That evening, Lucy and I kept busy by making wontons and gau gee from scratch, something I had loved doing with my mother when I was young. Lucy was an excellent folder of the wonton wrapper. My plan was to rise early and fry them up before we left. Po Po was busy preparing her special house noodles. The camp encouraged parents to pack a picnic on the day they visited. We were making preparations for Ryan’s favorite foods: noodles and dim sum. Also in the making were har gow, siu mai, spare ribs, hot and spicy wings, and pot stickers. We also planned to pick up a few char siu bao from Chinatown before leaving. You know how it is when you haven’t seen your kid in a while. Somehow, you believe they’ve been starving, and it’s your job to stuff them full for the coming winter.
The drive to Yosemite took us three and a half hours; luckily, we had Lucy entertaining us with her singing for most of the trip. She sang the first verse of
She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain
and nothing more. We arrived at a little after ten in the morning, at the same time as most of the other families. The parking lot was total chaos, but eventually, we found a spot.
When we located Ryan, we saw a whole different side of him that we’d never seen before. He had a permanent smile on his face and a tan, of all things. I had never seen him with color in his skin. From the moment we came together, he couldn’t stop telling us about all the things he had done and learned so far at camp. The counselors gave the families a guided tour of the grounds before turning everyone loose for lunch. We were told to meet at the outdoor stage at 2:00 p.m. where an hour-long performance by all the kids would take place. The rest of the day, until five, had been designated as free time.
During lunch, I had to keep reminding Ryan to eat. He had been so engrossed in his storytelling and making sure he left nothing out that he kept forgetting to put food in his mouth. Not once had I seen this sort of enthusiasm from him in anything. It made me feel happy for him. When it looked like he was about to take a breather to finish off some wings, I spoke up.
“Remember this?” I removed a necklace from my purse and held it out to him.
His eyes exploded to their widest points. “Oh, yeah! The hunters made this, right?”
“Yup. That’s a tooth from a black caiman.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a type of crocodile.”
“No way! Thanks, Abby,” he said, throwing his arms around me. He then draped the necklace around his neck and proudly puffed out his chest. The whole family gave him a round of applause. “You look like one of them,” I said.
After eating, I felt like a bloated whale though my taste buds were thanking me for the wonderful bounty.
We watched Ryan’s performance—they reenacted Lewis and Clark’s expedition. After that, we spent the rest of the afternoon by the lake and met some of Ryan’s new friends before piling into the car to head back to the city. I told Ryan I would pick him up at the drop-off point by the wharf in a week and a half. We said our goodbyes and hunkered down for our drive home.
Lucy fell asleep in the backseat mid-song about fifteen minutes down the road. Po Po and I exchanged relieved smiles. We had heard enough about that woman coming around that mountain during the three-and-a-half-hour ride on the way up.
When I parked outside our home, Lucy was still asleep, whistling out of her stuffed nose. Po Po had experienced the head nods for the last hour but did her best to stay up with me. I appreciated that. It was past both of their bedtimes. My eyes also felt heavy, and I didn’t survive much longer after putting Lucy down.
It felt like minutes, but hours had passed before my cell phone rang and ruined my date with Mr. Sandman. The caller ID told me it was Reilly.
“Abby Kane here.”
“Abby, Elan Ortega was right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s gotten worse.”
Chapter 54
Earlier in the day, Vega had put a call in to his lieutenants and told them to start preparing for that night. There were two gangs that prevented him from taking over the Mission neighborhood and claiming it as his territory. He planned on annihilating one of them. If all went as planned, the gang’s entire leadership would be exterminated, something Vega had once thought wasn’t possible.
El Caos
was the gang Vega wanted to put down. They claimed most of the south side of the Mission. The largest concentration of the gang lived in an area bordered by 25th and 20th Avenues and Folsom and Portelo Avenues. This would make it easy for Vega’s men to target most of the leadership, but it also made it dangerous because his men could easily be surrounded. That predicament was what had prevented him from making a move on them in the past.
