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

  He tamped down his tie and turned to leave, stopping himself only to address Happy one last time. “You’re absolutely certain this interpreter’s name is Samir Khalid Sadiq?” He posed the question as though to imply there were varieties of deceit, especially in the Muslim world, that were not just hard to discern, they were impenetrable.

  “Yes.” Happy swallowed. “At least, you know, that’s the name he always used around me. Always.”

  The lawyer shot a warning glance across Lattimore’s bow, then left like time was money and the money was down the hall. And that was pretty much the last Happy saw of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Pitcavage.

  LATTIMORE GUIDED HAPPY TO THE ELEVATOR AND DOWN TO A LOWER floor where his own cubicle was buried. Happy felt a little shocked to see what a rat’s nest it was, binders stacked helter-skelter on every surface, copies of National Gang Threat Assessment, National Intelligence Assessment: The Terrorist Threat in the U.S. Homeland, A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety and a dozen others scattered everywhere to the point you had to wonder if something might collapse if it was all hauled away. The only personal items he could see were a gym bag stuffed with ripe sweats and three framed photographs on the shelf, one of a sprawling colonial-style house in the country somewhere; another of an older couple, parents maybe; the third of a tricked-out Harley with gold and crimson flames on the gas tank. Happy supposed the mess made sense. For all the sharp, battened-down attitude the man possessed, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine a daredevil slob lurking just beneath the skin. He wore no wedding band, never spoke of kids. Maybe the whole of his life was contained, one way or another, in this clutter.

  Removing a clump of files from the chair beside his desk, Lattimore waited for Happy to sit, then commenced to unpack his memory, searching out every possible detail he could bring to bear about Samir: schooling, family, wife, in-laws, best guess on dates he stayed in Abu Ghraib, dates he traveled with the convoy to Najaf, everything and anything so it could be passed along to field agents in Baghdad. “If your story doesn’t pan out on that front,” Lattimore said, “the plug gets yanked quick, understand? We can’t have a Trojan horse rolling toward the border. Everything shifts gears then and we focus on making sure he gets nowhere close.”

  Happy glanced again at the pictures in their dime-store frames. “You live with a man day in and day out,” he said, “you go through hell with him—I told you, he saved my life—you get a sense of when he’s making crap up. You know, tell a good story. You figure out too, when he’s speaking for real.”

  From there it was farther still into the bowels of the federal building, to the lair of a tech named Merriwether. Curiously, given the cutting-edge nature of his job, he was the oldest guy Happy met that day—mudslide of chins, wispy hair swirling around a freckled bald spot. Happy found it easier to picture him selling vacuum cleaners to housewives than miking up snitches.

  It turned out there wouldn’t be a body wire. “Very old school,” Merriwether explained. Instead they had a flannel shirt with a microphone in the collar, a tiny video camera in one of the buttons. Happy felt like 007 as he shouldered into it.

  “We used to have an on/off switch right here in the cuff,” Merriwether said, “but defense lawyers complained that if the CI could switch the tape on or off himself, how did anyone know when he might have been making a threat, offering a bribe?”

  The backup recorder turned out to be the battery for a cell phone. It sent out a continuous signal to the nearest relay tower, no need for a booster transmitter.

  As they walked back to the elevator together, Merriwether put his hand on Happy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about anything except getting these people to say what they’re supposed to say.” A few brisk pats. “You’ll be frightened. That’s understandable. If you find yourself at a loss for what to say, ask a question, any question. You’d be surprised how often that works.”

  “THIS YOUR GUY?” VASCO POINTED WITH HIS CHIN ACROSS THE TRUCK yard at the figure striding toward them. He was lithe but short, a boxer’s gait, decked out in a black suit, a silver silk shirt buttoned tight to the collar.

  “He’ll call himself Zipicana,” Lattimore had said, “the name of some underworld spirit, Mayan Quiché lore. And don’t wear your flannels or bring the cell-phone battery to the meet. You’ll see why.”

  As the man named Zipicana came nearer, Happy could make out the smeary reddish blotches on his face and neck, the faint outlines ghosting the skin, and wondered at the missing tattoos, assuming laser treatment. The guy skipped up the concrete steps onto the loading dock but ignored both Happy and Vasco, continuing on instead toward the office across the warehouse floor. Vasco and Happy exchanged baffled glances, then fell in behind.

