I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (3 page)

“I don’t know the cops. And most aren’t my friends anymore.” Not after he nearly beat to death a fellow cop and was sent to prison for two years. Jake would do it all over again, but this time without witnesses and no one would find the body. Any cop who not only made it easy for underage prostitution to thrive, but participated in it, deserved worse than the beating Jake had dished out.

But in L.A., Jake would never have gotten a sympathetic jury, especially after the asshole judge had tossed Jake’s evidence of the dirty cop screwing thirteen-year-old runaway prostitutes, so he took the plea agreement his lawyer negotiated and considered himself lucky.

“It’s not the cops; it’s the prisoner they’re hunting. A material witness in some big case, and considered a possible accomplice. With a thousand cops looking for her, thinking she helped a cop killer, she’ll be dead on sight. You know that.” He paused, nervous. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Jake had no idea what Cutler was talking about. He looked at the sheet again, read it more closely.

“Are you fucking with me?”

“No, swear to God Jake, it’s legit. I don’t know what she did to get dumped in juvie, I don’t know what’s going on other than every cop in L.A. is looking for her.”

Jake pushed back from the bar. “Call me as soon as you find out
anything
.”

Jake went upstairs to get his gun. It wasn’t legal for him to carry, but he didn’t much care.

The only thing that mattered was finding his daughter before a trigger-happy cop did.

Angel waited for a good ten minutes before she left her hiding spot and ran across the street. It was night and had started to drizzle. People in L.A. didn’t handle rain well. This helped her, because though it was Saturday, there weren’t many people out. Even the gangbangers who dominated the apartment building next to hers weren’t loitering on the corner.

She went around to the back and climbed onto the Dumpster. She’d done this before, when she needed to get into her apartment incognito. If the window was locked, she could have pried it open if she had her tools, but she had nothing.

The window was cracked open. That couldn’t be a good sign.

Still, she listened and heard nothing coming from her small unit. Instincts told her to run, but she hesitated. No sirens, no noise except for half-deaf Mr. Whitmore in the far corner apartment listening to his stupid sitcoms at maximum volume.

In or out? Come on, Angel, make up your mind!

The pain in her side made it up for her. Something was wrong with her, and maybe in the back of her mind she knew what it was, but she wasn’t even going to acknowledge it until she had five minutes to think.

She pulled herself up, wincing as every muscle in her body ached. She landed on the floor of her mother’s room. The threadbare carpet reeked of cigarette smoke, over-cooked food, and old booze. She got up, didn’t turn on any lights, and walked through the apartment. It was stale, closed up, and filthy. She hated this place. Her mother was a drunk, her father a deadbeat, and all she wanted to do was get her high school diploma and leave. College was out of the picture for girls like her, girls with records and attitude. And what was she expecting to do? Become a doctor or lawyer or some such thing? She just wanted to survive.

If someone had been here, Angel couldn’t tell. She pushed a chair under the front door knob — not that it would keep anyone out for long — then went back to her bedroom, grabbed a change of clothes that smelled cleanish, and went to the bathroom. She cracked the door so she could hear if anyone was trying to get in and turned on the light.

She looked like shit. Her face was filthy, her hair sticking up, scrapes and cuts up and down her arms. But her pins had fallen out, and the bright red wasn’t as noticeable with her hair down. Her tank top was dark with dirt and possibly blood. She pulled it off and winced as the material pulled on her side, where dried blood had clotted with the cotton. Pulling it off made her side bleed.

She’d been shot.

It wasn’t serious — it couldn’t be serious, right? — but it looked like a bullet had just ripped into her waist and gone right on through. It burned and hurt and now was bleeding again. The indention was about as wide as her finger.

She searched the bathroom the twenty-first centuryuma for anything to clean it with, and found nothing but old peroxide and Band-Aids that had been soaking in some gunk at the bottom of the drawer. She rinsed out a towel with hot water and pressed it against her waist.

Tears sprang to her eyes but she held the towel there until the bleeding had almost stopped.