When Vega returned to his gang’s hangout near Hunters’ Point, his second in command, Elduardo “Chupa” Jiminez, had good news for him. Word had spread that the leadership of
El Caos
were meeting tonight for a celebration of the gang’s birth.
“It’s true,” Chupa confirmed. “We have eyes near the location, and they said it looked like they were getting ready for a party.”
“Tonight we strike.”
“Time to take those
pendejos
down. When should our soldiers meet?”
“They are not needed. Tell no one for now.”
Chupa watched a wry smirk appear on Vega’s face. “I don’t understand.”
“You, me, and a special weapon is all that’s needed.”
Don Vega said nothing more to his trusted lieutenant, leaving him to wonder how the two of them could succeed.
<><><>
Two white vans pulled up on the western side of Garfield Park a little after midnight. Across the green landscape was Treat Street, ground zero for the
El Caos
gang. Following closely behind was a black SUV with Zapata, Vega and Chupa inside.
“There,” Chupa pointed, “the white house.”
The lights were on, and there were about seven men hanging out on the porch and the stairs leading to the front door. Zapata ordered the first van to survey the house. He wanted a better assessment of how many gang members might be inside. A few minutes later, the van returned, and Zapata’s phone rang. There were maybe twenty to thirty men inside the house plus the seven outside.
Both vans held the gang of men who had attacked the bank—fourteen, including Malcolm.
Zapata had refused to enlist more when Vega asked—mostly because he didn’t take orders, but also because he wanted to know how they would fare against armed gang members. If they were successful, he knew he would be able to distribute MZ-1 to gangs all over the U.S. in exchange for their cocaine business. If all went as planned, he would have a monopoly on the drug trade. And maybe he could break out from under his boss.
If nothing else, it should be entertaining.
Zapata exited his vehicle and walked over to the second van. The side door slid open, and Malcolm exited.
“Are you ready to show these men what you are capable of?”
“I’m hoping you’ve arranged a challenge worth my time.”
Malcolm turned to ready his men. Within seconds the group had taken off on foot, crossing the poorly lit park. Like shadows, they slipped around trees and park benches as they zeroed in on the house. The men on the porch didn’t suspect a thing as they tilted back forties of beer. A chubby one stood up and drained his bottle. He turned to the sidewalk and took aim at the trashcan near the bottom of the steps when out of the darkness came a shirtless man moving with incredible speed. Large, bounding strides carried him up the steps. Before the confused gang member could gasp, the man was upon him, riding him down and sending his head crashing into a cement banister, where it emitted a loud thunk that reverberated in the bellies of the others. They turned around in time to face their own attackers. Malcolm picked himself up off the gang member as a pool of blood formed under the young man’s head. Focused on the front door, he flashed an evil grin and ran forward.
Chapter 55
By the time I got to 26th Street in the Mission, the block had been cordoned off at both ends, and a tangle of black-and-whites had taken over the street. Red and blue lights lit up the faces of the looky-loos who had gathered in great numbers. As I walked farther into the hive, I noticed multiple vans from the medical examiner’s office.
A high body count—that’s the attraction.
I flashed my badge at the two young uniforms on crowd control and slipped by without incident. A few seconds later, I heard my name and spotted Reilly waving at me.
“Thanks for getting here fast.”
“It’s my job. What happened here?”
“A massacre. We counted twenty dead. Five are injured, two in critical condition.”
That number sent shivers throughout my body. “How?”
“Follow me; there’s something I want you to see.”
I kept in step with Reilly as we headed up the steps of the old Victorian. The overwhelming smell of iron punctuated my nostrils as I tiptoed my way around pools of thickening blood. Forensics hadn’t finished their investigation, so the bodies still lay where they fell. I counted six before we got through the front door.
Once inside, Reilly made an immediate right into a sitting room with a large picture window that faced the street. “There,” he said pointing to body on the floor. “Take a look.”
I knelt down and pulled back the sheet. “He looks familiar.”
“He’s one of the men from the bank heist.”
