Black Rifle

PROLOGUE

It took 5.4 seconds for Arianna to die.

But when you’re bleeding from bullet wounds, it’s like someone switched the outside world into slow-mo and hit fast-forward on your brain. A story can have a hundred different beginnings and she wondered which one had led her to this end.

She could start at the very first one. The beginning of her life at 5:37 AM on October 16 at McAllen Medical Center. After all, aren’t we all born to die?

Or maybe she should start with her earliest memory. The way her father pronounced her name.

Are-ianna. So guttural and authoritative. It reminded her of a deep, dread-inducing organ chord. The sound hell might make.

She preferred the front-vowel a. Air-ianna. Saying it that way felt like floating on a cloud.

Dad’s diction was as tough as he was. How else could he have swum in the swamp of crocodile smiles and tears that was Washington, D.C. for all of those years, while Arianna’s mother raised her (if you could call it that) back in a poor border town near Edinburg, Texas? That was where her mother and her father were both from. She and her mother had moved back there from D.C. after the divorce. Her father swore he’d never step foot in that hopeless place again, and he never did.

That was where she first met the church.

One Mississippi.

Her father didn’t get to where he was by playing nice. Airy-anna, on the other hand, didn’t have a mean bone in her body. Whether that was a flaw or a virtue, she could not say. In theory, it seemed swell to love everything and everyone, but part of her was sure it was a cop-out.

She was the one her friends would call to talk about their problems, and there she would be, dishing out sage advice, which was usually just a regurgitation of some sermon she’d heard that she herself wasn’t even sure she completely understood.

In her darker, more private moments, she wondered, Is it not the weaker person who loves their enemy? Is it not the stronger one who stands firm against them? Does not forgiveness (at least sometimes) amount to cowardice?

But then she would remember the church. And she would repress these thoughts. Feel airy. And float away.

Two Mississippi.

She remembered how her mother used to call her a mostly-Mexican beauty. Mom had told her that there was some gringo in there somewhere, but she couldn’t say exactly what kind. Both of her parents were fluent in Spanish, but they never taught her, so they could, as her mother would say, talk about you without you knowing. Arianna would snicker and snort at this.

She was a nerd and she knew it. Thick prescription glasses. Faint freckles peppering the coffee skin around her nose and cheeks. In her free time, she read, preferring fantasy novels. Tolkien was her favorite. Most people assumed, given her appearance and hobbies, that she was a straight-A student. In fact, her grades were abysmal.

She didn’t blame anyone, but she knew she didn’t have the stability other kids had growing up. Her mother was a loving but negligent alcoholic and her father was absent. Affection was a foreign language to him. She remembered smoking weed for the first time when she was ten. Her first taste of alcohol came in sixth grade. By fifteen, she was completely sober. Most other kids raised the way she was would have been lucky to have made it to twenty without a police record, drug addiction or death certificate.

But those kids never met the church.

Three Mississippi.

That’s why she’d moved to Los Angeles. For the church. She’d found a shitty hostess job at a trendy burger spot downtown, earning minimum wage plus tips. She moved into the only place she could afford—some dump in South Central—and divided her time 70/30 between her church and hostessing duties.

Initially, the move to L.A. was nerve-racking. She wasn’t sure she’d belong. Fortunately, hipsterism was the in thing and what were hipsters but wannabe geeks with a dismissive streak? She knew she already had the geek thing down. A few trips to Urban Outfitters with her church friends, mix in a couple Bible-verse tattoos and instant hipster missionary. She fit right in.

But for someone who grew up so fast, she worried she was naïve. Believing the answer to every problem, no matter how complex or multifaceted, to be love. A notion as simple as it was abstract.

Four Mississippi.

She thought of Sean from Tipperary, who she’d met last month when he helped her at the Central and 7th bus stop after she’d been mugged and had her phone stolen. He’d moved to L.A. with dreams of becoming a cinematographer.

After they’d reported the mugging to the cops, he’d invited her for a drink. She’d declined, then invited him to church. She’d told herself it was so he could be saved. Definitely not because she thought he was cute.

