Street Raised Read online

  Speedy looked at the Lizards one by one full in the eyes, staring them down and morally hiking his leg on each in turn, Rachel last. She tried to win the staring contest but her gaze twitched to the side and she whirled to stalk away, continuing her patrol at the far edge of the pack.

  Had Pavel thought Speedy a likely stray? Had Pavel truly believed he’d been inviting a puppy in to hang with the big dogs? Not Speedy’s problem, Pavel’s potentially fatal mistake.

  Speedy smiled inside at their complacency. They thought they had him trapped but he knew he could take out Pavel to his rear with one or two moves, no trouble at all. Then all he had to do was hang back in the shrubbery’s gap, and they could only come to him one at a time as long as he stayed there. Speedy stood waiting, ready to pull out his foldie and flick it open, frowning minutely as he wondered what was keeping them from coming within his reach.

  Pavel chuckled behind him. “I knew you had heart. But now you gotta leave, you can’t hang if you’re not ready to play.”

  Speedy allowed Pavel to slip past him through the gap and into the crowd of Lizards. But Pavel continued on past his followers toward the truck stop, beckoning over his shoulder, again not looking back to see if Speedy followed.

  After a moment Speedy did follow, though leaving the tactical advantage behind made his skin crawl. He acted nonchalant as he walked through the Lizards, maintaining his psychological domination of them in this calculated, necessary risk. All the Lizards stood poised in disappointed indecision, as if awaiting some expected signal that refused to come.

  “Wait a sec,” Pavel said, veering toward a pile of bedding on the way out.

  Speedy feigned casual indifference though his hand hovered over his pocketed foldie and all his instincts screamed, ‘Here it comes.’

  But Pavel picked up a big-eyed bundle of brown fur with black spots. It was a kitten. He held the baby cat out to Speedy.

  “Call it a souvenir and take her.” Pavel’s expression suggested it wasn’t a request.

  Speedy tucked the kitten inside his field jacket.

  The two men walked side-by-side along the well-worn trail to the edge of the asphalt. The noise and diesel stench of the big rigs took over as the charnel scent of the Lot Lizard Graveyard faded to a distant subliminal olfactory backdrop.

  “You should come down to Oakland,” Speedy said, knowing the invitation to be futile even as he made it. “You can’t stay here, man.”

  Speedy pictured all the truckers in this Lot coming together some night, maybe even carrying torches like in some old Frankenstein movie and burning the Lizards out like vermin. This gig couldn’t last.

  Pavel laughed and spat on the ground. “Maybe I could’ve, once. I’ll admit this whole thing was going on long before I ever got here. But I’m somebody hereabouts. The Lizards count on me, listen to what I say. That’s pretty cool, to be a shot caller like that. To be needed.”

  Pavel studied Speedy’s face. “Tell me, what makes you believe we’re the ones that started it? Hell man, you actually think this is the only graveyard here? What if I were to tell you the truckers have their own place where they bury Lizards, over . . . oh, say, right over there maybe.”

  Pavel pointed at another clump of brush at the foot of the berm on the far side of the lot. That distant clot of undistinguished greenery rippled behind the shimmering heat waves already rising from the morning-sun-beaten asphalt.

  Pavel turned to reenter the shadowed shrubbery of his kingdom. “Good luck in Oakland, man. Maybe I’ll look you up sometime.”

  “You ever come to the East Bay, I’ll show you how we play,” Speedy promised.

  Then Pavel was gone, possibly to explain the unfamiliar concept of mercy to his murderous followers.

  Speedy wended his way through the trucks and truckers, past hustling Lizards and nefarious activities both visible and invisible. He reached the berm opening and continued on out towards the highway onramp.

  He’d been here long enough; it was time to chance moving on now. Besides, he figured this window of opportunity for getting away from the Lizards wasn’t going to last forever.

  The Jurassic trumpeting blast of a big rig’s air horn behind him almost made his heart miss a beat. Speedy leapt out of the way and spun to look, blank faced.

