THEN THE SCHOOL was gone.
They slid through traffic.
No one knew she was in the ride.
No one.
FREEDOM WATCHED THE streets turn unfamiliar. The men sat on either side of her. They laughed and passed a joint around. They spoke as if she wasn’t there. Called her their little money pot. They laughed about the fun they would have with her.
“You like fun, right?” He was in the front seat, looking directly back at Freedom.
“What?”
“Don’t play stupid, bitch.”
“Sorry, what did you say?” His hand was moving so fast it struck her face before she knew it was coming. It stung. The world was moving like a video where they removed a piece and put in stills. Jagged, no fluidity.
“Stupid bitch gets beat.”
“You tell her, Zero,” the driver said. He was watching Freedom in the rearview mirror. Eyeing her with brick-red, hungry eyes.
FREEDOM TRIED TO pay attention, but panic drove her to hide in her mind. More unanswered questions. More slaps. She thought of Alice in Wonderland. She liked books better than movies. In a book, she could see Alice as looking like her. In a movie, there was no escaping she wasn’t a little blonde white girl.
They were on the freeway.
They were over a bridge.
They were down the rabbit hole.
CHAPTER 3
The sun was burning off the fog when I woke. Hangover is too gentle a word for what I felt. Ragnarök. I felt like the Valkyries had ripped the flesh off my face and put it back on inside out. A goose egg graced the base of my skull. My mouth tasted like I had been chewing ass all night. Standing, I found all my muscles worked in a broken puppet, disconnected sort of way.
Rollens was sitting at my table, fresh and rested. She was sipping a large Starbucks coffee. A man was sitting with his back to me. When I rounded the table, he looked up. Xlmen. The son of a bitch who’d killed Mikayla. This fucking psychopath fancied himself a hunter. Bullshit. Killed her from a hundred feet out. Coward. A chrome .357 rested on the table under his hand.
“This that day?” I asked.
“Day you try and kill me, cabrón?”
“That day.”
“I don’t know, cabrón, is it?” I was close enough to reach his throat, maybe choke him out before he shot me. Worth a try.
Rollens set a digital camera down on the table. “Might want to see these.”
I sat across from Xlmen, picked up the camera. On the screen was a picture of Adolfo standing with his youngest boy. They didn’t seem to notice the picture was being taken. The next picture was Adolfo’s wife down at the lavandería laughing with some other women. Again, the subjects were unaware of the person taking the shots. These people had taken me in, treated me like family.
She motioned to Xlmen. “The hunter, he took these.”
My guts went ice. My head cleared instantly. “You sick fuck.” I stared into his eyes long enough to make most men turn away. He didn’t even blink. “I will put you in the ground. Piss on your grave.”
“I don’t think so, cabrón. But you will try.”
“Adolfo and his family get harmed . . .” I hadn’t taken my eyes off him.
“I know, cabrón, you will kill me. Painfully, yes? Bullshit.” He let out a low, mirthless laugh. Standing, he reached for the .357. I rose fast, tossing the table, flipping the revolver into the air. It landed in the sand next to Angel.
Xlmen moved for the gun, then froze when Angel showed her teeth.
Stepping past him, I bent and picked up the .357. The ivory grip was warm from the sun. Calmly, I pushed the revolver’s barrel up against the small man’s head and pulled the trigger. The .357 roared. Blood, bone and gray matter plumed. Blowback speckled my face. The assassin fell sideways, blood soaking the sand beneath his head. A group of seagulls screamed and took for the sky. Rollens had her Glock out, aiming it at me. She stood in a classic shooter’s stance. Her eyes flicked from me to the dead man, back to me. It was as if she was trying to solve some puzzle. I dropped the revolver into the sand. Slowly she holstered her pistol.
“I thought you were done killing?”
“I guess not. Get his feet.” I could easily pick the man up, but I need her complicity. I slipped easily into covering my tracks. Killing him was too easy. Maybe I wasn’t a better man than him. Maybe I was just quicker.
