Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  “Where’s Aunt Carmen?” she screams. “Where’s Aunt Carmen?”

  “I’m taking you to her,” Thacker says, and belts her into the truck.

  21

  LUZ SPOTS THE CASTLE FROM THE FREEWAY, AND IT LOOKS EXACTLY like she remembers it from when she and Alejandro used to go there on double dates with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. She tells Malone to get off at the next exit and directs him to the entrance to the parking lot.

  “Don’t go in,” she says. “Let me out here.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine if I drop you off,” Malone says.

  “He said to come alone.”

  Malone eases to the curb, keeps the engine running. Luz reaches into the backpack and pulls out the silver-plated .45.

  “Take this,” she says.

  “Maybe you should keep it,” Malone says. “Just in case.”

  “I don’t want it,” Luz says. “It’s bad luck, and there isn’t going to be any ‘just in case’ this time.”

  Malone takes the gun from her. He turns it so that it catches the neon of the sign overhead and flashes red, yellow, and blue.

  “Fancy,” he says.

  “He had it made special,” Luz says. “You can get a lot of money for it.”

  Malone points to the engraving on the ivory grip, a skeleton wearing a hooded robe. “What’s this?” he asks.

  “Santa Muerte,” Luz replies. “She’s like a saint for narcos. They pray to her.”

  “Saint Death?”

  “Like I told you,” Luz says as she opens the door and steps outside. “Bad luck.”

  “Don’t forget this,” Malone says, grabbing the phone off the seat and handing it to her.

  “Thanks,” Luz says.

  “Don’t worry,” Malone says. “Everything’s going to be fine.” The flashing lights of the sign claw at his face, and his smile is a little white lie.

  Luz can’t think of anything to end with this time. She closes the door and steps away from the truck, waits to make sure Malone drives off. When he turns the corner, she starts walking across the parking lot.

  It’s a confusing bustle of vehicles and people. Minivans disgorge swarms of children who carom off one another as they race to see who can get to the castle first, and teenagers slouch in their cars flamboyantly smoking cigarettes and courting through open windows.

  A loud kissing sound from the shadows spins Luz around. Two boys perched on the tailgate of a Toyota pickup eye her, one of them tugging at the crotch of his baggy jeans. The little pendejos are lucky she gave the gun to Malone. With a disdainful toss of her head, she continues on her way, the boys’ laughter quickly drowned out by the sputtering of go-karts circling the track.

  Luz is rocked by a flood of familiar sights and sounds when she enters the castle. The dusty suits of armor flanking the door, the swaying shoulders of the boys hunched over games in the arcade, the radio blaring Today’s Hottest Hits. She passes the bench where she and Alejandro used to sit, his lips tickling her ear and making her laugh, and the snack bar, where the same pale, bug-eyed woman still doles out popcorn and nachos.

  Walking out to the golf course, she keeps her eyes open for a man in a Border Patrol hat and a pretty little girl. They’re nowhere in sight, so she leaves the castle behind and sets off down a narrow path that winds among the holes. The course has a number of hills and gullies, and the candy-colored lights play tricks. A child with something familiar in her face attracts her attention, but as she moves closer, a woman calls to the girl, who skips off to join her family.

  Luz makes two quick circuits of the course, from the grinning purple dragon to the haunted house, from the freeway to the jungle waterfall, and doesn’t see Isabel or the border patrolman anywhere. Worried that she misunderstood the instructions, she returns to the castle and scours the arcade, then pushes through the heavy glass doors that lead out to the go-karts, where the stink of gasoline and burning rubber poison the hot air and cranky little cars rattle around an oval track beneath fiery, moth-swarmed floodlights.

  There’s no sign of the pair out there, either, and Luz starts to feel a little frantic. As she turns to reenter the castle, eyes darting wildly, the backpack clutched to her chest, a teenaged attendant in grease-stained coveralls regards her with suspicion.

  “Can I help you?” he says.

  “I’m looking for my daughter.”

  “Is she lost?”

