Wicked Break

Twenty-five

I lay in bed all night thinking about Famazio’s warning and the pins in his leg. My aches and pains were starting to subside. I’d been lucky that I’d survived my first two run-ins with Lonnie and Mo. I wondered who the third time would be the charm for.

I went for a run on the beach in the morning, the sunshine promising a warm day as it glistened off the ocean. For the first time in a while, the pain in my body was due more to exertion than to fighting.

I showered and was throwing on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt when my cell phone rang. I found it on the dining room table.

“Hello?”

“Where you at?” Carter asked, the line humming with music and a car engine.

“Home.”

“Thought we might go make a run at Deacon Moreno.”

It seemed like a month since I’d first heard Moreno’s name. I still hadn’t come up with a reason for why Moreno would come after me, other than my looking for Linc.

“Okay. Where are you?”

“Just dropped Dana off,” he said, and I could tell he was smiling.

“Jesus.”

“She did mention something about me performing like the Messiah.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I need something to eat before we go do this.”

“Shocker.”

“In-N-Out in Mission Valley?”

“Be there in half an hour.”

I brought Carter up to speed while we ate. I told him about my meeting with Famazio and my overnight encounter with Lonnie and Mo, as well as my meeting with the Pluto aunt.

An hour later we were headed south on the 805 in my Jeep. He fidgeted uncomfortably in the passenger seat, tugging at his corduroy shorts and the chest of his Sex Waxx T-shirt like they didn’t fit.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you acting like you’re a spaz?”

He glanced out his side window. “I’m getting impatient.”

“We should be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“No,” he said. “Not Moreno. With these skinhead fucks.”

“If you’d been at my place last night, I guess you would’ve been happy, then.”

He ran a hand through his bright blond hair. “I’m not kidding, Noah.” He turned to me. “They put you in the hospital once and you got lucky last night.” His eyes hardened. “They gotta go, dude.”

I glanced in the mirror and moved over a lane. “It’ll happen.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

He shook his head and looked back out his window. I knew he wasn’t satisfied with my answer, but I didn’t have another one. Lonnie and Mo were on my list of things to take care of, but I needed to know where they fit in before making them a priority.

Just south of the zoo, we took Highway 94 east for several miles and exited at Euclid Avenue. We were in the heart of southeast San Diego, perhaps the most dangerous part of the city. Gangs, poverty, and indifference had made it a part of the metropolitan sprawl that most chose to ignore and avoid.

Willie, Carter’s pal from the diner, had given him an Encanto address for Moreno, a small hillside neighborhood of low-slung houses surrounded by broken sidewalks and graffiti. Brown lawns, cracked asphalt, and broken windows were the dominant features of a community left for dead. In the late eighties, a kid named Sagon Penn had killed a cop with the cop’s own gun during a traffic stop and Encanto had since become synonymous with violence.

Carter directed me through the side streets off Euclid until we hit Radio Drive. Moreno’s house was in the middle of the block, a small square ranch painted a blue and gray that had probably been pleasant about fifteen years prior. A rusted-out Chevy Chevelle missing its hood was parked in the driveway, the small lawn next to it a mixture of brown grass and dirt. The iron bars on the windows practically screamed sad and hopeless.

I parked the Jeep across the street and looked at the house, completely devoid of the care you’d see in a home that people were proud to live in. Even my mother’s house appeared more hospitable than this.

Carter glanced down the street. “How many houses are watching us right now, you think?”

I glanced down the street. “I saw curtains in two different windows move as we came down the street.”

“So I say we double that and we’re close.”

Neighborhoods like this policed themselves and I knew they wouldn’t take kindly to two outsiders showing up unannounced. We needed to be aware of what was going on around us.

I grabbed my 9mm Glock 17 from under my seat. “I’ll take the house. You got the street?”

“Giant white guy hanging out in the driveway,” he said, checking the magazine in his.45 HK Mark 23. “Think anyone’ll notice?”

“Not if we get lucky.”

He snapped the magazine back in place and racked the slide. “Can’t remember the last time that happened.”

I got out of the Jeep and Carter followed. He hung back as I made my way up the drive and to the front door. The socket where the doorbell should’ve been was just a hole with wires. I rapped on the metal screen door.

A moment later, the doorknob twisted and I took a step back.

The door opened just enough for an attractive young girl to step into the opening and look at me. She looked to be nineteen or twenty, with light brown skin and striking amber-colored eyes. Her long black hair was cornrowed into thin tight braids that fell over her shoulder. She wore a red T-shirt and low-riding white cotton shorts.

