Hailey's War

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.”

eighteen

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.

nineteen

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.

Shay said, “An accident? I thought you were going out of town on personal business.”

“It started out that way,” I said. “The accident was accidental. Hence the name.”

A new girl, olive-complected with springy black hair and a nose ring, was watching us now, alert to the prospect of drama.

“Why didn’t you call in and let me know what was going on?”

My tone sharpened. “I couldn’t, Shay. I nearly died; I was in the hospital a long time.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”