Do They Know I'm Running?: A Novel Read online

  There was this American, a doctor who came to help us, his name was Charlie Christian. We called him Camilo. He’d been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, then became a doctor just to help people like us. Celestina worked with him as a nurse. That’s what most of the compas did, they worked medical, or food, or explosives. No joke, the women were very good at making and planting land mines, they had smaller hands, better control.

  Celestina saw a boy who was burned all over his body being treated by Camilo and that was when she said we had to get out. The boy had been burned in a bombing raid. There was this kind of plane we called a push-and-pull, it circled once, saw a campfire, and came back, lower this time, so we knew it was on a bombing run. Everyone ran to their shelters—we called them tatús—but this boy’s mother didn’t get the door closed in time. The bomb was a direct hit. The explosion cut her in two, she was burned to cinders. The boy, he was maybe two years old, his skin hissed and steamed as they pulled him out. But he was still alive. His mother, shielding him with her body, saved him.

  They took him to Camilo and he did what he could. When Celestina saw that little boy caked in mud and clay to cool his skin, only his eyes and nostrils visible … She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Pablo like that. She began secretly making plans to desert. But it was too late. The cuilios, the government troops, they were coming up the mountain. They sent their three toughest battalions—Atlacatl, Belloso, Bracamonte—plus the First Brigade. Ten thousand men. Only way out was to go by way of Copapayo to Chalatenango, cross the Río Lempa up there. We called it a guinda, a forced retreat, and even the villagers were coming with us, because they knew the troops would kill them regardless. That was just how it was.

  He fell quiet for a moment, staring off as though at a ghost, or the hope of one. Roque brought him back with:—You had to leave the mountain …

  —Right. We were struggling through the forest, dragging our mules, carrying the wounded on our backs or in hammocks strung up to a pole so two men could carry them. Nothing to eat but tortillas and sugarloaf. Some of the children died of malnutrition. I saw one boy vomit up worms from his mouth, his nose, right before he died. His mother carried his corpse with her because there was no time to bury him.

  The villagers were lagging behind because they had so many children. Celestina gave me Pablo, told me to go ahead, she would stay behind and round up the others, get them to pick up the pace. I argued, but there was something in her eye, something that scared me. I felt like I could see all the way down into her soul. And there was nothing there. She was already gone. How do you explain things like that? Anyway, it was the last time I ever saw her alive.

  Roque reached out for his shoulder, thinking: Sin ti. Without you.—You don’t need to tell me any more, Tío.

  —Please, Roque, let me finish. He smeared the heels of his hands across his face.—The government caught up with them near Tenango. The soldiers used guns and machetes. Twenty-eight people, mostly women and kids, butchered. By the time I made it back there, vultures were picking the flesh from the dead. Dogs were carrying bones away. Some of the women had been sliced open like iguanas when you harvest the eggs. You saw shoes, clothes, schoolbooks scattered all around, some of it charred black, because the cowards tried to hide the evidence by burning it. A few mules were still alive, torn up by gunfire or shrapnel, some with their guts hanging out. The braying, it was hideous. We shot them just for the silence. I found Celestina facedown in a clump of chichipince. You’re not a boy anymore, I don’t need to spell out what they did to her.

  Roque felt paralyzed.—Tío—

  —I was such a loser compared to her. I fell apart, became worthless as a soldier, a father, a man. I knew that if I didn’t get Pablo out of the country, he might get captured when I did, then he’d get sold to some family abroad. There was quite a racket in that back then. My superiors knew that too, finally they just told me to go, leave, head for the States, I was no good to the frente anymore. I was no good to anyone.

  There was a group of people, a few nurses, a professor, a couple reporters, all marked for death and they were heading north, with plans to end up in Los Angeles. I went with them, bringing Pablo. But I couldn’t stay, too many people around MacArthur Park just reminded me of what had happened. I had a friend working in the Napa vineyards, he said I should come stay with him, his wife could help with Pablo. And so I ended up in Rio Mirada. A few years later I met Lucha—and you, your brother.

  Roque wished for something to say, anything to ease his uncle’s heart, if only for a moment. But all he could come up with was:—I’m sorry.

