THE DODGE IDLES ON ALAMEDA, THE ROAD BLOCKED BY A PASSING train. Isabel screams and kicks and slams the back of her head into Jerónimo’s chest as he watches the freight crawl past. He counts its cars in an effort to calm himself. The train seems endless. It’s another trial, Jerónimo reflects, another misery to be endured, like cold rain or a sleepless night.
His first thought was that they’d wait for Luz at Carmen’s place and grab her when she showed up to see her daughter. But while talking to Carmen, he began to worry. If Luz went to the police or got help from somebody else, he and Thacker would be sitting ducks at the house. Better to take the kid and go, and then use the little girl to force Luz to meet them at another location.
“We have to get the child out of here,” he said to Carmen. “Right now.”
“What?” Carmen said.
“For her own safety.”
“No.”
“We’re not going to hurt her,” Jerónimo said. He turned to Thacker, who was standing against the refrigerator. “Do you have something to write with?” he asked him.
Thacker passed him a pen, and Jerónimo plucked a napkin from a wrought-iron dispenser on the table. He took out the phone El Príncipe gave him, pulled up its number, and wrote it on the napkin.
“When Luz gets here, have her call me,” he said. “If she does what I tell her, I’ll return the child to you.”
“Please,” Carmen said. She looked up at Thacker and pleaded with him in English. “Please don’t take the girl.”
“We’re taking the girl?” Thacker said.
Jerónimo made a face to warn him to shut the fuck up, then grabbed the distraught woman’s shoulder.
“Listen,” he said. “The man I’m working for is an animal. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll come to this house and kill you, your husband, your children, your whole family. Be smart, and let me handle this. Make sure I get Luz, and everything will be okay.”
Carmen’s eyes were shut tight. She twisted her head from side to side.
“In the living room,” Jerónimo said. “Which one is she?”
“No,” Carmen whispered.
“I’ll take them both if I have to.”
Carmen opened her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Don’t scare them,” she said. “Let me explain it.”
“Fine,” Jerónimo said, “but do it now.”
The woman wiped her face with a towel lying on the counter, then stood and walked into the hall without another word. Jerónimo followed and motioned for Thacker to come too. He thought of his own children, how frightened they must have been when El Príncipe’s men took them from their home. And now here he was, terrorizing another family for that son of a bitch.
He made himself smile as he entered the living room. Both girls looked up when Carmen said, “Did you see who’s here, Isabel? It’s your uncle, your mamá’s brother.”
The smaller child, the one with the Dora the Explorer T-shirt and bright red shorts, said, “My real mamá?”
“That’s right,” Carmen said. “This is her brother. He’s come to take you to McDonald’s.”
Isabel gave Jerónimo the once-over, skeptical.
“My real mamá lives in Mexico,” she said to nobody in particular.
“So do I,” Jerónimo said. “And she told me to stop here and visit you.”
Looking past him at Thacker, the little girl said, “Are you a policeman?”
Carmen clapped her hands. “Hurry, hurry,” she said. “It’s hamburger time. Put your shoes on.”
Isabel kept her eyes on Thacker as she sat up and slipped her feet into a pair of pink flip-flops.
“Can Lizzy come?” she asked Carmen.
“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” the other girl chanted and started to put on her flip-flops too.
“No, Lizzy,” Carmen snapped. “This is special time for Isabel and her uncle.”
Lizzy sank back onto the couch, a disappointed scowl twisting her face.
Isabel hesitated, sensing that something was up.
“I don’t want to go,” she said quietly.
“What are you afraid of?” Carmen said. “This is your uncle, like Uncle Jorge and Uncle Rafael. He’s come a long way to see you.”
Jerónimo squatted in front of the girl. “It’s okay,” he said to her. “We’re gonna have fun.”
“I want Lizzy to come,” Isabel said.
“Not this time,” Jerónimo said. He picked up the girl. She stiffened and began to sniffle, tears flooding her big brown eyes, and he hurried for the door to get her out to the truck before she broke down.
“Say good-bye to everyone,” he chirped as he stepped onto the porch. “Tell them you’ll be back soon.”
Isabel didn’t say anything, just sucked in a chestful of air. Jerónimo carried her across the street and was sliding into the Dodge when she cut loose with a high-pitched wail.
Thacker climbed in and started the engine.
“This is going too far,” he said. “You never said anything about snatching a kid.”
