All Involved (3 page)

“Tell your brother we coming.” He whispers it like my ma whispers when she's mad at you in church. Quiet mad.

The one giving orders from the car yells out, “People are
watching,
fool!”

The shape above me disappears then. The car does too. It kicks up gravel on me as it goes. I'm still breathing but it's wet. Half blood. I'm numbing up all over. I try to roll. I think if I can turn over, the blood will just fall out and not choke me. But I can't. I see a new shape above me. I blink hard and it's a face. It's a lady brushing hair from her eyes as she leans over. She's telling me she's a nurse, to stay still. I want to laugh, want to tell her I can't move, so not to worry, I'll stay still because I can't do anything else. I want to tell her to tell my sister what happened. There's another shape beside her, a smaller one. It looks like the boy I saw, almost, but it's too fuzzy to tell. I hear the kid's voice clear though, “This fool's gonna die, huh?” For a second, I think he's talking about somebody else. Not me. The lady whispers something I can't hear then, and I feel hands on me. Not hands so much as pressure. The pain isn't the biggest deal. The problem is I can't breathe. I try and I can't. My chest won't rise. Feels like a car's parked on it. I try to tell them this. If they could please tell the car to move, I'll be fine. It won't be so heavy and I can breathe and everything will be okay if I can just get air. I try to shout this, any of it. But my mouth won't work and my skin feels big, loose, and the sky feels too close, like it fell on me, on my face, like a sheet, and I have the strangest feeling, like it's coming down to fix me, that it's getting inside me with some dark kind of concrete, trying to patch my holes up and make it so I can breathe and I think how good that'd be if that were true but I know I'm just dying, the kid is right, I know I think I'm just melting into it because my brain's low on oxygen, and I know because that's logic, because brains don't work right without food, and I know I'm not really becoming part of the sky, and I know because, I know because

APRIL 29, 1992

8:47
P
.
M
.

Clever's studying a textbook while Apache's sketching
Teen Angels
magazine style at the kitchen table, and over on the stovetop Big Fe's slapping chorizo around in a pan with a wooden spoon. He's halfway through shouting his Vikings story at me in the living room, talking about how one night at Ham Park shots pop off and everybody hits the floor, and how bullets whiz, man, how they really
do
make that sound, when a knock hits the front door of my house all hard and fast, like
bam-bam-bam,
like whoever is on the other side doesn't give a fuck about his hand.

We
were
watching a bunch of
mayates
tear the city up after putting a brick through some white trucker's face on Florence and Normandie, but the news got boring quick so we clicked over to the small dial to watch something else. There's a western on TV now with the sound down, but whatever. It's safe to say my eyes aren't on the guns and hats anymore though. I'm looking at Fate (Big Fe pretty much only goes by Big Fate, so you know) and Clever and Apache and they're all looking at me. We're thinking the same thing: this ain't sheriffs.

Sheriffs don't knock. They ram. They come in screaming behind shotgun barrels and flashlights. They don't care if you're a girl like me. They fuck everybody up regardless.

No way
this is sheriffs.

Fate's got the juice card around here. Under his wifebeater he's that natural type of big that pro wrestlers wish they could be. His right arm ripples with Aztec tattoos as he pulls his khakis up at the belt and moves the pan off the heat even while the sausage keeps pop-popping.

I nod at him and he keeps talking, to sound normal in case whoever's outside can hear us, and he nods back as he bends down and comes up with a pistol. There's always one in the pan drawer under the oven.

It's a .38. It's real small, but it makes real holes.

“So I'm on my back,” Fate says as he moves to the door all slow, “looking up at stars, and, like, little shreds of leaves falling down on me cuz the bullets cut straight through them. They're just
raining
down on me.”

I slip to the floor. I eye the windows, but I can't see shadows for shit behind the curtains. Apache's right up on them though. I see the white comb he keeps in his back pocket peeking out. He's not much taller than me but he's solid muscle, and he wears baggy clothes too so nobody can tell how strong he is. He's the kind of guy you need in a situation like this, in any situation, really. I mean, he scalped a fool once. That's how he got his name. He took a knife and peeled the skin off, inch by inch, hair and all. He threw it in a sink when he was done. I wasn't there, but I heard.

“You know me,” Fate's still going, “I just army-crawl my ass over to the nearest tree so I can look out to see who's shooting.”

I must've heard Fate's story two hundred times. We all have. By now it's like call and response. It's our story, we all own it, and when it gets told, you gotta ask questions at the right times.

As I crawl to my room I say, “Could you see who it was, like faces or whatever?”

The knock comes again, slower and heavier this time.
Bam. Bam. Bam.

