by Kyanna Skye
“Which ones?”
“Classics, corvettes, an old mustang, and I keep some antiques.”
“You mean real antiques.”
“Of course.” They passed down the cliffs with ease and started heading up the beach north of the city into hills formed from lava rocks with gaps below where the water flowed in from the ocean.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“No, but I have at least two dozen cousins and sixteen aunts and uncles.
“Jesus.”
“That's small. My grandparents were strict Catholics, never used contraception. This is a big party.”
They pulled into the wrap around the driveway of a modern, Spanish estate with a yellow, stucco façade topped with arches that gave way to a courtyard leading out onto the beach. There was tables setup in rows holding platters of food. Most of the guests were either in the courtyard sitting and talking or hanging out on the beach.
“Hey!” An old, white man with a pot belly and scraggly white hair stood up. He was dressed in designer jeans and a button up. A group of people was sitting at his table in the center of the courtyard talking. When the couple walked up, they all turned around. These were the heads of the family, older men and women all gawking at the girl that had shown up to the family barbecue with Tony.
Tony walked to the man's side and slapped him on the back “Lana, this is my dad, Richard.”
Richard pulled Lana in and hugged her. “You know, this is the first time he's brought a girl to one of these things.”
She blushed.
“Listen, we got steaks on the grill and some burgers already up just back here. Get yourselves something to drink. We've got margaritas.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carter,” Lana said.
“Call me Rick.” He took a bite of a hot dog and sat down so he could dive back into a lengthy story.
“The first time, huh?” Lana got herself a burger and started building it.
“Yeah, so what?” He grabbed a burger. “Just a fun afternoon.”
“I'm flattered.”
“Good. You should be.” He took her to a bench out on the veranda where they could see the kids playing in the water.
“When I was in Arizona, I wanted something like that, you know—a family that I could take to nice parties and a husband by my side. Instead, I worked all day and came home to filth. Now this. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know whether or not I'm off balance, chasing something crazy with you, or if it's real.”
“You know I've got your back, though. I won't let anything happen to you, Lana. It's not as crazy as it sounds. We can be happy.”
“I still don't know what I'm getting myself into.”
He took a swig of the beer he was holding and threw it into the boulders off in the distance. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“But you'll still stay with me even though I can't answer your questions.”
“I don't like it. You said you were dangerous.”
“I am, but I'll do everything I can to make sure you're safe. I want you to be with me because you want to—without reservation.”
“I want to.” Her voice broke.
“Then go along for the ride. Don't let it get you.”
She could do that. It would be easy for her to fool herself into thinking that everything was okay, at least when she wasn't at the clinic but sitting out on the beach with Tony. Then when she went back to the clinic, she'd see all the bullet victims and remember that there was a sacrifice to be made for this life. People were dying.
“I see people get hurt every day, Tony, and I'm getting involved with a man at the epicenter of the violence. I've never been more scared. If I'm in danger, or you're in danger, you have to tell me. And I can't just watch people die without an explanation.”
“I'll never talk.” The discussion was closed when he walked back up to get a drink.
He owed her an explanation. She went back up to follow him and he casually herded her around the building. There was a man screaming on his phone near the front of the courtyard.
Tony was so smooth about diverting her that it made her want to slap him. “What are you protecting me from?”
“It's time to go.” He directed her to the car and got in. Now she was getting upset. Had she not known the risks involved, she would've held her ground and demanded some answers. It wouldn't have worked. He probably would've grabbed her and put her in the car like an unruly child. He had a dangerous look in his eyes as he raced down the road.
They were flying down the cliff road when she exploded. “You need to tell me what just happened.”
He pursed his lips and took a sharp right up to a dirt road that led uphill through the rocks.
“Where are we going?” she screamed. “What is going on?”
“Will you just stop?” He slammed the dashboard. “This isn't easy. I like you, Lana. I don't want you involved. It's not safe. There are too many things that could happen. So I'm going to protect you and keep you as far away from the trouble as I can.”
“I need to know.” They reached the top of the hill and drove through a field. The road was getting patchy. She had to hold on to keep her head from slamming against the roof of the car. “Where are we going?”
“It's a long drive.” He sat back, lowered his speed, and kept quiet. She decided to do the same. She wasn't sure what he was doing, but she decided to trust him. He was going to give her an answer, and that was enough.
The field stretched for miles until there was nothing else around. They were traveling farther and farther away from the coast and into the wild. The road kept getting worse until they were both bouncing up and down, rattled by the rocks in the road.
Eventually a tan, square building came into view in the distance. It was a long way off, and big. “What is something like this doing out in the middle of nowhere?” It looked like an unmarked factory with a chain link fence and guard towers surrounding it with men walking around the perimeter holding assault rifles. None of them had uniforms, just plain shirts, and jeans.
“What is this, Tony?” She was shaking.