  Luz ignores the kid and pulls open the door to the arcade, ready to search the whole complex again. Only then does she notice that the phone, in the pocket of her hoodie, is vibrating, has been for who knows how long, the ringer having somehow been turned off.

  “Hello?” she says. “Hello?”

  “Hola, guapa,” the border patrolman croons.

  “Where are you?” Luz says. “Where’s Isabel?”

  “Are you at the golf course?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Like you wanted.”

  The border patrolman chuckles. “You know what I love?” he says. “A hot chick that follows orders.”

  “Tell me how to get this money to you,” Luz says.

  “Me and Isabel are checking into a room at the Best Western on Lincoln and Euclid. Think you can find it?”

  “I’ll take a taxi. What room?”

  “Tell you what: stay in the parking lot when you get here, and I’ll be watching for you.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” Luz says.

  “Goody,” the border patrolman says. “I can’t wait.”

  Back on the streets.

  Jerónimo thought he’d be on his way to TJ by now, mission accomplished, but here he is cruising through Compton again, trying to remember the way to Carmen’s house. He’s going back to see if he can squeeze more information out of the woman. His hope is that she knows more than she let on before. Maybe Luz told her where she was headed next. Maybe she left a number. He’ll get rough this time, hold her daughter’s hand over the stove if that’s what it takes.

  He sees the sign, CHILDREN PLAYING, and recognizes the van. By the time he pulls over to the curb, the dogs are at the gate, waiting for him to show himself. So no sneaking around back. He’ll have to sweet talk his way through the front door and bring the hammer down once Carmen lets him inside.

  He steps out of the Honda, and the dogs go nuts. At first glance it looks like nobody’s home, but he can see a glow behind the drawn curtains. My wife, my kids—he rehearses his plea as he moves up the walkway to the dark porch. The white flowers clinging to a trellis there give off a sweet smell.

  Knocking on the door, he stares at the tiny circle of light shining through the peephole. The light disappears for a second, returns, goes dark again. He hears whispers inside. A bare bulb comes on overhead, and the door flies open. He sees a man first, some guy in work clothes, then a shotgun pointed at his head.

  “Wait,” he squawks. “Hold on.”

  He starts to reach for his pistol, but something smarter wins out, and he finds himself backing off the porch, hands in the air.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  The man keeps coming. Jerónimo sprints for the Honda and dives behind it just as the guy pulls the trigger. Jerónimo hears the BOOM of the gun and the pop of breaking glass. Red-hot pellets burrow into his face and neck. He drops to the street.

  The shot echoes through the neighborhood. Jerónimo presses his belly to the pavement and peers under the car, trying to track the gunman. The curb blocks his view, so he gets up and looks over the hood. The guy is standing on the lawn, staring at the smoke curling out of the barrel of the gun like he can’t believe it actually went off. Jerónimo opens the car door and scrambles inside.

  The windows on the passenger side are gone. Pebbles of shattered glass glint on the seat. Jerónimo gets the car running and hits the gas. The Honda slowly picks up speed, and the wind whistling through the broken windows sounds like a distant siren. The man on the lawn points the gun but doesn’t
fire again. He must have used up all his guts the first time.

  When he’s sure nobody’s following him, Jerónimo checks the damage to his face. The rearview mirror reveals a bloody constellation on the left side. The worst wound is below his eye, where a pellet gouged a deep gash as it rode the curve of the cheekbone. Adrenaline dulls the pain for now, but he knows he’ll be hurting soon.

  He pulls into the parking lot of a Rite Aid and wipes away the blood with a dirty rag from the floor of the car. He keeps the rag pressed to his face when he walks into the store. The security guard up front is playing a game on his phone, doesn’t give him a second look. Jerónimo wanders the aisles in a daze, tasting metal and feeling the buzz of the fluorescent lights inside his eyeballs.

  When he finds the bandages back by the pharmacy counter, the array of choices confounds him. He grabs a box of Band-Aids and a bottle of peroxide. A skinny black girl approaches as he’s searching for tweezers. At first he thinks she works here, is coming over to ask if he needs help, but she’s not wearing a nametag or a smock, and her eyes are crazy bright.

