“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. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. “Thanks.”

“He has this”—she scrunched up her face as she talked—“has this big tattoo of a tiger on his neck. Open mouth … teeth showing. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “That’s good, Alice Anne. Anything else?”

Her head bobbed up and down. “I seen him around.”

“Where? At MacFerren Park?”

“At the park, yeah, but also at the coffee shop. Late at night. Sometimes twelve, sometimes one. Sometimes even later. I seen him ’cause I check the garbage there. Twenty-four hours, so lots of fresh garbage.”

“That makes sense. Which coffee shop?”

“Boss’s.”

“The place about five blocks down on the corner?”

“That’s the one. I seen Germando there. Lots of times. He likes the banana pancakes.”

26

Someone was hitting me over the head, just pulverizing my brains to dust. In horror, I could see the tissue flying around, splattering on the ground, but still the pounding wouldn’t stop. It took several minutes before I could translate the repulsive nightmare into sound. … Someone was knocking on my door. When I opened my eyes, I felt my heart racing, smelled the sharp odor of sweat that was evaporating off my skin. Shaking from cold, I wiped the wetness off with my damp sheets. I knew I had a breakfast appointment with Hayley Marx, and I wondered if I had overslept and it was she. But checking my alarm, I still had a half hour to go. Ordinarily, I would have been angry at being awoken prematurely, but it was a relief to bury the evil specter.