by Jackson Ford
“Hey, why didn’t you answer your phone?” I ask, pulling away.
He looks embarrassed. “Left it in the office.”
“You tool.”
“Yeah, I was kind of in a hurry this morning. Annie had hers, though.”
“The van?” Paul is out of the truck now. He moves to get Reggie’s chair out of the cargo well, but she waves him away.
“Out of sight.” Carlos points back towards the river. Annie still hasn’t said anything.
Paul massages his jaw, like someone hit him. “Good. That’s good. Annie, did you have any luck with your people?”
Annie mutters something, not looking at us.
“Annie,” I say, thinking she didn’t hear him. “Did you—”
“Oh, I got something.” Her voice is low and even, almost a monotone. “Or someone, anyway. Maybe he’ll help, maybe he won’t.”
“Everything OK?” Paul says. “You look kind of—”
“No,” says Annie. “Tell you the truth, things are not OK.”
She looks in my direction, the sunglasses reflecting both me and Carlos. “I didn’t mind helping when it was just us trying to figure this shit out. But now we got the cops on our ass. They know who we are. So yeah, very much not fucking OK.”
I try very hard not to point out that she very much minded helping before. “We’ll figure this out,” I tell her. “I promise.”
“We talked about this, Annie.” Reggie sounds strained. She’s still in the truck and has to raise her voice to be heard.
“Yeah, but we didn’t talk about the cops figuring out we were there. That shit wasn’t supposed to happen. How the fuck did they know about us?”
Reggie coughs, harsh and brittle. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not getting arrested again,” Annie says. She points at Reggie. “Not for you.” At me. “You neither. And definitely not for Tanner. I got family. I did some stupid shit in the past, and there is no way I’m going back to jail. I’m not putting them through that. So you call Tanner and tell her I’m done. I don’t give a shit.”
“Annie.” Paul sounds wounded.
“Nah, man. Nah. I’m getting the hell out of town.”
There’s a long moment when nobody says anything. In the distance the river murmurs, almost inaudible under the hum of traffic. On the other side of the street a kid on a little BMX rides past. He gives us a mildly curious glance but doesn’t stop. Why would he? There must be a dozen gatherings like ours just in this part of LA alone. Labourers and contractors and other poor bastards unlucky enough to be working a Saturday, hanging around trucks and waiting for their jobs to start. Cyclists and runners, up early, meeting at intersections and planning their routes. All we’re missing is the takeaway coffee.
Annie gives us a tight nod. Then she jams her hands in her pockets and walks away.
There’s a part of me that just wants to let her go. She doesn’t want to be here, and I’m not sure I want her around anyway—not if she’s going to hate me for it. But the other part… the other part knows that if she walks away, she won’t be coming back. Not this time.
“Hey!” I shout.
“Yo, Annie,” Carlos says. “What about—”
“North Western Ave,” she says over her shoulder. “Ask for Nando.”
“Paul?” says Reggie.
Paul makes a noise that is half-sigh, half-groan. “Hang on,” he says, taking off after her. “Annie, hold on. Annie!”
She’s halfway down the street when he catches up to her, reaching out to grab her shoulder. At first she shrugs him off but then comes to a halt. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but it’s then that I understand that Annie isn’t just angry. She’s scared. It’s something about the set of her shoulders, the way her hands are held at her sides, open, as if she’s forcing them not to clench into fists.
I want to be mad at her. I don’t have the energy. And if I had her record, I wouldn’t want to be within a million miles of an arrest warrant.
I got family, she said. Strange. I don’t know who she means. She’s not exactly been forthcoming about her personal life. Even thinking about her outside of China Shop and the Boutique is… weird.
Reggie has her eyes closed, head back against the seat rest. She looks drained. Carlos shifts next to me, one foot to the other, and my thoughts about Annie are blotted out by another. A much scarier one.
“You’re staying, right?” I ask him. “You don’t wanna…”
“Course I’m staying.” He sounds faintly disgusted. “Who else is gonna make sure you don’t get yourself killed?”