Isabel tried to squirm out of Jerónimo’s grasp, but he held her tightly.
“I’m tempted to drop your ass off right here,” Thacker continued. “That’s what you deserve for springing this on me.”
“You want your money?” Jerónimo said. “Shut up and drive.”
Thacker is still fuming when the train finally clacks off down the tracks. He mutters to himself and bounces his knee. Jerónimo considers shooting him in the head and taking the truck, but there’s still a chance a cop might come in handy today.
“Where to, genius?” Thacker says.
“Find a McDonald’s,” Jerónimo says.
Isabel is finally running out of steam. She’s stopped struggling, and her sobs have tapered off into pitiful whimpers. Thacker reaches over and pats her leg. “That’s a good girl,” he says. From a compartment in the dash he fishes out a quarter and hands it to her. “Look at that,” he says. “Candy money.”
“You ready for a hamburger?” Jerónimo asks her.
She nods, staring down at the coin.
“You like French fries too?” he says.
“I like Happy Meals,” she says.
“’Cause of the toy, right?” he says.
She nods again.
Thacker uses his phone to locate a McDonald’s over on Santa Fe. By the time they get there, Isabel has calmed down enough to ask Thacker if she can have a second quarter, for her other hand. She insists on coming to the counter with Jerónimo and ordering her own food, not trusting him to make sure she gets a girl Happy Meal. She reminds him so much of Ariel it hurts.
He carries the tray to the booth where Thacker is waiting for them. The fat man grabs his Big Mac and fries and digs in. Jerónimo snaps together Isabel’s toy for her—a yellow plastic flower that spins like a windmill—then unwraps his own burger. He’s too keyed up to eat, though, can’t take his eyes off the phone sitting on the table in front of him.
“Would it piss you off too much if I asked ‘What now?’” Thacker says.
“We wait for the call.”
“Driving around until it comes?”
Jerónimo ignores him. He hates everything about Thacker—his sunburned bald spot, the faggoty way he purses his lips when he sucks his straw, how he pretends to be thinking when he already knows what he’s going to say.
The fat piece of shit picks a shred of lettuce off his shirt and pops it into his mouth. “Why don’t we get a room?” he says. “Motel 6, Holiday Inn. We can beat the heat, screw our heads on straight. And the kid’s gonna need a nap at some point. I mean, who knows when mamacita’s gonna make it to town.”
Jerónimo picks up the phone, checks it, and puts it back down. Ring, you fucker. Taking a room will be an acknowledgment that this thing might drag on longer than he wants it to. He keeps picturing El Príncipe back in TJ, staring at the second hand of his Rolex and getting angrier every time it sweeps around the dial.
“We’ll be more comfortable with a home base,” Thacker continues. “I don’t know about you, but I think a whole lot better with my feet up and a beer in my hand.”
There’d also be less chance for trouble if they laid low. All it would take to blow everything is a cop pulling them over and asking the wrong questions. Jerónimo twirls a fry in a puddle of ketchup. He’s surely tempting fate, wandering around in a city he doesn’t know anymore.
“Find someplace close,” he says.
Thacker takes out his phone and starts searching.
A skinny black woman darts around the restaurant, placing small cards on the tables. Jerónimo picks one up and examines it. I am deaf, it says. Can you help me with a donation? On the other side is the alphabet in sign language, little drawings of hands clutching and pointing.
He knew a deaf kid once. Bobby Escobar. They used to sneak behind the guy and yell as loud as they could, then bust up when he didn’t react. For the longest time they thought he couldn’t talk either, until one day he got into a fight with another boy and began to bray obscenities like an angry donkey. Months later you could still get a laugh by imitating his strangled fury. Jerónimo can’t believe that after killing six men and hurting many others it’s this childish cruelty that’s stuck in his memory.
The woman makes her second pass through the dining room, retrieving the unwanted cards and collecting a few handouts. Jerónimo reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dollar.
“What are you doing?” Thacker says.
“What do you care?” Jerónimo says.
“She’s not deaf. It’s a scam.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Don’t be a chump.”
Thacker calls to the woman.
“Hey!” he says. “You can hear me, can’t you?”
Confused, she shows him one of the cards.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jerónimo says to her as he shoves the dollar bill into her hand. Thacker shakes his head and goes back to his phone.
“There’s a Budget Inn a couple blocks away,” he says.
