Hailey's War (13 page)

The four of them, who made up less than half the sucias' number, were in Serena's living room when I came out a little after ten. I'd slept all day, and I still didn't feel too hot. The girls were playing with Teardrop's baby daughter and talking in Spanglish. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and sat at the table to eat. They ignored me, except when Teardrop said in Spanish,
Look, she's all red
, meaning badly sunburned, and the rest giggled. I told myself it wasn't a slur I needed to answer and pretended I didn't hear.

I'd told myself more than once that it was stupid to seek validation
from a tribunal of gang girls. Underneath the hard shell of gang identity, they were just teenagers, emotional and naive, sentimental about babies and their
abuelitas
, desperate for the slightest affection from a homeboy. Most of them knew little of the world outside East Los Angeles. I, on the other hand, had jumped out of planes in Airborne School and boxed on my company's team back east, sparring with guys my height and weight in the ring. But none of that mattered to the sucias. To them I was less than, just because I was white and unaffiliated.

They weren't hostile to me. The name they called me,
la rubia
, meant only
the blond girl
. That wasn't an epithet, yet I read a tinge of contempt in it: Blondie. And although Serena had told them I spoke Spanish, they never seemed to believe it: Whenever they spoke it in front of me, it was rapidly and with the clear implication that they were talking among themselves. She'd also told them I had been at West Point, but they seemed to have only a vague idea of what that signified. If Serena had said I'd gone to the South Hudson Institute of Technology, that would have gotten about the same response.

Tonight, though, I had a credential that even the most jaded gangbanger couldn't brush aside. When Serena came in from an errand, she looked at me and said, “Show them your scars.”

“Why?” I said.

Trippy said to Serena, “What scars?”

“Hailey got shot,” Serena told them. “Twice.”

“For real?” Risky said with disbelief.

I stood from the couch, listing slightly before getting my balance. I lifted up my shirt, revealing the angry, corrugated reddish marks. There was an appreciative murmur as they drew near to get a closer look.

“Can we touch them?” Risky asked. “Will it hurt?”

I nodded—
Go ahead
—and felt their gentle fingers on my wounds. “That doesn't hurt?” Heartbreaker said.

“I'd tell you,” I said.

Their fascination was gratifying, but I knew they weren't impressed
by me, personally. I was like the nerdy kid who'd brought an awesome toy to show-and-tell.

Trippy didn't even direct her questions to me, looking instead at Serena: “Why would somebody shoot her? She doesn't even claim.” She meant that I was unaffiliated with any gang.

Serena said, “Tell them, Hailey.”

“Why?” I said. “I'm pretty sure that whatever Nidia was running from, it's not related to anything that happened around here.”

I just didn't feel like giving a speech. For all that I'd slept, I was still tired, and vaguely dehydrated.

But Serena said, “You never know what people are talking about, what the girls might have overheard.”

So I sat down on the arm of the couch and told the story from the beginning, Serena listening as patiently as she had the first time. When I was done, Serena said, “I've got some bad news. I called Teaser's sister Lara.”

For a moment the name was unfamiliar, then I remembered the cousin of Nidia's who'd acted as a go-between, enlisting Serena's help in getting Nidia down to Mexico.

“And?” I prompted.

“Her mother said that the two of them had this crazy screaming fight and Lara split. Her mother doesn't know when she's coming back.”

“Great,” I said.

Serena turned to her girls. “Keep your ears open about where Lara Cortez is, Teaser's sister. Hailey'd like to talk to her. Which is the same as me saying I'd like to talk to her. Okay?”

I'd been rubbing my aching temple, but I stopped to look up at her. “‘Hailey'd like to talk to her'?” I echoed. “What am I going to talk to her about?”

Serena looked at me quizzically. “Where else would you start, to sort all this out?”

“You think I'm going to find out what happened to Nidia?”

“None of the rest of us would know how.”

