“Tell me about it,” joked Leda, but her tone was snide. Incredibly, it seemed to be directed more toward herself than any of us, or the situation at hand. My, my, wasn’t she full of surprises today…
“I wonder what she has to talk to you about, though. What would get her so riled up that she’d put herself out there like that, you know? She has totally opened herself to such a degree that she is an easy target. Why would she do that? And why come to you of all people?” It was Katie. I was a glad for the change of topic. I really didn’t want to risk a rehashing of Leda begging me to fuck her just yet. As intriguing as it seemed upon the surface, what rested below was too weird to think about, in depth, at the time. It was too soon for my taste.
“She said she wanted to talk to me, because it would be the last thing anyone would expect… or maybe she had said ‘suspect’. I can’t remember,” I offered, but even that really didn’t answer any of my cousin’s questions.
“And that’s what makes it all the more weird, Estefan. Who the fuck is she hiding from and why?” Katie slapped her knees in frustration.
“You know, that’s a pretty god damned good question now that you mention it,” said Leda, appearing to realize the problem from a different vantage.
“You don’t think this is all more Muto bullshit, do you?”
We all turned to look at Sandy, remembering Leda’s rough treatment of her mere minutes ago over the very same subject.
“You think she’s been sick?” I asked of the group, but my query was more for my girlfriend.
She closed her eyes and got very still. The rest of us frowned in confusion. What the hell was she doing? was the silent group inquiry.
The silence continued for a few more heartbeats and I was about to say something when Ramona spoke.
“She’s too far away, I can’t tell.”
“What?” I asked her.
“Ramona, what are you talking about?”
My girlfriend gazed at Sandy with a small smile dancing across her lips.
Then it hit me… it’s her “power”! She can access her ability to see into others at will now! Holy fuck that was fast!
The house phone rang suddenly and scared the fucking crap out of each and every one of us.
Jacob! I thought and made a dash for the phone at the corner of the room closest to portal that led to the staircase.
“Jeya,” I answered in my deepest tone, already knowing who it was.
“No deeeeck, you’re not a gansta from the hood. You’re just a skinny pendejo with the world’s most sexy fine cousin, bitch!” It was Jacob alright.
“Yeah Katie is indeed a knockout,” I reposted knowing what he really meant.
He laughed for a second or two, then stopped abruptly. “Hell ya, cuz, that girl is tight everywhere – tits, ass, face… Hey, when you gonna put in a good word for me, so I can sample that pussy!”
Whoop-dee-doo, it was Jake alright – stupid, dipshit Jake.
“Aaaah, let’s see… probably never.”
“Ah shit, man that’s cold blooded.”
“No, it’s more like common sense.” I turned back toward the girls, seeing looks that varied from resignation to indignation. They all knew Jacob. They all knew precisely what he was talking about. I shrugged. More than one of them glanced away, revolted.
“So, fucknuts, what did you find out?” I asked, certain if I didn’t hurry the conversation along, the girls were going to snatch the phone from me and take matters into their own hands.
“About what?”
“Fuck Jake, have you been hitting the bong hard already?”
“Naw, man, I haven’t been high since you sent me on this fucking wild goose chase…” He trailed off as he slowly but surely began to recall why he had called in the first place. Then he chuckled like a tween. “Ah fuck, man, sorry about that.”
Tool!
“So… what did you find out?”
“Yeah man, this shit is pretty fucked up,” began my recalcitrant cousin. “It seems that the nice and helpful yard monitor at Lisa’s school has a bit of habit.”
I frowned. “Why do you mean by that?”
“Well, I went to the same dealer I went to when I went to buy the shit for you and Katie the other day. He and I go way back. Anyhow, I asked him if he would do me a solid and snoop around to see if there was anyone out there buying up drugs that usually doesn’t. He looked at me all suspicious at first, and asked me what the fuck for. Which I had already figured he’d ask, so I told him that someone close to me got pinched by some stoolie and that my family wanted a little payback.”
