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

  “I’m not getting a Bivens claim slammed down my throat because of you two,” Lattimore said. “Call in, have the shift supervisor draft a warrant, walk it over to the magistrate and have somebody hike it over here.”

  Sound reasoning, Godo supposed, but the tiff had nothing to do with law or procedure or good sense. It had to do with who could swing the biggest dick. The ICE guys felt humiliated, called on the carpet in front of a family of nacho niggers. No red-blooded American male over the age of nine could be expected to take that. Funny, he wanted to tell them, how sometimes that big dick just gets in the way. Take it from me.

  The phone rang. Roque got up from the table and answered, holding the receiver in the crook of his shoulder as he tucked in his shirttail, conducting this mindless bit of business with such hip artlessness Godo felt an instant flash of jealousy, like he was being forced to watch his shit-for-brains hermanito turn into a rock star right there before his very eyes. And maybe he was. God help me, Godo thought, then Roque shot a wary glance out the screen door toward the agents, who were listening in. He turned his back to them, lowering his voice.

  The door opened. Lattimore stepped in, the other two humping along behind. Roque cut short the call—“Okay, thank you, I have to go”—then returned the receiver to its cradle and turned back toward the room, tucking his hands in his pockets. It was odd, he still had that same lax grace about him, except the eyes.

  “Let me guess, señores. You want to know who that was.”

  The Spanish was meant as ridicule. Godo felt impressed. Meanwhile, to his credit, Lattimore said nothing, just waited. The man had the patience of a wall.

  Roque added, “But you already know what I just found out, I’ll bet. ¿Verdad?”

  Lattimore held pat for another beat, then: “Faustino Orantes.”

  Tía Lucha stiffened, eyes bugging with fright. Godo, snapping his head toward Roque: “What’s he talking about?”

  Using Spanish, to be sure his aunt didn’t misunderstand, Roque said:—They picked up Tío at the port, some kind of raid. Nobody’s sure where they took him.

  Tía Lucha lifted her hands from her lap and, folding them as though for prayer, covered her nose and mouth and closed her eyes. She took three shallow breaths, trembling.

  Lattimore said, “And yes, I’d like to know who that was on the phone just now.”

  Roque ignored him, instead kneeling down in front of his aunt, stroking her arm. Finally: “I don’t have to answer that.”

  Weeks later, Godo would look back on this moment as the point in time when Roque found his backbone. Either that or his terrible angel had come, whispering in his ear: Hey cabrón, take heart—you’re already dead.

  IT WAS AFTER NINE BEFORE ROQUE COULD BREAK AWAY. TÍA LUCHA begged off work to spend the day searching for Tío Faustino; Roque sat by the phone in case she called. Come nightfall he put some dinner together from leftovers, made sure Godo got his medicine, watched a little TV with him in his room. Finally, when the first six-pack was history and Godo dropped off, Roque pulled on his sweatshirt, turned off the ringer on the phone, slipped out for Mariko’s. He’ll wake up at some point and find himself alone, Roque thought, and that could go a dozen different ways. But he’s not the only one with needs.

  Jogging up Mariko’s block, he noticed a strange car parked out front, lights on in her living room. He waited outside for the man to leave—graying blond hair, yuppie rugged, North Face vest, Timberland boots, a mere peck on the cheek as he said goodbye—waited ten minutes longer, then walked up and rang the bell.

  “You had company,” he said when the door opened.

  Wineglasses lingered on the living room floor near the futon, one empty, the other half so. The bottle sat uncorked off to the side. Given the sparse furnishings, the bare walls and hardwood floor, the arrangement resembled sculpture.

  She stared, those dark almond eyes. “You’re not going to turn jealous, are you?”

  There was no smell of sex. And she was dressed in a bedraggled pullover and drawstring pants, everything bulky and shapeless, not the stuff of come-hither.

  “Who says I’m jealous?”

  “Because it would be dreadful form, given the age difference.”

  He warned himself: Steady. Don’t get sucked in. “You know, it’s hard to keep up. One minute, I’m so damn mature. The next, when you want to put me in my place—”

  “I have friends, I have clients. Sometimes we meet here. You can’t be part of that world.”

  Roque’s chest clenched; the knot felt cold. “I said I wasn’t jealous.”

  Mariko studied him—not without a hint of longing, he thought. “In my experience, it’s always the ones who tell you they’re not jealous who are.”

  “Maybe that says more about your experience than it does about me.”

  He went to kiss her. She turned her head, offering her cheek.

  “It’s been a long day.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, smothering them beneath the nubbly sweater. “I have a client consult early tomorrow.”

  “They took my uncle away.” It was smarmy and manipulative, he realized that. But he had to get her to drop the put-upon snit she was hiding behind. He deserved better.

  The almond eyes turned glassy. “What are you saying?”

  “ICE. La migra. They nabbed him at the port and we don’t know where he is. My aunt and some of the other women from the trailer park have gone down to the federal jail in San Bruno, see if they can find anything out.”

  “Who’s looking after your brother?”

  “Godo’s fine. He won’t really need me till morning.” There, he thought, that puts things plain.

  “I can’t let you stay.”