She’d been texting him only moments earlier. When she’d still had her whole life ahead of her. She was in her small ground floor studio apartment.

Did you go to church?

Nah.

Por k?

In hindsight, she should have looked twice at the large black vehicle looming on the street outside her barred window.

I thought you didn’t speak Spanish?

Lol. Why do you think I spelled it por k? Why didn’t you go?

She should have been paying attention.

Ask me in Spanish.

Punk. I’ll ask you in Irish. Po-Ta-Toes. Boil ‘em. Mash ‘em! Stick ‘em in a stew!

Maybe she would have heard her killer in the hallway.

Are you quoting Lord of the Rings? You do know Irish people and hobbits aren’t the same thing, right?

Could’ve fooled me.

She might have heard the footsteps getting closer.

I’m about to walk into the movies.

Geez. What is it with you and the movies? Don’t you have Netflix?

Streaming will be the death of cinema! Good night!

Arianna grinned and began to type goodnight, but she only made it to the letter n before the gunfire cut her off.

Her message was left unfinished. It would never be sent nor received.

Five Mississippi.

And as she lay on her apartment floor, her heart pumping precious blood through dark bullet wounds, she wondered, Where are the angels? The bright light? Why did she feel so fucking cold?

She’d never thought it would be like this. She’d never imagined she would feel so alone. And in her final moments, she was terrified that God was a crock of shit and that she had lived her life as a coward.

PART I

GOT YOURSELF A GUN

1

He went by Cal for short, though no one knew what it was short for.

He was putting on black Everlast hand wraps. He hadn’t boxed since it happened. A single event that he couldn’t even remember, which was nevertheless responsible for the last four miserable years of his life. Years that he would never forget. They say war is hell. Well, so is prison.

Cal looped the hand wraps over his knuckles.

That was the first thing the police did, he remembered. When they brought him in that night four fucking years ago. They photographed his knuckles. They told him the bouncer he punched had been struck with so much force that it was like the poor bastard fell from a third-story window. They could’ve told him anything. He had no idea what the hell they were talking about. He didn’t remember a thing.

He Velcroed the hand wrap around his wrist and slid on his sixteen-ounce sparring gloves.

No, it wasn’t taking pictures of his knuckles, he remembered now. The first thing the cops did that night was breathalyze him. He blew a .3.

This one guy he did time with was named Vinny. He’d wake up every morning craving a hamburger, but it couldn’t be just any burger. Back when he was on the outside, Vinny’d drive across town past a dozen or so other fast food joints just to get to this specific Wendy’s restaurant because he swore on his mother that there was something different about the burgers there. Nothing like any other burger on the fucking planet. Not even like other Wendy’s. They were the greatest fucking hamburgers in the world and he just had to have one.

Every day.

The thing about this Wendy’s was it happened to be in the red-light district.

Vinny was a sex addict.

He didn’t wake up thinking I’m going to have sex today. In fact, a lot of days, he woke up swearing he wouldn’t. But he just couldn’t go without that fucking hamburger. From that fucking Wendy’s. He really believed it tasted different.

Like how alcoholics say cigarettes taste fresher at liquor stores.

Addicts are masters of self-deceit.

Cal didn’t smoke. In fact, he hardly ever drank. But when he did, it was at 100 miles per hour, just like everything else in his life. It wasn’t on purpose and he didn’t blame anyone else for his problems. His brake lines weren’t cut, he was born without brakes.

Cal stepped into the ring. It was like coming home from college.

His opponent had about thirty pounds on him, but punching wasn’t about size. You don’t strike with your fist, you hit with your whole body. That was how Bruce Lee could throw a one-inch punch and little Russian girls on YouTube could strike through tree trunks.

In order to throw a real punch, he had to be in absolute control of himself. Everything had to be in perfect harmony. There was only the present and the ring was the universe. Cal was completely aware and in control.

Like God.

