“Initiated?”
“Blood in, blood out. You kill to get in. They kill you before they will ever let you leave.” Benito wiped at his cheeks. “I am running out of time.”
“Where is the gang’s headquarters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do I find Xavier?”
“I don’t know. We fought last week. He run away. I haven’t seen him since. I lost my wife, and now I can’t lose him. I promised her. When she was dying, I promised her I would take care of him. I did my best. I did my best.”
“I don’t understand,” Evan said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t let them make my boy a killer.”
“No one can make someone a killer.” The words were out of Evan’s mouth before he saw the irony in them.
“Yes,” Benito said. “They can. They will.”
The philosophical point was lost on Benito and not worth arguing.
“I promised I would meet with you,” Evan said. “But there’s nothing I can do here.”
“Please,” Benito said. “He is a good boy. Help him.”
“I’m not a social worker.”
“You can convince him.”
“Convincing people isn’t part of my skill set.”
Benito walked over into the kitchen and pulled a photograph off the refrigerator, the magnet skittering across the floor. He returned to Evan, held up the picture in both hands.
Evan looked at it.
It had been taken at a backyard barbecue, Xavier in a wife-beater undershirt and too-big olive-green cargo shorts, a tilted beer raised nearly to his mouth. Raw-boned but handsome, clear brown eyes, carrying a trace of baby fat in his cheeks despite the fact that he was twenty-four. His smile made him look like a kid, and Evan wondered what it felt like for Benito to watch this human he raised transform into a confusion of opposing parts, menacing and sweet, tough and youthful.
Had Jack felt that way about Evan?
He’s the best part of me.
“When he lose his mother,” Benito said, his hands trembling, “he lose his way. Grief makes us do terrible things.”
Evan saw himself in the pest-control shop in Portland, his foot pinning a man’s chest, shotgun raised, the wreckage of a hand painting the floor red.
He gritted his teeth and took the photo.
38
Steel Bones
The construction workers drifted away from the site, heading upslope where an old-fashioned roach coach competed with an upscale food truck featuring Korean tacos. Three vast parking lots had been torn up to make way for a low-rent retirement community, which was portrayed in idyllic watercolors on the massive signage. Pinning down the southern end of the six-acre drop of cleared land were the steel bones of a five-story building, the first to go vertical in the new development. It backed on the high wall of the 10 Freeway, making it an oddly private spot in the heart of the city.
Which made it useful for Evan’s purposes now.
A yellow tower crane was parked haphazardly among piles of equipment and supplies. Cement mixers and steel pedestals, hydraulic torque wrenches and bolts the size of human arms.
Way up above, the workers reached the trucks, their laughter swept away by the wind. And then there was only stillness and the white-noise rush of unseen cars flying by on the other side of the freeway wall.
A wiry man with orange hair darted into sight, shoving a wheelbarrow before him, his muscular arms shiny with sweat. He reached a mound of copper plumbing pipes and started loading them into the wheelbarrow, shooting nervous glances at the workers upslope.
Evan stepped out from between two Porta-Potties and came up behind him.
“Excuse me,” Evan said.
The man started and whirled around, a length of pipe gripped in one fist. He looked street-strong, his muscles twitching from uppers, which would make him stronger yet. He had a face like a pug’s — underbite, bulging eyes — and his complexion was pale and sickly.
“The fuck you want?”
“A couple of answers.”
They were in the shadow of the freeway wall, and not a soul was in view all the way up to the trucks above. No one could see them down here.
A fine place to steal copper.
“You’re local,” Evan told the man. “Clearly you’ve cased the place, timed the workers. I have a few questions I need answered by someone who lives here.”
“I’m gonna give you two seconds to walk away. Then I’m gonna cave in your fucking head.”
The man inched forward. Evan did not move.
“Your first instinct is to escalate,” Evan said. “That shows me you’re a punk.”
The man ran his tongue across jagged, rotting teeth. “Why’s that?”
“Because you’ve spent your life around people it’s feasible to escalate against.”
“I’m not some West Coast pussy, okay? I’m from Lowell, Mass, bitch. I grew up street-fighting with boxers who—”
Evan daggered his hand, a basic bil jee finger jab, and poked him in the larynx.
The man’s windpipe spasmed. His mouth gaped.
The man dropped the pipe, took a step back, sat down, and leaned over. Then he lay flat on his back. Then he sat back up. His mouth gaped some more. Then he managed to suck some oxygen in with a gasp. He coughed and then dry-heaved a little.
Evan waited, staring up the erector-set rise of the structure. From the fourth floor, you could see Benito Orellana’s house. From the fifth you’d be able to see most of Pico-Union. For all the crime, this was a small neighborhood. Intimate. People who lived on these streets would know things.
The man finished hacking and drew in a few deep lungfuls of air. “Fuck, man,” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “What’d you do that for?”
“To speed up the conversation.”
The man still couldn’t talk, but he waved his hand for Evan to continue.
“MS-13,” Evan said. At this the man’s eyes darted up to find Evan’s. “I need to know where their headquarters are here.”
“I can’t tell you that, man.”
Evan took a step forward, and the man scrambled back, crabwalking on hands and heels until his shoulders struck the top flange of an I-beam. Evan shadowed his movement.
“Wai-wai-wait. Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you.”
He cowered against the steel, Evan standing above him.
He kept one hand clamped over his throat, the other raised defensively. “Just lemme catch my breath first.”
39
Visions of the Occult
A reinforced steel door gave the first indication that the abandoned church was not what it seemed. The half dozen men on guard outside, smoking and bickering, were a more obvious second. Their heads were shaved, their faces and skulls covered with tattoos. Devil horns on foreheads. The numbers 1 and 3 written in roman numerals rouging each cheek. Dots in a triangle at the corner of the eye, showing the three destinations for Mara Salvatrucha members after they’re recruited — hospital, prison, or grave.
To a one, the men wore Nike Cortez sneakers, blue and white for the flag of their home country. One shirtless bruiser had the monkeys of lore inked across his torso — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
Evan walked past on the far side of the street, then cut around the block and took his bearings. The church was north of Pico along the 110 Freeway, surrounded by buildings in steep decline. A textile plant. A bodega with plywood replacing the glass of one front window. Graffiti everywhere, covering Dumpsters, parked cars, walls. On the corner a shrine of flower wreaths and sanctuary candles remembered a young boy who peered out of a framed school picture with bright, eager-to-please eyes.