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

  “Fucking hell—you stupid? What’s a lawyer gonna do except take our money? You think—” Happy stopped short, glancing in his rearview mirror. A patrol car pulled into the strip-mall lot. Murmuring, “What’s this asshole want,” he stubbed out his cigarette, dropped the butt between his feet. “Keep talking,” he told Roque.

  “About what?”

  “About anything. So we don’t look like we’re casing this dump.”

  Roque let his glance dart once out the cab’s back window, then started babbling, launching into the first thing that came to mind. Happy, eyes glued to the mirror, spoke to the reflection: “Come on, fuckwad. You run the plates, we’re gonna do this.” With painful slowness, the patrol car eased along the storefronts, shining a flashlight through the window glass.

  “Open the glove box,” Happy said.

  Roque obeyed. The butt of a pistol lay exposed within a folded newspaper. “Jesus—”

  Happy turned toward him, their eyes met. The menacing sorrow was gone, replaced by emptiness. “Tell me another story.”

  “You’re not gonna shoot a cop.”

  “I’ll shoot you, you don’t calm down. Tell me another story.”

  The black-and-white, having finished its check of the stores, eased toward the end of the parking lot, only to circle back and come abreast of the pickup, so the driver sides matched up. The cruiser’s tires were muddy, the windshield caked with rainy grime. The cop lowered his window and gestured for Happy to do the same. The glove box remained open.

  The officer said, “Mind telling me your business here?”

  Happy turned so his body blocked whatever view the cop might have through the window. “I’m just sitting here talking with my cousin, officer. He’s getting married next month and he’s worried about money.”

  The cop studied Happy at length, an occasional attempt to glance past him toward Roque. The man had a thick putty-colored face with baggy eyes, more bored clerk than cop. “Kinda early, don’t you think?”

  “Only time we had. We both gotta head off for work soon.”

  “What say you do that now.”

  “Yes, sir. You wanna see my license and registration?”

  Happy reached for the glove box. Roque’s throat closed up, he couldn’t get his breath.

  The cop glanced away, dipping his head toward his radio, deciphering a sudden shock of words ensnarled in static. “Just get to where you need to be.”

  “Okay, sure.” Happy toggled his keys, cranking the engine. “Thank you, officer.”

  He pulled out and the cop stayed put, the two of them watching each other in their rearviews. Happy turned south, heading back toward the trailer park. He dug another smoke from the pack in his shirt pocket, set it between his lips, then rummaged in his pants pocket for his matches. “I’m gonna drive a ways,” he said, “not pull in, understand?”

  Roque nodded. He could finally breathe. “You’re the one driving.”

  Happy lit a match one-handed, held it to the tip of his cigarette, tilted his head back as he waved out the flame, then tossed the matchbook onto the dash. “Let’s get back to what we were talking about.”

  Unable to stop himself, Roque glanced over his shoulder out the back window. Like a nagging itch, the cop was there, trailing several car lengths behind.

  Happy said, “I see him. Relax, will you?” He glanced toward the glove box, which Roque had yet to close. “With Godo fucked up the way he is, it’s gonna be up to you. No excuses.”

  Roque went cold. He glanced at the weapon, then back at the cop, then Happy. “What do you mean? Up for what?”

  “I said relax. I’m talking about my old man.”

  Roque wiped his palms on his jeans, trying to picture Tío Faustino in a crowded cell, unable to sleep, scared. “What about him?”

  For the first time that morning, Happy smiled—an acid grin, vanishing almost instantly—as he glanced in his mirror. Behind them, the patrol car slowed, then turned off into another strip mall. A clerk not a cop, Roque thought.

  Happy said, “Shut up and I’ll tell you.”

  GODO WASN’T SURE AT FIRST IF WHAT HE HEARD WAS REALLY A knock at the door—the sound seemed timid, maybe just a tree branch brushing the roof. He muted the TV. It came again.

  He swung his legs to the floor and leaned down, reaching under the bed, not for the shotgun this time but the Smithy .357. Be cool, he told himself, no reruns of yesterday. Could just be one of the neighbors, wanting to beg some favor off Tía Lucha. That happened a lot—patron saint of mooches, that woman. But then he glanced at the clock and thought, My God, has it really been an hour since she left for work? Can’t be. He blinked, shook off the watery drift of things, checked again. Sure enough, not just an hour, a little more.

