Cameron Haley - Mob rules

"Okay, Terrence. We're not going to be able to control this situation unless we know what the situation is." Terrence nodded.

"So we try to back this thing up, as much as we can, and we try to figure out what the play is. I don't know about you, but I don't like being a pawn in someone else's game."

Terrence nodded and raised his glass. "I'd rather be the motherfucking king. Peace, Domino."

"Peace," I said, and touched his glass. I finished my drink in one long swallow and stood up.

"You in a hurry, girl?"

"Yeah," I said. "I got a date."

"I sat down with Terrence Cole." I was on the cell with Chavez as I drove to Brentwood to meet Adan.

"Did he say anything?"

"He suggested I could make this all go away if I just took down Rashan."

"Doesn't seem like a good career move, chola."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. According to Terrence, Papa Danwe doesn't have a problem with the outfit. He'd just like to see new leadership."

"He say why? I never knew there was bad blood there."

"He didn't say. Most likely, the Haitian knows he has no shot at this with Rashan in place, might as well try to get me to do his dirty work for him."

"That makes sense. What'd you say?"

"Quid pro quo. Terrence takes out Papa Danwe, and I take out Rashan. Then we make nice."

Chavez laughed. "Good play, D. And?"

"And, probably we both know we're yanking each other's chains. Still, I don't think Terrence wants this war. He says he'll try to cool things out, play for time."

"That'd be good."

"Best case scenario, maybe he takes his eye off the ball, starts thinking more about his boss than he is about us."

"Maybe," Chavez said. He didn't sound convinced.

"He also hinted that there's another player involved, backing Papa Danwe."

"Another outfit? Mobley's crew? The Rastas don't have enough juice to mean much, D."

"Terrence didn't give anything up, but I don't think it's the posses, Chavez." Francis Mobley ran a small Jamaican outfit, one that was known to be aligned with Papa Danwe. "I'm pretty sure Terrence doesn't know who his boss is allied with, and that tells me it isn't Mobley."

"Or any of the other outfits that bend over for the Haitian," Chavez added. "If it was, Terrence would know."

"If I can believe half of what he said, he doesn't really know much. He didn't seem too happy about it. I guess I believe him. He's got more of it than I do, but not a lot more."

"Fuck him then, boss. What's your next move?"

"I'm working another angle. I got a witness who puts Terrence at a club in Hollywood where Jamal was hanging out. Only thing, Terrence says he's never been there. Plus, there's a vampire I can connect with it. Terrence seemed to think the vampire might be working for the unknown player."

Chavez didn't say anything. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something that made a little sense. I couldn't think of a good way to tell him I was going on a date with Adan Rashan.

"I'm just playing a hunch, Chavez. I can't see what it is yet, but I think there's something there."

I could almost hear Chavez shrug. "Not much for you to do here anyway, boss. We're pulling it together."

"Just make sure no one gets trigger happy. I don't know what Terrence is going to do, but I want to give him a chance to walk this back."

"I'll make sure everyone knows the rules of engagement."

"Let me know if anything changes. And keep an eye on the Jamaicans, just in case. This shit in Crenshaw is bad enough. I don't want to get sucker punched by someone sneaking up from behind."

Miss American Pie is one of the only places in town where you can get a five-hundred-dollar Bordeaux with your pizza. There are fifty-one different pies on the menu, and each one is named after one of the States, plus the District of Columbia.

"What do you think about Maryland?" Adan asked, studying the menu. "It has crabmeat."

"So does Alaska," I said. "I guess it's a different kind."

"Hey, Washington has cinnamon apples."

"Sounds like dessert. How about New York? It's got pepperoni."

Adan laughed. "You can get pepperoni at Pizza Hut."

"Yeah, it's a classic."

Eventually we settled on Louisiana, with Cajun blackened chicken. I insisted on the house white, and Adan's wallet breathed a sigh of relief.

"What shall we drink to?" Adan asked, after the waiter filled our glasses.

"To your father," I said. "He introduced me to gainful employment, and he introduced me to you."

Adan smiled. "To my father." We touched glasses and drank.

"So tell me all about how my father gave you a job," Adan said.

"I grew up in East L.A. My mother still lives in the house where I was born. She's Mexican and my father was Irish-that's how I got the funky name."

"Dominica Riley. I think it's an excellent name."

"Yeah, well, the kids in the EasLos barrios didn't think so. Anyway, you know how the story goes. I grew up hard and fast on the street." I made a face, feigning nausea, and winked at him.

"Yes, but you were different. You could do magic."

"Yeah, there's that." I laughed. "It saved me a lot of ass-kickings."

"When did you know?"

"I've always known. I can't even remember a first time, because I was doing stuff, little things, long before I even realized it."

"But how did you learn the spells?"

I shook my head. "Mostly I didn't know any spells. This was spontaneous stuff-that's why it was always little things. I was walking home from school and it was hot, so I made myself a little cooler. I didn't do my homework, so I told the teacher the dog ate it and she gave me an A. That kind of thing."

"And other things?"

"Yeah. Some older kids ran a dice game in a vacant lot near my house. I could almost always get my number when I wished for it hard enough. I'd just visualize it, you know, and it would happen."

Adan laughed. "You must have been the richest kid in elementary school."

"Yeah, but it wasn't always funny. The winning led to fights, and I started using magic to win those, too. I'd throw a punch and put a little juice behind it. Or I'd make the gun slip out of a kid's hand."

"And eventually my dad noticed you?"

"Yeah, that was later, when I was fourteen. I'd picked up some craft by then."

"How? You didn't have anyone to teach you."

"Some on the street. There were a couple guys in the neighborhood with a little juice-small-time stuff, but it was a start. I watched how my mom did it, too. That gave me enough of the basics that I could teach myself."

"Your mother is a sorcerer?"

"Fortune-teller, psychic, bruja, whatever. Tarot cards, palm readings, seances, stuff like that. She doesn't have a lot of juice, but she worked it in with the usual hustle and managed to keep food on the table. So I just watched what she did, and I figured out pretty quick that the cards and crystals were just props. They're just different kinds of containers to pour the juice into. I started doing the same thing with my spells."

"Famous quotations?" he asked, smiling. "I recognized one from the club, when you threw Manfred into the street."

I laughed. "Yeah. I think Mom owned three books-the Yellow Pages, the Bible and Collected Quotations."

"Why not the Bible?"

"It was a lot easier to look up good spells in Collected Quotations. And Mom would have kicked my ass for blasphemy if I'd used the Bible."

"So you were already casting spells when my father found you."

"Yeah, I was pretty far into the life, too. You name it, I was probably doing it-shoplifting, some burglary, rigged games like the dice."

"You were a total delinquent."

"Yeah, I was a thug. Really, I just wanted to learn more magic. And that's where it was happening, out on the street. I wasn't going to learn anything in a classroom."