Lola

by Melissa Scrivner Love

  To Andrea’s credit, she doesn’t flinch at the sight of Lola’s black eye. Instead, she observes, “It looks fresh. Did he come after you today?”

  Lola nods. “Found out I’d called you. Got pissed.”

  “Does he know we’re meeting?”

  “I told him I got scared, canceled.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  Lola shrugs. “See when I get home.”

  “I don’t think you should go home,” Andrea says. She reaches into her purse, a Louis Vuitton monster of a bag, and plucks out a business card—the woman’s a virtual library of them. What really amazes Lola is how Andrea keeps eye contact with her as she plucks the card from the depths of the bag. How does she know where the card is without looking? “This is a battered women’s shelter.”

  Lola stifles a laugh at that word, battered, as if she’s been dredged in milk and flour to be fried in a pan.

  “The director, Corey, is expecting you.”

  Lola doesn’t accept the card, not yet. That would be suspect. “And if I say no?”

  “Your choice.”

  “What about…him?”

  “I’ll have Huntington Park PD pick him up within the hour.”

  “Yeah, but say he gets all that due process shit, goes to trial, makes a deal, whatever the fuck it is, how much time is he gonna do?”

  “The maximum is—”

  “First offense. He won’t get the maximum.” Shit. Too smart.

  Andrea hesitates, then nods, something inside her breaking. She leans forward, closer to Lola, leveling with her. Finally, the prosecutor is talking to Lola as if they are equals…but Lola isn’t sure that’s what she wants, not yet. “Look, your brother can cut a deal. He’ll do ninety days, maybe, then probation and some community service.”

  “What, like picking up trash on the side of the highway or some shit?”

  “Yes,” Andrea says.

  “Not good enough,” Lola says, pushing Andrea’s hand and the card away from her.

  Andrea sits back, and Lola thinks she’s stumped the prosecutor. Then she sees the waitress marching her soldier ass cheeks over with their order. Andrea is sitting back to make room for her plates.

  “Here is your food,” the waitress says, and the words sound formal. Then she disappears, her ass once again turning heads like puppets connected on a single string.

  Andrea digs in, starting with the hot food. Lola wants to eat—she sees the crisp triangles of tortillas glistening with just the right amount of oil in a pillow of fluffy scrambled eggs. But Lola can’t eat, not playing this part.

  “What if I know something…about something else?” Lola asks.

  Andrea pauses to chew and swallow. She dabs at her lips with a signature Freddy’s flimsy paper napkin.

  “What something else?” Andrea asks at last. Her pause has muted Lola’s courage. Her next word, the one she knows is for the best, she can’t take back.

  “Murder,” Lola says.

  The word doesn’t shake Andrea. She stabs a grape with her fork and shoves it in her mouth, disappearing it in three chews.

  “Whose murder?”

  The question that really matters. It’s fine if you kill the right person—a minority, preferably one with a criminal record, although that’s not a necessity. Young black men are the easiest victims for getting a perp off with probation, a little community service, and a pee test every once in a while. Mexican men are next. And Lola can’t leave prostitutes off the list law enforcement and prosecutors are willing to let die sans justice. Drug addicts. Damaged girls. Blue-collar immigrants who don’t pay taxes because they fear deportation. The list of souls who don’t matter is too long for Lola to bear.

  The thought prods Lola to eat, to sustain, and she starts to shovel her own meal into her mouth. The grease and the cream and the crunch of the tortilla mingle against her cheek, soothing as a cold compress against an open wound.

  “Darrel King,” Lola says, and Andrea does sit back, for real this time, surprised, her mouth opening a little so Lola can see bits of egg against tongue. Then she closes it, and she is Andrea, fiery prosecutor with no flaws.

  “Holy shit,” Andrea breathes. She looks around, spotting the waitress refilling coffees and doling out smiles, all eyes on her. “Do you want to talk somewhere more private?”

  Lola has already considered this option, and her verdict was simple—fuck it. It’s time for her to step from the shadows, before someone forces her into the light.

  This place, Freddy’s, is in Lola’s hood. Her people can get on the boat she ordered two by fucking two, or they can drown.