  His leg felt leaden and balance was iffy but he made his way down the hallway and into the kitchen just as a third knock sounded. Pausing beside the door, he stared at the square of cardboard taped up where the window used to be.

  He called out, “Yeah?”

  No answer at first. Then: “Hello?” It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar.

  Godo tensed. “Who’s there?”

  A preliminary bout of throat-clearing. “I’m a friend of Faustino’s. Drove his rig up from the port. Parked it out front. Got his keys here.”

  Godo stepped past the door toward the window, edged back the curtain. He was a knobby squint of a man with large hands, a reddish mustache too big for his face, ears poking out from under a graying mop of windblown hair. He wore a mechanic’s one-piece coverall, stained at the knees from oil, other smeary markings here and there.

  Godo reached around to the small of his back, tucked the .357 into his pants, covered it with his shirt and opened the door. The man seemed taken aback by the sight of his face.

  Extending one of his outsize hands. “Name’s McBee. You Faustino’s son?”

  The question reminded Godo that Happy of all people had appeared out of the blue that morning. Or was he making that up? A drugged-up dream, a figment of his bleak mind—no, he thought, it happened, we fought. But Christ, we always fought. Suddenly he remembered his hand and glancing down he saw it, same pitted red scars as on his face, locked in the fierce pumping grip of this stranger. McBee. Chafing calluses coarsened the man’s palm.

  Godo said, “Not son. Nephew, sort of.”

  McBee seemed content with this information, delayed though it was. He took his hand back, dug around in what appeared to be a bottomless pocket, then produced Tío Faustino’s key chain. “I can leave these with you?”

  “Sure.” Godo shook his head to clear away the Percocet muck. McBee dropped the keys into his hand. From somewhere in the trailer park, a woman’s voice could be heard: “¡Oye, nalgón, no me jodas!” Listen, fat ass, don’t fuck with me.

  McBee broke the spell. “Any way I could bum a ride to the bus station? Gotta get back to Oakland. Can’t waste the whole day, losing money as it is.”

  Godo caught a hint of dutiful poor-me in his tone, the only snag in the man’s act so far. “I don’t have a car, sorry. My aunt took it to work.”

  The news seemed to baffle McBee. He dog-scratched his ear. “Point me the right direction at least?”

  Godo snapped out of his stupor. “Sorry. I’ll walk you, how’s that?” He thumbed the door lock plunger, searched for Tío Faustino’s keys, found them in his hand, reminded himself not to forget about the pistol nudging his ass crack, then stepped out onto the doorstep. “Follow me.”

  McBee blanched, stepping back to make way. “You sure?”

  “I’m positive. Get the blood moving. You coming?”

  He shortly regretted not donning a jacket but then shook off the cold, faulting himself for wanting snivel gear. During the invasion he’d slept shivering in shallow ranger graves, wet from rain or choking from windblown dust, hoping not to get run over by a tank in the night, clutching his weapon, happy as a drunk come payday. Jesus, he thought, how soft you get and so fast. He fought against the ho
bbling pain breaking through the Percocet, willing himself forward. McBee kept pace behind, patient despite the crippled speed and mercifully short on conversation.

  Near the trailer-park gate Godo spotted Tío Faustino’s Freightliner cab and felt a misty want, picturing his uncle, wondering when he might see him again. Strange, how girlish the moods sometimes. The truck’s engine was ticking from its cool-down and he caught a whiff of diesel, the scent sending him back instantly to the cramped confines of his Humvee, packed into the backseat with the rations and water cans, the ammo and thermite grenades, C-4, claymore mines, the bale of concertina wire and cammie nets, bolt cutters, map books, chemlites, a pickax and sledgehammer—Chavous in the opposite seat; Mobley in the turret manning the Mark 19, his ass a fart’s breadth away from Godo’s face; Gunny Benedict in front with his maps; Pimentel at the wheel, bitch-slapping the radio, screaming at the static. They were pealing toward Al Gharraf, preparing to take fire.

  “You all right?”

  Godo snapped his head toward the sound.

  “You stopped walking,” the man said. McBee. He sounded concerned. Maybe frightened.

  Godo said, “Sorry.”

  “Listen, if this is too much, I’m serious, just point me in the right—”

  “I’m fine. Come on.”