She folded a dry face cloth and pressed it to her side, then went to her room for a roll of zebra-patterned duct tape she knew she had under her bed. She taped the cloth in place, then pulled on a dark, clean T-shirt with her favorite band emblazoned across the chest. It would hurt like a bitch when she took it off, but she didn’t want blood all over the place, either.

There was pounding on her door. At first she thought cops, but then she realized they weren’t announcing themselves, they were trying to break down her door.

She ran to her mother’s room and opened her nightstand drawer. There wasn’t much money, a few ones and coins, but she stuffed it all in her pocket before climbing out the window. There was no ledge. Why was it always easier to climb up than go down? She hung off the sill until her toes found the top of the Dumpster, then she dropped.

A shout at her back didn’t slow her down. She didn’t want to be dead. Wasn’t that pathetic? She had no life to speak of, but the idea of being killed, of being just wiped off the face of the earth, terrified her.

Her side hurt and felt warm. She hoped the face cloth would soak up any blood. She thought she’d taped it on tight enough. She ran, cutting through the courtyards of every apartment building on the block, until she reached the corner.

To the right was Reseda Boulevard, to the left was a neighborhood. A bus stop was across the street, and
thank God
, a bus was approaching. There were several people waiting for the bus in the drizzle of spit that came down from the sky. Safety in numbers? Not if someone had a semi-automatic gun or three. Gangbangers like Raul Garcia and his crew didn’t give a shit about collateral damage.

She waited until the bus was closer before she ran across the street. The bus slammed on his brakes. She swung inside.

“Girl, you’re going to get yourself killed,” the driver said. “I should kick you off.”

Angel bit back a sarcastic remark, because the driver
would
kick her off, and she didn’t want to be on the street. Not now.

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly and put her coins in the box.

“Watch yourself,” he said. Angel nodded and shuffled to the back of the bus. She glanced out the window. Though the light in the bus made it difficult to see anything outside, she could have sworn she saw a shadow running down the street toward her.

Go, go, go!

No amount of talking to herself was going to get the bus driver to move any faster, so she quickly slouched in a seat.

The bus lurched forward. She found a position that didn’t pull at her wound and where she could also see everyone who got on the bus. They were heading south, toward West Hollywood, and it was only a few stops before she’d have to get off to make her way over to the warehouse.

She counted the money she’d taken from her said, stepping into the room">
“ma mother’s drawer. A five, three ones, and about three dollars in change. She wouldn’t be able to buy her way into hiding. And she wasn’t going to spread her legs for it, either. She might be able to sneak in, but that would be tricky, too. If Marisa was already there, that would help, but could Marisa have hidden out at the warehouse for this long? Angel doubted it. Not with the Garcias looking to kill her. They had too many kids working for them, and it only took one to turn.

If she could just find a place to hide until dawn, she’d be okay. She could ride the bus around until midnight, but then would have to get off. Daylight afforded more options.

As she considered her limited options, her thoughts went back to the group home. The shooters had been hiding in the van, they must have known who she was and what time she’d get there. If the cops were part of it, they wouldn’t have gotten themselves shot, right? What did that mean? Who else knew she was going to be at that specific group home?

The information was probably in her file, which different people could access — social workers, cops. Just about anyone, right? If there was someone on the inside who was selling her out to the Garcias, there was no one she could trust. Not the cops, not the DA’s office, and no one on the street.

You’re in deep shit, A. How are you going to get out of this mess?

Someone had been following Angel since she got off the bus. He was in a car, she couldn’t see his face, and it looked like only one person. Which meant, probably not the G-5 gang or the cops.

Still, she wasn’t going to stop and ask him what the hell he was doing trailing her. Probably some perv who thought he could pay her twenty bucks to suck his dick.
Not.

She turned down a street not much wider than an alley. Everything was shut down — this was an industrial area. Half the businesses were closed permanently and boarded up. The other half were simply gated and locked, their owners coming back tomorrow or Monday. Lots of repair places and auto body shops and businesses that served the Van Nuys Airport and whatnot.

