The Painted Boy (18 page)

“I have no forgiveness for the
bandas
.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But you wouldn’t strike against them, either.”

There was nothing Rosalie could say because he was right.

“You agree with Anna, don’t you?” she said instead. “You think Jay should have crushed the
bandas
when he had the chance. You think he should have killed them all.”

“I believe that, when he went to meet El Tigre,” Ramon said, “he didn’t know how.”

“But now?” Rosalie asked when he didn’t go on.

“Let me put it this way. If the whole membership of the Kings had been inside the music hall when it collapsed and they’d all died . . . I wouldn’t be unhappy. And if there was a button I could push that could still make that happen, I’d do it.”

He looked away to the mountains and signed the shape of the cross, forehead to chest, shoulder to shoulder. Rosalie took his hand when he was done.

“Maybe I’m worse than you,” she said, “because I think I’d do the same, but I wouldn’t ask forgiveness for the evil thought.”

Ramon sighed. “Oh, Rosie. What are we doing, living in this place?”

“I can’t leave,” she said. “This is my home. It was my parents’ home. If I abandon it to the
bandas
, then they will truly have won. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

“I know, I know. But days like these are hard.”

Rosalie nodded. She looked at the TV crews on the other side of the fence, filming people leaving the cemetery.

“Those vultures don’t make it any easier,” she said.

Ramon followed her gaze. “Let’s hope none of them try to interview Anna again.”

“Why are they even here? Who turns on their TVs to watch people grieving?”

“I think the reporters are hoping for more,” Ramon said.

“More what?”

He shrugged. “You know. Drama. Like if the Kings showed up.”

“Not even they’d be that stupid.”

But then Rosalie caught sight of someone on the other side of the cemetery fence. At least she wasn’t wearing gang colors.

“I take that back,” she said. “I can see Maria—over there, past the TV van.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to go talk to her. Could you keep Anna busy?”

She didn’t have to explain why. If Anna saw someone connected to the Kings here today, she’d go ballistic and the TV cameras would get all the dramatic footage they could want.

“Sure,” Ramon said.

Rosalie waited until she saw that he’d caught up with Anna and the others. When she did start for the gates, she held back so that they’d go through well ahead of her. Once outside, she walked along the parked cars to where she’d seen Maria. She half expected her to have vanished—not quite the same way that Jay had, but gone all the same. Yet when she came around the side of the TV van, Maria was still there, leaning on the hood of her old beat-up Buick.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Once upon a time,” Maria said, “Margarita was my friend, too.” She held up a hand before Rosalie could speak. “No, don’t start in on how it was my choice. You have no idea why I hooked up with the Kings and you never bothered to ask. You just cut me off when the deal was done.”

Rosalie took a steadying breath.

“Okay,” she said. “So why did you join the Kings?”

Maria shook her head. “Now’s not the time to get into that—not with Margarita fresh in the ground and the trouble that could be coming.”

“What trouble?”

“Right now it’s mostly between Flores and the Kings. Guys like Cruz and Switchblade—they’re El Tigre’s lieutenants,” she added. “Anyway, they want payback for what happened to Alambra, but Flores says—”

“Wait a minute,” Rosalie broke in. “Payment for what happened to
Alambra
?
He
killed Margarita.”

“After she dissed the Kings.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“I’m not saying everybody agrees,” Maria said. “I don’t. And neither does Flores. He’s already pissed off that Alambra broke the truce with your China Boy—which I’ve got to say, nobody can understand. What’s so important about him?”

“Ask Alambra.”

Maria gave a slow nod. “So it’s true. He did use some kind of weird
brujería
on him.”

Rosalie kept quiet.

“Okay,” Maria said. “So maybe he’s a player, and that’s why El Tigre wants to keep the peace with him. But the Kings aren’t happy. Flores told us that if he wasn’t already dead, he would have killed Alambra himself. And the same goes for anybody else who wants to cause trouble for any of China Boy’s allies. But I think maybe one of them’s going to decide to take a run at El Tigre, and the way they’ll do that is by going after one of you and forcing his hand.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Rosalie asked.

“I don’t want to go to another funeral for somebody I used to call a friend.”

“You’re not like them,” Rosalie said. “Why don’t you quit the gang?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Tío did.”

“Those were very different circumstances. The Kings owed him. But they own me.”

“How can you say that? How can you live that kind of life?”

Maria shrugged. “Ask me again if we get through all of this. Maybe I’ll feel like telling you then.”

“But—”

“I have to go,” Maria said, pushing away from the car. “I’ve been here too long as it is. If anyone saw me talking to you . . . ”

Rosalie didn’t argue. She got out of the way when Maria started the Buick. Standing there in the dirt by the cemetery fence, she watched Maria pull out onto Mission Street and drive away.

 

 

“I remember the day she came to school wearing the Kings’ colors,” Ramon said. “You just cut her off.”

“What was I supposed to do? Overnight she became the enemy.”

Ramon shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s ever as simple as that. We live every day with the
bandas
in our lives. We all have to find our own way to cope.”

They were standing outside the Vargas house. The street was lined with cars. The mourners spilled out into the yard, talking in quiet voices, many of them smoking. The reporters were finally leaving them alone.

“I did ask her why she did it, you know,” Rosalie said.

Ramon shook his head. “No, you confronted her. It’s not the same thing.”

Rosalie sighed. Ramon always kept her honest.

“It just took me by surprise,” she said. “It took everybody by surprise. She was always so against the gangs.”

“No surprise there, with her mother working for the probation department.”

“And her dad being a teacher,” Rosalie said. “I know. But then one day she’s hanging out with us and the next morning she comes in wearing gang colors. How could I not freak out?”