Cal was an addict. But his drug was not tobacco, or booze, or pussy.

His opponent launched a jab and Cal slipped left, turned on the ball of his foot and drove his power up through his body like a pressure vessel. Flicking his wrist forward, he drove his front two knuckles through his opponent’s face.

As his opponent fell backward onto the mat, Cal’s brain released a flood of dopamine and he felt euphoric.

Addiction is like Russian Roulette. You spin the chamber. You get the high. You spin it again. You keep playing, sooner or later, you catch a bullet. Every addict does.

Miranda and Camilla were lying in bed, passing a joint. Both were unclothed or, rather, naked in beautiful vulgarity, as Miranda would sometimes say. That was how Camilla gauged how high Miranda was. By the floweriness of her language. Miranda was not a flowery person.

I had a dream last night, Miranda said, the roach glowing between her fingers. It was awful. And weird. I woke up crying. I was on a roller coaster with my dog from childhood. My dog jumped out of my arms. I saw him skinned along the tracks.

Miranda took a toke. Held the warm, musky marijuana smoke in her lungs.

I looked it up and it’s supposed to signify the loss of someone close to me. She exhaled.

You don’t have anyone close to you, Camilla said.

Miranda grinned. Only my enemies. She kissed Camilla on the cheek.

If you’d have told Miranda when she was a kid that one day, she’d be in law enforcement, she’d have asked you what you were smoking. She grew up in East Los Angeles with her mom and four sisters. She liked to say that the only time the cops were around was to arrest or deport brown people.

She’d watched her mother work her ass off day and night making tamales she and some other people from the neighborhood sold at unlicensed street stands. Miranda saw education as a path out of poverty. She studied hard, got into Cal State LA, where she majored in PoliSci. She saw politics as the best way to change the system. So imagine her surprise when the system came knocking. The ATF recruited her directly out of college. They said they needed people like her.

Miranda lay in bed watching Camilla put on a dark pantsuit and wrap her hijab around her head.

Camilla could feel Miranda’s eyes on her. Don’t, Camilla said.

I was only going to ask, why hide that beautiful hair? Especially in the name of people who think we should be stoned to death?

"That’s what you don’t get, Miranda. It’s not in the name of people." Camilla moved to the door.

Have a good night. Love you! Miranda shouted after her. The slamming door was the only response she received.

Camilla’s work had her coming and going at all hours. Such was the life of an orthopedic surgeon. She was born in Nigeria. After her father earned his medical degree from the University of Ibadan, he’d moved the family to the United States to continue his studies at the University of Southern California.

Miranda and Camilla had met four years ago, when Miranda visited Cedars-Sinai for a hand injury. She had just finished a stint on a joint FBI/ATF terrorism task force attempting to link gunrunning on the Mexican border to Islamic terrorism. The operation did not bear fruit. Frustrated at the powers that be for exerting their energies in all of the wrong places, Miranda had punched a wall. Rather, Miranda had punched through a wall, receiving fractures to her second and third metacarpals, as well as three weeks in finger splints and, finally, a date with her orthopedic specialist.

Camilla couldn’t understand. What did you hope to accomplish by striking an inanimate object? she’d asked. Miranda told her to think of it as a metaphor for law enforcement. Pointless at best; maladaptive at worst.

Miranda used to joke that after 9/11, federal law enforcement agencies rushed to hire more black and brown people, even though most mass shootings and acts of domestic terrorism were perpetrated by angry, baby-dicked white males. Camilla didn’t like it when Miranda made comments like this. She believed that law enforcement professionals should not engage in identity politics.

The two lived in Miranda’s loft in Downtown Los Angeles in an unofficial capacity. Camilla still kept her own place in Santa Monica for appearances. Or at least, that’s what she told herself. She couldn’t ignore the fact that although they had been living together for nearly two years, the loft felt like it had never been moved into. The walls were bare. The furniture sparse. There was not a single photograph. Everything about the place was transient.

