They hugged for what felt like an inappropriate amount of time, and Patrick feared he may have held her there against her will on accident, but when they pulled away, she was still smiling. “Whassup, Patrick, you ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
She looked him up and down and curved the corner of her mouth, clicked her tongue. “We gonna have to do somethin’ about your clothes. But don’t worry, I got you.”
Patrick knew he should have changed, but he had to escape his apartment before he lost the courage to disobey his mother. His shirt was a light blue polo with baggy jeans and a pair of white K-Swiss. Back in Cali, it was perfectly acceptable, but he had a feeling Krystal would say something about it. He didn’t have any brown clothes.
“I can go back and change if—”
“No time, homeboy. My boys are waitin’ on me.”
All of his attention was now on Krystal’s hand which clutched his as she led him down the street. He could feel the sweat start to dampen his palm, and he hoped they were getting to wherever they were going quickly before she felt it.
A tan Lincoln on big, chromed-out rims sat on the corner, deep bass bumping from the trunk. The passenger window was cracked and swirls of dense smoke floated out of it. As they approached, the window rolled down more and a brown face emerged from the darkness of the car, twin plumes of smoke rolling from his nostrils.
The bald-headed Mexican with the tattoo on his head smiled, and when he saw Patrick, he gave him that same up-and-down look Patrick had gotten from the thug at the store. Krystal stepped between them, leaned over and kissed the man. Patrick couldn’t see it, but by the motion of her head and the smacking sounds, he knew.
Krystal dislodged herself from the man, and he opened the door, leaned his seat forward, and she slid in behind him. She poked her head out and waved Patrick over.
Patrick thought about just turning and heading home right then. I can still escape, he thought. I can still get out of this shit.
“What the fuck you waitin’ for, motherfucka,” the man said. “You don’t wanna be testin’ my patience, homie.”
“Patrick, come on,” Krystal said, and widened her eyes.
Patrick finally unglued his feet from the concrete and hurried toward the car, slid in beside Krystal.
The man slammed his seat back, cracking the back of the seat into Patrick’s knees. Small monitors played what looked like a homemade pornography movie on the headrests of the two front seats, but the DJ Screw bumping from the speakers drowned out any sex noise. Patrick’s flesh throbbed and trickled sweat as the Mexican couple fucked on screen just in front of him and Krystal, but she didn’t seem to pay it any mind as the man from the front passenger seat passed a smoldering blunt back to her.
The driver nodded his head, one hand on the steering wheel, eyes on the road. He was someone Patrick didn’t recognize, older than the others, but he had the same traits as the rest: shaved head, facial hair, tattoos scattered over his face, neck, and arms. He rapped along with the music, didn’t even acknowledge Patrick’s presence in the car.
Krystal took a long puff from the blunt, exhaled through her nose, hit it again, and passed it to Patrick. He took it, thought about passing it on without hitting it—didn’t need to feel any more paranoid than he already did—but he didn’t want Krystal or her homeboys to think he was a bitch, or worse yet, a snitch. So he put it to his lips and inhaled, went into a coughing fit and passed the blunt back to Krystal.
“Big Cali boy, huh?” Her voice was just barely audible over the music. She hit the blunt again before passing it back up to the bald guy in the front passenger seat.
Patrick tried to hold his breath to keep from coughing, but he couldn’t hold them back. The driver finally looked back at him and scowled, then burst out laughing as they burned through a red light.
Krystal leaned forward between the two men. “Cut that shit down for a minute.”
The driver did, put the blunt to his lips a few times before tossing the roach out the window.
“Patrick, this is Jaimé,” she said nodding toward the driver. “He’s been a Loco for years, goes back to when it first started.”
Jaimé peered back at Patrick and smiled, his face friendly besides the crown tattooed above his left eyebrow and the three tear drops beneath his right eye. “Que paso, güey? You ready to party, pinché pendejo?” He burst out laughing again, reached back and locked hands with Patrick, keeping his eyes off the road for longer than he probably should have.
Paco snickered. “Yeah, man. Hell yeah!”