Isabel is humming to herself and rocking back and forth. She’s only eaten a few bites of her burger, is more interested in the toy. Jerónimo pushes the tray closer to her and says, “Sit still and finish your food.”
She ignores him and continues to fidget.
“Hey!” Thacker shouts at her.
She looks up at the fat man, wide-eyed.
“Eat,” he says. “That’s an order.”
Pouting, she reaches for her burger.
The floor is sticky under Jerónimo’s feet. There’s a sucking sound when he lifts one sneaker, then the other. He opens and closes his phone and wonders why Thacker can’t chew with his mouth closed. A kid brings in a bunch of balloons and presents them to a girl working behind the counter. She blushes and giggles as the whole crew sings “Happy Birthday.” Isabel stands on her seat to watch, and Jerónimo’s patience runs out. He can’t sit here any longer. He packs what’s left of the girl’s meal back into the box and says, “Let’s go.”
The motel is an anonymous stucco heap wedged in beside an off-ramp from the 91. Nothing good has ever happened here, no happy reunions or thrilling trysts, nothing nice. It’s all husbands who’ve been kicked out, family members in town for funerals, and high-functioning dopers on weekend benders. Thacker pulls into the parking lot and backs into a space well away from the office.
“You check in,” he says. “I’ll watch the kid.”
“Why me?” Jerónimo says.
“Number one, I don’t have any money,” Thacker says.
“I want to go home,” Isabel whines.
“Shhhhh,” Jerónimo says to her. “Carmen’s coming to pick you up in a few minutes.”
“Number two,” Thacker says, “you fit in here better than I do.”
Jerónimo can’t tell if the fat man is trying to be funny when he says shit like this, or if he thinks he’s getting away with something. Maybe soon he’ll beat the answer out of him.
The Indian manning the office is asleep in his chair. Jerónimo slaps the counter to wake him. He writes the first numbers that come into his head where it asks for the truck’s license plate on the registration card and leaves the deposit in cash.
“The swimming pool is closed,” the Indian says.
“That’s okay,” Jerónimo says.
“Spa too. Broken pipe.”
“Whatever.”
Isabel is in the throes of another tantrum when Jerónimo returns to the truck. He watches it through the windshield like a movie with no sound, the girl red-faced and thrashing, her mouth stretched wide in a silent howl, Thacker sitting glumly behind the wheel, jaw set, knuckles white. The kid’s fury spills out when Jerónimo opens the passenger-side door and slams into his chest like a two-handed shove.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says. “What’s the problem?”
“I want—” Isabel sobs, “I want—” but is unable to get the rest out.
Thacker, meanwhile, slides out of his door and makes his escape.
“Give me the key,” he says. “I raised two sons already, and that was enough daddying for a lifetime.”
Malone pulls the beer from under the seat and opens a can as he watches Luz walk to the house. He’s in no hurry to get back on the road. It’s after three already, and traffic is going to be terrible all the way back to San Diego. The smart thing would be to go to a movie or find a bar and wait it out.
Luz is on the porch now. A woman opens the door, and she and Luz talk briefly. All of a sudden Luz goes down. Malone is out of the truck and halfway across the lawn before he thinks about what he’s doing. The shotgun in the hands of the Mexican guy who steps out onto the porch brings him back to his senses, the shotgun that’s pointed at his head.
“Stop!” the guy says in thickly accented English.
Malone jerks to a halt and raises his arms.
“I’m a friend of Luz’s,” he says. “It was me who drove her here.”
“Go,” the guy says. “Now.”
“I just want to check on her,” Malone says. “I saw her fall. Is she okay?”
The guy consults with the woman, who’s now standing beside him on the porch. After a short discussion, he walks out onto the lawn, the gun still trained on Malone.
“Lift you shirt,” he says.
Malone pulls his T-shirt up to his chest.
“Turn,” the guy says.
Malone faces the street and shivers as the shotgun brushes his spine. The Mexican’s breathing is loud in his ear as the guy pats the pockets of his shorts. Malone watches the pale ghost of a plane descend toward LAX.
“Okay,” the guy says. “Come.”
He trails behind Malone as they walk to the porch. Luz is lying on her back with her eyes closed. The woman is crouched beside her. She reaches out to nudge Luz as if trying to wake someone who’s fallen asleep.
“Hey,” she says. “Hey.”
Malone goes down on one knee next to her.
