Hoodtown Read online

  “Maybe...” I grunted and struggled but couldn’t break the hold. “Maybe he just wanted to...” I kept up the struggle but no dice “...hurt her. To do the worst possible thing to her as a...” I sucked in a deep breath and caught his head, wrenching downward until his body followed, laying him out on his back. “...form of torture.”

  He kipped up to his feet and said the thing I’d been thinking all along, the thing I’d been afraid to say out loud.

  “Think there’ll be more?”

  “How the hell should I know?” I locked back up hard and redoubled my efforts, obscurely angry at him now. “Who knows what a crazy fucker like that will do?”

  He didn’t say anything else and neither did I. My anger made me sloppy as we exchanged a swift series of increasingly stiff attacks and counters and he was eventually able to trap me in a classic Full Nelson, forcing me to my knees and increasing the pressure on my neck and shoulders until I had no choice but to tap out. When we stood, he pulled me into a sweaty embrace.

  “You sure you’re all right, kid?” he asked, resting a hand on my shoulder.

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said, forcing a smirk. “And I’m not your fucking kid.”

  “Oh yes you are, tough guy.” He mock punched me in the arm. “Always were and always will be. Now get out of my ring before I really make you my bitch.”

  “Same time tomorrow,” I said, smile gone wide and genuine. “We’ll see who the real bitch is.”

  “Take care, X,” he said. “You need anything, you call me, OK?”

  “You got it,” I replied.

  9

  It was less than a week later, way too early, when frantic knuckles against my door dragged me out of bed and into a nasty hangover. I staggered to my feet, mouth bone dry and brain thumping, and went to lean against the door.

  “Yeah?”

  A familiar woman’s voice, jabbering in hysterical Spanish. I could make out about every third word, but when I heard “Gitcho” more than once, I opened the door.

  It was Rubia Peligrosa and she seemed far more in danger than dangerous. She was obviously off-duty, looking like some nice grocer’s daughter in a floral dress and girlish hat but her eyes were wild, her lips skinned back over her teeth like a hunted animal.

  “You gotta help us!” She clutched at me with shaky hands. “Please, X, there’s nobody else!”

  “Jeez, honey,” I pulled her into the room and closed the door behind her. “Slow down a minute and tell me what’s happening.”

  “Kitsune...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “She didn’t come home last night.”

  I was suddenly very awake.

  “What?”

  “The cops can’t prove the body they found is her, but...” Her lip trembled, tears welling as she reverted to Spanish. “I feel sure it’s her. In my heart I feel it.”

  She pressed a sweaty newspaper into my hand. The headline read “HOODTOWN HORROR!” and I didn’t need to read anymore. Again that plunging elevator in my gut and the feeling of reality folding back, the stink of the hotel room and a vision of the dead girl’s ear. I couldn’t speak.

  “They say all her hair was cut off and her mask was gone.” Rubia collapsed into a chair, her masked head in her hands. “It had to be a Skin. Only a fucking Skin could do something like this.”

  Then it hit me.

  “Rubia, where’s Gitcho?”

  She looked up at me, tears clinging to her lashes.

  “Aw shit.” I slid my thumb and forefinger into the inner corners of my sleephood’s eyeholes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Five minutes.”

  10

  Of course, this wasn’t my first visit to Hoodtown Division. Way too many teenage misadventures had wound up here, Skin cops lascivious with fat hands on my ass and fat fingers up under the hem of my máscara. Nothing but bad memories of probation and manila folders full of black marks. The smell hadn’t changed, burnt coffee and metal and dust and yellowing paper and through it all the eternal clack clack clack of typewriters condemning the accused with indelible words like incorrigible and belligerent. Rubia wouldn’t get within ten blocks of the place so I was on my own as I wrapped an extra layer of steel around my spine and did what needed to be done.

