Los Angeles Noir 2

by Denise Hamilton

  “Some Lobos got his baby brother Mauricio down at the school, Lucía,” Chique tells me. I feel her hot breath on my skin and even though it’s so cold her face is sweaty, but then I can’t feel or see nothing. What she say? Baby brother. Baby brother, I keep thinking it over in my head. I know that name. I used to know it.

  “All right, ésa, check it,” she says, and it’s like she’s trying not to jump out her own skin. “Montalvo caught this little C-4 tagger crossing out Lobo sets at Garfield and when he gets to beating on him, the baby starts going on how the Lobos better watch it cause he’s Chico’s brother, and how Chico will kill all of us, that kind of shit. ‘He’ll kill you and your women,’ he says. Like that one he took out at the rumbla. The one he shot in the back.

  It takes me a minute, but then it hits me solid in the chest. The vato that started the whole thing finished it too. “We’re gonna talk straight up, Lucía. I hear there ain’t no other Lobo who’s got it together.” That’s what he told me through the crack in my door and I felt full of spice and flame when he said them words. Then he’s fighting Manny at the rumbla and after Beto takes over you couldn’t see nothing but arms and legs bending and the blur of faces. There was the sounds of guns popping and the pounding of the Bombers running up by the benches and so I’d raced off, leaving my Star Girl to try and kill the loco that took out her Ghost man, her with them weak hands she had and she couldn’t hold the gun right, but Chico don’t show her no mercy. He just walks up while her back’s turned and puts a clip right in her spine.

  “How you hear this?” I ask Chique, filling out that C-4 blank face in my head. Halfie fuck. Greaser rubia hair like a girl, pinkie skin that can’t take no sun. You’re a strung-out white boy can’t do your fights fair, eh? Can’t walk away like a man. Got to go and bang on my chola cause you can’t hold tight. Old Chico. That’s the vato I’ve been dreaming about, and I know him too good. I knew you when, boy. When you was nothing. “How you hear?” I say again, but mostly so I hear my own voice out loud. I’m standing there in my doorway but it feels like my heart ain’t even beating.

  “Girl, you’re gonna be the last Lobo to find out,” Chique says, pulling my arm and making me get in my car. “I guess there was some homeboys around and word’s spreading in the neighborhood like wildfire.”

  When I got there, after screaming on over to the school like a dragracer and jamming on all the reds, I looked around to see what my battle was gonna be. I’d have to be careful, cause once a man goes down in this neighborhood it seems like everybody hears electric fast at the same time, and I knew the C-4s would be racing over here to help out their jefe’s baby brother as soon as they got wind. “Good thing, eh?” I said to Chique when we set foot on asphalt, eyeballing the playground for any badasses. But I didn’t see any Bomber locos yet. There’s just a crowd of Lobos far off, standing in a circle and looking down. Montalvo, Rudy, Madball, Dreamer. I see some of them have red warrior bandannas sticking out their pockets like blood roses, but now they look as still and timid as schoolteachers. And there’s some sheep on the sidelines, keeping their mouths shut but playing nervous with that fried hair of theirs. I even see Manny waiting on the outside as usual and wearing his loser hangdog face.

  I can’t make out what they’ve got there. I figure it’s that Mauricio beat up bad on the ground cause they ain’t kicking or laughing at nothing, only keeping their shaved heads bent. Watching. It’s quiet as a cloud. There’s still a little baby blue morning color in the sky so nobody’s out yet, and you can’t hear a peep coming from the vatos. Nothing was coming from baby brother neither.

  More Lobos show when I start walking up to that little circle. Beto comes around, and I see Chevy and Wanda driving up. Rocky and Tiko and Popeye are coming through the gate behind me. Even Cecilia’s racing on in and beelining for Manny. “It’s gonna be hot, ésa,” Chique’s saying next to me, and my heart starts steamrolling cause I know I’m gonna get that C-4 back after all this time.

  “What you homeboys up to, eh?” I say, my voice breezy. I’m making my way up there slow the same as a big head would instead of running and flapping my hands like a henpecking woman, and I’m still keeping a lookout for any sign of C-4. “What up?” I ask again but nobody’s talking. I don’t get one sign from them till I get real close and then Dreamer looks up at me, and he don’t have no buffalo to him right then. He’s wearing this face as ragged and thin as worn cotton, and from the pinch of his eyes I see how he’s fighting down shame.