“What happened?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” the woman says. “She fainted.”
Malone can see that Luz is breathing, her chest expanding and contracting regularly. He lays a hand on her upper arm and gently squeezes it.
“Luz,” he says. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyes flutter, then open. She inhales sharply upon seeing everyone staring down at her, and a sudden spasm of fear curls her into a ball. In the next instant, however, she seems to remember where she is and relaxes a bit.
“You passed out or something,” Malone says. “Are you okay?”
Her reply is a desolate moan.
“They took Isabel,” she says.
Malone looks to the woman for confirmation. She nods curtly, her expression grim.
“Fuck,” Malone blurts, raising a hand to his forehead. He’s at a loss about what to do next. “What’s your name?” he says to the woman. “You’re her aunt, right?” Turning to the man, he says, “Can I take her inside?”
The man and woman exchange looks, and the woman stands and opens the door wider.
“Only for a minute,” she says. “We have children.”
“Can you walk?” Malone asks Luz.
He can’t make out whatever it is she murmurs, so he slips one arm under her knees and one under her shoulders and lifts her from the porch.
Inside the house he lays her on a couch in the living room. She’s shaking all over. The man closes the door and stands in front of it, shotgun pointed at the floor. The woman watches Malone and Luz warily.
“I’m Kevin,” Malone says, trying to put her at ease.
She ignores his outstretched hand. “I’m Carmen. This my husband, Bernardo.”
Bernardo, a short, burly man wearing paint-stained coveralls and work boots, doesn’t acknowledge Malone’s nod in his direction.
A little girl sneaks into the living room and stands against the wall. She’s hoping not to be noticed, but Malone points her out to Carmen, who says, “Back to your room.”
“Where’s Isabel?” the girl asks.
“To your room! Ahora!” Bernardo shouts.
Frustrated, the girl stomps off down the hallway. A second later a door slams hard enough to rattle the photos hanging on the wall.
“There’s two more that’ll be home from school soon,” Carmen says to Malone. “You and her have to go now.”
Luz sits up, startling them all. Tears glisten on her face, but there’s a coldness in her eyes that spooks Malone.
“Who took my baby?” she says to Carmen.
“It was two of them,” Carmen says. “The one who did the talking looked like a narco. The other was a white man in a uniform. At first they said you were in trouble and that they were here to protect Isabel, but then they admitted they’d been sent by someone. To get you.”
“How long ago?”
“An hour, a little more. I tried to stop them, but they said if I didn’t give them Isabel, they’d kill us all.”
Bernardo shifts uneasily and looks out the peephole in the door. Malone feels the tension too, like all hell could break loose at any second.
“You have to call them, and then they’ll bring Isabel back,” Carmen says. She hands Luz a napkin. “Here’s the number.”
Luz gets up from the couch. “Where’s your phone?” she says to Carmen.
“You’re not calling from here,” Carmen says. “Go somewhere else and deal with this.”
“Fine,” Luz says. Her eyes scan the couch and the floor. “Where are my bags?”
“On the porch,” Carmen says.
Luz heads for the door. Carmen follows her.
“What the hell is wrong with you, dragging us into your shit?” Carmen says. “And Isabel. Your own daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” Luz says.
Bernardo unlocks the door and opens it to let her out. Sunlight floods the darkened room, and Malone loses sight of her until she steps forward and is silhouetted on the threshold.
“Did you really think you could come back and be her mom again?” Carmen says, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the glare. “You abandoned her, remember? Ran away and left her here all alone. What the hell do you even know about being a mom?”
Malone cringes. Val said something similar to him shortly after Annie was killed. He was in the backyard, drunk by the pool, which was where and how he spent his time in those days. More than a month had passed since the funeral, but it was still hard to walk, to breathe, to blink. He hadn’t been back to work, hadn’t even called his dad to discuss it, and was starting to think he never would.
Val came out to the pool deck carrying a drink of her own. She stood over him, her anger stronger than her sorrow that night, a newly kindled fire blazing inside a cold furnace. A drop of condensation fell from her tumbler and hit Malone square in the chest, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak, just kept watching a cloud overhead that was about to swallow the moon.
“Tell me something,” she said. “What made you think you’d be any kind of father?”
Even if he had an answer, she didn’t want to hear it.
