Free Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) by Mark Wheaton Page A

expected not much more than a pitying smile and a retreat. Instead, Nicolas hugged him.
    “I love you. Mom loves you. You’re already ten times the man Dad was. We’re just waiting for you to see that.”
    Luis shoved his brother away. Nicolas left the room. Luis got a call from Oscar a second later saying he’d be picked up after midnight. He never saw his brother alive again.
    When he slipped out that night, Luis found a car waiting for him at the end of the block with two guys up front. He got the sense they’d been there for hours and wondered if the Alacrán OGs thought he might try to run. The drive was less than ten minutes. They reached the edge of Boyle Heights, pulling to a curb alongside the wide concrete riverbed of the so-called Los Angeles River. The men climbed out first and led him to a break in the chain-link fence that crowned it.
    When they reached the bottom of the dry waterway, Luis realized why it was appealing to gangbangers. The lights of the city dimmed to an almost-perfect darkness in the gully. It took Luis’s eyes a few seconds to adjust, but soon he saw the large group of Alacrán gangbangers waiting for them under the Fourth Street Bridge.
    They’re going to make an example of me, he thought.
    Conversations quieted as they approached. Luis could make out Oscar, Remberto, and a few of the younger guys he’d run with, but many faces were unfamiliar. He’d seen various OGs around the neighborhood just enough to know they were a different level of gangster from him. They had reputations. They’d been to prison. They were feared by other gangs. They had families. Some had jobs or businesses. They weren’t just criminals, they were part of a criminal economy.
    One of them—a tall, skinny man with a shaved head and big, gaucho-style facial hair—stepped forward. Luis had never seen him before.
    “Get over here, Chavez,” he said in Spanish.
    Luis did so, seeing the vast number of tattoos crisscrossing his face, neck, and arms. They were of three familiar varieties: Catholic, Chicano, and criminal. Nobody with ink like that thought twice about working in the straight world.
    Luis caught Oscar’s gaze, but his friend quickly looked away.
    It’s gonna be bad, Luis thought.
    “So, you fucked up a robbery, fucked up the getaway, and got thrown in jail,” the OG said. “It’s only because of our intervention that there aren’t going to be charges.”
    This answered one of Luis’s questions. He considered thanking the guy but figured he should keep quiet.
    “Everybody goes in at one time or another,” the OG continued. “It’s how you do your time that is the measure of a man. You got your cherry popped, but you did it right. Even better than not talking, you didn’t complain and you didn’t make friends. A man like that—and that’s what you are now, a man—can be relied on.”
    Luis was confused. He shot a look to Oscar for clarification. His friend still wouldn’t meet his gaze.
    “But to be a man, you still have to deal with all of us.”
    Luis waited for an explanation. He got a fist to the kidney instead. For the next thirty seconds, Luis was pummeled from all sides. Most of the blows were to the torso, though some made it to his arms and legs. A couple glanced off his head, but any that hit there or to his face felt like accidents. A rib cracked and he gasped as he felt it in his lungs. Blood trickled into his eyes from a cut to his forehead. He’d tried to stand after the first couple of hits but now balled up in a fetal position, the concrete cold through his thin shirt.
    He knew what this was. More importantly, he knew he wasn’t to fight back. If he did, the intensity of the beating would likely increase or, worse, the beating would get called off entirely. No one got a second chance to be jumped in. You had to just take it.
    The beating stopped as suddenly as it began. Everyone stepped back, though it still felt to Luis as if someone were pressing on his chest,