“And I would?” I said. “I went to West Point, not Scotland Yard.
Besides, you told me earlier today you don't even think Nidia's still aboveground. Your words were something to the effect of, ‘They might not have needed her alive for very long.' So what's the point?”

“Retaliation is the point,” Serena said. “That's what
la vida
is about. If those guys killed Nidia, they got something coming.”

“I thought retaliation was by homegirls for homegirls. Nidia wasn't even one of you. And neither am I.”

Serena said, “I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” I said, getting to my feet. “Thanks for the ghetto hospitality, but this is your problem now.
Me vale madre.”
Loosely translated,
I don't give a shit
.

“Wait!” she said.

I didn't. I got to her entryway before she caught up.

“Hailey, stop! You don't have a car. It's not safe for you to be walking out there at night.”

“Safe?” I repeated. “You mean,
safe
like I was down in Mexico? Serena, did you even listen to a word I told you this morning?”

She backed up a step, startled.

“Look,” I said, “I'm sorry I screwed up the mission I didn't even fucking know was a mission! But you put me in an impossible position, Warchild! You know what happened on Wilshire Boulevard, what I did, and you put me in a situation where I had to run down two guys or get killed myself! Do you have any idea how that feels?”

“Hailey—”

Maybe I raised my hand to her. I must have done something that looked threatening, because suddenly I felt an impact. My back hit the wall, and there was an arm pressed hard against my throat. Also, a cold ring against the underside of my jaw that I recognized as the muzzle of a gun.

It wasn't Serena. It was Trippy. On the periphery of my vision I could see the other sucias, riveted.

“Thank you, Luisita,” Serena said calmly. “Hailey will settle down in a moment. She's just not herself right now.” To me: “Right?”

“Serena,” I said stiffly, trying not to cough against the pressure
Trippy was putting on my larynx, “you need to get her off me before she gets hurt.”

“Like you could, bitch,” Trippy said.

Serena, though, was watching my eyes. “If I do call her off, are we all going to make nice?” she asked me.

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

Serena said, “Trippy, it's okay. Take the gun off her.”

“Are you kidding? She just went fucking crazy.”

Serena said mildly, “No, Hailey's been a little crazy for a while now.” Then, more authoritatively: “Really. Let her go.”

Trippy gave her a hard sideways glance, then, angrily, she stepped back. “This is bullshit,” she said, the all-purpose face-saving line. She walked away, not back to the living room, but out the front door. It banged shut hard behind her.

Serena watched her go, then looked at me with concern. “Feeling okay?”

“A little light-headed,” I said. It was coming on fast, along with a weakness in my limbs.

Serena's face was worried. “You haven't been out of the hospital for very long, right?” Her voice was kind. “Come on, lie down again.”

I spent the next few days mostly sleeping, whether from a fever or just sun
and dehydration and overexertion, I don't know. Serena tended me. She'd clearly looked after sick people before, probably gangbangers too broke or too hot to go to the ER. She made me drink water and more water, fed me chicken broth and applesauce, and yelled at her homegirls to keep the music and the television turned down. I had a dreamlike memory of waking in the small hours of the night to see her dressed in dark clothing, with the cool smell of night air still rising faintly from her clothes and hair, counting money on the bedroom floor. She'd moved the lamp down from the night table and was counting cash by its small ring of yellowy light. Then she took down her framed print of Vietnam's Halong Bay, unclipped the cardboard backing, laid a single layer of bills between the poster and the cardboard, and then replaced the whole thing on the wall.

Seeing me watching, she said, “Go back to sleep,” like a mother who'd come into a child's bedroom to put away folded laundry.

After two days and three nights of rest, I woke up at half past five in the
morning, feeling better, alert and clearheaded. I kicked the covers aside and stood.

I did some stretches, then got down to the floor and tried some military-style push-ups, hands close enough together to make a diamond of my thumbs and forefingers. It wasn't as hard as I'd expected. I'd lost muscle in my chest and shoulders from lack of use,
but at the same time, I'd lost weight, so it evened out. I did ten push-ups and then sat on my heels, feeling my heart subside into normal rhythm.

