Halfway House (36 page)

“
Mijo
?”

The figure nodded.

“We need to talk,” Lucy said.

The figure shook its head.

Lucy turned toward his men. This wasn’t going as planned. This diminutive MS 13 gangsta couldn’t possibly be the leader. Lucy realized that he was being played. But before he could say anything, a single shot rang out.

High-powered rifle.

Then three shots. The water erupted in gouts of spray as bullets impacted. The third shot produced a scream. Lucy saw a dozen El Salvadorans surging from the waves in a sneak attack as all hell officially broke loose.

His dive to the sand seemed to take forever.

Semi-automatic and automatic gunfire erupted from both sides. Glass shattered. Bullets bit into the vehicles, the sound of Teflon popcorn. Screams of rage and pain came from everywhere at once.

More high-powered rifle fire came from three Angels dangling from climbing harnesses on the cliff behind him. They had infrared scopes, all former U.S. Army infantryman returned to the hood after multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’d had his back the whole time and had seen the Salvadorans trying to sneak ashore.

Sand bit his face and open mouth. He wanted to burrow to safety, but knew he needed to get back up and add his violence to the conflagration. Fighting past his fear, he tried to reach the nine tucked into the back of his pants, but felt the world change as he was suddenly jerked back behind the safety of the Angel cars.

They’d tied a rope around his ankle in the event something went wrong. The idea was for him to dive, and three Angels to pull him to safety by running in the other direction holding the rope. He’d forgotten this imminent salvation in the excitement of the moment, and blessed Trujillo for the idea that had him break the
gangbanger on a rope
land speed record.

By the time Lucy got to his feet and opened fire with his own pistol, the battle was almost over. Near the water a huddle of MS 13 hid behind the tailgates of a pickup as one of Lucy’s snipers walked .50-cal rounds down the length of the truck. When they reached the tailgate, it exploded in fist-sized holes that punched through the faces and torsos of the El Salvadorans.

That was enough for them.

Those who hadn’t turned to run joined their gangster brothers who’d already fled. They left half their cars behind, piling into trucks and backseats as they lunged and sprinted for safety.

Lucy called a ceasefire.

Admiring the devastation they’d laid upon the enemy, he felt a surge of victory. El Salvadorans lay sprawled all across the enemy line. Cars burned. Discarded weapons lay everywhere. All but one set of headlights had disappeared. A horn blared from the engine of the pickup his snipers had just destroyed. One more round and the horn was silenced.

Lucy turned with a grin. He wanted to share his victory. He wanted to celebrate. But his side had taken substantial damage as well. More than a dozen Angels lay dead and barely moving down the length of the line. He saw Mojo, his face almost ripped off, blood soaking his white shirt. He saw Manolo cradling a man whose brains were seeping free.

He felt a burn along his left arm and the warm stickiness of blood. He tried to check his arm but found he couldn’t move it.

He’d been hit.

Trujillo.

Where was Trujillo?

He felt an arm come around his shoulder. Trujillo’s face was as implacable as always. The man’s calmness settled Lucy and they watched as the last of the enemy tore up 36th Street.

The Battle of Cabrillo Beach was officially over when Rafa radioed in, “
No mas
.”

Fatigue owned Kanga.

They’d taken him inside to rest just that one time, and he’d vowed never to return. The once legendary surfer named after the television children’s show host, Captain Kangaroo, still shuddered at the memory of the leering faces of the upside-down Japanese soldiers and his frantic search for the daughter he’d thought was trapped in the walls of the house. He’d come unglued. Whether it was from what they’d given him to drink or pure exhaustion, what he’d seen and heard couldn’t have been real.

Except for the part about his daughter.

Whatever had actually happened inside the house, the single greatest thing was that it had shattered the wall that had been separating him from speaking with Laurie. When he’d first arrived at the halfway house and decided to join the throng, it’d seemed that no matter how hard he tried, he hadn’t been able to communicate. Whether it was the drugs, the presence of the dead witch’s body or some truly fantastical magic, the part of him which didn’t believe had been vanquished, allowing Kanga to speak without limitation to his daughter. And although he was exhausted beyond reason, he wasn’t about to leave her alone. He’d left her once and couldn’t do that again, especially since she was dying all over again.

He’d been allowed to sit inside the recessed doorway a few times to catch a moment’s slumber. But besides the bathroom, he wouldn’t go any farther into the house. The wardens seemed to understand and smiled patiently at his fear, as if they’d seen it all before. They fed him too—energy bars and electrolyte drinks measured out through the day to keep him from getting seriously hungry.

The others residents seemed to be in the same situation.

Ralph whispered to his dead partner, John Henry Watson, thinking his secret life was safe, but to the people of the house, nothing was secret.

Polo wept inconsolably, his wife almost gone except for a few strains of an old Spanish song.

Theopolis trudged around like he didn’t care about anyone but himself. He didn’t really care about Lashondra, but the boy was too scared to leave. Kanga believed the boy thought the spirit of his dead girlfriend would follow him if he left, so he stayed and waited until the house did what her own knife had failed to do—silence her forever.

Mattie, Figuero and Johanna had all gone home, as had the three crazy sisters. The latter he was more than happy to see gone. They were trouble verging on evil. They made him nervous and he hated to hear them talk.

The nature of the halfway house, now that Kanga had unlocked his ability to communicate, was that spiritual conversations were broadcast to everyone. Just as his private moments with Laurie were heard by the others, so were their moments heard by him. With the three sisters, he’d heard their brother begging them to leave him alone the entire time they were there. He wanted to be left in peace, which was the whole reason he’d killed himself. But the sisters were malicious and patient in that special way only tormentors can be. Evidently their brother had sexually abused them when they were children. They’d waited thirty years, and then tracked him down to the docks where he’d worked. One day he was an employed longshoreman with money and possessions and prestige in the union, the next he was held captive inside a shipping container buried in the backyard of his home and fed through a tube in the ground. This lasted twenty years until his recent death, when he’d finally succeeded in killing himself by drinking a stash of stored urine.

