Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot - By Jodi Compton Page 0,8

into a business sideline—a boutique drug trade—but there was no question she’d found a niche. Her clientele was small and select, most of them entertainment-industry people. Though marijuana was nearly as available as Wrigley’s gum in Los Angeles, these were people who ate at Spago. They weren’t going to pass around a slimy joint like it was 1973. Serena understood this, and she gave them the same quality control they expected in their cabernet sauvignon or sparkling water. Serena dealt with only one supplier of high-quality marijuana, a grower hidden deep in a national forest in Northern California. She bottled her product tastefully in small shaker bottles that she bought at a kitchen-supply outlet. And she didn’t actively seek new customers, just let word of mouth do its work.

A lot of people would say, With a product like that, why stay small? Why not go big and watch the money roll in?

Serena knew better. A larger operation would draw the attention of the big fish in La Eme, who’d take over, and then Serena would be an employee in her own operation, making only a small cut, and that couldn’t be allowed. She’d paid her dues for years on her prescription-drug heists, just as the guys of Trece did on the cocaine and grass they moved in the neighborhood. But the oil-of-chronic sideline, that was Serena’s endgame, her retirement plan.

Serena went over to peer into the vat, as if she were inspecting the work of a sous-chef. Then she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Corona, looking questioningly at me.

“Just one,” I said. “I gotta drive.”

“You can sleep here,” she said.

The bedroom was lived in and messy, with mismatched furniture and a thirteen-inch TV perched on the dresser.

“Where does Diana sleep?” I asked.

“She sleeps on the couch when I spend the night.”

“But there’s got to be other people living here.”

“No, just her.”

That was odd. In the barrio—not just in gang life—crowded homes were the rule. A whole apartment for one teenage girl, no matter how small—that was almost unheard of.

Serena said, “I’ve been helping her pay the rent here.”

“What about her family?”

“Dad’s in prison, Mom’s a flake with a meth habit. Good times.”

That wasn’t an uncommon story; many of the sucias came from broken homes. Serena had often made room for them in her old house, but I’d never known her to pay rent for any of them. “You must like her.”

“Like I said, she has a lot of potential.” Serena set her bottle down and reached into her jacket, taking out the roll of bills she’d brought from the storage unit. She peeled several off the top. “Here,” she said, handing them to me.

“Thanks.” I didn’t count them. We didn’t negotiate my pay for riding with her; we didn’t even talk about it. It was understood that when times were good for her, financially, they were good for me. She opened the top drawer of the dresser and put the rest of the money inside. Then she flipped on the TV set atop the dresser. The audio began right away, hip-hop music, but the picture tube was slow to warm up.

“Look,” I said, “if Diana’s so different, if she’s got a lot of brains and potential, why not steer her in a different direction, like toward college?”

This was sensitive territory. It didn’t matter that I was now as morally compromised as anyone in Serena’s OC underworld; I was still white and college-educated, and she was quick to get hot about anything like preaching on my part.

But she calmly said, “Let me put it in terms you’ll understand: Virtus laudatur et alget.”

“ ‘Virtue is praised and made to freeze’?”

“ ‘Virtue is praised and left to freeze,’ ” she corrected. “That’s what happens to good girls around here. The nice boys, some of them get a football scholarship or something, but the girls? There’s nothing for them. Diana could study and work and study some more, and then she’d get killed in a drive-by anyway, or shot by accident by the cops, and the neighborhood do-gooders would light a few candles, and then they’d forget her. It woulda happened to me, if I hadn’t gotten ganged up and learned to look out for myself.” She repeated herself: “Virtue is praised and left to freeze—you’re living proof of that.”

“Me?”

“Look what happened to you at West Point. You worked your ass off to become what they wanted, and then they hosed you off the back steps because of something