Tara Janzen - Loose And Easy

Sure, she knew it, too, except even the oldest gangster in the alley was too young to have run with Dom, and the one moving in on her might not even remember Carlos, and Johnny’s time had run out about a minute ago.

“Well,” she said. “If I don’t make it to the bar at Guadalupe’s, remember, the body will be just off Delgany, behind Butcher Drug Store.”

“If I believed that for even a second, I’d be calling in the cavalry.”

Esme felt herself blanch. “Uh… no. No cavalry. Honest, Dax. I’m fine. You’re right.” The last damn thing she needed was Dax’s idea of Denver cavalry, which could be summed up in two words: Lieutenant Loretta. The woman had been a beat cop long before she’d made lieutenant, and if there was a kid on the street she hadn’t scared straight, that kid had probably ended up in Canon City.

She’d scared the crap out of Esme. One little incident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time had been all the delinquency Esme had been able to handle.

Lieutenant Loretta was a big woman, reddish hair, large nose, amber-eyed, kind of lovely… maybe, if a person wasn’t shaking in her shoes, looking straight up at her. Esme had been shaking like a leaf the night she’d run up against the lieutenant, and she was going to skip the cavalry tonight. Loretta Bradley didn’t forget, ever. That was the urban legend, and Esme wasn’t about to put it to the test.

“Hola, chica.” The gangster with the gold incisors finally reached the Cyclone and leaned down in the driver’s-side window, all flash and swagger. Two spiders inked into his skin covered the back of his right hand. Not black widows, she didn’t think, not tarantulas, but brown recluses-with fangs. Cripes.

“Gotta go, Dax.”

“Watch yourself.”

“Check.” She hung up the phone and gave the gold-toothed, spider-inked wonder a contemplative look, wondering how much longer Johnny was going to leave her here, holding down the fort in the damn alley, and whether or not it really was in her best interest to get out of the car and start walking.

Somehow she didn’t think so.

The longer she held his gaze, the wider the boy’s grin got.

“You see somethin’ you like, gatita ?” he asked, leaning a little farther into the car.

Not really, especially since two of the other guys had pushed off the fence and were heading toward the Cyclone. She didn’t like seeing that at all.

“Maybe.” She smiled back. “Do you like…uh, Vermeer?” She was floundering, making conversation, passing time, and hoping she could just slide her way through the next few minutes without having to make a big deal out of saving her ass.

But these guys weren’t going to touch her. No way. Not when this one was flashing vampire teeth and arachnids.

“Sure, chica. ” He nodded his head, very cool, very laid-back. “I love Vermeer. Me gusta mucho. You got some? You wanna party?”

“Me gusta Vermeer, también,” another of the gang members said, leaning down to look in the driver’s-side window. He, too, had spiders tattooed on the back of his right hand.

“Kiko,” the guy with the gold teeth said, “wasn’t that Vermeer boom we were smokin’ at Rosario ’s?”

“Yeah,” the third Loco confirmed. “That was Vermeer.” She couldn’t see his right hand, but her money said he was sporting a spider tat.

“That was good shit, man.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah, Vermeer was good shit. Adolph Hitler had me gusta mucho ed it so much, he’d stolen a piece from the Rothschilds in 1941, an exquisite painting done by the artist in 1668, The Astronomer. To the benefit of everyone, the piece currently resided in the Louvre.

On the other hand, she was currently residing in this damn Cyclone, and Johnny Ramos was now two minutes late.

“So, chiquita, cómo se llama? What’s your name?” vampire boy asked.

Esme didn’t give it a second thought.

“Margaret Mead.” That was the name she was going by in the alley tonight.

“Ah, Margarita.” They all chimed in, charming as hell, and why not? She was no threat to them.

Yes, Margarita frickin’ Mead.

“Arañas, qué tal? Eh?” She heard Johnny make his way through the crowd around the driver’s door, and all she could think was that it was about time.

“Juanio.” The boy with the gold teeth greeted him, giving him a sign that Johnny returned.

“Ramos, your girl.” One of the other Locos made a kissing sound. “Se me empalmó.”

The other guys laughed. The banter continued, and from the sounds of it, Esme was glad she didn’t speak Spanish.

Behind Johnny, from somewhere in the yard, she heard a guy shout out. She glanced through the windshield and saw the tall, muscular man with all the tattoos-Baby Duce. Within seconds, the Locos had melted back into the alley, returning to their posts.

Crisis averted, thank God.

“You’re late,” she said, when Johnny finally got inside the car.

“And you’re Margaret Mead?” He slid her a highly skeptical look.

“Margarita Mead,” she corrected him.

“Shifting your anthropological research from the indigenous tribes of New Guinea to the inner-city tribes of Denver?”

She lifted one eyebrow, nonplussed. This boy was no gangster. She didn’t care how tight he was with Baby Duce.

“Uh… gang culture is highly regarded as a legitimate field of academic inquiry with a number of direct correlations documented between it and more traditionally recognized tribal customs and affiliations.” It was the truth. More than one dissertation had been published on the subject.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Right. That’s what I’ve been studying for the last few years, too, tribal culture.”

For no good reason, she believed him, even if she did get the idea that somehow they were talking about two different things.

“Well, I mean, of course, aside from the violence of the gangs,” she added, wanting to clarify that she understood there were some inherent differences.

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “There’s no ‘aside’ about the violence, Esme. It’s front and center and always coming up behind you when you’re not looking, and I can guarantee there isn’t a gang in America that has anything on the ‘more traditionally recognized tribes’ when it comes to sheer, mind-numbing brutality. It’s a war zone out there, babe, every day, in every way.”

The casual bluntness of his words struck a chord, giving them a hard validity.

“Voice of experience?” she asked, curious as hell.

In answer, all he did was hold her gaze, clear and steady. By the time he looked away, she had all the answer she needed.

Voice of experience? Sure, Johnny thought. Tribal culture experienced and studied from the stock end of an M4 carbine in Iraq and Afghanistan-a curriculum otherwise known as war, which, according to Duce, was where Franklin Bleak was headed, if the bookie didn’t get back on his side of the fence and stay there.

Johnny slipped the key in Solange’s ignition, but held off starting her up. Solange the Cyclone-he’d named the car after Quinn Younger’s mother, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was fifty-four now, and as far as Johnny was concerned, just hitting her stride in the gorgeousness department. The guys at Steele Street had teased him unmercifully when he’d first started calling his ride Solange-but they knew. Each and every one of those pendejos knew Quinn’s mother was hot.

Fast-backed, 4-stacked, and radial-tracked, the 1968 Mercury Cyclone GT was plenty hot, too, but only under the hood. He’d never taken a torch or a hammer to her body. She wasn’t rusted or pitted, so he’d left her alone, let her be the sleeper.