“No,” I said, “she’s an excellent judge of character. I need your help, Dwayne.”
“No, shit, man,” Dwayne said, continuing to rub and stroke the abused animals. I could feel the power shifting between his fingers, like invisible sand, as he was gently healing and soothing these dogs’ pain as best he could. “You definitely need some help. I felt what you did in there, Ballard, and that was majorly uncool. That’s unnatural, man! You’re gonna end up junking up what little bit of soul you got left.”
“Yeah,” I said, “thanks. I’m not really looking for a morality lesson from a guy who worships the expressway toll plaza.”
“Hey, brah, everything has a spirit,” Dwayne said. “There’s voices in the concrete, whispering, burning rain in the power grid. The lotto is the numerological oracle, and the traffic jam is the great serpent uncoiling across the land. Life finds its way, brah, anywhere, everywhere. The city is every bit as alive as the forest, the ocean, or the desert, and this city has a heartbeat. She’s good and loyal to those who love her back and treat her right, who listen. I was just born with better ears than most. She’s beautiful, you know that, Ballard, you used to love her true. What you just did in there, it’s against life, against nature, against the cycle. You know that, man, you feel it. You act like you don’t care, but I know your heart, man, and you do.”
“The asshole was betting blood sport on innocent animals,” I said. “To hell with him, Dwayne.”
“Your people find out you did that, and they are going fuck you up, brah,” he said.
“Look,” I said, “I need a sit-down with this guy who does business with MS-13. Dragon is on board to get me in, but I could really use your help, Dwayne. What do you say?”
Dwayne looked to Gretchen. The German pit made a sound like “Mmph.”
“Gretchen says I should shine you on, man.”
“Oh cut the shit, Gretchen,” I said. I tossed the accumulated loose weed, Thai sticks, and joints I had scored from my fans at Satellite earlier tonight at Dwayne’s feet. “This guy can help me find a runaway, lost out here. She’s a kid, scared, desperate on your streets, Dwayne. You know better than anyone the kind of two-legged predators hunting out there.”
Dwayne gave the fighting dogs a final skritch and looked to Gretchen as he stood, gathering up the drugs. “Find me a cell phone off one of these losers to call the shelter and the cops, Gretch,” he said. Gretchen padded out of the room, giving me an indignant sniff as she passed me. I gave the finger to her back as she headed down the hall. “I’m pretty sure about eighty percent of what you just told me was bullshit,” he continued. “But if you’re even doing twenty percent good, that’s better than your usual average, and your ass needs all the karma you can get, brah, so okay, we’ll help.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We need to get moving. Hitting those MS-13 assholes at dawn was probably the best way to do this.”
“Yeah,” Dwayne said, as Gretchen returned with a smartphone in her mouth. Wayne took it and petted her. “We’ll try to do this all quiet and cool, Ballard, but we might want to get our hands on boku hardware in case it goes sideways. Some of those MS-13 guys are Nahualli—Aztec sorcerers—and trust me, brah, you do not want to piss with them or their creepy-ass gods.” He swiped the screen of the phone and began to dial a number.
“Dwayne,” I said, “man, there must be like fifty guns or more lying around this house. All loaded, never fired, only dropped once, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” the man responsible for all the carnage said, nodding as he put the phone to his ear. “I kinda forgot, I don’t do hardware unless I gotta … uh, hello? Hi! I wanted to, like, report some nasty-ass illegal dog fighting and, oh yeah, a bunch of like, dead assholes.” He pulled the phone away from his face. “Yeah, we’re going to need a trash bag, or maybe a laundry basket to put the hardware in…” There was a tiny voice speaking on the phone. Wayne put the phone back to his ear. “… wha? No, man,” Dwayne said, as casually as if he were ordering a pizza. “Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you … no, I said dog fighting, then murders … get it straight, man.”
I looked at Gretchen and she cocked her head at me. I shrugged and started gathering up guns, as the sky outside crept closer to dawn.
ELEVEN
Sherman Oaks was west of Studio City and decapitated by the 101. Located in the San Fernando Valley, it was a quiet little oasis of suburban calm in the pretentious smog of hipster pollution and the staccato machine-pistol frenzy of gangbang chaos. It was the kind of strip-mall, chain restaurant, P.T.A. place to which you’d flee to raise a family. So, naturally, it was the perfect place for the particular strain of MS-13 I was hunting to hang out. The mara had bought a ranch compound on about an acre of land, just off Round Valley Drive.
On the way over in a cab, I texted Dragon the address of the gang safe house. “Me and Dwayne are on our way there now to pry Luis Demir away from some MS-13 mouth-breathers,” I typed. “We’ll need evac, most likely a garbage run. Our ETA is about twenty minutes.” Three minutes later I got a curt text reply from Lauren:
“Asshole.”
I looked over to Dwayne as I put the secure smartphone away. “We’re golden,” I said.
It was about an hour after dawn when Dwayne, Gretchen, and I knocked on the front door of their house.
A young man, maybe twenty, opened the door. His face was tattooed with various slogans in Spanish and large stylized letters: MS. He had shaved his head,
