“Go home to your wife, Stan. Give her a hug and let her see that you’re okay. She’s worried about you.”
I tapped the roof and walked away before he could object. A couple seconds later, I heard the engine rumble as he drove out of the Wienerschnitzel parking lot and pulled into traffic. Stan knew I was right. When push came to shove, he always put Aleisha first.
The scent of hot grease invaded my nostrils and made my stomach clench. I hadn’t eaten since the night before, and the window posters of chili dogs and pastrami chili cheese fries tempted me more than they should. I considered a quick lunch, but I didn’t have the time. Instead, I retrieved one of several protein bars I kept in my cycling backpack. The dense nutrients wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as cheesy, greasy, pseudo-meat on fries, but it would give me the energy I needed to track down Emma. When I turned onto the empty sidewalk of Long Beach Boulevard, I realized my mistake—noon was not a hot time for plying the sex trade, at least, not on the north end of The Blade.
I shouldered my pack and ran.
A few thousand feet later, I saw the first sign of action, on the other side of Compton Avenue—two black girls, barely out of high school, smoking cigarettes and eying the traffic. They wore t-shirts, denim shorts, and rubber thongs One had space buns, and the other had pulled her short hair up into a puff. They could have been idling outside of school or wasting time on a summer day, except for the intensity with which they watched the passing cars.
Eventually, a green sedan slowed beside the curb. The girls went to meet it. But instead of getting in, they turned away with dismissive waves, sneering back at the driver until he had driven out of sight. I could only imagine what offense he had offered or requested. Then again, maybe I couldn’t.
When the traffic lulled, I sprinted across the street and ambled up behind them.
Space Buns must have heard or sensed my presence because she stopped to see who had approached. She sucked in and exhaled a gust of smoke out her nose. “This ain’t your spot.”
I held out my hands. “I’m not staying. I’m just looking for someone.”
“Not here you ain’t.”
The skinnier girl with the puff flicked her cigarette onto the sidewalk and checked the street, repeatedly, in both directions.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I said. “I’m just looking for a friend. Maybe you’ve seen her? Tall, white, long red hair?”
Space Buns snorted out a laugh. “You for real?” She shook her head, making the balls bounce, then flicked her fake glitter nails in dismissal. “The fuck outta my face. We don’t got nothing for you.”
She grabbed her partner by the arm and yanked her away from me.
“Wait,” I said. “Please? She works for Manolo. Do you know him?”
Skinny girl freaked. “Make her go. If Cash sees us talking to her, he’ll think—”
Space Buns backhanded the girl’s arm. “What am I, stupid? I know what he’ll think.” She glared at me. “Bye, bitch.”
Skinny Girl hurried down the sidewalk, unwilling to wait for me to leave. Mentioning Manolo had unnerved her. Did he have a reputation for poaching girls? Or was Cash dangerously possessive?
I let them go. There was nothing to gain by chasing them, and I was drawing unwanted attention. Cars slowed. Drivers and passengers—all men—craned their necks to examine me like meat in a grocery store display case. I gritted my teeth. In this neighborhood, women only lingered on sidewalks for one reason. If I didn’t want to get harassed, I needed to keep moving. But where? I had no idea which way to go or how to find Emma.
A flame-orange, low-riding Impala slowed beside me. Chicano rap blared from the speakers. The bass pulsated. The car bounced on its hydraulics. Then the music quieted and passenger winked. “Hey, girl, you new? Come over and talk to us. We won’t bite—much.”
They laughed.
I raised my hand to flip them off and stopped. Was I new? They’d have to be locals, or at least frequent patrons, to recognize a new girl on the tracks.
I sauntered over and stopped a couple feet from the Impala. The chassis stopped bouncing and settled a few inches above the pavement. I kept my distance. Although the other girls had leaned against that green sedan, I wouldn’t put myself in that position—too easy to get grabbed or stuck with a needle. Heck, a girl my size and weight could get yanked into a car through an open window and whisked away before anyone even noticed.
