All Involved (4 page)

I tap Fate on the elbow. He knows for what.

He shines his watch's face at me. Still got over an hour and fifteen before Lil Mosco goes Tasmanian Devil. That's if we're lucky.

Homies already locked down the alley on both ends. Ranger, Apache, and Apache's cousin, Oso, are guarding up the way. Like soldiers, you know? I can't see far enough down the other side to know who's down there, but they're there, four long knives of shadows pointing up the alley cuz of the softball field lights a few blocks over, which is weird cuz I can't imagine anyone playing a
game with the city burning up like it is, but whatever. It ain't my electricity.

The alley is wide enough for two compact cars maybe, nothing else. The backsides of wooden houses on either side are old as fuck, like 1940s, and rotting at their drainpipes. Some garages are separate from houses and between them there's mattresses, old couches, and all the other shit people don't want in front or on the lawn. It's definitely that depressing kind of place no owner ever thinks you'll see, the backs of houses nobody bothers to paint.

All around us, the streets are watching.

Blank faces tucked up in the shadows of garages. Scared faces acting like they ain't scared. A couple look familiar and I mark them in my head. One's a nurse though, still with hospital blues on. She flinches a little when I look at her. Beside her there's a shuffling black bum I don't recognize from the neighborhood. He's short, with a cane, and he's moving toward the body like he's curious.

When he sees me eye him, he says to me, “Hey, what happened here?”

I don't even break stride.

“Somebody get this eyeballing motherfucker out of here.” Feels like I spit it more than I say it.

Fate nods back behind us, and some soldier must've branched off to take care of it cuz I hear a quick scuffle but nothing worth paying attention to. I'm already focused on something else.

As we walk up on my big brother's body, it looks too small to me. Like, his shoulders are too small, and I always remember them being wide enough to carry me around and pretend he was a horse when I was just a little
chavalita
. I don't flinch when I see his face, but I stop. I stop hard.

That's cuz Ernesto's face is busted the fuck up. I mean, it's his face but it's not. Not no more.

Both his eyes are blown out like a boxer took shots on him, all methodical and shit. Grit from the alley floor is pressed into long
wounds on his cheeks, into his mouth. Little bits of sand. Tiny pebbles. One of his front teeth is turned all the way around. His cheek's caved in. He's missing an ear.

“That's him,” the lil homie says, but he doesn't have to.

Shit. It's fucking obvious.

I don't say that though. I'm all trapped inside my head.

I'm looking down at my big brother who doesn't look so big.

I work my jaw and it pops. Ernesto was taller than that, I think. Stupid, I know, what with everything else I see but you can't help that shit. The thoughts just come, unoriginal shit just bubbling up, and my skin's prickling. That's when I realize I'm sweating hard.

He's still wearing his uniform, my big brother. He's wrapped up in dark and dirt and still-drying blood. On this whole busted-up excuse for an alley, there's only one tree tall enough to put its shadows on him, and it's swaying back and forth, pulling this dark outline up and down his legs like a blanket, like it's trying to tuck him in or something.

Worse than that, he's wearing the cowboy boots I got him for Christmas two years ago. Black leather and an elm-colored heel and sole. Real classy shit. He never wore 'em at work, only to walk to and from. For some reason, that hits me deepest. I remember his crooked smile when he opened that box, how his eyes got wide, and I gotta take a minute.

I walk away with my fists clenched up tighter than double knots. Staring at the field lights till I blink blue copies onto the nearby garages doesn't do much for me, but it's something. When I look back to the asphalt and start walking it, I'm careful not to step on the tire marks that lead away from Ernesto like black railroad tracks. I understand the dragged thing now.

He must've gone fifty, sixty feet on the asphalt after they beat him.

Fuck that
pinche
shit! I understand too good.

First, they beat him. They put their fists through his face, prolly the butts of their guns too, if they had 'em. They did this to a guy that never did nothing to them. They crossed a line when they did
that, and only one thing about it made sense. They were trying to get at us instead, at Lil Mosco's stupid ass most obviously and most likely. This was them sending a message. They just didn't think I'd be the first to get it.