Jacob paused to take a breath, then: “He smiled real big, because he liked what I said. He mumbled something about just making sure and how he hated all the fucking NIA finks around the neighborhood. He says they’re fucking up his business.
“So, I asked him if he was cool with looking under a few rocks for me. He said he didn’t have to, because just a few hours before, one of his regulars had bought a whole slew of shit from him – weed, “x”, acid, even some old school ‘ludes. When I asked him why that was such a big deal, he said because… and these are his words, Eff… he said, ‘that lunch lady barely has enough money to buy a nickel bag and now she’s got enough cash to buy $3,000 worth of shit, come on.
“I said, ‘lunch lady, why do you call her that?’
“And he’s like, ‘cuz that’s what she does, man. She works at the school for retards they got on Aldama Street.’
“I was quiet for a while and he seems to notice. He asks me if that’s who my family is looking for. I looked up at him and his expression changes and shit, and he’s like, ‘you guys are going fuck her up, huh?’
“I just nodded. I guess I was pretty mad, Eff. I mean, Lisa is a little hard to be around sometimes, you know, but she’s never hurt anyone, man. She doesn’t deserve what happened to her,” he finished, almost apologetically, like he’d done something wrong by showing too much emotion to his drug-dealing acquaintance.
“So you thinking what I’m thinking, then?” I asked an edge to my tone as well.
“Yeah man, that fucking lunch lady sold out Lisa for the Discovery Cash. Because she needed some liquid funds to satisfy her habit, bro, so she turned in Lisa, marked her as a suspected Muto… That fucking pisses me off!” If Jacob was nothing more than an idiot at times, he was a loyal idiot. He’d known Lisa since she was a little girl. We all had, having grown up in the same neighborhood.
“I guess I will be meeting with Tirza then,” I mumbled my thoughts aloud.
Around me the girls all moved a bit closer; their curiosity peeked by my change of heart.
“What’s that?” asked Jacob.
I quickly told him about all of Tirza’s messages and our phone call and my thoughts on the matter – both before and after his call to my house.
“Fuck, cuz, you think that’s smart? If she won’t tell you over the phone and now we have a fairly good idea that her sister was turned in as a Muto suspect. You might be getting yourself into even deeper shit than you ever have before.” Jacob was still mad, but I could hear genuine concern in his voice for me.
I guess there’s a deep seeded reason why I hung out with him so much, because in a pinch you could always count on him. He was what we used to call back then, “cool people.”
“Jake, I’m already in deep shit, man,” I replied, looking over at the girls.
“How so, bro?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.” Like Tirza I wasn’t going to risk anything by talking over the phone about what had happened to me, to Katie, to Leda and to my girlfriend. The NIA might suspect that Lisa was a Muto, but we were Mutos, and we all knew it. “Are you coming over?”
He didn’t hesitate in the least. “Naw, cuz… so far all of this shit is just hearsay. I’m gonna stay on these streets a bit longer and see if I can turn some of it into fact. We’ll meet up later, maybe tomorrow and see… what’s the haps…”
Wow, I thought, J
acob’s really fucking pissed! “What’s the haps” was our code for “dropping elbows”, which could be loosely translated from street-talk to kicking someone’s ass in a royal fashion… by whatever means available.
“We gonna take it that far, Jacob?” I asked, merely for clarity on the matter.
“If we have to… you know The Uncles will help, those crazy vatos are always down to fuck somebody up,” was his subdued retort.
“Yeah, but that usually involves guns and shit, Jacob. They might be related to us, but they always take shit to the head.” I was doubtful whenever it came to my father’s two surviving full-blooded brothers. They’d been in and out of prison for more years than I had been alive and were still heavy hitters in the old Barrio. So much so, when Jacob had mention that “our family was looking for someone”, we both knew his drug dealing contact would take that to mean The Uncles wanted to find someone. We knew no one turned them away empty handed. Their rule was simple - give up what you know and it’s all good. The threat was there, though, it was merely never voiced out loud.
“Well, let me hammer more of this shit down and we’ll decide later, ok?”