  Tío Faustino looked up, eyes glassy and vacant.—No, Roque. I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel guilty.

  —I meant—

  —You were kind to listen.

  —Tío—

  —I’m a silly, sad old man. He hefted himself from his chair.—

  The moonlight, it makes me morose. And with that, yes, we should head off to bed. He turned to go in but then stopped, gazing one last time across the glimmering lake.—“We are the artificers of our own history,” they said. A morbid chuckle.—Whatever the hell that means. He wiped his face again, then gripped Roque’s arm, squeezed.—I am so proud of you, you know? So gifted. So thoughtful. Everyone says so.

  ROQUE STAYED UP LATE THAT NIGHT, UNABLE TO GET HIS UNCLE’S story out of his head, wondering how people survive such things. He sat beneath the mango trees, strumming gently as Carmela’s exotic flowers filled the warm night air with their fruitlike scents: Arrayn Silvestre smelling like limes, sapuyulo like oranges. The full moon had waned, the yard was dark.

  About midnight he heard a car slow and stop at the bottom of the hill, the motor died, a door opened and closed. He listened for footsteps, heard none, went back to playing. Then he sensed it, someone nearby, before hearing the twig snap. Turning toward the sound, he watched as Sisco ventured slowly forward, hands plunged into the pockets of his baggy pants.

  “Hola, chero.” The kid rocked on his heels, a kind of mocking uneasiness.

  Roque thought he smelled drink, but something else too, vaguely chemical, like ether or ammonia. “Why did you park down the hill?”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Fuck yes something’s wrong, puto. It’s been, like, almost three weeks.”

  Roque put the guitar down, for fear Sisco might try to grab it from him, smash it against a tree, just to make some senseless point. “I don’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Fuck you don’t.”

  “My cousin won’t even talk to me about it. The money, it’s in his hands.”

  Sisco pivoted a little in place, like he was trying to find something to kick. He began to cough, couldn’t stop himself for several seconds, his chest rattling with phlegm.

  Roque wondered at Sisco’s life here. He’d heard stories about other DPs—deportees from the States—thinking in American slang, living in Spanish, the culture a fading reactionary echo of some fictive golden past, with a chafing revolutionary undertone. The DPs were the hip outsiders, the hopelessly lost but strangely successful: reggaetón deejays, concert promoters, hair stylists, tattoo impresarios in a country that put you in prison for flashing your ink. The DPs had cache, if no real rank. They were, hey, Americans. Roque couldn’t imagine Sisco in such company. What was his gift? Sulking, back talk, hanging around. He’d soon be on the way back north to some street corner. Or else get shot dead right here.

  The kid finally collected himself, got control of his cough, and the words uncoiled from within him as though off a spool. “Okay, fuck me, what I’m saying—hear me out, chero—what I’m saying? Next time, it won’t be me standing here. Am I getting through? It’s gonna be Lonely. And he don’t like you. He thinks you wanted to snag his bitch. Look, look, just listen, a’ight? Lupe? She’s fine and all but she ain’t like his chorba or nothin’—not even, not close. But you put pussy in the room, the sme
ll gets on everybody, know what I’m saying? So he’s got this thing for you now, he don’t like you. He don’t respect you. You’re fool material. So get this shit together. It’s finance, man. Plans been made, the money’s supposed to be, like, in hand, in place, what-the-fuck-ever, we ain’t seen shit, and it’s a fucking problem. Get it done. Make a call. Or you can kiss that sorry old man you call your tío goodbye, ’cuz he ain’t goin’ no place.”

  HAPPY SQUINTED AGAINST THE SUNLIGHT, NURSING HIS LAST cigarette of the pack. Forklifts roared forward and beeped backing up, bearing pallets of shrink-wrapped bananas, plantains, mangoes and melons from long-bed containers, delivering them to the panel trucks abutting the loading dock. Hard hats—blue, white, yellow—bobbed everywhere like gumballs; the workday hustle kicked into gear. With the concrete floor still wet from its morning hose-down, every footfall slapped or screeched.

