Page 6 of Dirty

And, I prayed.

To live long enough to see the miracle.

THREE

Cholo

The rotten stench of the adrenaline-laced sweat that leached from the pores of drug dealers and their prey lingered in the air. Two stoned Hispanic men who looked like they hadn’t showered in a month were seated on the filthy tan sofa that was shoved against the far wall.

Beside the couch, a broken-down recliner that appeared to be stuck in the recline position sat empty – short of the half-eaten bag of chicharrones that sat on top of the pile of dirty clothes that littered it. The coffee table in the center of the room was covered with the previous night’s beer bottles, money, an electronic scale, a box of granola bars, and enough cocaine to get San Diego high for a year.

In the hallway to my left, a muscular Hispanic man wearing a stained dingy wife beater and khaki-colored Dickies leaned against the wall.

Directly in front of me, a shirtless man who was covered in jailhouse tattoos stood. The teardrop tattoos dripping from his eye let me know he wasn’t going to play nice, and the script tattooed across his muscular chest clearly identified the gang he was in.

Calle 18.

My eyes darted around the room, taking inventory of the threats. As I sized up each of the four men, the one in front of me grabbed a bottle of beer from the coffee table. As he lifted it, I made note of two things:

One, he was left-handed. And, two, there was a cigarette butt floating in the beer.

He took a few steps toward me, limping slightly as he walked.

The fingers of my right hand twitched, and I hoped he didn’t notice.

If he did, he wouldn’t know what it meant. But I knew. It was one of those tells that a professional poker player must hide to prevent the other people at the table from knowing when he’s bluffing.

Not that I was bluffing.

Because I wasn’t.

But my right hand wondered how I was going to get out of the room alive. I’d been in worse situations, I was sure of it. For the life of me, however, I couldn’t remember any of them.

With his eyes locked on mine, he lifted the bottle of beer to his lips, took a drink, and then spit it onto the floor in disgust. He glared at the bottle, and then looked at me.

He cocked his head to the side. “Quien te envio?”

Who sent you?

I pulled my hat down a little tighter and then shrugged. “No habla espanol.”

It was a lie. I spoke Spanish fluently, but at least one of them spoke broken English, I was sure of it. Speaking something other than their native tongue would keep those who didn’t speak English a few steps behind, and I needed all the help I could get.

He tossed the bottle onto the floor beside the table. As it belched out the remaining contents onto the carpet, he cleared his throat, and met my gaze.

His eyes fell to my feet, and then slowly rose the length of my frame. “Who seent jew?”

I locked eyes with him. “El mero chignon.”

No one had sent me. My response was a risk, but a minimal one. Within the ranks of Hispanic gangs, there was always an “el mero chignon.” In Spanish, it meant the head motherfucker, the one in charge, or the top dog.

He grinned and nodded his head, revealing a tattooed lower lip and teeth much whiter than I expected. “What jew want, Homie?”

I took a quick glance at the man in the hallway, and then shifted my eyes back to the shirtless man. I debated on whether to tell him the truth or a lie.

A lie would buy me a little time, but eventually I’d either have to beat the shit out of each of them, kill them, or tell them the truth and hope we could work out some sort of agreement. Regardless of my boxing experience, beating them with my fists– and succeeding – wasn’t really an option.

I brushed my left hand along the tail of my shirt until it was alongside the pistol that was tucked into my waistband and prepared to tell him the truth.