach out, try to find things in the alley I can use as weapons, I get back almost nothing. It’s like trying to pick something up after your arm has gone to sleep. I can sense objects, feel their form, but I can’t get a grip on them.
The surface of the alley is potholed, with a dribble of water in a central gutter. My feet aren’t working well enough to keep my balance. I faceplant, ripping skin off my cheek. A fire-alarm burst of pain blares through my skull.
Someone has painted a silhouette of an oversized spray can on the wall, the face of an Indian shaman in a headdress superimposed on it. Next to it are the words WAR PAINT.
My jacket is gone. I don’t even know when that happened. I must have shrugged out of it, or had it pulled off me. I roll over, legs twitching. Taser guy and his buddy—a thickset bald dude in a white T who looks like a gangbanger—are slowly approaching.
Wait. I know him. The second one, the bald dude. He was in the car last night. The one I thought was following me, and zoomed off when Nic came up behind me.
“Stay down,” says taser guy. His voice is ever so slightly hoarse, and he’s moving with a weird, bow-legged gait.
“Come on, man.” I push myself up on my elbows—or try to, anyway. My lips have gone numb, and the words slur together. “I got stuff to do. You’ll have to get your buddy to kiss it better.”
“Oh, y’all got jokes, huh?” Baldy nods to taser guy. “Yo, don’t miss this time.”
I shouldn’t be here. I should be in bed in Leimert Park, deliciously half-asleep. Instead, I’m tired, aching, framed for murder and I’ve just been tasered while running an errand for a homeless guy. I don’t know what these two want, but if I don’t do something right now, it’s over.
My PK gives me nothing. It slips off the ta
ser like it isn’t there. There’s a broken bottle under the dumpster, the perfect weapon, but I can barely feel it.
Taser guy starts to reload. And that’s when I get really scared.
SEVENTEEN
Teagan
Nope. Nuh-uh. Not today. Not in this shitty alley, at the hands of two goons with a taser.
I throw everything I can into one final push. I am going to Fort Minor this bitch. The feeling is ninety per cent anger, five per cent pain and five per cent absolute, cold knowledge that when this is done, they’re going to remember my name.
Which is when something… weird… happens.
Athletes talk about how they have to dig deep to find an extra bit of energy at the end of a long race or a game. I always thought it was a conscious thing—that they trained their muscles to draw that energy. Turns out, when it happens it’s the body taking over. The internal systems scrambling, shunting conscious control aside and grabbing hold of the wheel.
For half a second I can feel everything in the alley.
And I mean everything.
Every atom in the brick walls, every fragment of paint on the Indian dude on the wall, the prongs on the taser, every tiny fragment of stone and glass and dirt. Everything. It’s like being surrounded by a million points of light.
The dumpster flips off the ground like a car in an action movie, its lid gaping, a cascade of garbage exploding out. For a half-second me and taser guy and his friend stare at it in astonishment, watching this giant hunk of metal and trash casually break the laws of physics.
At the very last instant taser guy shoves his buddy out of the way. The dumpster lands where he was with a stomach-shaking crunch, the sound echoing off the buildings around us. There’s a huge roaring hollow in my gut, a titanic headache blossoming at the base of my skull.
Somehow taser guy keeps control of the situation. He didn’t let go of his weapon after all, and he takes aim at me, ignoring his friend. But my lizard brain survival instinct still has hold of the dumpster. I might not be fully in control of what I do with it, but at this point mine is bigger than his.