When I was fully dressed, I quietly opened the door and came out. Serena's living room, always messy, was bathed in the cool gray light of morning. On the couch, Serena slept in a pile of blankets.

I wasn't sure I'd ever understand her. Three days ago she'd told me that if she'd felt it necessary, she could have shot me to death in her driveway and not felt guilty afterward. Yet here she was, sleeping on her couch so I could have her room.

I was quiet going into the kitchen, but when I pulled my head back out of the refrigerator after surveying the contents, Serena was at the terminator of the hallway carpet and the kitchen linoleum, hair disheveled, eyes violet-shadowed underneath from inadequate sleep.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don't you go get in your bed, get some more sleep? I'm up.”

She shook her head. “I'm all right,” she said. “A lot of nights I don't get eight hours.” She moved into the kitchen, stood behind me at the refrigerator. “You hungry?”

“Let me fix something,” I said. “You've cooked for me enough.”

Not long after, we were at her table, having Diet Coke and omelets.

“I was thinking,” Serena said, slicing into the center of her omelet, releasing steam, “that I was wrong the other night, to push you about finding out what happened to Nidia. It's not your problem.”

“I know it's not,” I said, “but I'm going to try, anyway.” I paused. “Because the thing is, what if she's still alive somewhere?”

“You think she is?”

I hesitated. “If I had to guess, I'd say no. It's probably been too long. If they took her alive intending to let her go later, she'd probably have turned up somewhere by now.”

“Unless they're still holding her.”

“Unlikely,” I said. “Back east, we learned a little about terrorism
and overseas kidnappings and hostage situations. As a rule of thumb, shorter is always better for kidnappers. The longer you have people, the greater the chance of an escape, or a rescue, or a hostage finding a way to stick something sharp in you, or to despair and commit suicide. And then there's the logistics of feeding and guarding a hostage. It's a labor- and planning-intensive mission.”

Serena considered this. “But maybe they're capable of it. You said these guys acted like pros.”

“They did,” I admitted. “They were following us for a while. Babyface, the lead guy, he walked right up to me in El Paso and exchanged pleasantries. The scary thing is, he didn't ask me any questions about where I was headed; he wasn't fishing for information. He didn't have to. He already knew.”

Serena looked curious. “So what was he doing?”

I shrugged. “Nothing,” I said. “As far as I know, he was amusing himself at my expense. These guys are beyond my league.”

“Yet you want to take them on.”

“Well, if I get killed,” I told her, “at least you won't have wasted money on that tattoo on your leg.”

“There is that,” she agreed.

Several days later, I got off a Greyhound bus in San Francisco. Compared to
the way I'd arrived back in L.A., I was generously outfitted for my expedition: a pay-as-you-go cell phone with two hundred minutes on it, a pint of Finlandia, a SIG Sauer P228, and two thousand dollars from Serena. Most of that was my per diem for taking Nidia to Mexico. I hadn't gotten the job done, but no one could say I hadn't earned the pay. Serena had thrown in a little extra for my expenses going forward, a gesture that said this wasn't just a private vendetta of mine, but that I had
la veterana
Warchild at my back.

The SIG was also a loan from Serena. It was chambered for fifteen rounds and was heavier than the Airweight, about two pounds, which was entirely worth it. Since the tunnel, I'd lost interest in guns with five-shot capacities.

I'd already programmed Serena's number into my cell phone and made sure that she had my new number. Maybe I needed to feel like I had a home base. Like if I disappeared this time, someone would report me missing.

I got off the city bus in Japantown and walked to Aries's offices. When I got there, Shay was sitting behind his desk, and when he looked up from the phone conversation he was having, his brows rose toward his hairline, like my old guidance counselor. When he hung up, he said, “Where the hell have you been?”

“I was in an accident.”

Serena and her girls could take the news of a shooting in stride; for them, it was just a bad day at work. But when I was dealing
with other people,
accident
was going to be my euphemism for the ambush.