Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  “And I said thank you,” Luz says.

  “Yeah, but you stole from me too,” he says. “You didn’t think I’d find that money, did you?”

  He’s trying to bully her, to scare her. Five years ago it might have worked, but since then she’s been with men whose viciousness makes this pig look like a schoolyard punk.

  “It wasn’t for me, it was for Isabel,” she says.

  “Stealing’s stealing,” he says as he unzips her hoodie. Luz raises a hand to stop him, but he slaps it away, then reaches inside her jacket and squeezes one of her breasts.

  “You think I’m a man you can mess with,” he says. “But I’m not.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  Luz doesn’t reply. She’s not going to play his games. He’s all worked up, trembling, sweaty, and what he wants now is for her to crumble, to acquiesce, as if she actually did something to deserve what he’s going to do to her. He’ll die waiting for that.

  “Get in the bathroom and show me how sorry,” he says.

  “Go to hell,” Luz spits.

  She empties herself out so she doesn’t feel any pain when he grabs her hair, any fear when he draws his gun and jabs it into her cheek. It’s just a body that he hauls into the bathroom, just a shell that he forces to the floor.

  “Let me see those titties,” he says.

  Luz takes off her hoodie, her T-shirt, her bra. The border patrolman sticks the pistol into a holster under his arm, drops his pants to his knees, and sits on the lid of the toilet.

  “Get up here and suck on it a little bit first,” he says.

  He leans back so that his belly lifts out of the way and his hard-on pops into view. His keys slide out of his pocket and clatter on the tile. Luz crawls toward him, but the old tricks aren’t working tonight; she’s not as far away as she should be. She’s going to remember the smell, the taste, the feel of his hands on the back of her head as he fucks her mouth.

  She moves up between his legs, takes his cock in her hand, and that’s when she sees it, a mother-of-pearl switchblade dangling unnoticed from his pants pocket, about to slip the rest of the way out and drop to the floor. Without pausing to think, she grabs it, presses the button to open it, and lays the blade across the top of his scrotum.

  “What the hell!” the fat man yelps, raising a reflexive fist.

  “Touch me, and I’ll cut them off,” Luz says.

  The man lowers his hand and glares down at her. His face is bright red, and his breath comes in frightened puffs.

  “You like to push girls around?” Luz says, making a little sawing motion with the knife. “You like to hurt them?”

  “Please,” he says.

  “Please,” Luz repeats, in scornful imitation. “Please.”

  In one swift motion, she stands and snatches the man’s gun from its holster, then backs away, pointing it at his face. He’s not so tough now, an old gordo slumped on a toilet.

  “Try to fuck me now,” she says.

  “Get the hell out of here before you do something stupid,” he says.

  “The only stupid thing I’m going to do is blow your head off,” she says.

  And if Isabel weren’t here, she’d do it. She’d pull the trigger and put this dog down. Instead, she picks up her hoodie with her free hand and shrugs it on. Then she sticks the knife in her pocket and grabs her bra and T-shirt.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she says as she steps into the other room. “You had the money.”

  The man shrugs and looks down at the floor.

  “Don’t fucking move,” Luz says.

  She closes the door and goes quickly to the bed. Picking up Isabel, she manages to lay the girl over her shoulder without waking her. The backpack is on the table. She shoves the pistol and her clothes into it, zips it, and slings it over her other shoulder.

  She slips out the front door and shuts it quietly. Hitching Isabel higher, she hurries for the stairs. Down she goes and across the parking lot. When she glances back at the room, the door is still closed.

  She turns out of the lot and walks toward the bright lights of a strip mall on the next block. It’s not so much a decision as a destination, somewhere to run to. Better to be around other people if the fat man comes looking for them. Isabel wakes up before they get there and rears back her head to see who’s carrying her.

  “Who are you?” she asks, so matter-of-factly that it makes Luz smile.

  “I’m a friend,” Luz says. “A friend of Aunt Carmen.”

  “Where’s the policeman?”

  “He had to go.”

  “Where’s Aunt Carmen?”

  “You’ll see her soon.”

