“He never said anything to me. He said how he’d meet up with me there, at the dance. The bomb at the dance, when it went off, I was right there. Right there. Ronni Edwards got killed. She went up ten feet away from me. I knew her.”
He stopped, and rubbed his hands over his face. When he dropped them again, Connie took one in hers.
“I knew her,” Joe repeated. “Since we were in kindergarten I knew her, and she blew apart in front of me. I never . . .” He lowered his head, fought for composure. “Sorry.”
“Take your time,” Eve told him.
“It went—it went to hell in seconds. Music’s playing, kids are dancing or hanging. Then it went to hell. The noise, the fire. More kids got hurt, and then they’re running around, crazy scared, and more get hurt in the trample. Lino and Chávez and Penny, they’re hauling kids out like heroes, and saying how it was the Skulls, the motherfriggin’ Skulls.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But they weren’t there, not when it went down.”
“Lino, Steve, and Penny weren’t there,” Eve qualified.
“Yeah. I mean no, no they weren’t there when the place exploded. I’d been looking for
Lino. I had a couple guys who wanted in—wanted in the gang, so I was looking for Lino. Nobody’d seen him. Just minutes before it blew, nobody’d seen him or Penny or Steve. He never missed a dance. I figured, well, he was just late getting there. And probably lucky for him, I thought that after. Lucky for him because we figured he was the target. It was later when I realized he was the one making the noises about being the target.”
“Were you hurt in the first bombing?”
“Got some burns, cut up some from the stuff that was flying around. Not real bad. If I’d been standing where Ronni was . . . I thought about that. Thought about that and how Ronni had just blown. It got me up, got me thinking, yeah, those Skulls needed some killing. So I’m up, think I’m up to get my mark because of that, and I hear Lino and Penny talking.”
“Where were you when you heard them?”
“We had a place we used, like a headquarters. This basement in a building on Second Avenue, right off 101st. Big basement, the place was like a maze. Rattrap,” he said with a sour smile. “They fixed it up about ten years back. It’s apartments now. Nice apartments.”
“Just for my curiosity, do you know who owned it?”
“Sure.” He looked puzzled by the question. “José Ortega—the old guy—kind of a big deal in the neighborhood. José was one of us. Soldado—I mean the old guy’s grandson was one of us. But the fact was, Lino said it was our place.”
Ripples, Eve thought. “Okay. So you heard Lino and Penny talking when you went into the basement, into the headquarters.”
“Yeah, like I said, it was a big place, lots of rooms, and corridors. I was heading for the war room. I was up, and I wanted in on the retaliation. Hell, I wanted to lead the charge. But I passed one of the flop rooms, and I heard them talking about how it worked. How planting the boomer at the dance got the community—that’s how Lino put it—the community involved. How they’d hit the Skulls now, and everyone would cheer. The Soldados would be heroes because everybody thought the Skulls attacked, the Skulls brought blood to neutral territory. And Penny said they should’ve used a bigger bomb.”
He looked down at his hands, then lifted his gaze back to Eve’s. Tears glazed it. “She said that. Said how Lino should’ve built a bigger boomer so there’d be more dead instead of just that little bitch Ronni. How a bunch of bodies would’ve gotten people really juiced. And he laughed. He laughed and said, ‘Wait a few days.’ ”
He reached for his wife’s hand. “Can I get some water? I think I could use some water.”
Peabody rose, walked over to fill a paper cup. “Take your time, Mr. Inez,” she told him.
“I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe they’d do that. To our own. Chaz Polaro was in the hospital, and they didn’t know if he was going to make it. And they’re in there, laughing. They’re the ones who did it, and they’re laughing.
“It could’ve been me that night, dead or maybe dying. It could have been any of us, and he’d done it. They’d done it. I went in, so pissed off. They were on this old mattress we had down there, and she was mostly naked. I said, ‘What the fuck, Lino.’ I’m sorry, Connie, that’s what I said.”
Joe began to talk quickly now, pushing the words out, pushing the memories. “I said, ‘You fucking bastard, you set that boomer on us.’ He started telling me to chill, frost it up. How it was strategy, for the good of the gang, and all this bullshit. I told him to get fucked, and I walked out. He came after me. We had a lot of words—and Connie’s going to get steamed if I say them all. Upshot was he told me he was captain, and I’d follow orders, I’d keep my mouth shut or he’d set Chávez on me. He said we were going to hit the Skulls and hard, that he’d already made the boomer for the hit. If I didn’t want him to shove it down my throat and hit the remote, I’d keep my mouth shut. I guess he wasn’t sure I got the point because I got jumped a few hours later, got the shit kicked out of me.
“I kept my mouth shut. I kept it shut and the next day Lino and Chávez took off. I kept it shut when Penny hunted me up and told me to remember it might be Lino’s boomer, but her finger was on the trigger now, and if I didn’t follow orders they’d do to me what she and Lino had done to her old man.”
“Hold it there a second,” Eve told him. “Did Penny Soto tell you what she and Lino had done to her father?”
“Hell, they bragged on it all the time. How they’d diced up Nick Soto. How they made their mark together.”
“Okay. Keep going.”
“I guess there’s not much more. A couple days after Lino left, the bomb hit the diner. And I kept it shut. I didn’t say anything to anybody, and five people died.”
“You knew about the second bomb beforehand?”
“Yeah, I knew.” He crushed the water cup in his hand. “I didn’t know the when and where, but I knew they were going to do it. I knew people would die, because Penny wanted bodies, and Lino liked to get Penny what she wanted. I didn’t do anything about it. I went and got drunk, and stayed drunk for a long time.”