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  Rhee grinned. “In 1980, while you were busting crooks in DC and my older sister was falling in love with Duran Duran, El Salvador has itself a twelve-year civil war. Bunch of people get killed, even more get the hell out. They trickle north, but Mexico isn’t much better than home. And LA is just over the border, looking pretty good to a bunch of people who live on five bucks a month. But LA ain’t ready to welcome a bunch of piss-poor Central American refugees with open arms. The Blacks and the Mexican gangs start pushing the Salvadorans around.”

  “And they push back,” I said.

  “Right. Now, normally, these refugees would get their asses handed to them by any number of gangs in LA that would line up for the pleasure. But these fuckers weren’t bean farmers, man. They’re rebels, army deserters. They got five, ten years of combat experience in the jungle. They’re not going to take shit from anyone. People learn real quick not to mess with the Salvadoran maras, the gangs, and pretty soon we’ve got a real success story, the American Dream come true. The gang carves out some breathing room, starts to spread, and puts down roots.”

  “What about recruitment? Some of those ex-rebels have to be out of the picture by now, right?”

  “Sure. That was in the early ’90s. But there ain’t never been a shortage of poor, displaced Central Americans, homie, especially around here. And, even the ones who are trying to be decent can be part of the problem.”

  “Like?”

  “One scenario, happens all the time. Mom and Dad immigrate from El Salvador to make money in the U.S., leave their kid back home with Grandma. The parents work their asses off. Ten years later, they finally get enough cash to bring him along, but now their cute five-year-old is a surly teenager who doesn’t know a lick of English. He’s supposed to fit in overnight. And maybe he has a new little brother or sister half his age who speaks the language and acts American and is the apple of Mama and Papa’s eye. Now the first kid’s pissed off. He’s a second-class citizen in his own family. He’s got no identity. He finds the gang, or the gang finds him, and they’ve got a new recruit who doesn’t have the first idea about the Salvadoran civil war and wouldn’t care if he did. He’s just mad and wants to make somebody pay.”

  We spied the motel a minute later and Rhee pulled into the parking lot. We sat and took stock of the place, a two-story, run-of-the-mill flop house.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  Rhee puffed his cheeks, then blew out a breath. “I could ask the front desk, but the clerks get a little skittish if they think the gang might take it out on them for ratting to the cops. Let’s try something else.”

  He got out of the car and I followed, adjusting my jacket. Rhee noticed and said, “You packing?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked troubled, but just said, “This isn’t a bust. Just an info session, okay?”

  “I’m not here to put holes in anyone.”

  He nodded, then motioned for me to follow him. We walked along the cracked and weedy pavement slabs that fronted the first-floor rooms, heading for an external second story set of steps. Rhee took them two at a time and we followed the platform balcony around until it turned a corner, putting us in the rear of the building. The back of the motel overlooked a lonely patch of asphalt populated by two Dumpsters and bordered by a chain-link fence. On the other side was a used car dealership partially hidden by its own chain-link fence and that strange plastic curtain stuff that they weave in between the links.

  At the end of the balcony, in front of the door to what must’ve been the last room in the place, was a pile of cans and pizza boxes. A mountain bike hung half over the concrete knee wall, its front tire missing. As we got closer, I could see a grubby denim jacket on the ground with a battered Washington Nationals cap nearby.

  “What do you think?” Rhee asked, nodding at the mound of garbage. “Think we found our party?”

  He walked up to the door and tried it. Finding it locked, he cupped a hand and squinted through the window, then went back to the door and banged with his fist a half-dozen times.

  “Rico! Vámonos, hombre,” he yelled, kicking the door. Another three or four minutes of this and eventually the door cracked open. A creaky voice asked in Spanish what the hell we wanted. Rhee ignored it and pushed his way in. I followed a few steps behind, wanting my eyes to adjust.

  It was my nose that needed the adjusting. The smell of days-old pizza, beer, puke, and sweat hit me like a hammer. I took shallow breaths and waited while my eyes got used to the dim light.