  The little girl stares into Luz’s face, deciding if this is acceptable. After a long pause she says, “It’s my birthday Tuesday.”

  “I know,” Luz says. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “For my party?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Isabel lays her head back down and doesn’t say anything more. When they get to the strip mall, Luz ducks into a busy 7-Eleven and moves to the rear of the store where they can’t be seen through the front window. She watches the door as she calls for a cab.

  “Where do you want to go?” the dispatcher asks.

  Isabel is humming to herself and tugging at the string that tightens the hood of Luz’s jacket.

  “The bus station,” Luz says. “Greyhound.”

  Isabel leans back to look quizzically into her face again.

  “Why are you crying?” she says.

  “They’re happy tears,” Luz says, pulling the girl close to kiss her on the cheek. “Haven’t you ever heard of happy tears?”

  22

  MALONE IS ON HIS WAY TO PALOS VERDES WHEN THE PAST DROPS over him like a hood. His dad, his wife, his dead baby daughter step forward out of the darkness to deliver their lines, the litany of failure louder than ever tonight. He turns on the radio to try to drown it out, yells the words to the songs, but the testimony cuts right through. Other voices, other faces are what he needs, the distraction of strangers.

  He takes the next exit and pulls into the parking lot of the first bar he comes to, a dumpy stucco box called Breezy’s Hideaway. A Budweiser sign gutters in the window, and a big man with a scraggly white beard is standing out front, sucking on a cigarette.

  Inside, the bar is brightly lit and decorated with a muddle of beer advertisements and sports banners. A couple of flat screens are tuned to ESPN, but the sound is dialed down in favor of the heavily reverbed racket blasting from a karaoke machine manned by a skinny bald guy wearing a tuxedo T-shirt. The frowsy blonde on the mike, a renegade mommy in high heels and too much makeup, screeches out the chorus to “Livin’ On a Prayer,” playing to a group of similarly decked-out women seated at one of the tables.

  Malone sinks into the last open chair at the bar and orders a double vodka from a gal with a pixie tattooed on the inside of her forearm. She brings him his drink and takes his money without looking at him. Staring down at his clasped hands, he thinks of Luz. She’s probably with her daughter by now, and that’s good, that’s at least one story that might end well. He swigs half the vodka in a gulp, but something is wrong. It sticks in his throat and comes up so that he tastes it again, caustic and sour, his best friend finally betraying him.

  An old man gets up to sing “I Walk the Line.” This agitates the guy sitting next to Malone. He bumps Malone’s elbow, mutters an apology, then blurts, “Fucking Johnny Cash.”

  Malone turns to look into his face, and, Christ, it’s a mirror.

  “You know about Johnny Cash?” the guy asks him.

  “What do you mean?” Malone replies.

  “He wore black for the Indians, for the vets, for the prisoners, for every fucked-up fucker, and now look.” The guy gestures at the old man singing as if pointing out something obvious.

  Malone nods sympa
thetically without trying to figure out what his neighbor is getting at. Another drunk with a beef, he figures, another boozer trying to put words to his pain.

  “You are a cocksucker!” the guy says to the old man, building to a shout on the last word.

  This draws a warning finger from the bartender. “Strike two,” she says.

  The guy hunches his shoulders in apology like a chagrined little boy.

  Malone sips his drink. It goes down easier this time. He’s waiting for the alcohol to kick in, for the honey to start to flow. He should be feeling better by now, a little at least. This shit should be on the verge of bearable.

  “What kind of music you into?” the Johnny Cash fan asks him.

  “I don’t know,” Malone says. “Rock, old punk.”

  “Old punk?” the guy exclaims with delight. “Old punk. Okay.” He extends his hand, palm up, and begins reciting band names, touching his fingers to his thumb. “The Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, the Ramones, Bad Brains, Suicidal, Black Flag, Rancid. I played in punk bands, man, toured and everything. San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix.”

  “That’s cool,” Malone says.

  “What are you drinking?” the guy says, happy to have found a friend. “Let me buy you one.”