  Secretly he envied these men, honest work, honest pay, if there was such a thing. At a glance he could pick out at least half a dozen he suspected of being illegal, drivers especially, like his old man. Ironic, since at that very moment there were enough feds nearby to arrest half of Richmond.

  “Your guy’s in love with his fucking phone,” Vasco said, glancing for the thousandth time at his watch. “Feels like all I’ve done since you talked me into this is wait.”

  “If I’ve already talked you into this,” Happy said, “what the fuck are we doing here?”

  In truth, everybody was getting itchy, unless he had a badge. Happy’d heard that morning from his father in San Pedro Lempa that the mareros were suddenly jacked with impatience, leaning hard now, popping up in the middle of the night, wanting their money, ready to pull the plug if it didn’t get wired down yesterday. And Vasco just got greedier the longer Happy stalled, the greed made him edgy, his edge made him an impossible pain in the ass. But Lattimore worked on government time, which seemed to have only three gears: Stalled. Stuck. Backwards.

  It wasn’t like they had to wire up the warehouse. The feds had used it before, their favorite snare, home field, hidden video everywhere. When stings weren’t in play, the company that actually owned the place used the cameras to guard against employee theft—“shrinkage,” they called it. Even the office was miked, everything go. It was the paperwork jamming the gears.

  Two days after that first face-to-face at the Vietnamese restaurant, Happy went in for his free talk, as Lattimore called it, or “off-the-record proffer,” per the assistant U.S. attorney. Happy laid out everything he’d done, no threat of prosecution: sneaking back into the country with the help of his ganged-up polleros, planning to do the same for his dad, lending some muscle to Vasco’s pathetic moving-van shakedowns, stripping copper wire for him. But it wasn’t Happy’s past that brought them all together. They wanted to hear about the future.

  The conference room had a flag in the corner, a tray of coffee and ice water anchoring a long shiny table, a portrait of FBI director Robert Mueller III—Bobby Three Sticks, Lattimore called him. His supervisor, a reedy and taller-than-average Filipino named Orpilla, passed a consent form in front of Happy that asserted he willingly agreed “to assist in the making of undercover recordings at the sole direction of law enforcement officials.” The form promised Happy the federal government wouldn’t prosecute him for anything that popped up in those recordings; all bets were off, though, if state or county prosecutors went ahead. He’d have to work that out on his own. Happy read the form, waived his right to have someone from the public defender’s office advise him. Prior experience convinced him public defenders existed simply to slow things down, not change their direction or, God forbid, improve their odds. He signed where he saw his name. Orpilla took the executed form and tucked it into a folder.

  It was the AUSA, though, who was driving the bus. The guy’s name was Jon Pitcavage—overachiever eyes etched with crow’s-feet, a tight scrub of graying black curls, the build of a serious gym rat. He wore a snappy pinstripe suit and leaned into his words. If Happy read Lattimore’s body language right, he had little use for Pitcavage, except he was the one AUSA in San Francisco, supposedly, who knew where the gas pedal was, not just the brake. He got points among the agents for that—though, apparently, only that.

  Happy repeated for Pitcavage what he’d already laid out for Lattimore. The attorney listened with elbows on the table, hands clasped, thumbs bobbing against his chin. Once Happy wrapped up, the guy leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his legs, rocked pensively back and forth. Guy likes being watched, Happy thought, while over the man’s shoulder, far beyond the conference-room window, an airliner razored a vapor trail across an otherwise perfect sky.

  “This scenario,” Pitcavage said finally, “the quid pro quo—this Vasco character gets sole control of the narcotics operation involving the Valle Norte cartel and shot-caller status with Mara Salvatrucha, in exchange for funding the smuggling of this Arab alien, this would-be terrorist, into the country—as I understand it, this was all your idea?”

  Happy felt the familiar bilge of nausea rising from below. “Yeah.”

  “But there is no smuggling operation, correct? And the Arab, as far as you know, owes no allegiance to any known terrorist organization.”

  “Samir—he’s Palestinian—he actually helped the coalition forces in Iraq.”

  Pitcavage glanced toward Lattimore. “An interpreter.”

  Happy said, “That’s right.”