But they wouldn’t let it go. They’d known about the house and the curse, and they’d looked forward to torturing his soul. So while everyone else was busy grieving with their loved ones, the three sisters were celebrating each moment of continued torture until the house finally consumed every last vestige of their brother.

Which was also happening to Laurie.

But what could he do?

Kanga accepted that there was magic at work. He suspected that it probably had something to do with the altar with the fifty gallon drum with the bloody cross painted on it. But he was just a surfer and a bum, and not much of a father. All he could do was be here with her, talk to her like she was in a hospital bed withering away to nothing and him sitting beside her, her hand in his, as he told her stories.

“Tell me again about how you met Momma,”
she said.

And so he told her. Walking a figure eight, his back bowed, his face pressed to the sky, he described her mother and the way the sun had caught the droplets of water in the long black hair, miniature prisms of light winking, as the earth turned that morning so long ago.

*  *  *

The cops had an APB on Lucy so Bobby arranged to meet him at the Lighthouse Deli. They sat in a booth near the back door, so if a black-and-white pulled up, Lucy would be able to walk out without anyone the wiser.

Lucy’s face was puffy from lack of sleep. His eyes were red and visibly irritated, set within dark shadows. His left arm was bandaged.

“What’d you do? Drink all night?” Bobby asked.

“I wish. More like took care of things.”

Bobby already knew about the battle on Cabrillo. He also knew about the Angels who’d fallen. According to Manolo, Lucy had gone to each of their homes and had spoken with mothers and fathers and wives and lovers, giving his personal condolences. It had taken him all night, but he’d managed to stay one step ahead of the cops who were looking for him. Captain Fiesler was pissed about the turn of events. Whatever benefit of the doubt Lucy had earned through the years had been crushed in the events of last night. She’d sent out an APB, and if not for an old retired cop who’d been monitoring the airwaves, Lucy might have been picked up already.

Bobby waited for Lucy to order a Jamaican jerked lamb omelet before he said anything. “What now?”

Lucy shrugged. “I can’t show my face around here for a while. I don’t want to end up back in county.”

A tall Brazilian waitress brought Lucy a bottle of Visine. He leaned his head back and squeezed until he was crying chemical tears. When the bottle was empty, he tossed it on the table.

“What about Kanga? What about Laurie?” Bobby asked.

“What about them?”

“They say that there’s a spell on the halfway house. Kanga believes it. All those other people believe it. I don’t know what to believe, but I’d feel horrible if it were real and I had the chance to do something about it and didn’t.”

Lucy stared out the window at a black-and-white that patrolled slowly down the street. He shifted slightly in his seat, angling for the back door in case the cop car stopped, but it drove on.

“Bet you think that’s crazy,” Bobby offered with a weak grin.

Lucy shook his head and presented a look that couldn’t be more serious. “Not so crazy.”

“What?”

“There’s something to what you say. My grandmother has some of the magic, you know. Not much, just a little. Nothing more than reading people’s thoughts and making things grow.”

Lucy sipped at his coffee as Bobby remembered the woman pointing at him and sending him into a fit. That in turn reminded Bobby that he should take a Topomax, but he’d left the bottle down at the beach. Lot of good it did him there.

When Lucy finished his coffee, he continued. “She says there’s a spell and there
is
magic. She told me about the
Bruja
who cursed the land and uses the souls of the dead to power the curse.”

“But that’s all bullshit, right. Something about Japanese men slitting the throat of her daughter.”

“Not just Japanese men, but soldiers when they attacked Los Angeles.”

“The Japanese never attacked the mainland.”

“What do you think those footprints are about? Just because you didn’t read it in school, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, Bobby Dupree.”

Bobby laughed but abruptly stopped when he saw that Lucy wasn’t joking. “There are not Japanese soldiers upside down under the prints.” He shook his head. “I refuse to believe that.”

“Refuse all you want, but we’re going to dig them up and find out once and for all.”

Bobby stared at Lucy for a long time. He’d always afforded the gang leader an immense amount of respect. Not only did Lucy wear his authority like an invisible robe, but he was fair and just and had everything in a leader that Bobby liked. If Bobby had lived in San Pedro he’d have been an Angel, of that he had no doubt. To hear Lucy voice his belief in the unbelievable crystallized the possibility of what Bobby had just a moment ago thought impossible.

“When are we going to do this?” he whispered.

“Tonight.”

Bobby licked his lips. “What happens if we find upside-down Japanese men?”

“Then we burn them and then burn down the fucking halfway house. Whatever the magic was meant to be, it’s become evil. I can’t have it eating the souls of my Angels. Not Split. Not Mojo. Not Laurie. None of them!”

The waitress returned with their plates. She set them in front of the two men, along with buttered bread and a bottle of ketchup for the home fries. She left for a moment, then returned with a pot of coffee and refilled their cups. It wasn’t until she’d left and they’d decimated most of their meal that Bobby spoke.

“What about the wardens? I bet they’ll have something to say about that.”

“I bet they will.”

As Bobby ate, he wondered if his journey to Los Angeles had been for this. To defeat a long dead witch, rid a community of a curse, and free the soul of the damned was something right out of a comic book. He’d seen the Fantastic Four, the Defenders, the Avengers and the X-men all fight similar battles between the pages of his comics. Bobby had always thought that coming to Los Angeles was to find out his heritage, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe he’d been pulled here. Bobby could have settled anywhere in Los Angeles. The metro area had fourteen million people. So why had he chosen a backwards, hidden place like San Pedro to live?