  She doesn’t even whisper as she replies, “No. This is fine.” She takes another bite. Heaven. “Fuck, this shit’s good.”

  Andrea notices the change in Lola’s behavior—the eating, the posture, the cursing. The Lola in front of her is not a victim. She is pure perp, at home with blood and collateral damage and torturing loved ones to get to her.

  Lola is ready to start calling the shots. She takes her last bite of migas, gulps her last coffee and juice, and sits back. “Ask me about Darrel.”

  Andrea doesn’t move.

  “You don’t want to talk about Darrel because you know who wanted him dead.”

  Andrea’s appetite must have disappeared. She pushes her plate away, toys with her fork. She doesn’t know what question to ask next.

  “Eldridge,” Lola says. She signals to the nice-ass waitress to refill her coffee cup, but she keeps her eyes on Andrea. The woman’s cheeks flush, and she reaches for her water glass. Lola hears the crunch of teeth on ice, breaking the tiny squares into shards.

  “You’re working with him.”

  Andrea looks up at the waitress, then to Lola—her eyes pleading with Lola.

  “Don’t worry. She doesn’t give a shit. She’s got honest work. Isn’t that right?”

  “Sí.” The waitress smiles so that Andrea can see the woman has no idea what they’re saying. Then she’s gone.

  “What do you want from me?” Andrea asks.

  “I want you to make an arrest in the murders of Darrel King and his girl, Mila.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have a suspect.”

  “You don’t have to link this shit to your boy,” Lola says, annoyed that the ferocious prosecutor has crumbled right in front of her. “Keep Eldridge’s name out of it. It was a gang thing. Killer was making a play for Darrel’s territory. Done.”

  Andrea is quiet, her hands folded in front of her. Lola wants to poke her—Come out and play. Come on. Let’s make a deal.

  But Lola is beginning to see the scenario she hadn’t pictured before this moment. Andrea is working with Eldridge, yeah. But they’re not equals. Andrea fears him.

  Shit.

  Andrea unfolds her hands and speaks in a whisper. When she’s uncertain, as she is now, she sounds like a little girl. “My educated guess would be that Mr. Waterston is under the impression you work for him now.”

  Lola has to think about her reply. “And what’s your impression?”

  “I think you work for yourself,” Andrea says.

  “Who’s to say I’m not working for the enemy? Los Liones.” Lola tries out the cartel name to gauge Andrea’s reaction. The woman sits up straighter.

  “If you work for…them, and they think your gang is involved in Darrel’s death, you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  “Unless Eldridge protects me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Who do you think the order to kill Darrel came from?”

  Andrea sits back, and Lola feels betrayed. She had wanted to meet with a powerful woman, a woman who didn’t have to run back and forth between a man and Lola to make assertions and strike deals.

  “Here’s what I think,” Andrea says. “The cartel hired your little gang to fuck up that drop between Eldridge and Darrel. You did, but you really fucked up. There’s no cash, the heroin disappears—”

  “How is Sergeant Bubba?” Lola as
ks, and Andrea stops. It’s all well and good to dance around drug lords and murder charges, but Lola has mentioned a dirty cop. That’s Andrea’s world, her side of the table.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Cartel knows there’s a dirty cop on Eldridge’s payroll.”

  “How?” Andrea asks, her eyes alert, nervous.

  “I told them.”

  “Told who?”

  “Don’t know his name. All I know is he’s real fat. And he likes sushi.”

  The description has intrigued Andrea. “Where did you see him? Tijuana?”

  “Tijuana? Nasty-ass town.” This, though Lola has never been. “Nah, he was right here. Los Angeles.”

  Andrea signals the cheeky waitress and tosses some crisp twenties at her.

  “Gracias, gracias,” the waitress repeats, and the way she bows reminds Lola of the fat man and the sushi that stung the insides of her mouth it tasted so damn good.

  Andrea is on her feet, ready to go, but she doesn’t leave. “I’m sorry I can’t arrest you for murder. I’m guessing you’re counting on some kind of protection inside, while things cool down out here. But they won’t cool down.”

