The Painted Boy (35 page)

“He only wears the dragon face now,” Lupita said. “Rita’s seen him, too. She says it’s because he doesn’t want to be hurt anymore, because, like, who can hurt the dragon?”

“I need to apologize to him,” Anna said.

“There’s no point,” Lupita said. “The dragon really doesn’t care.”

Rosalie pressed her hands against her chest but it didn’t stop the wave of heartache she felt for Jay.

“There must be something we can do,” she said.

Lupita shook her head.

“You know,” she said, “if I’d known it was going to turn out like this, I don’t think I’d ever have played the part I did in waking that damn dragon in him. I know it’s a selfish thing to say, but I’d rather have my friend back.”

Rosalie understood exactly what she meant.

“Doesn’t this just suck?” Anna said. “I get exactly what I wanted, but I feel like shit. Those freakin’
bandas
screw everything up, even when they’re gone.”

Rosalie put her hand on Anna’s arm.

“No, don’t try to comfort me,” Anna said. “Something had to be done about the ’bangers, sure, but I was the one who had to go all hard-line on some kid who never had a life before he got here, and now he still doesn’t.”

“It’s not like you loved him,” Lupita said.

Anna frowned at the jackalope girl. “I don’t know what I felt. I just know I liked him a lot. But he also scared the shit out of me so I kept him at arm’s length. But that wasn’t enough, no. First I left him hanging, then I had to jump all over his ass, blaming him for everything that went wrong.”

“You’re still a drama queen,” Lupita said. “Everything’s not about you.”

Rosalie could feel Anna’s arm tense up. For a moment she thought Anna was going to deck the jackalope girl.

“You get a free ride on that,” Anna said. “Don’t let there be a next time.”

Then she shook off Rosalie’s hand and stalked away into the night.

Rosalie hesitated. She needed to go after Anna, but she could also see the tears welling in Lupita’s eyes.

“She doesn’t really mean that,” she told the jackalope girl. “Well, she does, but she’s got a short fuse about all of this because she really does blame herself. And she cares more for Jay than she lets on. She can be really fun and sweet when she’s not, you know, all wound up.”

“I . . . I should have kept my big mouth shut. . . .”

Rosalie stepped forward and gave Lupita a hug.

“I’m sorry we came over and upset you like this,” she said into the girl’s multicolored hair.

“It . . . it’s okay. I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“Because you care about him and you miss him, just like we all do.”

Rosalie gave her another hug and stepped back.

“You’re nice,” Lupita said.

Rosalie ducked her head. “Yeah, well, if I was really nice I would have come by myself. I should have known that Anna would let her mouth run on before her brain caught up. She really does have a good heart, but . . .”

“I wasn’t being much help.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’ll come over again sometime and we can share the good things we remember about Jay, but right now I have to go catch up to Anna.”

Lupita nodded. She waited until Rosalie was a couple of steps away before she called her back and told her the last place she’d seen Jay.

“The crow boys say he’s still there,” she added, “when he’s not, you know, out saving the world.”

“Thanks,” Rosalie said.

 

 

She thought Anna would be halfway home, but she found her by the car, sitting on the curb, her face in her hands. She sat down and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

Anna didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “You know, she’s right. I am a drama queen.”

“No, you’re not. You just feel things strongly. And it’s not like you haven’t had to deal with a lot of crap.”

“And I’m such an asshole.”

“You are an asshole,” Rosalie agreed. “But you’re not mean-spirited.”

“I should go back and apologize to that kid.”

“You can do that some other time. Right now I think she needs some space.” Rosalie waited a moment, then asked, “Did you really mean what you said about Jay back there?”

Anna lifted her head and looked at the big cactus growing against the adobe wall of the house across the street.

“Do I love him? I don’t know. Do I feel a little off balance and tongue-tied when he’s around? Yeah. Could we have gone anywhere? Maybe, if I wasn’t so stupid. But it’s too late for any of that now, isn’t it?”

“Lupita told me where Jay is—or at least where he spends a lot of time.”

“Where? Can we—”

Rosalie put her hand on Anna’s knee as she started to get up.

“We can check it out tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t care how safe the barrios are these days. It’s still not a place I want to go in the middle of the night.”

 

 

Jay couldn’t remember who had warned him about the drug cartels, but El Tigre’s bosses were quick in mounting an offensive. The same night that Rosalie and Anna went to call on Lupita, six black SUVs came up from Mexico, filled with gunmen. Jay had no idea how they got across the border with all those weapons. Money talked, he supposed.

He waited to confront them until they had left the freeway and were on a two-lane blacktop just south of the city. While they were still in the middle of the desert, he stepped out of
el entre
and waited. The first vehicle caught him with its headlights and slowed to a stop, the others following suit.

Before the gunmen could disembark from the SUVs, Jay called on the winds to help him again, and the vehicles fell to pieces, just as the gangbangers’ had done in front of El Conquistador. He did the same with their weapons. Then he used his dragonfire to burn away their clothes, leaving the men themselves untouched. By now, he was so adept at this little trick that they didn’t even feel the heat on their skin.

Naked, with a hundred small bruises and cuts, the men emerged from the wreck of their vehicles, hands cupping their genitalia. They might have been the cartel’s elite, they might have only been gangbangers hired for the job—Jay didn’t know or care. But whoever they were, they were cowed and helpless now.

“” Jay told them.