“What’s up fellas?” I said, keeping my distance and doing my best to show off the goods. Fat chance of that. Dressed in boy clothes—as Ma would have called them—and compacted by the sports bra and Lycra shorts I wore underneath, I looked as soft and curvy as a tank.
The passenger chuckled. “You hear that, Two Guns, she called us fellas.”
The driver leaned over for a better look and offered me the same opportunity. He was larger than his buddy in height and weight but not personality. He grunted, noncommittally, and settled back in his seat.
If these guys cruised The Blade, they might know Emma. I didn’t want to lose their attention before I had a chance to pick their brains.
“You like Asians?” I said, turning this way and that. “We’re so small and delicate, right? Something new to break up the monotony?”
“Listen to that, homie. We got an educated girl, here. Monotony and shit.”
I laughed. “Oh, I’m educated. Went to the best schools with all the rich white girls. You know the types, right? Good girls with bad habits.”
I leaned forward. Close. But still not close enough to reach.
“You like that? Doing your thing to girls too good for you? Educated Asians and snobby white girls?”
“White girls? Around here? You tripping, ho.”
“Huh.” I straightened up and flicked my fingers as I had seen Space Buns do. “In that case, I got no time for you.”
I strolled down the sidewalk, against traffic so they couldn’t follow—but they did.
Cars honked as the Impala backed up along the curb. “Hey. Don’t disrespect us, puta. You know who we are?”
He stuck his arm out the open window and flexed, displaying an ink sleeve that started abruptly at the edge of his heavy plaid vest. It must have taken several days in a chair to tattoo those intricate black and gray patterns. They were beautiful. But what caught my breath was the name embedded into the design.
Sleeves laughed at my surprise. “That’s right, ho. You should be honored we even stopped to look at your sorry ass.”
He turned to Two Guns, exchanged some words in Spanish, then glared back at me. “You don’t belong here,” Sleeves said, scrutinizing my face and body. “In fact, you look pretty fit for a girl who works on her back.”
Dread turned me cold. Despite the heat of the day, I shivered. Of all the potential johns to cruise up The Blade, why did it have to be them—men who had every reason to want me dead, the surviving members of the Varrio Norwalk 66?
I flipped up my hand and strode away, as if I didn’t have time for their games, scanning the area for the best possible escape. Slim pickings. Across the street the Rite Aid strip mall and KFC appeared to be walled in. On the left, I faced a block of iron fences and rolling gates. I could scale them easily, but the burst of athleticism would confirm the gangbangers’ suspicions.
As far as I knew, these guys hadn’t seen me at the house of death, so any description must have been passed down to them by neighbors. It couldn’t have been very clear, probably a general idea of height, weight, and ethnicity. In a city of four million people with over eleven percent identifying as Asian, my description could have applied to tens of thousands of women. But how many of them would be walking alone in a tough neighborhood like Compton?
The car door creaked opened behind me.
Time to go.
Sleeves yelled in Spanish. A car door slammed. Tires screeched. I needed an exit. I couldn’t afford to get trapped in a gated lot, so I sprinted d
own the sidewalk. I was five-foot-four with average-length legs, but I’d bet the farm I could run faster and longer than any pumped-up, shotgun-riding Varrio. Unfortunately, I couldn’t outrun a car.
When the fences ended on the left, I cut through the corner parking lot and onto a residential street. A glance behind me confirmed Sleeves was chasing me on foot and the Impala screeching across traffic into a U-turn.
I bolted behind the retail buildings and turned left, hoping to slow down the driver. Instead, I trapped myself in a shooting gallery with the back wall of A & D Building Supply on the left and the security fences of houses on the right.
Shots were fired. Bits of cement flew into my face.
I raced to the end of the wall and ducked around the corner into the driveway of peach colored house with one viable exit—a pair of electrical pipes running up the wall.
