The Bones of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  “Yes.”

  “The awfullest thing, see, is that once you been so scared that way by somebody, you can’t really feel about him no other way after that, not even when he’s being nice. Ever since that night, I’m all the time scared of him. About the only time I have fun and don’t feel really nervous is when I go shopping with the other girls or there’s a party and I can dance. I love to dance. The bad part about a party, though, is I gotta have sex with any guy who wants it. I guess that’s a funny thing to complain about, huh? Seeing as I’ve been in those sex movies.”

  “That’s all done. You’re coming with us.”

  “Well, hey, I really want to but there’s a problem. Some of Chuy’s fellas are waiting out in front for me and the other girls, and they’re not about to let me go off with somebody else, especially not some strangers.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Rayo says, and pats her hand. “I’ve gotten to know this place. We’ll leave by a side exit and give them the slip.”

  “Think we can? Oh, man, if they catch me trying to—”

  “They won’t. I’ll give my guys a call and we’re on our way.”

  She glances at her watch and takes out her phone and is irritated by the screen warning that the battery power is now nearly drained. She puts in the earbuds, telling Kitty it’s so she can hear better in all the food court noise, then pretends to tap a few numbers and says, “Come on, man, answer.” Rudy’s voice says, “Well done,” and she tells him to pick them up at the building’s north door, which is nearest to the food court.

  “All right, amiga,” Rayo says, putting the phone and buds back in the tunic pocket, “let’s hit the trail.”

  As they head for the food court exit Rayo asks her how old she is.

  “Seventeen as of two months ago. How about you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Really? I never woulda guessed you’re that old. You sure don’t look it,”

  “Thank you so very much.”

  “And hey? I been wanting to tell you. I like your haircut.”

  Rayo laughs. “Yeah? That’s cool, kid, because I like yours, too.”

  RUDY

  The sun’s past its meridian but we’re in good shade, and a breeze has kicked up and we’ve lowered the front windows about halfway to let it flow through. We’ve taken turns getting out to stretch our legs and take a piss in the restroom of the coffee shop down the street, but the wait’s making us a little antsy. As we’ve listened to Rayo’s talk with Kitty, we’ve been keeping close watch on the mall entrance. Most of the girls, a dozen so far, have returned to the vehicles and been divvied into the two Navigators parked just ahead of the rear Chrysler. Behind that Chrysler is the black-glass Navigator, which ten minutes ago got back from wherever it went to make the meth pickup. It pulled in at the tail end of the line of vehicles, and four guys got out and traded fists bumps with some of their fellows. All the escorts are now loitering down near the vehicles except for two guys still up by the front doors and waiting for the last of the girls.

  Three more party girls come out the front doors, and the escorts up there—one wearing a New York Yankees cap, the other a white narrow-brim Panama—gesture for them to hurry on down to the vehicles, where they’re directed into the Navigator directly behind the lead Chrysler. Two minutes afterward another two girls emerge, one of them with a buzz cut who had been impossible not to notice when the girls first arrived and we were glassing them in search of Kitty. The Yankee-cap guy gives them a palms-up shrug as if he’s asking something, and the buzz cut’s ponytailed pal answers him, looking pissed off and pointing back at the front doors as she speaks. Whatever she says clearly irks the Yankee-cap guy, too. He says something to the Panama hat guy and then heads into the mall as the Panama hat conducts the two girls down to the forefront Navigator.

  “What’s all that, you think?” I say.

  “What else? It’s time to go and they’re still a girl short, so the guy’s gone to fetch her. Christ. We can’t give Rayo a heads-up, she’s not wearing the buds. We better quick—”

  He’s cut off by Rayo telling the girl she’s going to give us a call and then pretending to and urging us to answer. I tell her she’s done well, and she says to pick them up at the north doors and I say we’re on the way.

  “Let’s get over there,” Frank says—but as he reaches for the ignition, there’s a sudden and sustained blaring of vehicle horns from the intersection on our right, where we’ll have to make the turn to get to the mall parking lot and the building’s north doors. The avenue light is green, but a pair of black Yukon SUVs side by side at the head of the southbound double lanes aren’t moving. Because horn blowing is something of a national pastime among Mexicans, who rarely step on the brakes ahead of leaning on the horn, the hubbub is drawing scant notice from avenue pedestrians or the Sinas at the driveway.

  Now the green light’s flashing to signify it’s about to turn yellow, but still the Yukons don’t budge and the squall of horns gets louder.

  “The hell’re those Yukes doing?” I say.

  We put the binoculars on them and see they’ve got black glass. The light changes to yellow and the Yukons start across the intersection in no hurry at all. And now we see two silver Yukons directly behind them. They’ve got black glass, too, and start creeping toward the intersection, then abruptly stop, the drivers behind them braking hard and laying on their horns even more furiously. Then the light goes red and the silver Yukes leap forward, leaving the traffic behind them stuck at the stoplight as they speed across the intersection just ahead of the coming cross traffic, which also gives them a lot of angry horn blares.

  “Kids getting kicks?” I say.

  Frank shrugs.