She eyed me warily. “Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Deacon,” I said.

“So?”

“Is he here?”

Her mouth twisted into a frown. “I look like his secretary or something?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

She sighed, annoyed. “Deacon ain’t here.”

“Know where I could find him?”

She leaned against the edge of the door, making no move to open the screen door between us. “Who’re you?”

“I’m an investigator,” I said.

“You don’t seem like no cop.”

“I’m not.” I pulled a card out of my pocket and held it up. “I’m a private investigator.”

She studied the card through the screen, then moved her eyes back to me, unimpressed. “What you want with my brother?”

I dropped the card back in my pocket. “Just want to ask him a few questions.”

She looked past me, over my shoulder. “That big dude with you?”

I turned around to see Carter inspecting the beaten-down Chevelle in the driveway. “Yeah.”

She blinked her eyes and ran a hand over her braids. “Think he gonna protect you if somebody come up on you?”

“Is that what’s gonna happen?”

She snorted. “That’s your own problem.”

Good to know.

“I didn’t know Deacon had a sister,” I said, trying to sound friendly and unthreatening.

She thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah. I’m Malia.”

“Malia, can you tell me where Deacon might be?”

“Deacon fuck you over or something?”

She kept answering my questions with her own and I tried to remain patient. “No. I just wanna ask him a couple questions.”

“About what?”

“A case I’m working.”

She sighed again and rolled her eyes. “Look, I know my big brother’s a fuckup, alright? I know he does all kinds of shit with that gang of his.” She shook her head. “Dumbass motherfucker that he is.”

“You guys aren’t close?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Deacon’s my brother. But I hate all this shit he’s into. Gonna get himself done like the rest of these fools in this neighborhood. He’s never going to get himself out of this place.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you getting out?”

I heard more footsteps coming from behind the door and my hand slid around my back to my gun. Malia ducked behind the door and I heard a muffled exchange, but couldn’t make out what was being said. She came back into the doorway.

Something had changed in her expression and she stood up a little straighter. “One more semester and I’m done at State. I’ll have my degree and I’m outta here.”

She saw my attention was on whoever was behind the door.

“And relax, dude,” she said, shaking her head. “It ain’t my brother in here. We’re studying for a chemistry exam.”

I watched the door, but nothing happened. I relaxed a little. “Chemistry?”

“I’m a physical science major.”

We looked at each other for a long moment. I finally pulled the card out of my pocket again. “Can I give you this? You can pass it on to Deacon and tell him I’m looking for him.”

“I ain’t opening the screen,” she said, her words firm. “I don’t know you. Leave it outside and I’ll get it after you go.”

I stuck the card between the screen and the doorframe. “Fair enough.”

“Don’t count on him calling you,” she said.

“He’s not in trouble, Malia. At least not with me.”

She smirked, looking at me like I’d just made some outrageous claim. “So you come into my neighborhood, this neighborhood, and expect me to believe Deacon ain’t done nothin’ wrong to get you here?” She laughed softly. “Nice try, mister.”

“I just need to talk to him,” I said.

“Noah,” Carter called from behind me.

I turned around. He was focused on the end of the street. Three teenage boys were making their way toward us.

“You better go,” Malia said, seeing them as well. She stepped back and shut the front door.

I walked down to the sidewalk to Carter. The boys were slowly ambling up the street, all of them dressed in baggy jeans and polo shirts, trying to look casual. They stopped when I joined Carter.

“Get anything?” he asked, not moving his eyes from our friends.

“Nothing.”

“Man, you are so good at your job.”

“Thanks.”

The boys were now pretending to check out an old Cadillac parked on the street, engaged in an animated conversation. Their words didn’t make it to us.

“The smart thing to do would be to get in your car and go,” Carter said.

“Yes, it would.”

“But you got nothing from the house.”

“No, I didn’t.”

The vein in his neck pulsed. “So we gotta go talk to these guys, don’t we?”

“Afraid so.”

The conversation among the three stopped. They were about seventy-five yards away. They returned our stares.

Carter looked at me. “There may be more. In the houses. These guys may be decoys. I’ll go behind you a little bit, so I can watch.”

I nodded, the muscles in my back and stomach tightening. I flexed my trigger finger, knowing that it might get put to use.

“You ready?” Carter asked.

I wasn’t, but it didn’t matter.

We started walking.