The Return Read Online Free

I'm sorry," she said again.
    "Don't be sorry," he said as he left the room.
    Ninety minutes later Jean was sitting in the living room with Lenny, Carol, and Darlene. After Lenny had left her, Jean had fallen back on the bed and passed out for an hour. She hadn't dreamed, only entered a black void where there was no sound or feeling and slept the sleep of the dead. She didn't even know who she was when she awakened in the dark. The disorientation had lingered.
    Who had turned off the bedroom light? She didn't know and it didn't matter.
    The four of them were the only ones left at the party. Jean sat on the couch with Lenny. Carol was on the floor, acting bored. Her Russian boyfriend had never shown. Darlene, as usual, paced. Darlene wanted revenge, she wanted blood. Her little meeting was about planning a hit on Sporty's murderers, specifically on Juan Chiato.
    Juan was the biggest drug dealer at their high school, although he hadn't been to class in ten years. He was twenty-one years old, high up in the Red Blades, one of the most vicious of the inner city gangs. Jean knew Juan by sight; she had met him twice at Lenny's house. He'd been leaving as she went in. Out of necessity, Lenny said he occasionally had to deal with Juan, although Lenny clearly did not like to be in the same room as Juan, who was known for his violent temper. But Juan had direct contact with Colombian drug lords and practically set the price of cocaine in their neighborhood. His face was badly scarred from knife fights. Jean thought he looked like one of Satan's first lieutenants. She hadn't known Sporty was connected to Juan, but she supposed she'd been mistaken.
    "Let me tell you why I know it was Juan," Darlene said as she strode back and forth in front of them, a cigarette in her hand. "The week before Sporty died, he told me about a deal he had going with Juan. You didn't know about it, Lenny.
    Sporty told me Juan had sworn him to secrecy. Anyway, Sporty told me about it because he could never keep his mouth shut when he was drunk. It had nothing to do with drugs. Juan had stolen a truckload of Levi's jeans. He had slipped onto a freight company's lot with a gun and put the barrel to the security guard's head and driven away with the trailer. He wanted to use Sporty to sell the jeans to certain stores. Sporty was game. The commission looked good, and he thought dealing with store owners would be a lot more pleasant than the jerks that hung around Juan. But what he didn't know was that Juan was just using him. The stores he sent Sporty to paid protection to the Bald Caps. You know them?"
    Lenny nodded. "Cierto. They're a small gang, but they control much of downtown, especially around the convention center and the skyscrapers. Why did Juan want to piss them off?"
    "I asked Sporty that," Darlene said. "He thought maybe Juan was trying to set something up between the Red Blades and the Bald Caps. Juan was trying to move up in the Blades, and he was impatient. He wanted some action that he could lead, show the others how strong he was. He wanted a fight. He sent Sporty out, not to sell jeans, but to start a war with the Bald Caps. Right away Sporty ran into trouble. The Caps cornered him and threatened to cut out his heart for daring to enter their territory. They stole his van full of jeans. Sporty went running back to Juan and told him what had happened, but Juan didn't want to hear about it. He gave Sporty an ultimatum—either he got the jeans back or he was going to cut out his heart Sporty yelled at him, said he had just been set up. Then Sporty made a big mistake. He told Juan he was thinking of going to the police to tell them the whole story."
    "No," Lenny said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have been that esttipido. "
    Darlene paused in her pacing. "Sporty was pretty stupid sometimes. I can say that because I loved him. I asked him how Juan reacted, and he said Juan didn't say anything, which we all know is not the best response to get from a