  The Peterbilt overtaking him veered for a second like it was going to run him over, before resuming its course straight ahead down the middle of the road. Speedy could see the driver laughing in the cab as the eighteen-wheeler passed. A brawny arm extended from the driver’s window to flip Speedy the bird in greeting and farewell.

  Remembering the kitten, Speedy stood up and reached into his field jacket to touch it. But it was safe and unharmed, and as he chucked it under the chin it started purring.

  Chapter 2

  There were no other cars on the road with the Coupe de Ville so they were making good time. That was all bueno with Esteban – he only wanted to get this trip over with.

  He pressed his sneaker a little harder on the gas pedal and snuck a glance at his older brother Beau, lounging in the shotgun seat. They were up to seventy-five MPH now but Beau seemed not to notice.

  Beau just kept staring straight ahead into the night as if brooding, that lady-killing profile of his expressionless as he listened to George Benson’s cover of ‘Nature Boy,’ playing soft and lush on the radio. ‘Nature Boy’ was the kind of moldy oldie Beau loved – just the kind of old school tune he knew Esteban hated, yet still made a point of playing whenever he and Esteban were together. But least it wasn’t even older, like the 50s doo wop cruising music Beau usually tortured him with.

  Beau was always on Esteban’s ass about something, too. If he had noticed Esteban’s furtive increase in speed he would have said something like ‘Keep it under the speed limit, Steban,’ or more likely, ‘Keep it under the limit, pendejo.’

  Then Oso’s laugh would come from the backseat, that scary booming chuckle bubbling up from way down in Oso’s barrel chest, the chuckle that sounded like water gurgling past in the depths of a sewer storm drain.

  Esteban reddened just thinking about the prospect. This was the first time he’d ever been on one of these rides and he was terrified he’d do something to embarrass himself. He got nervous even on lesser jobs than this, but Beau always made him drive. No free tickets in this business, Beau always said – not even for familia.

  Thinking of rides, despite his best efforts Esteban’s thoughts turned to their two unwilling passengers lying on the floor in the backseat. Two cabrons wrapped in chains like metal cocoons or mummies and stacked on top of each other with a bedspread concealing the whole mess.

  Oso was folded in the backseat with his knees almost up by his ears and both his size-fifteen snakeskin cowboy boots planted on them, to keep them from squirming around too much. Esteban knew Oso was loving this shit, but it gave Esteban the creeps as he’d never been involved in the killing side of the business before. This was his first murder.

  He wondered what was going through the cabrons’ heads as they lay back there in the dark with their mouths taped shut, unable to move, unable to fight or run away. Their duct-taped mouths prevented them from sharing any words – were they staring into each other’s oh-so-eloquent eyes? Or were they withdrawn inside their own skulls reliving the decisions that had brought them here, to the end of the line?

  Esteban’s mind veered away from that train of thought. If they hadn’t wanted to end up like this they shouldn’t have tried ripping Beau off. Anybody with even a little sense knew better than to try punking Beau, either over his money or his drugs.

  They were coming up on a river, with a tall steel girder bridge spanning the deep chasm between hills. The tires’ whine took on hollow overtones as the Coupe de Ville started across the span, as if the car itself could feel the drop below.

  Beau said, “Stop the car.”

  Esteban did as he was told, stopping right in the middle of the bridge and killing the headlights.

 
; Beau opened his door and climbed out, stepping to the bridge railing to look over and downward. He rubbed his hands as he turned back toward the Coupe de Ville. “Here. We do it here.”

  Esteban licked his lips. “Beau, man, this is right out in the open and shit. I don’t know, man.”

  He felt like he could actually hear Oso’s mouth spreading into a feral grin in the darkness behind him, and the back of Esteban’s neck crawled.

  Beau bent over and stared across the front seat at Esteban through the open passenger window. “C’mon out here with me, hermanito.”

  Esteban obeyed and trotted around the car to stand in front of his older brother.

  “Look around us,” Beau said, waving his ring bedizened hand expansively.

