IQ(75)

“How come it’s okay for you to use the N-word but it’s not okay for someone like me?”

“Let me make it real for you,” Stokely said. “If a nigga calls me a nigga I know what he means. But if you call me a nigga you might mean nigga.”

The gangster left and Roddy packed up while Kaylin stood in the shade of the news van and smoked a Marlboro Light. She’d asked the gangster the right questions but after editing bleeped out all the profanity there’d be nothing left but adverbs and pronouns. Maybe the job would get better, she thought. She’d get used to it, toughen up, get hard-nosed and courageous. Be one of those women reporters wearing a flak jacket and crouching behind a mud wall because the rebels were shooting and talking to Anderson Cooper via satellite. Yeah, she could see herself doing that.


Frankie La Piedra Monta?ez was the Locos’ shot caller. His shaved head was all angles like a Stone Age cutting tool, his mouth the same shape as his drooping mustache. He was shirtless, a thicket of tattoos on his chest and arms. A grinning skull in the middle of a spiderweb. A cholo and a hot chica wearing sombreros and ammunition belts. The letter M on a palm print with the caption in Spanish: When the hand touches you you go to work, and the Aztec war glyph to show pride in his heritage.

Frankie was a carnale, a high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia, the prison gang also known as La Eme. The Locos bought their drugs from La Eme distributors and kicked back a percentage of the profits. They did this voluntarily because every homie knew that someday he’d go to prison and if La Eme had a beef with you you might as well stab yourself twenty times with a sharpened spoon handle and save them the trouble.

Frankie called an emergency meeting and the Locos gathered in the amphitheater in McClarin Park where people played chess and ate their lunches around the dried-up fountain. They fled when the gang showed up. “Those f*cking Violators came up from behind like the f*cking cowards they are,” Frankie said. “Supposedly we had something to do with robbing Junior but that’s like bullshit, that’s like an excuse so they could attack us. It’s like they’re throwing down the gauntlet, like they can intimidate us, like we’re going to back down.” The gang yelled their defiance; tick tocking their heads, waving their straps, and talking shit. Frankie raised his arms for quiet. “It’s war,” he said. “No mercy, no quarter, shoot on sight. Somebody looks wrong to you take ’em out first and ask questions later.” Frankie looked solemnly from face to face. “The Violators have to pay in blood for what they did to us,” he said. “This is our mission and we gotta take it all the way. We can’t let our fallen brothers die in vain. They were Locos, nuestra familia, and they will live in our hearts forever.”


Expecting retaliation, the Violators traveled in packs now, nobody walking around solo or sitting on their front porch smoking a joint. Kinkee, Sedrick, Hassan, Omari, and Dodson were eating chili dogs on a cement picnic table behind Hot Dog Heaven, a spot you couldn’t see from the street. A building had been demolished on one side of the restaurant. Nothing left but piles of old lumber, broken concrete, and rusted rebar. On the other side, European Auto Mart, Trone over there checking out the rides.

“Look at him,” Kinkee said, nodding at Trone. “Nigga ain’t got the money for a muthaf*ckin’ hot dog over there like he’s gonna buy a car.”

Dodson was still in pain from the beating. His ribs were taped up, painkillers were part of his diet now, and he was smoking a lot of weed. He thought about calling Isaiah and thanking him for saving his life but all he’d do was give him shit. Fuck Isaiah.

“Booze is coming home soon,” Kinkee said. “Junior’s still in there, need another surgery but he ain’t gonna die. His mama said she taking him to Stockton, get him off the street. Shit. They got streets up there too.”

Trone had his hands cupped over his eyes and was trying to see into a Benz 500SL. A white salesman in a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up was talking to him and smiling with just his mouth.

“Salesman don’t know what to do,” Kinkee said. “Trone might be a rapper, buy the car for cash.”

“Or he might be what he looks like,” Dodson said, “a thug with no money.”

“What I want to know,” Sedrick said, “is how the Locos knew about the reup? Like what day, what time.”

“That ain’t no damn mystery,” Dodson said. “The Locos was tracking Junior the whole time, sneaky muthaf*ckas. If you can sneak over that wall and get past the border patrol with all them cameras and night vision you can sneak up on anything.”

Kinkee was looking at the car lot. “Oh shit,” he said.

The salesman was hauling ass for the office. Trone was running toward the group, hurdling the chain that bordered the car lot. “They comin’,” Trone said.

Dodson saw a group of Locos sneaking between the rows of cars, red kerchiefs over their faces. They stood up and started shooting. “Kill ’em, kill those f*ckers,” a Loco said. Dodson sprinted for the empty lot, Sedrick and Omari right behind him. Trone raced to the dumpster and dove in headfirst, rounds punching holes in the green metal. Hassan couldn’t get his legs out from under the table, took two in the chest, and died with his mouth full of onion rings.

A Loco shouted: “I got him, I got him.”

Dodson, Sedrick, and Omari crouched behind the demolition rubble and returned fire, bullets exploding off the concrete, whanging off the rebar, and ripping into the old lumber. Kinkee was on the side of the restaurant sticking his gun around the corner and blasting away. It was shock and awe, a full-on gunfight: .9s, .38s, .45s, and .357s going off in salvos, both sides emptying clips through a haze of smoke.