[Georgia 03] Fallen

face of the gang. There are two others, but they keep an incredibly low profile and you’ll never find all three of them together in the same place. Before you ask, Ortiz is in Phillips State Prison serving his third year of seven without parole for attempted manslaughter.”
    “Attempted?” That didn’t sound very gangbanger.
    “Came home and found his wife tossing the sheets with his brother. Story goes he missed on purpose.”
    Will assumed Ortiz had no trouble running his business from prison. “Is he worth talking to?”
    “Even if we had cause, he wouldn’t sit with us in a room without his lawyer, who would insist that his client is just an average businessman who let his passion get the best of him.”
    “Has he ever been arrested before?”
    “A few times in his younger days, but nothing major.”
    “So, the gang’s still under the radar.”
    “They come out every now and then to school the younger kids. Do you remember the Father’s Day murder in Buckhead last year?”
    “The guy who had his throat slit open in front of his kids?”
    She nodded. “Thirty years ago, they would’ve killed the children, too. One might say they’ve gotten softer in their old age.”
    “I’d hardly call that soft.”
    “Inside the joint, the Texicanos are known as throat slitters.”
    “The gentleman in the trunk is high up on the food chain.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “He’s only got one tattoo.” Young gang members generally used their bodies as a canvas to illustrate their lives, etching tattoos of teardrops under their eyes for every murder, wrapping their elbows and shoulders in cobwebs to show that they’d done time. The tattoos were always rendered in blue ink culled from ballpoint pens, what was called “joint ink,” and they always told a story. Unless their story was so bad that it didn’t need to be told.
    Will said, “A clean body means money, power, control. The gentleman is older, probably early sixties. That puts him in on the ground floor of Texicanos. His age is his badge of honor. This isn’t the kind of lifestyle that ensures longevity.”
    “You don’t get old by being stupid.”
    “You don’t get old by being in a gang.”
    “We can only hope the APD shares the gentleman’s identity with us when they manage to track it down.”
    Will glanced at her. She stared ahead at the road. He had a niggling suspicion that Amanda already knew who this man was, and exactly what part he played in the Texicanos hierarchy. There was something about the way she’d folded Mrs. Levy’s photograph in her pocket, and he was pretty sure that she had given the old woman some kind of coded message to keep her story to herself.
    He asked, “Do you ever listen to AC/DC?”
    “Do I look like I listen to AC/DC?”
    “It’s a metal band.” He didn’t tell her they’d created one of the bestselling albums in the history of music. “They’ve got a song called ‘Back in Black.’ It was playing when Faith pulled up. I checked the CDs at the house. Evelyn didn’t have it in her collection, and the player was empty when I ejected the tray.”
    “What’s it about?”
    “Well, the obvious. Being back. Wearing black. It was recorded after the original lead singer of the group died from a drug and alcohol bender.”
    “It’s always sad when someone dies of a cliché.”
    Will thought about the lyrics, which he happened to know by heart. “It’s about resurrection. Transformation. Coming back from a bad place and telling people who might’ve underestimated you, or made fun of you, that you’re not taking it anymore. Like, you’re cool now. You’re wearing black. You’re a bad guy. Ready to fight back.” He suddenly realized why he’d worn out the record when he was a teenager. “Or something like that.” He swallowed. “It could mean other things.”
    “Hm” was all she would give him.
    He drummed his fingers on the armrest. “How did you meet Evelyn?”
    “We went to Negro school together.”
    Will nearly choked on his tongue.
    She chuckled at his reaction to what must have been a well-used line. “That’s what they called it back in the stone ages—the Negro Women’s Traffic School. Women were trained separately from men. Our job was to check meters and issue citations for illegally parked cars. Sometimes, we were allowed to talk to prostitutes, but only if the boys allowed us, and usually there was some crude joke about it. Evelyn and I were the only two whites