Evan crouched gargoyle-still at the edge of the crack-house roof, peering through the shattered stained-glass window into the church next door.
Freeway sat on the carpeted steps leading to the altar, a king on his throne. A series of kids entered, each slinging a giant zippered bag at his feet. They looked no older than Evan had been when he was taken from the Pride House Group Home.
Indoctrination—best started early.
The boys entered the church with swagger, but all signs of confidence evaporated by the time they reached the altar. They kept their heads lowered, afraid to meet Freeway’s stare.
It was a hard stare to meet.
He cast his solid black eyes over his spoils, giving a faint nod to dismiss each child in turn.
Evan scanned the other gang members clustered in groups around the tipped-over pews, searching for Benito’s son. But just like this morning, there was no sign of Xavier. Evan had left Joey in the Vault, hard at work reassembling his hardware. The thought of her in his sanctuary unattended, pulling cords and handling his possessions, caused a discomfort that was physical, insects running beneath his skin. He couldn’t think about it right now and keep his focus.
And given that he was surveilling the deadliest gang in the world, he needed to keep his focus.
A commotion at the front door drew his attention. A group of women were corralled into the vestibule. Bright makeup, torn stockings, stiff hair. One was missing the heel on one of her red pumps.
Evan was surprised to see that the men who had brought them were not yet visibly tattooed. Lowly initiates, given the lowly task of gathering the street girls.
As the newcomers shuffled through the sporadic falls of light from the overheads, Evan caught a glimpse of a young man in the back. Xavier. He helped herd the women through the nave toward the altar. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off, the gym-toned muscles of his shoulders rippling.
The women rotated before Freeway, handing over wads of crumpled cash that he eyed and then handed to one of his lieutenants. None of the women met Freeway’s eyes. Several seemed to hold their breath until they scurried away to gather by the bags of stolen goods.
The last woman in the group, the one with the broken heel, stepped forward and offered up a few tattered bills. Freeway examined them, clearly unimpressed, then let them fall to the floor.
He stood up.
The effect was momentous.
All the gang members went on point. The woman started trembling, shaking her head. Evan couldn’t hear her beg, but he knew that she was.
Freeway gripped her chin, squeezing her cheeks. He flicked out a straight razor, which gleamed in the low lights from the altar.
She cowered, her back to Evan, blocking his view. Freeway towered over her. Evan saw his hand rise and move across her face, two strokes, each punctuated with an artistic flair of the wrist. Her shriek was clear, even above the wind rushing over the rooftop.
Evan moved his gaze away from Freeway and the woman, finding Xavier. Benito’s son stood in the half shadows to the side of the altar. The other gang members looked on with reverence, but Xavier’s arms were crossed uncomfortably. His face was pale, blood draining away, and his blink ratio had picked up—signs of an anxiety reaction.
Freeway flung the woman aside. She landed on her belly with her torso twisted, bringing her face into view, and Evan saw the damage inflicted on it.
Matching slashes across both cheekbones, red streaming like war paint.
Freeway hadn’t just punished her. He’d marked her for life.
She sat on the floor, hands cupping her face, blood spilling through her fingers.
All the gang members were watching Freeway.
Except Xavier.
He watched the woman.
Noteworthy.
Freeway dismissed his men with a flick of his fingers and headed back to the sanctuary to attend to other business. They streamed out. Xavier got halfway to the door, then paused and looked back at the woman, on her knees before the altar.
His jaw shifted with discomfort. He looked torn.
One of the other initiates said something to him, and he snapped to, exiting the church.
Evan watched the woman unsteadily find her feet. The other women finally broke out of their paralyzed trance by the bags of stolen goods and rushed to her. The injured woman collapsed into their embrace.
They helped her out a side door.
Evan backed away from the edge of the roof.
* * *
He caught up to Xavier four blocks north as he said good-bye to two fellow initiates at a street corner. Xavier peeled off, heading up a dark block alone, ignoring the invitations of the street girls: “Hey, Big Time, wanna get warm?”
Evan shadowed him, keeping a half block back. After a quarter mile, Xavier cut up the stairs of a dilapidated house that had been diced into a fourplex. From across the street, Evan waited and watched. Most of the windows of the apartment building behind him were open, banda radio music and the smell of charred meat streaming out.
After a moment a light clicked on in a window on the fourplex’s second floor.
Evan waited as a low-rider scraped past and then he crossed the street. The front door’s lock was a joke, the metal guard bent back from previous B&Es. Evan pulled out his fake driver’s license, used the edge to slide the turtle head of the latch bolt level with the plate, and eased the door open.
He took the stairs up to a tiny entry between two facing doors. The floorboards, though battered, looked to be oak, probably the surviving section of a study from before the house had been carved up.
He rapped on the door to the left.
Footsteps. The peephole darkened.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Your father sent me.”
“Go away. You’re gonna get yourself hurt.”
“Open the door.”
“You threatening me, fool? Do you have any idea who the fuck I am?”
“Why don’t you open the door and show me?”
The door ripped open. Xavier stood there holding a crappy .22 sideways, like a music-video gangsta. His head was drawn back, chin tilted up.
Evan stood there staring at him over the barrel.