  Andrea has misunderstood Lola. Still, she is not an ally, not yet, so Lola doesn’t bother to correct her. It takes her three seconds to click from table to door, and then she is gone, leaving Lola at a booth, food finished, check paid, nothing left to do but await her fate.

  Outside Freddy’s, Lola finds herself staring at the traffic. Even in the ghetto, people have jobs to get to, families to provide for, loved ones to cuddle, loved ones to beat. Everyone is in a hurry, except Lola. She has put some semblance of a plan in motion, but her game is chess. She has to wait for Andrea’s next move to plot her own.

  With nothing better to do, she walks in long, calm strides, catching a glimpse of her shadow. It fills the brick wall of the alley behind Freddy’s. She is larger than life.

  Bangers revving their lowriders’ engines at a crosswalk stop their pissing contest to let her pass. She doesn’t look, but she knows their eyes are on her. Like the waitress in Freddy’s, she is turning heads, but it’s not her ass doing the work. Is it possible, Lola thinks, that her whole neighborhood knows her power?

  Yes. Ghetto gossip spreads faster than lice at a daycare, hopping from head to head, brain to brain, growing, changing, and morphing into the best narrative to trade over coffee or tequila or cocaine at the kitchen table.

  And now that Andrea knows Lola’s truth, it makes it real. She has made it onto a prosecutor’s radar. The “good” people know she is bad.

  A ’90s model Geo Metro, bright green, pulls alongside her, and Lola knows Jorge will be behind the wheel.

  “Yo, you dig my wheels?”

  “They’re the shittiest you’ve dug up in a while,” Lola says. Next to Jorge, Marcos grunts, approving the insult.

  “My dad’s old. He got IBS. He ain’t got time to steal the dope whips.”

  “He doesn’t steal. He chops.”

  Marcos rolls his eyes. Lola, too.

  “Look, whatever, man, we found her.”

  Lucy.

  “Where?”

  “At her mama’s place.”

  Marcos shoves a slip of paper into Jorge’s hand, and Jorge passes it to Lola. It is Rosie Amaro’s address, heretofore unknown, as junkies don’t tend to pay their rent long enough to leave a trail of residences on the Internet.

  “You want a ride?” Jorge again.

  But Lola is moving at a run, away from the shitty car and her faithful soldiers. This shit’s personal. She finds herself on the apartment’s doorstep before she knows where she’s going. The doormat is tattered to shit, but Lola can still make out a faded chili pepper, red and green like Christmas, under her feet. She doesn’t have a key, but when no one answers her knock, she tries the door. Unlocked.

  Inside, the reek of rotting dairy overwhelms her—spoiled milk and queso baked bad in the sun. The flies prefer the rancid fry meat stewing in filth on the stove. Empty beer bottles line the kitchen counter like green glass soldiers. The same bottles, overturned, are scattered across the living room floor. The apartment is small, with a shoebox of a kitchen and a living room too full of broken-down furniture—a coffee table with a broken leg supported by old phone books, carpet peppered with brown stains, a sofa with coils poking out from ripped fabric.

  The woman slumped on the sofa is rail thin and shaking. Her skin is brown. Her whole body doesn’t look like it should be able to stand or breathe or eat or shit. She is unnatural. She should be dead.

  Rosie Amaro musters the strength to raise her head and register Lola.

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  Rosie cocks her head to one side, searching for an answer. She is too low to find any anger to direct at Lola. It’s possible she doesn’t even know who Lola is. The only thing Rosie knows right now is she needs a fix.

  The man bursts through the apartment door in a whirlwind of wiry energy. He is young, younger than Lola, twenty-one or twenty-two, with a shaved head and lean muscles under a Polo shirt. He wears khaki pants. He is white. He does not belong here.

  “I got it,” he says, his voice trying to contain his excitement, like a child bringing home a good report card. He holds up a bindle, a little vial of white powder. Heroin.

  Lola can tell her junkies apart—bad teeth and pockmarks for the tweakers, skeletons with popping veins and chicken-thin arms for the heroin addicts. This man, in his upper-middle-class uniform, is neither, and Lola can tell by looking that he has brought just enough smack to tide Rosie over for maybe half an hour.