  Esteban dutifully peered up and down the highway. The road spooled away in both directions, an asphalt ribbon glowing dull gray in the moonlight and disappearing into the pine-crowded mountains behind and ahead of them. From the car radio, George Benson crooned out ‘To be lo-oved . . . in retu-urn.’

  Beau reached out and grasped the back of Esteban’s neck. Beau steered him to the railing and the two brothers stood together, both of them staring down into the abyss. “No traffic, no lights, no towns – this is the true middle-of-nowhere, es verdad? We have total privacy here.”

  Esteban trembled, hypnotized by the long drop. The river sighed past, way too far below, its swirls and ripples sparkling and cold as the water surged past the bridge’s seemingly flimsy, inadequate supports.

  Esteban couldn’t admire this view – he was terrified of heights. And Beau knew it.

  “We’re all on a bridge between life and death, hermanito, all the time,” Beau said. “And this is where those two putos in the car step off. We do em here.”

  Beau’s eyes glowed as he gazed off into the distance, and he gently squeezed the back of Esteban’s neck as his little brother listened to his speech.

  But then, Esteban had listened to a million of Beau’s speeches. Esteban could recite most of them by heart; they’d been the closest he’d ever had to bedtime stories when him and Beau were younger.

  Beau always got like this when he talked about killing, la muerte got him all dreamy and mystical. For Esteban the whole idea of death just made him feel cold – he shivered when his gran hermano finally released him and he could look away from the abyss.

  They both turned as one to face the Coupe de Ville, a family unit.

  “Let’s do it, Oso,” Beau said. “Vamanos.”

  Oso clambered from the backseat to tower by the car in the watery moonlight, his square brown face an impassive Mayan Indio mask under his cowboy hat. Despite his western wear, Oso’s hands looked like they should have been holding sharp flint. Smoking braziers should have awaited this offering publicly; it should have been happening atop a jungle pyramid in front of an enthusiastic multitude, his stoic bulk somehow managed to imply.

  But Oso betrayed no resentment over the secretive nature of tonight’s excursion – he was pragmatic in his pleasures as Esteban well knew.

  “Bring em out,” Beau said with a directorial gesture of his hand, the orchestra conductor directing his latest funeral march.

  Oso bent and pulled off the bedspread, wadding it up and tossing it onto the backseat. Then he reached in with both hands and grabbed the cabron on top by his bound ankles. The hombre’s separate chains dragged across each other, clanking and chinking together in a skirling whir as Oso dragged the top one out by his feet across his amigo’s body.

  When the cabron’s head reached the doorway and slipped off the edge, it dropped the two feet or more to the pavement and the back of it slammed onto the asphalt with a hollow thud that made Esteban wince. The hombre’s grunt was muffled by the duct-tape across his mouth.

  Esteban watched this dude blinking as Oso dragged him toward the railing. Esteban couldn’t decide if the hombre was groggy from the long drive wrapped in heavy chains, the impact to the head, or both.

  Maybe it was better this one stayed out of it a little, Esteban thought.

  “Get the other one, ‘Steban,” Beau said. “What’s the hold up?”

  Esteban turned away to escape his gran hermano’s reproving scowl and found himself bending over without thinking, reaching with both hands into the darkness of the backseat to take up his share of tonight’s burden.

  As he hooked his hands into the slackened chains around the cabron’s ankles the guy stirred, and Esteban froze for a second. When Esteban began pulling again the vato tensed, his body snagging and catching as Esteban dragged him across the floor to the door. The chains made him heavier than Esteban would have expected.

  When he had the vato almost all the way out Esteban stopped, grabbed his head and lowered it gently to the pavement. He just couldn’t bear to hear that thud again.

  He flicked a guilty glance at his brother and Oso but they were hovering over the other vato by the railing, muttering to each other as they studied him with pleased expressions on their faces.

  Esteban looked down at his vato’s head, still cradled in his hands. This hombre was Asian, maybe Chinese, with black hair braided into a long ponytail.

  The Asian was staring at him and Esteban reflexively made eye contact, right away wishing he hadn’t. All the life within this Asiatico seemed to be pouring out his wide brown eyes in an overwhelming flood, pleading with Esteban, sending Esteban a silent message like he was trying to reach into Esteban’s mind and taint his soul.