  I push them open and see this red-colored beat-up kid bent up double on the ground like babies do in their mamas’ bellies. His shirt’s scraped off, his arm’s twisted the wrong way, and there’s that yellow tagging paint on his open hands, capping his fingers. I can’t make out his face, but that vatito looked right, dark like I remembered, and he wasn’t more than nine or ten even though his head’s half buzzed clika style and he’s got a Bomber tak scratched on his bony boy chest. He looked like Chico’s. But he’d took it bad. From what I can see of his skin, already blue and purple in places, there’s some stripe cuts bleeding down his ribs and slashing up his neck and face. I know them marks. He got them from getting kicked when he was already flat down. This puppyboy was whipped worse than any full-sized loco I’d ever seen except for old dead Ghost, but he still was breathing. I see his lips flutter up like they’d caught a breeze.

  “This the baby brother?” I ask, and I see Manny standing behind them begging at me with his glassy eyes as big as mirrors, asking me can he have a piece.

  Montalvo nods his head, looking at me careful but not like before when he was thinking I’m some bird-brained nobody screaming on his front steps. Now he’s scared he ’s the crazy Mexican cause he’d beat some empty-handed tagger baby near dead. “Yah, he was yelling something about Chico shooting off a sheep at the rumbla.”

  “What’s that?” Beto’d caught up by then and the homeboys stepped aside easy, but when he sees Chico’s boy he shuts right down. He leans back on his heels and whistles low while the homies watched him careful to see what he’s gonna do. But he didn’t do nothing but keep standing there as dumb and fix-eyed as a cow, and they started coughing and twitching their heads around nervous.

  “All right éses, looks like you done real good,” I start saying, keeping that voice of mine nice and light.

  I could tell they was getting weak on me there, that they was gonna curl up the same as that boy on the ground if I didn’t make my move. But it don’t surprise me none they can’t take it. Like I said before, clikas used to have rules. We used to have some religion. Time was, the locos had to leave the pride-and-joy women and babies alone and keep the fighting to themselves. But not no more. Chico broke up my Girl and left her with that tree stump cutting her back open, the white shiny roots stretching down to her loose legs. My homeboys was staring at that C-4 baby like they don’t wanna know what their own monster hands can do, but I can look it straight in the face any damn day then swallow it down and smile. Baby brother there with the eyes beat shut ain’t gonna ruffle my feathers. He had it coming.

  All of a sudden the light flickers and it looks like his eyes was gonna open, or that his mouth’s twitching like a smile, and I think he’s gonna sit right up and laugh at me the same as old Lazarus. But it wasn’t nothing but a shadow falling on his bent-up self. It flashed in my head then how Manny and me used to be the same, rock sharp and strong all the way through down to the bones, I remembered that when Manny moved quick by me and I hear his breath close to my ear and he blocks the sun from the baby on the ground. Manny was switching his hands up like he was gonna do something, gonna grab hold of that boy and beat him worse to show me he could still sing for his supper, but when I turn and look at him I see he don’t have his old hot stare or the same steel jaw sticking at me prideful. He’s only some burn-out veterano now, with a skinny face and glassed-out carga eyes, wearing that wool cap pulled low and some ripped-up dumpster pants. He’s not the same vato I used to know. With his mashe
d arm Manny couldn’t give a good featherweight punch these days even to save his own skin.

  “Yah, you vatos done a real nice job here, but we better scoot off, hear me?” I say, pushing Manny soft with my hand, and he gave easy, backing down like a hit dog, and Beto’s vatos close around me again.

  I know it for sure then. Nobody, nobody can tough it out like this chica can. I see past Manny how the sheep was looking over at me scandalous and making their tight mouths like I’m this empty-bellied bruja. Some even got muddy crocodile tears running down their faces from crying over the little C-4. Cecilia’s staring at me wicked out of that dirt-colored face of hers, thinking I’m some baby-eating witch who’s stealing up her brother. And my homeboys was circling me, their lips pulling sad like they’re some viejas at a funeral.

  “Órale. Looks like he’s hurt bad,” Beto says, bending down and poking the brother with his finger, but the thing down by my shoes wasn’t moving an inch.