  Malone starts to answer, but his stomach bucks and his mouth fills with saliva. The bar swells and shrinks as the music dissolves into an incoherent roar. He launches himself out of his chair and hurries past the pool table, past the video golf game to the bathroom, where he slams his way into a stall and vomits. He’s been vomiting a lot lately. Sometimes he hopes it’s cancer.

  His head is spinning when he finishes, but he manages to get himself together enough to make it back out to the pickup. Once there he rinses his mouth with one of the beers and watches cars pull into the drive-through of the Taco Bell across the street. The echoey, amplified voice of the girl taking orders sounds late-night and lonely.

  He thinks of Luz again, realizes he’s half in love with her. An alternate life unspools, the one they might have had together. Christmas and birthdays. Her little girl calling him Daddy. The three of them a happy family. More bullshit, another pathetic fantasy, like starting over with Gail in Hawaii. The truth is, nothing’s ever going to change, nothing’s ever going to get better.

  He reaches into the glove compartment and brings out the silver-plated Colt. Santa Muerte grins at him from the grip, her smile as inviting as it is horrible. He sticks the muzzle of the gun into his mouth and starts to pull the trigger. But then a thought comes to him, one last loose end he can tie up, something that might give Luz some breathing room. He takes the pistol out of his mouth and lays it in his lap. It’s not over yet. Not quite.

  Jerónimo’s blood is a funny color under the fluorescent light of the motel bathroom. Almost purple, almost black. He grits his teeth and watches his shirtless self in the mirror as he uses the tweezers to dig another shotgun pellet out of his cheek. He drops the tiny chunk of lead into the toilet, where it spirals like a comet, dragging a pale pink tail down to join the other pellets at the bottom of the bowl.

  While he works, he struggles to come up with his next move, feeling like he’s reached a dead end. Returning to Carmen’s is out of the question. She’s his only hope for more information about Luz, but her neighborhood is probably crawling with cops right now. And meanwhile, El Príncipe waits back in TJ, growing increasingly impatient. It won’t be long before he makes good on some of his threats. Jerónimo turns the situation over and over in his mind, searching for some new angle, but nothing reveals itself.

  The ringing of the room phone is like a gun going off. Jerónimo jumps, startled, then grabs a towel and hurries to answer.

  “Hello?” he says into the receiver.

  “Don’t talk, just listen,” Thacker says. “I fucked up. I took the kid and tried to do my own thing. It was stupid, and I apologize. The bitch pulled a fast one on me, though, and got away with the kid and the money. So now I’m ready to make a new deal. You want to hear it?”

  “Go on,” Jerónimo says.

  “I managed to pick up her trail after she took off,” Thacker says. “I saw her get into a cab and tailed the cab, and I’m looking at her right now.”

  “Where?” Jerónimo says.

  “That’s the big question, right?” Thacker says.

  Jerónimo wipes the blood and sweat off his face with the towel. He can’t stand having to kowtow to Thacker but understands that working with the pig is the only way he’s going to find Luz quickly, so he chokes back his disgust and says, “Whatever you want, you can have.”

  “I want the same thing I always wanted,” Thacker says. “I want the money.”

  “If I get my hands on it, it’s yours,” Jerónimo says. He sits on the bed and rocks back and forth. His head is pounding, his face aches.

  “All right then,” Thacker says. “Can you get a car?”

  “I already have one.”

  “Excellent. So this is how it’s going to go: Luz is at the Greyhound bus station in Anaheim. You’re going to go there and do what you have to do. You’ll be on your own, because I’m done with that part of it. All I care is that when you’re finished, you drive two blocks to the corner of Anaheim and Midway, drop the money there, and drive away. Got that?”

  “Anaheim and Midway.”

  “Dump the backpack in the bushes and drive away.”

  “Got it.”

  “As soon as you do that, our partnership is over.”

  “Okay.”

  “But know this: I’ll be watching you the whole time, and if you try and fuck me over, I’ll call every cop I can find between here and San Diego and tell them you abducted a little girl. I’ll give them the make and model of your vehicle, the plate number, and they’ll run you off the road before you’ve gone twenty miles.”