“Thank fuck.” I force a smile. “Otherwise it’d just be me and Agent Whiteboard.”
“Who?”
“Oh. Paul. Just a stupid nickname.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s… Never mind. Who’s this Nando person?”
“I dunno. We were heading over there when Reggie called. Annie’s been on the phone all morning.” He takes a breath. “Yo, listen. I’ve been thinking…”
He doesn’t get a chance to tell me what he’s been thinking. Paul walks up, Annie trailing just behind him. She still looks angry—angry and terrified—but there’s a determination there too. Whatever Paul said to her, it looks like it worked. To our right, Reggie lifts her head.
The sun is already hammering down, beating a drum on the back of my neck. We’re all sweating. Paul’s head gleams in the sunlight.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Annie says, pointing at me. “I’m not here for you. Only reason I’m not heading to Canada right now is cos Paul thinks we got a better chance of clearing our names if we stick together.” She glances his way. “I don’t trust any of you motherfuckers, but I trust him.”
Reggie looks put out but nods. “Thank you, Annie.”
“So you don’t think I killed Chase?” I say.
She bites her lip, chewing on it for a long moment. “Paul doesn’t.”
“I didn’t ask that.”
“Fuck you, Teagan.” She hops into the truck’s back seat. “Come on. You want to figure this out, we best get moving.”
Her response isn’t what I was hoping for, but at this point I’ll take what I can get. I climb into the middle, Carlos on the other side.
“OK,” I say, trying to put the conversation back on track. “Let’s go see this Nando person. Where is he?”
Annie gives her phone another sour look. “The worst place on earth.”
TWENTY-TWO
Teagan
North Western Avenue does not look like the worst place on earth.
It’s in Hollywood—not the movie star part, sure, but it’s not exactly Compton or Watts either. The houses are shabby, slightly rough around the edges, but the streets are clean. It’s a Latino neighbourhood, and this being Saturday morning the streets are full of people. Kids playing in noisy groups, battered BMX bikes riding in circles. Abuelas and abuelos sitting on stoops and drinking coffee. Hell, there’s even an ice cream van on one corner. It’s beat to shit and looks like a serial killer lives in it, but there’s a noisy crowd of kids outside, cones dripping.
“This where I think it is?” Reggie murmurs.
“Uh-huh.”
“Um, where are we exactly?” I ask. Nobody answers me. I nudge Carlos, but he’s looking out the window and doesn’t respond. I shiver, and it has nothing to do with the truck’s aircon.
Annie tells Paul to pull up on the corner of Garrison Street, a little way off the main drag. I’m starting to notice a few things by now. The groups of young men hanging out on the corners, wearing denim shirts buttoned to the neck and doo rags wrapped around their heads. The kids standing on the rooftops—not many but a few, evenly spaced, eyeing us as we pass. One puts his fingers in his mouth as we pass, and his whistle reaches us over the sound of the truck’s engine.
I’ve been watching for police ever since we left Cypress Park. I’m not too worried: for one thing, they’ll be looking for a white van, not a
black pickup truck. Paul drives well under the speed limit, and the few times we see a cop car, he makes sure to give them a very wide berth.
“Is this a good idea?” he says now. His fingers are tight on the wheel.
“No.” Annie unbuckles her belt. “But if anybody knows about what happened to Chase, it’s Nando.”
“All the same…”
She ignores him. “When I get out, lock the doors.”
“Uh… OK?”
Annie pops the door, a tongue of heat licking into the car, steps onto the sidewalk. Almost before her feet hit the ground, a man is there. He appears as if from nowhere and doesn’t look happy, and neither do his three friends, standing behind him.
Annie says something, and it’s like a magic word. His face lights up, and he pulls her in for a handshake-hug. As he does so, his shirt lifts up, revealing a gun tucked in his waistband.
The man leads Annie a little way down the street, towards one of the houses set back from the sidewalk. From where I’m sitting, in the back seat of the truck, I can’t quite make out the figures sitting in the shade of the stoop.
