“But she isn’t, not anymore,” I pointed out. “She’s pregnant, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, now she’s the madonna, or she might as well be,” Serena said. I understood what she was saying. In the world Trece’s guys lived in, there were nice girls, and then there were girls who let themselves be passed around. There really wasn’t much in between. Someone like Nidia, who had slept with only one man, apparently for love-that was nearly as good as still being a virgin.
“It’s messed up,” Serena said. “I’ve done more for them than a girl like that ever will. I’ve lied to the cops and hidden their guns for them. And still, they wouldn’t go to all this trouble for me. But they’re doing it for her.” She was just getting started. “Some little mousie, some little vic who thought that because she prays all the time that God was going to stop the traffic whenever she had to cross the street.” She repeated, “It’s messed up.”
I said, “I wish you’d gotten in touch with this resentment a lot earlier. If you’d never asked me to take her to Mexico, I wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
Serena gave me such a sharp look that I nearly swerved the car.
“Kidding,” I said hastily.
She shook her head. “That’s why I’m doing this,” she said. “I mean it, I’m doing this for you, Insula. Because you got shot, and that shit’s got to get paid for. It’s not about her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Relax, I believe you.”
twenty-nine
Late that night, I was in bed with Serena, staring up into the dark, waiting to sleep.
A lot of people wouldn’t have understood it, two adult women sharing a bed. But now I understood what Serena told me when I’d seen two of her sucias sleeping close together: Sleep was the most vulnerable time, and there was safety and comfort in numbers. My borrowed SIG was on the nightstand. Serena’s Tec-9 was under the bed.
I knew she was straight, but I really couldn’t have told you what Serena did for sex. During her adolescent years, when she’d shaved her head to run with Trece, she’d had to put away her sexuality for later, like female soldiers pack away dresses. Later, when she became the leader of the sucias, Serena had celebrated her new power by growing out her hair. But if she’d reclaimed her femininity, sex was still full of danger. An alliance with Payaso or any of the Trece homeboys, no matter how consensual, would have cost her dearly in respect. Gangbangers commonly referred to a girl “sexing” a guy. It was a term whose closest analog was servicing.
As for a boyfriend outside the gang culture, well, it wasn’t like UCLA grad students in Chicano Studies were going to come by her house with flowers. Serena was a victim of the ways she’d exceeded the limitations around her. I thought of her as a chola in the truest sense of the word: someone who lived between two worlds.
“The girls were riding your bicycle a couple of days ago,” Serena said. She meant the one I’d taken from the charity donations center, not the Motobecane, which was still in San Francisco.
“Risky tipped it over. They were all cracking up,” she said. “It’s funny to see them acting like kids.”
“Kids,” I repeated.
When we’d come in, I’d overheard Trippy talking to several of the homegirls. She’d seemed high-not pharmacologically, but on adrenaline-and I’d soon gotten the drift of what she was talking about. She was bragging about running into a girl from a rival cliqua, “some nothing hoodrat,” and beating her until she’d cried and begged for it to stop. Trippy hadn’t said that the girl’s only crime had probably been being from the wrong neighborhood or flirting with the wrong guy, but that went without saying.
I rolled over onto my stomach and rested my head on my crossed arms. I didn’t like Trippy and wouldn’t have even if we hadn’t had our dustup the last time I’d been staying here. I thought Serena had made a lousy choice in lieutenants, but that was an opinion I was going to keep to myself. I knew what Serena would tell me. She’d say that my kind of ethics were a luxury, that nice girls were eaten alive in her neighborhood, that Trippy and girls like her didn’t get to go east to war school and learn the rules of engagement.
I changed the subject: “Listen, Serena, speaking of bikes and all, I can’t keep doing what I’m doing on city buses and whatever. God knows, when we find Nidia, we’re going to need a car to take her away in.”
“You know Chato’s always got a couple of cars,” she said.
“Too dangerous,” I said. “I’m not going to use this car for an hour or two and dump it. I’ll need it long-term, and sooner or later, some patrolling cop or meter reader will run the plate. I can’t afford to get arrested for driving a stolen car.”
She said, “We’ve probably got a legit car around here you could use.”
“True,” I said, “but I’m thinking of something specific. I don’t know if I can outrun Skouras’s guys if it came to a chase, but I don’t want to be in a four-banger, just in case. It’s got to carry a couple of soldiers and, eventually, a pregnant girl, and reasonably comfortably. It needs to be plain enough that I can do surveillance in it. And it can’t be a speeding-ticket magnet for cops or a theft magnet for-”
“People like me?” Serena said archly. “So what you really need, then, is money.”
“Yeah,” I said. “This mission is gonna run up expenses that go beyond just the car.”
“We can help; I told you that,” she said. “Trece’s got some plata.”
“Not that much,” I said. “You guys are living proof that crime barely pays.”
“So what’s your idea?” Serena said. “Gonna go to Bank of America? That’s a loan program we could use around here. ‘Whether you’re starting a small business or starting a gang war, BofA is here to help.’”
I rolled over again, looking up speculatively at the ceiling. “That’s not exactly what I have in mind.”
thirty
LAX has a great energy: the constant flow of people whose lives are in motion, and, of course, the diversity. It’s hard to think of anywhere else you see such a racial and economic mix of people. It’s like a gigantic jury pool.
It was also a useful place for me to meet someone: accessible by public transportation and crowded enough for me to blend in. You’d think I’d chosen it as a place of meeting. I hadn’t. Nonetheless, around four in the afternoon, I was sitting in a bar off a main concourse, people-watching, with an ice-choked Pepsi in front of me. I’d been there about fifteen minutes when I saw him: CJ, half a head taller than the people around him, wearing tight, wash-faded cords and a T-shirt with the classic picture of Che Guevara over the legend I Have No Idea Who This Is. He was carrying no bag, just his Dobro guitar in its case, and a small box wrapped in paper from the Sunday comics and a red self-adhesive bow, the artless way men wrap a birthday present. It had been CJ who chose our meeting place. His flight to New York left in fifty-five minutes.
“I like your shirt,” I said, by way of greeting.
CJ said, “Funny, I was just about to say I liked yours. I think it’s a healthy step in you moving on from your relationship with the Army.”
Serena had loaned me a few things, but I was getting fond of the Navy T-shirt, which was why I was wearing it.
He set down his guitar. “I don’t feel really great about you being in L.A. like this,” he said, sliding onto the opposite stool.