  Jerónimo stands and reaches for his shirt. He can get a map at the gas station across the street.

  “I’m on my way,” he says.

  “The next bus for anywhere leaves in half an hour,” Thacker says. “So hurry your ass up.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s been calling that phone of yours. Someone from Mexico.”

  Jerónimo freezes. “Did you answer?”

  “Hell no,” Thacker says. “I threw the fucking thing away.”

  Stay calm, Jerónimo tells himself. He’ll deal with getting in touch with El Príncipe after he picks up Luz and her kid.

  “I’ll be at the station in fifteen minutes,” he says.

  “Get me my money,” Thacker says.

  Jerónimo hangs up and collects his keys and the gun. He’s just about ready to leave when a knock at the door derails him. He wipes his face again with the towel, then approaches the door cautiously and bends to look through the peephole.

  He’s shocked to see the shaggy-ass pendejo who drove Luz across the border and then came out of nowhere to help her tonight. The dude must be crazy to show up here. Jerónimo backs away from the door and points the gun at it.

  “Yeah?” he calls out.

  “We need to talk,” the guy says.

  “About what?”

  “You know about what.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “How about where Luz is, and your partner, and what they’re up to.”

  What they’re up to? Jerónimo has been trying to ignore the doubts he’s been having about Thacker, and now this dude comes along talking about what they’re up to, and a whole new kind of paranoia grips him.

  “Why would you want to talk to me about that?” he says.

  “They cut me out, and it pissed me off,” the guy says. “I figured you might be willing to pay for good information.”

  Jerónimo smiles. Another rat. They’re everywhere. He bends to the peephole again. The guy hasn’t moved.

  “So, go on,” he says. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Seriously, man,�
�� the guy says. “Don’t play me for a fool.”

  Two minutes is all it will take to hear the rat out and determine whether he’s full of shit. If he is, Jerónimo will kill him and leave for the bus station; if he’s not, a change of plans might be in order.

  Jerónimo unlocks the door and opens it a crack, showing the muzzle of his gun.

  “Hands up,” he says.

  The rat hesitates for a second, then complies.

  “Lift your shirt and turn around.”

  Two Chinese men dressed in business suits step out of the next room and onto the walkway. Jerónimo can’t see them, but he hears their yammering. The door to their room slams shut, and they come into view as they pass between him and the rat. Jerónimo closes his door almost all the way, reopening it when the chinos clomp down the stairs.

  “Okay, now,” he says to the rat. “Show me.”

  The rat pulls up his shirt to reveal his belly, then starts to turn. Halfway around he pulls a gun from the small of his back and slams his shoulder into the door with all of his weight behind it. The move catches Jerónimo by surprise, and the inside edge of the door strikes the bridge of his nose, triggering a red wave of pain that scrambles his vision and softens his bones.

  Carried backward by the momentum of the rat’s charge, he trips and falls across the bed. The rat follows him down, landing on top of him. They’re lying face-to-face, and Jerónimo feels the rat’s gun pressing against him, trapped between their bodies. The rat attempts to pull it loose, but Jerónimo hugs him with one arm and uses the .25 in his free hand to hammer the side of the guy’s head again and again until he lets go of his pistol and turns his attention to stopping the blows. The weight shift gives Jerónimo enough leverage to buck him off, roll to the edge of the mattress, and drop to the floor.

  Dizzy, nauseous, he scoots backward. The rat rises from the bed, panting, blood streaming from a gash on his head, and claws his pistol out of the tangle of sheets. He points it at Jerónimo, but Jerónimo is quicker. He raises the .25 and fires twice.

  A ringing silence follows the shots. The rat’s knees buckle, but he doesn’t go down. Stunned, he examines the holes in his chest, touching them inquisitively. Jerónimo springs at him and knocks him onto the bed. Twisting the gun out of his hand, Jerónimo takes hold of his hair, yanks his head back, and jams the .25 under his chin. He’s got to work fast. Once the man’s brain catches up to what’s happened to his body, it’ll be all over.