  Zipicana gestured for them to wait outside as he climbed the wood-plank steps to the office, which resembled a work-site trailer. He knocked, entered, spoke briefly with the owner, who was still yammering away on his phone. Happy was beginning to wonder just how long this charade was going to last when the balletic Zipicana turned back, opened the office door and snapped his fingers for them to step inside.

  Before anyone could say boo, the warehouse owner rose from his desk and approached Happy and Vasco, bearing a black wand-like instrument. He waved it up and down both their bodies, like he wanted to remove some lint, and Happy realized why he’d been told to leave the spy gear behind, not just because it was redundant. The guy was checking for RF frequencies, to be sure neither of them was wired. It was all pure theater, of course; the guy was undercover FBI. He knew better than anyone he’d find nothing, unless Vasco had secrets of his own.

  A murmured apology, the magic wand returned to its drawer, introductions ensued. The owner-agent identified himself simply as Nico. Happy resisted the impulse to glance around the room, search out the cameras, the microphones.

  “You’re here,” Nico told Vasco, plopping back down in his chair, “because Happy put your name forward. Otherwise we could just as easily turn to Sancho Perata.”

  Like that, Vasco flushed bright red. “Listen, Sancho’s got no trucks. I do. I’m watching your dock here all morning, thinking this is perfect. I’m your guy.”

  Happy could only marvel at Vasco’s predictability. Make it a competition, make it with Sancho, he’d throw all qualms overboard and fight to win.

  Nico just stared across the desk, unfazed. “My point, you’re here because you’ve been vouched for.”

  Vasco bit back his pride, let it drop. The talk turned to the operation, Nico explaining the code they’d use over the phones: “produce” for cocaine—the particular fruit would change day to day, the meaning wouldn’t—and Vasco would refer to his wholesalers as “grocers,” not customers. “Other than that, a shipment’s a shipment. I’m the consignee on all bills of lading, you place orders through me. I mention a number and an invoice, that’s what you owe. Keep it simple. You get shorted on your end, it’s not my problem.”

  “What kind of loads are we talking?”

  “Five hundred kilos.”

  Vasco looked like he’d just swallowed an egg. “Okay. But you break it down here in the warehouse, right? Separate my product out from, you know, the fruit.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Vasco’s shoulders buckled together. “What the fuck am I gonna do with a couple dozen pallets of bananas?”

  It was like he’d farted.

  “You don’t take the whole shipment,” Nico said, “who needs your goddamn trucks? You drive in here, leave the pallets behind, I mean, you nuts? Blows the whole scheme. I want the whole load out of here. Otherwise why am I doing business with you? And this way we can both plead ignorant, some cop stops you on the street, checks the load, finds—”

  “But what the fuck am I gonna—”

  “Sell it to your local bodega, cluckhead. Give it to a homeless shelter, throw it in the goddamn bay, what the fuck do I care?”

  Happy cringed at the false note—cluckhead, something only a cop would s
ay—as Vasco lashed back with some abuse of his own, too hot to let his ears cue him in. Meanwhile, Zipicana sat there watching the back and forth with solemn eyes. Finally, he lifted his hand, as though stepping in to referee.

  “There’s something else we need to discuss.” His scrutiny shuttled face to face, then settled on Vasco. “You have the thirty?”

  Vasco, still fuming over the bananas, “I have some questions first.”

  “I give a fuck about your questions. You don’t have the money, we’re done.”

  “Yeah.” Vasco glanced at Happy, the gaze poisoned with blame. “I’ve got the money.”

  Zipicana pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Vasco. Happy recognized it, the list of Banco de Cuscutlan account numbers passed along from Lonely in San Salvador for wire transfer of the thirty thousand. “Divvy it up any way you want,” Zipicana said, “not all the same amount, though. Don’t be stupid. And make sure it gets done today.”

  Vasco tucked the paper into his breast pocket. “How soon till we get a shipment?”

  “A month. Maybe six weeks.”

