by Ryan Gattis
I put a please on the end of it so Fate knows it’s his call, but he also knows it’s prolly the best chance we got right now. At least, it’s the best chance I got.
“Could be a trap or something,” he says to me.
I just kind of shrug. If it is, it is. I know he’s right, though. Cuz Fate’s twenty-five. He’s seen things every which way. You don’t live as long as him, putting in work for a decade, without being paranoid.
“They catch you over there, it ain’t gonna be tickling,” he says.
That’s his way of saying I get a bullet if I’m lucky, a knife if I’m not.
I know it. Everybody in the room knows it.
Clever doesn’t like it either. “I still think we just roll deep over there, like five, six cars, grab the tapes, and be out.”
Apache’s eyes light up, so you know he agrees.
Big Fate glares them both down. Sometimes he’s more fam to me than Ray ever was. He knows me so good, knows I can’t get talked out of shit like this when I get locked on to it. He stares at me hard, but there’s something in those eyes though, a shiny spot like he’s proud and he doesn’t like it but he knows better than anybody how I gotta go. He wants me to be careful. He wants me to come back safe. He’s just not going to say it.
6
I can’t walk normal outside, can’t really sway like I usually do, so I gotta slap my heels down after my toes kind of. It’s enough to get me to the curb without eating shit. I feel eyes on me, but I don’t turn around and check the cameras. Could be the last time I see any of them. That occurs to me, but I don’t wave or nothing. I just get in the car.
Lorraine’s got some sort of Japanese piece of shit riding on three good tires and a spare. Used to be her cousin’s. It’s got no lighter cap and a Dodger-logo baseball stuck on top of the gearshift. I slide in and turn the key. Smokey Robinson comes on the radio, but I shut him off as I notice the blinking clock on the dash is off by six minutes.
I got fifty left. That’s it.
The starter sputters, but the car kicks in gear and I shoot down my street with the sticker of the Virgin Mary staring at me while I scrunch around in my seat cuz Lorraine’s dress is twisted around on my hips. Figures. She’s two sizes bigger than me but I can’t help it now. I fight that shit down at a stop sign, looking at my eyes in the rearview, all Cleopatra’d. I hit the gas.
Times like this, I’m glad I never got no tattoos. You’re burnt right away being marked up like that. It was Fate’s idea for me not to get any ink. Shit though, he’s got his work from this dude’s garage that everyone’s been talking about. Pint. That’s his name. Fate says he’ll be a famous dude that came from Lynwood someday, like Kevin Costner is, or Weird Al Yankovic, and now people are saying Suge Knight too. Death Row Records. That guy.
I’m jealous of Fate’s tattoos, but fuck it. He said years ago that I gotta keep clean, that I’m scarier that way. I can go anywhere without them, that I can blend in. He says I’m the element of surprise, and I get that, but he knows I’m entitled to two tattooed tears. My next thought hits me hard and blunt, baseball-bat style.
Shit. Three tears now. Counting Ernesto.
My breathing gets tangled up in my lungs. It’s starting to feel normal almost, like I only got half my breathing space to use, not all of it.
I don’t exactly have my license, but Ernesto taught me to drive good, how to drive defensive. And you know it’s funny when I think that, cuz some old lady who can’t see past her hair curlers puts half her van into my lane and I honk hard, dodge that shit, speed up, and change lanes easy. I swear, fucking people drive around like this is Culiacán, ignoring lanes, never signaling. I freeze a little after thinking that cuz it’s something Ernie used to say all the time.
You know, he never complained when he had to sell his truck a year ago to pay Ray’s bail after the dumb fucker caught an aggravated assault charge. Ernie volunteered to do it. He knew we couldn’t be showing drug money or they’d be finding a way to investigate us, audit or some shit, whatever the fuck they do.
That truck of his was our only family asset besides the house. And Ernesto did it. He sold it and didn’t even blink. Walked to work every day after that. He worked longer hours. He wouldn’t even take the money Ray offered for a new ride. Instead he just walked and saved for a new one.
