The Painted Boy

  “Why would he do that?” Rosalie said into Ramon’s shoulder. “Why would he say that and then just disappear?”

  Ramon held her close and stroked her hair.

  “I don’t know, Rosie. We were pretty harsh, the last time we saw him.”

  “It’s not what you said, it’s what you did,” a familiar voice said.

  Rosalie stepped back from Ramon to see Lupita standing nearby. There was something different about the little jackalope girl, but it took a moment to figure out what. Then she realized that every other time she’d seen her, Lupita seemed to almost vibrate with restless energy. All of that was subdued now.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “What did we do?”

  Lupita shook her head. “It’s not my story to tell.”

  “I think I know what she means,” Ramon said. “It’s about Maria, right? She had something like this planned all along, but we just assumed she’d joined the enemy. We never gave her a chance to explain.”

  “You mean I didn’t,” Rosalie said. She turned to Lupita. “Is Jay coming back?”

  “I don’t know. He’s awfully mad about what happened to Maria. Did you see how big his dragon is?”

  Rosalie and Ramon shook their heads.

  Lupita shrugged. “Well, at least he’s got it under control. For now.”

  “Did Jay go back into that magic desert we were in last night?” Rosalie asked.

  Lupita nodded.

  “Can you take us there?”

  “No. I mean, I could, but I won’t. He wouldn’t have left if he didn’t want some privacy. We need to respect that.”

  “But—”

  Lupita glanced at the stage; Anna was starting the band off on yet another traditional instrumental. The Malo Malo fans pressed up against the stage appeared restless. This wasn’t what they’d come to hear.

  “You should go play with your band,” Lupita said, turning back to Ramon and Rosalie. “After all they’ve seen this morning, those kids could use something familiar and fun to bring them back down to earth.”

  “I guess,” Ramon said. “But—”

  “Go ahead,” Rosalie told him. “I’ll be okay here.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Lupita said when Ramon still looked dubious.

  The two girls watched Ramon make his way back through the crowd to the stage. The kids parted for him when they saw him coming. Some reached out and touched his arms and shoulders as he went by.

  “He has something special,” Lupita said.

  Rosalie nodded. “But he never puts on airs.”

  “That’s part of what makes him special. Malo Malo is going to go far.”

  “If it goes on at all,” Rosalie said.

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Ramon always says that the band is like alchemy, a perfect mix. He doesn’t want to be in a band where any member can go and just be replaced. It’s always been everybody or nothing.”

  “And with Margarita gone . . .”

  Rosalie nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Ramon was onstage now. He conferred for a moment with Anna and Hector, then Anna went over to the drum kit and said something to Chaco. He gave a nod and started a complicated rhythm on the snare, his gaze on Anna. She nodded, then turned to Ramon and the band jumped. The audience roared their approval.

  “Well,” Lupita said, “you could always tell him that if he lets the band fall apart, it’s like he’s letting the Kings win.”

  It was all Cruz could do to not break into a run. He felt like he had spiders crawling up and down his back until he finally rounded the corner of the pool hall. He stood there for a long moment, hand on the adobe wall, telling himself to calm down, just calm down, man. But it wasn’t working. He took off again at a fast walk—fast enough to get his ass out of there, but not so fast that anybody watching might think he was running away like some little girl.

  He should have been on his ride, a vintage 1966 BSA 650 Spitfire. He’d babied that machine ever since he’d picked it up as a wreck at a road show out in Linden and spent the next year rebuilding it to factory specs. But now it just lay in pieces in front of El Conquistador along with everybody else’s rides.

  Mother of God, what had happened back there?

  Nobody was normal anymore. Flores. Rita. The Chink.

  And Maria. Maria! He supposed they should have seen that coming—she’d been a stone-cold bitch from day one. Maybe it hadn’t been the brightest move, jumping her into the Kings like that. Maybe they should have held out and got Sandro’s pretty little niece Rosalie like they’d planned in the first place.

  Except, would it have made any difference?

  He kept going back to how the knife had just been yanked out of his hands.

  And his bike. That sweet Spitfire.

  Man, he’d never seen anything like what the Chink had done to their machines. The kid could probably have handled Flores as easily if Maria hadn’t gone and cut his throat first.

  There was serious payback due, but now wasn’t the time. He had to think this through.

  It wasn’t like he was scared. He was just being cautious. And he was seriously pissed off. Especially with Rita.

  Or whatever it was that Rita had become.

  What the hell had happened? For a moment there he thought he’d seen a snake’s head instead of her own. And that weird-ass tongue. He’d never noticed it before—but people were doing all kinds of crap to their bodies these days. Getting her tongue split like she had was just one more freaky thing that freaky chicks did.

  He’d known all along there was something sketchy about her. He’d tried to talk to Flores about it, but hell, there was always something sketchy about him, too. Turns out he was right about the both of them because what the hell kind of monster had burst out of El Tigre’s skin?

  It was all too much like the fairy tales his tío had told him when he was a kid.

  That’s exactly what it was like.

  The realization made the back of his neck feel like spiders were crawling all over it again.