Xlmen had left the keys in his Land Cruiser, and why not? Everyone in Ensenada knew his rig, and no one was stupid enough to steal it.
“Follow me,” I told Rollens. She was still trying to regain a firm footing, but she did as told.
We drove south, putting some distance between us and town. Angel was sitting in the passenger seat, hanging her sloppy face out the window, letting the wind fill the folds of loose skin around her mouth. If she minded the corpse in the back she wasn’t letting on.
After twenty minutes, I pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. A few miles up the arroyo I parked behind a granite outcropping. I searched the car. I searched the dead man. I found an envelope with three grand American. I found a Rolex, a good hunting knife, a Remington scoped rifle. I took the watch and cash and left the rest. Travel light and scavenge what you need as you go. It was guerrilla warfare, and I had no base camp for resupply.
I took the five-gallon tank of gas off the back rack and dumped it over the car. Fire is a great destroyer of DNA, not that they would need any to know it was me who killed him. Xlmen was an assassin for Señor Sanchez, a local mobbed-up pimp. Sanchez left me alone as long as I let his boys be. The only caveat was that he had to keep his hunter away from me. For executing Mikayla, I made it clear that if I saw Xlmen I would kill him. A man’s word is his bond.
BLACK SMOKE ROSE up in the rearview mirror as Rollens drove her Honda Accord back toward the highway. “How did you contact him? Girl, don’t even think about lying to me.”
“Girl?” She let it drop. “A DEA agent knew a solid cop down here. Said if any man could put the fear of God in you it was Xlmen.”
“You hired him?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have let him hurt your friends. I took those pictures, not him.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“An aunt who’s run out of options.” I had no snappy come back. If it were my niece I would do worse. Hell, I had done worse.
WE PARKED IN front of my house. “You certainly have fucked my shit up down here. So I’m in, but I want some things from you. This is over, I want a guarantee that my prior record gets expunged. No more holding this third-strike bullshit over my head. Never again.”
“I don’t know. Give me a minute.” While I went in the house, she walked away trying to get cell service.
I traded my flip-flops and shorts for a pair of jeans and cherry red Docs. I packed a duffle with all I owned; there was room left over. I’d arrived in Ensenada in a stolen Mercedes, not that the dead men I took it from were bitching much. The car was stripped and on its way back to El Norte in days. From a ceiling panel, I took what cash I had left. It and the money I’d scavenged from the hunter gave me a knot of five grand plus change. From the back of my closet I took my 1911 Colt .45 and a cut-down Mossberg. That was it. I was ready to roll. Hefting the duffle, it was light. It was all I had to show for 45 years on planet Earth. That and a head full of trip lines and barbed wire.
I snapped and Angel jumped in the back seat. “How did your call go?”
“Looks good. Not solid, but it looks good. Armed robbery, no one hurt, auto theft, no one hurt. With my and Lowrie’s recommendations, the ADA thinks we can make it go away.” I doubted every word, but she was the only bus leaving town so I climbed in.
Adolfo was working the front door at one of Ensenada’s legal brothels. He was a good man, knocking out the bills to cover his family. Who was I to judge how he did it? I passed him the door keys and told him the house was his. It was already in his name since Americans can’t own property on the coast. Angel stood beside me while
we talked.
“Mi hermano, no, I’ll hold it until your return.”
“I may not make it back.”
“You just tired. Rest up, I get Jerry’s boat, we go fishing. Or get laid. You feel much better.”
“Not this time, amigo. Keep the house. I’m leaving Angel with you, have the boy take care of her. Just save me a room in case of miracles.” The house had cost all I had, but the idea of Adolfo and his family moving from their apartment to the beach made it less painful for me to leave. He pulled me into a hug. He didn’t say it, but I knew I’d always be welcome. He pressed a small silver medallion on a chain into my palm.
“Saint Jude, patron to lost causes.”
“Ain’t Catholic.”
“If you don’t tell, I won’t.” He gripped my hand. “Vaya con Dios.”