  “Hey,” she says with a nervous glance at the pharmacy counter. “You got any pills you want to sell?”

  “Huh?” Jerónimo grunts.

  “Oxy or Vicodin,” she says, one hand scratching at her throat, nails bitten ragged. “Anything like that?”

  Begging dope in a drugstore. Fucking junkies always creating their own bad luck. Got to stay as far from that kind of stupidity as possible.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” Jerónimo says.

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” the girl drawls.

  “I said move along.”

  Jerónimo knocks a pair of tweezers off the display while snatching one for himself. The girl doesn’t follow when he heads up front. The cashier is black, too, her hair piled in thick orange curls on top of her head. Jerónimo pays her with the money Looney gave him, gets back three bucks in change. The cashier acts like she doesn’t see the bloody rag.

  He hurries out of the store. The passenger side of the Honda is freckled with tiny holes from the shotgun pellets. Looks like somebody went to town on it with an ice pick. Jerónimo collapses in the driver’s seat and lowers his forehead to the steering wheel. His face is on fire now, and he can’t think straight around the rhythmic pulsing. Best to go back to the motel, get his shit together, then figure out what to do next.

  “Do you have any kings available?” Thacker asks the desk clerk at the Best Western. The clerk is a Mexican kid who must be new on the job, the way he pauses before each step of the check-in process, as if reviewing it in his head.

  “A king?” the kid says.

  “Yeah, it’s just me,” Thacker says. “I have my granddaughter with me now, but her mom’s coming for her shortly.”

  Thacker doesn’t intend to be in the room for more than an hour, but he wants it to seem as if he’s staying all night, like any other guest. A little too cautious, maybe, but he’s doing everything he can to get out of town without making any ripples.

  “Let me check,” the kid says.

  Isabel is asleep in the truck, parked in front of the office. She passed out as soon as they left the arcade. Thacker can see the top of her head through the window. He picks up a brochure somebody left on the counter. The Hollywood Wax Museum. The figures in the photos look more like department store mannequins decked out in wigs and mustaches than the movie stars they’re supposed to be. Pretty pitiful.

  The clerk lets Thacker pay the room deposit in cash and then hands over a keycard. He points out the room on a map and where Thacker should park. Thacker drives down to the shorter leg of the L-shaped complex and finds a spot, but as he’s opening his door, a family spills out of a room on the first floor and begins to load into a van parked next to the truck, blocking his way.

  “Sorry,” the redheaded, sunburned daddy calls to him. Thacker gives him a wave and a smile, whispering “Fuck you” through gritted teeth.

  The Disney parks are only a couple of miles away, Knott’s a couple more, so the motel is full of rowdy kids and harried adults. That’s why Thacker chose it, thinking that he and Isabel would blend right in. When the last child has climbed into the van and daddy pulls away and heads for the entrance, Thacker gets out of the Dodge. Walking around to the passenger side, he takes the seatbelt off Isabel and carries her up to their second-floor room.

  He opens the door and lays her on the bed. She doesn’t stir when he lifts her head to slide a pillow under it. After checking the bathroom and closet for bogeymen, he grabs a cup to spit in and steps outside to wait for Luz.

  The walkway overlooks the motel’s swimming pool. Lit from below, it’s a quivering rectangle of the palest blue. A dozen children splash in the water, sending up reflections that wriggle across Thacker’s face as he places a bit of dip in his mouth and leans forward to rest his elbows on the railing. He can see the whole parking lot from here, all the way back to the office and the IHOP across the road. The catbird seat. The kids’ shouts resound into nonsense as they bounce around the motel.

  “Marco!” “Polo!” Back and forth they go.

  Three teenage girls leave the pool together, and the gate in the fence that surrounds the deck slams shut behind them. Thacker watches them scuff across the parking lot in their flip-flops and feels his breathing change. They’re carrying towels but don’t use them to cover themselves as they bounce up the stairs in their bikinis.