  What I saw wasn’t anything to write home about. A typical crummy motel room. Two twin beds, a cheap table with two chairs, and a TV bolted to a faux-wood credenza that was, in turn, bolted to the wall. There were beer cans and cardboard Budweiser boxes everywhere. Two open pizza boxes decorated the table where a family of flies landed on and contaminated what remained. The TV screen was smashed and there were small shards of the glass on the floor. The AC fan was on, but it was broken, so the only noise was a low buzzing sound not unlike the flies on the pizza.

  A guy and a girl were still fast asleep in the bed nearest the door. A guy was passed out on the floor. A girl in biker shorts and a halter top had answered the door and backed away, standing bleary-eyed by the foot of the second bed. Rhee opened his mouth to ask her something when at that moment the toilet flushed and a guy in jeans and no shirt walked out of the bathroom.

  He was a scrawny, pock-marked sort of kid, with skinny arms and a pot belly. About five-eight and a hundred and nothing pounds, with black hair and black eyes. A tremendous scar ran along the right side of his scalp, white against his skin and dark hair. But the most arresting detail was on his face. Across his forehead, in large block letters, were the letters “MLA.” Several black teardrops were inked below his left eye. Tattooed Gothic script flowed around his nose and cheeks, with stylized skulls, women, and numbers dripping down his neck where they joined a score of others on his chest and stomach. I’d seen gang members proclaim their loyalty before, but never like this. He could’ve been wearing a mask.

  Both Rhee and the tattooed dude froze. The scene seemed to crystallize and slow to a crawl. The smell and the heat faded away, but the buzz from the broken fan seemed to get louder. My arms and legs felt leaden, even though my pulse jumped up a notch. I was very careful to keep my hands motionless and visible.

  “This isn’t Rico, I guess,” I said after a second.

  “Nope,” Rhee said, not taking his eyes from the other guy. He said something in Spanish, very fast, too fast for me to follow. The tattooed guy watched us, his liquid black eyes moving slowly back and forth. There was casual menace in the set of his face, but he was as still as a stone. After a second, he replied, in a soft voice completely at odds with the body it came from. Rhee said something else and got a shrug in return. There were a few more exchanges where Rhee did most of the talking and the other guy said very little, if anything. Then Rhee nodded, and stepped back, away from the door. I followed his lead. The tattooed guy very deliberately reached down and picked up a grimy t-shirt from the floor, slipped it over his head, and walked out the door without looking back. The deadbeats in the bed and the guy passed out on the floor slept through the whole thing. The girl who’d answered the door watched us.

  Rhee seemed pretty cool, but I let out a shaky breath. “Who was that?”

  He shook his head. “Never seen him before. I asked him his name. He said Cuchillito. Chillo for short.”

  “‘Little Knife’?”

  “Yep. Well, kind of. Chillo actually means snapper, like the fish. But in this case, it means knife.”

  “Chillo a first or a last name?”

  “More like a brand name, I think,” Rhee said.

  “I’m guessing from his ink that he’s not one of the benchwarmers you’re looking for?”

  “Fuck, no. That’s the real deal, a dude from the mara. Wasn’t expecting that. Maybe this was just a party, but I doubt it. My boy Rico has some explaining to do.”

&nbs
p; Rhee went over to the bed and slapped and poked the guy in it until he groaned and sat up. It was another skinny Hispanic kid, but without Chillo’s tattoos and menace. Rhee handed the kid an opened beer and started to pepper him with questions, but the kid was hung-over and sullen and eventually stopped talking altogether. The girl began to snore. The guy on the ground moaned and rolled over onto his back. Rhee tried a few more times to get Rico to talk, his voice going from wheedling to flat and threatening. I heard him say the name “Chillo” several times. But the kid just sat propped against the headboard like a lump.

  Rhee swore and straightened up. “This piece of shit isn’t going to give us anything. Rico, I’m telling you, you start playing with those guys and you’re going to end up deader than dirt. Or in jail for life. You understand, chico? You know something you better tell me. I’ll be around, okay?”