Fate blinks. I'm hunched down by the door to my room, running my hand along the baseboard for the rifle my little brother
hides there behind the nightstand. He does that. Hides one in every room, two in the bathroom.

“It was
Vikings
. Leaning all out over the hood of that cop car, headlights off, letting go of shots, man, just squeezing!”

That's Lynwood. We got our very own neo-Nazi sheriff gang. I wish I was lying. I'm not. We heard they even got tattoos. Minnesota Vikings logos on their left ankles. The law don't matter to them. Their idea of fixing gang problems is rolling up in a neighborhood with their lights off like Fate said, then loosing shots at whoever even looks like a gangster before rolling out, hoping to set off a gang war where we kill each other cuz we think another gang shot at us, not sheriffs. That's some criminal police work right there. But to them, if you're brown or black, you're worth nothing. You're not even human. Killing us is like taking out trash. That's how they think.

With nail polish in one hand and one of them application things in the other, Lorraine pokes her head out my room with a curious look on her face, a big, dumb look with her high school
chichis
jiggling at me underneath it. She's not even wearing a bra, and only three toes out of ten are done up in blue glitter. Obviously, she got interrupted.

My glare stops her cold. I mouth the words,
Puta, get back
.

She looks mad at first, but she sinks back into the darkness of the room as I wrap my finger around the butt of the rifle and draw it into my lap. It's a light little thing in my hands, a .22. I only ever shot it twice at targets in my life.

I check it's loaded. You know it is.

Clever's whispering at Fate, looking at the closed-circuit monitor that shows every angle of the house outside, “Got nothing on video. It's the Serrato kid.”

“Alberto?”

“Nah, the youngest. I don't know his name.”

The knock comes again and it's loud as fuck. Hard to imagine a twelve-year-old kid hitting my door that hard. That's when my
stomach drops like I'm riding a Knott's Berry roller coaster. See, that's when I know something's real wrong. Something that maybe can't get fixed.

Fate's on the phone, doing the smart thing: calling across the street, calling two houses up, two houses down, to make sure the avenue is clean, carless, nobody lurking. You never know who they might use to get you to open a door. Could be kids, could be anybody. Gotta have eyes everywhere. He nods slow before handing the piece to Apache. Clever backs him up.

Clever's toothpick thin. A real
palillo
. He keeps the chain on the door but turns the knob and cracks it so Apache can slide the snub-nose .38 to the metal grating of the security door, a few inches from the boy's face. “You need something, lil homie?”

The kid is dead out of breath, coughing a little, not even looking at the barrel or even looking up. “Miss Payasa, I . . .”

Lupe Rodriguez. That's been my government name if you need to know. Not that it matters. It's not my real one. I've changed it twice already. But it's Payasa since I been all involved. (That's the polite way of saying I'm into some gangster shit.) Calling me Miss, though? Ha. If my stomach wasn't fighting itself, I might even think that was cute. Even now, even in the heat of whatever, respect is necessary.

Around here, that stuff isn't courtesy. It's currency. Can't ever forget that.

Apache leans in. “Spit it out, lil homie.”

The kid raises his eyes from my front stoop and his face is all hard. “It's her brother, he's like—”

Clever undoes the chain then the security door, and Apache snatches the boy inside by his shoulders, slams the door with his heel as the security metal slams behind it, and frisks the kid quick
and efficient. The boy has too-long black hair and a chipped tooth. He's got blood on him too.

Fate picks up from there and shakes the kid a little. “
¿Adónde?
”

I can't even lie. See, I'm thinking it's Ray, my younger brother. He goes by Lil Mosco. (Mosco means “mosquito.” He caught that name cuz he never stopped buzzing around when we were little. He's got Lil cuz there used to be a Big Mosco until last year. Drive-by. Rest in peace.)

It takes the kid a minute to tell us the body is two blocks away, dead as dead can be. That's when the blood really beats up in my ears cuz that doesn't make any sense.

Lil Mosco's running to Riverside and back, I'm thinking, like, how could he . . . ?

Shit. It hits me in that second, hits me right in the face and tilts the whole house on me. I gotta catch a wall with my hand just to stay upright.

It ain't Ray.

“Oh, fuck,” I say.

Fate lets go of the kid and he's got this sad look on his face, the saddest look I ever seen. He knows it too. Clever's already got his mouth open like he forgot what breathing was. Apache has his head in his palms.

It's Ernesto, my big brother. My guts know it, but my brain's disagreeing, saying things like, he's not even a player. He's not involved. He's civilian. He's off-limits, so there's no way. No fucking way.

