The Painted Boy (7 page)

Then he was inside and the doors closed behind him.

Jay watched the bus leave, then set off for the pool hall.

 

 

El Conquistador looked as rough as the man had suggested it might. The adobe walls were flaking a sun-washed, pale green paint, and the windows were grimed with dust. The tall sag uaro standing at the edge of the building had patches of unhealthy yellow. Around its base, the weeds and prickly pear were a long-dead brown. Up and down the street, and in a gravel parking lot beside the pool hall, low riders and chopped bikes were parked.

But that was only the outside of the building. Inside was where the real danger would lie.

Jay wasn’t afraid the way he knew he should be. He’d woken with a confidence he couldn’t explain away simply from having dreamed of Paupau, a confidence that stayed with him now. Perhaps it was because he knew that the gang members Flores had surrounded himself with weren’t the danger. They didn’t need to be.

Not with Flores there.

El Tigre.

In the spirit realms, Paupau said, the big cats were the mortal enemies of the dragon clans. Sometimes that enmity carried over into the physical realms. But enemies didn’t need to fight one another, Paupau had also said. If they did, the world would be wracked with even more wars than it already was.

It was only eight thirty when Jay crossed the street to the pool hall, but he still expected El Tigre to be inside. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the best time of day to go talk to a drug lord. If you believed the stereotypes found in videos and movies, Flores should still be in bed, or only just getting to bed after a long night of partying and doing business. He wouldn’t be in this pool hall at this hour of the morning, hanging out with his gangbangers.

But Paupau had been available to anyone who needed to see her, night or day—it was part of her responsibility to her clan. No one made an appointment. She simply
knew
when they were coming and would be waiting for them before they were able to ring the bell to her apartment or enter the restaurant where she held court in a corner booth.

So El Tigre would be here. If he wasn’t, then he wasn’t a spiritual force. He was just a gangster with a provocative nickname. Considering that possibility, Jay felt the muscles in his shoulders tense uncomfortably when he put his hand on the door.

There were over a dozen people in the pool hall and they all turned to him when he stepped inside. Jay had expected the gangbangers to be Mexican, and most of them were, but there were also a couple of blacks, a white, and even a guy who looked East Indian. They all had gang tattoos on their forearms—some also had them on their necks and faces—and they wore their red-and-green
bandas
colors: scarves around their wrists or on their heads or dangling from a back pocket. Red or green T-shirts. Red or green baggy pants. Though most of them looked to be in their late teens or early twenties, there were also three adults.

There was the fat guy sitting behind the counter at the back of the room who was obviously the owner or manager, and a lean, handsome man playing pool who stood up from the shot he’d been about to take. They were both Mexican. The third was an attractive Native woman who sat at a corner table by herself, her dusty tooled-leather cowboy boots propped up on a second chair. She wore a choker with a large turquoise stone and a straw cowboy hat that hid her eyes until she tilted her head to study him.

A funny thing happened when Jay looked at the woman and the man by the pool table.

Over the years, Paupau had often told him various parables and what Buddhists called jataka stories—the kind that you were supposed to contemplate until you gained some small flash of enlightenment. But she had little practical advice. Direct questions were always answered with evasions. His supposed heritage—this spiritual burden and gift of the Yellow Dragon Clan—was something that could only be approached from the side, she claimed, never directly. He would learn what he needed only when he needed to know it. Until then, he had to trust that this would be the case.

For instance, once she told him that they shared the world with many other spiritual beings whose strengths were rooted in various animal clans. That as he went out into the world, he would meet them and immediately know them, as they would know him.

“How will I recognize them?” he’d asked.

“How could you not?” was her unhelpful reply.

He hadn’t understood then, but he did now. Looking at the man by the pool table and the beautiful woman with her straw hat and cowboy boots, he felt an odd
ping
in his mind—as though a bell had sounded, but its tone was made up of colors rather than sound—and he knew that they were more than what they seemed.

“You sure you’re in the right place, kid?” the fat man behind the counter asked.

Jay blinked. He realized he’d spaced out.

“I’m here to see Mr. Flores,” Jay said. “I’ve heard he’s looking for me.”

Jay pushed back his hoodie as he spoke. Two of the gangbangers started to move forward.

“Wait,” the man by the pool table said.

His voice was quiet, but it snapped like a whip. The gangbangers stopped in their tracks.

“I’m Flores,” he said to Jay. “What makes you think I’m looking for you?”

Jay shrugged. Now that he knew that Flores was more than the gangster he pretended to be—just as Paupau was more than an old lady sitting in a back booth at the Dragon Garden back home—the tension left his shoulders.

“How could I not know?” he asked.

He was pleased with his response—it was the way Paupau would have answered. But then he saw El Tigre’s eyes narrow in angry suspicion and he realized he shouldn’t be getting cocky.

He held his hands out in front of him, palms up.

“I’m new in town,” he said. “I just thought it would be polite to meet you. I mean you no harm.”

One of the gangbangers snickered. Flores didn’t look at him. He just said, “Shut up,” and continued to study Jay.

“Who sent you?” he finally asked.

“Nobody. My grandmother thought I should do some traveling, so I closed my eyes and stuck my finger on a map. Santo del Vado Viejo is what came up.”

Flores nodded as though this made perfect sense.

“Boss,” another of the gangbangers said when Flores continued to stand by the pool table, cue in hand, all his attention focused on Jay. “You want us to take this kid out back and—”

Flores turned on the man. “Didn’t I tell you all to shut up?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Get out,” Flores told him. He waved his free hand to take in the rest of the room. “All of you get out of here.”

From the angry looks the gangbangers shot his way as they filed out, Jay knew the smart thing to do was just stay where he was. He tried not to let the weight of El Tigre’s gaze worry at his nerves, but it was hard. Moment by moment he could feel the tension return to his neck and shoulders.

