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

  “Go where?”

  “El Salvador.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “Why—”

  “I have to go down and make sure the money we send gets into the right hands, make sure Tío Faustino doesn’t get screwed by the mareros.”

  “The who?”

  “Gang members. They’re the ones who can get him through Guatemala and Mexico. The borders have tightened up down there. It’s not as easy as it used to be to come north. Money’s not enough, you’ll just get ripped off. Or worse. And Tío Faustino’s no spring chicken.”

  “And you’ll be doing what in all this?”

  “We get close to the border, the mareros take Tío, hike him overland, I drive through the checkpoint. I’ve got an American passport, it’s like magic down there. I pick up Tío on the other side, some designated spot. Guatemala, then Mexico, then the U.S.”

  “That’s insane. How can you trust these people?”

  “Like we’ve got a choice? The drug cartels took over the smuggling routes. You can’t just go it alone, too easy to get killed or betrayed. Happy already has some angle worked, he hooked up with these people when he came across this last time. All we need’s the money.”

  “I can’t believe you’re even thinking—”

  “I can’t let the family down.”

  “Your family shouldn’t ask you to do something so stupid.”

  “Please, don’t talk about my family like that.”

  “You’ve got too much promise.”

  “It’s not about me.”

  “You’re just trying to prove yourself. To this cousin.”

  His hand ventured across the table, searching for hers. “It’s nice, by the way, to hear you say I’ve got promise.”

  “I’ve always said that. When does all this happen?”

  “Happy’s got a line on a job for me, some moving company, guys he knows.” He drew back the neglected hand. “Like I said, we need money, more so now. It’ll take anywhere from six weeks to six months for them to deport Tío Faustino. They’ve got laws on the books, from the civil war, making it harder to send Salvadorans back home. It creates a lot of red tape. But he’s got no case, no lawyer can help him, he’s screwed. So it’s just a matter of time.”

  She rose from the table, walked to the sink, staring out past the muslin curtains. “I’m not going to save you from yourself, Roque, if that’s what you came here for.”

  He felt stunned. “That’s what you think?”

  She opened the spigot, ending finally the thudding drip, and rinsed her cup. “I care about you. What you’re thinking of doing, I wish I could stop you, talk you out of it. But I also get the feeling that’s precisely what you want me to do. It feels manipulative. It feels wrong.”

  “It is wrong. Everything you just said.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.” He glanced again at the bodhisattva Jizo, guardian of travelers. What she meant was goodbye, she’d been saying it all along. Maybe it was time he listened.

  “HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY THAT I HATE THIS?”

  Roque sat slumped back in his seat, watch cap and work gloves in his lap, as he studied the images in the mirror outside his window: Puchi and Chato standing at the back of the truck, shaking down the couple whose furniture the crew had just hauled to their new home in Pinole. The man taught high-school history. His wife, flamboyantly pregnant, worked for a florist.

  Happy sat behind the wheel. He was smoking, waiting for the word: Unload or take off. In time, he said, “You got some better idea how to pay for Godo’s meds, cover the nut on getting my old man back here, I’m all ears.” Cocked head, reflective smile. “Into each life, mi mosca muerta”—my little innocent, literally my dead fly—“some fucking rain must fall.”

  Roque turned his gaze toward the sky. The winter sun hovered beyond a filmy mass of noonday cloud. “Thanks for the update.”

  “Life’s full of things you gotta do, not wanna do.”

  “No shit? Try practicing scales six hours a day.”

  Happy stubbed out his smoke. “Scales, yeah. I bet it’s a bitch.”

  Let it go, Roque told himself. He regarded Happy differently now, admiration too lofty, respect too blasé, but that was the emotional territory.