“I trusted you,” she continued. “Annie trusted you. You were her daddy. You were supposed to protect her. You were supposed to keep her safe. But you didn’t, and nobody’s going to understand that. Oh, they’ll say this, and they’ll say that, but you’re always going to be the man who let his baby get run over.”
She was right, and he knew it, and that was the moment when he gave up. Gave up, stopped paddling, and sank like a stone. And soon, sooner than you’d think, he found himself among the bottom-feeders—the creeps and cutthroats, the scuttlers and the slime. Settling in with his bottle and his grief, he waited to drown, and it would have been so much easier if he had.
He walks to the door, needs some air, and almost bumps into Luz on the porch. She’s holding out the backpack to Carmen.
“Take this,” she says. “There’s money in it.”
“Money?” Carmen says. “Whose money? Are you trying to get us killed?”
Luz sets the pack on the welcome mat, next to the bags containing the doll and the stuffed bear.
“It’s for Isabel,” she says.
Carmen kicks the backpack, knocking it over.
“We don’t want your money,” she says.
Luz turns to Malone. “Can I use the old man’s phone?” she says.
“It’s in the truck.”
She steps off the porch without another word and walks away across the lawn.
“Isabel will always have a home with us,” Carmen calls after her, “but I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Malone picks up the backpack and follows Luz. When she gets to the truck, she yanks open the passenger-side door and climbs in. Malone sets the pack on the seat between them.
“You might need this,” he says, sliding behind the wheel.
“Please get me away from here,” Luz says.
They drive past a group of kids tossing a baseball. It’s late afternoon, and the shadows of the trees have begun to creep toward the houses on the east side of the street. Luz stares straight ahead. Her face is blank, but her mind is working a mile a minute. When they come to a stop sign, Malone asks which way.
“Just park somewhere,” Luz says.
He takes a left and continues until he hits a strip mall containing a Laundromat, a beauty salon, a check-cashing place, and a liquor store. He swings into the parking lot and finds a spot in the shade. They’re looking into the window of the Laundromat, where a tall black man folds a pair of pants in front of a dryer, and a little Mexican boy pushes a little Mexican girl in a laundry cart.
“I should have known,” Luz says, her voice flat, dead.
“Known what?” Malone says.
“He told me he could find me anywhere.”
“Who are we talking about? Your boyfriend? Your husband?”
“The devil,” Luz says. “The fucking devil.”
“I’m trying to help you,” Malone says.
“You can’t help me,” Luz says. “It was my husband who sent those men. He’s a gangster, a narco. You know what that is?”
“A narco? Sure.”
“You don’t know anything. He…he beat me. He raped me. He threatened to kill me if I ever left him. But I wanted to be with Isabel.” Luz breaks off here, takes a deep breath and turns away. “I stole some money from him and ran off. The maid tried to stop me, and one of my husband’s bodyguards, and I killed them both.”
“Jesus,” Malone says.
“That’s what I’m paying for now,” Luz says. “That’s why they have my baby.”
Malone tugs on the collar of his shirt. His clothes feel like they’re suffocating him.
“What’ll happen to you when you go back?” he says.
Luz smirks at him like he’s dense. “What do you think?”
He’s not going to give her false hope, doesn’t want to insult her that way. He can see in her eyes that she knows what she knows.
“Will you do me one favor?” she continues. “Will you stay with me until I find out where they want to meet and then drive me there?”
“I’ll stay with you as long as you need me,” Malone says.
She reaches over and lays a hand on his thigh.
“You can have the money back,” she says. “And if you want, I’ll…”
Her voice trails off, and the unspoken offer fills Malone with sadness. Putting his hand over hers to keep it from sliding any higher, he says, “Don’t.”
Luz pulls away, her embarrassment coming out as anger.
“Sorry,” she snaps.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Malone says. “It’s just that you don’t have to do that to keep me around.”
Luz can’t look at him while she processes this, stares out her window instead. Eventually she gets herself together and takes the napkin that Carmen gave her from the pocket of her hoodie.
“So can I use the phone?” she says.
Malone passes it to her, and she punches in the number written on the napkin. He gropes under the seat for the vodka, opens it, and has a swig. Inside the Laundromat, mama is mad at the kids playing with the cart. She lifts the girl out and sets her on the ground and swats at the boy, who laughs and runs away. Malone closes his eyes. He can’t watch anymore. He’s done with this world, has been for years. He closes his eyes and listens to the beeping of the phone as Luz calls up her doom.