I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (2 page)

Some genius you are, Angel. You certainly know how to pick your friends.

Lambert handed Angel her backpack that had been confiscated when she’d arrived this morning. She stuffed the stolen paperback into the front pocket. An older plainclothes detective stood in the doorway. He looked her up and down, surprised. “This is Saldana?” He frowned at a folder in his hand.

“Yes,” Lambert said.

“It’s the hair,” Angel said with a fake smile. “I got bored with brown.”

She’d bleached the underside of her hair, then dyed it fire engine red. Added a couple blonde highlights on top and became a different person. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but unfortunately, the radical color made her stand out. First chance she got, she’d do something less dramatic to blend into a crowd. a hand through his hair. sGr

The cop raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Maybe it wasn’t just the hair. The nose stud might have done it. Or the two Chinese characters tattooed on the back of her neck that meant
strength
. She certainly wasn’t out to impress this cop or anyone else.

Lambert signed the paperwork and the cop escorted Angel out of the building. It was already dark, not surprising because it was January. She’d bolted from her apartment so fast after Marisa disappeared and the creeps showed up that she hadn’t grabbed a jacket. Everyone thought L.A. was all sun, all the time, but January and February got damn cold when the sun went down. There might even be rain this weekend.
Terrific
. At least the weather suited her mood.

The cop said, “I’m Detective Jim Friday.” He nodded to the other plainclothes cop leaning against the hood of the sedan. “That’s Detective Martinez.”

“
Hola.”
She gave Martinez a partial salute. “Can I convince you guys to swing by In and Out? I’m starving.” Juvie food was a step up from garbage, but she’d been so nervous that she hadn’t eaten.

“Sorry,” Friday said.

“Jim Friday.” Angel smirked. They didn’t have cable in her apartment and she’d spent one summer watching reruns of sixties television shows. Anything was better than the soap operas her mother devoured like the wine she drank.
Mister Ed
,
Bonanza,
Adam-12.
Dragnet
made her laugh, though she didn’t think it was supposed to be funny. “Anyone call you Joe?”

Martinez laughed spontaneously and Friday scowled. She grinned as she climbed into the backseat. The two cops sat up front.

“Don’t start,” Friday muttered to Martinez as his partner turned the ignition.

As soon as the car left the juvie compound, Angel breathed easier. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she was no longer locked up. Angel knew the San Fernando Valley inside and out and was confident she could find someplace to hide if the group home situation was messed up.

“Where are we going?”

“Reseda,” Friday said.

“My apartment is in Reseda — think we could swing by and get some of my stuff?”

“No.” Martinez glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you think it’s unusual that you have a police escort? We don’t usually go about transporting juvenile delinquents from lockup. It’s either corrections or social services.”

“I’m not a delinquent.”

Martinez snorted. “I saw your file.”

She stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror and leaned back.

Friday said, “The DA’s office is taking all precautions, considering.”

“Considering I have a target on my back.”

“If there was a real threat, they’d put you in a safe house. This is simply a precaution.”">Should we choose a particular edvo

“Whatev.” Of
course
there was a real threat. Angel had always steered clear of the gang and drug scene, though it wasn’t easy. Between her apartment and school, by the time she was running through multiplication tables Angel knew every street name for meth, coke, pot, heroin, and anything else grown, cooked, or manufactured to get someone high. When Marisa started dating Raul’s brother George, she’d brought the drug gangs to their doorstep. Angel should have told her to take a hike, but loyalty — best friends forever — won. Marisa and her parents were the only stable people in Angel’s life. They’d lived in the same apartment building for as long as she could remember. Marisa’s parents taught her Spanish and fed her when her mom didn’t buy food — which was often.

“Why’d you do it, Marisa?” Angel mumbled.

“What?” Friday said from the passenger seat.

“Nothing.”

Because it was Saturday evening and traffic was moving, it didn’t take long to cross the Valley. The group home off Vanowen looked like every other ranch house built in the fifties. The front was mostly concrete with a small square of lawn, a three-foot high chain link fence that might keep a Chihuahua caged and not much else. A white van in the driveway had
Los Angeles County Group Facilities Management
painted on the side.

