I took the Range Rover from Rick’s parking lot and drove to the heart of Compton. Raymond Street is split in two by South Central Boulevard, and I found the pool hall tucked behind a mall on the east side. My neighborhood was seedy, and Rick’s would have been described by a hustling realtor as “authentic,” but Raymond Street was downright dangerous. I knew that from the bars and shutters on the windows of every small, single-story home. Residents imprisoned for their own safety while criminals roamed free.
The pool hall was in a grimy whitewashed two-story warehouse on the bend near the mall parking lot. It was approached by a driveway that ran beside a little bungalow that had been painted electric blue. A sign stuck to the wall of the warehouse read Ocean Beach Pool, which must have been some kind of joke, because there was neither ocean nor beach anywhere to be seen.
I parked a short way up the street, in front of a house with a small porch where a couple of old guys were drinking from unlabeled brown bottles. They didn’t say anything and just watched me walk away from the car.
Were they a vision of my future? Would I end up on the porch of some run-down house, day drinking? How many bottles were they from a life on the street? How far did I have left to fall?
You can go all the way, Walter’s ghost said. I believe in you.
Fuck you, I thought, but the spirit was right. I had all the wrong potential.
Keep mouthing off, smart guy, the ghost said. I’ve got company down here. Keep shooting your mouth off and I’ll cut her loose.
I knew instantly who he was talking about.
The girl.
I’d spent years binding her, smothering her spirit deep within me. I didn’t want her back haunting me. My very first victim had almost killed me with her whispers of guilt.
I’m sorry, I told Walter’s ghost inwardly. Please don’t.
My plea was met with silence, so I walked on, aware that I had to get my money back. But I was scared, and my stomach started shooting acid into my throat as I neared the warehouse. It flipped when a couple of painted guys eased themselves out of the front door of the electric-blue bungalow beside the driveway. Young, muscled, wearing shorts, vests, and dark shades, the message was clear: this is our land.
They said nothing and eyed me as I started along the driveway. I felt their sour looks on my hot shoulders as I walked the curving, dusty track. I moved toward the bungalow’s yard so the peeling slats would obscure me, but when I looked back, I saw the two men fall in behind me, lumbering like a couple of fighters on their way into a ring.
Keep tumbling, Walter’s ghost said. You haven’t got far to fall. You’re almost at the bottom.
I could turn around now and pretend I’d come to the wrong address, but Skye would lose her future and I’d be an inch closer to a life on the street.
And I’ll have died for nothing, Walter’s spirit chimed in. Death is one thing. Death at the hand of a deadbeat, that’s just a crying shame.
I couldn’t stop my feet marching toward the warehouse entrance.
The two-story building was like a church, with a steep gable roof. The walls were streaked dirty gray, and the windows that overlooked the track were cracked. There were a dozen cars parked in a yard at the end of the track. Souped-up old trucks and muscle cars, the kind driven by men who want the world to have a clear gauge of their strength and virility. A small porch extended into the yard. It was covered with graffiti, scrawled words and images, some obscene, all designed to send a simple message: keep out.
You’ve probably realized I’m not a brave man. I served in the army, true, but for most of my time I was a master builder who stayed well away from combat. I made things that killed people or stopped them being killed. I built bridges, defenses, things other people used to wage war, but I wasn’t a warrior myself. Until prison, I managed to go my whole life without a proper fight, not because I let people walk over me, but because I never allowed myself to be in a position where their boots could touch my back. I skirted danger, avoided confrontation, and kept out of trouble. Did that make me a coward? I think it made me smart. But it certainly didn’t make me brave. Now here I was standing outside a place of violence, about to confront the men who’d stolen everything from me. Seeking conflict was the opposite of everything I’d ever done, but if I didn’t go in and face these men, Skye’s future would be lost, and I’d probably end up on the street after a long spell inside for the thing with the sheriff’s car.
I had thought about trying to get hold of another gun, but if I went in there playing the action hero, there was a better than even chance I’d be the one chewing a bullet. I figured my best hope was to try to strike a bargain, let them know my daughter’s future was at stake and agree they could keep some of the money.
Even gangsters have souls, right?
The two tattooed thugs were close now, their presence pushing me on like a steer being corralled by a couple of wranglers. I was sweating, but not because of the heat, and my gut was pulsing with acid. My legs were weak and my hands trembled.
Do it for Skye, I thought.
I ignored a handwritten sign on the door that featured a skull above the words Members Only and pushed it open.
I stepped into a large room with a double-height ceiling. Less a pool hall, more a gang hangout, Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” was playing for a dozen or so guys who all stared at me as I made my reluctant incursion. Stained, torn couches lined the walls, a couple of battered pool tables stood in the center of the forty-by-twenty-foot space. Behind them was an old restaurant bar that didn’t quite fit the corner it had been built into, obviously salvaged from somewhere else. Mean faces watched me, betraying histories of blood and violence. I saw the six men who’d been at Rick’s, the ones I assumed had robbed me. They sat on stools by the bar, a Donald Duck mask on the counter behind them.
Outwardly, I kept my cool as I walked across the room toward them, but inside I was as nervous as a frog in a pit of snakes. The two thugs from the bungalow entered the building behind me.
“Private club,” the barman said. Like the others, he was dressed for a metal concert and covered in ornate tattoos that featured too many skulls. “Get the fuck out.”
“I’m—” My voice broke a little, so I cleared my throat and took it down a few notes. “I’m looking for Frankie Balls.”
“He don’t live here,” one of the men by the Donald Duck mask said. I recognized his voice. He was Rasper, the man who’d electroshocked me. Everyone else watched him for cues, and he had the air of a leader. Vicious, but a leader nonetheless.
I guessed he was Frankie Balls.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said.
“What you don’t want don’t count for shit,” Frankie replied, rising from his stool. The men around him did likewise.
“I had some trouble yesterday. That was enough for me. I was robbed. Some men took my daughter’s college fund. She wants to be a doctor.” I grew increasingly nervous as the thugs from the bar fanned out around me. “Like I said, I don’t want any trouble. I was hoping the guys who took the money would find it in their hearts to give most of it back. Keep, say, twenty percent for their trouble.”
“Twenty percent?” Frankie asked. “That’s a pretty sour deal for guys who already have one hundred percent. Why would they give anything back?”
“To help a kid who doesn’t deserve this,” I replied. “Thirty percent if it makes it any easier. Thirty percent and a chance to do something good.”
Somewhere in these men there had to be a kernel of decency. I had to believe that like me they’d just taken a wrong turn in life. I had to believe it for Skye. But even as the naive thought flared, I knew it was a delusion told by a desperate father who’d walked into the lion’s den. Square folk don’t know what desperation really does to a person, but if you’ve ever felt desperate yourself, you’ll know why I stood there trying to reason with monsters. I had no other hope. Looking back on that day, I wonder at just how low and desperate I was, because standing in the midst of thugs and villains pleading with them to return stolen money was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.
Frankie smiled. He looked like an evil version of Escape from New York–era Kurt Russell, complete with wild long, straw-blond hair and manic eyes.
“Good? What the fuck does good have to do with anything? Do you think the world is good?” he asked. “Has it been good to you?”
I knew it was the kind of question that didn’t have a right answer, so I kept my mouth shut and felt a little sick at the growing sense of foreboding.
“The world isn’t good, friend,” Frankie said.
I didn’t see who threw the first punch because it came from behind and sent me stumbling forward.
“This is from the gospel of Frankie,” he said as he drew back his fist. “Life is pain.”
He hit me hard enough to knock me down, and then they all joined in and after a few seconds of dazzling agony, I passed out.