  At the gate Godo swung south and they marched along the gravel roadbed toward the center of town where the transit center was located. The wind was sharper here, keening off the mudflats and the grass-lined river, but now Godo embraced it, letting the cold meld with the throbbing ache in his leg. His gooseflesh cheered him and his pitted skin blushed from the stinging air. Beyond the wetlands the Mayacamas range lurked in the drizzle. Stunning, he thought, miraculous, resisting an urge to cry out: Get some!

  With the engaging monotony of one step begging the next, time fell into its crazy hole again. He lost all track. Ten minutes? Twenty? Maybe this means I’m finally in the moment, he thought merrily, buoyed on pheromones, but then he noticed, just up the roadbed, near the edge of the commercial district, an arch-backed dog rummaging in some Dumpster overfill. He stopped, feeling his lungs constrict. Shortly, the frame confused him, a line of towering dusty palms, a sagging concrete wall, a roadside bag of trash, then impulse threw him to the ground, locked up in a fetal curl, burying his head in his arms. Seconds warped around his brain as he waited out the blast. Rather than the dust-scattering concussion he was expecting, though, he felt instead a gentle prodding kick to the sole of his shoe.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to keep bringing this up—”

  Godo’s eyes shot open. The light was gray, not ocher, the air wet and cold, not parched.

  “—but if you need help, or I should get you to a doctor—”

  Godo scrambled to his knees in a panic, combed the grass with his hands, searching out the spider device—two batteries, the curving wires, the unspent shell.

  “—you gotta let me know, okay? Otherwise I’d just as soon—”

  Jerking his head up, Godo fixed the man in his eye. McBee. Hillbilly stock, grip like a pipe wrench.

  “—not impose on you. I’ll just head on downtown here, if this is the way.”

  A station wagon had pulled to the curb a little ways on. A broad-faced man in a ball cap stared back over his shoulder at them.

  To McBee, Godo said, “Don’t look at me that way.”

  McBee took a clumsy step backward. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Who the fuck are you, look at me like that? I served for you, asshole.”

  McBee put up his hands, another step back, quicker. “Look—”

  “Fuck you, white trash.”

  McBee dropped his hands, now clenched into fists. His crabbed eyes turned fiery. “You go ahead and wallow around on the ground there, piggy. Go on. I did your uncle a favor, I lost half a day’s pay for the privilege. I’m done being nice.” He spat, then stormed off.

  Godo struggled to his feet, bellowing, “I don’t owe you, honk. I paid. I paid big.” Turning toward the man in the station wagon, he reached to the small of his back, gripped the gun, and held it up above his head. “You feelin’ me here, Elmer?” The fat-faced man jumped in his seat, threw his car in gear and sped away, tailpipe belching smoke. A Latina dragging a pigtailed child on the far side of the street stopped to stare until her eyes met Godo’s, at which point she scooped up the toddler and hightailed off. Godo glanced over his shoulder, trying to get a better look at the skulking dog. But there was none. The palms remained, the listing wall, the Dumpster dripping trash bags. No dog.

  God help me, he thought.

  He put the gun away, then began plodding home. Within twenty steps the fluidity of time failed him, the seconds like daggers, every footfall an ordeal. The pain in his leg shot down into his heel and up into his spine and he gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, closed his eyes, walked.

  As traffic passed, he tried to let the whisking hum of the tires against pavement lull him into a trance. Every now and then, though, peeking up, he saw drivers staring, passengers too, gazing at the pock-faced stumbling madman and he wondered: Who are these creatures? What world do they come from? He laughed. That was it—they came from Mars or the moon or MySpace, instructed by their overlords to annoy the fuck out of anything that moved. He could hear their voices tripping away inside his brain, beamed in by radio wave, echoing things he’d heard before, things other creatures, all heartfelt eyes and misty smiles, had said when he’d ventured out.

  Things like: “Welcome home.”

  Things like: “Thank you.”

  Things like: “Support the troops!”

  Except the troops don’t need or want your support, thank you very much. They don’t want the bumper-sticker bravado, the teary moms sporting Yankee Doodle ribbons on their watermelon tits, the brainwashed kids with the scrubbed little grins and roadkill eyes. The mascara wives bearing heart-attack casseroles and lukewarm beer or shag-assing off to bed for a little marital poon that can only go screamingly haywire. One trip to the VA, listening to the other guys rotating back, taught you that much. The troops respectfully request that you and your gung-ho support kindly fuck off. The troops do not recognize you as human.

