by Peter Craig
“Now why would his bosses come after you? It seems like they’d go after his people: They were the ones running the scam. You know where all the other houses are?”
“I think Jonah gave me a chance to prove myself. That day. I think if I’d shot this woman like he wanted me to—”
“Lydia—you got the mindset of a battered housewife, and it scares the shit out of me.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I know he lied to me, the whole time, but I just don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Lydia, listen to me here.” The waitress approached and slapped the check onto the table. Link waited until she had gone again, and said, “We have one thing to think about, and that’s getting you away from these people. But to do that, I got to figure out exactly who this is on our trail. Is it his guys? Is it somebody he worked for? Do they have some kind of connection with those cops that got right on us the other night? There’s a lot we don’t know. So I’m going to do some research of my own. Talk to a guy I know, back over in Calipatria.”
She blew her nose into a napkin, then asked, “Can you get back in there?”
“There’s not a CO there that’ll recognize me like this. I don’t recognize myself. I’m going to call my sponsor and get him to FedEx his driver’s license down here. Few days ago, he promised to help, any way he could. Let’s hope he’s sober again. He had a little slip—the stress of my goddamn life, I think.”
He handed her the drawing he had worked on throughout her speech, shaded and done with a light touch—and Lydia was surprised by how calm and courageous he had made her face. She folded it up, slipped it into her backpack, and said, “They’ll have to kill me to get this one.”
A little past eleven o’clock the next day, Link picked up Kirby’s package from FedEx and dropped his daughter off at the crowded mall beside it, watching her as he idled against the curb. The place was already teeming with Christmas shoppers, and Lydia had assured him that she could stay safely immersed in crowds. The movies would begin in an hour, and she would snuggle into the seat of the most populated theater. She would leave her cell phone on, and Link would give only a quick call when he was back, so that nothing could be traced or triangulated, by either the police or Jonah’s bosses. He left her his sponsor’s number to call in case they were separated. She chuckled as she programmed it into her phone, and she seemed to like this new role of calming a worried parent.
A few minutes later, Link was racing westbound on I-8 back toward the 111 turnoff for Calipatria, wearing an olive-colored suit she had bought for him with their windfall from Preacher’s desk. The jacket inflated with the wind, and Link felt emboldened and alive to be accelerating like this again, in a deafening pocket of noise, with the air stinging his cheeks.
By a little after noon, he was moving along the stretch of farm road, past the cow pastures, scaring up flocks of seagulls that had been sitting on the road. The Salton Sea smelled thick and pungent as he turned and passed through the gates into the massive, sterile city that sat alone on a patchwork of farms and irrigation trenches. He made it through clearance, the metal detectors and the search batons, frisked by a CO who knew him but didn’t recognize him; and a half hour later he was sitting in the private meeting room, impressed that Rios still had access to it.
Rios was led into the room in his jumpsuit and shackles. He wasn’t taking care of himself. His usually shaved head was grown out into a lumpy, fuzzy mix of black and gray, and his mustache drooped long over his mouth. He had new memorial tattoos, which were poorly done—not half as precise as Link’s work. Link felt a pang of jealousy and wanted to kill whatever asshole had done such sloppy work at the trunk of his neck; but before he could get too worked up, Rios sat down across from him and stared ahead, with no recognition whatsoever on his face.
He said, “What’s this all about?”
“Conjugal visit,” said Link. “Kiss me.”
Rios smiled hugely, trying to stifle a laugh. He asked the guard to give them a second alone, and the kid complied. Then Rios squirmed around on his chair across the table, doing everything he could to contain himself. Finally he just busted out laughing, prompting Link to laugh just as hard back at him. The two men howled at each other, face-to-face across the table, until the sound became like an aggressive barking. Rios started to recover, sighing and saying, “Shi-hi-hi-t, man,” and then he sat up straight and said, stone-faced, “You look like my lawyer.”