  Thacker stands up straight when they pass by him on the walkway, sucks in his gut, and says, “Ladies.” This makes them giggle, the funny old fat man. Anger flashes like lightning behind Thacker’s eyes. You don’t know how lucky you are this isn’t some dark road, he thinks. Marla called him a pervert when she found out about Lupita, and he wanted so badly to say to her, “Shit, baby, you think that’s sick?” She’d drop dead if she could see the stuff that comes into his mind sometimes.

  He leans over the rail again, spits into his cup. The sky lights up with fireworks bursting silently over Angel Stadium or Disneyland, bright skittering blooms that fade into spiders of smoke. A taxi pulls into the driveway and a young woman carrying a backpack gets out and eyes the motel. Her. Thacker waves his arms.

  “Hey!” he shouts. “Hey! Up here!”

  Luz wants to run to the stairs but makes herself walk, her excitement building with each step. All these people standing outside their rooms, all the kids in the pool. Surely the guy wouldn’t choose a place like this to double-cross her.

  Two little girls with wet hair and dripping bathing suits press their faces to the bars of the fence circling the pool to watch the fireworks Luz glimpsed as she was getting out of the taxi.

  “Look,” one of the girls says to Luz, pointing.

  Luz glances over her shoulder. “Pretty,” she says.

  The border patrolman watches her climb the stairs with a lecherous smile on his face. She zips up her jacket as she approaches him, an automatic reaction.

  “Damn, mama,” he says. “You are fine.”

  The nasty old cabrón, with his clown nose and yellow teeth, his big belly hanging over his belt. And now he’s holding his arms out like he wants to hug her.

  “Come here and give me some sugar,” he says.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Actually, it’s not. I’m not letting you into the room without patting you down first.”

  Luz holds her breath as the border patrolman runs his hands over her. He ignores the phone but tenses when he finds the money in her jacket pocket, a stack of bills she took from the backpack right before the taxi dropped her off, some cash to get her and Isabel wherever they’re going.

  Waving the money in her face, he says, “Is this some of mine?”

  She shrugs for an answer. They’ll get along without it.

  “You’re a sneaky one, aren’t you?” he says.

  Fuck him.

  He points to the backpack. “Is that the rest of it?”

  She swings the pack around b
ehind her, where he can’t get to it. “Not until I have Isabel,” she says.

  A car alarm goes off below, and the kids in the pool imitate its whoop.

  “I guess it’s time,” the border patrolman says. He opens the door to the room, and Luz feels like she’s expanding beyond her body, like flesh doesn’t mean much anymore. She squeezes past the fat man and sees Isabel asleep on the bed. She’s such a tiny thing, but still where all the light in the room goes. Luz is drawn to her, too, pulled to the edge of the mattress, where she sinks to her knees.

  She reaches out a tentative hand to touch her and wonders if she’s worthy, having abandoned her, having forgotten her even—so terrible to admit—for weeks at a time when she was on dope. Gently brushing back a curl of jet black hair from the girl’s lips, she decides that if she came all this way and did all she did only to see her for this instant, it was worth it.

  The border patrolman is saying something. Words, words, words. Luz hands him the backpack without taking her eyes off her daughter. I will never leave you again, she promises. Your life will always mean more to me than my own. The child looks so peaceful that she hates to wake her back into all this, but they have to keep moving. She stands and bends to pick her up.

  “Hold on a minute,” the voice behind her says.

  Luz pauses, arms outstretched, wondering What now? but already knowing.

  “Turn around.”

  The fat man is standing too close. Close enough to touch her. Close enough that she can feel his breath on her face.

  “She’s a good girl,” he says. “She behaved herself real well today.”

  “I’m glad,” Luz says.

  “When that fucker said he was going to kill her, that was it for me. He blew it. I snatched her right out from under his nose and decided to give her back to you.”

  “Thank you,” Luz says. She turns back to Isabel. Maybe if she moves quickly enough.

  The border patrolman grabs her arm. “I saved her life,” he says, forcing her to face him again.