Tires skidded as I climbed. Another shot. A bullet grazed the corner of the wall, hitting the nearest pipe, and shaking it from my grip. Dangling by one arm, I dug my toes into the mortar for purchase and resumed my frantic climb.
A man shouted in the distance, “You got her?”
A closer voice shouted back, “She’s getting away.”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I hauled myself onto the roof and ran.
Chapter Ten
I jumped off the other side of the warehouse roof onto a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and took off through the parking lot toward Long Beach Boulevard. The Varrios had two choices—race around the block, making two left turns at busy intersections, or a three-point-turn back the way they had come. Either way wouldn’t take long.
I bolted into the street, narrowly missing an oncoming car, and wove through the traffic to the same KFC I had passed only minutes before. Even running for my life, I had circled in place. Life lesson or cruel joke? I’d think about it later—if I got out of Compton alive. In the meantime, I needed a ride out of this mess. And quick.
I yanked the phone from my pocket and yelled a voice command to unlock my phone—a phrase I wouldn’t be caught dead using in normal conversation—then cut across the drive thru line to the alley. “Call Kansas.”
After a couple rings, a woman answered. “Hey, Lily. Where you been?”
I slapped the trunk of a reversing car and grunted as it shoved me off course. “Oh, you know, running around.”
“As in now?”
“Little bit.”
“Need a ride?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where are you?”
“Compton.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
I bolted out of the alley and hugged the sidewalk on the left. If the Varrios drove up Compton Avenue, I’d draw their attention like a dog to a squirrel. But the odds were against them searching this street—at least, not this early in the chase.
“Where exactly?”
I sprinted across the avenue, to the consternation of several irate drivers, and onto a new side street.
“Depends how long you’ll take.”
She paused, presumably to calculate distance, traffic, and time. “Fifteen?”
A lifetime. But I couldn’t worry about that. I just needed to keep moving until I got somewhere reasonably safe.
I thought about the route Stan had driven and the landmarks I had noticed. “Shell station on Rosecrans.”
“Be there in twelve.”
Kansas drove for a women-centric rideshare company that offered an array of options from infant car seats to surfboard racks—any convenience the modern Los Angelena might need with the peace of mind of not getting harassed, raped, or robbed. As the slogan stated: “Life’s an adventure. Let Choozit get you there, safely.”
Of course, no company could guarantee safety any more than they could guarantee that their women drivers—three times more than the competition’s—would behave like respectful, law abiding citizens. That said, having women drive women improved the odds and made everyone feel more at ease.
I, on the other hand, used the app to support female entrepreneurship and keep an ear out for women in potentially violent situations. A surprising amount of secrets escaped during idle conversation, especially while creeping through L.A. traffic. I almost always controlled the direction of those secrets. Not so with Kansas. The surf-loving architect-in-training had learned far more about me than I had her.
Her olive SUV waited just inside the Shell station, nose out and engine running. I hopped in, and Kansas took off before I even shut the door. It didn’t matter which direction we went as long as I got out of Compton, and she knew it.
With every block, my anxiety lessened until my heartrate finally returned to normal. The slow recovery bothered me as much as the initial influx of emotions. I didn’t do anxiety. I trained to have a calm mind in any circumstance, to be fluid and adaptable, to capitalize on the emotions of others not scamper in every direction.
Had the surviving members of the Varrio Norwalk 66 really identified me as the Asian assassin who had taken out their gang? Or had they chased me for another reason? I didn’t know. And in this moment, it didn’t matter. The chase had locked me in their memories for good—all because I had tried to play a role I hadn’t prepared to play. I was doing a lot of things that I didn’t normally do.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I said.
Kansas shrugged and watched the road. “Where you want to go?”
The magnitude of the question confounded me.
I shook off philosophical thoughts and stuck to the basics. “Not sure. Home. I guess.”
She looked at me for the first time and smirked. “The alley off of Overland?”
