Page 80 of The Slayer
“Give me a break. Go talk to Miami.”
She slammed the door so hard Marcos asked, “Trouble in paradise?”
“I’ve had a shitty day.” Chuito leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “I got arrested.”
“What?” his cousin barked. “Why?”
“Fighting with Tino.” He sighed, seeing now how absolutely stupid it was.
“What’d that Italian motherfucker do?” Marcos’s voice was positively shaking, making it obvious jail mixed with the Italians was enough to have his cousin wanting to come up there and smoke someone. “I told you—”
“It wasn’t Tino’s fault. Look, just forget it,” Chuito cut him off. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“No, you tell me what’s wrong,” Marcos argued. “Getting arrested trumps the issues here. Did they charge you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” Marcos sounded extremely concerned.
Chuito considered that for a long time, before he shrugged. “I think my life’s going to hell here. I should probably move back. It’s not fair to have you dealing with all this Los Corredores bullshit. The whole idea was to get you out. This issue with Angel just won’tgo away.”
“I haven’t been to the warehouse since everything with me and Angel went down,” Marcos promised him. “But some of the kids have been talking. You know Chu Jr., the kid Katie’s been tutoring at the house—”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Chuito complained. “Giving that kid a legacy like that is like putting an omen over his head.”
“He reminds me of you. Big, mean, angry…smart. Crazy loyal,” Marcos explained as if that alone was worth cursing the poor kid. “Anyway, he told me Angel’s been recruiting hard. Like he’s expecting something to go down. He’s grabbing them younger and younger. He said they just jumped in a kid who was thirteen.”
“I hate that motherfucker,” Chuito whispered darkly, wondering how he had ever considered Angel his friend. “I never recruited kids that young.”
“You never recruited,” Marcos reminded him. “You just sort of took over for Victor after we buried him.”
“Mmm,” Chuito agreed, realizing for the first time that it was actually true. “I guess I didn’t.”
“Lucky for you Victor did a fuckload of recruiting before the police bullet got him.”
“Don’t say shit about Victor,” Chuito complained, because Victor had been the closest thing he had to a father figure. “He did that to protect us. He did the best he could.”
“Yeah, that’s the same shit Angel’s selling,” Marcos said bitterly. “How protected were we, Chu? Safety in numbers. Boricuas need to stick together. Like hell. It brought the devil to our door. It didn’t save us from shit. It made us a target.”
“Ay Dios mio.” Chuito groaned in misery. “I’m already slitting my wrists this week. Spare me, please.”
“I’m going to smoke this motherfucker myself, I promise you,” Marcos went on as if he didn’t hear Chuito’s pleas, because his cousin wasn’t one to be contained over a little guilt. “I think he’s planning on starting a war with the Italians.Your Italians.”
“He’s going to lose that war,” Chuito reminded him. “They’re a lot more connected than Angel.”
“And what happens to these kids?” Marcos asked him sharply. “My kids. He pulled one of them right out of my shop. Omar is fourteen. Angel already had his brother. That meant Omar should’ve been in the clear.”
“Brothers jump in together all the time,” Chuito reminded him, even if it was a common street rule that only one male member of the family needed to be in to have protection. “You jumped in.”
“He was one of mine,” Marcos snapped. “Angel’s stealing them from me on purpose. He’s fucking with me.”
“You should’ve put ink on him,” Chuito suggested, and he was only half-joking.
“Are you serious?” Marcos sounded completely incredulous, which showed just how much being with Katie had changed his perceptions. “I’m trying to keep inkoffthem. I’m trying to give them a life. A real life.”
“Okay.” Chuito took a deep breath and tried to clear his head, because Marcos was passionate, and he did have a good point. “Look, you better make sure Angel doesn’t know these kids are talking to you about his shit. If Angel still sees you as that big a threat—”
“I am a threat,” Marcos growled. “I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”
