idea of what I was doing in San Francisco. He’d seen me on the street, his curiosity was provoked, he’d followed me to satisfy it. This was plain-view reconnaissance, the kind you did with an enemy so inferior that you had no fear of it. That was how he saw me, as no threat.
That was how I wanted to keep it, then. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and get away clean.
I spoke softly. “I don’t know what happened to Nidia, and I don’t care.” I hunched my shoulders slightly, trying to project fear. “All I want is to forget about it. Every night I feel guilty, wondering why I came home alive and she didn’t.”
“You don’t need to feel guilty about that,” he said. “You’re just a kid who got mixed up in something a lot bigger than you realized.”
I nodded and stared straight ahead, at the grab bar on the seat in front of me.
Babyface’s voice was almost kind as he said, “If you forget all about this, you’re going to live a long and happy life, Hailey.” He took my hand, squeezing it as if to comfort me.
I nodded again.
“Well, this is my stop.”
It wasn’t his stop. But now his curiosity was satisfied.
Babyface said, “One thing, though. One of my guys couldn’t get out of the way of your car in time.”
In my mind’s eye I saw the Mexican tunnel, how two men had been almost directly in my path as I floored the Impala’s gas pedal.
Babyface took my little finger between two of his and said, “He’s never going to walk right again.”
Then he did something quick and efficient with his hand, and I both heard and felt bone crack as he broke my little finger.
twenty-six
It was around ten in the evening. I was sitting on the bed, holding the cell phone in my uninjured hand. My broken finger was splinted to its neighbor, the left ring finger.
The splint wasn’t a doctor’s handiwork; I hadn’t gone to the ER. After Babyface had gotten up and walked to the exit door, I’d stayed where I was sitting, bent over with pain, feeling the aftershock ringing up the bones of my hand and past my wrist. If anyone around me understood what had just happened-and believe me, I’d made noise when the bone snapped, a sound between a yelp and a short scream-they were determinedly refusing to show it. Rule number one of city life: Don’t Get Involved.
Then, as if nothing had happened, I spent an hour and a half fruitlessly looking through Medical Board of California newsletters for the thumbnail reports on disciplinary actions against doctors. Finally the pain got distracting enough that I went home, found Aries’s first-aid kit, and splinted my finger the best I could. I would have liked something stronger than Advil for the pain but didn’t have access to it.
Serena said, “You’re coming back to L.A.?”
“I ran into one of Skouras’s guys today,” I said. “The head gunny. Now he knows I’m alive and in San Francisco.”
“He recognized you?”
“More than. He broke my finger.”
“Jesus, Hailey,” Serena said.
Had Babyface guessed that what I said about being “up for a few days” was bullshit? Did he truly believe I was as frightened and harmless as I’d acted? If he didn’t, I had a problem. San Francisco wasn’t a big city. Forty-nine square miles wasn’t a lot when you had to share it with someone who’d already tried to kill you once.
Serena said, “I thought you didn’t like being in L.A. Because of you-know-who.”
“I don’t,” I said, “but it’s been a year, and besides, where you live is pretty far from Marsellus’s L.A.”
Even so, I thought grimly that, having exiled myself from L.A. a year ago, now I was making deadly enemies in the north, too. Not wise. There was always Oregon and Washington, but they weren’t for girls like me. I could never learn to walk in Birkenstocks.
“Well, you know my place. There’s always room for one more girl on the run,” Serena said. “But what’re you going to do once you get down here?”
“Research,” I said. “I think that trying to find Nidia through Skouras’s real-estate holdings is the best prospect. He’s got to be hiding her somewhere.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Serena said. “I don’t know how you learned to do this shit,
“The thing is…”
“What?”
“I can’t do this alone,” I said. “If I find Nidia, there’s going to have to be a rescue mission. I can’t go in single- handedly.” I paused. “Skouras’s men are like soldiers. Criminals, but soldiers. I need the same kind of guys on my side, guys who don’t scare easy and can shoot.”
“You want El Trece,” Serena said.
“Nothing against your sucias, but this is out of their league,” I said. “Yeah, I need your homeboys. I hate to ask, Serena. This will be dangerous.”
“I know.”
“And they won’t do it for me, a white stranger. I need you to ask on my behalf.”
She was silent so long that I thought she was going to say no. Then she said, “It is a big thing, and I’ll ask it for you, but there’s something I want from you in return.”
“Anything I can do, I will.”
“Take your beating. Get jumped in.”
This was her old tease, about me becoming one of her sucias. Except this time her tone left no doubt that she was serious.
“Serena,” I said. “We’ve had this conversation before. There’s too many white people out there already trying to be something they’re not. I won’t join them.”
“That’s not what this is,” she said. “It’s symbolic. You want me to go to the guys and ask them to ride on a mission with you, first you gotta be blood.”
“That’s my point. I’ll never really be one of you.”
“You’ll always be different,” she said. “But I’m different, too. How many girls shave their heads, put in work like a guy? What made me different let me become a leader.”
“But-”
“But nothing. You’re always saying you’ll never really be one of us, but you know how often white people tell people like me to act white, to assimilate? They know we’ll never really be one of them, but if we want the good job, the big house, we’re always getting asked to make the effort. Why is it different when I ask you to make the effort?”
I stretched out on the bed and didn’t say anything.
“I won’t ask that much of you, either, afterward,” she said. “I know you’re never gonna steal cars for me and then kick it in my living room with my girls. But you want my help, that’s my price.”
There was an interesting correlation in Latin. The noun for close relative or good friend was
In other words, home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to beat you up.
“All right,” I said. “Yeah, okay. I will.”