  The kid watched us, resentful, as we walked out of the room and into the cleaner air of the parking lot. Rhee closed the door behind us and, this time, did blow out a breath.

  I looked at him. “‘Deader than dirt’?”

  He shrugged. “All I could think of.”

  We headed back to his car and got in, but Rhee sat without starting it. “This is weird,” he said.

  “Which part? I thought you said the gangbangers came around once in a while.”

  “Yeah, but after they leave, punks like Rico can’t shut up about how they’re going to be in the real mara now and how things are going to change. They puff up like a blow-up doll until a couple weeks go by and they realize the only reason their homie came around was to score some dope for the night.”

  “Rico didn’t look forthcoming.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Rhee said.

  “And the Illustrated Man wasn’t exactly, uh, voluble.”

  “No, he wasn’t. He was as surprised as we were. But he could tell it wasn’t a bust. Either that, or he’s stone-cold inside.”

  “Both,” I said. “That piece of work could pull your heart out without blinking.”

  “Rico knows that better than we do.”

  “So Rico is scared,” I said.

  “Or we’re hassling him just as he’s making the grade. Maybe he got the call-up to the big leagues. And we made him look bad by showing up,” he said, thinking out loud. “Can’t help his case if they know we can find Rico anytime we want.”

  “That would explain the pouty face.”

  He sighed and started the car. “Any of this help you out?”

  “No, not really,” I said. “But it’s been fun.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As a kid, I read comics about Superman and his home, the Fortress of Solitude. I can’t recall how the artists portrayed Superman’s Arctic home, but I’d always envisioned him sitting on a chaise longue made of ice or steel—Superman doesn’t experience discomfort—doing the New York Times crossword puzzle or whatever it was superheroes did to unwind after defeating the Lex Luthors of the world.

  The point being that even Superman needs a break.

  I’d been working on Bloch’s cop-killer for a week solid and felt run down. There was a time when I could’ve done that week on no more than a few hours of sleep. Cancer and age made that kind of stamina a memory of the distant past, but the tradeoff had been wisdom. The kind of wisdom that tells you that sometimes you’re more effective when you take a rest, that running yourself into the ground doesn’t always solve the case. In fact, might even make a solution more elusive.

  So, I tucked all my feelings of guilt and fear into a back corner of my head—not easy to do, when I expected to get a call from Bloch any minute—and called my old partner Dods to invite him to a cookout.

  “A cookout?” he said. “What the hell, Marty?”

  “What’s wrong? You have a problem coming over?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s just…you’ve never had a cookout before. Do you know how?”

  “Of course I know how,” I said.

  “Really? You have a grill?”

  “No.”

  “How are you going to have a cookout, then?”

  “I’ll do what everyone else does. I’ll buy a case of beer, order take-out from Rocklands, and heat everything in the microwave.”

  “I think you’re missing the point,” he said. “But we’ll be there. Margie’s gonna be ecstatic. Who else is coming?”

  “I’ll ask Amanda, see if she wants to bring any friends,” I said. “It’ll be small.”

  . . .

  Everyone congregated in my backyard, sitting at an old picnic table, moving carefully to keep from getting splinters. Amanda had brought Zenny and Jay, her grad friends from GW, who listened in rapture as Dods regaled them with stories about life as a career homicide cop. The guy could find humor in just about any situation, which was a useful trait for staying alive and sane in our line of work. Even better, he loved to play the ham. My sense of humor tended towards the internal and sarcastic, which Dods was good at as well, but he was even better when he had an audience to play to. His broad, Slavic face was lit up like a lightbulb and his hands were held wide in a “it was this big” gesture.

