Denise Hamilton - Los Angeles Noir 2

“Go out to Garfield and cross out all the C-4 you can see, eh?” Beto told the vatos, with me standing behind him quiet. Now that Hoyo was dead—there’s this big rip hoyo tag up by the 101—the main Lobo taggers was Tiko and Dreamer. Tiko, he knew how to butcher streets ugly by running down the sidewalk with his thumb on the spray-gun trigger. Dreamer, though, he’s the best tagger in L.A. The number-one paint boy. A short dude, with this jailbird buzz cut and a slow buffalo walk, but he had these mile-a-minute hands. He was so fast with his can that even the cops knew his name. He’d tagged every big wall between here and Edgeware three times already.

Those two tagger boys started crossing out C-4 sets regular. They’d do it at night, dressing in black jeans and sweater, black cotton cap on to cover up. Dreamer would lead, and him and Tiko would sneak on down to Garfield quiet and careful with their black backpack full of cans, scope out all the C-4 sets, and then cross them out with a long black line and write up LOBOS after. They sprayed the whole school as black and red as a ladybug, and after a couple nights of missions there wasn’t an inch of yellow anywhere in sight.

We had some bad rumblas then. The taggers was dog-fighting bloody over walls and right-hand vatos from both sides was circling Garfield, not even doing coke deals now but trying to jump in the junior high babies. “Hey, ése, you come over here a minute?” Gangsters would run on down after school’s over and all the niños was walking home dressed in their sweaters and white scuffy sneakers. “You with us now, hear it?” the vatos would say, slapping them around a little. Most of them little boys would try and tough it out, but sometimes they’d be crying and looking around scared with their mouths hanging open. It didn’t matter. Either way they swore they’d go with whatever clika was beating them.

Even I started to get some grouping done. About a month after Star Girl got shot, me and Chique went down to Garfield with Beto’s boys looking for a couple of fresh-meat chicas to rough. Now that Girl was gone it was just the two of us, and I wanted a whole crowd of cholas under my feet. I wouldn’t set my sights on just one or two. I’d get myself a dozen, twenty, and they’d all be scrappy and mean-hearted. Not at first, mind you. I wouldn’t expect nothing of them pigeon-toes at first except some bawling and thumb sucking. But after I got through with them they’d be as tough as leather.

“Hey, cholita, pretty girl, you come right on over here, wanna talk to you,” Chique was calling out to the sixth graders, watching out for a good one. My old homegirl Chique, she was the best jumper I ever saw. She cornered this little thing with a swingy ponytail who was walking home, later we called her Conejo because she was a round-faced bunnyrabbit-looking girl, her nose and eyes getting all pink. “Yah, I’m talking to you, ésa,” Chique hissed at her, getting in her way on the sidewalk and then reaching down and grabbing her skinny arm. “You’re a Lobo now, ain’t you?”

“No, I ain’t nothing,” I heard Conejo tell Chique, making up this street voice, but she knew it wasn’t no use.

I was standing right there in front of them and giving Chique my proud eyes, but in my head I saw how it was when I jumped in Star Girl. How we’d been warm and laughing there on the cold grass after, looking at the sky and feeling like familia.

“Yah, chica, you is,” I heard Chique saying now, her breath coming up fast.

I looked off, over where a couple Lobos was messing with the little Garfield boys. They was the same as us, crowding and pushing and buzzing around like hornets. I could make out Rudy and Montalvo twisting around some scrubby-headed niño and Beto laughing at them on the side. Chevy was standing around with his hand in his pocket and hooting, “Chavala!” Even Dreamer was there, with his black shades on and arms crossed in front like a big head now that he’d done all them tough tagging jobs. And far out, outside them, there was my old tired man. He was peeking his head over the vatos and then sloping back and watching them quiet same as me. Oh yah, that’s good, I’m thinking. I see you, Manny. Loser boy. And looking at him then, it seemed like so long since everything. Wacha me, right? I got what I wanted. Here’s me jumping in a chola and there’s him, way gone.

I’d heard that Manny was crawling around here already, that he’d started walking the junkie streets just a few months after the rumbla even though he’d got hurt so bad. I have to say he’d healed up pretty quick, cause he looked almost as strong as he used to even though you could still see how his shoulder was bent in and hunched some from Beto’s knife. It almost made me sorry to see him outside, cause I know how cold that life is. He’s got this sheepdog face on like he wants to help out with the Lobo jumping, but the vatos was turning their eyes from him and butting up their shoulders so he can’t squeeze on in the circle. The homeboy looked poor too. He was wearing this raggedy old shirt and black wool cap pulled down to his eyes. I heard he was sometimes crashing at Chevy’s and making his ends by doing little stickups at liquor stores, pushing his guns in them bodega ladies’ faces the same as any old third-rater’s gonna do. I knew he was hoping like hell to get back on in with la clika, that’s why he’s standing over there like a scarecrow. But it couldn’t happen. Once you’ve been a jefe, that’s it. You get a stink on you.

“Why don’t you just head your ass on home, ése?” I screamed at him over the sound of Chique banging Conejo around, and the little one’s crying now. “Go on back to your mama!”

I don’t know if he heard me. Maybe he turned his eyes over my way to see me standing over my cholas and watching him hard. Maybe he don’t wanna see me cause he knows he’s just a beggar-looking Mexican wearing hobo clothes now. All I’m thinking is, Things sure are different, son, and I almost get softhearted there remembering how he used to be. But it don’t last. When I’m listening to them jumping sounds I start seeing that same picture again, there’s Star Girl on the grass, smiling up at me with the fog of her breath twining up in the night air with mine. And then there’s that woman sitting in her chair, and I see again how the dark sky’s coming. Yah, things are different now, I think on over to him again, but colder.

I turned back to look at Chique doing her work. “Beat her good if you have to,” I tell her. “Cause this little chola ain’t going nowhere.”

The Lobos grew bigger and spilled over with all of that new junior high blood. Soon we had almost double the number of vatos scamming the streets and fighting any C-4 they lay eyes on. Beto was strutting around with his bluffy big talk and his hitman swagger, but instead of a fedora he’d wear a Stetson. “You know you chose good,” he’d say, making a muscle and then trying to give me his weak-mouthed French kiss. Well baby, either way it don’t matter, I’d think on back to him. You could be anybody. You’re worse than anybody. With me too busy dreaming on the C-4’s blank face and with Beto playing king, the Lobo business had shrunk up and almost died. Now that Manny was gone Mario wasn’t coming by no more, and the locals had heard we’d run out of supplies. But so what. I’ll deal with that thing later, I told myself. I still had my own job to finish.

I’d got together a whole posse of chicas by then. I called them my Fire Girls. Hey, you’re on fire now, girl, I’d tell them after they got jumped in and they’d look over at me with their wet eyes and scuffed-up faces then try and give me a smile. We got that Conejo, she was a big crybaby at first, a second-generation Sunday school chavala chewing on her nails and running home, but she warmed up quick enough once I showed her how good gangbanging can be. After that we snatched Payasa. I named her that cause she’s clown funny with some big curly Bozo hair. And then Sleepy, this heavy-lidded cholita, and Linda and Thumper, these two sisters from Jalisco. Thumper banged her leg on the chair when she’s happy and Linda didn’t want no new clika name, so we let her stay the way she was. That was us, the Fire Girls. They was only twelve and thirteen years old but you want them young ones cause they can be the meanest. You just gotta kick that girlie out of them. It ain’t so hard, once you scratch their dresses off and give them baggies and lipstick and taks, they take to it real nice.