The man’s friends have surrounded the car with the casual power of a pack of lions protecting a kill. One of them, a fat bastard with a sweat-stained denim shirt, leans on the hood, fingers drumming on the hot metal.
Despite the aircon, the inside of the car feels stuffy. There’s a plastic bottle in the seat pocket, still a quarter full. I drain it, making a face. The water is warm, almost sticky. The dashboard clock reads 10:49.
If this were a regular Saturday morning, I might be getting started on my second cup of coffee. Third, if I woke up early, On the couch, still in my PJs, music on—some classic soul or Native Tongues-era rap. Stuff from the early 90s, with easy-going drums and lyrics about peace and love and good weed. I’d be thinking about putting brunch together: French toast, an omelette, maybe even a benny if I was feeling it, a poached egg lapped with a coating of soft sauce. Making hollandaise is a giant pain in the ass of course, and I’d probably be feeling a little lazy. If I really did want a benny, I’d have to head down to Jacko’s or Over-Easy, two of the closest brunch spots, and—
My stomach gives a horrible, violent lurch, the greasy breakfast from Jojo’s threatening to come right back up. I have to get out. I have to get out of this car right fucking now.
My sticky hands fumble at the door lock, eyes stinging with sudden, nervous sweat. Paul turns in his seat. “What are you doing? Annie said stay in the car.”
“Nope. Uh-uh.” There’s a horrible moment where I’m convinced Paul has activated the child locks. Which means he’s about three seconds from a broken passenger window.
“Teags.” Carlos’s hand on my shoulder. But at that moment the lock pops, and I tumble out onto the sidewalk.
The heat doesn’t settle on me, like when you walk outside on a summer’s day. It grabs me in a fist, coming from all directions, beating down from the sky and baking up from the concrete. High above us there’s another LAPD chopper, floating in the sky like a malevolent god.
The man closest to the back of the car is on high alert, straightening his shoulders as he looks me up and down. Eyes invisible behind wraparound shades. I lift a hand. “’Sup.”
“Como está?”
“Um. Muy bien.”
Mercifully he says nothing else, saving me from having to fumble through a conversation in my shitty Spanish. I straighten up, taking in the rest of the street. On the other side of the car a couple of kids are chanting something in Spanish, a children’s song, the lyrics impossible to make out as they sing over each other in loud, joyful voices.
At the very far end of the avenue a black-and-white cop car rolls past. Too far away to make out, but it conspicuously avoids coming in our direction. Which is just fine by me. We’ve got lucky so far—we’ve run into plenty of cop cars, but none that have taken more than a passing interest in us.
The house Annie was led to is a little way up from the truck. She’s sitting on the steps leading up to the porch, deep in shade, talking to a man I don’t recognise. Shaved head, old wifebeater, cut-off cargo shorts. He looks old, sixties at least.
There’s a long, low whistle. Carlos is standing next to me—I didn’t even hear him get out the car. “Shit, Annie.”
“What?”
He nods to the porch. “That’s Nando Aguilar.”
“Yeah, so? She said we needed to talk to Nando. Guess that’s him.”
“Didn’t know she meant that Nando.”
I shield my eyes from the sun. It’s easier to pick out the details now. The man isn’t as old as I thought he was—late forties rather than sixties. It’s the stoop in his shoulders that makes him look older, the crow’s feet around his eyes. He and Annie are speaking in low voices, too quiet to make out. A gentle smile plays across the man’s face as he gestures to something on the street.
Carlos frowns. “Y’all don’t know who that is?”
“Should I?”
“He runs the largest MS-13 clica in Los Angeles.”
MS-13. Mara Salvatrucha.
Shit, Annie.
When people think of gangs in LA, they think of the Crips and the Bloods. Blue and Red. But there are plenty of others—Mexican, Armenian, Cambodian, Chinese triads. And Salvadoran. MS-13 aren’t the biggest gang in LA, but they are easily the scariest.
