“And one more thing.”
Norma waited.
“It’s a secret, right? A true secret. You and me, we don’t tell. Nobody, right?”
“How come you don’t want teacher to know?” Norma said, peering at Rita over Angel’s shoulder.
“’Cause it’s a secret. I just told you. Right? Nobody?”
“Deal,” Norma said, bumping her elbow against Angel’s arm. Norma put her finger to her lips. “Nobody.” She glanced over at Rita. “Hi,” she said.
Rita came out to them. “What you two whispering about?” she asked Norma.
“Nothing,” Norma said.
“We were just talking about games,” Angel said. “Norma’s really good at games and she’s helping me.”
Rita raised her eyebrows. She didn’t buy it.
“Go on,” Angel said to Norma. She gave the girl a quick hug and propelled her on her way. “See you at school tomorrow.”
Norma kept walking but turned her head to look at Rita and Angel. “Bad bad,” she said, and pointed to her head.
“What does she mean?” Rita asked.
“Uh, I told her she’s cool, like bad, you know.”
Rita snorted, gave up trying to get the truth. “Let’s finish our conversation.”
They took either end of the couch. “Now you’re trying to try to find Scotty before he finds you,” Rita said, letting Angel off the hook. “Unlikely, but let’s say you and Momo luck out and run him down. Then what?”
Angel couldn’t tell her. She really liked Rita but she couldn’t trust her with this. Rita would try to stop her. “I tell the police, tell TJ or somebody where he is. Maybe by then they’ll have found Mom. And when they arrest Scotty they’ll keep him this time. Put him away. It’ll be over.” Angel raised her shoulders. “After that maybe I can stay somewhere around here.” Angel thought Rita might like that, thought that idea might derail her from asking again about what would happen if she found Scotty.
Rita reached out and took one of Angel’s hands in both of hers. “Look at me. I think I understand how alone you feel with this problem. And I understand how when other people get involved it gets worse for you.”
Rita stopped and chewed her lip.
Angel could see Rita had more to say, but she didn’t want to hear it. Rita was right. Other people made it much worse.
“I respect that,” Rita continued, “but lately you’ve started to lie to me all the time. All the time. I know you think you have to, but I’ve got my marriage and my kids on the line. I can’t have you lying to me. Makes the risk way too high. If you can’t tell me the truth … you have to leave.”
“I WANT TO LEAVE!” Angel was up and yelling. “You think I don’t want to take off? I could, too. And he’d never find me. I could walk to … way away and he’d never find me in a million years. You trapped me!”
Angel was scaring herself. She was out of control like the way she felt sometimes when her mom and Scotty would have those horrible fights. She needed to run. She wanted to run. She always ran. So why was she standing here? It wouldn’t do any good. And it wouldn’t do any good to cry. Nothing would do any good until Scotty got her or she got him. Now how do you tell that to someone you … to someone you … Angel sank back to the couch. Out of words. Out of energy.
Rita, having remained seated through the tirade, took a deep breath and finger-combed the tangles in her hair. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said. She didn’t move closer to Angel, didn’t reach out, but her face and her voice were kind. “We’re at one of the hardest places people ever get to when they care for each other. Either tell me the truth, or you can’t stay here any longer. Either trust me, or you have to leave and pray you can save yourself.”
Rita shifted position but held Angel’s eyes. “You’ve been taking care of yourself by yourself, pretty much since you were a little girl. You had to, and you made it work. But right now there’s another step to take. Let me in. Yeah, you could be hurt. You been hurt. Do it because … because I…” Rita looked like she wanted to say more, but she stopped, put her hands in her lap. Waited.
Angel’s hands and knee were burning. She should put some iodine—“I’ve got … I took—” Angel looked away from Rita. She couldn’t do it. The gun was her only chance. The only real solution. “I got to go” was all she could come up with. She was trying to read Rita’s face but she couldn’t. “I’ll stay close. I’ll come to school whenever I can, but I have to hide now, until I can get out of here.”