I'm so mad I'm shaking. All that anger I had for Ernesto, the same dude that raised me when
mi padre
died, that made sure I always ate up my
chilaquiles
and had a lunch for school every day, changes over.

I actually feel the click. I feel that shit deep inside me, like a light switch flicking on. How all the anger I had for my brother walking home the wrong way just goes away, and how, at the exact same moment, it blazes up at the fools that did this. And I need to know who did it worse than I ever needed anything. Seeing his face like that—shit. Seeing his face like that.

I know I can never go back to who I was before I saw.

These cowards made a new me when they did what they did to my big brother, my Ernesto. I'm standing here all reborn and shit cuz of them. Right now, I'm like starving and thirsting and burning all rolled into one. I look at his face again, and I need to know who I need to do
that
to. I need to know whose hearts need holes to match the ones in mine. And I need that shit like five minutes ago.

Out in public like this, Fate calls shots. I force my hands to unclench. I force myself to walk back to him.

It don't matter how much I'm feeling this. I can't be running my mouth out here, can't ever be undercutting
machismo
. It doesn't work like that. I'm not even really a full foot soldier yet, just related to one. And besides, women got no say-so. I can cry about it or work with it. I do that latter shit.

But Fate already knows what I want. It's like he's reading my mind.

“If you're good to, Payasa, go talk at some people. And keep doing what you're doing, Clever.” Fate nods at us both, then turns to the boy. “The fuck were you doing out here, lil homie?”

I don't hear his answer, don't really care.

I'm already ten steps closer to that nurse I seen before. She's standing right in the alley like she's expecting somebody to ask her questions.

This nurse, she's maybe five three, still in her hospital blues and whiter-than-white, chunky shoes. She's got a scar on her chin, short hair like black nail polish shining under a streetlamp, and blood on her, all down her front. What I think is, she tried to save him, and my brother's blood looks like purple on her smock, like not even real.

“You Sleepy's sister? Gloria?”

She nods. She knows I mean Sleepy Rubio, not Sleepy Argueta. There's a big difference. Sixty pounds, give or take.

“I'm so sorry,” Gloria says.

I put on the calmest voice I can because she looks shaken up. It feels fake as fuck, but I got to. “Tell me what you know.”

She hugs herself like she's cold and points at the nearest garage, some box that looks navy in the dark. “I pulled in, was just going through my mail, you know. I don't pick it up enough and . . .”

Gloria sees my got-no-time glare and speeds up.

“This car, it looked like a little truck with a bed and everything, went by fast. In the rearview, I saw it, and I saw something being dragged behind it and I got out and looked and when I saw it was a person, I just couldn't believe it. It was like something out of the movies. They stopped, like, four houses up and two guys get out.”

I'm counting in my head. “Out the driver's side too?”

“No. Out the bed and the passenger door.”

“So there was a driver who didn't get out?”

“I guess.”

My eyes must've flashed at that cuz she backs up a little. I say, “What'd the other two look like?”

“I dunno. One was normal tall.”

I roll my eyes at that shit. Seems like the majority of people on earth pay less attention than rocks. For us, though, you gotta pay attention in this crazy life. If you don't, you don't deserve breathing.

“But the other,” Gloria says, “he was taller than me. Six foot maybe?”

I say, “Okay, that's good,” but it isn't good, not really. It's something though. I try encouraging her cuz it's what Fate would do. He's better at it than I ever was. I nod up at her. “Did you see their faces? Any marks or like anything out of the ordinary?”

“No. It was dark. They wore sunglasses though. I thought that was weird at night.”

“What were they built like? What'd they wear?”

“Built like normal, I guess, but the tall one was muscular, like he lifts a lot. They both wore black. Hats and everything. I couldn't see anything.”

That figures. When I do some evil shit to get some back for Ernesto, I'll prolly be wearing black too.

“What make of car was it?”

“I dunno. Like, a Cadillac or Ford, one of those long, boxy cars from the seventies or something, but did I say it had a bed to it? One of those half-car, half-truck things.”