“Ok, man, talk to you later.”
“Later,” was all he said and the line went dead. He hadn’t even called me a dick, which was his calling card.
Yeah, he was pissed.
“So what did he have to say, Effy? Nothing good, I presume from the way you look,” wondered Katie, coming around the coffee table to stand before me. Her hand reached to stroke my cheek before she could stop it.
Over her shoulder, I watched Leda frown slightly at that. I knew she was beginning to realize how close Katie and I were. I could see she knew boundaries had been crossed. Katie was just too intimate with me sometimes.
I breathed explosively, pushing those thoughts aside, because as this day wore on that particular topic was becoming ever more irrelevant. “He is fairly sure that Lisa was sold out for the Discovery Cash.”
“Fuck!” yelled Ramona. I knew it wasn’t just outrage over Lisa being seized by the government, there was some real angst in there. Because, now I would be dead set on meeting with Tirza, and that was something she definitely didn’t want to happen.
“Damn,” muttered my cousin and half-turned from me. Her thoughts making her go inside herself.
Leda walked closer toward us, stopping a few feet away, putting a hand on her hip. “You are not going alone, Estefan. We are all going with you.”
From the cast of her face, I knew there was absolutely no changing her mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Chapter 33 ~
(Summer – 2018)
An Uneasy Decision
“I agree, Steve, there is no other way I can accept you going to meet with her, unless all of us are there with you,” stated Ramona, after she’d recovered some of her composure. “After everything we’ve been through together I think it’s only fair.”
I sighed in total agreement. Things were complicated enough already. I certainly didn’t want to make the situation any worse by letting my newfound abilities fuck them up even more. “I better call her and get this over with then,” I announced, which made every single female face about me grimace.
“Right now, Estefan, do you have to do it right now, this very moment?” asked Ramona. Her voice was neutral, but her eyes were flashing.
I looked over at her. She hadn’t come any closer. She just stood there with both hands of her hips, her head tilted toward me, extenuating her point.
“Why put it off? What for? You know and I know what for, I have to call her now and agree to meet with her. After what Jacob told me, I have too. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell her what I knew and something bad came about, because I didn’t speak.”
“You think it’s going to make a difference, though Eff?” It was Leda. This surprised me, because she usually stayed out of conversations between me and my girlfriend, specifically, the intense ones. She noticed my quizzical expression and went on. “For Lisa, I mean… There’s really not a lot we can do for her. For all we know, she might already be –.”
“Leda, shut up!” yelled Sandy. “Just don’t say it!”
Leda’s eyes widened at her friend for moment, and then hardened. “I was only… I mean, I didn’t mean to be mean. I just -.”
Now it was my turn to cut her off. “Everyone deserves to know the truth. No matter how hopeless…”
Ramona breathed heavily through clenched teeth, moved toward the couch and abruptly sat. She staring at the TV, purposefully, rigid with fear and anger.
Leda shrugged and nodded turning toward Sandy, mouthing a silent “sorry” to which Sandy smiled. It was a worn, tired version of the brilliant one she usually flashed.
“Imma call her from the kitchen where it is quieter,” I declared, pulling my cell phone from one of my pockets as I made my way out of the room.
From behind, I heard Ramona say, “Go with him Katie, please.”
Maybe she hadn’t meant for me to hear or maybe she had. I didn’t know and didn’t care. This was about Lisa, and not about the fact, at one time, I had loved Tirza very much.
I walked into the kitchen with the cell to my ear, having accessed Tirza’s contact information, which dialed her number automatically.
She answered on the second ring.
Fuck, she had been waiting alright.
“Estefan, oh my god, I didn’t expect to hear from you so quickly. I thought, Ramona would… well, you know delay you or something,” she said in a single breath.
“Where do you want to do this?” I asked, not really in the mood to mince words or bandy about various topics. Even though the day wasn’t particularly old, I was rapidly losing my fight against the mental fatigue, besieging every side of my consciousness.
A short, stunned silence ensued.