Camilla fixed broken things. It was her job. Her passion in life. Sometimes she wondered if that was what she really saw when she looked at Miranda. Something broken. A life to fix. Her father had always taught her that if a body can be healed, then so can a soul. Miranda, on the other hand, always saw the worst in people. Even herself.

Hours after Camilla left for work, Miranda was still lying in bed, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her night. She was tired, but not sleepy. She could work, but by now, she was too high. She could smoke more, but she felt she was already high enough. She thought about Camilla. Why did she always antagonize her? She had to admit she found it hot when her girlfriend, usually so imperturbable, got ruffled. It was lust, she knew.

What is the difference between lust and love? she wondered. How could she ever be truly emotionally attached to someone she so disagreed with?

When her cell phone rang, it was a relief. Although—and likely because—they never show it, the toughest people often feel the deepest loneliness. Agent Lopez.

Miranda. It’s Bob Greco. Bob was a Special Agent at the FBI’s Los Angeles office. They’d worked together on the Mexico gunrunning operation and he was just as bitter about the whole thing as she was. They both agreed that her SAC, Mark Scarpelli, was a political hack more concerned with jerking off his bosses than fucking the bad guys.

What’s up?

There’s been a shooting.

There are shootings every day, Bob. Why does the ATF care about this one?

You’d better get down here.

Miranda thought about it. She was still pretty stoned.

Gimme twenty. She hung up the phone, went to the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. After she patted it dry, she put Visine in her eyes and rinsed with mouthwash.

She arrived at Arianna’s apartment building nineteen minutes later in her ATF jacket, feeling fresh as a fucking daisy. The area was cordoned off with police tape and red and blue lights danced.

Greco was waiting outside. Thirteen dead. Someone cleaned out the whole building.

Okay. Miranda popped a piece of Dentyne into her mouth.

I haven’t spoken with your SAC yet. Wanted you to see it first.

Miranda nodded, sauntered into the building and entered the first door on the right.

Bullet holes defiled the room. The dead girl was by the sofa. Miranda gnawed her gum, slapped on some nitrile gloves and approached.

Arianna’s vacant dark eyes stared up at the ceiling.

Her name is Arianna Barros, Greco said. Her father is Marco Barros.

Miranda stopped chewing. Her eyes darted to Greco.

Yeah, Greco said.

Miranda’s gaze returned to the dead girl. She noticed a small crucifix tattoo on her wrist.

This needs to be handled right, Greco said. When powerful people are involved, investigations can get messy. Given the nature of the crime, the ATF should be involved, but I don’t trust that shit-sack of an SAC you’ve got over there. I’ll only work with you on this.

If you didn’t have a dick, I’d fuck you, Miranda said. Greco was probably the only cop she actually liked. Let’s get to work, she said.

By the time Miranda returned to her loft, the sun was rising and Camilla had just managed to drift off to sleep after a long, caffeine-fueled night shift.

I’ve just been assigned Senator Barros’s daughter, Miranda said as she burst into the room.

Camilla got her bearings and sat up. What?

Shooting in South L.A. Senator Barros’s daughter was among the victims.

How terrible, Camilla said.

Miranda set her box of files on the kitchen table. This girl, she said, shaking her head. Moved out here with a Pentecostal church. You know how these Jesus freaks are. Anti-gay. Anti-woman’s rights. They stand for an America where you and I don’t exist.

Camilla glimpsed a crime scene photograph. A pretty, sort of nerdy-looking young Latin woman, sullied by blood splatter. How old was she?

Miranda was too outraged to hear Camilla’s question. And don’t get me started on Marco Barros, she said. No politician has accepted more money from the NRA. He’s one of the main reasons why the ATF is one of the least funded law enforcement agencies in the country. Now I’m supposed to give his rightwing church kid special treatment?

Camilla looked back down at the photo of Arianna. A human face staring back at her.

I need to be in D.C. by noon, their time, Miranda said as she finished throwing clothes into a suitcase. I don’t know when I’ll be back. She pecked Camilla on the mouth and rushed out the door.

2

Cal always hated offing