Hailey's War

Payaso lit a cigarette, not offering me one. He took a drag, held it, and exhaled at length. Then his face changed, turning serious. I didn’t have to be told it was time for business.

He said, “So tell me about the shit that went down in Mexico.”

I told him the story. Fast through the part I knew Serena had told him already, about Lara and the arrangements to take Nidia to Mexico. More detailed on the things only I witnessed, like the ambush in the tunnel, and my run-in with Babyface up in San Francisco. Briefly, I talked about what lay ahead, getting Nidia back. In doing so, I salted the conversation with words from my military background, calling the information-gathering I was doing intel and a prospective mission against Skouras asymmetric warfare. I wasn’t just playing to Payaso’s earlier interest in West Point, but to every gangster’s romantic conviction that his life was part of a war. It was no coincidence that most writing done on the Mafia, for example, referred to lieutenants and foot soldiers.

“These guys are serious,” I said. “I told Serena and I’ll tell you, this isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” Did that sound too authoritarian? I went on: “But I can’t do it without the kind of backup that you can provide, guys who can shoot and don’t scare easy.”

“That’s us,” Payaso said, and his guys murmured agreement.

He stubbed out his cigarette. “All right, Insula, me and my homeboys are in. Whatever you need. Those guys are gonna learn they can’t mess with a Mexican girl like that.”

The guys around him nodded.

Payaso added, “But I’m gonna need to know what you’re planning, though, the details of it.”

I shrugged wryly. “As soon as I plan it,” I said, “you’ll be the first to know.”

He stood up, and we shook hands, formally.

Then he looked at Serena. “Warchild,” he said, “there’s a car out in the driveway, a blue Volkswagen. Go drive it to Chato, to his shop.”

The car turned out to be a rather nice Passat with leather seats and a high-end sound system. Somebody out there was missing this car in a way insurance didn’t make up for.

“You don’t have to go with me,” Serena told me. “I can just take you home.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”

“You want to drive, then?” she asked, abruptly reversing position. “I’m getting a headache.”

I’d worried about being dragged into sucia business, and here I was, volunteering for it. I didn’t know exactly why, except that I’d felt bad for Serena, back in the house. I was used to seeing her among her sucias, the undisputed leader; I wasn’t used to seeing her take orders. I’d known gang life was hierarchical, but I’d felt a twinge of distaste nonetheless.

I navigated her darkened neighborhood, then up onto the freeway. While I was merging into traffic, Serena flipped on the Passat’s sound system. There was a CD in the drive, but I didn’t notice the music until Serena said, “What the fuck are we listening to?” Alerted, I listened, and in a second recognized the song coming from the speakers: vintage Simon and Garfunkel, the lilting strains of “Feelin’ Groovy.”

Without waiting for an answer, Serena jabbed at the controls, replacing acoustic music with rap. “Who listens to that shit?” she said, lower-voiced but still irritable.

I didn’t answer. It would be easy to dismiss Serena’s outburst as ghetto monoculturalism, like a child rejecting a food she’s never really tried, but I knew her better than that. What she was really saying about the song’s easy, happy lyrics was not Who listens to this? but Who lives like this? Who feels this way? She didn’t. Nobody she knew did.

After a moment, she spoke again. “You know what really bothers me?”

“What?”

“Payaso and his guys,” she said. “I knew they weren’t going to sign on to this for your sake, but they’re not even doing it for me. They’re doing it for her, Nidia, and they don’t even know her. It’s what she represents to them. The nice girl from the block, the sweet little virgen.”

“But she isn’t, not anymore,” I pointed out. “She’s pregnant, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, now she’s the madonna, or she might as well be,” Serena said. I understood what she was saying. In the world Trece’s guys lived in, there were nice girls, and then there were girls who let themselves be passed around. There really wasn’t much in between. Someone like Nidia, who had slept with only one man, apparently for love-that was nearly as good as still being a virgin.

“It’s messed up,” Serena said. “I’ve done more for them than a girl like that ever will. I’ve lied to the cops and hidden their guns for them. And still, they wouldn’t go to all this trouble for me. But they’re doing it for her.” She was just getting started. “Some little mousie, some little vic who thought that because she prays all the time that God was going to stop the traffic whenever she had to cross the street.” She repeated, “It’s messed up.”

I said, “I wish you’d gotten in touch with this resentment a lot earlier. If you’d never asked me to take her to Mexico, I wouldn’t have gotten shot.”

Serena gave me such a sharp look that I nearly swerved the car.

“Kidding,” I said hastily.

She shook her head. “That’s why I’m doing this,” she said. “I mean it, I’m doing this for you, Insula. Because you got shot, and that shit’s got to get paid for. It’s not about her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Relax, I believe you.”

twenty-nine

Late that night, I was in bed with Serena, staring up into the dark, waiting to sleep.

A lot of people wouldn’t have understood it, two adult women sharing a bed. But now I understood what Serena told me when I’d seen two of her sucias sleeping close together: Sleep was the most vulnerable time, and there was safety and comfort in numbers. My borrowed SIG was on the nightstand. Serena’s Tec-9 was under the bed.

I knew she was straight, but I really couldn’t have told you what Serena did for sex. During her adolescent years, when she’d shaved her head to run with Trece, she’d had to put away her sexuality for later, like female soldiers pack away dresses. Later, when she became the leader of the sucias, Serena had celebrated her new power by growing out her hair. But if she’d reclaimed her femininity, sex was still full of danger. An alliance with Payaso or any of the Trece homeboys, no matter how consensual, would have cost her dearly in respect. Gangbangers commonly referred to a girl “sexing” a guy. It was a term whose closest analog was servicing.

As for a boyfriend outside the gang culture, well, it wasn’t like UCLA grad students in Chicano Studies were going to come by her house with flowers. Serena was a victim of the ways she’d exceeded the limitations around her. I thought of her as a chola in the truest sense of the word: someone who lived between two worlds.

“The girls were riding your bicycle a couple of days ago,” Serena said. She meant the one I’d taken from the charity donations center, not the Motobecane, which was still in San Francisco.

“Risky tipped it over. They were all cracking up,” she said. “It’s funny to see them acting like kids.”

“Kids,” I repeated.

When we’d come in, I’d overheard Trippy talking to several of the homegirls. She’d seemed high-not pharmacologically, but on adrenaline-and I’d soon gotten the drift of what she was talking about. She was bragging about running into a girl from a rival cliqua, “some nothing hoodrat,” and beating her until she’d cried and begged for it to stop. Trippy hadn’t said that the girl’s only crime had probably been being from the wrong neighborhood or flirting with the wrong guy, but that went without saying.

I rolled over onto my stomach and rested my head on my crossed arms. I didn’t like Trippy and wouldn’t have