  “And this coconspirator in Richmond, the warehouse owner, the person who is supposed to receive these fictitious shipments of cocaine from, where was it?” He leafed through his notes. “Turbo, Colombia—you just made that up.”

  “Read about it on the Web, actually. Sounded good. Thought it’d get Vasco to bite.”

  “But he didn’t bite, did he?”

  Happy cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

  “He wanted verification. He wanted to see an honest-to-God warehouse, a real live owner. Golly, I’m stunned. Just like he’ll probably want to see a cocaine shipment before too long, don’t you think? Where do you suppose that might come from?”

  Happy felt like he had a living thing thrashing around in his gut. “I figured I’d be in touch with you people by then. That was something we’d have to work out.”

  “We.” Pitcavage’s eyes looked scorched. “How I always love the sound of ‘we.’”

  “Look,” Happy said, “if you think I just made this crap up so I could shake Vasco down, get him to pay for my old man’s trip back, you weren’t paying attention. Get serious, I do that, and Vasco finds out everything else, the coke, the Colombians, the terrorist, it’s all just crap? He’d lean hard. Me and my family, we’d pay and just keep paying. Like I told you, I want citizenship, me and my dad both. Can’t get that from Vasco. I want that, I gotta come here. Way I see it, my cousin Godo already earned it, earned it for me, my dad, both. But I’m ready to go the extra mile, make sure you get what you want, ’cause yeah, I surf the Net, I read the articles about how you guys are trying to link up gangs and the ragheads. Dream bust, those two tied together. And I know how to make that happen, who to put with who. I give you your shot. And I know this doesn’t just stop here. I know this opens doors for you. People gonna read about this case and they’re gonna say: We gotta stop these maras, these gangs. We gotta let the cops off the leash. So instead of treating me like I’m the shit on your shoe, maybe you should see I’m not the problem here. I won’t ask for thanks but I won’t sit here and beg, neither. Just want what me and my family deserve. And what I deserve, this minute? Is to be taken a little more serious.”

  Pitcavage ran his tongue inside his lower lip, as though scouring out a speck of food. “You honestly believe that this bag of snakes you came in here with is a dream bust?”

  “I deserve to be taken more serious.”

  The lawyer turned to Lattimore and Orpilla and, as though Happy had just vanished, launched off on a new tack. “I’ll sign off on the recording, it’s reasonable and legal. As
for the setup, the way I understand it there’s been no Barraza harassment, no pressure, no cajoling. Admittedly, your genius here has devised the crime but we’re clear there, that’s established law. If there’s no prior disposition to terrorist activity there certainly is to the smuggling. No special feel-good motive’s been contrived, nobody’s gone all buddy-buddy. It’s about greed, period.

  “The one weak spot, beyond the obvious tactical headaches, is the unusual attractiveness of the crime. What is it, anywhere from one and a half to three mil this Vasco clown thinks he’ll be clearing per annum? But there’s been no promise it’s a sure thing, he hasn’t been told they can’t get caught. He knows the risk. And one discussion, boom, he’s in. You get him and these other idiots on video, you get them on tape, plenty of it, you know the drill. And it’s all got to happen quick, before somebody catches on there aren’t any shipments coming from Turbo and never will be. I figure we’ve got a month, tops. Any longer, the thing will unravel. And unless I’m mistaken, this interpreter and the source’s father should be back in the States by then. So that’s your time line.”

  Pitcavage rose from his chair, stole a glance out the window. The vapor trail resembled a line of coke on a blue mirror.

  “Get these guys expressing full knowledge and consent. I don’t need a pledge to al-Qaeda, like those buffoons in Liberty City, though that would be sweet. But they make it clear they know what’s going on: quid pro quo, a cocaine franchise for a terrorist across the border. You get me that, I don’t see a jury backing off a verdict. You’ve heard me say it before: We don’t have to wait until buildings come down to prove somebody’s a terrorist. And your genius is right, the MS-13 angle makes it particularly attractive. These guys want to claim they weren’t predisposed, they can walk away any time they want. Make sure everybody on the joint task force stays in the loop. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see plea deals all the way down the table. Defense will cry entrapment but they always do. And they always lose. Entrapment’s just what they tell their clients so the bills get paid.”