Him and Ray never got along. I mean, they loved each other, but they scrapped like crazy growing up. Ernie never lost, not that I ever saw, which of course made Ray raw and competitive, mean as fuck. Made him want to join up too. Made him always want to prove himself and overdo shit, like two weeks ago when he shot up a club.
It’s an old story. You prolly heard something like it a million times. That doesn’t make it untrue though, just makes it stupid that people keep repeating this shit. See, Ray gets loaded out of his mind, goes to a club, and when some cholo claims another set, he heads to the car and gets his piece and decides everybody needs to be talking about how bad Lil Mosco is, then it was just that bang-bang-screech shit: shooting and squealing the tires and boning the fuck out.
He shot somebody in the eye, a girl with parted hair and big shoulders. We know cuz the TV said so. Well, it didn’t say she had parted hair and big shoulders. That’s just my observation.
Her parents held her picture up on the news when they were pleading en español for more information regarding her death. Some white dude on Fox 11 translated their words with all the emotion of a grocery list and not like two people crying. Ray was smoking when he saw it and he laughed at that girl’s parents, took another hit, and laughed again.
What the news didn’t say and maybe her parents didn’t know was that she was all involved, not civilian. That doesn’t mean she had it coming, but when you’re in, it’s always a possibility. You can be involved and still be a wrong place, wrong time kind of girl when you catch one. No gang ties ever protected anybody from a bullet. A click is not a vest—I remember Fate said that at the time—it’s a family.
Just thinking of that makes me mad at Ray all over again, about how he’s been laying low since then, mostly away, doing errands as amends to Big Fate for being dumb as fuck. Everybody knows he did what he did, and they didn’t say shit, but they were waiting for him to pop his head up so they could get one back on him.
But he didn’t. Guess they got tired of waiting. Figured one was good as any other, civilian or not. Brother for brother. Same thing, right? That’s the only thing that makes sense.
My eyes are wet and itching, so I roll the window down and get some dry night wind on my face cuz I’m not about to mess up Lorraine’s work. I can smell the fires, like everybody in this neighborhood got wood-burning stoves overnight and stuffed them with tires, garbage, whatever.
That girl in the rearview isn’t me. I convince myself of that shit. She’s a spy. Dangerous. She’s got a .38 in her girlfriend’s borrowed purse.
Outside, the city’s busy making night sounds. Banda music from a backyard party fades back when I hit Atlantic, and as I turn out into traffic, there’s cars with bad carburetors getting their pedals pushed down before the light goes all the way green. They bump out beats. They compete. Even now. Even when people are rioting and killing each other a couple miles away.
Crazy. But that’s priorities, I guess.
Five miles over the limit, I’m good for a few blocks. I hit a left on Imperial. Soon as I’m on it, I feel eyes on me, and you know for sure I’m not looking sideways at lights. My ass is only looking straight.
Last thing I need is windows rolling down and some homeboy fronting me, asking me where I’m from.
My blood feels fuzzy and fast in me when the Cork’n Bottle comes up, and I grip harder on the wheel than I need to as I cut behind a Dodge and slide right on a yellow light. I’m staring at the dash clock as I slip behind the store and park in the back lot they share with the tire store. It’s all empty.
Forty-three minutes, that’s what I got left.
7
It’s
brighter than daylight when I roll in through the back door, steady as I can on those wedge shoes. I scan the store and don’t see nobody but the clerk. He’s half bald, wearing a button-up shirt that’s not buttoned or tucked. He’s got dark circles under his eyes and a junkie shoulder slant to go with his wifebeater and black beard.
He’s not Mexican, or Salvi even. He looks like something else, like Afghanistan or some shit. His arms are crossed on his chest as he’s watching dudes dash in and out the front door ripping open the coolers and snagging beer and Cokes while others stuff candy in their pockets. There’s three or four of them. Like an assembly line of looting. Or a disassembly line. Whatever it is, the clerk doesn’t care. He’s not about to get killed on account of this. Smart, I think, a man worth talking at.