  “Well fuck him then. Got it?” I start up, steel-tough sounding now and Beto gives me some cold-water eyes, the same as Manny got when he figured me out, but I don’t care. They can see me all they like cause I can tell we’re all gonna be standing around here like lazy brains when the C-4 bigs get here, and they’re gonna give us an eye for an eye cause it looks like we killed one of their babies. “Let’s GO, they’re coming quick, you hear that?” I’m yelling at them now, that llorona bumping up in me big. It feels dark and windy when I watch them walk away from the brother in slow motion, dragging their heels even though this is for my Girl, this is our payback, leaving a half-dead C-4 baby twisted on the ground like my Star Girl on the grass waiting for la chota to bring her back to Kaiser. The Bombers can’t just bang a Lobo woman and get off scot-free. This is the one thing that’s gonna make us equal.

  “Come ON,” I say, hitting Beto hard in the arm so that he wakes up, and we scattered on out of there. I ran as fast as the vatos with the air cold on my cheeks, hearing the sheep crying behind me and leaving that busted brother with all the life bleeding out of him for Chico to find. I got this blast of heat that was singing through my arms and legs and making me feel like my old self again, knowing that soon he’d see his pride-and-joy C-4 baby and put his red wet face in his hands cause I hurt him so bad, the same as he hurt me.

  I didn’t care about nothing then when I was pounding my way back. I wasn’t thinking about Chique or the Lobos or doing deals or even Star Girl with that dark sky over her face. I only felt cut loose and fire-hot inside, thinking how I’m the only one in this town who can do it. Wáchale, man! I felt that steering wheel tight in my hand and I was gunning my Maverick down the street, laughing loud as a banshee the whole way home cause I knew it. Check it on out. Nothing’s keeping this chola down. I’m the only woman or man in this place, the only one in Echo Park, who can scratch on up to the top and stay there.

  “Lucía” is an excerpt from the novel Locas (Grove Press, 1997).

  TALL TALES FROM THE MEKONG DELTA

  BY KATE BRAVERMAN

  Bel Air

  (Originally published in 1990)

  It was in the fifth month of her sobriety. It was after the hospital. It was after her divorce. It was autumn. She had even stopped smoking. She was wearing pink aerobic pants, a pink T-shirt with KAUAI written in lilac across the chest, and tennis shoes. She had just come from the gym. She was walking across a parking lot bordering a city park in West Hollywood. She was carrying cookies for the AA meeting. She was in charge of bringing the food for the meeting. He fell into step with her. He was short, fat, pale. He had bad teeth. His hair was dirty. Later, she would freeze his frame in her mind and study it. She would say he seemed frightened and defeated and trapped, “cagey” was the word she used to describe his eyes, how he measured and evaluated something in the air between them. The way he squinted through hazel eyes, it had nothing to do with the sunlight.

  “I’m Lenny,” he said, extending his hand. “What’s your name?”

  She told him. She was holding a bag with packages of cookies in it. After the meeting, she had an appointment with her psychiatrist, then a manicure. She kept walking.

  “You a teacher? You look like a teacher,” he said.

  “I’m a writer,” she told him. “I teach creative writing.”

  “You look like a teacher,” Lenny said.

  “I’m not just a teacher,” she told him. She was annoyed.

  “Okay. You’re a writer. And you’re bad. You’re one of those bad girls from Beverly Hills. I’ve had my eye on you,” Lenny said.

  She didn’t say anything. He was wearing blue jeans, a black leather jacket zipped to his throat, a long red wool scarf around his neck, and a Dodgers baseball cap. It was too hot a day for the leather jacket and scarf. She didn’t find that detail significant. It caught her attention, she touched it briefly and then let it go. She looked but did not see. They were standing on a curb. The meeting was in a community room across the boulevard. She wasn’t afraid yet.

  “You do drugs? What do you do? Drink too much?” he asked.

  “I’m a cocaine addict,” she told him.

  “Me too. Let’s see your tracks. Show me your tracks.” Lenny reached out for her arm.

  “I don’t have any now.” She glanced at her arm. She extended her arm into the yellow air between them. The air was already becoming charged and disturbed. “They’re gone.”