“Nobody’s blaming you, Rosie. Not with Tío and what happened to your mother and Paulo.”

Rosalie nodded. “It felt like such a betrayal.”

“I know.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “And I know you, too. You probably still find yourself regretting the things you said to her.”

God, that had been such a terrible morning. The things that had come spilling out of her mouth while Maria just stood there and took it . . .

“We were friends for so long,” Rosalie said. “And I felt even worse when her family disowned her.”

“Yeah, that was harsh.”

Rosalie knew they should go inside the Vargases’ house again but she couldn’t seem to muster the energy.

“I saw Jay at the funeral,” she said.

Ramon turned to look at her.

“He was by that big cross near the gates and kind of hiding inside his hoodie.”

“I never saw him,” Ramon said. “When did he leave?”

“As soon as I noticed him. Except he didn’t walk away or anything. Instead, he just did that disappearing trick of his. Poof, he’s gone.”

“I wish Anna hadn’t gone off on him,” Ramon said.

“I know.” She leaned her head against Ramon’s shoulder. “But at least we know that he’s okay.”

Ramon let her chill for a few more minutes, then he straightened up and took her hand.

“We should go back inside,” he said.

 

 

The next day Rosalie took another day off from school. She knew she was only delaying the inevitable, but with the funeral still so fresh in her mind it was hard to see the point. Why bother graduating when tomorrow you could be the next victim? She knew she’d see things differently in time—she’d been down this road before—but right now she could no more imagine sitting in class than she could joining one of the gangs herself.

After Tío went off to the restaurant, she took the dogs for a long walk, following Redondo Drive for a couple of miles along the perimeter of the park. The desert landscape seemed more dangerous than it ever had before she’d read Jay’s journal. Was an invisible Lupita out there right now, watching her and the dogs go by?

It was like Ramon had said. The world was bigger than they’d ever thought it was. Or at least bigger than she’d ever thought it was.

When she finally got back home, she took a shower, collected Jay’s journal, and walked over to Anna’s. Half a block away she could hear the angry sound of an electric guitar. It got louder and louder the closer she approached. Standing on the street outside the Castillos’, Rosalie was surprised that none of the neighbors had called in a complaint. But everybody would know the story of what had happened, and Rosalie could only hope they’d understand.

She waited until there was a pause in the music before she rang the bell. The only response was the guitar starting up again, louder and angrier than before. Rosalie tried the door. It wasn’t locked, so she went in. By the time she was standing in Anna’s doorway, she had her hands over her ears.

Anna stood facing the window. Rosalie called out, but she couldn’t make herself heard. She waited another couple of moments, then walked over to the amplifier and pulled the power plug from the wall. The sudden silence felt almost as weird as the music had been.

Anna whipped around, but her mood softened when she saw who it was.

“I’m not going to school,” she said.

“Yeah, me neither.”

Anna’s eyebrows went up.

“It’s hard for me, too,” Rosalie said. “Every time I walk down a hall I’m going to expect to see her, but she won’t be there. She’s never going to be there again. And everybody’s going to want to talk about what happened and . . . I’m just not ready.”

Anna nodded. She unstrapped her guitar and set it in its stand. For a long moment the two of them stood there, almost like strangers, then Anna crossed the room and they held each other for a long time. Neither of them cried.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Anna said.

She turned away and sat down on the small sofa across from her bed. Rosalie joined her. Anna laid her head on the fat-cushioned back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Every time somebody else dies,” she went on, “it’s like another piece of my heart gets torn away. It feels like I’ve got nothing left inside anymore.”

“I know.”

“How do you keep going on?”

Rosalie shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve got Ramon.”

“He’s like a rock.”

“He’s hurting, too.”

“I know he is,” Anna said. “Maybe more than any of us. I just meant the way he keeps it all together for everybody. That night it happened. At the wake. At the funeral.”

“Did you know that he was planning some kind of payback against the Kings?”

Anna’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “Oh, my God. Did you talk him out of it? I’d love to see those sorry bastards taken down, but all that’s going to do is leave Ramon dead or in jail—which is the same as dead, because the
bandas
in there will take him down.”

“Margarita’s father made him promise not to do anything.”

“And did he promise?”

Rosalie nodded.

“Good.” Anna waited a beat, then added, “Jay could have stopped this from happening in the first place.”

Rosalie didn’t try to argue.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “Because you believe that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need to read this,” Rosalie said, handing her the notebook.

“What is it?”

“Stuff Jay was writing before everything went to hell. Kind of like a journal.”

“I don’t want to read it.”

She tried to hand it back but Rosalie refused to take it.

“Humor me,” Rosalie said.

Anna held the journal unopened on her lap. She tapped the cover with a calloused fingertip.

“What are you doing with this, anyway?” she asked. “It’s not like you to go prying into people’s private stuff.”

“I’m trying to figure out what happened to him—where he went. This explains a lot.”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t care. Jay’s the last person I’d want to—”

“Are you going to read it, or do I have to tie you down and read it to you?”

“Don’t you get it?” Anna said. “I don’t—”

“Please.”

Rosalie reached over and opened the journal. She flipped through the pages until she came to where Jay wrote about the hike the desert.

“Just read this part,” she said. “It’s about that Sunday he went with Ramon. I checked with Ramon and he says it’s pretty much true.”

She waited until she was sure that Anna was actually reading before she got up. She stood at the window looking down the alley behind the Castillos’ house until she finally heard Anna close the journal. She waited a few moments longer, watching a stray cat unsuccessfully stalk a bird, before she finally turned around.

“Well?” she asked.

“People can write down anything they want,” Anna said, her voice flat. “That doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Rosalie noted that Anna didn’t say anything about Jay’s feelings for her, but she let that slide.