“It have anything different about it? Bumper stickers or a smashed taillight or whatever?”

Gloria squints her eyes for a second before saying, “No.”

I shake my head and give up on that shit. “Tell me what they did when they got out.”

She gasps a little, won't look me in the eyes. “They stabbed him, like, a lot. Again and again. I never saw anything like that before. It makes a
sound
.”

Gloria shivers and chews her lip. She doesn't need to explain.

It makes a sound all right, and it depends on how loud if you're bouncing off ribs or if somebody's holding their breath when you sink in. Don't even ask about cartilage. Truth: it ain't easy to stab somebody to death. It takes time. Sometimes it takes luck. It's way
easier if they don't struggle, and maybe Ernesto was too hurt to do that.

I bite the insides of my cheeks so hard I taste blood like burnt copper in my mouth. I'm shaking again, balling my fists up. “How many times they stab him?”

“I dunno,” Gloria says.

I nod and swallow, trying to push my feelings down as low as they'll go. Past my feet even. Down into the ground. “And then they just took off, right?”

It's what I would've done. In and out. Nothing left behind. Clean. I notice I got my fists balled up, so I force my fingers straight. I already know the answer to this question is a yes.

“No,” Gloria says.

My ears are ringing when I pounce on that shit. “What do you mean?”

“The tall one, he wiped off his knife and tucked it in the pouch of his sweatshirt and then he took out some gum, put it in his mouth, and threw the wrapper. Or maybe he got the gum first?”

“Wait.” Hair on the back of my neck stands up. “Where?”

She doesn't hear my question at first, she's still talking, her eyes far off and remembering. “And then they all got in the car and—”

“Hold up.” I put a hand on her shoulder. Maybe it's too hard cuz she whimpers a little. Ask me if I fucking care. “
Where
did he throw it?”

Gloria starts and looks down at me. “What?”

“The gum wrapper.”

She points up the alley, to the right of where Fate is standing with the Serrato kid. I start moving that way, fast. She's trailing behind me, still talking. “I tried to save him. I want you to know. But it was just too much.”

I shoot a look over my shoulder to see Gloria waving her hand at her nurse smock, at the blood marks. At Ernesto's . . .

I should thank her. I can't.

I'm too busy searching through weed clumps and kicking up
pebbles till I find a white little ball of paper wadded up in a divot. It looks new. Brand new.

My heart pounds up in my chest when I see how clean it is, only a little wet on the bottom, like it was recently chucked. This shit's definitely it.

I turn, about to call for Clever, but he's right beside me, holding out a baggie. Shit, he's good. On top of everything. I drop the thing in there.

He's got a pair of long tweezers he uses to hold an edge and then presses his fingers through the plastic like a makeshift glove and unwraps it. The other side is blue. We both look close.

There's some weird writing on it, like calligraphy or some shit. Fate's beside us too then, pressing his face in.

I say, “Is that Oriental style? Like Korean writing?”

“Nah. Not Korean.” Clever holds it up to the light. “Looks Japanese. These letters are all sharp. Korean is the one with circles.”

I don't know but I nod anyway. “What's it say?”

Clever unrolls it before tapping his tweezers on a picture of fruit in the middle. He narrows his eyes at it. “Not sure, but doesn't that look like blueberries?”

“Who the fuck chews blueberry Japanese gum around here?”

“Put the word out,” Big Fate growls. He takes off toward the soldiers. “We're about to find out. Everybody tell everybody.”

I walk back slow to Ernesto and look at the baggies Clever has lined up on the chipped asphalt. Six of 'em. One holds Ernie's wallet. I open it and check if there's still money in it.

There is. This just makes my burning worse. When they didn't even bother faking a robbery, that's when you know that shit was a message. Not like you can fake anything when you beat somebody, drag them, and then stab them all cold-blooded. Shit.

I pull his card and pictures of me, Ray, and Ernie when we were little, a picture of Mamá too. I put the wallet back in his pocket and leave the money so the sheriffs'll know it wasn't a robbery, only twenty-three bucks anyway, but I got to make them work for an ID.