“So no one sent you?” Flores said when the last of the gangbangers had filed out.

“No, sir.”

“And when you say you mean me no harm,” Flores went on, “do I have your word on that? That you won’t bring your weight, or the weight of your clan, down upon me?”

Jay started to respond, but something in the other man’s careful phrasing made him stop and think first.

“Yes, sir,” he said finally. “So long as you can guarantee a similar safety for me and, uh, those under my protection.”

He hoped he’d said that right. Apparently he had, because Flores nodded and he seemed to relax.

“But we’re only talking a deliberate attack, right?” he said. His phrasing lost some of its formality. “Because these
bandas
, they’re still just kids. They get into fistfights and crap like that.”

“Um . . .”

“But no weapons,” Flores said. “I get that. Nobody gets hurt for real on either side.”

When he fell silent, Jay felt he was supposed to say something.

“Right,” he said. “Well, I should get going.”

Flores nodded. “I’ll put the word out. You ass’ll be as safe here as it was in—where did you say you were from?”

This felt like a trick question that for some reason it was important he not answer.

“I didn’t,” Jay said.

“That’s right, you didn’t. But you got here on a bus from Chicago.”

Jay shrugged.

“Yeah, I know. That doesn’t mean anything. I appreciate your stopping by, kid. You can tell the boys to come back in on your way out.”

He turned away from Jay and went back to lining up his shot on the pool table. Jay glanced from him to the man behind the counter, the woman at the corner table. The fat man ignored him but the woman winked at him before she looked away.

What was that supposed to mean? Jay wondered as he made his way outside.

His shoulders tensed again when he stepped out onto the street where the gangbangers were hanging around, smoking cigarettes. Their dark gazes turned on him as one.

“Uh, Mr. Flores said that you can go back in,” Jay said.

He walked quickly away before any of them could respond, going back the way he’d come. He felt a prickle at the nape of his neck as he made his way up the street, but kept himself from turning around to make sure they weren’t following. When someone suddenly fell in beside him, he thought his heart would stop. He stumbled, but the newcomer caught his arm before he could fall. He looked up to see that it was the woman from the pool hall.

“Jesus!” he cried. “Where did you come from?”

The
ping
of familiarity he’d felt before went through him again, but this time, with her hand on his arm, it was like a static charge. The woman smiled and let go. Like Paupau, she was a lot stronger than you’d think from looking at her.

“Seriously,” he said. “How’d you get here so fast?”

She ignored his question.

“That was a very interesting conversation you had back there,” she said.

“Did Mr. Flores send you after me?”

“Flores does his best to ignore my existence,” she said.

“But I saw you back in the pool hall.”

She nodded. “I do what I can to annoy him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.” She looked him over, starting from his feet, until her gaze reached his eyes. “So,” she went on, “it looks like you worked out a truce.”

“I guess. I just don’t want any trouble.”

“Nobody does.” She paused and smiled. “Well, that’s not true. I know people who thrive on trouble. But I understand what you’re saying. You just want to get along.”

Jay nodded.

“But what if you can’t? What will you do if he breaks your truce?”

“I don’t know. Do you think he will?”

“Hard to say. It depends what’s most profitable. Let’s just hope Flores doesn’t figure out that you’re here without backup or much experience.” At Jay’s surprised look, she added, “Oh, come on. You and I both know there won’t be some ‘wrath of the dragon clans’”—she made quote marks in the air with her fingers—“coming down on him. You’re here to see how you can fend on your own. This is like some Chinese version of a spirit quest for you, isn’t it? To see if you’re actually worth the mantle of your clan.”

“How can you know that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve heard how it works with your people. Go back far enough and I figure you’ll find we’re kin.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I didn’t say the bloodlines run close. But the scales you can hear whispering against each other in your mind? I hear them, too.”

Jay just looked at her.

“I know what you’re wondering,” she went on. “Where does she align? East, west? North, south? Well, it’s different here than it was in China. Here the four directions belong to the thunders—the big mysteries—and the animal clans belong only to themselves. But we recognize some clans as kin, and we can make alliances, same as anybody else.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Jay asked. “Making an alliance with me?”

She gave him another shrug. “Maybe I’m just being friendly.”

Sure, Jay thought. Tall, gorgeous Native American women were always looking to make friends with some kid like him.

“So what’s the deal with you and Flores?” he asked. “Do you have an alliance with him, too?”

Her eyes flashed and she spat in the dirt between them.

“I’ll give you that one,” she said in a tight voice, “because you don’t know any better. But don’t bring it up again.”

“Look,” Jay told her. “I don’t know you and I don’t know him. I don’t care what is or isn’t going on between you because it’s none of my business. I only came by because I want to be left alone.”

He turned to go, but she caught his arm with that strong grip of hers. When he stopped, she let her hand drop.

Jay had to make an effort not to reach up and rub his arm.

“We’re not enemies,” the woman said.

“Yeah, but are we friends? Like I said, I don’t know you and I’d just as soon not get involved in whatever’s going down between you and Flores.”

“Except isn’t that exactly why you’re here? The yellow dragons—isn’t your whole thing about making places safe, fixing what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know why I’m here.”

She nodded. “Okay. Play it that way. But let me know if you change your mind.”

Why did everybody think he was so much more than what he was?

“How would I get hold of you?” he asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

“And I don’t know yours.”

“I’m Jay Li.”

She shook her head. “That’s not your
name
,” she said. “That’s just what you go by.”

“Excuse me, but isn’t that what a name is?”

“Not in the clans.”

“I don’t have a clan name.”

“My point, exactly. You’re too young to have one. And I’m too old to be giving mine away to just anybody.”