  Better yet: “Bring the troops home!” Yeah? Permission requested to saw off your head, the better to shit down your neck. What the fuck do you know about it? You know nothing—because you don’t want to, you want to wax indignant, you want to blame the same old crew, the greedy preening stuffed suits you blame for everything. You want to say the magic word: peace. Well fuck you. Fuck peace. Fuck a home that has to be shared with the prissy likes of you.

  Someone called his name.

  He turned toward the sound. A vintage Impala, tricked out like a showpiece, had pulled to the curb, passenger-side window rolled down. A pair of chavos in the car, both watching, waiting. The faces, yes, he knew these two.

  “Hola, chero. The fuck you been?”

  The voice conjured a name: Chato. The other one, behind the wheel, was Puchi.

  “Need a lift?”

  The next thing he knew he was in the backseat, the black vinyl upholstery cool and tight. A whiff of reefer, sweat disguised with Brut. He could make out Puchi’s eyes in the rearview. He wore an A’s cap with the brim cocked up in front, a gray hoodie. He seemed bigger, bulkier than Godo remembered. Weights, maybe. Prison?

  Chato, a few years younger and riding shotgun, turned around in his seat so he and Godo were face-to-face. An angry whitehead wept pus just beneath one heavy-lidded eye. He wore a hairnet, his coif meticulous, black and sleek and combed straight back, while on his neck three tattooed letters appeared: BTL. Brown Town Locos. It was the name of the clica he and Puchi belonged to, the one Godo had danced around the edges of before enlisting. The name seemed a relic from an ancient time.

  Chato held out his fist till Godo bumped it with his own. “My brother from another mother. Long time.”

  True, Godo thought. Two years at least. An eternity, given what happen
ed in between. Chato had been a mere mocoso, a little snot, back then.

  “Iraqistan. Musta seen some serious shit. Bet you waxed your share of raghead motherfuckers, am I right?”

  The kid was wired and his breath smelled and Godo had to resist an impulse to reach out and rip the hairnet off.

  Puchi chimed in, “Wondered when we’d see you around, man. Heard some things, didn’t know what was true, figured we’d wait till we caught you out and about.”

  Godo waved his hand idly toward his face, as though to conjure its pitted ugliness in a gesture. “Malacara,” he said, figuring that explained it all.

  “Yeah, but you’re not all picoteado from squeezing your zits,” Puchi said, slapping Chato’s shoulder. The kid glared back venomously. “And it’s not like we’re gonna mock you, homes. Not the way it is.”

  Godo tried to picture what that meant—The Way It Is—wondering if it bore any resemblance to Some Serious Shit. The effort to make more sense of it foundered as they passed the fenced confines of a vast construction site, rising in tiers up a broad bare hill. Baymont, the neighborhood was called, that or Hoodrat Heights, depending on who you talked to. Boon-Coona-Luma. Ho Hill. At least, those were the names thrown around before Godo left for basic.

  He’d heard the story in bits and pieces after that, following the hometown news from afar, how some developers had wanted the whole hill condemned, war-era federal housing never meant to be permanent but grandfathered in, city council deadlocked on eminent domain. So a local fixer, former honcho with the firefighters union, hired some bent ex-cop to torch the whole neighborhood, burn every home to the ground. The plan was to blame it on some arson freak, this patsy they let die in the fire, and for all practical purposes it succeeded, though the players turned on one another when the bent cop got exposed. Not that that stopped anything. What was left of the neighborhood wasn’t worth rebuilding. The condemnation vote finally passed and the developers lined up like trick-or-treaters. Then some of the local stakeholders, good old boys whose families ran things here, they began wrangling over secondary spoils; the construction unions demanded a local-labor rider in any contracts; the town’s greenies hired a lawyer and challenged the EIR; the Building Department red-flagged every plan submitted, slowing things to a crawl; then the bottom fell out of the housing market and the mortgage crisis hit, financing dried up. So here it was, a vast plot of nothing, stalled in its tracks before the first shovel bit dirt. Two years now and counting, old houses torn down, nothing new built back up. As for all the families who’d lived here? Don’t ask.