She ran to a white mini-van covered in rust spots, missing a rear bumper.
A man, her father by the looks of it, jumped out of the back of van as she got inside with the rest of her family.
They were huddled around ice chests, piles of clothes. Angel saw the black trash bags filled with everything they owned.
The children had their faces buried in their mother’s arms.
He yelled, “Go park at a Walmart!”
The dad got in the van, drove away.
Lauro laughed, uneasily, “That’s cold, man.”
*****
Inside Verde Park, near the Verde Community Center, the preteens were playing, catcalling to Miss Padilla again in their squeaky little voices. “Hey mamacita! I want to do the wild thing to you!”
Another said, “How much for a blowjob, bitch?”
In unsure voices that could crack glass, they catcalled, giggled. They tossed their football back and forth.
Miss Padilla, she couldn’t remember faces anymore. Her life before she got clean last year made it so. But the kids would not let her forget. She still liked to straddle her neck in gold jewelry. She still liked to wear the same hot pink, skin-tight, halter-top dress.
Angel said, “Check out Miss Padilla. Baby got back.”
At a fast clip, she bustled up Van Buren Street. Her chest puffed out, tits bouncing all over the place.
He did a little bump and grind dance, dry fucking the air. “I wouldn’t mind riding that train.”
“You’d fuck her? She’s like forty, and she used to be a prostitute.”
“I’m just playin’.”
Lauro smiled, “What’re you getting your mom for her birthday? Something nice?”
“I was thinking of some gold jewelry.”
Miss Padilla wore giant gold earrings that glinted in the sun.
Lauro saw the gold around her neck.
“I fucking dare you! You won’t do it!”
She bustled toward them like daring them to stop her, daring them to do something about it. But without looking them in the eye, she strutted past. Angel grabbed the jewelry from her neck. She started screaming, “Fuckin’ no good rotten kids!” Then she was shouting, “Fuckin’ no good rotten kids!”
Before they knew it was happening, she had opened her Chanel purse, pulled a gun. She boomed the way thunderclaps rumble through clouds, across the sky, “I’m gonna teach you not to fuck with decent folk!”
Without thinking, Angel ran. It didn’t register in Lauro’s mind right away that Angel had run. Lauro bolted a second later, as fast as his fat little legs would carry him. He was too slow, and it was all the excuse she needed to shoot him twice in his back with the.38 snub-nosed revolver. Like a spooked stampeding cow, Lauro belly-flopped into the ground. The momentum of his dead weight carried him skidding across the scarred pavement on his chin.
