Mafia Doll

I don’t wait for an answer. I press the pedal, and the bike obeys with that old squeal that’s been with me forever. The city, at this hour, sounds like red lights with no witnesses and footsteps trying not to make noise. I pedal close to the edge, dodging glass, potholes, and shadows.

I don’t know if I did the right thing. I know I can’t save her today. Today, I can barely hold myself up. So I keep moving: one block, then another, then another. The wind dries my tears before they fall. And I leave Pamela behind, with the door half open and the night gnawing at the edges, silently promising myself I won’t let go of the plan, I won’t let go of my own, I won’t let go of me.

The next day at the restaurant smells like old oil and toasted bread. I’m serving an exhausted mom with a kid who won’t sit still: he throws the napkins, pours out the sauce packets, launches the fork to the floor like a rocket, and, to top it off, drops the little juice cup. It hits the floor and splashes my sneakers. The woman half-apologizes, out of breath, while she tries to pry his hand off the ketchup dispenser.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her, with the best smile I can manage. “I’ll bring you another one.”

I pick up the utensils, swap out the tray, and wipe the mess with a damp cloth. My phone buzzes in my apron pocket; I don’t need to look to know what it’ll show me. I look anyway: notifications from my 20 calls to Pamela with no answer. All straight to voicemail. Ten unread messages, or buried in the void since yesterday. Nothing. Not an “ok,” not an emoji, not a curse.

Voicemail. Voicemail. Voicemail.

“Could we get more straws?” the mom asks, dead on her feet.

“Yeah,” I answer. “Of course, yes, yes.”

I walk to the service station. The sticky floor keeps my soles. The manager is “in the office” (meaning: absent); Perla at the register chews gum and types. My chest goes in short, tight beats. I brace for a second against the counter edge. Inhale four. Exhale six. It doesn’t work. My head runs on its own: what if last night… if someone… if the corner… if Antony…?

I go back to the table with straws and a smile I don’t feel. The phone buzzes again. I turn around.

“Perla,” I say, and I hear my voice shake, “can you cover me for two minutes? Two. Really.”

She looks at me and understands something. She nods. I slip through the back hallway, between cases of soda and bags of chips. The exhaust fan roars. It covers my ears but not my thoughts.

I dial Pamela again. Automatic. Maybe now.

Voicemail.

I grab my phone and call Aunt Carmen’s house directly.

“And Pamela?” I ask without a greeting.

“At work, mija,” she answers, calm. “Yesterday she told me she had double shifts all week.”

My back goes cold.

“Double shifts… today too?”

“That’s what I understood. She must be there. Everything okay?”

I nod a yes, but my lips tremble. She doesn’t know anything. The last thing she has is those words that now sound like an alibi. I don’t want to scare her, at least not until I have something solid.

“I’m going to call her,” I say. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

I shut myself in the hallway, between the mirror and the shelf of saints. I call Pamela again. Voicemail.

My fingers go numb. I fumble a search: “Copper Lounge Houston.” First number. I call.

“Copper bar,” a girl answers over clinking glass and a soundcheck. “What can I get you?”

I swallow. I talk too fast:

“Hi, I’m Vanessa, Pamela Ortiz’s cousin. She hasn’t answered since yesterday. Is she there? Did she make her shift?”

A memory silence on the other end. I hear ice in a glass. Then:

“Pamela? She hasn’t come in because of the incident. I’m Roxy, the bartender. If you see her, tell her to call. We’re…” she hesitates, “worried.”

The word goes through me like a hook: worried. I brace against the wall because my knees buckle.

“Incident,” I whisper. “What do you mean?”

“One of the dancers passed away.”

I hang up. I stare at the black screen for a few seconds as if I could wrench an answer out of it by sheer fear. My hands shake so much I almost drop the phone. I call again. I don’t know why. Voicemail.

I breathe in jolts. The exhaust fan, the shouted orders in the back, the microwave beep: everything sounds farther and louder at the same time.

I go back to the dining room. The kid is stacking cups into a tower; when I move, the tower collapses in a cascade. I crouch to gather them, the plastic scrapes my palm. I drop off a small ice cream “on the house” at the table—I don’t even know if the manager will charge it, I don’t care—and the mom thanks me in a voice about to break. I nod, but I’m somewhere else: in front of a red neon door that won’t open, at a dead phone, on a street where the shadows know my name.