“That’s it,” I said, snapping my fingers.
“First a bank. Now a gang. What’s Zapata’s motive?”
I stood up and brushed my hands off out of habit. “Looks like he’s testing what his gang of mutants is capable of.”
“They’re a formidable force.”
I turned toward the direction of the familiar voice and watched Cabrera make his way down the stairs.
“It’s a slaughterhouse up there,” he said, motioning with his head.
“Any others I should look at?” I asked.
“Nah, just the one. If the same group of men attacked this gang, well, that’s about ten or fifteen against twenty-five hardened gang members. Losing one is a great ratio.”
“It’s a spooky ratio,” I added. “Do we have an ID?”
Reilly shook his head. “Not yet, but we’re working on it. We had a few positive hits from the bank footage. Some of the officers from the Tenderloin precinct recognized the men involved with the heist. They’re talking up their contacts to see what the word is on the street.”
I looked around at the bodies that littered the floor.
This can’t be far from what a battlefield looks like after an ambush.
“According to SFPD, this street gang is called
El Caos
and is not affiliated with the Colombians. Most of them are Hondurans,” Reilly continued.
“Why a gang?” Cabrera asked as he walked around a body. “They may not buy in bulk, but they’re an important part of the distribution pipeline.”
“My best guess is that Zapata showcased MZ-1 for another street gang and used their enemy,
El Caos,
as the example.”
“If that’s true, it’s an impressive way to get them to pay attention,” Cabrera said.
“But what does Zapata get out of it?” Reilly asked.
I turned to him. “If they want to create their own army of fighters, they have to buy his cocaine.”
“He’s looking to set up a monopoly.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter 56
Malcolm and his men had been on the run for close to two hours. He had only a vague idea where he was and hadn’t yet decided what to do. He had already lost a few of his men when they decided to choose their own paths. He didn’t blame them. Their situation had become frantic. But that blame could not be put on Malcolm; Zapata held that responsibility.
Right after he and his men had wiped out the
El Caos
gang, they sprinted back across the park to where the vans were. Only the vans weren’t there. Thinking maybe he had misunderstood the pickup point, he lead his men around the entire park to see if a van waited in another location. It was then Malcolm realized they had been abandoned. With distant sirens closing in, they had to get out of the area. Fast.
For the next couple of hours, he led his men down dark alleyways, along side streets and through small parks—anywhere they could stay out of sight. The chilly San Franciscan temperatures had no effect on the men, who were still running high on their adrenaline rush. Malcolm knew the worst would be determined when the men came down off their highs and returned to a more normal state. His own knuckles were bloody and raw from the bashing they had given, but the pain didn’t bother him. He never noticed.
The men he had lost earlier headed in a direction different than Malcolm had wanted to go—deeper into the city. Malcolm, on the other hand, had other plans and headed in the opposite direction.
Malcolm held his arm out, stopping his men under a low-hanging tree that encroached on the sidewalk and masked their presence. It also helped that the moon that night had been a sliver of itself. Had anyone noticed them, surely a call to the police would have been in order. He looked over his men and noticed some were still carrying the steel pipes used in the attack. He quickly ordered them to toss the bloody weapons down a nearby gutter.
During the trips to the bank and to tonight’s location, Malcolm had noted every detail, from signs to landmarks to landscape. He even noted the miles traveled with a simple glimpse at the odometer. By his calculations, they were close.
He and his men left the overhang of the tree’s branches and crossed an empty lot until they reached a drainage ditch. From there, they traversed the cement river, which sported barely a trickle, for a hundred feet or so. It ran parallel to the main highway and did the job of keeping them out of sight.
When Malcolm spotted the familiar yellow arches sitting on top of a tall steel pole, he led his men out of the ditch and onto the access road near the highway. Moving as quickly as possible, as they were now visible to the odd car still out in the early morning, they made a right and then a left and finally another right before they stopped at the entrance to a quiet cul-de-sac. A corner of his mouth widened, creating that grin again.