Read Online Hailey's War by Jodi Compton - Free Book Online

money.”
    It was a little-known truth about the job: If you were committed to it—steady and reliable in reporting for work but fast and heedless on the street—you could outearn some of the young suits you sped past on the street.
    I stood up and walked over to the window, looking down at the traffic. “You’re doing all this for Teaser’s memory?”
    â€œYeah,” she said. “I know it may not seem like there’s much of a connection to you, but
la raza
can be a small community. And Teaser was one of mine. The sucias are for the sucias. You know how it works.”
    â€œI know,” I said.
    â€œNo you don’t, not really,” Serena said. “You ought to get you some
familia
, someone who’ll never not back you up.”
    I’d never told her about CJ. The two of them had been the bright and dark of my old life. They didn’t mix.
    â€œBut don’t worry about the money,” she said. “Times are good right now.”
    I didn’t believe her. I’d seen the truth of Serena’s glamorous gangster life in the faded brown shag rug of her rented house and the twenty-year-old sedan under her carport.
    But then she added, “You know, your pay wouldn’t have to be all in cash. I could open up the drugstore for you.”
    Her gang brothers in Trece dealt coke; Serena had her pharmacy heists. Cocaine meant speed for the street, and Xanax and Ambien were peace for the evenings, when memories of West Point and Wilshire Boulevard troubled me most. Serena was smart. She once told me that drugs were money in places money couldn’t go. Clearly she hadn’t forgotten that. I hadn’t used since I’d left L.A., but now the prospect was tempting to me where mere cash wouldn’t have been.
    I ran my hand through my hair. “I’m not saying yes right away, but let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll have to look at a map and figure out how many days this’ll take, then I’ll give you an estimate on what it’ll cost. I’d want to be sure the expenses were really covered.”
    â€œThey will be,” she said. “Whatever you need.”
    â€œI just mean this trip is going to take the time it takes,” I said. “I’m not going to drive way over the speed limit, or push myself until I could get tired and make an error in judgment. I can’t be reckless on the road. You know why.”
    â€œYeah,” Serena said. “I know.”
    What we were both remembering was the reason I left L.A.

five
    If you keep up with the entertainment news at all, you’ve probably heard of a man named Lucius “Luke” Marsellus. He ran maybe the second-biggest gangsta rap label in America. Or, if you were an LAPD cop doing gang suppression in South Central about fifteen years ago, you knew him for different reasons. I could say that people who knew Marsellus when he was a teenager knew him “before he was famous,” but that wasn’t quite accurate. He just had a different kind of notoriety back then. There are different words for it—
made guy, OG, veterano
—but most gang members reach that status young. When you’re liable to be dead by twenty-one, you have to. Luke Marsellus was ganged-up by the time he was ten and a hood celebrity by fifteen.
    At that age, Marsellus had become the right-hand man to a dealer named J. G. Deauville, a man who’d climbed the distribution chain from street-corner dealer to having two dozen guys working for him. And Marsellus was constantly by his side, his protection and enforcer. His shadow: tall, silent, feared. The extent of his crimes in Deauville’s service still isn’t known: The gang unit never made anything stick to him.
    His boss wasn’t so fortunate. Deauville taught Marsellus a lot, but perhaps the most important lesson was this: Luck always runs out. He taught his lieutenant that the hard way: After years