Restitution

Chapter 1Almost a week of scorching highs in the hundreds brought another day of eye-stinging sweat to a thirteen-year-old boy with a dirty face and black, unkept hair. He dribbled a worn-out basketball along the terribly cracked blacktop that was once part of a public court. The metal poles at either end still stood tall, but they were rusted and missing their hoops. One still had two-thirds of a backboard, graffitied with profanities and male genitalia. Tall, thick grass and loose trash from the wind covered much of the surrounding lot. In a tank top, knee-high socks with stripes, and torn sneakers, the boy bobbed his head to mariachi music blaring from a rundown three-story apartment building across the street. He lifted his arm high to spike each bounce, trying to match his dribble with the song’s proud guitar riff and trumpets. The under-inflated ball made it difficult. When he lifted his dark face to meet the above sound of a bird, his face tightened from the sun’s glare. His bruised, swollen eye watered. A shirtless elderly man with a tattoo on his dark shoulder, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, rode down the adjoining street on a bicycle. Its frame was rusted and its brakes screeched when he reached the adjacent intersection. The driver of a pale blue, early ’60s El Camino stopped at a red alto sign, and waved him through. The sparkle of the driver’s gold watch caught the boy’s eye. The boy stopped dribbling, holding the ball with both hands as he gazed at the gleam of the car’s finish and its whitewall tires. When the driver turned right, the boy ran over to a patch of grass at the edge of the court. He pulled from it a well-used canvas backpack, jamming his hand inside and pulling out a gym whistle with half of a neck-strap. He shoved the whistle in his mouth and blew into it as hard as he could, arching his back and rising to the tips of his toes. His eyes honed in on an open window on the top floor of the brick apartment building, where drying bedsheets hung on a line attached to the next window over. He squeezed the basketball into his backpack and nearly blew into the whistle again, when a younger boy with wavy dark hair appeared in the window. The boy on the court waved his arms in the air, pointing in the direction of the El Camino. The boy in the window had one arm in a sling, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. He reached down and pulled a phone handset up to the side of his face. It looked huge in his hand, as did the coiled cord that stretched around his chest like a snake. He dialed a number. The boy on the court threw his backpack over his shoulders and ran across the grass, leaping over a discarded planter and around a leaking fire hydrant on the sidewalk. He crossed the street and ran to the opposite end of the apartment building. On its wall was a large, colorful mural of a dog with big pointy ears and flowers on top of its head. As he passed over the dirty narrow yard, a hairdryer blew from an open ground floor window. It competed with the sound of the mariachi music. The boy skidded to a halt when he reached the front of the building, carefully peering around its corner. The man in the El Camino had parked along the street in front and had already stepped out of his vehicle. Sporting sunglasses with gold frames below dark, slicked-back hair, he took a moment to rub a blemish off the car’s hood with the palm of his hand. A toothpick pointed down from his mouth as he scrutinized his work closely. The man appeared in his late twenties or early thirties, a good-looking guy with a strong jawline, broad shoulders, and a thin waist. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt with a collar; the top three buttons detached. Cowboy boots poked out from under his brown jeans topped with a belt buckle so large it looked like some boxer’s championship prize. The boy had never seen him before, but he was sure it was the right guy. The car matched the description he’d been given to a T. The man walked with some swagger up to the front door, holding it open for a middle-aged woman with boxes in her hands as she exited. She thanked him. He nodded in return before entering. The boy heard him start his way up the stairs before the door closed shut behind him. The boy stayed put for ten minutes until a white pickup truck pulled up behind the El Camino. Three men stepped out, each wearing jackets that didn’t match the weather. One of the men was older, probably in his fifties. He was bald and stout with a strong mustache and rough skin. The other two could have been in their teens, full heads of dark hair, sharing a fierce narrowness in their eyes. The boy ran up to the men. The bald one glanced up and down the street before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out an envelope. He handed it to the boy and slapped him on the back before he and his partners made their way to the front door. The boy bent the envelope in half and shoved it into his front pocket. He watched the men enter and work their way up the first flight of stairs before the door closed. He took a few steps back, peering up at the flat roof of the building. He waited nearly a minute but no one appeared. He cupped his hand to his mouth. “Alvar!” he said in a loud whisper. Suddenly, there was a loud crash from above. Men shouted. A woman screamed. The boy’s heart raced, his body shaking and his eyes wide as he stared intently at the roof. “Alvar!” Another scream was followed by the loud pop of a gun. Three more pops came soon after. The mariachi music went dead. An overweight man with his daughter in his arm barreled out through the door. Other tenants followed, panicked and confused—an old man, a teenager, a woman in a towel. Alvar wasn’t among them. The boy breathed hard. He swung his head to the street, watching his neighbors flee in different directions. He knew none would return to help. They were too scared. With another pop of a gun, he clenched his teeth and ran inside. His backpack bounced off another tenant as he jogged up the stairs, skipping every other step. When he reached the third floor and entered the hallway, he gasped at the sight of one of the men from the truck lying motionless in a pool of his own blood. His head was pointed right toward the boy, wide eyes glaring through him. Part of his skull had been blown off, a gap in his hair leaving some brain exposed. A man yelled from the open apartment door next to the body. Another man yelled back. One was threatening. The