HUNTINGTON BEACH
It was Polly’s first kidnapping. From this side of it, anyhow.
They sat in the green monster outside the woman’s house. Polly wore a baseball cap to cover her watermelon hair. When she ran into the liquor store for sodas, the old woman behind the counter had called her a little boy. She almost corrected the woman. But she let it ride. It didn’t really matter, and she was undercover, after all.
Polly’s muscles groaned under her skin. Aches were a constant thing now. Under the sore muscles her bones hummed like power lines. She felt them stretching at night. She’d need new clothes soon.
They drank sports drinks and bottled water. They peed at the taqueria down the block. They ate mulitas stuffed with steak. Polly ate as much as he did. She was always hungry these days.
They watched people come and go from the woman’s house. Men with shaved heads, tattoos on their faces and necks. Women too. Her dad had explained the tattoos to her. How sometimes they had numbers, but it was like a code. Like how 88 stood for HH stood for Heil Hitler. That the Woody Woodpecker tattoo they saw down a man’s muscled bicep meant he was a part of Peckerwood Nation. The green-eyed woman, the one they watched, with her hair shaved everywhere but her bangs, Nate called that a “featherwood.”
The green-eyed woman opened her door to all of them. From where Polly sat across the street, it looked like the woman said hello with her mouth but not with her eyes.
“It doesn’t look like she likes them,” Polly said. “Why do they come visit her?”
“She’s a spider,” Nate said.
“A what now?”
“A spider—she’s at the center of a web,” he said. “She’s a connection between the inside and the outside. There’s somebody she’s close to who is in jail. A brother or a husband or something like that, somebody who is plugged in nice and tight with Aryan Steel. And she’s passing him messages, and getting messages back. Probably running a bank account too.”
“So she knows everything,” Polly said.
“Yup.”
“So she’s going to tell us where their treasure is,” Polly said. “And we’re going to take it.”
“Smart girl. But it’s not easy like that. First she’s got to tell us.”
“She’ll tell us,” Polly said. “Or you’ll make her tell us.”
He scrunched his face, like she’d said something wrong. But it wasn’t wrong, was it?
They did it the next day.
He put a blanket in the backseat so Polly could hide and listen. She climbed back there, the bear in her arms, as they rolled back onto the woman’s block. She felt like a pirate climbing a rope ladder. She carried a ghost knife between her teeth.
“Yo ho ho,” she said as she plopped into the backseat. Nate looked at her with a frown. But his eyes smiled.
Polly slid down to the floorboard. She pulled the blanket over herself so she could hide when the time came. They’d timed it just right. The mailman was just pulling away from the curb when they got there.
“Well all right,” her dad said, watching the mailman go. “If we got her pattern right, she’ll be out to fetch the mail in a minute. Be ready. It’ll happen damn fast when it happens.”
Maybe it was a minute or maybe it was ten before the woman came out. She wore a too-big T-shirt and cutoff jeans. She put on makeup just to get the mail. Wild red lipstick that Polly liked.
“Here we go,” he said. Polly had that juiced-up feeling, like someone had just poked air holes in the lid of her jar.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “Something goes wrong, you run.”
“I won’t leave you,” she said.
“Fuck that noise,” he said. “You’ll run.”
Polly watched from the backseat as he walked to the woman’s front door. He had a gun in his pocket. He reached the woman before she saw him coming. He put the gun against her. The woman looked like a person caught napping. Polly watched the woman’s face get angry. Not scared. He wrenched the woman to the car. Polly slid back down and pulled the blanket over herself and the bear. Giddy now, giggling. Under the blanket the bear lifted a paw like shush when the car doors opened.
“What the hell is going on?” the woman asked. She didn’t sound too scared. Polly liked that.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Nate said. “Not unless you make me.”
“Fuck you.” Polly liked her even more.
The engine started.
“All I want is some info.”
A beat passed before the woman answered.
“You’re not a cop.”
“Didn’t say I was.”
“You got any idea of who you’re fucking with?”
“You’re plugged in with Aryan Steel,” Nate said.
“Then you know you’re fucking dead, right?”
“I’m already a goddamn zombie walking,” he said.
Polly guessed the woman didn’t know what the hell to make of that.
“They can only kill me once,” he finally said. “So I can’t be scared. Means I’m going to get what I came for. Why don’t you make it easy?”
“Tell you what, cowboy. You let me go right now, go back to whatever fucking hole you climbed out of, and I won’t say a word to Dick.”
“Who’s Dick?”
“Bullshit. You come after me, you sure as hell know who Dick is.”
“All I know is you’re a spider. You got a man inside. That who Dick is?”
Polly scrunched her face at the bear like what are they talking about?
“You know enough to know I’m not going to say a goddamn thing,” the woman said. “You can’t scare me any worse than I’m scared of them.”
“We’ll see,” Nate said. The air under the blanket was getting hot. It was getting harder for Polly to feel like she was getting full breaths. She wondered if the woman would talk easy. She didn’t want the woman to talk. She wanted to see what her dad would do if the woman wouldn’t talk.
“I need places,” he said. “Trap houses. Stashes. People moving product. Figure you ought to be able to draw me a map.”
“Didn’t you hear me when I said ‘fuck you’?”
Polly heard the pistol click.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” the woman said. It sounded to Polly like maybe the woman was telling it to herself, hoping maybe she’d believe it if she heard it out loud.
“Playtime’s over,” he said. That was the sign for Polly to plug her ears. That something ugly and mean might happen. She didn’t plug her ears. She raked her bottom lip with her teeth, harvesting strands of flesh.
“I’m not some goddamn junkie looking for a fix,” he said. “They killed my ex-wife. They’re fixing to kill my daughter and me. So you better—”
“You—you’re Nate McClusky?” the woman said. “The one everyone is looking for?”
Polly pulled the blanket off her head before her front brain had even figured out what it meant. She sprang up behind the woman. The woman horror-movie screamed. The look on her face, the terror, made Polly feel like she could tear bricks in half with her hands. She got those monster hands into the woman’s hair, close to her skull so her knuckles scraped the woman’s scalp. She yanked the woman toward her. She opened her jaws like a girl raised by wolves. She leaned forward to take a bite of the woman’s face.
“Polly, stop it,” Nate said. He got his hand between Polly and the woman. Polly’s teeth clicked hard as she bit air. Nate pushed her back into the seat. She came back to herself, a little.
“What the fuck,” the woman said. Polly punched the back of the woman’s seat.
“You’re one of them,” Polly said, her voice raspy and wet. “You’re one of them who helped kill my mom.”
“You’re the little girl,” the woman said. “Oh my god. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”