  I watched from the kitchen window as I cleaned up, one of those people who can’t sit for very long. Or maybe it was just experience. Dods would inevitably get around to roasting me and it was always smart to excuse yourself before the guns swung in your direction. Or, maybe it was because I’d hoped the cookout would act as a pick-me-up, but what had really happened was my feelings of loneliness had been brought into stark relief. I wondered what it would look like with Julie sitting there, pushing a strand of hair out of her face as she listened. Or Kransky and Dods together, two ex-partners, swapping stories about me. It hurt to think about. When I let myself open that door, sitting at a picnic table chuckling at one of Dods’s jokes didn’t seem to fit. I’d originally hoped the get-together would pull me out of the dumps, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect.

  I was scraping the last of the baked beans back into its take-out container, Pierre skulking around my legs looking for scraps, when I saw Amanda glance around, looking for me. She stood while the others were still laughing at something Dods had said and came towards the house. She poked her head into the kitchen, holding a hand out to keep the screen door from banging.

  “What are you doing in here, Marty?”

  “Just trying to get a jump on cleaning up,” I said. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

  “You should be enjoying yourself.”

  “I am. I enjoy cleaning.”

  She made a face. “Seriously, come out and join us. Relax. Laugh a little. That was the whole point, right?”

  I shrugged. “True. And who knows when we’ll get the chance again.”

  She came all the way inside, a concerned look on her face. “What’s that mean?”

  I tried to wave it off, but I’d let my mouth run ahead of my brain again. “Nothing.”

  Amanda folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “Hey, give me some credit. Did the doctor call? Has something happened?”

  “No, it’s not that. I…” I gritted my teeth.

  “What, then?”

  I put the container in the fridge and rinsed my hands, dried them on a dish towel. It gave me a good excuse to not look at her. “Look, I’m happy that you’re graduating, that you’re moving on. Very, very happy. If anyone deserves some good news in life, it’s you.”

  “But?”

  Okay, now I had to look. “I’m trying to get used to the idea that in a few weeks you could be leaving. Maybe for good. Maybe more importantly, I’m trying to adjust to the idea that you leaving should bother me so much. I’ve gotten through fifty-odd years with about four important relationships in my life. At some stage, all of them involved the person leaving, changing, progressing, doing something different than I was.”

  She was quiet, her face expectant.

  “I’m saying that you leaving bothers me. A lot. We’ve helped each other in the last six m
onths, but I feel like I’ve gotten the better end of the deal.”

  “That’s up for debate.”

  I brushed that aside. “Long story short, I don’t want you to leave, even though you’ve got every right to. I’m trying to work around that right now, but what can I say? It’s depressing.”

  She walked over and put her arms around me. Her grip was strong. She stepped back and looked me in the eye. “First, I may not leave. They haven’t exactly been beating down my door with job offers. Second, even if I end up leaving, we’ll cope. You’ll miss me, but you’ll find a way to deal with it, the same way I’ll have to, wherever I end up. Third, you’re part of my life and nothing will change that, especially not something as meaningless as distance and time. Like it or not, you’re my family, Marty. Which means, wherever I go—if I go—we’re connected.”

  She hugged me again and I hugged back, hard. After a moment, though, my stomach broke into a long and protracted gurgle that felt like a lawnmower had started somewhere south of the border. Amanda, her head tucked into my chest, started to laugh, her body shaking in my arms. I laughed, too, and it felt good.

  “So much for our Hallmark moment,” I said, letting her go.

  “We’re too cynical for it anyway,” she said, smiling. She squeezed my arm. “Come on, Marty. Leave this stuff for later. Come out and sit with your friends.”

  “Go on out. I’ll be there in a sec,” I said. “I’m going to grab some more beer for Dods before he guts me.”

  “Don’t be long,” she said and went outside. “I don’t want to have to send him in after you.”

  I reached into the fridge for another six-pack, but paused at the sink again, watching as Amanda re-joined the group. The tableau was perfectly framed by the window. Dods had her laughing before she was done taking her seat and I smiled. It was a snapshot of joy and friendship and I wanted to tuck it away.

  She was right. And she was wrong. We all cope. We’re all connected. And we hope the love we share with others will get us through bad times. But it doesn’t always erase the pain, the loneliness. It isn’t always enough.