  “I see them,” Lenny told her, inspecting her arm, turning it over, holding it in the sunlight. He touched the part of her arm behind her elbow where the vein rose. “They’re beautiful.”

  “But there’s nothing there,” she said.

  “Yeah, there is. There always is if you know how to look,” Lenny told her. “How many people by the door? How many steps?”

  He was talking about the door across the boulevard. His back was turned. She didn’t know.

  “Four steps,” Lenny said. “Nine people. Four women. One odd man. I look. I see.”

  She was counting the people on the steps in front of the meeting. She didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s get a coffee later. That’s what you do, right? You can’t get a drink? You go out for coffee?” Lenny was studying her face.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “You don’t think so? Come on. I’ll buy you coffee. You can explain AA to me. You like that Italian shit? That French shit? The little cups?” Lenny was staring at her.

  “No, thank you. I’m sorry,” she said. He was short and fat and sweating. He looked like he was laughing at her with his eyes.

  “You’re sorry. I’ll show you sorry. Listen. I know what you want. You’re one of those smart-ass teachers from Beverly Hills,” Lenny said.

  “Right,” she said. She didn’t know why she bothered talking to him.

  “You want to get in over your head. You want to see what’s on the other side. I’ll show you. I’ll take you there. It’ll be the ride of your life,” Lenny said.

  “Goodbye,” she answered.

  Lenny was at her noon meeting the next day. She saw him immediately as she walked through the door. She wondered how he knew that she would be there. As she approached her usual chair, she saw a bouquet of long-stemmed pink roses.

  “You look beautiful,” Lenny said. “You knew I’d be here. That’s why you put that crap on your face. You didn’t have that paint on yesterday. Don’t do that. You don’t need that. Those whores from Beverly Hills need it. Not you. You’re a teacher. I like that. Sit down.” He picked the roses up. “Sit next to me. You glad to see me?”

  “I don’t think so.” She sat down. Lenny handed the roses to her. She put them on the floor.

  “Yeah. You’re glad to see me. You were hoping I’d be here. And here I am. You want me to chase you? I’ll chase you. Then I’ll catch you. Then I’ll show you what being in over your head means.” Lenny was smiling.

  She turned away. When the meeting was over, she stood up quickly and began moving, even before the prayer w
as finished. “I have to go,” she said softly, over her shoulder. She felt she had to apologize. She felt she had to be careful.

  “You don’t have to go,” Lenny said. He caught up with her on the steps. “Yeah. Don’t look surprised. Lenny’s fast, real fast. And you’re lying. Don’t ever lie to me. You think I’m stupid? Yeah, you think Lenny’s stupid. You think you can get away from me? You can’t get away. You got an hour. You don’t pick that kid up from the dance school until four. Come on. I’ll buy you coffee.”

  “What are you talking about?” She stopped. Her breath felt sharp and fierce. It was a warm November. The air felt like glass.

  “I know all about you. I know your routine. I been watching you for two weeks. Ever since I got to town. I saw you my first day. You think I’d ask you out on a date and not know your routine?” Lenny stared at her.

  She felt her eyes widen. She started to say something but she changed her mind.

  “You live at the top of the hill, off of Doheny. You pick up that kid, what’s her name, Annie something? You pick her up and take her to dance school. You get coffee next door. Table by the window. You read the paper. Then you go home. Just the two of you. And that Mex cleaning lady. Maria. That her name? Maria? They’re all called Maria. And the gardener Friday afternoons. That’s it.” Lenny lit a cigarette.

  “You’ve been following me?” She was stunned. Her mouth opened.

  “Recon,” Lenny said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In Nam. We called it recon. Fly over, get a lay of the land. Or stand behind some trees. Count the personnel. People look but they don’t see. I’ll tell you about it. Get coffee. You got an hour. Want to hear about Vietnam? I got stories. Choppers? I like choppers. You can take your time, aim. You can hit anything, even dogs. Some days we’d go out just aiming at dogs. Or the black market? Want to hear about that? Profiteering in smack? You’re a writer, right? You like stories. I got some tall tales from the Mekong Delta for you, sweetheart. Knock your socks off. Come on.” He reached out and touched her arm. “Later you can have your own war stories. I can be one of your tall tales. I can be the tallest.”