  The black Yukons slowly roll by the mall driveway, the one in the outside lane moving over behind the one in the inside. When they come abreast of the driveway exit, they halt, blocking it off. At the same time the silver Yukons come to a stop about ten feet shy of the driveway entrance, the Yukon in the outside lane almost a full length ahead of the one closer to the curb. It takes me a moment to recognize it as a common attack alignment that affords both a wider barrier of defense and a better field of fire to anyone shooting from this side of the vehicles, and it blocks both of the traffic lanes behind them. Frank’s picked up on it, too, and says, “It’s a hit!” in the same moment that some of the Sinas point at the Yukes and start yelling in alarm.

  Then everything happens fast.

  All the Yukon doors facing our side of the avenue fly open and men spring out, nine or ten, including the drivers, all of them armed with AK-47 rifles, some of which have a grenade launcher attached under the barrel. “Fuegos!” Frank says as the Sinas scramble for cover behind the vehicles and grab for their guns under their guayaberas. But before any of them can get off a shot, a Fuego fires a grenade through the back window of the black-glass Navigator carrying the meth load and God knows how much gasoline—and a bright orange blast bucks the vehicle off the ground, blowing off its doors and making spray of its glass. The Navigator crashes on its side in a raging fireball, and the Chrysler in front of it is also hit with an incendiary and explodes into flames, and then the two Navigators ahead of the Chrysler—each one holding six girls—blow up almost simultaneously. Through the dense black smoke and roiling flames we see at least half the Sinas sprawled on the sidewalk, on the steps, their clothes smoldering, their hair. There’s a swelling chorus of terrified shrieking from all along the avenue. Traffic’s at a standstill at both the right and the left intersections, vehicles being abandoned in the street, people fleeing in all directions away from the mall driveway. The Fuegos are now cutting loose with automatic fire, and the Sinas who are still able are fighting back with handguns, both factions ducking and sidestepping, trying to get clear shots at each other from around the burning vehicles while maintaining cover behind them. A Fuego with a ready grenade launcher peers over the hood of a Yukon and starts to take aim, but his head snaps back and he drops in
a slack half-turn. The Chrysler at the head of the Sina convoy pulls away from the curb and zooms toward the exit and the foremost of the black Yukons blocking it. A trio of Fuegos sprint away from the Yuke as others drill the Chrysler with automatic bursts just before it rams the Yukon aside and then swerves across the empty northbound lanes to this side of the avenue, crashes into a sidewalk tree, and bursts ablaze.

  The only Navigator still intact and not on fire contains the last five girls to exit the mall. It’s now at the forefront of the burning row of vehicles and the nearest to the driveway exit, but the Fuegos either can’t see it for the flames and smoke or are out of incendiary rounds. Sidling toward it are the five or six Sinas still on their feet, a couple of them being assisted by comrades, all of them crouching low and out of the Fuegos’ line of sight.

  “The entrance!” Frank says, his binoculars on it.

  I take a look and there’s the Yankee-cap guy. He’s got a pistol in his left hand and is holding a girl close to him on his other side, but we can’t see her face until they start running toward the far end of the steps and a thick, bordering row of palm trees that slopes down a knoll all the way to the sidewalk. “Kitty!” Frank says at the same time I recognize her. I cut the glasses back to the mall doors to look for Rayo, but there’s nobody else there. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d risk coming out into the war zone, but I’m hoping like hell she doesn’t. I grab up my phone and yell, “Rayo! You hear me? Rayo!” Nothing.

  We both scan our glasses along the full length of the front of the building but see no sign of her. Police sirens are closing in from every direction.

  The Yankee-cap guy and Kitty are barely detectable in the shadowy palms as they scuttle their way down through them and then we lose them altogether behind a hedge at the bottom of the steps. But in a moment the guy’s head pokes around the end of the hedge as the other Sinas are piling into the remaining Navigator. Tugging Kitty along, he runs out to the vehicle, his mouth working, shouting. The door starts to close and then swings open again and the Yankee-cap guy shoves Kitty inside and dives in after her and the door shuts and the Navigator wheels into the gap between the exit and the black Yukon with the bashed-up front end. It hits and dislodges the Yuke’s front bumper and speeds toward the south intersection and the stalled traffic facing this way as volleys of AK fire form pale starbursts on its bulletproof back window. A Fuego runs over to the guy sprawled in blood beside the AK with the ready grenade. He grabs up the weapon and takes hasty aim and fires at the escaping Navigator as it makes a hard right turn at the traffic light and the grenade misses and detonates against a garbage truck across the intersection. The blast jolts adjacent vehicles and sets some of them afire.

  The Navigator’s gone, the sirens getting louder.

  Frank turns to say something—then his eyes cut past me and he grins big.

  The rear door jerks open and Rayo slides in and slams it shut, shrugging the tote off her shoulder and taking her phone out of the tunic pocket even as she’s saying, “My stupid no-good fucking battery died and I couldn’t tell you I lost her! I told her stay there, stay right there, don’t move, I’ll be right back, and I go off and come back and she’s gone who the hell knows where. I wanted—”

  “She’s okay but they got her back,” I say. “One of them went in after her and came out with her. They took off in a vehicle with some other Sinas and got clear. Only ones who did, them and a few other girls.”