The gum’s up front. I quick-scan all the types and see it there, blue and shiny right in front of me.
I say to the clerk, “You speak English?”
He says sure, but he looks surprised anybody’s talking to him, so I hold a pack of that blueberry gum up in his face so he can’t fucking miss it.
I say, “You know who buys this?”
I’m looking up behind him at the camera focused on my side of the counter. It’s the perfect angle. Whenever Ernie’s killer bought gum, he’s on tape for sure. The clerk watches my eyes come back to him and he shrugs.
“Gum is gum,” he says. “All the same.”
I slip my feet outta them wedges and smirk at that shit. I can’t move fast in them. I could hop the fucking counter, put myself between him and the police button, and shove him hard against the cigarette case as I pull my .38 faster than he can see. I could put that shit under his chin, in the soft skin directly beneath the tongue. I could watch his eyes go big. Could muscle him as he tries to squirm away before figuring out I got too much leverage.
I could, but I don’t.
Instead, I just say, “Look, man, we know Julius owns this place and you don’t, so just give over the tapes and it’s all good.”
I nod up at the camera and then to the door next to the coolers that leads to the back room, where they keep the tapes. This ain’t the first time anybody ever came in wanting tapes. People that own these stores don’t live in the neighborhood, but the employees sure as shit do. We know where their mamás live, their girlfriends, their babies too. When we ask, when anyone asks, they drop a dime like a motherfucker. It’s how it works.
I rip some plastic bags out of the metal holster at the counter. The clerk blinks at me, but I’m not me. I’m dangerous.
He sees it in my eyes and he gets it. We walk just the two of us to the storage closet. It’s full of monitors, cases of beer and toilet paper and chips everywhere, crowding the walls. Cool as hell, he hits eject-eject-eject on three VCRs and throws the tapes in one of them plastic bags.
I point at the shelf of tapes above the machines. I say, “All them motherfuckers too.”
He puts the tapes in the bags like he’s bagging groceries, stacking ’em right. Must be twenty tapes in both bags when I say, “You should prolly go home. No use standing around while they take everything.”
He looks at the tapes and then back at my face.
“And you never saw no girl taking tapes,” I say.
He shrugs at that and I figure that’s the most I’m likely to get out of him, so I slide out of the closet and past an old man who’s half leaning into a cooler, fighting with a case of beer, his pockets stuffed with jerky, fitting to get away with all of it. Wow. You know that shit is none of my fucking business.
I’m too busy snagging Lorraine’s wedges from under the front counter, jamming my feet in them, and slapping back out into the night the way I came, my blood buzzing like crazy. But I haven’t even taken four steps into the parking lot when I hear a guy’s voice behind me.
“Hey, girl”—it’s all calm as fuck—“where you from?”
8
I got two fingers snaking down into the bag, touching the pistol handle as I turn. I don’t try to hide the bags behind me or nothing. That shit’s suspicious. I just pray it’s dark enough for whoever not to see the tapes in them and wonder why I got so many, and where that shit come from, and why the hell I need it.
My heart sinks when I see who the voice belongs to.
He’s taller than me by a head, wide shoulders, bald cholo style, and he’s standing a few steps from the doorway.
Fuck.
My stomach hates me for this. It punches up on my ribs to tell me so.
He’s looking gee’d up too: khakis pressed, black tattoos you can kind of see through his undershirt that’s whiter than teeth in toothpaste commercials—all that. Worse though, he’s eyeing me and smiling. I can’t tell yet what kind of smile it is, or what he wants me to do about it.
Behind him two of his homeboys are busy holding up both sides of the door frame with their shoulders, posing hard. You know how some people think like they’re always in a movie, like the camera never stops rolling on ’em? That.
He steps to me and I hold my breath. All my blood vessels and veins decide they’re racetracks right then.
When he frowns, there’s a twenty-car pileup in my chest somewhere.
“Uh, don’t take this the wrong way or nothing.” He licks his lips. “But you’re walking out like you stole something.”