  Vasco’s eyebrows levitated. “Six weeks? Why the fuck—”

  “That’s nothing you need to know.”

  “Like hell it ain’t. I’m out thirty grand till then.”

  Zipicana grinned, his eyes more cold than mocking. “What, you want interest?”

  “I’m putting my ass out in the wind here. Happy vouches for me. Who vouches for you?”

  “Listen to you.” It was Nico, leaning back in his chair while Zipicana rose to his feet with a stagy air of menace. He doffed his suit jacket, then began unbuttoning the silver shirt, cuffs first, then the collar, then on down. “Who vouches for me?” He stripped the shirt off with a flourish, then lifted his welterweight arms, turning slowly to display the tattoos no laser had touched, his torso a billboard. A spiderweb covered his left shoulder, a black widow dangling on a thread, the number 13 on its back in a red hourglass, while from below a devil’s claw emerged from flames to clutch his heart. Two masks appeared on his right shoulder, one happy, one sad—Smile Now, Cry Later—with fist-size letters and numerals in chainwork down that side of his chest: M—S—1—3. The name Mara Salvatrucha scrolled in a vine down one arm, while down the other you could read amid florid decoration: Sleep with the maggots, norputos. On his back, across his shoulders, in finely detailed Gothic lettering: 13 por vida, 18 son putas. A black billiard ball with a 13 in the white circle bore the added inscription: Rest in Piss, Jotos. Then, in the small of his back, a graveyard of headstones, each bearing the name of a dead chamaco: Skyny, Gato, Slayer, Pincho, Dreamer, El Culiche, Vampi, Pingüe, Zorro …

  Happy glanced over at Vasco and gauged from his expression that he was thinking: Who vouches for this guy? The madhouse. The street. The devil.

  “Let me tell you something,” Zipicana said, reaching for his shirt. “We don’t need you, am I right? What we got to sell, we can find a buyer. No problem. And whoever steps up, he gets more than five hundred kilos and a bunch of fucking bananas. He gets the crown, understand? So what you want to ask yourself”—he slipped on the shimmery silk shirt, fussed the collar into place—“is this: Do I want to rule or be ruled? Who do I want for partners? Who do I want for enemies? Because the storm is coming, chero. You want to be ahead of it, not behind it.”

  Out in the warehouse, a pallet crashed to the floor, followed by echoing curses. Vasco sat there fuming. “I ask for some sort of proof this is more than just wind,” he said, “you make threats. I’m supposed to sit here and take that. It’s a lot to ask, especially considering the other angle to this we still haven’t discussed.”

  Zipicana, tucking in his shirttail: “You’re talking about the extra cargo coming up by separate carrier.”

  “I’m talking about the fucking Osama you guys are bringing across the border.”

  There, Happy thought, feeling both a flash of dread and a wave of relief. Please God, he thought, no foul-ups, no tech glitches. Meanwhile, Vasco ragged on. “You want me to front thirty grand, stick out my neck on something I want no part of, and in return you offer me take-it-or-leave-it, with a threat for good measure. I’m getting screwed three ways here with nothing but a promise for my trouble.”

  Zipicana made a face like he understood. But. “Remember, we don’t know you.”

  “You said I was vouched for.”

  “We’re talking terms here. You want the plum job, you gotta go the extra mile. You don’t want to, don’t bitch about what you missed. Don’t come to me begging for your chance back.”

  With his thumbs Vasco tapped out a furious rat-a-tat on the arms of his chair. One of the workers came up to the office window, pushed back his blue hard hat and knocked softly on the glass to get Nico’s attention. Nico held up five fingers. The guy shook his head, ambled off. Happy wondered if he was undercover too. Or the real owner, wanting his office back.

  Zipicana sat down on the edge of Nico’s desk. “You say you want no part of this other thing, our lonesome friend who’s coming up to visit. What’s that about? You got some feeling for this shitbag country? You know what happened to Happy’s family here. I won’t bore you with my story. I’ll bet, though, your own family has a tale or two, am I right?”

  Vasco met Zipicana’s eyes and, after a moment, nodded.