Xavier cleared his throat, then cleared it again. Apparently the gun was not having the effect he’d hoped.
“Your throat’s dry,” Evan said.
“What?”
“Because you’re scared. Adrenaline’s pumping. It acts like an antihistamine, lessens the production of saliva.”
Xavier stuck the muzzle in Evan’s face.
Evan regarded it, a few inches before his nose. “You’re holding your weapon sideways.”
“I know how to hold my goddamn—”
Evan’s hands blurred. He cranked Xavier’s arm to the side, snatched the .22 neatly from his grasp, and stripped the gun. Pieces rained down on the floor. Slide, barrel, operating spring, magazine, frame.
Xavier stared at his empty hand, the red streak on his forearm, his dissected gun littering the floor around his Nikes.
“Step inside,” Evan said.
Xavier stepped inside.
Evan followed, sweeping the remains of the gun with his boot, and closed the door behind him.
It was a run-down place, sleeping bag on the floor, flat-screen TV tilted against the Sheetrock, floor strewn with dirty clothes. An add-on kitchenette counter bulged out one wall—hot plate, microwave, chipped sink. An exposed snarl of plumbing hung beneath the counter like a tangle of intestines.
“Life’s not fair,” Evan said. “Your mom died. You pulled a dumb move and joined a gang. The wrong gang. I think you’re scared. I think you’re in over your head and you don’t know how to get out.”
The sleeveless flannel bulged across Xavier’s chest. Veins wiggled through his biceps. He was a big kid.
“You don’t know nuthin’ about me, baboso.”
“You sure you want me to work this hard to like you?”
“I didn’t ask you to come here.”
“No. Your father did.”
“That old man don’t know shit.”
Evan cuffed him, an open-handed slap upside the head. The sound rang off the cracked drywall. When Xavier pulled his face back to center, his cheek bore the mark of Evan’s palm.
“Make whatever choices you want to fuck up your life,” Evan said. “But don’t disrespect that man.”
Xavier touched his fingertips to his cheek. Down near the elbow, his forearm had a tattoo so fresh it was still scabbed up. An elaborate M—the beginning of Mara Salvatrucha.
He stared at Evan. And then he nodded. “Okay.”
“We both know you’re not a killer,” Evan said. “But they’re gonna make you one.”
Xavier’s face had softened, his cheeks full, his eyes as clear as in that photograph Benito had shown Evan. He looked much younger than twenty-four.
“I know,” he said.
Evan recalled the tremble in Benito’s voice when he discussed his son. This boy he’d taught to put on socks, ride a bike, throw a baseball. Countless hours of loving attention, late nights and early mornings, and then your son winds up here, with grown-man problems. And you—the father who once held the answers to the universe—you’re helpless.
A memory flash penetrated Evan’s thoughts: Jack squinting into a handheld camera at sixteen thousand feet, wind whipping his hair. Evan banished the image.
“I am out of time,” Xavier said. “I swore the oath.” He held up his arm, showed the tattooed M at his elbow. “It’s written on my flesh. Know why they do that?”
“It’s good business,” Evan said. “Once you’re marked, you can’t ever join another gang. They own you. Which means they can treat you however they want and you can never leave.”
Xavier looked confused at that. “It’s to show allegiance. For life, get it?”
“Nothing is for life. We can remake ourselves in any image we want. One choice at a time.”
“I’m out of choices.”
“We’re never out of choices.”
“Know what their motto is? ‘Mata, viola, controla.’” Xavier snarled the words, suddenly the raw-boned gang member again. “‘Kill, rape, control.’”
“Their motto,” Evan said.
“What?”
“You said, ‘Their motto.’ Not ‘Our motto.’”
“I already robbed a store. I stole stuff from a truck. They make me collect from the putas. I brought one in today, and she … she got her face cut open.” Xavier put his hand over his mouth, squeezed his lips. “I’m already one of them.”
“Does anyone beyond this chapter know about you?”
“No. I’m just getting jumped in.”
“No one back in El Salvador?”
Xavier’s eyes shone with fear. “No.”
“You’ve got one chance to get out.”
Xavier paced a tight circle by the kitchenette, came back around to face Evan. “Why do you care?”
“I got into something when I was young,” Evan said. “I’ll never get out. Not clean. You still can.”
“What about them?”
“I can handle them.”
“You can’t do that. No one can do that.”
Evan just smiled.
Human engineering had been part of Evan’s training, no less than savate and marksmanship and endurance. He had been trained to disappear into a crowd and fire three-inch clusters at a thousand yards. He had been trained to intimidate, to make grown men afraid. He could convey breathtaking menace when he had to.
So he just smiled, and that was enough.
“You decide what you want,” Evan said. “And call if you need me: 1-855-2-NOWHERE. Say it back to me.”
Xavier said it back.
Evan started for the door. He’d stepped over the stripped gun and set his hand on the doorknob when Xavier spoke.
“This girl today, her face…” Xavier lowered his head. “There’s a point you cross where you can’t get yourself back. Where you can’t find, I don’t know. Redemption.”
“Every choice holds redemption.”
Xavier lifted his eyes to meet Evan’s. “You really believe that?”
Evan said, “I have to.”