Sugar -- A Tale of the Runoffs(2)

Aztlan Abajo, the AztAb, is the Hispanic refugee community in the tunnels. Here are the unpapered Mexicans, Salvadorans, Panamanians and other refugees who can be snatched up on sight by la migra. Here also are those who have escaped bondage to the hijo de puta coyotes, human traffickers who extort and enslave the desperate and those who care for them.
         I lock up my bike in a stub of a tunnel a hundred yards short and hump the drop in over my shoulder. Raimundo gets nervous at the sound of an engine. The walls here are layered with graffiti, gravure, blotches of color and form and more graffiti. I read up on the latest on my way.
         The Apocalypse is Coming, this time for SURE!!
         Donald Trump come mierda sin sal.
         Sales Office next left.
         Once, an Esso motor patrol officer ran a pistol-whipping carjacker down into this neck of the tunnels. If the AztAb ever starts to shelter violent criminals, the sympathy allowed to simple refugees will go up in smoke. The Sheriff's Office will come into these tunnels in paramilitary strength. Raimundo gave up the carjacker.
         Raimundo is the jefe, their leader, boss man, front man and something else I don't quite get. This day, he greets me in a mish-mash of iFrench, some sort of Open Source Gallic gallantry. "Meric, mon frere! Zut allors! ... " The rest blows far over my head.
         "Hey, that's not bad! Almost as good, I'll bet, as your Mexican accent." Someone has scrounged an old teacher's desk and placed it here at the demarc of the AztAb. Out of politeness, Raimundo has hidden his assault rifle in the footwell. I heave my bag onto this "treaty table", next to their box of outbounds.
         "I put in the work. And from you I get the damnation of faint praise."
         "So who am I to judge? It's not like I was born there."
         "Well, I neither. What have you today for us?"
         "You know. Big pile of legal stuff, small pile of personal stuff." I begin to empty my bag. "Whattaya got for me?"
         "Big pile and a little pile. You know."
         I give him my list and accept his. We begin to reconcile.

Someone is trying to steal my bike. Judging by the sharp crack as he breaks the lock on the forks, he's pretty strong. I hear metal dropping on concrete. I lay my bag on the tunnel floor and round the corner.
         She's big enough, for a girl. I see by the light of the instrument cluster that she's already either shorted or jimmied the ignition switch. A glance to one side shows me the length of steel pipe she used to pry on the forks. She glances at me and jumps on the kickstarter. She revs the motor and lets in the clutch. When the bike doesn't move, she kicks it into first gear. Her hands are spastic and she almost kills the engine. But the bike actually lurches toward me before the motor sputters and dies.
         "Having trouble with your bike?"
         "No, uh ... I'll get it." She jumps on the kickstarter, then again, and again.
         "It won't start," I volunteer, "until it gets some gas."
         "Sure. What do you know?"
         "I know where to find the fuel valve on my own bike." I step back and gesture toward the main tunnel. "Walk away, girl. Just walk away."
         She drops the bike and glares at me. Her eyes are full of rage. She lunges for the discarded piece of pipe. She is clumsy with it. Her arms are not as strong as her anger. She takes an awkward cut at my head. When she misses, the pipe drags her shoulders around and I move in and pin her arms to her body. The pipe clatters to the floor and I swing her around, plant her on her feet and give her a shove. "Now walk away."
         Half-bent, hugging herself for support, her eyes swim in tears of rage. "Bastard! You're just a mean sonnuvabitch!"
         Not to be cruel, but I only shrug.
         She sobs and turns, stumbling. She gets five yards behind her before her legs collapse.
         Swing on me once ... But there is something I don't like about her breathing. I work my way behind her, kneel and place the back of my hand on her forehead. Her skin burns with fever, all the way down her face and neck. She is little more than half-conscious as she tries to duck from under my hands. "Aw, jeez."
         Bag hastily strapped to the handlebars, I wheel my bike into the main tunnel, open the fuel valve and wrestle her onto the seat. When I pull her arms around my waist, she clasps her hands by reflex. I don't want to bungee her in place if I don't have to do so. I head us toward the open channel, city streets and the County Hospital Emergency Room.
         We've covered most of a mile when she rouses slightly. "Where ... we goin'?" She sounds like a sleepy child.
         "The CHER. You're going into shock."
         "No ... can't. ... find me ..."
         "You're dying now. Just hold on to me."
         "No. He'll ... kill me!" She pulls her arms from around my waist. I bring the bike around to a sliding stop as she pushes against my back with the strength of hysteria and tumbles off of the seat. I vault from the idling bike and try to lift her back onto the seat. She swings an elbow at my head.
         I put down an urge to slap the stupid out of her. "You need a hospital, and now."
         "No," she murmured. "He ... knows people. He'll find me. Help me. Please." She hugs my arm and strokes my bicep weakly.
         This is ridiculous. "All right. I know another place, a safe place."
         "Please ... help ... me." She is too far gone to complain about the bungee cords.

Everybody, except me and Jay Leno, drives a truck. Maybe it's because nobody else can afford a multimillion-dollar car collection. Maybe it's basic strategy in street combat. The one that cuts me off is at least thirty years old, but it has a fresh engine, half a dozen panes of tinted glass and the brightest, cleanest camo paint job I have ever seen.
         The stupid gunner in his urban tank is nothing new to me. My basic strategy is to find a driveway. I take us slanting across the parking lot of a half-empty strip mall toward an alley exit. And I hear that old-school small-block roar rise behind us. Blots of camo spatter my mirrors.
         I cut a corner between a liquor store and a payday lender. Like me, the hater comes in on two wheels. Then he's on the brakes as I duck between two concrete-filled posts into the alley servicing the stores.
         He's too late. Judging by the crash, I flee the scene of two tons of crunched metal and powdered concrete.
         Nosing out of the alley at two miles per hour, I scan left-right-left. The tail of a six-pack in camo disappears into the shopping center to my right. What, a club? Paramilitary paranoids in trucks? A camoed Yukon stops halfway into the driveway and jerks into reverse.
         Forget the ER.

1213 words