  He holds the drugs out to Rosie without asking for cash. She will pay him some other way.

  Lola looks down at her clasped hands. She hadn’t realized she’d assumed a prayer stance, because she doesn’t want this to be what she thinks it is.

  “Who are you?” the man asks, having registered her presence now that he’s handed over the drugs.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she says.

  He straightens his spine and sputters, “You’re in my girlfriend’s house. I have a right to worry about it.”

  He has no idea how many rights he has. Lola can’t help herself. She peeks out the front window, where the dirt chokes any sunlight that might have made its way into Rosie Amaro’s apartment. An apple red car is rounding the corner, too far away for Lola to see its make, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t belong to the piece-of-shit pedophile in front of her. Then she sees it, parked among the Hondas and Nissans and Impalas. A brand-new Mercedes. No tinted windows. Not a ghetto dealer’s prize, but a white boy’s privilege. She has the plates memorized before she speaks.

  “Your car. Your daddy give it to you?” Lola asks. Daddy is the Amaros’ landlord. This man is a child rapist.

  “At least I have a daddy,” the young man sneers, and Lola barks a laugh.

  “Got me there.”

  Rosie gives a half-assed cry from the sofa, but when nothing happens, she gets pissed enough to launch herself off the sofa coils. Rosie disappears behind one of the two doors off the living room, and when she returns, she’s got Lucy by the elbow.

  “Say hi,” Rosie insists, as if she can’t believe her daughter’s rudeness to this privileged pedophile piece of shit. Lucy tries to hide her head in her mother’s ripped jeans, but there are no soft edges on Rosie. There is no comfort there.

  Somewhere inside Lola, her heart snaps.

  But Lola can ignore a broken heart. For now. She pulls the knife she packed in the pocket of her cargo pants this morning. Unlike the knife she took to Darrel King’s house, the one she’s carrying today is big, too big for her pants, and she’s lucky she never stood up with Andrea. She flicks open the blade, and it is long, with a serrated edge. The weight of it in her hands feels too much, but this is all too much, and she has to fix it.

  The thought that she is about to make this right causes Lola’s broken heart to leap up into her throat, but it’s not nerves. It i
s what she imagines people mean when they say their heart soars. The thought pushes her forward, and she closes in on the young man.

  He dangles the bindle like a cat toy. Rosie, that dumb junkie bitch, is about to take it, but Lola breaks up the party.

  The man squeals, because Lola does not fuck around. She puts the blade to the bare, delicate skin of his pale throat.

  Fucking kill him, a voice in her head screams truth. But Lola tells it to be quiet, if for no other reason than so she can hear him plead for his life.

  “Please. Please don’t kill me. I was just—”

  Lola does not let him give an excuse. “Give me that bindle,” she says.

  The man hands over the bindle, and Lola hears a hiccup escape from skeleton Rosie as her would-be loot disappears in Lola’s clenched fist. The sorrowful hiccup sends a shiver of pleasure up Lola’s spine, greater than the pleasure she would feel if she sunk this blade into this sick fuck’s dick. This man’s a villain, sure, but a woman who pimps out her own daughter is a monster.

  “Please,” the man says again. “Let me go.” He doesn’t realize that he is closer to the front door than Lola. He has forgotten that he can run right back to his Mercedes and gun it out of the ghetto. He can leave this behind, but Lola and her blade have made him forget his entitlement.

  “I got your plate number. I’m gonna find your name, where you live, your fucking credit score. You try this shit again, I will know,” Lola tells him. “Do you understand?” The man can’t move. He doesn’t believe she is letting him go. “Nod if you understand.”

  Lola asked him to nod because the gesture forces him to move his skin against her blade. It doesn’t cut him, but he thinks it will. She salivates at the terror in his eyes. She has to let him go now, to get to the real work, but he’ll remember that feeling of her blade against his skin. It is as good as a leash, at least for a little while.

  When she pulls the blade away, the young man runs as fast as he can to his Mercedes. The engine purrs, so calm in the face of his terror, and ferries him out of Lola’s neighborhood.