They both broke into a new paroxysm of laughter, and Rios fell onto the table, and when he finally recovered from the second bout, his body looked tired and his eyes were wet. “Damn, man—you’re an ugly dude. Grow the beard back, please.”
“All right, enough already. I need your help.”
He pointed to the tie and said, “Wait—don’t tell me. You need help tying that?”
“Shut up already. It’s not funny anymore.”
“It’s funny, man. This shit is funny forever.”
“Listen, listen. You remember my daughter?”
His face straightened out, and he cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, of course.”
“She’s alive, but—she got into some serious trouble with some guys, and I need you to help me sort this shit out.”
While the final aftershocks of laughter played out, Link told him everything he knew from Lydia, and he was encouraged when Rios began nodding along as if he recognized the name—Jonah Pincerna—and parts of the story. He was a patient listener, and he wasn’t one of those people who nodded to be polite. When Link finished debriefing him, he asked, “Anything ring a bell?”
“Well, Pincerna. First of all, homes—he ain’t Chicano, so don’t put that shit on me. That’s a Greek name or something. But from what you say, I think I know who he is—he sounds like a junior.”
“What’s that?”
“One of those rich punks the Tijuana cartel started using, mid-nineties or so. Fucking mess. Biggest mistake of the AFO, man—and we had problems with it too. I mean, we just had a cease-fire on the streets. And we had a green light in here on anybody that still did drive-bys, because I don’t want no fucking little kids getting capped. But then these rich putos from both sides of the border, they come in trying to prove some shit. Doing everything too fucking loud.”
“But go back—go back—they get brought on board—”
“Basically it’s like this. The cartel has a nightclub in Tijuana. You know, like Tijuana and San Diego used to be like one big town. So now it’s getting harder to get back and forth. There’s kids with Tijuana connections—lots of money, you know. They belong to the country club and they go to the nice restaurants: It’s a really small town for the people with money. Some of these kids, they basically grow up on the other side. They go to big Catholic schools in San Diego or up north or wherever. Like Saint Augustine. They’re rich—nobody notices when they’re driving bigger cars. They got all kinds of connections down south; and they blend in up in the States. They were perfect for a while. Educated. Greedy. Bored as shit. So the AFO started recruiting these kids out of this nightclub. They’d use them to do all sorts of jobs—some of them just organizing things in various cities; laundering, maybe; some of them would do hits. But they’re crazy. Everything they know is from the movies, man. They took out a judge in Tijuana, some of these rich kids: They shot him twenty-something times in front of his house, and then they ran over him about ten more time with a’ SUV.”
“My daughter would say the worst part is the SUV.”
“We don’t do shit like that. It’s bad business. You want to stay on top—you got to do it like Cali—quiet, cabrón. With honor. These kids are loud and they’re sloppy.”
“Okay, so these juniors—they would have jobs for the AFO?”
“Right. This guy Jonah you talk about—his family already had a business. Right? And he took that over, and he did this angle for them with the stash houses—probably working for the cell head in Los Angeles. If that’s what he was doing, then
he wasn’t a big deal in the organization. But I guess he wanted to be.”
“What would he have to do with the CLCS? Those are your kids, and I saw some of those tats on his guys—”
“He’s paying for some muscle. I mean, they’re around. Those kids will do work for money. They usually tax for us, man, but we can’t control everybody. It’s bad business. The Red Steps and the Logan Heights kids have been doing this AFO shit for years; and it’s moving up north now—that’s a problem. You can always find some muscle in dieciocho. There’s fifty, sixty thousand people under that bandera, man—that’s a small country. If he pays, if he’s good to his people—he’ll find somebody. And maybe they’re loyal. Maybe they’re your problem.”
“But this kid, Jonah—he’s dead. Would they be loyal enough to keep working when the money stopped?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to position, you know—take over his business.”
“Now—yesterday, I go back to check on some stuff out in the desert, just east of here—some old Angels, AB ties, couple of old grass breeders. They were torched. Burned on tires—that kind of thing. And it was meant for us. So if this guy was just somewhere, mid-level, this Jonah kid—what the fuck are these people doing? What do they care about my daughter?”