  Roque forced a smile. Can’t? “I didn’t ask to.”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Not in any words.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “You’re talking to me like I’m a problem.”

  Just outside, a neighborhood cat in heat emitted that distinctive guttural howl.

  “Look, I’m sorry about your uncle.”

  “Yeah. It’s fucked. But you can’t let me stay.”

  “You said you didn’t want to.”

  “I said I didn’t ask.”

  “My God.” She pushed her hands into her wild black hair. “What are we fighting about?”

  “I’ll go.” He turned for the door.

  “Roque, I don’t have what it takes for this.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “For what?”

  “For what’s happening, right now, between us.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop what? I’m serious.”

  “This game you’re playing. This thing that you’re doing.”

  “Huh.” He struck a pose. “This thing.”

  “If you want to talk about what happened with your uncle, we’ll talk. But there’s something else going on and I just don’t have what it takes to deal with it right now.”

  “Maybe I should come back when you do.”

  “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  She was shouting. But he’d become invested in seeing her cry. Somebody, somewhere was supposed to cry.

  “I’m just saying, maybe I should come back. Tonight’s, you know, not good.”

  The rutting cat cried out from the dark again. Mariko said, “No. Please don’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I want you to leave and not come back.”

  The cold knot in his chest dropped like a stone into his stomach. “What are you saying?”

  “We both knew this couldn’t go on forever.”

  “I didn’t know that.” He wondered if that was true. “The guy who left—”

  “Here it comes. I knew it.”

  “I love you.”

  She brought herself up short in the middle of an unpleasant laugh. “No, you don’t. You just like the way it sounds.”

  “
Why are you insulting me?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. If that’s insulting—”

  “The truth? Agents busted into our trailer today, looking for my cousin. They almost got into a shootout with Godo, I mean they were this close, okay? Then, way I hear it, my uncle got chased from his truck at the port, run down like a crook. He’s been hauling loads there five years, suddenly he’s a security risk, the fascist fucks.”

  “Things are different now. You know that.”

  “My uncle’s in a cell someplace. At least, that’s the best I can hope for. But in a few weeks, maybe less, he’ll be on a plane to El Salvador, not much me or my aunt or anyone else can do about it. And we kinda need Tío’s cash input at the moment. Money’s kinda tight.”

  “Maybe it’s time you thought about a job.”

  The tone, he thought, so snide, so bogus. “Okay. You’re right. I should go.”

  “And not come back.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I don’t? I said it—I can’t take this, okay?” A tear scrolled down her cheek. He reached out to hold her but she tore herself away. “Get out!”

  “Why are you—”

  “Get! Out!”

  She looked around, saw the empty wineglass on the floor and stooped to pick it up. Cocking her arm, she readied herself to hurl it.

  “Put it down.” He turned and without looking back walked out the front door. She slammed it behind him but didn’t turn the lock. He wondered at that, lingering on the porch. Shortly he heard it, coming from inside, not the sound of weeping, something else, something much different, a sudden thick crashing, the splintering hollow thud of earthenware smashing against wood. By the time he snuck back in, came up behind her in the long narrow hallway, she was ankle deep in clay shards, face in her hands, shoulders heaving. And then the shelves were bare, he thought, the words sounding like a line from a fairy tale.

  He picked his way through the debris, noticing how the fresh-grave smell was even more pronounced now, wrapped his arms around her, whispering her name as he nuzzled her hair. Listening to her shallow sobs, he thought: But this was what you wanted, right? Someone somewhere crying.

  Hours later, when he rose from her bed to head back home, he asked himself what it meant, to bed this woman he cared for so much when she wouldn’t look at him, when even during sex the tears didn’t stop—unable or unwilling to climax, turning away from him as he pulled out short of climax himself, burying her fist in her mouth and her face in the pillow, steeled to his presence but no longer demanding he go.

  ROQUE SLOWED TO A JOG AS HE NEARED HUNTINGTON VILLAGE. Fog drifted off the wetlands, hazing the streetlamps. The screech of a blue jay answered a distant car horn.

  He wondered if the agents had come back hoping to wrap up the prior day’s business, snatch the few stragglers who’d eluded them—like Happy, who hadn’t been seen anywhere around here since, Christ, when, two years ago? The prospect of a confrontation, ordered to show ID, forced splay-legged against the chain-link fence with its thorny bougainvillea, it momentarily distracted him from what had just happened with Mariko.

  He’d meant to comfort her; she’d remained inconsolable. The woman who made him feel smart, capable, a lover, a man, she’d peeled back the layers of his ego to reveal a whole new level of fuckup. He felt out to lunch, dishonest, guilty. He felt eighteen.

  His chest heaved from the run as he peered through the fogged-in darkness, edging toward the trailer-park entrance, checking for sedans, clean-cut cops in bulky raid jackets. The maze of trailers sat quiet and mostly dark. The air smelled of pine and sewer muck. You go back soon, he told himself, you make sure she’s okay. You stay until she talks to you.

