Hellbent

38 Steel Bones

The construction workers drifted away from the site, heading upslope where an old-fashioned roach coach competed with an upscale food truck featuring Korean tacos. Three vast parking lots had been torn up to make way for a low-rent retirement community, which was portrayed in idyllic watercolors on the massive signage. Pinning down the southern end of the six-acre drop of cleared land were the steel bones of a five-story building, the first to go vertical in the new development. It backed on the high wall of the 10 Freeway, making it an oddly private spot in the heart of the city.

Which made it useful for Evan’s purposes now.

A yellow tower crane was parked haphazardly among piles of equipment and supplies. Cement mixers and steel pedestals, hydraulic torque wrenches and bolts the size of human arms.

Way up above, the workers reached the trucks, their laughter swept away by the wind. And then there was only stillness and the white-noise rush of unseen cars flying by on the other side of the freeway wall.

A wiry man with orange hair darted into sight, shoving a wheelbarrow before him, his muscular arms shiny with sweat. He reached a mound of copper plumbing pipes and started loading them into the wheelbarrow, shooting nervous glances at the workers upslope.

Evan stepped out from between two Porta-Potties and came up behind him.

“Excuse me,” Evan said.

The man started and whirled around, a length of pipe gripped in one fist. He looked street-strong, his muscles twitching from uppers, which would make him stronger yet. He had a face like a pug’s — underbite, bulging eyes — and his complexion was pale and sickly.

“The fuck you want?”

“A couple of answers.”

They were in the shadow of the freeway wall, and not a soul was in view all the way up to the trucks above. No one could see them down here.

A fine place to steal copper.

“You’re local,” Evan told the man. “Clearly you’ve cased the place, timed the workers. I have a few questions I need answered by someone who lives here.”

“I’m gonna give you two seconds to walk away. Then I’m gonna cave in your fucking head.”

The man inched forward. Evan did not move.

“Your first instinct is to escalate,” Evan said. “That shows me you’re a punk.”

The man ran his tongue across jagged, rotting teeth. “Why’s that?”

“Because you’ve spent your life around people it’s feasible to escalate against.”

“I’m not some West Coast pussy, okay? I’m from Lowell, Mass, bitch. I grew up street-fighting with boxers who—”

Evan daggered his hand, a basic bil jee finger jab, and poked him in the larynx.

The man’s windpipe spasmed. His mouth gaped.

The man dropped the pipe, took a step back, sat down, and leaned over. Then he lay flat on his back. Then he sat back up. His mouth gaped some more. Then he managed to suck some oxygen in with a gasp. He coughed and then dry-heaved a little.

Evan waited, staring up the erector-set rise of the structure. From the fourth floor, you could see Benito Orellana’s house. From the fifth you’d be able to see most of Pico-Union. For all the crime, this was a small neighborhood. Intimate. People who lived on these streets would know things.

The man finished hacking and drew in a few deep lungfuls of air. “Fuck, man,” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “What’d you do that for?”

“To speed up the conversation.”

The man still couldn’t talk, but he waved his hand for Evan to continue.

“MS-13,” Evan said. At this the man’s eyes darted up to find Evan’s. “I need to know where their headquarters are here.”

“I can’t tell you that, man.”

Evan took a step forward, and the man scrambled back, crabwalking on hands and heels until his shoulders struck the top flange of an I-beam. Evan shadowed his movement.

“Wai-wai-wait. Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you.”

He cowered against the steel, Evan standing above him.

He kept one hand clamped over his throat, the other raised defensively. “Just lemme catch my breath first.”