A lot of the gangs here are more bark than bite—the kind of outfits that give rich white people a thrill when they talk about crime waves at dinner parties, and the LAPD an excuse to go break down some doors. MS-13, though? They’re the real deal. Kidnap. Torture. Ritual beatings. Just a regular day at the office for your friendly Mara Salvatrucha representative.
I glance back at the soldier with the wraparound shades. He inclines his head very slightly. There’s a knife in his waistband, at the small of his back. And not a pocket knife either. A fucking machete. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.
“Nando’ll know what’s happening, that’s for sure,” Carlos mutters.
“Yeah, and what’s that gonna cost? I can’t see him just doling out info for free.”
“Seems like he’s getting along with Annie.”
I look back over at the stoop. Nando is cackling at something Annie said, head tilted back, mouth open to reveal a couple of missing teeth.
The heat holding me in a closed fist is forced back by a sudden chill. Annie’s record is pretty gnarly, even if I don’t know the details… but it’s supposed to be behind her now. Having contacts is one thing; being this friendly with a gang like MS-13, though…
“Well,” I say. “If she pisses them off, at least I know I can handle myself.” Thinking about the alley earlier this morning. The dumpster I flipped over like it was made of cardboard.
“What?”
“If they start some shit. I can just…”
My eyes go wide. I haven’t told him. Or Annie. With everything that’s happened, with Annie nearly ditching us, and the cops, I got it into my head that Carlos already knew. What happened in that alley was so insane that it felt like everyone knew. I didn’t even think to say anything in the ride over here.
I fill him in, talking quickly, careful to keep my voice down so machete boy can’t hear us.
“The fuck?” Carlos says when I tell him how I was tasered. As I continue, his eyes narrow, his forehead knitting in barely concealed rage. I debate not telling him about the dumpster, hiding it from him like I did with Reggie and Paul. But this is Carlos. He trusts me, believes me, and that’s not going to change if I tell him I’m stronger than I thought I was.
I finish with my delivery to Jeannette, the woman in the red tent who Africa is in love with. When I’m done, Carlos wipes his mouth, looking around him as if he’s expecting another person to contradict me, say that my story is bullshit.
“Someone did this to you?”
“Yup.”
“And you don’t know who they were?”
“Yup.”
He sp
its something in Spanish, rapid and ugly.
“Dude, I’m OK. Really.”
“It’s not that.” He steps in a little closer, lowering his voice even more. “This is getting too much. We got the cops, we got people after you, Annie talking to fucking MS-13. Not to mention there’s another you out there.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just…” He looks around him as if afraid that he’s going to be overheard. But Reggie and Paul are still in the truck, and even the MS-13 soldiers assigned to watch us are barely paying attention, looking bored.
“I still got friends,” Carlos says. “Over the border. What if we just left?”
I shake my head. “Can’t do that.”
“Why not? Annie and Paul and Reggie… they can take care of themselves. You and me? We got the most to lose. And I can make it so Tanner never finds us.”
The same feeling I had at Jojo’s swoops back in. The urge to bug out. To run as far and as fast as possible.
I open my mouth to reply, close it again. How do I even start? How do I tell Carlos that I have to find this person, talk to them, hear their story? He’d call me insane, and he’d probably be right.
“Teagan, please.” He grips my shoulder. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I told you stay in the truck.”
It’s Annie, striding up the sidewalk towards us. Behind her, Nando Anguilar reclines in the shade.
I don’t have a smart remark this time. I just shrug, hot and helpless.
“Got something,” Annie says, popping the back door. “Let’s go.”
Just before she climbs in, there’s a shout from the stoop: “Annie!”
Nando’s voice is rich and deep. He sits up, spreading his hands wide. His arms are covered with black tattoos.
“We straight?” he says.
Annie lifts a hand. “We straight,” she yells back. “I got you.”
He laughs, waving a hand at her as if to say Get outta here.
“Think about it, OK?” Carlos whispers to me as we follow Annie back into the truck. The soldiers watch us go, one of them moseying out into the street as Paul does an awkward three-point turn. It would be wrong to say he speeds back to North Western Avenue, but he goes very light on the brake.