  The tinny clamor of wind chimes grew louder as he neared the trailer; he saw lights up front. Tía’s awake, he thought, one more thing to tweak his guilt. Godo would be too, of course. I’m gonna catch hell, he thought, for leaving him alone. Okay. Fine. Unlocking the door with his key, he eased it open, stepped inside. Glancing at the breakfast nook, he stopped short.

  “Close the door,” Happy said.

  He was sitting next to Tía Lucha at the kitchenette table, his face bearded and stern, looking like a saint from some old Dominican prayer card. The beard was new. Always lean, he seemed gaunt now, eyes bulging from their sockets like small black plums. The rest of his face composed itself into a wary, tight-lipped scowl and his body seemed coiled, ready to bolt or lash out. He wore jeans, work boots, a plaid flannel shirt. His black hair was cropped short.

  “Where the hell did you come from?”

  Happy’s long-fingered hands clutched a mug of Tía Lucha’s Nescafé, which he raised halfway to his lips before answering. “That’s a long story.”

  “When did you get here?”

  Tía Lucha piped in:—He’s been back almost a week.

  Roque was stunned. “You knew?”

  —Of course not. Why would I keep something like that from you if I knew?

  She seemed dazed, even fearful, an effect enhanced by the day’s first smears of thick white makeup, which gave her face a clownish unreality. Her glance darted between Roque and Happy, her gifted if irksome nephew, her marido’s fugitive son.

  Roque said, “I meant no offense, Tía.”

  She rolled her eyes. Happy downed the last of his coffee.

  Roque said, “Does Godo know you’re here?”

  Happy turned in his seat to get out. “We had our chat.” He rose and offered a grateful nod to Tía Lucha. To Roque, he said, “Walk with me.”

  “I need to check the dressing on Godo’s leg.”

  Happy glanced back down the hall toward Godo’s room. “It can wait.”

  OUTSIDE, THE FOG LINGERED. HAPPY HIKED UP THE COLLAR OF HIS shirt. “You forget how cold it gets here,” he said, walking briskly toward the gate, hunched forward. He cast an impatient glance over his shoulder, urging Roque to keep pace.

  Once they were out on the river road he turned north, one wash of headlights after the other spraying his back as the morning’s first traffic made its way toward Napa. He ignored the cars or trucks as they rushed by but Roque could tell from the dock of his head as each one passed that he was noting who was inside.

  Several hundred yards on he turned off the gravel roadbed into the parking lot for a small weatherworn strip mall—a cash-only car repair, a discount mattress outlet, a combination panadería/tienda/envío de dinero. If not for the raid the day before, clusters of bleary men would already be gathered in the parking lot, trying to stay warm as they waited for contractors to swing by, collect them for a day’s work. Happy headed for a battered Ford pickup scalloped with rust, bearing Arizona plates. Climbing behind the wheel, he said, “Get in.”

  As Roque closed the door behind him, Happy lit up a cigarette, the rubbery match flame hollowing his features. After shaking out the match and exhaling a long plume of smoke, he turned to stare across the pickup’s cab with a strangely menacing sadness.

  “Been spending your nights boning some broad twice your age. How’d that happen?”

  Roque felt the blood drain from his face. “Who told you that?”

  “Who says I needed to be told?” Happy tapped his ash through the window vent. “Tell me, Roque, your vieja, when she takes you into her bed …” He affected a throaty purr.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “You been spying on me?”

  “I know things,” Happy said. “Get used to it.”

  “Yeah? What else do you know?”

  “That’s my business. What’s with Godo?”

  “Tía Lucha didn’t tell you?”

  “Never mind what she told me, I wanna hear it from you.”

  “Hear what?”

  “He’s fucked up.”

  “Ya think?”

  Happy reached across and swatted the back of Roque’s head. “Don’t be such a punk.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Happy, in w
hiny nasal mimicry: “Don’t touch me.” Then: “His dick still work?”

  Roque had to process that. “There’s some things we don’t share.”

  “I mean has he gotten it wet since he got back? Given how he looks, I was thinking maybe …” Happy rubbed his thumb and index finger together, suggesting cash.

  “Who am I, his pimp?”

  Happy chuckled at that, then took another long drag, blowing the smoke out, watching it billow against the windshield. “Face the way it is? He looks like a fucking dartboard.”

  “Tell him that. I dare you.”

  Happy let that go, except to say, “You got a point. Nothing wrong with his temper. Spent maybe two minutes with him, he wants to mix it up.”

  “You want Godo mellow, you’ll have to kill him.”

  “There’s a thought.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Fuck’s sake, Roque, chill out. By the way, not everybody who was over there came back fucked up. You get that, right?”

  “How would you know?”

  Happy picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue. “That’s another long story.” He turned to gaze out at his window at the mold-freckled storefronts. A crow perched on the rain gutter, framed by fog. “How come you’re not pitching in with money?”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  “You’re really starting to piss me off with this.”

  “I’ve got a line on a band gig. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  Roque shrugged. “Hard to say.”

  “Really? Hard to say what, your family needs the bread? Hard to say they’re fucked, my old man deported?”

  An eighteen-wheeler thundered past, rattling the pickup’s windows. The crow on the gutter fluttered its wings. “Maybe we can get a lawyer.”