Jaimé grinned and nodded, put his hand back on the steering wheel and made a wide right turn.
“This is Simon,” Krystal said, and the bald passenger turned in his seat to face Patrick, but there wasn’t any trace of friendliness there. “Simon, this is my friend, Patrick. He’s cool, a’ight?”
Simon looked Patrick right in the eye, a deep smirk bending his mouth. “You think you hard, dawg? What makes you think you hard enough to roll with us, huh? You know who the fuck we are?”
Patrick didn’t know what to say, so he looked at Krystal for help.
“I’m talkin’ to you, nigga. What, you need a bitch to back you up? I asked you a motherfuckin’ question.”
Jaimé laughed again, kept nodding his head to the beat.
Patrick knew there was no way out of this without saying something, so he sucked it up, stuck his chest out, leaned forward. “I’m new in town, ain’t heard too much about Los Locos. But I’m here now, ain’t I? And you don’t know the shit I’ve done back in Cali. So, hell yeah, I’m hard enough.”
It was a lie. Patrick worried he’d gone too far, but he kept his facial expression hard as Simon looked him up and down again.
Simon shrugged, ran a hand over his head, and turned back to face the front. “Yeah, whatever, motherfucka. We’ll see about that.”
Patrick sat back, the weed working through his system, relaxing him. He felt good about himself, didn’t bitch out like he thought he would. Krystal patted his knee and smiled at him, then her eyes darted to the monitor where the man was smashing the woman from behind, both of their faces twisted with ecstasy. When she looked back at Patrick, she bit her lip, raised one eyebrow, but then just sat back.
Patrick didn’t know if he was just high, but it sure seemed to him she was trying to tell him something, but with her man sitting just in front of them, he didn’t know exactly what she wanted from him. The last thing Patrick wanted to do was piss this guy off even more, so he just looked out his own window and bobbed his head to the pounding beat.
Jaimé made another sharp turn, and the street was alive with movement. Cars with music blaring from their speakers, Mexican men and women hanging out the windows, lined the concrete. The red light from their taillights bled over their surroundings. Simon rolled his window down, hung his torso from the window, and shouted something in Spanish. The people walking by shouted back, and they all threw up signs with their hands. Patrick caught glimpses of a few pistols tucked behind waistlines, and brown bandanas were everywhere.
The men and women who walked the streets, and even the cars, were, for the most part, the same. Ages and body shape varied, but the men all seemed to have either shaved heads or bald fades, not a single one without visible tattoos; the women had long hair, dark lips, thin eyebrows, and hoop earrings. And everyone wore brown. Most hands were wrapped around beer bottles, and most lips had either cigarettes or blunts clamped between them.
Jaimé parked the car crooked on the sidewalk and cut the engine off. A chubby girl walked up, her shirt a couple sizes too small and her tits nearly choking her, and bent over to peer into the car, smiled in at them. “Ay, que paso?”
Jaimé chuckled as he reached for her, pulled her face to his and slid his tongue into her mouth. She let him, let out a muffled giggle as he reached up and massaged her br
east. They unlocked faces with a wet smack, and Jaimé leaned out and slapped her on her big ass before she walked off, then turned to Patrick and guffawed. “Welcome to the party, esé. Let’s get you fucked up.”
Patrick laughed as Jaimé exited the car, lifted up the seat so Krystal could get out. Simon opened his door, stepped out, and slammed it before Patrick could make a move toward it, so Patrick slid across and followed Krystal instead.
The air was thick with car exhaust, weed smoke, and spilt beer. Men and women shouted as they greeted each other, clapped hands, hugged. Spanish words were exchanged, and Patrick felt he must be the only one there that didn’t speak a lick of Spanish.
I’m the only one here who’s not Mexican.
Simon strolled across the street toward an obese man in a brown hoodie who leaned up against a big dark brown SUV. Simon locked hands with him, and they simultaneously looked toward Patrick, then shared a laugh as the big man lit a fat blunt.
“Hey, pocho.”