  Cop behind the desk like every cop behind every desk, leering and jowly in his too tight double-breasted navy jacket, double row of shiny brass buttons and heavy brass badge. Lazy revolver lounging against his hip and “I bet you got a real pretty face under that thing, sweetheart.” I said Cray’s name through my teeth, through a mouthful of hate and shame and impotent anger and he smirked and elbowed his buddy and sent me to the third floor.

  Typical clutter of crime scene photos and coffee cups. Map of Angel City on the wall with Hoodtown outlined in red. Clunky broken fan bolted to the wall, its heavy metal blades furred with dust. The desk was about a thousand years old, scarred with circles and gashes and cigarette burns and behind it, Cray, hat off and brow furrowed, collar unbuttoned and tie pulled loose. His dark eyes were shadowed, sleepless. When he saw me, he didn’t even seem that surprised.

  “I guess you heard.” he said.

  “I need to see Gitcho,” I told him.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “You know her?” I could see his detective’s mind clicking and whirring beneath his naked forehead. “Did you know the missing prostitute as well?”

  “Where is Gitcho, Cray?” My patience was growing thin.

  “Well, she’s down in lock up.” He frowned. “She assaulted the desk sergeant. It took five officers to subdue her.”

  “Santo.” I turned away, hand over my eyes. “This is turning into a fucking pesadilla.”

  He rubbed at an invisible smudge on the pitted surface of the desk as a nervous silence spooled out between us.

  “I have to see her,” I finally said.

  “Christ, I don’t know...”

  “Never mind what you don’t know,” I told him. “I gotta see her. Come on, Cray.”

  “Look,” Cray glanced over his shoulder as if checking to see if his mom was watching. “I want to help you here, I just have to be careful. I can take you down for a few minutes, but really, that’s the best I can do.”

  I crossed my arms. “Aren’t you a regular friend to Hoodkind.”

  “I don’t have to do this, you know. I’m just trying to help.”

  He was mad now and it matured his face somehow. I felt low for treating him like the bad guy.

  “Hey, I’m sorry ok?” Now it was my turn to look away. “It’s tough, that’s all.”

  He stood.

  “Forget it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Hoodtown lockup was always a cheery place. Bare bulbs in wire cages strung along the ceiling. Hardcore alkies and drunken Skin kids sleeping it off in the puke-stinking tigrebako. From there it was boys on the left, girls on the right. Cray walked alongside me with his shoulders tense, stoically ignoring the cat calls from the cells.

  The female wing was nearly all Hoods, mostly chicas and gang-girls. Gitcho huddled alone in the corner of the last cell in the line.

  Her sharp suit was gone, replaced by a drab gray prison-issue dress that hung shapeless from her defeated shoulders. Her hood was caked with old blood, the left eyehole torn up into the hairline. I had to call her name twice before she looked up. For a long moment it seemed like she didn’t even recognize me.

  “Gitcho.” I said again, reaching through the bars, my Japanese faltering. “Please tell me what happened.”

  She didn’t answer, just slowly put her fingers up to touch mine.

  When she finally spoke it was in a whisper that was almost too soft to hear.

  “What did she say?” Cray asked. I had almost forgotten the Skin dick was there.

  “What do you think?” I glared at him. “She wants me to find the bastard that killed Kitsune.”

  “Well,” Cray stammered. “Tell her we will do everything we can to see that the perpetrator of this crime is brought to
justice.”

  Gitcho gripped the bars, baring her teeth.

  “I understand you, Skin,” she spat. “But your words, they mean nothing.”

  She turned away from us then and sat unmoving on the built-in cot, facing the wall.

  I took Cray’s arm. I could see in his face he was really starting to take this personally.

  “C’mon, bozu” I said gently.

  He nodded and we walked away. I tried not to look back at Gitcho, slumped and hopeless in that tiny cell but of course I did. It was getting harder and harder to stay uninvolved.

  11

  I tried to get back to the daily grind. Bills still needed paying and my ancient super was at the door again, hood tucked down, apologetic as he handed me my third overdue rent notice. I still needed to feed my big beautiful ass so I booked a session with one of my regulars down at Madrugada’s and tried to bury my restless thoughts under the mindless veneer of routine.

