HUNTINGTON BEACH
While her dad questioned Charlotte, Polly took notes with a pencil pebbled with tooth marks. She’d found the pencil at the bottom of her school bag, and the notebook too. She tore out the pages filled with division problems and facts about South America. She dropped them crumpled to the floor. She wrote aryan steel at the top of the page. She drew a line underneath it. She numbered the different places.
Charlotte talked to Polly’s dad, sneaking peeks at Polly, looking away, touching the claw marks on her face where Polly had gone after her. Polly liked the way Charlotte looked at her, like Polly was a monster wearing little girl skin.
Some of the words Charlotte used, Polly understood. Some she didn’t. She wrote them down anyway. She figured her dad knew or he’d ask. She wrote down things that seemed important. Like this:
CHOP SHOP—mechanic on Alverado s. of McArthur park. Close to chicken place. Peckerwood Nation.
She mouthed words to the bear as she wrote, not because she had to but because they were fun to say. Peckerwood chop shop peckerwood chop shop.
She wrote about a trap house by the Hollywood In-N-Out. An Odin’s Bastards biker bar on the PCH. A Peckerwood Nation safe house in Venice Beach. A white power metal bar in Encino. The main stash house down in Sun Valley between the scrap yard and the garbage dump. This last one was the one that her dad asked the most about.
“What kind of stash house?” her dad asked.
“Crank,” Charlotte said, and Polly wrote it down even though she didn’t know what it meant. “The main stash for the Nazi Dope Boys.”
Polly wrote quick as she could.
“That might be the one,” her dad said.
“You want to hurt them, that’s what I’d do,” Charlotte said.
“You been there?” he asked.
“Once,” Charlotte said.
“You can draw it? The inside, I mean.”
Charlotte nodded like I guess so. Polly handed her the notebook. She pulled herself up by the back of Charlotte’s seat to watch her draw. Polly kind of liked the fake-flower smell of her. She peeked over at her dad. He kept his eyes on Charlotte. Something in his eyes when he looked at the woman made Polly feel off balance.
“Is that all?” she asked to break the heavy silence.
“Who runs the operation?” he asked.
“They call him A-Rod.”
“That’s a baseball player,” Polly said.
“Yeah. He’s a hitter,” her dad said. “It’s another word for killer.”
Charlotte nodded like that’s right.
“So he’s trouble,” he said.
“No shit,” Charlotte shifted in her seat to look back at Polly. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, I can hear curse words,” Polly said. “He says them all the goddamn time.”
“Polly . . .”
The bear shook with silent laughter. He slapped his leg with his paw. Polly caught Charlotte clocking the bear, a look on her face like nutso alert. She fought the urge to put the bear away. What did she care if this woman thought she was nutso?
“You’re really going to do it?” Charlotte asked. “You’re going to rob that place? These guys are killers—”
“Think we don’t know that?” he asked. Charlotte turned away fast like the words had slapped her.
“I guess you do,” she said.
“I get the feeling they know that we’re coming, I get the idea you said a word to anyone about this, I come back to see you,” Nate said. “And you won’t see me coming.”
“I say a word about this to anyone,” Charlotte said, “and dude, the line to get me will be long.”
They let her go in front of her house. Polly watched her walk back to the door. How Charlotte looked back over her shoulder. How he looked back at her with that same hungry face of his that made Polly grab the bear tighter in her arms.
“When you go rob them, you’re taking me, right?”
“It’s not pretend, Polly. It’s men with guns who won’t stop themselves from hurting a little girl.”
“There’s men with guns anyway. If you’re doing it I want to do it. I want to help.”
“It’s dangerous,” he said.
“You said it was dangerous everywhere for us. So we should be together. I want to help.”
He didn’t talk for a while. He shot sideways eyes at her, breathed out a long slow breath.
“Then you help.”
“Okay,” Polly said. “But you have to tell me what to do. I never robbed anything before.”