Rios nodded and thought for a minute. “Listen—I don’t think anybody is going to give a shit that this kid went down. I think somebody was going to have to kill him sooner or later anyway, if he had some side business going. But if they’re coming after your daughter—she must have something.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Does she know where some shipment is? Where it’s going? Where it’s hidden? Something like that. Maybe she don’t even know what she knows. Maybe one of those houses has got all kinds of information in it—like some insurance policy for the kid. This is money, John. These guys aren’t staying after her for anything else.”
“Yeah, okay.” Link thought for a minute, and said, “She might know something.”
“The thing about these juniors—they’re unpredictable, because they don’t fucking know how to do this shit right. They ain’t never done any time. They don’t understand the politics, man. They don’t know how to fight—not for real. Not up close. They don’t know shit but what they seen in video games, and they make mistakes that veteranos like you and me just don’t make.”
Time was running down, and Link nodded at the ground. He asked for Arturo’s gut response: Was the AFO on his trail, or just Jonah’s remaining clique? Rios said, “I can’t tell you for sure, man. Either way, if they want her, they’ll get to her. And she won’t be safe anywhere. Unless you change her, hide her—she’s got to be a good girl. She’s got to stay in the daylight, stay clean, that’s the only way to get away from these people. But this kid, Jonah: He’s lucky to be dead. He was going to get hurt worse than you could imagine. She put that motherfucker out of his misery, if what you say is true. You don’t steal from these people. You just don’t. They took out a whole family in Ensenada. Forty-something people shot and laid out in the street. He was the one with all the secrets to protect. If I had to bet, I’d say it’s somebody close to him that’s on you now. A business partner. They’re the ones with everything to lose.”
Link swatted Rios on the shoulder.
“But one more thing, cabrón. This kid—I know something else about him. A rumor. Did his family get killed?”
Link settled back into his chair. “I don’t know.”
“I think so. His father, man—he was DEA in San Diego. Big time, really fucking crooked. Married this good-looking woman from a big family down in Tijuana. Tore up his kids—fucking animal.”
“No shit?” said Link.
“So anyway, the rumor goes—Jonah, he was always at this nightclub. He was going to school up north or some shit, coming home every weekend. One day, one of the brothers in the AFO gives him the pitch: has the kid in a car, asks him if he’s got any enemies. This is how they invite these kids in. The kids say, yeah, some dude that fucked my girl or said something to me. Couple of enforcers mess the guy up—maybe kill him. Then you owe the organization, and you go to work. So what I hear: Some guys from the AFO ask this kid the question, and Jonah says something like, ‘If I’m going to work for you, I need to clean up my own house.’”
“They killed his old man?”
“And his mother,” said Rios. “He asked them to. He took his little brother, never went back south.”
The CO returned to the room and stood by the door with his loop of keys.
Link stood and said, “Arturo, my man, I owe you another one.”
“You don’t owe me shit, man. Get out of here. Go take care of your kid.”
seventeen
Earlier that morning, after Lydia had watched her father ride away down the busy side streets, she blended in with schoolgirls and shopping families, moving under displays of tinsel and giant Christmas trees beside the front doors. There was something disconcerting about the ashen desert sky, the sandstorms on the horizon, and these Norwegian pines bound up for sale along the walk. Once she was inside, amid canned music and echoing voices, she felt as if it were Christmas on the moon. She had a pocketful of money, and she played and shopped, tried on lipsticks and perfumes. She bought presents for her friends, feeling wistful that she might never see them again. Laughing and causing a confused look from the saleslady, she bought her father a tie with little motorcycles on it. When the saleslady finally asked her what was so funny, Lydia sounded almost as if she were going to cry. She said, “It’s just so horrifying.”
“Isn’t it?” said the saleslady. “Do you want it gift wrapped?”
