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the real, an alley cat like Salida seemed to have nine lives. Bilal had knocked the shit outta her with his brother’s car, and as Mo peeped outta the back window she coulda sworn Salida had cracked her conniving skull on the concrete and croaked.
    But noooo. That woulda been too much like an answered fuckin’ prayer! Monique had been hot as hell when Pluto came home that night talking about Salida had got hit by a car and the only thing she had was a sprained damn hip.
    What the hell? Monique had wanted to scream and ask him. How was that possible? You mean that bitch’s back didn’t get broke? Her dome didn’t shatter into a hundred pieces and her shiesty-ass brains didn’t spill out all over the sidewalk? What the fuck! Wasn’t old people supposed to have brittle fuckin’ bones?
    Monique had gone over to Salida’s apartment the next morning and pretended like she was all concerned. But on the real, she just couldn’t stop seeing the dark hole of the gat that Salida had pointed at her, and the whole time she was in the kitchen showing Nooni how to fix Salida some buttery grits and a bacon and cheese omelet, she was steady plotting on how to hit Salida one more time, but the next time she was gonna knock the old bird on her ass for good.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 8
     
    “I don’t think he’s going to show up,” Renata whispered to her husband as they sat in the front row of the cathedral. They were having a quiet Catholic memorial service for Frank’s nephew Mikail, and Renata couldn’t help glancing at the door every few minutes and hoping that their other nephew, Salvatore, would walk in.
    “He’d better not show up,” Frank growled under his breath. “Because if he does he’s a dead man.”
    Frank had been livid at his nephew’s blatant defiance of his orders. Not just with the electronics heist and the death of his cousin Mick, but with Juicy too. He had made it clear to Sallie and everyone else that the girl was strictly off-limits. He’d given his word and put his arm of protection around the girl, and Sallie had violated that in the worse way.
    If Juicy had come back to Los Angeles and tried to drive home from the airport she would have been blown to bits by the bomb that Sallie had gotten boom-rigged in her car. It had been reported all over the news, and some media outlets had even tried to tie the bombing to terrorist activity. Juicy had to have heard about it, and Renata had been trying desperately to reach her, but Frank told his wife that Juicy was probably too scared to think about coming back to California now. She probably didn’t think there was anyone in the whole state that she could really trust.
    Renata sighed and interrupted Frank’s thoughts. “I just can’t imagine where Sallie could be. Where he could have gone.”
    “Beats the hell outta me.” Frank shrugged as he looked over his shoulder, “But if the little bastard isn’t burning down in hell then he didn’t go far enough.”
    Renata followed her husband’s eyes as they watched the other mourners stream through the doors. They were mostly the mafia-type. Stern-looking Italian men in business suits who had come out to pay their respects to the idiot son of a made man.
    “That worthless turd should get away with killing my son?” Frank’s brother Mike had cried when he saw Mick’s roasted body. “I’m a made man, Frankie! That Irish bastard should be the one laying here like a toasted marshmallow! Not my freakin’ Mickie!”
    And their sister, Salvatore’s mother, had been no less emotional with her pleas. “Have mercy on him, Frankie!” she had cried when Frank and his brothers burst into her house looking for Sallie. The little rat didn’t even have the decency to tell his own mother goodbye. Instead, he had run off and left an empty, carved-up safe in her wine cellar.
    Frank had given his only sister a real long look, telling her without words exactly what he was going to do to that bum son of hers if he