15 Street Dreams by Faye Kellerman

Author:Faye Kellerman [Kellerman, Faye]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In civilian clothes, on my way home from my shift, I saw her rooting through the garbage. I pulled my Lexus to the curb, got out of the car, and called her by name. She looked up with that stunned deer-in-the-headlights look. She was wearing layers on layers, the top stratum being an old gray knitted sweater filled with holes. When she recognized me, she visibly relaxed and went back to her Dumpster. I took out a ten-spot, flicked it with my fingers, and pulled her aside. Her focus glommed on to the money with feral eyes. Her mouth spread into a gap-toothed smile.

“What?”

I crushed the bill in her dirty hands. Her hair was soiled and greasy but not matted. “Nothing. Go buy yourself something decent to eat.”

She stared at her good fortune. “And you don’t want nothin’ for it?”

I held up my hands. “See. There is such a thing as a free lunch.”

Alice Anne didn’t get the joke.

“I don’ like sompin’ for nothin’. Makes me nervous.”

“I could take it back.”

She shook her head and deposited the bill between her pendulous breasts. “Wanna know anythin’?”

“Want to tell me anything?”

This time, she shrugged.

I thought a moment. “Gangs, Alice Anne. Mixed-race gangs. What do you know about gangs who jump their marks in Mac-Ferren Park, specifically in the bathrooms?”

“Lotsa gangs, Officer Cindy.”

“I know that, honey.” It seemed they changed every week. You cleaned up one gang and then another moved in to take its place. When you cleaned up that group, the original gang moved back to its original turf. “I was just wondering if something came into your head. Mixed races, Alice Anne: white, Hispanics, maybe Asian. One white guy has lots of pimples; another is bald or has a shaved head—”

“Lotsa shaved heads.” She wrinkled her nose. “You mean gangs with whites and Mexicans together?”

“Yes.” Alice Anne didn’t subscribe to political correctness. “I’m looking for two Mexicans who hang around a white bald guy and a white guy with pimples. The bald guy might be the leader. Any ideas?”

“Lotsa ideas.”

“Share with me, Alice Anne.”

“There’re lotsa gangs working MacFerren, sure.”

“Do you have any names?”

“They bother me, too, Officer Cindy. Once they took my shopping cart.”

“Did you report it?”

Alice Anne smiled. “Aaahhh, now you’re jokin’.”

I smiled to show her I was. “So now we both got problems with these people. Names?”

“I seen a gang … Mexican and white … some Orientals, too.”

“Blacks?”

“No blacks. They don’t live here no more. But there’s more than four of ’em … mebbe like twelve of them shootin’ off guns at night. I stay away.”

“Well, these guys that I want, they could be part of that gang. Tell me about it.”

“Part of the BBs.”

Blood Bullets. I didn’t think they operated this far west—a recent development.

Alice Anne said, “I knowed one boy. They call him Hermano.”

“‘Hermano’ means brother in Spanish, Alice Anne. That could be like, you know, ‘Bro.’”

She stared blankly.

“‘Hermano’ is not necessarily a name.”

“Maybe it was Hermando.”

Herman in English. In Spanish, it was Germando, the G pronounced as a soft guttural H.

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