Lola Read online

  In the kitchen, more women—older than the ones gathered outside with their vodka cranberries and bloodred press-on nails—bustle. In here, the women are thicker from ass to earring. They speak only Spanish, as if it’s some secret code Lola and the younger ones don’t understand.

  “No, it was his ex-girlfriend’s mother’s cousin—” Lola catches from one of the women.

  “Lottie’s girl?”

  “No, Lottie was dead by then. You remember her husband? The one with the hammer toe?”

  “Ohhhhh….” A chorus of collective remembrance fills the tiny kitchen, where maternal bodies touch hip to hip. Their symphony is composed of deeper voices than that of the younger women outside. In here, it’s a cacophony of decades-old cigarettes and fucking and family—followed by the clapping of Lola’s rusting oven door as one of the thick women opens it. Something steaming hot and smelling of melted queso emerges, encased in a glass dish Lola recognizes as her own. The women ignore Lola, even though it is her kitchen. They have co-opted it for themselves, with no explanation, and they never asked permission to use either her appliances or her dishes. Lola knows it is because they believe they know better than her how to use them. They are right.

  “Lola,” another one coos. Veronica, her mother’s oldest friend, approaches with a wet paper towel.

  “What’s that for?” Lola asks.

  “Lipstick,” Veronica explains.

  “What lipstick?”

  Veronica kisses Lola with hot pink lips, then dabs at the stain she’s left on Lola’s cheek. The women laugh, shrill ringing that fills the room, heating it up more than the open oven alone.

  “Veronica,” Lola says, soft, but the other women catch the chiding tone in her voice and turn on her. Lola is not supposed to speak this way to Veronica, her elder.

  She changes the subject. “Where’s Kim’s chocolate cake? People’re asking for it.”

  “Kim made the cake?” Veronica asks. “I thought you were going to.”

  The room is so quiet Lola can hear the drippy faucet Garcia promised to fix. The hippy-ass women all face her, waiting.

  “Other stuff to do.” Lola shrugs. “But the guys want it.”

  The room snaps back into motion, ringed and bare fingers wringing, all with a task—find Kim’s cake, where is Kim’s cake, the men want it. Lola can’t hear the words, just the voices, low hums and hems and questions. She weaves through the warm bodies to Lucy, catching the little girl yawning in the stifling oven heat.

  “Are you tired?” she asks the little girl.

  Lucy tries to stifle a second yawn as she shakes her head. Lola catches the little girl’s fleeting glance outside, to the circle of men surrounding the smoldering grill.

  Lola thinks of her own junkie mother, of the men she introduced Lola to, of the things Lola had to do for these men at night so that Maria Vasquez could score her own fix. Lola thinks of all the sleep she lost losing her innocence.

  Now, Lola lowers herself to Lucy’s level and speaks so only the two of them can hear. “Are you scared of the men out there?”

  Lucy hesitates, and Lola keeps her distance, not touching the girl, but staying down here with her. After a few seconds, Lucy nods.

  “I understand,” Lola says. “Would you like a safe place to sleep?”

  Lucy stares at Lola, licking her lips, wanting to say yes.

  “I can show you how to lock the door,” Lola says. “You can follow me if you like, or you can stay here. Either way, I won’t be upset.”

  Lola rises, slow, so as not to frighten Lucy. She leaves the kitchen and heads down the narrow hallway where three doors creak open to bedrooms.

  The room Lola enters is plain white—white walls, white ceiling fan, buzzing white air conditioner percolating in the window, white bars outside it. Lola doesn’t know who it’s for—guests? But no one ever comes to stay with her and Garcia. The room belongs in an institution, one where patients need their minds wiped clean. Maybe it is perfect for Lucy, who looks like she didn’t sleep last night. Lola wishes it were just Lucy hearing her mother shoot up in the next room keeping the little girl awake, but Lucy’s look outside to the men hints at something more sinister.

  Lola stops these thoughts. There is no point. She is not Lucy’s mother. There is nothing she can do to save this child.

  She hears a floorboard creak and turns to find Lucy, staring at the lock on the white door.