“So, you’ll meet with me then?” she asked smally, sounding more like herself with me than she had in many, many months.
“Yes, conditionally, but, yes, I will meet you all the same.” It was evasive, but I wanted her to ask why, so I could explain what the girls had decided beforehand. You know, get that shit out of the way.
“Conditionally…?” she repeated, opening the very door I wanted her to open.
“It cannot be alone, Tirza. Ramona won’t allow it to happen any other way,” I stated clearly. “She agreed to let us meet, but under no circumstances can we meet in private.” I chuckled apologetically into the tiny microphone on the cell. “Sorry,” I added as an afterthought.
Another spell of utter quiet from her followed. I knew she was thinking, weighing what I had told her against her own thoughts on the matter.
“I guess that will have to do,” she said in a rush. “At this point, it really doesn’t make a difference, right?”
I shrugged into the phone, but stayed quiet as Katie come to the threshold of the kitchen, leaning with her shoulder against the door frame. I saw her smile thinly at my glance. I knew she didn’t like being someone else’s babysitter. But, we both knew how jealous Ramona could get at times. The fact she hadn’t come herself, spoke volumes to the changes going on within her.
“So, when and where do you wanna meet?” I queried, looking away from my cousin.
“I don’t know…” Her way of letting me know she was thinking. “How ‘bout tomorrow at the Highland Park Rec. Center?” she offered only moments later.
“Sounds good,” I began, “Does eleven o’clock work for you?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect.”
“Okay, then, Tirza. It’s settled. Take care until I see you, ok?” I tried to keep any sort of emotion out of my tone, and just barely managed to do so.
“Yeah, yeah, you too… Oh and Estefan…?”
“Yeah?” I replied with a question.
“Thanks for meeting with me, really, as a friend – it means a lot. Thanks.”
I heard her voice on the verge of cracking, but I wasn’t entirely sur
e. Maybe, I had imagined it. Instead, I let it pass. “No problem, Tirza.”
“See you tomorrow, Effy.”
“Bye,” I said as I heard her say, “K”, and we cut the connection simultaneously.
I gazed over at Katie with a half-hearted smile. She returned it.
“Looks like it’s all set for tomorrow at eleven, at the Recreation Center,” I informed her, putting the phone away and walked up to her.
She looked up into my eyes, her own suddenly filled with pride, narrowing. “You handled that perfectly, cousin,” she muttered, her voice husky.
I let my orbs search the hazel cast of hers and unearthed precisely what I had expected when I heard the tone of her voice. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?” I prompted feeling a devilish sort of wedge develop along my lips.
I soooo needed a flirty moment at the time!
She rumbled with chuckles, in the hollow of her chest. “You know it…”
“You think we should risk it?” I suggested, coming closer.
She let her head bump against the frame of the entryway, which made her body arch slightly toward me, inviting. Her breasts pushed against the fabric of the top she was wearing. “Aaaah, Eff, you don’t know how much I would love to feel your lips against mine, even for a second…”
“…But…,” I continued for her.
“…We can’t take the risk.” She seemed to deflate before her, though her nipples were rock hard and she squeezed her thighs together.
My little cousin wanted some… Heh, heh, heh…
“Tonight then, Kat,” I countered. “Tonight, ok?”
“Absolutely.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t resist. I quickly reached around her and grabbed her tight ass, and gave it a firm pinch. Then, I forced myself to stop and walked passed her back toward the TV room, as if nothing had happened.
“Argh, you bad boy!” she called after me, but only loud enough for the two of us to hear.
I laughed into my hand, crossed the hallway and walked into the TV room. I found Leda standing off to one side, while Sandy - having joined Ramona upon the couch – was speaking to her, fervently. Though I stood at the portal of the room, I could tell she was encouraging my girlfriend, trying to lift her spirits over Tirza. There was no mistaking Ramona’s sulking face in combination with Sandy’s gestures - movements that told me she was bullet-pointing. She was attempting to convey anything positive to the girl before her.
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