He squeezed her hand and stopped the car about a quarter mile away. “Listen to me. Whatever you see here, I don't want to lose you. I'm not involved. None of this is me. I hate it, and I want to be with you. Can you remember that when you go in there?” He was dead serious; he didn't want to lose her.
“I… I don't know.”
“Look at me, Lana. You're safe, but I can't have you yelling or causing a scene.”
“What's inside there, Tony?”
“Just come on.” He drove further up the road, waved his hand out the window, and a man opened the gate. Then they pulled into a gravel parking lot and stopped near the front of the building. She was still shaking, her hand firmly gripping his when they got to the front door and he waved up at the camera so they could buzz him in.
They passed through a simple, concrete hallway and stopped at a pair of double doors. Tony turned to her with wide eyes. “Don't run away from me.”
She wanted to reassure him, but the look on his face told her that that was exactly what she should've been doing. “I won't leave yet.” That last word seemed to send him reeling. He stepped back, leaned against the wall behind them, and stared down at the floor.
“I don't have anything to do with this.” He stepped forward to open the door. “You gotta understand that.”
The smell of a million skunks poured out when he opened the door. Behind it was a warehouse that seemed to stretch for miles with rows marijuana plants sitting from end to end.
“Oh my god.”
“I don't got nothing to do with it.” He flinched back and closed his eyes.
“It doesn't matter. Your father he—”
“He's a good man. He never sells hard stuff. He's not doing anything wrong.”
“I don't buy it. People are dying for this stuff. That's not acceptable.”
He turned around and w
alked out. She followed closely behind him, grabbed him by the arm in the hallway, and turned him around. “Hey, I'm not leaving. I just....”
“You'll leave,” he said bitterly and turned around to walk back towards the exit.
“But it just doesn't answer any of my questions.” She followed him into the car.
He started it up. “The Carter family has been dealing drugs and moonshine in San Diego for more than a century. It's just how we've always gotten along. People would get what they needed from us and they'd come to us if they had an issue. You can't trust the police to handle everything, so the Carter family stepped in where there was a need. That's how things like this get started.” He drove back through the field.
“Things like what, Tony? What is this?”
“The mafia, but you don't know what that means.”
“Then tell me,” she demanded. He swung the wheel and veered a right straight into the field then he hit the gas until the car was sitting at the top of a cliff near the edge of the water.
“When somebody gets hurt, or they mess up, we take care of them. We take care of the neighborhoods, give out food and money. We watch businesses and make sure they don't get broken into. The cops can't do the things we do, so we step in, and we fund the operation with the weed. We ship it up and down the coast.”
“But why are people dying?”
“Those are low-level drug dealers getting robbed by addicts and competing thugs. The problem is drug prohibition. When alcohol was illegal, people were dying in the streets doing the exact same thing, only it was over whiskey. Nowadays you can get whiskey wherever you want to, and they're not killing each other for it. At the time, the people thought that alcohol was something that would never be purged from society, but humans don't just imbibe alcohol. People have been getting high off everything from insects to tree sap since before man could walk. People are going to use whatever, no matter what the government does, and they're willing to die for it to keep that cycle going. The only way to stop the deaths is to stop the illegal trade.”
“The money people get from selling this stuff isn't worth the risk.”
“I agree,” he said, staring out at the water. “I hate it.”
“But you're involved.”
“No. My father's involved. When my father dies and I take over, the business will be shut down. The men will be disbanded and all of this will be over.”
“What about all the men running around in wife beaters collecting insurance from businesses?”
“The Carters aren't like that. It's peaceful. People don't just get killed without a good reason. It's mostly to protect men and their families when somebody decides to ruin their lives and go to the feds. It's too much of a risk to have them walk away, and considering what the feds will do to the people that get in trouble, it's a fair response.”
“You're justifying this. You're telling me that you're going to disband this whole operation when you take over, but you like the way your family does things. You idealize the mafia. You're even justifying the killing.”
“When a man runs out and decides that he's going to go to the feds, he's putting my father and my family at risk of losing their freedom. You're damn right I'm justifying that. I believe in protecting my people, and yes, I do like pieces of this lifestyle, but it's not worth it. If I get my way when my father dies, I'm closing the whole thing down.”
“And you don't get involved, not in any of the violence or the drug trade—nothing.”
“Nothing.” She knew he was lying.
They were halfway to Tony's house when he turned to her and asked, “Will you please stay with me tonight?”
“Of course.” She didn't want to leave him that evening, not after what she just saw.
If Tony wasn't taking any part of his family's activities, then why was he dangerous? Was there something else that he wasn't telling her? This man had too many layers to him. Every time she found something out about him, she found out that there was a completely different side to him. She could spend years trying to figure him out.