  “Here,” Lola says. “Let me show you.”

  Lola helps Lucy practice with the lock. “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” Lola repeats as Lucy locks to the right, unlocks to the left. She can’t remember where she learned the saying, but she likes sharing it with Lucy now. She may not be able to save this child, but she can give Lucy an hour’s reprieve in this white room, so that is what she does. She lowers the dusty blinds. Lola turns out the lights, even though outside the sinking sun is still too bright, the shadow-streaked sky still too blue. Lucy needs dull—grays and whites. Lola wishes she had a teddy bear for the little girl to squeeze. If Lucy is dealing with what Lola thinks, though, a locked bedroom door will give her more comfort than any teddy bear.

  Lola shuts the bedroom door behind her and waits in the hallway until she hears the padding of little feet, then the click of the lock. The walls are so thin she can hear Lucy sigh as she sinks into clean sheets.

  Lola will wait outside the door until the little girl has had enough time to fall asleep. The women’s voices in the kitchen dull to a buzz. The changing light outside shifts the shadows in the house. No one will look for her here.

  The sharp knock at the front door interrupts Lola’s respite. The women’s kitchen chatter silences quick as a blaring television switched off.

  The only people who knock on front doors in this neighborhood are cops who’ve exchanged their battering rams for bad news.

  From the hallway, Lola can see through the master bedroom’s small square of window to the backyard. Garcia is still charring meat, sporting the same smile he wore half an hour ago. No one outside heard the knock. They are still living in a party.

  When Lola opens the door, her breath catches in her tiny cavern of a chest. The man standing there is not a cop. He is Mexican, not Mexican American, like everyone else here. He wears a tailored suit and steel-toed boots. Lola searches his face for a bead of sweat but comes up empty. She has never met him, but she knows his name. Everyone in this neighborhood does. They call him El Coleccionista, the Collector.

  “Hola,” she says, tucking an ankle behind a calf and tilting her chin down, playing dumb. Luckily, Lola spent the first twenty-three years of her life, until she met Garcia, figuring out how to make sure men didn’t feel threatened by her. It is a skill that has served her better than any chocolate cake recipe ever will.

  “Garcia,” El Coleccionista says.

  “Out back,” Lola responds, planning to dart ahead, pretending a tour of the house, ending with the master bedroom, so she can signal to her man.

  But El Coleccionista doesn’t wait for an invitation. He steps forward, and Lola steps to the side, losing the game of chicken her guest wasn’t playing.

  Lola follows him into the kitchen, where the now-silent older women are not so good at playing dumb. They, too, know this man’s identity, and they are too stunned to see him here, in the chipping yellow paint and burnt-out fluorescence of Lola’s kitchen, to hide that knowledge. Lola hears only the vent over the stove blowing its constant neutral air and the click of Garcia’s boss’s boots on her linoleum, which is gleaming clean but bent up at the corners.

  The man on her heels, his breath so close she can smell his most recent mint, once led the cartel crew that invaded a small Mexican town, taking out dozens of civilians in under twenty minutes—doctors, lawyers, cops, housewives, children, criminals—all because one citizen was harboring a witness against the Los Liones cartel. That guy, the witness, El Coleccionista spared, only to draw and quarter him with four Honda Civics the next day. Even that small car
could tear a man limb from limb in less time than it took the cartel to mow down dozens of the would-be witness’s innocent neighbors. But El Coleccionista made sure his death took over half an hour, and he recorded the man’s screams.

  El Coleccionista gave a copy of the death to Garcia the day they started working together—a preemptive warning. The Crenshaw Six were allowed to work their six corners in Huntington Park with cartel shit, and the cartel would even throw in a few extra corners for good measure, but the Crenshaw Six better cut them in on the profits. And they better not fuck it up.

  Lola needs to warn Garcia. El Coleccionista’s boots move in a calm one, two rhythm across her kitchen floor. Lola takes off, ducking between padded female bodies that reek of perfume and grease, taking the long way outside, through the laundry room, where Garcia’s boxers thunk and click in the dryer. She rounds the house, breathless, and Garcia sees her face. He’s here, she mouths, and Garcia is the only one who sees her.