Angel scanned the living room. Was there anything she really needed to take besides the purse with the gun? “I’ll stay in one of these empty houses, the one with the jeep, like you said. You’re right about the attic. If Scotty gets me, I can’t have kids around. I’m figuring a way … I’ll deal with this.”
Angel stood, wanted to hug Rita but didn’t move forward, afraid she might cry. She hefted the purse and clasped it in front of her. “Thanks. Thanks for everything. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want…” She struggled, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
Rita stayed quiet, looking first at Angel’s eyes and then down to the purse. Rita’s boy came into the living room and asked about dinner. She held up five fingers and he went away. The stillness felt heavy to Angel, but she endured it, reluctant to walk away.
“Is it loaded?” Rita asked.
Though she hoped her face didn’t show it, Angel was stunned. How? How could Rita know? “What? What are you…” but she gave up. After an uncomfortable minute or so, Angel nodded.
“Is the safety on?” Rita asked.
Angel didn’t know. She took the gun out of the purse and looked at it. Wasn’t the safety what kept it from firing if you didn’t want it to? There was the lever that made the cylinder open. She didn’t see a safety catch.
“Do you know enough about the gun to operate it?” Rita asked.
“I fired one like it.”
“Once?”
Angel nodded.
“Keep your finger off the trigger,” Rita said.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s the only safety. Don’t touch the trigger until the very end.”
23
The lock was corroded, the mechanism stiff, and Angel was afraid she might break the key Rita had given her. After several tries and some jiggling, it finally turned and the door creaked open. The Flores place was vacant but not empty and not ruined. Rita was right. From the dusty picture window in the front room you could see the whole main road into town all the way up to the StopShop. The two corner windows gave her a ninety-degree view of the intersection with Rita’s street and she could see the highway north of the store from the front bedroom. Scotty would have to leave his truck, sneak around the town’s borders, and come in from the seaside to surprise her.
She checked the back door, the back windows, and made a tour of each room to make sure everything was locked. Okay. He couldn’t sneak up on her unless she was asleep. Since she didn’t think he’d come right away, she had a couple of days to figure out how to handle dozing off. A couple of days to decide whether to really make a run for it.
The boats she’d seen on her walks along the shore were rotted and useless and the sea was way too wide to swim, so she couldn’t go east. Brawley, which was probably where he was staying, was miles south, so she couldn’t see how to make that work. North, even farther away, were a bunch of towns like Thousand Palms and Desert Hot Springs, but Scotty knew that area better than she did. Straight out front, west, she’d have the Anza-Borrego badlands. She couldn’t make it through that to San Diego. And if she hitched? Pretty risky. If Scotty saw her, she’d disappear forever.
So, first thing, she was here. Here. At least for the next couple of days. She could sleep on the couch, which must have been too big for the Flores family to take with them. She could eat lunch at the school, help a little with the kids, and stay out of Rita’s hair.
By sundown Angel was sprawled on the fuzzy sofa, watching the road, a
nd munching on the tortillas and cheese Rita had sent with her. Her plastic liter bottle of water and the phone sat beside her on the floor. As a hideout this was good enough. Like she’d expected, cars were few and far between. She didn’t realize she was so tired.
* * *
… AT NIGHT, the amusement park had great colors, the brightest neon and flashing lights outlining the shapes of rides. She was up in the sky, everything laid out below her, and then she was passing through the front gate in a crowd of people headed to the double roller coaster. She had seen this place several times from the freeway and always wanted to go there … but now the nearby roller coaster was creaking, so maybe it wasn’t safe. Maybe it was going to break and—
Angel’s eyes popped open. Noise. Creaking. Wood groaning … the door frame … She reached to the floor for the purse but couldn’t find it. When she leaned over, there was enough light to see, but it wasn’t there. Just the phone and water bottle. She grabbed the phone, twisted it open, but the screen was dark again and she couldn’t get a dial tone.
“Angel!” A bang on the door rattled the windows.