  The client was a bull-ugly crossdresser and unapologetic mark who had spent a ridiculous amount of money having an exact replica of Rosa de Oro’s old ring gear made to fit his bulky masculine body. It was always tough to keep a straight face, looking at him in Rosa’s gold lamé bodysuit with the golden lace ruffles and the big yellow rose just below the wide expanse of prickly shaved chest exposed by the deep, plunging neckline. Even funnier was her famous ornate, art-nouveau style máscara pulled down crooked over his own goofy red and yellow hood.

  This guy was fixated on this one single match, a match where I had put Rosa over my knee and spanked her ass. What had been a throwaway gag one night when were bored and punchy after too many sleepless nights on the road and too many pre-match beers had become the critical turning point, the vital nexus of this kid’s sexual awakening. He wanted to reenact that match move for move, endlessly, like a lab rat pushing the button to get dope over and over until it was dead.

  It was always a phone-in for me, but I was having trouble staying focused. The guy smelled disconcertingly like old chorizo, and I was thinking about Cray, about Gitcho. Thinking I ought to go check back in with Minnie, and trying to figure how I was gonna keep out of this mess. Wondering if, or more likely when there was gonna be another one, another dead, hoodless girl.

  “X,” the client whined, voice muffled against my thigh.

  “What?” I loosened the hold a little and let him raise his head.

  ‘You forgot the columpio.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Remember,” he said, breathless and wheezing. “Remember you got her in the columpio first, then after you let her out she tried to crawl away and that’s when you got her in the legscissors.”

  I let him out, feeling cranky and hostile and just wanting to get this foolishness over with. He laid, belly down on the mat, waiting like an eager bride for me to get him in that stupid swinging submission hold that I didn’t even really like and hardly ever used. Had I known I was going to be repeating this same match over and over like a damned soul in lucha hell for the rest of my fucking life, I guess I might have put more thought into the call.

  I sleepwalked through the rest of the “match,” waiting for him to finish the one new move, his single editorial change —jacking off under his sticky gold costume as I spanked his thick, doughy ass.

  He came with a weird, honking noise like a goose with laryngitis and I pushed him away and stalked out of the ring, leaving him in a wet, panting heap.

  In the shower, I scrubbed my body with a rough washcloth, washing up under my loose mesh bathinghood and wishing there were a way to scrub my brain. The soap Madrugada provided was this slick black slab that made me smell just like her.

  I was toweling off in the hallway/dressing room when, speak of the devil, there was Madrugada. She was in some slinky red velvet number with sequined crosses around the plunging neckline and she slithered up to me like a silent movie vamp.

  “I hear another girl has been found murdered and hoodless.”

  I nodded, stashing my towel and wiggling into my girdle.

  “Santo!” She extracted her cigarette case and flipped it open, switching back to English. “What kind of world is this?” She took a cigarette and gestured at me with it. “I heard you spoke to the police.”

  “Yeah.”

  I told her about Cray, about visiting Gitcho. She lit her cigarette and sucked in smoke, listening.

  “Do you think this kid can do anything?” she asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. I think he wants to, but who knows with Skins.”

  “Skins will never understand. To them a dead callejera is a dead callejera. Nada mas. The máscara means nothing to them.”

  “Well, that may be true,” I said. “But right now, that Skin is all we’ve got.”

  “Mira, X,” she said, long red nails caressing my head through the fabric of my hood, looking into my eyes with her head tilted like a worried lover. “Don’t worry about what you owe me.”

  “But....”

  She hushed me with a finger on my lips.

  “Please,” she said. “Just promise me you will take care of yourself. Be careful OK?”

  “I will, I promise” I said. “But you gotta let me pay you. I know you need it right now, Madra. Don’t lie to me.” I smiled. “Come on, if you go under, how am I supposed to pay the rent?”

  She smiled back, brief flash of fangs and then she stepped back, blowing smoke down and away from me.