other was pleading. A woman screamed and whimpered. In the dead man’s hand was a silver revolver. The boy pulled off his backpack and set it against the wall. He quietly made his way forward, as the shouting and screaming continued inside. Two men. One woman. The boy knelt beside the dead man, avoiding looking at his face a second time as he pried the gun from his warm fingers. He looked the weapon over before gripping it the way he’d once been taught. He peeked inside the doorway. There he saw the other young man from the truck. He was lying facedown on the orange shag carpet. Blood spattered the short wall beside him, along with a bullet hole that had torn off part of the drywall. Across the room was the open window he’d seen his younger brother standing in from the court. The phone on the stand below the windowsill had been knocked over. Its offhook tone began screeching. The boy swallowed and entered carefully as another tenant raced down the hallway behind him. He held his breath through a stench of cigarettes as he stepped over the man’s body. The shouting belted back and forth, growing more aggressive. It was coming from the master bedroom to his left. “Drop it!” repeated a man in Spanish. “You drop yours or she’s dead!” yelled another man in the same language. Furniture in the small living room had been knocked over. A lamp and end table had been smashed in a scuffle. A picture had been knocked from its wall. The boy made his way past a grimy kitchenette with a sink overflowing with pots, pans, and dishes. A half dozen bottles of booze and a large ashtray sat on the counter beside it. Children’s crayon drawings hung from the dented door of an undersized fridge. On the other side of the narrow hallway was a small room, dark from pillows shoved in the window frame. All that could be seen inside it from the hallway light was part of a bunk bed, though its frame and thin mattresses more resembled military cots. When the boy reached the master bedroom with its bright pink walls and white dressers, he peeked through the doorway. Inside, his mother’s terrified eyes met his. The slender woman was being held from behind by the bald man, his thick arm around her throat and his pistol pointed at the temple of her head. “No! Run!” she screamed at her son in Spanish, tears pouring. Her long bleached-blonde hair covered half of her thin face. She was clad in white lace lingerie that came up past her hips, revealing long bronze legs that shook with fear. Other, more colorful nightwear of various styles hung on hangers in the closet beside her, its lattice door caved in. When the bald man saw the boy, his eyes shot wide. The boy held his breath and stepped into the room, gun pointed at him. “No!” came another man’s voice to his right. The boy twisted his head to meet it. There he saw the driver of the El Camino with a gun in his hand, it too pointed at the bald man. He was dressed only in black underwear briefs and had backed himself into the corner of the room, on the other side of the bed, with his body in front of Alvar’s . . . protecting him. “Kid, I’m a police officer!” he shouted, keeping his eyes on the bald man. “You need to leave right now! Go to another apartment and call the police!” “Go!” his mother screamed. Her captor yanked back on her throat before she could say more. The boy hadn’t known the man was a police officer. He’d assumed it had been about drugs—his mom turning tricks for a dealer and the cartel wanting to take out a rival. They said when they’d approached him a week earlier on the court that his brother wouldn’t be harmed when it went down. But things had gone south. The cop had fought back. He’d taken out two of the men, and the third was now leveraging his mother’s life. Tears ran down his mother’s face, dark makeup streaming with it. Her eyes pleaded with her oldest son to leave. The cop shouted at him again, demanding the same. Alvar glared up at his big brother, his charcoal-colored eyes desperate. The boy’s face tightened. His nostrils flared as he straightened his arm, training his focus on the man who held his mother. He suddenly swung his arm to the right and fired. The policeman’s head imploded. Blood sprayed through the air. The mom howled. Her captor, seemingly just as shocked, dropped his arm from her neck. She collapsed to her bare knees while he stared in disbelief. The policeman, blood flowing from his skull, gradually toppled forward. The gun fell from his hand. His chest and face hit the carpet. Alvar’s face was covered with the policeman’s blood—everything but his dark eyes that mirrored his brother’s gaze. The bald man’s mouth remained open. His eyes shifted between the two boys and their mother, who sobbed on the floor with her hair dangling in front of her face. The boy walked up to Alvar and grabbed him by his slung shoulder. He pulled him up and out of the corner. Alvar cringed and whipped his arm free. He leaned forward to grab something from the floor with his good hand. “Why?” the mom screamed, pulling her wet face up from the carpet. Her eyes washed over her oldest son’s face without a hint of familiarity, as if she were suddenly staring at a complete stranger. “How could . . . how could you . . .” “How could you?” he said, eyes expressionless. His voice had taken on an eerie depth. A loud pop echoed off the walls. “God!” shouted the bald man, stumbling backwards into the wall behind him. His gun fell from his grip. His eyes were as wide as his mouth. The mother no longer cried. She lay on her side, her halfclothed body curled in nearly a fetal position. Blood oozed from under her bright hair. Alvar stood above her with the policeman’s gun drawn straight. Smoke rose from the weapon’s barrel as he glared down at her from behind his crimson mask. The bald man’s head shifted back and forth between the two boys, eyes blinking. Ignoring him, Alvar turned to his older brother, who set his pistol on the bed and jammed his hand into his pocket. He pulled out the envelope. He opened it and flipped through the bills inside, dividing the sum in half. He handed Alvar his cut—restitution for hardships and abuse a ten-year-old shouldn’t know. The bald man launched forward and retrieved his gun from the floor. He nervously switched his aim between the two boys. His face had gone pale and his shirt was soaked with the mother’s blood. Distant sirens made their way out of the background. The older brother lifted his eyes to the man. “You’re taking us with you.” Friday, October 3rd, 2003 Las Vegas, Nevada