  Esteban wrenched his gaze away from the Asiatico’s witchery, his heart pounding in his chest like the bass speakers at a loud party. Grandmamma had talked about the evil eye when Esteban was a little kid, before she died and it was just him and Esteban on their lonesome.

  Esteban’s right hand reflexively crooked in defense against black magic, pinkie and forefinger extended like the estupido huero head bangers did at their rock concerts – but then, how many of the blancos knew anything about real demons?

  Spoiled, the blancos were. They didn’t know what was what like him and Beau did.

  Avoiding the Asiatico’s gaze, Esteban grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him the rest of the way to the railing, keeping the hombre’s head off the pavement at least.

  Esteban set the Asiatico down next to his bound amigo. He stepped back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Beau and Oso, the three crime partners in a unified front looking down at their pair of victims.

  The light was better here and Esteban could see that the other vato was a huero with a blond crew cut, still blinking stupidly. Maybe bouncing the back of his head on the road had knocked something loose.

  The Asian hombre seemed all too conscious of his predicament however – his face was covered with a glistening sheen of sweat and Esteban could see the whites of his eyes as the Asiatico stared up at an indifferent heaven. If Esteban were in his place he knew he’d be praying – not in petition for some improbable life saving miracle, but for the salvation of his own immortal soul.

  “So you maricons figured you’d take me off?” Beau asked the two, grinning. “Here comes all the oro you’re gonna get out of me.”

  Beau’s hands fumbled at his zipper, and, without warning, he started pissing on the men on the ground. Esteban’s mouth hung open as Beau swept his hips from side to side, the pungent stream of his urine arcing out to splash up and down the lengths of their chained bodies and across their faces.

  The huero didn’t react to being pissed on at all, but the Asiatico grunted and shut his eyes tight as he jerked his head to the side in a futile effort to escape the fluid’s humiliating touch. To no avail: it spilled across his cheeks and up his nostrils, prompting a desperate round of sneezing.

  The Asiatico was still sneezing the piss out his nose when Beau stopped urinating, tucked his verga back inside his fly and zipped up his trousers.

  “You like that, putos? You’re gonna love this.” Beau nodded to Oso.

  Oso squatted next to the huero and looked up at Esteban with a smi
le.

  “Time to lose your cherry, ‘Steban,” Oso rumbled, good-natured enough now that someone was going to die.

  Esteban swallowed and squatted opposite Oso, grabbed two handfuls of chain just like Oso did. With a heave and a grunt the two stood up, the chains on the huero clanking as they dragged him to lean semi-vertical against the concrete railing.

  The huero’s face was only inches from Esteban’s. Esteban could see his eyes rolling stupidly around in his head, their lids fluttering and spastic. The huero was lucky – he didn’t even know he was here.

  “Ready?” Oso asked, eyes twinkling.

  Oso squatted by the huero’s ankles, keeping one hand on the chains around the blonde’s waist to hold him upright. Esteban hurried to follow suit. Then, at Oso’s nod, they both stood up, heaving the huero’s ankles overhead as he endo-ed over the railing and off into space.

  Esteban turned away, he couldn’t watch. But Oso leered over the edge the entire eternity it took for the huero to hit the river below, with a distant booming splash that elicited a triumphant grunt from Oso.

  Now Oso leaned over the Asiatico so their faces were close together.

  “Your turn, mamon,” Oso crooned to the Asiatico in a bass singsong.

  A high-pitched giggle leaked from Oso as if beyond his control, a falsetto titter that Esteban would have expected to hear coming from a girl instead of a huge hombre like Oso. Esteban’s skin crawled as he moved to the other side of this last would-be rip-off.

  Esteban knew the drill now; didn’t have to think, didn’t want to. He squatted as Oso did, not making the mistake of looking at their victim’s face this time.

  The Asiatico had tensed in terror – he was straight and stiff as they grabbed him and stood, heaving him to an upright position against the rail.

  That’s when the Asiatico went off.