I don’t even blink. “Cuz I did.”
I breathe though. Shit, I breathe. This idiot only thinks I’m fuckable, not a rival. Relief rocks my knees a little, but I keep standing. I also take my fingers off the gun.
He says, “Yeah, I knew right away, you look the robbing type.”
“Biggest robber you ever seen,” I say.
He shakes a finger in my face, trying to be playful. “You know, you do look kinda familiar.”
He turns to his boys. “Don’t she?”
They don’t move. They’re too busy looking tough for their close-ups. That, or they think his shit’s as tired as I do.
His look changes though, gets a cutting edge on it, and he nods up. “Serious though, where you from?”
A moment like this is when the unexpected is my friend. Gotta use it to put his brain somewhere else, guide him, so I already know where his next couple questions will be coming from. Put him on a new path, you know. It’s what spies do.
I smile my best Lorraine smile. “The Valley.”
He leans back at that. “Like, what, Encino or something? All respect, you don’t look like no Valley girl.”
He means this as a compliment.
I slap at his shoulder. His muscles sure aren’t painted on. I say, “It’s more like Simi Valley.”
He gets a look on his face like he never saw that one coming. Perfect.
“Why didn’t you just say that then? Gotta be all misleading.”
“Cuz nobody cared about Simi until they moved that Rodney King trial up there, and even less know how to get to it. Try it. Do you know where it is?”
He smiles an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, of course I do.”
“Oh yeah,” I say and giggle like Lorraine, “where then?”
“Like, north? Right?”
“Yeah”—I say it like how Lorraine would say it—“good job. ‘North.’ You’re going to have to forgive me but I had this conversation my whole life and next thing is, you’ll ask where it’s really at and then I’ll have to explain how to get there and how big it is and polite shit like that and I’m just not feeling it. So I’d just rather say the Valley and let you think whatever.”
He understands this. I see it flash in his eyes and get filed away. He’s not stupid, this one. But he still asks the question I was guiding him to. Can’t even see my traps before he steps in them.
“So what’re you doing down here?” He genuinely wants to know why the fuck I’d drive down from Whitepeopleville to here. He’s testing me, wondering if I’m stupid, or slumming, or looking for trouble, or all of the above.
“My cousin lives here. Maria Escalero. You know her?”
>
Maria ain’t my cousin, but her name’s safe to use. She was my high school crush, a senior when I was still a little freshman going to class and not dropped out. I used to run behind her in gym class. Ass like you wouldn’t believe. She used to live by Lugo Park. Ended up going to college in Colorado somewhere. Damn shame.
“Nah, can’t say as I do.”
“That’s too bad,” I say. “You look like the type that knows people.”
His eyes bug a little at that, like he wasn’t expecting it. It’s cute in a sad way, like he’s not nearly as smooth as he thought he was, not as practiced. And he spills then, the reason why he called me out in the first place.
“Hey, so, you want to come to a party tonight? It’s like a celebration and you got the”—he pauses, drifting his eyes to my chest without bothering to bring them back up—“profile we’re looking for.”
The bag handles are cutting into my palm pretty good by now. My fingers are going numb.
“And you ain’t even seen my side yet.”
I turn to the side and show him, hiding the bags better.
“That’s nice, you know?”
“Oh,” I say in my best Lorraine style, “I know.”
He’s turning red now, losing his nerve. “You should come, really.”
It’s my turn to give him a good long stare, freeze him up.
“I’m good,” I finally say. “I promised Maria we’d do the clubs tonight if the whole city don’t burn down.”
“It won’t. And you could come by after.”
“No, thanks. You’re cute though. You have a nice night.”
I step and you know his eyes are glued to my ass and that’s okay cuz I got my bags in front of me and then I’m opening the door and I’m in the car smashing the bags onto the floor behind the front seats and turning the key in the ignition before he even knows what hit him.
The clock says I got thirty-five minutes. It ticks over, right in front of my eyes. Thirty-four now.