But then it dawns on me like a math problem my stupid ass finally figured out. There are no rules now. None. Not with people rioting. I shiver when I realize every single cop in the city is somewhere else, and that means it's officially hunting season on every fucking fool who ever got away with anything and damn, does this neighborhood have a long memory. I snort and take a second to appreciate the evil weight of it.

I mean, me, Fate, and Clever joked about something like this
happening when we saw the dude getting bricked on the TV before Apache came over, and we were saying how now would be a good time to even up some scores if we felt like it, but I guess some homies were already out there, calling in old debts, blasting.

Behind me somewhere, Lorraine comes out of my room and says, “No, baby, no . . .” like she's trying to comfort me or something, but I'm not even sad right now and I sure as hell don't want her hands on me.

I'm angry.

I mean, I never been so mad at anybody in my life. I see flashes of red dotting my vision as I dig my nails into the rifle butt.

Like, how many times did I tell Ernesto to pay attention how he walked home? The dividing line between our neighborhood and theirs is too close as it is. Lazy-ass motherfucker got what he deserved for not listening to me!

I bite my lip and realize I been holding my breath.

I hear myself say, “Who knows?” It comes out sounding like rage.

The kid looks confused. “Like, who did it?”

“No,” I say. “Who knows Ernie's gone?”

The kid gets around to it: just the people in the alley where he got dragged.
Dragged,
the kid says the word and I don't even know what it fucking means in this situation. The word just doesn't click for me. I don't get it. Not right at that moment. Not with the house still spinning, not with me still holding on. I swallow hard and say, “How much time we got?”

Clever gives me a look like he doesn't get what I'm asking at first, but Fate does. I don't even need to say it.

He looks at the wall clock and shrugs. “Hour and a half most likely.”

That's how long it'll be before Lil Mosco buzzes back and hears about this. Nobody takes pagers on runs. That eliminates the temptation of using it while you're doing business.

So ninety minutes then, maybe less. That's how long we got to
find out who did it, find them, and put bullets in them before wild-ass Lil Mosco gets home and starts shooting up house after house of anybody even halfway connected to this shit. But that's not my style.

I need to look whoever did it in the eyes, because what else is a sister to do?

They need to know I know before they get it. It needs to be justice.

Everybody in the living room can tell I'm on fire. Nobody says shit when I turn off the TV on a posse scene, badges getting handed out to a bunch of white hats. For a second, that feels like us. I hand Fate my rifle and pick up the phone to call
mi mamá
. We moved her out of Lynwood last year to somewhere safe, somewhere I can't even tell you. She still hears things though, like the grapevine still runs right through her kitchen.

Takes me five tries to get through. Phone lines must be jammed everywhere tonight. Guess I'm just lucky. When she comes on the line, I can tell by the tone of her voice she doesn't know yet, but she knows something's wrong cuz of my tone. I tell her not to answer the door, to lock it up good. I tell her not to answer the phone again until I get there cuz I got something important to tell her but it needs to wait, and I need her to hear it from nobody but me.

“
Por favor,
” I say. “
Prométeme
.”

She promises.

I hang up the phone and tell the kid to take us there, take us to the place where my brother got fucking dragged to death.

The drive over in Apache's Cutlass is the longest two minutes of my life. My left leg shakes like I-don't-know-what and only putting my hands on my knee makes it stop. But that's when the other one starts up and I'm like, fuck it, and just stare out the window at the mailboxes going by fast, at the front doors caged with bars. Everything's
locked up good and tight. I don't blame them. It's not so dark that you can't see smoke over the tops of houses and know shit's still burning in the distance.

I remind myself to breathe as Clever parks one street over from the alley and me, Fate, and the lil Serrato homie cut between houses on the Boardwalk and come up into an alley with garages on both sides. The air is still here, like a bunch of people been holding their breath till we came. I'm too hot, so I undo the buttons on my flannel till it's blowing out behind me and I only got my wifebeater left as a shield.

Normally we'd roll in, see what we can see, and roll out quick. But we got time tonight. Even if somebody called the sheriffs, they ain't coming for a while. Not tonight. Tonight the streets are ours.

Clever's right behind us with a flashlight and some of them bags with zippers already open and prepared. Clever's an all-star for shit like this. We sent him to L.A. Southwestern College for Crime Scene Investigation last year. He's almost got his A.A.

I mean, part of you doesn't ever want him to use what he learnt. But that's the crazy life. Soon or late, it's somebody's turn to feel the cut. And you hate it when it happens to others in your
clica,
but you hate it more when it happens to you. I felt it twice already, for a cousin and
mi padre
gone down. Now that spinning wheel landed on me again. It's my turn. Again. And I need Clever and his answers. I need 'em fast.