Hailey's War

It sounded like paradise, except it was two thousand miles from L.A. and my God-given brother and sister. In that regard, it was purgatory, just like everywhere else. I said, “I can’t cook for shit.”

“For crying out loud, you can learn. Hailey, you’re twenty-four, you have all the time in the world.”

I didn’t mean to wince at that, but I guess I did, because he said, “What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “That sounds nice. I’ll think about it.”

He took a last sip of his beer and said, “I gotta run, sugar.” He got off his stool, picked up the guitar, and kissed me quickly on the lips.

I stayed at the table and watched until he was out of sight. Then I left money for the drinks and joined the crowd headed for the exits, just an average-looking girl in a T-shirt and jeans, carrying ten thousand dollars in cash in a newspaper-wrapped box.

thirty-one

I was on the bus home when my cell rang. I checked the screen: Not surprisingly, it was Serena.

“Prima,” she said, “you gotta come home right away. There’s someone here you need to talk to.”

“Who?”

“Wait and see.”

“I’ve had enough surprises for a while, Warchild.”

“Just come home.”

Serena’s coyness irritated me, but after I hung up I thought about it, and by the time I was getting off the bus, I was pretty sure who was at the house.

Cousin Lara Cortez didn’t look much like Nidia. She had pale olive skin and brown eyes but straight hair chemically lightened almost to blondness. She was in the living room when I got there, on the couch, with a schoolgirl’s bright yellow backpack sitting at her feet.

“Risky and Heartbreaker ran into her at the Pollo Loco,” Serena told me when we briefly conferred in the kitchen. “No one’s asked her anything yet; we were waiting for you.”

I went into the living room, Serena at my heels.

“Are you Hailey?” Lara said as I entered. “You’re the one who got shot.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes were worried. “Did Nidia?”

“Get shot? I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if she’s still alive. I’m just trying to piece together what happened.”

Lara pulled out a pack of chewing gum and unwrapped a piece.

“So,” I said, slowing my speech as I reached the critical point, “this is the big thing I need to know from you.” I moved to stand over her, close enough that I could smell her hairspray and the sugary watermelon scent of her gum. I said, “Was Nidia pregnant?”

Lara looked down at her cheap plastic sandals, and then she nodded. She looked up again and shot a nervous glance at Serena, behind me. “Am I in trouble, for not telling about that?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Nidia was scared, she didn’t want to tell even me about the baby. She said she had to get to Mexico right away, because our grandmother was sick. But I knew that wasn’t true; my mother has a letter from Grandma every couple of weeks, so I knew she was fine. I said to Nidia, ‘What is it really?’ and she started crying and told me about the baby. She said its grandfather would steal it from her and she’d never get it back, that the old man was already looking for her and she had to get to someplace safe. She knew I knew Warchild a little through Teaser, and she thought that Warchild would know how to make it happen. I said I’d ask for help, but then she begged me not to say the real reason. She wanted me to tell the story about our grandma.”

She turned still-worried eyes to Serena. “I didn’t want to lie, but she said it was too dangerous for people to know about this.”

“More dangerous not to know,” Serena corrected. “Hailey drove into an ambush blind because none of us knew what was really up.”

“I know,” Lara said, chewing her gum hard. “And I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

“If you were one of my girls, you’d take a pretty good beatdown for lying to me, but lucky for you, you’re not,” Serena said.

Lara shifted as if to get up from the couch right away, but I held up my hand.

“One last thing, Lara,” I said. “Stay alert. If the old man knew about you, he’d probably have sent someone much earlier. But be careful. You see anything, you even feel anything’s not right, call Warchild.”

She nodded.

Then I said, “Other than that, try and forget about this stuff. You’re supposed to be on your way out of this story, not deeper in. Out is the smart direction here.”

Lara nodded seriously and got up off the couch and left, as if she’d been dismissed from class by a teacher.

Serena said, “Now what?” She and I were still headed deeper into this story, the wrong direction.

“Call Payaso,” I said. “Have him bring over the guys he trusts. It’s time for a war council.”

thirty-two

Two hours later, I was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, notepad on my leg. Serena was nearby, on the couch.

Lara had confirmed my theory, and yet I had mostly given up on the idea of finding Nidia by finding a doctor fallen from grace; even if I trolled extensively through Medical Board of California records, there was no effective way to follow up a hunch about which ones might have been receptive to a Skouras overture. My plans, for now, were fixed on finding out where Skouras held property, particularly individual properties in isolated areas.

Serena got up to answer a knock at the door, and came back with Payaso and his 24-7’s, his most trusted homeboys, Deacon and Smiley and Iceman. A few minutes later, Trippy and Risky and Heartbreaker came in. Not that the girls were going to be in on this mission, but Serena said they could listen.

“They might as well learn,” she’d said. “Even if they’ll never be able to use this shit. Think about it, Insula. This is the kind of thing people like us are part of maybe once in a lifetime. If that.”

She’d sounded awestruck. I hoped she didn’t think this was going to be a harmless adventure, like the movies. She’d seen too much to be thinking that way.

Maybe, though, she was being romantic precisely because what we were doing was so different from the usual banging. Saving Nidia and her child, it was honorable. So I didn’t say anything to bring her down.

Serena, Payaso, and the crew settled down in positions around the living room. Heartbreaker was adding rum to a half-full two-liter bottle of Coke, and passing ice and glasses around.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re not ready to plan the mission itself yet, because that can’t get done until we’ve learned where Nidia is and checked out the layout and all that.” I sipped a little of my rum and Coke and went on: “We need to figure out the smartest way to proceed. In other words, how to find out where Nidia is without drawing attention to ourselves in the process.”

Payaso said, “What’re you thinking?”

“There are two things I’m sure that Skouras needs right now: a corrupt doctor willing to take care of Nidia extralegally, and an out-of-the-way place to keep her. Getting a line on the doctor is going to be next to impossible, given that there’d be no paper trail. So right now I think we should concentrate on finding out where he owns property.”