The car didn’t follow her, but she suspected he’d try and catch up with her on the other side. She slid through a walkway — barely wide enough for a person to pass, a place she wouldn’t normally walk through day or night, except that she was being followed. Fortunately, the drizzle had turned to rain and kept everyone in. Unfortunately, she was now cold and wet. It was a mile walk to the abandoned warehouse where she might — and that was a big
might
— be able to find a roof for the night.

Once she was confident she’d lost the creep, she headed east on Sherman Way until she crossed under the 405, turned north, and cut through residential areas trying to blend into the shadows.

An unlocked car in front of a dark house tempted her — there was a sweatshirt on the front seat. She was freezing. She quietly opened the door and grabbed the sweatshirt, closing it with a barely audible click. She slipped it on — it was several sizes too big, but it was warmer than nothing. She hugged herself and walked faster. Looking down, she underage prostitutiony vo saw that it was a UCLA sweatshirt. She would have killed to go to UCLA, but at this rate, she wouldn’t be able to afford community college. And if she got herself killed, then
any
college was out of the question.

She felt bad about stealing the sweatshirt, but she’d done worse, and she was freezing. It didn’t help that she also had a hole in her side.

Don’t be such a wimp.

In all the years she’d lived in some of the worst areas of the Valley, she’d never been shot
at
let alone
shot.
It made her unusually depressed.

Her trek through the east side of the Valley seemed to take her forever, but finally she passed Saticoy and was entering a business and industrial area. This place was far worse than the place she’d lost whoever was following her. There were people loitering under the eaves of boarded up buildings. Most of them were harmless — the older homeless, the mental cases, the ones who might yell at her but didn’t know what they were saying or even who they were talking to. But as she got closer to her destination, the homeless dried up and she saw her peers — runaways, gangbangers, thugs, and misfits. She focused on the building where she’d once been given sanctuary when her mother’s then-boyfriend tried to get in her pants, but sanctuary was never guaranteed.

It really depended on who was in and who was out.

“Hey,
Chica,
you’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

Two girls stepped out from between buildings to block her path, across the street from where Angel wanted to go.

“I’m looking for Owen.”

They glanced at each other. They were both street kids, one white, one half-Hispanic. By the distrustful look in their stoned eyes, Angel suspected they were hookers.

“Owen ain’t here anymore.”

Angel tried not to let her disappointment show.

“Who’s in charge?”

“You think we’d tell ya?”

Angel had to hazard a guess — otherwise she’d be here arguing, fighting, or running.

“Pete.”

The white girl snorted. “Yeah, right. Like we said,
Owen
ain’t here. Think his little minion butt boy would hang around?”

If Owen and Pete had left or been run off, that meant Kai was in charge, and Kai was bad news.

“Fine,” Angel said. “Tell Kai congrats on the victory and that Angel would like to see him.”

Bingo. White girl stayed to watch her while the darker girl scampered across the street.

The girl leaned over. “There’s no room at the inn, bitch. You’d better run while you can.”

“It’s raining. I just want one night.”

“No one is going to want to share their bed with you.”

“I don’t share with anyone.”">Should we choose a particular edvo

She laughed. “Oh,
chica,
you might as well leave. You don’t play, you don’t stay.”

Kai and Owen had a turf battle on this block. Not gang warfare, because when it was them against the gangs, they teamed up. But when it was about rules and favors and risks, they fought bitterly — once Kai had pushed Owen off the roof and he broke his arm. It could have been worse. Kai left after that; Angel was sorry he’d returned. He could be nice and friendly one minute, then could stab you in the back the next.

Five minutes later, the girl came back. She looked a lot younger than Angel first thought.

“Kai said come on in.”

All three of them were surprised.

Jake sat in his car down the street from the aluminum building that had once stored auto parts — at first legit, then later stolen parts, until it was shut down by the police and boarded up his last year on the force. That was four years ago, and it looked like it had been taken over by squatters. He could see them in the shadows, if he sat still long enough. He was patient; he had to be. There were times in Afghanistan where his life depended on how still he could be.