  Everyone else has turned to watch El Coleccionista taking the cement steps down from the kitchen door, never breaking the rhythm of his stride. One, two, one, two.

  The entire yard quiets, the neighborhood stills. Somewhere in the distance, a bird tweets, and then the neighbor from two streets over starts his shitty car to a booming backfire. No one jumps. They are all staring at El Coleccionista. Everyone has only seen his picture, or they know him from his clothes. No one here dresses like that.

  “Garcia,” El Coleccionista says. Lola can’t be sure if he has an accent, since this is the only word she’s heard him say.

  Garcia hands his beer to Lola, who has migrated to the spot behind his right shoulder. It’s her place. An automatic safe zone. The beer is sweating—Garcia wasn’t drinking it. He doesn’t drink much, and beer has never been his choice. He has only been pretending at playing house this whole time. So has she.

  She hopes Garcia’s boss isn’t here to kill them all. Still, Lola doesn’t feel fear. This Mexican thug wants the little lady scared, and she plays it that way. She holds Garcia’s beer and makes sure not to look directly at his boss. But she knows his secret—El Coleccionista is middle management.

  She wishes only that Los Liones had sent someone higher up. El Coleccionista doles out messages and punishments. He doesn’t call the shots.

  “Inside,” El Coleccionista says. Slight accent. Lola has no accent in English or Spanish. The thought comforts her as Garcia follows the man into the house. She can hear the scatter of thick older women on her aging linoleum, then they all break into the backyard, hands still wringing, hens running out of a fox-invaded coop.

  After Carlos’s murder three years ago, the Crenshaw Six transitioned from stickup crew with no turf to call their own to bona fide gang with six corners no one else would touch because of their proximity to schools and police stations and nursing homes. The cartel has probably always supplied the product the Crenshaw Six peddles, but until recently, the gang was too low in the pecking order to know more than the identity of their loser tweaker of a middleman, Benny, who carried an empty pistol and an eye twitch everywhere he went.

  Then, two months ago, El Coleccionista sought out Garcia, the small-time South Central dealer, because the LAPD had seized one of Darrel King’s warehouses. The cartel wanted to keep product flowing to its dedicated customers, and they couldn’t do that when Darrel, their largest dealer, was out of commission. Would Garcia be willing to do his part and take on a few more corners to keep his neighborhood flush with quality smack?

  It was the break the Crenshaw Six needed. Perhaps El Coleccionista has stopped in this evening to give Garcia a friendly employee evaluation. Lola knows that isn’t it, though. Garcia has stuck to the cartel’s terms, allowing Crenshaw Six soldiers to sell the cartel’s product only on the additional corners Los Liones gave them. Even with the added turf, the Crenshaw Six controls only a molecular sliver of Los Liones’s middleman Darrel’s fifty-one point zero eight square miles of South Central pie. Garcia has followed the Crenshaw Six’s own principles, including never selling to kids, as well as the cartel’s only declaration—turn a profit. He hasn’t tried for a power grab. He has worked hard and humble, and the thought makes Lola swell with what she imagines is pride.

  As the guests cluck and spit and swig more alcohol, faces paling, voices silent, Lola is sure she knows why El Coleccionista is here.

  Lola hears the rumble of men’s voices on the other side of the flimsy wooden door. Their words run together, but she can pick out certain fragments from El Coleccionista. He emphasizes the last word of each sentence.

  “Warehouse…emptied…heat….”

  Lola finds her hand turning the fake gold doorknob before she thinks to stop herself. For once, she, the woman, is not supposed to be in the laundry room.

  She finds the men leaning against her appliances, El Coleccionista closest to her, his arms crossed, his hip touching her ancient mustard yellow Maytag. Garcia stands straighter against the mismatched bright white dryer. Lola recognizes her man’s attempt to show respect. Or maybe she caught him surprised to see her. Her boldness has surprised her, too, and the saying about curiosity killing the cat flits through her mind. Her need to know what the men are discussing isn’t mere curiosity, though.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Cake?” Lola asks.

  “Coffee,” El Coleccionista says without looking at her.