I so do not want to be here.

“These people know I’m not in trouble, right?”

“They know you’re a material witness and we’ll be picking you up at seven thirty Monday morning to escort you to the courthouse.”

“My own chauffeur service,” Angel said.

Martinez turned off the car and stared at her. “Your mouth gets you in trouble, doesn’t it
chica?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t cause problems,” he said.

She gave him her most angelic smile. “Who me?”

Friday got out, opened her door and said, “Watch your step.”

She got out and then hesitated. Just a moment.

Angel had survived fifteen and a half years because she had sharp instincts honed in the womb. Every synapse told her to duck. She didn’t know if it was the van, if she saw it move, or if it was a sound, but something was
wrong
and Angel trusted her gut.

As if Friday could read the expression on her face, or maybe she’d said his name, or perhaps his own cop instincts had kicked in just a moment too late, he turned, his hand on the butt of his gun.

The van’s side door slid open and Angel flattened her body on the ground as soon as she saw the glint of a weapon under the streetlights.

She rolled under the cop car the second before gunfire started. Semi-automatic weapons, the kind that weren’t legal and probably never had been, broke the silence with a roar. She slid to the other side of the car, the underbelly scratching her leg, the rough asphalt scraping her arms and stomach. When she was clear, she half crawled, half ran What the fuck is going on?””d across the street.

She heard shouts and screams behind her, and one of them yelled in Spanish, “She’s across the street!”

Then she heard, “Bitch! Get back here,
punta
!”

Like she was going to stop for him or anyone else who was
shooting
at her.

The gunfire stopped and the van came to life, the headlights bright.

A burst of energy, her survival gene, had her sprinting. She should be a damn Olympic runner, she thought as the van squealed behind her.

She had to get off the street and into hiding. Her apartment wasn’t far, maybe a mile away, but they probably knew where she lived.

How did they know I would be at the group home? How did they know when I’d get there?

Angel couldn’t think about that now, not when men with guns were gaining on her. Not when two cops were down and probably dead.

She turned down a side street that ended in a cul-de-sac that backed up to an elementary school. She scaled the gate of one of the houses and ran through their property, maneuvering the toys and junk littering the cement yard. The back of their fence was lined with half-dead trees which made it easy to climb up. As soon as she grabbed the top and hoisted herself over, splinters cut into her hands. The fence teetered under her weight.

She scrambled over, scraping her shoulder on the way down, reminding her that she was in a tank top and jeans, freezing in the L.A. winter.

Angel ran along the far side of the open playground. Maybe she’d screwed up. There was nowhere to hide, and the front of the school would be gated with razor wire.

The lights from the van cut into the cul-de-sac she’d escaped down. What if they started going after the people in the houses? What if other people died because of her?

Save yourself, Angel.

She couldn’t save anyone else, she could hardly save her own ass, and now she was trapped.

Except . . . she wasn’t. She’d go out the same way she came in, just a different yard and different street.

Sirens cut through the night. The van burned rubber and was gone.

But Angel didn’t even know if she could trust the police anymore. Not after tonight. Someone had told Garcia’s people where she was going to be. And what if the cops blamed her? What if they thought she was part of this, getting their boys in blue shot up?

Her stomach retched, and she barely managed to keep it together.

People might see or hear her in their backyard, and she didn’t know who would be shooting first and asking questions later. The first yard she approached had two big dogs watching her. They could have been friendly, or they could rip her lungs out. She wasn’t taking the chance.

The next house looked dark, and she jumped into their back yard, then walked fast down the side. Getting over the next gate was hard because her hands were all cut up from the wood fence. She pulled over a metal chair, cringing at the way it scraped on the concrete, and used it to boost her over.

