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.”
39
Visions of the Occult
A reinforced steel door gave the first indication that the abandoned church was not what it seemed. The half dozen men on guard outside, smoking and bickering, were a more obvious second. Their heads were shaved, their faces and skulls covered with tattoos. Devil horns on foreheads. The numbers 1 and 3 written in roman numerals rouging each cheek. Dots in a triangle at the corner of the eye, showing the three destinations for Mara Salvatrucha members after they’re recruited—hospital, prison, or grave.
To a one, the men wore Nike Cortez sneakers, blue and white for the flag of their home country. One shirtless bruiser had the monkeys of lore inked across his torso—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
Evan walked past on the far side of the street, then cut around the block and took his bearings. The church was north of Pico along the 110 Freeway, surrounded by buildings in steep decline. A textile plant. A bodega with plywood replacing the glass of one front window. Graffiti everywhere, covering Dumpsters, parked cars, walls. On the corner a shrine of flower wreaths and sanctuary candles remembered a young boy who peered out of a framed school picture with bright, eager-to-please eyes.
A street vendor hawked knockoff Nikes on a ratty bedspread, the swooshes positioned suspiciously low. They, too, were blue-and-white Cortezes, fan paraphernalia for residents who wanted to be seen rooting for the home team.
Evan headed up an alley and scaled a fire-escape ladder to the roof of a crack house. He walked across the rotting shingles toward the spire rising from the neighboring building and crouched by the rusted rain gutter, peering through a shattered stained-glass window into the church below.
The pews had been shoved aside, gang members congregating in the nave. A pistol on every hip, submachine guns leaning in the corners, at the ready. They weren’t a gang.
They were an army.
The men exchanged rolls of cash, sorted baggies of white powder, collected from street-worn hookers. Electronic scales topped table after table like sewing machines in a sweatshop. Pallets of boxed electronics lined the far wall, fronted with heaps of stolen designer clothes. A hive, buzzing with enterprise.
Evan searched the milling crowd for Xavier. The tattoos were overwhelming. Pentagrams and names of the dear departed. Crossbones, grenades, dice, daggers, machetes. And words—words in place of eyebrows, blue letters staining lips, nicknames rendered across throats in Old English letters. Other tattoos coded for crimes the men had committed—rape, murder, kidnapping.
Their rap sheets, inked right on their faces.
Xavier was nowhere to be seen.
A broad-chested man descended from the sanctuary, and the body language of the others changed. Everyone quieted down, their focus drawn. The man had MS in a Gothic font on his forehead, showing him to be a high-ranking member; it was an honor to display the gang’s initials above the shoulders. But that wasn’t what drew Evan’s attention first.
It was his eyes.
They were solid black.
For the first time in a long time, leaning over the eaves of the crack house, Evan felt a chill. It took a moment for him to recalibrate, to pull himself out of visions of the occult.
The man had tattooed the whites of his eyes.
He had a lean, lupine face, a crucifix running down the bridge of his nose, unfolding its wings across his cheeks. Twinned rows of metal studs decorated his cheeks, and his lower lip bore shark bites, double-hoop piercings on either side. Block letters spelling FREEWAY banded his chin like a drooled spill of blood.
Freeway hugged one of his lieutenants, a hand clasp to shoulder bump, and headed out. The army parted for him.