Hellbent

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.