The garage door opened and a large black woman emerged. “What are you doing? Breaking into my house? Damn Mexicans! You get off my property!” The woman lunged for her, her hand raised as if she had a weapon — Angel supposed her hand would make a very good weapon — and Angel ran again, the pain in her side getting worse. Her whole body ached, and she just wanted to go home. But home wasn’t safe.

She saw flashing lights in the distance, and she turned down another side street, away from the group home. She was no longer running, because running teenagers made cops twitch. But she had to get off the street, clean up, find someplace to hide until Monday morning.

Hide? She needed to find Marisa. If the Garcia gang was after her, they were certainly after Marisa.

She doubled over in pain, cramps in her stomach. Where could she go to clean up and hang? To
think
? She didn’t trust any of her so-called friends, and she wasn’t going to walk into a police station and turn herself in. Garcia had people everywhere. Wasn’t that obvious from the fact that she was supposed to be in police custody and Garcia had known exactly where she was?

She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when she realized she was only two blocks from her apartment. As if subconsciously, she’d found her way home.

Don’t be stupid, A. They know where you live. They could be waiting for you.

A change of clothes. A burner phone. Food. Enough stuff to disappear for the next thirty-six hours. She couldn’t stay at her apartment, that would be stupid, and she couldn’t stay with Marisa’s parents. She bit her lip. They must be worried to death about Marisa, but Angel couldn’t give them any peace. She didn’t even know where to find Marisa. Before the cops picked her up this morning, Angel had checked every place she could think where Marisa might be hiding out, but no one had seen her. Unless they were too scared of the Garcias to tell Angel the truth.

Two apartment buildings down from hers, she stopped to watch for trouble. Hers was by far the most decrepit structure on the block, and that was saying a lot — most of the two- and three-story structures were sagging, unpainted, and surrounded by metal fences that did nothing to keep people out. Sheet curtains covered most windows, and the old woman in the downstairs corner had taped newspapers — now yellowed with age — over her windows.

Angel sat between two bushes and worked on catching her breath. Her side still hurt and she knew in daylight she’d look like she’d been beaten up. That was fine with her, she could still blend in, but not if she had blood on her clothes.

She had one place she could go. An abandoned warehouse on the edge of Van Nuys where runaways often hung when the weather turned bad. It wasn’t safe, not by a long shot, but she probably wouldn’t get killed because Hispanics dominated that area, and she could pass. She’d gone there before when she needed to escape — like the times her mom brought guys with grabby hands home.

And it would be a good place to continue looking for Marisa.

Jake M What the fuck is going on?””d orrison sat in the far corner of the long bar where he could see both the back door and the front door. It was a dive bar that rarely saw trouble because it was filled with retired cops and old private eyes. Jake was neither, but he fit in nonetheless. Ex-Marine, ex-cop, ex-felon. Now, he took jobs where he could get them, mostly under-the-table assignments for Clive Cutler, a slimy bastard bounty hunter who had one redeeming quality: he paid on time.

Jake didn’t much care to see Cutler this Saturday night — he’d just gotten back from a five-day chase of a bail-skipping drug-runner across the godforsaken desert in Eastern California and Nevada. California wasn’t all glitz, glamour, beaches and palm trees. He’d delivered Chester Smith to Cutler two hours ago. Went to his one-room apartment above the bar to shower the sand and grime from his body, and came down for a meal of Jack Daniels and peanuts.

So when Cutler walked in, Jake almost slipped out the back. Except there was an expression on his face that Jake didn’t often see: worry. Cutler never worried. He was pissed off and angry most of the time, occasionally defeated, but never worried.

Cutler sat down next to him. “Jake, don’t kill the messenger, okay?”

Cutler wasn’t worried; he was scared. Jake said, “You know me.”

“Yeah, I do, just remember, I’m the one who brought this to you, okay? As soon as it came across my desk, I brought it to you.”

Jake’s gut twisted. “What?”

Cutler slipped Jake a piece of paper. It was part of a dispatch report from LAPD. He scanned it. Two cops shot in Reseda outside a group home, one DOA, one critical. Possible ambush. They were transporting a juvenile prisoner from Sylmar.