Perla asks with her eyebrows: everything okay?

I shake my head. Once. Twice. The third doesn’t come out.

I grip a tray like it’s a steering wheel. I breathe through my nose, count, fail, count again. My body wants to run; my legs stay put. As soon as I finish this order, I tell myself, as soon as I close this table, I’m going to look for her. And I hope the world doesn’t fall on me on the way.

My heart races as I turn onto our street after finishing my shift.. The idea of finding my cousin’s body behind a dumpster, in a yard, dumped like nothing, terrifies me. What if…?

“Vanessa?”

I turn at the sound of that familiar voice. Pamela leans out her window, calling me.

“God, Pamela! Do you have any idea how scared everyone is right now?!”

Relief floods me when I see her, but I also feel a torrent of anger and frustration. Even so, worry wins—she looks wrecked.

“Wait, I’m coming down.”

She disappears from the window, and seconds late,r she’s in front of me.

Her face looks even more haggard up close. Her blond hair is a mess, and the dark circles under her eyes show that mascara lost the fight hours ago. I think I see brown stains on her wrinkled leopard-print miniskirt—she can’t stop tugging at it like she’s just realized it’s too short. She hasn’t changed since yesterday. She smells like a mix of sweat and cheap cologne.

“What’s going on, Pamela? I’ve been trying to—”

“Let’s go inside,” she cuts me off, nervous.

She grabs my arm and drags me toward my front door. With shaking hands, I fumble for the keys, open up, and throw the deadbolt.

Silence greets us. Grandma isn’t here—she’s probably at the neighbor’s.

“Are you going to explain now? Where were you all day?” I fire off immediately.

Pamela starts pacing circles around the living room, not answering. My heart booms down to my stomach. My thoughts won’t line up. But at least she’s alive. That’s already more than we can say for her coworker.

“I’m screwed, Vanessa,” she whispers, rubbing her temples. “I’m in it up to my neck.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“It’s just that I…” she sobs, “I have her blood on my hands. I have a girl’s blood on my hands!”

My heart nearly stops. Her legs give out and she collapses. I rush to catch her and let her cry on my shoulder. Shaking, I guide her to the couch and wait for her to settle.

What the hell is she saying? Does this have to do with her death? Did she… no. It can’t be.

“Pamela,” I say in the calmest tone I can gather. “I need you to explain. What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Once I know everything, we’ll figure out what to do.”

I rub her back, trying to soothe her. Grandma always says that kind of touch helps during a panic attack. I look her straight in the eyes.

“There’s nothing we can do! They’re going to kill me too!” she screams.

The terror in her voice runs down my spine like an ice-cold shiver.

“Who? W-who wants to kill you?”

“The Zeta Clan! They’re looking for me, Vanessa, because my coworker and I fucked up. We were idiots!”

“Pamela!”

Driven by panic, I jump up, run to the window to check the street, and come back to her.

“You… knew you couldn’t mess with… My God, what did you do?”

Messing with a cartel means real consequences. If the two of them crossed them, it’s not just their lives at risk. They could come after Aunt Carmen. After Grandma. After me.

Pamela wipes her tears, smearing mascara and glitter all over her face. She walks toward me with her head down.

“Do you remember Antony?”

I already know I won’t like what’s coming.

“Of course I remember.”

“I thought he was my boyfriend. And my coworker thought he was hers too. Do you get me?”

My face surely says it all, even if I don’t say out loud what I’m thinking: that Pamela should have seen it coming.

“He was playing us both! That bastard!”

Pamela sounds genuinely wounded by the betrayal. How could my cousin—so strong and sure—believe a cartel guy, one who was groping her ass in a strip club, was going to be her prince charming?

Anyway, her broken heart is the least of it right now.

“So… we decided to confront him. I thought we were going to yell at him, humiliate him, maybe force an apology. But… nothing went how I expected.”

I scan Pamela for injuries. She doesn’t look beaten, but she’s still trembling, trapped in the memory.

“We didn’t even get to speak. When we got there, he was on the phone. He didn’t see us. He kept talking like nothing. That’s how we learned that, on top of being an asshole, Antony is also a damn traitor.”