Someone To Believe In Read Free Page B

Manson song, which already blasted from her computer, and
crossed to the mirror above a dresser in her dingy bedroom.
Carefully, she streaked three fingertips over her face. The
Vaseline went on smooth and thick. It made her deep brown eyes
glisten like the stars. Better yet, it’d protect her skin from
knife cuts.
    Tonight she was after some hard beef with her
girls. Mazie Lennon’s boyfriend had been spotted with a member of
Anthrax, and Mazie had called out her home girls to teach the
broad a lesson. It was payback time. Taz didn’t think any guy was
worth the trouble, but when your home girls wanted help, you went.
Her opinion of the male species as lowlifes was why she hadn’t
trained in.
    Did you jump or train in?
    Smart girls knew it was better to jump
in; training in made you boys’ slaves. But most chola weren’t tough enough to do it. Taz had been
tough. She fingered her ribcage remembering that night. The older
girls had cracked two ribs with the billy club they’d jacked from a
cop and used in Taz’s initiation. They’d blackened and bloodied one
eye and it had stayed shut for a week. They’d given her killer shin
kicks; her hair had been pulled so hard she’d felt her fucking eyes
bulge. But she’d stuck it out longer than any chick on record, and
even some of the guys in the neighboring gangs, who did jump in.
Scared the shit out of all of them. Problem was she was so tough,
she was always having to prove it. Which was why she went online
tonight.
    You don’t have to be tough with me.
    Done with her own special brand of a facial,
Taz braided her hair so it was close to her scalp and couldn’t be
pulled; she tied an orange bandana, the GG’s flag, around her head.
Then she switched off the small lamp on her dresser. In the dim
light from an outdoor streetlight, she slugged back on a
forty—forty ounces of malt—and crossed to a makeshift desk. Picking
up the laptop she’d stolen from the school—and slept with a
computer geek to get bootleg Internet connection—she stuffed the
machine in her closet in a locked box. If the old man found it,
he’d sell it for booze.
    He’d already tried to sell her.
    How come she join a gang if she got family
like you?
    Christ, why the hell had she gone to the
Street Angel’s website? Taz guzzled some more beer, found her
blade, and tested its sharpness in three shallow slits on her
forearm; she smiled as she tasted the coppery blood. Every GG
carried the same blade. She looked down at the tattoo ringing her
belly button, visible under her crop top. It was a pitchfork. Hurt
like hell the night they all got one.
    When she heard the front door open, she spat
out, “Fuck,” grabbed her GG’s jacket and hustled to the window.
Jimmying it, she slipped out just as she heard the pounding. And
the swearing. And the foul names he called her.
    Her steel-toed boots clanged on the fire
escape as she took the steps two at a time, clutching the forty and
the blade close to her chest. In minutes, she was away from him,
headed toward her real family.
    Fingering her knife, she smiled. The dumb-ass
cunt who had moved on Mazie’s man was gonna regret her flirting all
right. By the time Taz got to the rendezvous point, she’d chugged
more malt and had convinced herself she couldn’t wait for the games
to begin.
     
     
    TWO
     
     
    CLAY LEANED AGAINST a storefront on MacDougal
Street, under an overhang to avoid the rain which drummed on the
small roof, and folded his arms over his chest. He had no idea why
he was here, at midnight on a miserable Friday in July, scoping out
the pub across the street. After his dinner with the governor, he’d
been comfortably ensconced in his brownstone on the Upper East Side
and had just talked to Jane. She’d not been happy that he was out
of Washington tonight, and missing the birthday party she’d thrown
for her father, the senator from Virginia. Jane had left the
shindig to call Clay and whine.
    God, he hated whining. His ex-wife had