I finally broke the hold. I put the medal on over my head. Way I was running, I could use any edge I could get. With a finger snap Angel sat beside Adolfo. She hung her head. I leaned down and let her lick my face. “You don’t want to go on this run. Kick back, you earned it. Now stay.” She stubbornly obeyed. I moved away and across the avenue. I didn’t look back. She was my last attachment to my old life.
In the farmacia, I picked up an industrial-sized jar of Vicodin. The girl behind the counter didn’t even blink when I crunched two of them before leaving the shop. Through the window, past the sign promising the best Viagra in town, I could see the street. Rollens’s Honda was blocked in by a military jeep. A pimply kid was aiming down with a fifty cal. If he burped wrong the street would be gone. He was aiming at Rollens. She spoke to an older officer. I backed away from the window. Watching. Feeling the Vicodin take hold. Rollens poked her finger at the officer, got up in his face. She had some cojones. Behind them sat a shiny new Lincoln Town Car.
From a pile of souvenirs I took a sarape and a sombrero with Ensenada emblazoned across it. I tossed the shop girl a couple of twenties. Pulling the hat down over my face, I moved down the street, stumbling like a drunk. Under the sarape I held my 1911, cocked and locked. Rollens was yelling about calling the local general in, said she had heat and this captain was going to get fried. On either side of the Town Car stood two serious men. They had black camos and MP5s, those ugly little death-spitters. I stumbled past the man on the left. He laughed, then noticed something wrong. Too late. The .45 was out and pressed into his cheek.
“Put it on the roof,” I told the man on the other side. “Do it or I shoot him, then you, then the man in the car.” I had the MP5 in one hand and my Colt in the other. Reflected in the windshield, I saw a soldier stepping slowly closer, his AK47 aimed at me. I was fucked. Might as well pull the trigger and see how it would take me.
A blur of strawberry blonde flew into my vision—120 pounds of bullmastiff in flight. Angel nailed the young soldier in his trigger arm. He fired a few wild shots before she had him pinned on the ground.
Across the Town Car, the serious man let blaze. I spun his counterpart in front of me. He must have vested up, because no bullets came ripping out his back into me. The gunner stumbled back and went down when I emptied the MP5 into his chest. I hoped he was vested, sort of. He took a job that ended with pointing a machine pistol at me. After that it was on him. I had enough legitimate ghosts of my own.
The military boys were standing around, not knowing what to do. I leaned down, pulled off a magazine Velcroed to the serious man’s belt. Dropping the empty, I slammed the full one home. I tossed the MP5 to Rollens. “They touch my dog, kill ’em.”
I was in the back seat before anyone could clip me. Señor Sanchez was cool and sophisticated in his windowpane-checked, slate-colored suit. “Moses, you are a difficult man to like.”
“True. Ask anyone.” Soldiers surrounded Rollens. The .50 cal was aimed at the Town Car. I let the barrel of the 1911 rest on Sanchez’s thigh. He hit a button and the window opened, flooding us with harsh light.
“Reyes.” He called the young officer over. The kid was in his early twenties and sweating, eyes darting between us. “Dile a tus hombres que se retiren.”
Captain Reyes looked relieved and snapped a smart salute. The bulletproof window slid back up, silencing the outside world.
“We, you and I, had a deal. I would leave you alone, and you, you would leave my men alone. I only made this deal because I was feeling generous.”
“You haven’t tried to kill me because you were afraid of the collateral damage I would inflict on you. I took the Russians off the count, you wondered if I could get to you. Right?” I looked at him, then around the car. “I just did.” The Vicodin had traded reflexes for bravado. Shit trade if you want to stay alive.
“You shoot me, you and the woman are dead.”
“Dumb fucking greaser, you think I give a shit who you shoot?” I started to laugh at a joke he wasn’t getting.
“But here you are negotiating for your life, true?”
“Your man—”
“Xlmen, my hunter.”
“That psycho midget, he killed a woman I counted a friend.”
“And you promised to let it rest if he stayed away and we didn’t cause your friend the doorman any trouble.”
“Your man fucked up. He threatened Adolfo and his family.”