  But what else could it have been but—man, he didn’t even want to think the word . . .

  Brujería.

  Maybe he wanted to ignore it, but the word whispered in his head all the same.

  Magic.

  Cruz wanted to believe that he didn’t buy into magic. That he never had, never would. That it was all just bullshit, whether it was los santos like his mamá prayed to, or the Indian spirits that were supposed to haunt the desert and the mountains.

  But he’d seen what he’d seen. Mother of God, something freaky was going down. And he didn’t want to be any part of—

  “Yo, Cruz!”

  He jumped at the loud whisper that came from the alley he was passing. He reached for his knife, but it wasn’t there anymore. Then he saw it was only Left Eye and he relaxed a little. Left Eye was pretty much a kid—sixteen, tops, Cruz figured—but he was lean and tough and always ready for a fight. He’d gotten his name after a drive-by when the bullet meant for his head glanced off his sunglasses, sending a shard of plastic right into the eye.

  When he came out of the hospital, he wore a patch like he was some kind of Mexican pirate. A week later, two members of the Southside Posse were found dead in a ditch.

  Left Eye looked up and down the street as he stepped out of the alleyway. He was carrying a baseball bat.

  “What the hell happened back there?” he asked.

  “No clue, man.”

  Left Eye slapped the bat against his free palm. “We’ve got to get the guys together. Inflict some damage.”

  “Yeah,” Cruz started to say.

  But then he remembered Rita’s parting words.

  I can’t hurt you the way I’d like to, but if I were you, I’d make tracks and put as much distance between Santo del Vado Viejo and wherever the hell you end up.

  He remembered the Chink’s eyes staring right into him as his knife was plucked from his hand by . .
. what? What had taken it?

  Something the Chink had done.

  The same thing that had trashed the long line of bikes and cars parked in front of El Conquistador.

  Cruz didn’t want that thing coming after him.

  “Except we need to be smart about this,” he said. “We need to find out just what the Chink and Rita are—”

  “Rita? What’s she got to do with this?”

  Cruz shook his head. “Don’t know. But she seems to be tight with the Chink and—”

  She’s got a forked tongue, he wanted to say, that matches the snake’s head I thought I saw sitting on her shoulders.

  But he finished with, “—we don’t know who else is in on this. I mean, you see what happened to our rides? Somebody had to set that up beforehand. A lot of somebodies, I’m thinking.”

  “But who’d do it? Not even those Malo Malo kids would be that stupid.”

  Cruz shrugged. “The 66ers? Maybe the Southside Posse?”

  Left Eye’s one good eye narrowed.

  “Or maybe the cartel didn’t like the job Flores was doing. Who the hell knows? But we need to figure out who and how many we’re up against before we let them know that the Kings don’t take crap from anybody.”

  Left Eye nodded. “So what do you want to do?”

  Cruz looked down at the bat in Left Eye’s hand. “I need to get me a stake. Let me borrow that.”

  “A stake for what?”

  “To pay some rats to go sniffing around and figure out what’s what. Whoever we’re up against, they’re going to know our faces.”

  “Yeah,” Left Eye said, handing the bat over. “Good point. You need a hand?”

  Cruz shook his head. “What I need you to do is hang around our people, see who knows what. But be careful. There’s no way Maria was working on her own. We can’t trust anybody.”

  “Aw, man. You really think there are other traitors?”

  “Right now,” Cruz told him, “the only ones I trust are you and me. Now get going.”

  Cruz waited until Left Eye took off, then headed for the liquor store a few blocks away. He wasn’t worried about anybody seeing him with a baseball bat. People here were used to seeing the Presidio Kings walking through the barrio with weapons. Nobody was stupid enough to actually report it.

  When he got to the liquor store, he took a quick look up and down the street, then went up the two steps and through the front door. The proprietor was a slender man with slicked-back hair and Elvis sideburns. And he was alone. He looked up at the sound of the door and Cruz smiled at the nervousness in the man’s eyes. At least everybody hadn’t gone loco. Some people still understood the Kings were still the real power in the barrio.

  Cruz rested the bat on his shoulder.

  “Give me your money,” he said. “All of it.”

  “C’mon, man. I already paid you guys this week.”

  Cruz brought the bat down on the glass display in front of the cash register. Displays of jerky, matches, lighters, and candy fell with a shower of glass.

  “Your head’s next,” Cruz said.

  Jay stood on the plateau in el entre and gently laid Maria’s body down. He heard a footstep behind him, but he didn’t turn around.

  “So,” Abuelo said. “You’re back. And I assume you won.”

  Jay turned to find Abuelo gazing curiously on Maria’s body.

  “Though not without casualties,” Abuelo added.

  “She wanted to see Aztlán,” Jay said. “I never got to take her here when she was alive so I . . . I . . .” He started again. “She just wanted there to be peace in the barrio so she took my side. I hardly knew her, but she still wanted to save me from having to kill El Tigre. Did you know he’s not even a tiger?”

  Abuelo nodded, but he was regarding Maria’s body with more interest now.

  “She killed El Tigre?” he asked.

  Jay nodded.

  “But she’s human.”

