Lonzo Perez insisted his crew call him 'Black,' not 'El Negro'. Hazel eyes, glassy and expressionless, a snake's eyes, stared at nothing in particular. Though sporting a Boston Celtics jersey, he had no love for the team. The green and white, however, were his crew's colors and its sleevelessness showed off his arms. Along his thick bicep and forearm was a tattoo of his humerus and ulna. A disconcerting effect against his honey-complected skin. The tattoo of his skeleton ran over his ribs and legs also, like an X-ray in a black ink. What gave him pause was the thought of doing his face, just the right half. Regardless of his decision, he knew he couldn't do his hand as it remained sheathed within its glove.
There was an art to being alone and he was the consummate artist. The name, the insisted English, separated him. It carved him out into an even more specialized niche, as if his people didn't already fear and respect him. In that order: fear then respect. Which was fine because he, too, feared them. He feared connection, found the burdens of relationship odd and heavy. Other than Lyonessa and his grandmomma — with his older brothers out of play, one dead, one in prison — he had no stability. No center. Nothing which weighed him down or left him vulnerable. Weak. Exposed. His life was a broken center and he was adrift, going whichever direction he pleased. The price of connection was often too steep.
The front room was the largest room, a mismatched couch and love seat ringing the enclosed space around the television. Grandmomma wrapped her arms around a tattered couch cushion. A picture of a needlepoint flower was stitched onto its front half. She had picked it up at a garage sale for a nickel and hugged it as if it were a talisman that was her only hope to hold back the evil spirits. The television was on, but no one watched it, though it helped drown out the noise of his men. Whiling away the hours in endless chatter about sex, money, and power, not truly knowing what to do with any of them. Sitting in the center of the room, all activity orbited Black.
Black hated this place. It reeked of poverty and shame. A dozen members of his family crammed into a tiny apartment. Barely enough room to sleep in peace. Broken old men, stoop-shouldered and thick-armed, killing themselves as day laborers, doing the scut work to fuel other's versions of the American dream. All scared and anxious. Black lived on the other side of town. Eagle Terrace, close as it was to Breton Court, and even though it was not controlled by a rival gang, often proved problematic. But there was no place he feared going into. Even his cholos gave him wide berth, standing around in their over-sized white T-shirts, gold chains, baggy shorts, and white knee socks, recognizing the electric tension of the room. His people scoured the block, the neighborhood, the city, searching for any trace of Lyonessa. Dred had gone too far. He'd been bucking for a war for a long time. He was about to reap one.
Every crew in their set had two leaders. Black was primera palabra, the first word. The segunda palabra, the second word, the leader when Black wasn't around, was La Payasa. She possessed a lithe physique and walked with a lilt; her body in constant twitch, as if she was constantly ready to burst into a dance, moving to the rhythms of life that only she heard. Blonde hair with black roots exposed to three inches. Black and gold, her colors, set against her butterscotch complexion which some might have been called 'high yella' back in the day. A crease, an old scar truth be told, etched the side of her face.
La Payasa stood at the back of the room, hating the idea of being touched. She was loath to interrupt him. She knew it was bad this time. In her mind, gangs lived by a code and certain things were just off limits. Children especially. The rules of the game had changed, if indeed there were rules. She too was afraid. Not for herself, mind you. She'd programmed herself to not be afraid. It came with always having to prove that she was down for whatever. Half black, half Hispanic, she always had to prove herself. But her soul already knew the night would not end well. And her heart steeled itself for the inevitable blood that needed to answer blood.
Someone rapped at the door. Black nodded and one of his boys opened it. Two police detectives identified themselves. Their eyes told the story long before their lips did. They had found Lyonessa's body. Grandmomma's mouth opened, wordless. A tear pooled in her rheumy eyes. The screams would come later. Without a word spoken, La Payasa knew she was to rally the soldiers because the streets would soon feel Black's rage. She knew Black's instinctive thought.
'Someone burns for this.'
CHAPTER TWO
The Marion County Coroner's Office was a nondescript brick building west of Methodist Hospital, just outside of downtown Indianapolis. The name Doctor Dennis T Nicholas was engraved on a plaque as if to say 'the doctor is in'. Ghosts in blue scrubs and blue gloves and blue masks, behind plastic face shields, the pathologist on duty was elbow deep in another body while a lab tech took photos of bodies as if for a thug fashion shoot. Posters of human anatomy hung on refrigerators like a child's drawing. Specs of the victims filled a dry-erase board.
Cantrell Williams stood over the body of a child and his heart mourned that the world was not the way it was meant to be. Right now, this portrait of an angel at rest had no name. There was no trace of the horrors she must've endured during her final hours frozen onto her face, only the face of a doll, a smooth brown framed by dark hair. Wearing a yellow gown over his suit, like an apron as if he prepared to barbecue, Cantrell hovered about the body. He hated the rustle of his mask every time he took a breath.
He almost didn't notice the cameras.
Some of the other detectives enjoyed their minor celebrity status. A three-man crew followed him down to the coroner's office as they filmed another episode of The Squad. They shadowed several of the detectives, hoping that maybe something they were working might turn into something more. Cantrell considered them a pain in the ass, more intrusive and a hindrance to real investigative work. Captain Octavia Burke thought it a shrewd public relations move, perhaps shining a bit of light on their dark corner of the universe. Maybe with more attention, the department might get a budget increase.
His partner, Detective Lee McCarrell, couldn't be bothered to be here. Action junkies hated the waiting and paperwork of the job. At best he would glance at a report or let Cantrell give him the highlights later.
Cantrell flipped through pages of the report. Diagrams of the head and body, though to his eye, the drawings were too Caucasian. The report was a litany of brutality. Details of vaginal and anal tearings. Wound tracks measured. He fumed to himself that he had to do this on his own. 'She got a name yet?'
'Lyonessa Maurila Ramona Perez,' the first blue ghost said. He cocked his head to the camera, affecting the pose of grief mixed with pensiveness.
'Guess that makes her official. We got ourselves a bona fide homicide.' Cantrell wanted to call bullshit on the doctors, but his own words sounded crafted for effect.
'When will we have the official report?'
'Tomorrow. End of the week at the latest. We're getting backed up.'
'Things are heating up. What's the unofficial word?'
'Someone brutalized this child. Her last hours were filled with pain and terror.' The pathologist attempted to pay little attention to the camera, yet carried herself as if on stage delivering lines she'd expect to hear on one of those prime-time cop shows. Cantrell waited for her to deliver a bad pun and dramatically don some sunglasses. 'Scrapes along her forearms, a cross-hatched scar across her neck. Skin under her fingernails from where she fought her attackers.'
Good girl, he thought.
X-rays lined one of the walls, body parts in close up. Shoulders. Arms. Feet. Ribs. Legs. Head. A pastiche of anatomy, no longer recognizable as human. The X-rays showed where the merciful bullet entered and the direction of it. Bruises and welts along her right thigh smeared into a blue-maroon blotch. A scratch mark ran across her shoulder. A red smear like poorly applied blush on her cheek.
She was twelve years old.
'Abrasions on her neck, possibly from a stranglehold. A contusion possibly followed with a temporary loss of consciousness.'
'What happened here?'
'Those marks are several hours old. From tape. Adhesive in the tracks. Looks like she was restrained during the assault. She tried pretty hard to get free.'
'She was a fighter,' he whispered in respect and sadness, a mix of mourning and pride.
'As best she could. We have carpet burns on her legs like she was forced onto…'