  “Like they give a rat’s ass about us. Fuck us in a heartbeat and play to the cameras. You seen what I seen. You hear what I hear. To hell with this country. Nothing but fat fucks and loudmouths. Somebody wants to bring down Disneyland, Dodger Stadium, Golden Gate Bridge, Candlestick Park—who the fuck cares? And the more cops have to waste time focusing on that shit? Better for guys like you and me. Better for business. No matter how bad things get, people gonna want their high. Especially then. You think about that. Meantime, you just wire the money to the numbers I gave you, you’ll see, you got no problems being linked to the Arab, me, anything. That’s a promise. You’re like a silent partner, okay? You can’t ask for better than that, not with what we’re offering you a piece of.”

  HOURS LATER, DURING DEBRIEFING, HAPPY ASKED LATTIMORE ABOUT Zipicana: Where did he come from? How did he know how to pinball Vasco so well?

  “Liked his shtick, did you?” Lattimore sat at his cluttered desk, slogging through paper. Short-tempered from the monotony, he slammed his desk drawers, glared at the phone if it interrupted. “Yeah, Ol’ Zippy-hana, as we like to call him, sure knows how to put on a show.”

  Happy could sense the shortness of temper cycling his direction. “I don’t get it. He pretty much said the same thing I—”

  “Correct. And I ran through all that with Zippy, told him the weak spots in your improv, so to speak. Thought we had ourselves a meaningful chat. Turns out I should’ve saved my goddamn breath.”

  “I don’t—”

  “The point is to persuade him, Mr. Orantes, seduce him into the scheme, not box him in so bad he’s got no way out. Christ, Vasco, the dumb cluck, he doesn’t go along, what’s he looking at? Slavery, basically. Looking up at a woeful dipshit like Sancho Perata running his life. I’d call that hell on earth.” He began peeking under files, looking for his pen. “His real name is Chimo, by the way. Chimo Trujillo. Used to be a shot caller for the Normandie Locos till we got him on a carjacking beef.”

  Happy wanted to get away from Lattimore’s resentment, but where would he go? They were all trapped now, caged together in the same machine, this lie.

  “And of course Vasco sits there, ready for his close-up, and basically says, ‘You’re threatening me. What else can I do but agree to whatever you say?’ Lawyer’s gotta be brain-dead not to make hay with that.”

  Happy’s stomach was roiling again. He would’ve popped out for a quick smoke if he hadn’t already ripped through his pack. “But Pitcavage said they always say that.” The weakness in his voice, the wishful thinking, even he could hear it. “And they always lose.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve heard a lot of other things
he’s said, right around the time things turn real.” Lattimore found his pen, opened a folder, fingered through the 305 reports already filed, searching out some forgotten detail like it was the most thankless chore of his life. “But ol’ Chimo, yeah. Guy could sell eggs to a goddamn chicken, I’ll grant him that.”

  THEY GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND SMELLED THE POND FIRST, THE water foamy with scum. Chato made an ignorant crack, something about farmers and pigs, secrets of the barnyard. He’d been holding court the whole drive, a barky crank-fueled mania that only got worse when he fired up a blunt, sailing off into high bake: I’ll put in a good turd for you. Let me give you a turd of advice. Honest, dude, I give you my turd of honor. On and on and on—he must’ve said “turd of honor” a hundred times—to the point Godo had to resist the urge as the trunk popped open to grab the first gun he saw, shoot the little fucker right there, put him out of everyone else’s misery.

  Luckily, the other two had grown sick of him too—Puchi, who’d driven, and a third guy Godo hadn’t met before, Efraim. They jumped on the kid and he shut up finally, at least as long as it took to unload the weapons: a Mossberg shotgun, a Glock with the ungainly eighteen-round mag, a more manageable Sig Sauer 9mm and three M16s, bought in pieces over the Internet and at gun shows, assembled by Efraim, who had quickly become Godo’s favorite of the bunch: quiet, capable and just a little haunted. By what, Godo wasn’t sure, but it made him feel a kinship.

  Happy had pushed him into this. It’s for the family, he’d said, think of Tío Faustino. Vasco was a dick but they were all dicks. He was paying the freight, end of story. This is how the devil hands back your soul, Godo thought. It’s not a gift.