  Good. She has a way back in the room, where she can blend with the peeling floral wallpaper and absorb the reason behind El Coleccionista’s visit to her home.

  When she returns with a steaming mug and some almond cookies one of the older gossips left on a tray in Lola’s kitchen, El Coleccionista is still talking.

  “Darrel King emptied his warehouse before the police raided it. Unfortunately, he can no longer move our product. There’s too much heat there. That’s why we sought you out in the first place.”

  “And the Crenshaw Six is grateful for the opportunity,” Garcia says.

  El Coleccionista gives an impatient nod and sucks the coffee Lola brought him through his teeth. His subsequent gulp and lip smack turns Lola’s stomach. She sneaks one of the almond cookies from the plate she brought, but the action draws Garcia’s boss’s attention.

  “May I have one of those cookies?”

  He knows the answer. Lola holds out the plate to him, not stepping any closer. He likes her for her timidity, and after he chomps the cookie in a single bite, he takes two more. The sugar must make him forget Lola’s presence, because his next statement is a cartel secret.

  “Problem is, Darrel went and found himself another supplier.”

  “Shit,” says Garcia, and Lola feels a wave of disappointment that she can only think the word her man is allowed to speak aloud. “Who?”

  “We don’t know. Whoever he is, he’s evaded our tails so far.”

  “You been following Darrel?”

  “We follow all our people.”

  The implication that Los Liones has been following the Crenshaw Six sends a ripple of excitement through Lola. They are important enough to distrust.

  “That’s how we know Darrel has set a time and place for the first drop with this new supplier. It’s scheduled for tomorrow night at midnight. There will be two million in product, a corresponding two million in cash.”

  “Where?”

  “Venice.” El Coleccionista holds out a hand, and Lola realizes he is ordering her to get him a pen.

  She finds herself scurrying to the junk drawer and makes a deliberate point to slow herself. Middle management, she repeats in her head, middle management. If El Coleccionista’s boss, rumored to be a fat man eternally clothed in a linen suit, were propping himself against her Maytag, the hurry would be justified.

  Lola digs in the junk drawer to the left of the washer and hands a ballpoint and scrap of paper from a local appliance store—RINCON BROTHERS—WE DON’T OVERCHARGE—to El Coleccionista. He scribbles an address and hands it to Garcia.

  “Thre
e-way intersection, part residential, part commercial.”

  “You’re giving me a lot of information about this drop,” Garcia says, a question in his tone.

  Lola finds herself in an awkward position, poised by the junk drawer, squeezed between El Coleccionista and the door. She wonders why the fuck Garcia’s boss doesn’t tell her to get the fuck out. He has a pen and paper, some cookies, and coffee. What else can she do for him? The answer stings—to this man, Lola is not important enough to send away.

  “We want your…organization to make sure Darrel King never gets his product…and that his new supplier never gets his money.”

  Funny, Lola thinks, the assumption on the cartel’s part that Darrel’s new supplier is a man.

  “That it?” Garcia asks, and Lola is sure El Coleccionista can see her man is trying to play it cool.

  “We would like you to use whatever means at your disposal to uncover the identity of Mr. King’s new supplier.”

  “Like?”

  “Couriers.” El Coleccionista holds out a hand again, and Lola is unsure what he wants until he points a hairy finger at the plate of cookies. When Lola holds it out, he takes three more cookies and puts them all in his mouth at once, grabbing another even as he chews.

  “You want us to…get information from the couriers.”

  “Using whatever means necessary.”

  Torture. Maim. Kill. Lola thinks of human bodies sliced and bleeding, of meat torn from bone, of screams and the smell of flesh turning from fresh to rancid. Even under Carlos, the Crenshaw Six, or Four, depending on the month, didn’t have the need to take many lives. At most, they doled out a few good beatings, taking teeth, driving up dental bills for bangers with no insurance. Still, she knows this is their break, and she knows what Garcia’s answer will be.

  “Sure,” he says, too casual, and she wants to tell him El Coleccionista would thrive on seeing the weight this assignment has placed on Garcia’s shoulders.