Patrick turned to find Krystal smiling at him, holding up a brown t-shirt. “It ain’t much, but you gotta get that blue shit off your back. It’s Jaimé’s, but he’s about your size. Put it on.”
Patrick was glad to see the shirt. Being the only Asian at the party was bad enough, though he knew nobody there could notice. But he was the only one wearing anything but brown, so he ripped his shirt away, tossed it into Jaimé’s car, but before he could take the brown shirt from Krystal, she slid the collar over his head herself. When her hands touched the bare skin of his chest, his breath caught in his throat.
“Let me see.” She held his arm as she slid his right hand through the sleeve, then the left. Her hands smoothed out the cotton over his chest and stomach, then she took a step back and inspected. “Much better.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, come on, man. Let’s do this thing.”
She held out her hand, and Patrick hesitated, looked over his shoulder at Simon, but the man was talking with a group of girls, had his arm around the neck of one of them. Patrick shrugged, took Krystal’s hand, and they walked toward the party.
The party was at a house, but they walked stra’ight into the backyard. Los Locos covered the property. Some of the thugs hung out in the front, sitting on the porch, others in the street. The front door was wide open, and Patrick could see the house was full to capacity as well. Deep bass rumbled its walls, and just inside, a group of topless girls danced and rubbed their bodies for the circle of men surrounding them. He caught glimpses of neighbors peeking from between blinds, parted curtains, but he doubted any of them would be making any noise complaints.
The backyard was swarming with thugs, all in brown, all smoking and drinking and cussing. There was a stereo system in the yard too, the bass thumping Patrick in the chest.
“Brown and proud, motherfucka. Brown and proud, motherfucka. If you wanna represent, then get loud, motherfucka.”
“That’s Jesús,” she said pointing to the stereo. “That motherfucker goes hard, right?”
Patrick nodded, glanced at all the brown men and women, caught more than one set of eyes staring at him.
Krystal had her hands in the air as they walked deeper into the party, hugging every person she saw, giving dap to others. She danced and nodded her head, Patrick walking behind her, feeling stiff and awkward. “You’ll meet Jesús later. He’s El Rey, so you ain’t got a choice but to meet him.”
Before Patrick could respond, Krystal backed her ass up into his lap and started bouncing it to the music, grinding herself against him. She ran her fingers through her hair and swayed her body. Patrick’s eyes bounced all around to the surrounding members of Los Reyes Locos as they watched, and reached out for Krystal’s hand. “Can we get a drink or something?”
She spun, put her arms on his shoulders and continued to dance while he stood there like a petrified wooden statue. Her head shook again and she rolled her eyes. “Shit, man, you’re such a dork.” But she turned, her hand clamped tighter on his, and led him deeper into the yard toward a congregation of more people.
Four plastic trash bins lined the back fence, each with a keg inside, and though Patrick wasn’t much of a drinker, he was relieved to escape that awkward situation. It was already bad enough that he didn’t know how to dance, but to have to try and do it in front of an audience that probably wanted to stomp him into the dirt made it that much worse.
A chorus of shouts erupted from Patrick’s right, and he turned to find a group of men standing around a small fenced off area where two pitbulls had each other in bloody death grips. The dogs rolled around in the mud created by the blood pouring from their bite wounds. The men laughed, shouted, and pointed.
“Here,” Krystal said, handing him a blue plastic cup full of foamy beer.
Patrick took it, but still watched as the dogs thrashed. The smaller of the two had a flap of torn neck flesh dangling from its body, and every time the bigger dog shook its head, the flap opened and closed and poured blood. The fight became a slaughter then, and Patrick couldn’t make himself turn away. Money exchanged hands between the men there, along with cussing and shoves.
“Don’t tell me you’re some kind of animal activist or some shit,” Krystal said. “Pits ain’t good for nothin’ else.”
Patrick didn’t consider himself an activist in any way, but seeing the big dog pin the smaller one down, the left side of the small dog’s face now clamped in the bigger dog’s jaws, sent tremors up his spine. The big dog lowered its head, pulled, then jerked to the right, tearing the flesh away, then chewed on it, thrashed its head and shook blood everywhere.