Lana wanted level ground. She wanted to know who she was dealing with, what he had to offer, and what being with him meant. She still didn't have the answers to any of those questions, and she wasn't sure she was going to get them. No matter how hard she tried to figure him out, there would always be something else she didn't know.
Lana hated uncertainty, and more than anything else, she hated having secrets kept from her. Those bullet victims were sacrificing themselves for a twisted game. Thugs always say the same thing; Lana had heard them. They all talked about making money and becoming rich off selling. Then they'd get caught up and start doing the drugs themselves. Ultimately, they'd end up homeless, and wind up in prison or dead. They were poor, young men putting their lives in danger for the false promise of having a better life.
That wasn't okay, but Tony was right. If they ended prohibition, just like Lana had heard plenty of times, they wouldn't have gun battles on the streets. There wouldn't be any of the pressure of the cops or people getting robbed, because whoever wanted to sell would be allowed to do so out in the open. There would be more weed, so there wouldn't be as much of a demand and people wouldn't be killed over a few ounces. The violence would end the second the bill was signed into law.
She couldn't justify what the Carter family was doing. That was the hardest part. When she thought of the weed, she kept thinking of Jim sitting on the couch with red eyes and his stinky feet sitting on the coffee table.
And she couldn't trust Tony when he said he wasn't involved. There were so many things she didn't know about him and he didn't want to answer any of her questions. She might just have to leave, because he told her he was dangerous and the kind of thing that his family was involved in was dangerous. She was treating the victims of that violence every day.
Still, she was in too deep. This man could take whatever he wanted. Even if she did try to walk away, he'd show up, whether it was in person or he found a way to creep into her mind. She worked at a clinic that his father owned. He'd have every opportunity to creep back in and she'd let him, because there was something so alluring about him. It was far too powerful.
She was his. She would just have to stick by him, and hope that as his layers peeled away, he didn't turn ugly.
When they got back to the estate, she had more questions, not just about Tony or what danger he'd bring, but also about the business, how it worked, and how best to keep both of them out of danger. He never wanted to think about what could happen; there'd be blood staining the desert sand, his entrails flayed out on the jagged, scorching rocks.
Or, as she got out of the car, she was trembling at the thought of fishes picking at his corpse, eating his eyes or tearing at his nose until he looked like a dead pirate clutching at a chest of Spanish doubloons. That's what this was; it was a deadly hunt for money, and even if he wasn't involved, he wound up with a bullet in his arm.
They walked into the house and she followed him into the main living area where a dinner was already setup for them, roasting in the oven. The air smelled like succulent beef and tender vegetables. He sat down on the couch and she sat next to him, resting her head in his lap while he stroked her cheek. She could see his bandage moving back and forth.
“How is it? Does it hurt?”
“No. Not unless I move around too much.”
“How did it happen?” She looked up to face him.
“I don't wanna talk about it.”
“So,” she sat up, “we're back to secrets and lies.”
“You're worried about my family, fine. I get that, but this had nothing to do with my family or the Lorrentz family.”
“The Lorrentz family.”
“It's another family in town.”
“They're at war with your family. Aren't they?”
“One guy sells for Lorrentz. The other guy sells for Carter. The two guys meet on the street they go at it like monkeys. You got Carters shanking Lorrentz’s
guys in prison and people setting up Carter and Lorrentz territory. It’s the small-time dealers that are doing it, and the real family wants it stopped. They'll do anything to stop the killing.”
Lana wondered whether or not he could be killed just by being seen by some thug on the street trying to make sure everyone knew he was the guy that killed Tony Carter. If people knew who he was, and the crime family he was involved with, then that would make him a target.
“None of this matters if you won't tell me how you got shot.”
“I'm not going to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have my reasons and I'm not going to be pushed into talking about it. It's not your business.”
“I am finding it so hard to trust you, Tony. I want to,” she raged, “I want to so badly, because I really like you, but there's too many secrets and too many lies. I want things completely out in the open, and if you can't do that....”
“You won't walk away. You couldn't even if you wanted to. But if you stay, you're going to have to accept the terms I have to offer. You can have whatever you want, but you've got to stop asking questions.”
“It's not enough, Tony. Take me home.”
“It'd be better if you stayed here tonight.” He sat back down on the couch and patted the seat next to him.
“Why?”
“There's trouble. It has nothing to do with you, but you're staying here just in case.”
“Well, I wanna go home.” She stood there stubbornly, refusing to give in. “What is happening?”
“Unless you can walk back, you're not going home tonight, and Lana, I'm gonna tell you this once.” He went serious and locked eyes with her. “Information is dangerous. You never ask questions in this world. You simply enjoy your life and keep your head low. That's how you have to live.”
“But I'm not that type. I wonder. I worry.”
“Don't,” he urged her.
“But this is real danger. The Lorrentz family.”
“It's another family in town.”
“Not as real as you think. This is just a precaution. Now sit down, do whatever, but don't give me grief.”