  She flops back in her seat with her hands over her face and lets out a long breath. Then sits up and passes me her phone and asks me to plug it into the charger.

  The sirens are piercing. Cop cars are picking their way through the jam of traffic both north and south along the avenue, ambulances behind them, TV news vans. Flashing lights everywhere.

  Frank cranks up the Cherokee, saying we better clear out before they cordon off the area. He wheels a U-turn and then whisks us up to the crest of the hill and onto a connecting street that winds down past an industrial zone. A trio of cop cars goes wailing by us toward the mall. At the bottom of the hill we turn onto an avenue with an arrow sign advising that the bayside business district is nine kilometers ahead.

  Rayo tells us she and Kitty were almost to the mall’s north exit when they heard a lot of horn honking and her first thought was it might be a traffic jam that would keep us from getting to the parking lot. They went out and saw the lines of traffic backed up along the north side of the intersection, but they hadn’t gone another ten feet before there was an explosion somewhere in front of the building and everybody around them started freaking. Then there were more blasts and gunfire, and people were screaming and running everywhere. She hauled Kitty back into the building, and they huddled against a wall not far from the doors, in case they had to exit fast. She tried to phone us and see where we were, but her battery was dead and Kitty didn’t have a phone. The Sinas don’t let the girls have them and punish anybody caught with one. So she told Kitty she was going to check things out and would be right back and made her promise not to move from where she was and she swore she wouldn’t. Rayo then hurried out and ran along the wall to the front corner of the building, gripping the Glock in the tote and hoping like hell she wouldn’t have to pull it. She peeked out and could hardly believe the carnage in front of the mall but was relieved to see the Cherokee still on the hillside. She figured she and Kitty could go a little way up the north side of the intersection, cut across the avenue through the stalled traffic, then make their way over to us. But when she went back the kid was gone. She tried looking for her but the ground floor was so packed with panicked people it was hopeless to think she might find her in that mob. Besides, what if Kitty took off out of the building? Who knew in what direction she’d gone? And what if Frank and I made it over to the north exit while she was out looking for the girl? All she could think to do was run back out to the avenue and work her way across it, hoping we wouldn’t move from our hillside spot before she got to us. And here we still were.

  “We had her,” she says. “You guys heard. She was coming with us. What a dumbfuck I was to leave her alone for even a minute.”

  “Not your fault the guy found her,” I say. “You didn’t want to risk her getting shot out there. The girls who saw her with you told the escort and he went in after her. Those guys probably know every foot of that mall. When he didn’t see her in the food court or around the front doors, he knew the north exit was the next nearest. He went there, spotted her, and grabbed her. If you’d been with her, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put you down.”

  “That right? Well, I wouldn’t have hesitated to put him down. Listen, a couple of her pals saw her with me. One with black buzz-cut hair, one in a Dodger shirt. They come out?”

  “They did,” I say. “Went off in the same vehicle with her.”

  “Ah, hell. . . . They’ll tell those guys she was talking to me.”

  “So what?” Frank says. “She’ll tell them what you told her. You’re a gringa in the porn biz who’s seen her in a movie and was happy to run into her by chance and offered her a job. Nothing suspect about that. Chubasco knows she’s been in skin flicks, probably seen her in some. Hell, he met her at Dolan’s. She’ll say when the explosions broke out and people started screaming and running around, the two of you got separated and she didn’t know what to do but she sure didn’t want to go out into the street. That’s why she was where the escort guy found her. She’s clever enough to come up with something that solid and simple, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. Actually she is,” Rayo says, and stares out the window.

  Along a bayfront street we spot a bar and grill that looks inviting—overlooking the water, outer deck with umbrella-covered tables and not a soul sitting at any of them, the parking lot half empty. We even find a shade tree to park under.

  Inside, the place is dim and cool and full of talk about the violence at the mall. The counter stools are occupied by patrons enrapt by the large TV above the back bar. The vol
ume’s turned down but closed captions run across the bottom of a screen full of burning vehicles in front of the mall, ambulance crews collecting the dead and wounded off the street, some of the bodies charred, some still smoking, reporters babbling excitedly into the cameras. We order a pitcher of beer and take it out to the deck, which we have to ourselves, and sit at a table in a seaside corner. I pour three glassfuls and we all take deep pulls off them. Beer never tastes better—nothing ever does—than right after an extremely vivid reminder of just how suddenly things can take a mortal turn.

  Frank’s phone hums.

  “Mateo,” I say. “Heard the news about the skirmish and wants to see if we’re among the quick.”

  He checks the screen, nods at me, and says into the phone, “I was about to call you. . . . . Yeah, we were. Practically had a front-row seat. . . . Nah, we’re fine. . . . No bullshit, man, not a scratch among us. We’re at a joint by the bay having a brew. . . . Yeah, actually, we did. But they got her back while the fight was going on. Got her back without even knowing we’d had her. . . . Naw, she was fine. Last time we saw her, anyway. She and a few other girls were in a vehicle that got clear.”

  He then listens for at least a minute without looking our way or injecting a word other than “yeah” or “right.” Then says, “Hold on. I’ll run it by them.”