There was a collective, “Oooohhhh.”
The small dog lay on the ground, its leg twitching, blood pooling all around it. It wasn’t dead because Patrick could still hear its whining, but the big dog lunged at it again, and now Patrick turned his head, gulped his beer down., and tried to ignore the wet tearing and growling from behind him.
Krystal looked at him, as if waiting for him to say something, then took a long drink of her beer. “What you think, huh? Think you can hang, pocho?”
Patrick looked around at all the people, all getting fucked up, and with so many unfamiliar faces, every one of them intimidating, he just felt overwhelmed.
“You’ll meet everyone eventually. Be a waste of time to start introducing you around, know what I’m sayin.’ ”
He just nodded, sipped his beer.
“Don’t look so scared, man. You ain’t the only new one here tonight.” She elbowed him in the side, then pointed into the crowd, but Patrick couldn’t pick out who she was pointing at. “Most of them are members’ cousins and shit, but we always get recruits, always buildin.’ “
Patrick gave the crowd another look, and shook his head. “Look, Krystal. I don’t think—”
“Krystal,” came a gruff voice from behind him. “What you doin’ over here, girl?”
“Nothin’, just showin’ my friend around.”
The man stepped into view, grabbed Krystal by the ass, pulled her close, and kissed her. He turned to Patrick and smiled. “This the one you was tellin’ me about?”
“Yeah. Patrick, this is Jesús.”
The man’s eyes widened at the mention of his name. He wore a brown, checkered shirt, unbuttoned, showing off the tattoos on his torso. The face of a scowling Mexican man covered his stomach, and above that, in Old English lettering, was Los Reyes Locos Por Vida with a gold crown on his chest.
Patrick tried to wipe any physical evidence of jealousy off his face. The man had hard eyes, and they drilled holes into the courage Patrick had managed to build up during the car ride. But then Jesús smiled, reached out and patted Patrick on the shoulder.
“Estamos contentos de que estés aquí. Estas listo?”
Krystal kind of smirked. “Él es un pocho, güey.”
Jesús sucked on his t
eeth, scratched his chin, and looked Patrick square in the eye. Patrick stared back, did his best to show no sign of fear. Krystal wrapped her arms around Jesús’ stomach, ran her nails across his skin as she stood on her toes and whispered something. Jesús smiled and nodded.
“Don’t worry, homie. All you need is heart and loyalty to be a Loco. You got that, Patrick?”
No! I just want to go home!
“Yeah… yeah, I do.”
“That’s good, homie.” Jesús strutted toward the stereo, cut the music off, and stood on the table. The party went silent, all eyes on him. Nobody even dared take a sip of their beers as they watched Jesús raise his arms.
Patrick glanced toward Krystal, but she had her attention on the man she called El Rey.
“Los Reyes Locos!” Jesús shouted. He tore his shirt off, slapped his chest repeatedly.
“Los Reyes Locos!” the men and women shouted together. “Los Reyes Locos por vida!”
Krystal had chanted right along with the others, then her gaze darted to Patrick and a smile pulled her face tight.
Patrick stood right in front of Jesús, and he wanted to get out of the way so everyone wasn’t looking directly his way, but he didn’t dare move. Then Jesús’ eyes shot down to him and he grinned.
“Looks like we got some young blood here tonight, ay? I want all recruits standing right here in front of me.” He made an L with his hand, pointed to the crown tattoo with the finger of his other hand. “You ain’t inked, then get your little ass up here.”
Patrick stood his ground, shifted from foot to foot and rubbed his hands. He glared at Krystal, wanted to pummel her at the moment.
She never said anything about this…
To walk away, or run away like he wanted to do, certainly wasn’t an option at this point. These people expected something from him now, and he shuddered at what that might be.
Two other boys and one girl stepped from the crowd. They looked sixteen, maybe seventeen, and they strutted across the yard and stood with military stillness beside Patrick.
Mutt eBook Page 4