The men obeyed, moving gingerly onto the rocks and dirt at the side of the road.

“ Jay asked.

The foremost man shook his head.

“” Jay told them. “”

He threw a fireball at the wrecked cars and they were engulfed. Moments later, only ash remained on the blacktop. Hardened criminals though the men were, many made the sign of the cross.

“” Jay told them. “”

The foremost man hesitated, then said, “”

“” Jay said. “”

The men beat a hasty retreat, heading south along the blacktop. Jay wondered how far they’d get before someone would report a band of naked illegals to the authorities.

A lifetime ago, he would have thought that what he’d just done was the coolest thing ever. Now it was just another part of his job.

He stood there on the road, following them on the medicine wheel in his mind until he was satisfied that they were doing as they’d been told.

Back before the
world changed, Rosalie took me to this abandoned shopping mall on the far east side of the city. I’d never seen anything like it. There was nothing there—at least not for anybody normal. It was all boarded up and covered with gang signs and graffiti. The parking lot was a dumping ground for junked cars and trucks, old fridges and stoves, and every kind of trash, all of it vying with the weeds, cacti, and scrub that had grown up through the pavement.

The
bandas
had shut the place down, she’d explained. There’d been so much vandalism and violence both inside the mall and out in the parking lot that the owners finally closed up and moved farther north. A chain-link fence had been erected, but that hadn’t stopped people from getting in. Close to where we stood you could see holes cut in the fence. Farther on, where one of the access roads had originally led into the lot, somebody had obviously driven a vehicle right through.

“They call this the Ghost Mall,” she said.

“What happened at the new place they built?” I asked.

“It’s still there. It’s out near those new subdivisions north of here.”

“So why don’t the
bandas
do the same thing there?”

“The people out there have the money to pay for their own
policía
.”

“But—”

“This is the barrio,” she said. “Nobody cares what happens here.”

Rosalie told me that the gangs still partied and squatted in the mall itself—mostly the Southside Posse, but also the Kings and some of Los Primas Locos from the west side. It was also a place where they’d go to settle their differences, gladiator-style.

From where we stood outside the fence with her dogs, we could see a half-dozen motorcycles, a couple of low riders, and one pickup, jacked up on monster wheels. We didn’t see any of the
bandas
themselves, but the vehicles told us they were there, probably inside the mall.

We didn’t go in.

Rosalie never actually came out and said why she had brought me to see this place, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. She wanted me to see the influence of the
bandas
at its worst. She wasn’t on me as much as Tío about how the barrios needed to be cleaned up, but it seemed every day I’d be made aware in one subtle way or another. I’d felt guilty at the time that I couldn’t help, but that was the old me, back before I figured out how to do the job I’d been sent to do. Before I assumed my place as a member of the Yellow Dragon Clan and accepted my responsibilities here.

I stand now in the same place that Rosalie and I did all those weeks ago. The mall looks as hopeless as it did then, but there are no more gangbangers. There are no more of them anywhere in the barrios I’ve taken under my protection. Its air of desolation suits my mood. It’s not
el entre
, which reminds me of how I miss Lupita, and it’s not the Barrio Histórico, where Anna and Rosalie live. I won’t accidentally run into anybody I might know. I don’t want to see any of them. No, that’s not true. I just know it’s safer if I stay away.

I don’t see that I can afford having anybody I actually care about in my life. Not anymore. Not after what happened to Margarita and Maria. I also don’t want to treat anybody the way Paupau treated me. I don’t want to use people. And I don’t want to have to worry about them getting hurt just by being around me. I’m just going to concentrate on my job. I made the choice, so I’m going to man up and stick to it without any outside distractions.

I understand now why Señora Elena just sits there in her living room. It’s easier when you don’t have to pretend to be human. I don’t even want to take in my own version of Maria to look after me. With the way everything I touch turns to crap, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that would end up.

I need to be like Batman or Zorro—just show up when there’s a problem and fix it. You don’t see them hanging around with anybody when they’re not on the job. I don’t know how Paupau does it.

The cousins probably know where I am, but they know enough to not come calling. I thought maybe Lupita would. I ran into her during that first week when I was still banging
bandas’
heads together, wandering around
el entre
in my spare time.

She wasn’t like she used to be. There was a wall between us now. Something in her eyes that I couldn’t quite name. I’d almost say it was guilt, but what has she got to feel guilty about? It’s more likely she’s just scared of what I’ve become.

I haven’t seen her since.

It’s better this way.

I’ve seen Rita, too. It was the night I stopped a half-dozen bikers wearing 66 colors from coming into the Barrio Histórico. I guess they’d come to check out things for themselves, maybe claim the old Presidio Kings’ territory for themselves. I was in a bad mood—I’d been thinking about Anna all day—so I was probably rougher on them than I needed to be. I broke a few arms, gave one guy a concussion, trashed all their bikes.

I stood there watching them flee, stumbling in the dirt of the dry riverbed, when I became aware of Rita standing nearby. On some level, I’d known she was there all along, but I’d been working on keeping a bit of a filter over things. I want to be a flesh-and-blood alarm system, just letting
bandas
business alert me. I don’t need to know what Anna’s doing, or where she’s going. I don’t need to know how busy it is at La Maravilla or that Tío’s still keeping a room for me in his house. Lupita might be crying in her bedroom, but that isn’t any of my business. None of it is.