  “I won’t fight you,” she said. “I’m not that tough. It’s 35 dollars.”

  I counted out her share from the sweaty wad the Rosa wannabe had given me.

  She hugged me tight and tucked the money into her ample cleavage.

  “You will be careful?”

  I nodded.

  “I was born careful.”

  I shimmied into my skirt and buttoned up my blouse, shoes on my feet and hat on my hooded head and I was gone. I wondered if that were really true, if I really could be careful. I was doing my damnedest to stay out of it but you know that just couldn’t last.

  12

  Later that week my phone rang, making me jump a little with its hoarse spitting sound, an ugly sound that spoke of a dysfunctional mechanism beneath the bulky, Bakelite shell. I was thumbing through one of the bird books, imagining some green, impossible jungle where colorful, exotic birds like these might live and I seriously considered just letting the damn thing ring. Eventually the pathetic sound got the better of me and I picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah?” I said into the mouthpiece.

  It was Cray.

  “We got a live one,” he said.

  Mercy Hospital. The only hospital in Angel City that treats Hoods. Most of us wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. If anything ever happened to me that Orchidia and her Bonesetter couldn’t fix I’d rather die in the street than let Skin doctors mess with me.

  The doctor that met us outside the girl’s room was too young and hassled, clearly hating this assignment and just doing time until he could get a private practice for normal people.

  “She came in without a mask. She was hysterical and had to be sedated,” He spoke to Cray and Sullivan, even though I was right beside them. “I doubt you’ll be able to get anything coherent out of her but you’re welcome to try.”

  I had more important things to do besides get bent out of shape over the usual Skin attitude so I bit the inside of my cheek for the hundredth time and pushed past them both, into the girl’s room.

  In the center of the narrow room, a bed surrounded by strange, outdated medical equipment. The best a Hood hospital could get in these enlightened times. Everything looked sinister and dirty, all grubby beige rubber tubing and cloudy green screens. The girl on the bed was unbelievably battered. Her hands were mittens of bandage and her head was covered by a thin hospital hood made of fibrous paper. Beneath the mask, lumpy masses of bulky, stained gauze. Her eyes were blacked, swollen nearly shut. She was a big girl with a thick, powerful body under the flimsy gow
n and she was muttering disjointedly in Hoodtown-accented Spanish.

  I pushed my way though the machine barrier and put my hand on the girl’s arm. She flinched.

  “What’s your name, honey?” I asked.

  “He... he ripped it...he tried to...”

  Sullivan was close behind me with his little leather note-book open.

  “Tell us what you remember about your attacker,” he said, his mouth a tight line. “Can you describe him?”

  “Can it, willya?” I spat over my shoulder. His eyes narrowed.

  “Give the girl a break,” Cray said. “Can’t you see she’s been through hell?”

  “...Jasmine...” the girl on the bed said, almost too soft to hear.

  I leaned closer to her.

  “What did you say?”

  “My name,” the girl said in English. “It’s Jasmine Eleven. Can...can we talk, y’know...without...”

  Her sticky eyes rolled towards the detectives.

  13

  Later, in a Skin coffeeshop, I sat with the two dicks giving them the lowdown on what Jasmine had told me. I was the only Hood in the joint. The hostility in the bullet shaped steel hull of the prefab diner building was thicker than the burnt onion smell from the smoking grill. Me and Cray sat together on one side of the glitter blue vinyl booth, Sullivan alone on the other. The waitress was Skin trash with a huge mass of bleachy hair that distorted the pure shape of her head into a soft-serve ice-cream silhouette, dwarfing her little naked animal face beneath it. She glared at me through makeup-clotted lashes, setting my coffee down hard enough to make the cup clink ominously, sloshing onto the perfect white saucer. I remembered why I lived in Hoodtown.

  “You wanna go someplace else?” Cray asked, shame thick on his pained face.

  “No,” I said, sipping the weak, awful coffee with grim determination and longing for a Hoodtown café con leche.