  “She took your advice and caught him by surprise. Like I should have done. Then she’d still be alive.”

  “Yes, and then you’d have won the cousins’ fear instead of their respect.”

  “I don’t know that it’d make that much difference. I didn’t stick around long, but I can tell they’re all afraid of me.”

  “Or simply cautious of the unknown,” Abuelo said.

  Jay shrugged. It didn’t matter. Maria was still dead.

  “Can you help her?” he asked.

  Abuelo lifted his gaze to meet Jay’s.

  “What do you think I am?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Some big power. Maybe one of what Lupita calls the thunders.”

  Abuelo shook his head. “If you compare me to the thunders, I’m the sound of a tiny pebble falling onto a rock.”

  “So you can’t . . . nobody can . . .”

  Abuelo stepped forward and laid his hand on Jay’s shoulder.

  “Some people call this desert the spiritlands,” he said, “but the spirits of the dead don’t usually linger here. They haunt their own world—usually the place where they died. We can’t bring them back. Some have managed, but then they come back wrong.”

  “It’s not fair. She should be alive.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,” Abuelo said, “but I know the wheel always turns as it is supposed to. We take many journeys. We face endless challenges. When the body dies, a new journey begins and who are we to say it is right or wrong? It’s simply how the wheel turns.”

  Jay nodded and knelt by Maria’s body. Abuelo crouched beside him.

  “It’s always harder on those who stay behind,” he told Jay.

  Jay nodded again. “Nothing’s going like I expected. From the moment I got off the bus in Santo del Vado Viejo. Every good thing that happened to me just set me up for something bad. Every time I thought I was doing some good, somebody gets hurt.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  Jay turned to him. “What’s the other?”

  Abuelo shrugged. “That people get hurt, yes, but many more are safe because of what you have done and will do. That what good things come to you should be cherished and remembered, seeing you through the times that are hard.”

  “You’d have to be really strong to live like that,” Jay said. “I’m not that strong.”

  His gaze went back to Maria’s still features. He’d never even considered a situation like this. Someone had given up her life for him.

  “How’s your head?” Abuelo asked.

  Jay turned to him with a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve just had the weight of what? Thousands of other beings dumped into it.”

  “It was overwhelming at first,” Jay said. “I was so lost in the wash of it. I didn’t know what was me and what was everything else. But then I heard Anna’s guitar and it brought me back.”

  “So the connections are gone?”

  Jay shook his head. “No, they’re all there—even over here—but it’s like I’ve got a filter on it all. I have to think about making a specific connection, but I’m still aware of everything in the back of my head. It’s just not all immediate and in my face.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how I got the hang of it so quickly. I guess it must be a yellow dragon thing—you know, all that training my grandmother made me do. Since we’re supposed to be protectors, I guess we must have the ability hardwired into our genes, too.”

  “And you don’t think that’s strength?”

  “Well, no. I mean, it’s different, isn’t it?”

  Abuelo said nothing.

  “Okay,” Jay said. “I get it. It’s just—oh, wait a minute.”

  He paused, head cocked. Then he stood up and vanished from the plateau.

  “So what’re you waiting for?” Cruz asked the proprietor of the liquor store.

  Using the end of the bat, he tapped a piece of glass still attached to the counter. It fell, breaking into smaller pieces. The bat went back onto his shoulder.

&
nbsp; “Well?” he said.

  The man opened the register with shaking hands.

  “Now you’re just being an asshole,” Cruz said. “You think I don’t know you keep the real cash in your safe?”

  “I—”

  The man didn’t finish. He looked past Cruz, his eyes widening. Before Cruz could turn, someone plucked the baseball bat from his hands.

  “You got some kind of a death wish?” Cruz said as he turned.

  But it was Jay Li standing there, and he wasn’t intimidated. He took the bat in both hands and broke it in two. Then before Cruz could move Jay brought the pieces down hard on Cruz’s forearms. Bones snapped under the impact and Cruz cried out in pain. He backed into the counter, wanting to hold on to his arms, but he had nothing to hold on to them with.

  Jay pointed one jagged end of the bat at his face.

  “What did I say before?” he asked.

  “Uh . . . uh . . . no more violence.”

  Jay nodded. “And what was going to happen if you ignored what I said?”

  “Uh . . . I . . .”

  Cruz couldn’t remember, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.

  “I said you don’t get three strikes,” Jay told him. “Mess up, and you’re gone.”

  “Right, right. I remember.”

  “So what do you do now?”

  Cruz stared at the jagged end of the bat still pointing at his face.

  “I . . . I don’t know, man,” he said. “What do I do?”

  “You cross over to the north side of the San Pedro and you don’t come back. And don’t think I won’t know if you try.”

  Cruz nodded. The rapid-fire drum of his pulse finally began to slow a little as Jay lowered the bat.

  “You win,” Cruz told him. “I’m gone.”

  “I know.”

  “But . . .”

  Jay raised an eyebrow.

  “You gotta know that they’re going to be coming after you,” Cruz said. “I mean, everybody. All the bandas, the cartels, hell, even the cops we’ve got in our pockets.”