She bought him a watch and some gloves, from which she assumed he would lop off the fingers, and then she saw a bracelet that she knew Chloe would love, and she bought it, figuring she could send it to her anonymously from the road. Store to store, kiosk to kiosk, she killed a few hours, and by one o’clock she was ensconced in a narrow cineplex movie theater during the first scenes of a holiday blockbuster. When her cell phone began ringing, shadows in the audience began to hiss at her. She leaned into the aisle and answered in a lowered voice, “Hold on, I’m pissing everybody off.” There was a party on the screen, a loud conversation over music, and Lydia couldn’t hear. She put her finger into her ear and trotted toward the exit, gathering her shopping bags. Once beyond the padded door, she heard damp exhales, strained, as if someone were breathing through a straw.
A voice said, “How’s the movie?”
Lydia stopped and stayed in the middle of the long, dim corridor. The voice was deliberate, but mutilated, the words delivered with an altered, half-swallowed wind.
“Disappointing?”
Lydia scanned the hall. To one end were bright bathrooms and rows of doors, sealed like submarine hatches, the sounds of muted violins and helicopter blades escaping.
He said, “You didn’t expect me, I guess.”
For a moment, Lydia thought it was a joke meant to frighten her, but, as he spoke with restraint, hostility, and the trademark condescension—she knew it was too good to be an imitation.
She said, “Jonah, please,” quickening her pace along the red carpet and trying to find someone, anyone to hover alongside. “How did you—okay, okay. So you heard the movie?” she said. “You just heard a movie.”
“Right,” he said. “Good for you. Maybe I’m sitting at home, right? Nothing for you to worry about out there. In Yuma. At the Southgate Mall.”
She pushed out through the glass doors into the main vaulted structure, where children’s voices echoed from a village of candy canes and reindeer below. She avoided the escalator to stay along the second floor, passing into the food court, where there was a lunch crowd, hundreds of voices clamoring in the cove of white tile.
Jonah said, “What did you do to your hair, Lydia? It looks terrible.”
She rotated in a slow circle with the phone pressed to her ear, trying to spot him somewhere in t
he crowds. Lines were forming around every stall and cash register, from drums of simmering fry grease to the bins of precooked Szechuan, and Lydia drifted among them, as if trying to hide herself in a giant, grazing herd. Quietly she said, “Nobody is ever going to hear from me, Jonah. I’m no threat to you.”
“That’s unbelievable. You have no idea what I’ve been through because of you. You’ll see in a minute. I’ll show you. We had three underground doctors, and they grafted skin from all over my body. That’s a sick feeling, to have bites out of my thighs and my calves—so my neck could be patched up. Wedges taken out of me, like I’m eating myself to stay alive.”
Lydia moved farther into the court, traversing the pizza lines to stand beside a revolving slab of lamb. She was flanked on both sides by teenage boys.
Jonah said, “Don’t try to leave. We’ve got guys all around you right now. And if you think I can’t see you in there—let me tell you something: You’ve got the most distinctive walk in this mall.”
He hung up the phone and Lydia moved to a table of teenage girls with teased and sculpted hair. They were dressed gangsta-style, with brown lipstick and heavy eyeliner, and, when Lydia hung beside them, they glanced up at her with knee-jerk offense. Lydia said, “Can I ask you for help with something? There’s a guy here that’s harassing me, and I wonder if you could do me a favor?”
The girls ignored her first, then began making fun of her, until one of them waved theatrically and said, “Bye.”
Putting down her bags, Lydia sat and waited at the end of a crowded lunch table, among children and families, a mother scolding a little boy with ketchup on his hands, and, farther down, two old women hovering silently over giant buckets of soda. Along the aisles, a pack of animated boys moved toward Lydia, one of them carrying a skateboard by its rim and another with his hair glued upward into a splash. From twenty yards, Lydia had considered them dangerous, but once they surrounded her she saw their spotted complexions and heard quavering adolescent voices and felt more comfortable, as if hidden in a landscape she knew better than anywhere else. They pelted her with aggressive comments and asked what she was doing all alone. Did she have a boyfriend? Did she party?