She jumped and hoped she hadn’t yelled. The kitchen. She’d set the purse by the sink while she tested whether the water worked.
“Angel!” The doorknob shook. “Hey, it’s Momo.”
My god, he really is going to get himself killed.
“Wait a sec,” she said, struggling to remember how to get the front door open. A deadbolt. Had she locked it with a key? No, there was a small knob and a little button thing on the door. She glanced out the window to see if there was anyone else in the street, anyone else watching. Another noise froze her again. A whine? Was Scotty twisting Momo’s arm? Hurting him so he would talk and get Angel to open the door?
“Easy, easy.” Momo’s voice.
What if she ran for the purse and he shot Momo? She couldn’t live with that. She had to open the door. She made herself undo the catches and pull, braced herself for a punch or a shot. But she had trouble making sense of what she saw. Momo. Bent over. Holding a cord in one hand and petting a dog with the other. She stepped back and the dog tugged the young man inside.
Momo was too busy with the animal to notice Angel yet, so she, too, focused on the dog. Light brown coat with a white horseshoe shape under its neck. A little over two feet tall with chest maybe twice as thick as its hips. Long, curved tail that swung and bounced. Big dark eyes and a thick pink tongue sliding out of its mouth, making a dopey grin. Excited, but quiet. Angel hadn’t been around many dogs, but no barking seemed unusual.
“Uh, I brought this for you,” Momo was saying. “He’s yours, you want him.”
Want a dog? Angel couldn’t even feed herself, let alone take care of a dog. What was he thinking? Was he just plain dumb?
Momo hadn’t stopped talking. “… so he’s a little injured. Sore, but he’s getting better. Right side, shoulder, and uh, I guess you call it the elbow, kind of skinned up. I think maybe he fell off one of the work trucks on the highway. No collar or tag. Nobody stopped or was looking. I didn’t see any signs on the road or posted at the store. He’s real good. I think he’ll get used to you quick. He already likes me and I got you a pack of baloney. I bet you feed him, he’s yours. And you can name him … I been calling him ‘Guy’ and he comes right up and he’s real stro—”
“Whoa!” Angel said it loud enough to penetrate Momo’s enthusiasm. “What am I supposed to do with a…” but she got it before she reached the end of the question. “Guard dog?”
“You bet,” Momo said, practically breathless. “They’re great! They use guys like him to watchdog those huge microwave towers you see around here. They’re sweet as can be until you try to mess with their home or their master. Then it’s back off or get bit, and this kind don’t never let go.”
“Isn’t it a girl?”
“Whatever.”
* * *
THE DOG, Angel named her Xena, settled down as soon as Momo left. Angel opened the pack of baloney and the dog swallowed it in one gulp and promptly went to sleep. In the morning, Angel saw that sometime during the night Xena had joined her on the couch and was now sleeping across her feet.
From yesterday’s exploration Angel knew the lights and water had been turned off. To pee, she’d been using the toilet even though it wouldn’t flush. She washed her mouth out from the bottle and poured Xena a drink in a bowl she’d found in the kitchen. She’d slept in her clothes and didn’t have anything to change into, so all she had to grab was the purse. She thought again about a different way to carry the gun. Did the Flores family leave anything she could use? In a bedroom she found a CD case but it wasn’t big enough. In back, in what used to be the laundry room, there were a couple of old sheets on the floor. She ripped a foot-wide strip from one, wrapped the pistol in it, and wound it around her waist with the gun at her back like a fanny pack. A wrinkled men’s dress shirt from a closet floor worked like a jacket to cover it.
She wasn’t sure how the dog would react to the kids, so she left it in the fenced yard and walked the back route to school.
Momo was in front of the building sitting in his truck when she arrived. “Hey,” he called to her, “I talk to you for a sec?”
She walked to the passenger side and leaned in the open window.
“We friends again?” he asked. “I want to know, ’cause this is the last day I can take you to Brawley. I got to ride up home tonight and check in with Ramón, do some chores for my folks. Got to be working again before the weekend.”