“I didn’t sanction that. He was freelancing for Detective Rollens.”
No one freelanced on Sanchez. I let the lie slide. “Here is how it is gonna work. I’m leaving Mexico. The only thing that will bring me back is if anything happens to Adolfo Anzaldua.”
“Ha. Good man. Loyalty. Xlmen was a good man too, but he liked to wander off script.” From a skull shaped bottle he poured us each a tumbler of tequila. “What shall we drink to?”
“Not having to mess up this lovely car?”
“No, a long life. To die with white hair on top and a hot puta under.” We slammed back the shots. It went down smooth. Things had gone soft and comfortable.
Señor Sanchez opened the door, leaned out, and moved his index finger in a quick circle. The officer commanded his men to load up, then climbed into the jeep. I walked away from the Town Car, waiting for a bullet to take me down. The Town Car slid away down the road. I snapped and Angel let the wide-eyed boy up. She moved to my side. The soldiers mounted up and were gone, leaving the street empty.
I called Angel. She jumped into the back seat of Rollens’s Honda.
“Thought you were leaving that bitch here.”
“Changed my mind.” Less I left behind, less leverage Sanchez had on me. That’s what I told myself. Truth is I needed something real with me. I had shot two men since morning. Angel kept me human. Least I thought she did.
“Are you high?”
“Not yet.” I took a long pull on a Pacífico and let my head sink into the headrest. I had not a clue where we were headed, but I sure as hell couldn’t stay where I was.
CHAPTER 4
Sunlight playing on a rusted swing set.
Mrs. James pouring pale, watered down blue Kool-Aid.
iPod playing Jay-Z, the earbuds split so each of the best friends got one.
Laughter.
Charles Drew Middle School, one year until high school—King Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science.
She was climbing up and out.
Dreamed to be a doctor.
That was forever ago.
That was two weeks ago.
FREEDOM LOOKED PAST Zero’s sweat-slicked shoulder. He was pounding down. Grunting. Naked, bruised and bloody, she was tied to a dirty mattress. When the first man raped her, she screamed. They stuffed a balled up sock in her mouth. She was choking. Pain filled with fear, or was it fear filled with pain? Word games helped her leave her body. But only for a second. She was a straight-A student. She would prove Mrs. Mayer, her social worker, was right and that bitch at the home was wrong. After King Drew Magnet, she was going to Stanford. She was going to be a doctor—or a rap star or a model, anything but this moment.
The second man was done in seco
nds. He grunted and climbed off. Stared at her. Angry. “What you looking at, bitch?” He hit her. Her lip bled down over her teeth. It tasted of iron. Her arms strained at the ropes. She wanted to punch this bastard. Make him bleed.
The third man was skinny, with cornrows. He spit on her and laughed when he was pounding on her. His spit on her cheek felt like acid. She closed her eyes. Saw the frog she had dissected in biology, saw the skinny man’s guts spilling out.
SEX. IT WASN’T like in the songs. All that bluster and bitch that, bitch this, suck my dick, strippers busting my nut, making it rain, popping rubber bands, broke bitches disgust me, nappy-headed hoes. Nicki Minaj talked about fucking hard.
What they were doing to her wasn’t a song.
What they were doing was full of hate and degradation.
They hated her.
Simple.
IN HER MIND, Freedom smelled chalk. She loved school, was good at it. She had moved in and out of different homes, but school was constant. She loved math and science; they were true. No room for bullshit lies. English? You could say you loved a child and walk away at the same time. Math was truth. Biology was even better. Facts. Attach a battery to a heart and it would beat. Cut the current it would stop.
“LOOK AT ME, bitch. I own your ass.” The fourth man had bulging muscles and a sleeveless sweatshirt. He punched her in the left eye. He let out a deep sigh when he finished.
The fifth was a boy. Not much older than Freedom. He looked sad, embarrassed, but that didn’t stop him. One of the older men stood over them while he did it to her. He laughed when the boy was done and toasted him with a 40. He took a gulp then poured some on her belly, for the dead homies.
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