Hailey's War

I was wearing a heavy flannel shirt over my Navy T-shirt, and thicker socks under my work boots. I had a canvas backpack strapped to my back, into which I’d tucked a sharp boning knife from the housewares section, a long, tough screwdriver I’d found on a table laden with assorted tools, and a wire coat hanger. I was also pushing a ten- speed bicycle. That had carried me to Serena’s place.

Now I crouched against the passenger door of the Caprice, working quietly and feverishly. Unlike Serena and her girls, I had no experience breaking into cars. I’d only seen it done, under innocent circumstances-several times I’d seen my uncle Porter come to the aid of people who’d locked their keys inside their own cars. This was a very different situation, and not the brightest idea, not in a barrio neighborhood where anyone who saw me wasn’t going to call the cops. They’d grab a gun and TCB themselves.

But the door gave way to the force I applied with the long screwdriver, just enough that I could get the wire coat hanger in and trip the lock. I was in.

I lay in the backseat for an hour, staying alert until I was pretty sure that Serena wasn’t coming out on some late-night whim, like a trip to the 7-Eleven. Then, finally, I curled up and closed my eyes and gave in to my exhaustion.

fifteen

Everyone gets sloppy. Even someone like Serena. If she walked out of her house every day scoping for assassins, she’d have cracked up long ago. She didn’t look through the windows at the interior of her car before getting in. She just unlocked the door and slid behind the wheel.

I rose up from my crouched position, grabbed her hair from behind the headrest, and laid the boning knife to her throat. She jumped, startled, but she also grabbed my wrist, ready to fight faster than most people would have been.

“Don’t,” I said. “Stay still.”

“Hailey?” she said, incredulous, her eyes going to mine in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t touch the wheel,” I said. “If you lay on the horn and get your sucias out here, they’ll shoot me, but not in time to save you.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” she asked.

I ignored that. “Put your hands on the wheel.”

“You said not to-”

“I am not in a joking mood, Warchild. Put your goddamn hands in the eleven-and-one position on the steering wheel and don’t take them off.”

She did it.

“Are you strapped?” I asked her.

“Of course.”

“Where?”

“Right side pocket.”

She was wearing loose olive-green cargo pants, the kind with generous pockets for carrying a weapon. I couldn’t take my right hand off her throat, nor could I reach her right leg with my left hand. Stalemate. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll let that be for a minute. You know better than to reach for it.”

“What are we doing, Hailey?” she said.

“A little Q and A. Did you set me up, down in Mexico?”

“What?”

“I said, did you set up that little girl, Nidia, and me to get jacked?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She’d recovered from her initial shock and didn’t sound all that scared. I’d known she wouldn’t be.

I said, “We got ambushed. I nearly died, and she’s missing. You were the one who set the whole thing up. And you knew I was down there and when I was supposed to be back, but you didn’t report me missing. That looks pretty bad, Warchild.”

She said, “When you didn’t come back from Mexico, I assumed you were dead.”

“Maybe you didn’t assume. Maybe you knew how and why.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head very gently, in order not to increase the pressure of the knife on her throat. “I called Teaser’s sister, Lara. She said that no one knew where Nidia was, either. I knew something went wrong. I can prove it.”

“But why didn’t you report it?” I pressed her.

“Hailecita, use your head! Have you ever known me to call the fucking cops about anything? We all know the fucking jura doesn’t care about illegal Mexicans! What were they going to do?”

I said, grudgingly, “What did you mean when you said you could prove it?”

“I added you to my roll call,” she said. Her tattoos on her calf, she meant. She added, “Can I show you?”

It meant reaching down and pulling up the hem of her pants. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “You think I’ve never heard of an ankle holster before?”

She drew in a steadying breath. “Okay, listen. I’m going to, real slow, pull my leg up where you can reach. You can get the nine I’m carrying in my pocket, okay? And then you can hold that while you reach over and look for yourself. Okay? Will that work?”

“Keep your hands on the wheel,” I warned.

Carefully, I let go of the hair I’d been gripping in my left hand, leaned back just a little, and slid my left arm diagonally past the headrest, crossing over my right arm, which was still holding the knife. Then I couldn’t get my arm down to her leg, because my elbow was locked in the wrong direction. I lifted my weight up slightly from the backseat, putting myself in position to turn my arm downward.

Serena flinched. “Hey!”

The shift in my weight had caused me to increase the pressure of the knife on her throat. “Sorry,” I said, glancing at her neck in the mirror. The knife hadn’t broken the skin.

I said, “I can’t reach. Lift up your leg a little farther.”

She did. I felt her body shake a little; she was laughing nervously. “This is some crazy shit, prima,” she said.

I angled my arm down toward her thigh and managed to slide my hand into her pocket, feeling the cool metal of her nine-millimeter. Gently, I extricated it, drew back my arm, and set it down on the seat next to me.

“Feel better?” she said.

“Yeah, but I still don’t want you going for your ankle. Pull your leg up where I can reach.”

Serena was five-nine, and it wasn’t an easy task for her to keep her hands on the wheel and slowly draw up her right leg, ease it past the automatic gearshift, and prop it on the dashboard. When she did, her knee was almost to her shoulder. I leaned forward and slid my arm along her leg, toward her ankle.

“Ghetto yoga,” Serena said, a shimmer of near-laughter in her voice.

“Shut up and let me do this,” I said, and with effort, I reached the cuff of her pant leg and slid it up, revealing the tattoo I remembered.

Two names had been added since I’d last seen it. The third from the bottom read, Teaser. And just below that, I saw the newest and freshest name, Hailey. It was like looking at my own obituary.

“Jesus, Serena.”

“I told you,” she said. “You went down to Mexico and didn’t come back. I figured you were dead, prima.”

It wasn’t logic that they’d understand in the suburbs. But gangbangers lost people all the time. In Serena’s world, it made sense.

I eased the knife away from her throat. “You really just assumed I was dead, with no body, no news report, nothing? Next time, try to be a little more aspirational, will you?”