I laughed. “I think we can get a little closer than that.”
She’d earned enough trust to leave me at the door. Maybe one day I’d even invite her up for tea.
Or not.
Some habits were hard to break even when fully committed. Right now, I didn’t feel committed to anything. “Have you ever felt so certain about something then had it all drift away?”
“What, like truth in politics?”
“Ha. No, I was thinking of something closer to home. Like, what to do with your life.”
“I’m twenty-six. It’s my job to not know what to do with my life. Ask me again when I’m thirty. I’ll have everything figured out by then.”
“Think so?”
“Of course not.”
I laughed.
“That’s nice to hear. I was beginning to think you had lost your sense of humor in the last month. Where’ve you been, anyway?”
“In my head.”
“Not much fun there.”
“Tell me about it.”
She drove up the ramp to the 105 and merged into traffic. “So what’s getting you down?”
I thought about brushing her off then changed my mind. “I’m supposed to find someone who may be too dangerous to save.”
“For you? I find that hard to believe. Isn’t she a good person?”
“I don’t know. I barely know her. But even if I did, that’s not my call to make. She’s dangerous because the decisions she’s made in her life could very possibly hurt the people in mine.”
And just like that I understood.
My heart hadn’t raced out of fear for myself but out of terror for what the Varrios might do to my family if they ever figured out who I was. And if I kept hunting for Emma on The Blade, that seemed likely. Every visit increased the odds that I’d be caught, killed, or—at the very least—identified.
“If even one of them sees us, they all have to die.”
That’s what Tran had said before we entered the gang’s lair. I had agreed for two reasons: to safeguard my family from gang retribution and because the Varrio Norwalk 66 trafficked in sex and snuff films. Even so, I had turned my gun on Tran to keep him from shooting the unarmed gang woman—I just hadn’t pulled the trigger.
“Isn’t that
always the case?” Kansas asked.
I yanked my thoughts from the past before visions of the gang woman’s blood-soaked bath towel and vine tattoo could invade my mind. “The case about what?”
“Well, people we love get hurt all the time, right? Whether we’re helping someone or not?”
“Not this level of hurt.”
“Maybe not. But would they want you to help her?”
“Who?”
“The people you love. The ones you’re trying to protect?”
I thought of Ma, wrapped up in her birthday drama and my grandparents’ imminent arrival, and Baba’s already obsessive concern about my eating habits. “Probably not.”
“Oh.” Kansas sounded surprised.
“It’s not what you think. They’re just…” I shook my head, not wanting to get into my family’s personal business. “They have enough to worry about.”
She nodded in acceptance. “Can anyone else help her?”
Aleisha and Stan had hired me, and Emma’s parents had probably exhausted all their efforts the first time their daughter had disappeared. Although they had the resources to help, I wasn’t sure they would, especially if they assumed Emma had run away again. I still wasn’t sure she hadn’t.
Kansas didn’t press me for an answer. Instead, she turned onto Overland and slowed at the alley. “Want me to drive in there?”
“Sure. Third building in, behind the black car with the gold dragons.”
“Yours?”
“Delivery car for my dad’s restaurant.” The words fell from my mouth as if I shared personal information all the time instead of doling it out in costly bits. Information was a commodity, and Ma had taught me to buy low and sell high.
I got out of the car and handed Kansas thirty bucks through the window. She waved away the bills. “Emergencies are free. Remember?”
I did. I just found it hard to believe.
Chapter Eleven
I showered and changed as quickly as I could before racing out the door to meet my parents for a quiet family dinner. When I arrived at Bistro de la Gare, Ma’s favorite French restaurant in South Pasadena, I found Baba and Ma sitting at a corner table deep in conversation. The elegant garden café sat a block from the Metro Gold Line rail station. The location, combined with my repeated praise for Metro’s punctuality, gave me zero excuse for being twenty minutes late—unless I told her about the Varrios, the real reason I’d been delayed. Which I definitely would not.
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