Had she forgiven him? What had she been so mad about? That he didn’t want her for a girlfriend? She could feel her face reddening. He was grown up and working and she was practically a child. He must think I’m such a freak. Like he’s gonna want a … a what? Maybe he thought she was a tramp like her mother … somebody who came on to every guy she sat in a truck with.
“Yeah,” she said, not ready to meet his eyes. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m just weird. You know. Uh, the dog was really cool. Thanks.”
“So you want to go to town this afternoon? There’s a couple of clubs, a couple of motels you might want to scope out.”
“Sure,” she said. She glanced up to find him smiling. “So honk a couple of times. I’ll come out, but I got to go now and help set up.” She left for the school door without looking at him again. Thinking instead that, once inside, she would figure out how to recharge the cell phone. She hoped that was its only problem.
Intent on Momo and the cell phone, she missed the very warning she had tried to prepare for just two days ago in her neighborhood car survey. Another man she’d never met, stocky, black-haired, middle-aged, was parked near the end of the block, watching her from the driver’s seat of a white commercial van that had not been there previously.
24
Momo handed her a photocopy as she climbed in the truck. “That’s his license on top, feds’ mug shots on the bottom.”
“This from TJ?” she asked.
He nodded. “He gave it to Rita.” Momo poked his thumb at the pictures. “Your guy still look like that?”
Angel was focused on the picture and trying to get comfortable again with Momo. She didn’t pay attention to the white van as they drove past it and on out toward the highway, didn’t see the man inside pick up a cell phone as he put his truck in gear and followed them at a distance.
“Scotty’s hair’s longer. Like the bottom one,” Angel said, “but he would cut it or color it if he needed to. He probably won’t change what he wears. Maybe keep a cap on.”
“He thin like that?”
“Pretty much, but he’s strong and he’s quick like you wouldn’t believe. He knocked a beer off the table and caught it before it hit the floor. And when he’s drinking he gets mad real fast. The remote pissed him off and he kicked in the television before Mom or me could even yell.”
“Hair-trigger?”
Angel didn’t answer. While he turned south on the highway, she was b
usy searching under the pickup seat.
“What you doing?” Momo gave her a quick glance and reached down and pulled the lever, slid the seat back so she’d have an easier time looking.
“I shouldn’t be like this,” Angel said, on her knees now, peering underneath. “You got a hat or anything? Sweatshirt?” She glanced up and caught him looking down her top. Blushed. Ignored it and bent lower to cut off his view.
“You want a get-up? Fool him?”
“I can’t let him know I’m looking. He sees me and I’m not sure what he’d do … even with you there.”
“Yeah, but I can’t take you in places looking funny. You gotta blend or my story don’t make sense.”
He was right. Angel stopped burrowing and crawled into the seat again. “So how can I change?”
Their conversation was interrupted the first time by the glitzy Red Desert Casino a few miles south of Salt Shores. Angel thought it was too close and looked too expensive for Scotty, but maybe it would be a good place to meet women. The parking lot was full of the kind of trucks he might buy. They parked by the front door and watched the customers enter. Older people mostly, smokers, several pale like they never got outside, and some beefy trucker types. The women, at least during the afternoon, were too fat or too worn out, sadly unattractive. Angel and Momo decided to give it another look when they came back by that evening.
Next, a few miles south, they checked the tiny town that materialized out of the desert, Westmorland. It couldn’t hold more than a couple thousand people. Probably too small and exposed for Scotty to choose it. There were two good-looking motels right on the highway, pickups in each parking lot. Again they decided to give it a closer look on the way back home. In the late afternoon they could watch people leave the motel rooms and head out to dinner.
* * *
BRAWLEY’S BUSINESS DISTRICT was a long straight street with fast food and chain stores at the west end. Maybe a half mile down they passed a big grassy plaza with red-tile-roofed buildings and, shortly after, the commercial center, a block-long stucco arcade full of shops and small businesses. Auto repair and service storefronts stretched beyond them to the east.
Desert Angel Page 12