  He’d asked Roque’s help writing a letter to his father, asking forgiveness for being such a crap son, explaining what the last two years had been like since being deported. Roque could hardly believe some of the things Happy told him to write down: the cops with dogs at the airport in Comalapa, who led him to a dank basement room, called him a faggot, told him to strip, just to check for gang tats; the hunchback priest who played harmonica and let him stay at his shelter for three days in the capital, then kicked him loose; old Tripudo the truck driver, a friend of the humpback priest, who took him on, teaching him how to handle a rig, only to betray him, turn him over to some rogue cops who handcuffed him, hooded him, drove him to the prison in Mariona, the one they call La Esperanza: Hope; the marero inmates who rat-packed him, beat him, raped him, almost drowned him in a cistern stewing with unspeakable filth, mocking him as he lay there on the floor, hands bound, gasping for breath, gazing up at the towers of mayonnaise jars in the disgusting cell—that was how they smuggled in cell phones, knives, drugs, inside jars of mayo; the plump balding warden who saw him the next morning, dressed in his pristine uniform, a parrot perched on his chair back, explaining how it would be: Happy was given a cellphone number, he’d be driven into San Salvador, he was to call the number, tell whoever answered he was sent by Falcón, then do as directed; the restaurant in San Salvador with more than a hundred restless men waiting in line outside, ex-soldiers, ex-guerrillas, answering an ad for contractors in Iraq; the call from a nearby phone booth to a raspy voice that told him to come around the back of the restaurant; the beefy guanaco at the table in the empty dining room, with his dyed hair and crisp white guayabera, brandishing an unlit cigar, telling Happy he’d been hired as a driver hauling freight between Abu Ghraib and Najaf—the coalition liked Salvadorans, the man said, they didn’t crap their pants when a bomb went off—for which he’d be paid $2,500 a week, all but $250 of which he’d kick back to a numbered account. That was the deal, go to Iraq and get shaken down or go back to that cell with the mareros and get punked to death, which was how Happy wound up in the same hell as Godo, except fate denied them the privilege of knowing that or ever getting in touch.

  Roque didn’t know how he’d survived it, not that Happy had come back unscathed. The sullen moods he’d always been known for now seemed not just more severe but even a little sinister—but who could fault him for that? And yet he never complained, not about what happened in El Salvador or Iraq or anything else. Roque sometimes marveled at that, how Happy stared life down, standing there at the edge of every moment, unrushed, unworried, as though, by expecting nothing anymore, not from life, not from people, he’d somehow been set free.

  At the same time, within the family, he was kind. He spoke to Godo like an equal, not a rival, not that they didn’t get into it now and then. Like a pair of dogs in a pit sometimes, those two, but not near as bad as before he went away. And he showed Tía Lucha a level of deference even she found unsettling. The only person he treated the same as before was Roque. He was the one person Happy still expected something from.

  Meanwhile, at the back of the truck, Puchi was explaining to the parents-to-be how it would go. The couple could pay an extra three grand to get their stuff unloaded or everything stayed in the truck, the crew would drive away and put everything they owned in storage until they came up with the money. It was their own fault, he’d tell them, not quite those words, their failure to realize that the initial low bid was just an estimate (a lie—the lowball quote was presented as final), and that only once their belongings were loaded could a full and fair price for the move be calculated (another lie—the setup was in play from the start).

  Insinuated but left unsaid was a hint of accus
ation. The couple had been greedy, hoping to score off a bunch of wetbacks, rather than pay the going rate. Well, they deserved what they got and it would only get worse if they didn’t play smart. American Amigos Moving wasn’t licensed, so the couple had no real recourse. There was no agency to complain to, no cops to call; this was a civil matter, the officers would say, not a criminal one. That was the mind-bending irony at the heart of the scam, your only shot at justice was with a company that was straight to begin with. Basically, the lovely couple could cough up or get screwed. Puchi was explaining all this with Chato sulking nearby in his hairnet and hoodie and work gloves, chewing on a toothpick, smirking at the lady, eye-fucking the man.

  “When I was in Iraq,” Happy said, “sometimes the foreman would tell us to drive the route even if there was nothing to carry. Several times a week we did this, one direction or both. This one time, I hauled a single bag of mail, nothing else, on a fucking flatbed. Know why? Because the company was getting paid by the trip, not the load.” He glanced at Roque, smiling as though the things he knew could cripple the mind. “This is a war zone I’m talking about. You never knew what was out there. But hey, shut up, it’s money. You die, tough luck. It was insane, the arrogant dumbfucks you had to deal with, the I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, the rip-offs, but the geniuses who run things, they’re all, Hey, don’t ask questions, you’re fucking with the war. So you think this couple here’s getting screwed by us? Trust me, they’ve already been fucked so bad by Uncle Sam we’re practically the good guys.”

  Even given all Happy had been through, there were limits to what Roque would swallow. “That’s messed-up thinking.”

  Happy nodded and said, “Maybe so.” Lighting another smoke—he’d developed an incredible habit during his years away—he added, “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

  Roque glanced toward his mirror again, just in time to see the history teacher shove Puchi in the chest. “Ah nuts,” he said, reaching for the door handle.

  “What?”

  “We got a scrapper.”

  Roque hustled to the back of the truck and was shortly joined by Happy. The history teacher, who was lanky but muscular, had Puchi in a headlock now, the two of them thrashing around on the ground. Puchi wasn’t fighting back very hard. In fact, unless Roque was mistaken, Puchi was laughing.

  Meanwhile Chato hovered nearby, the same nervy smile on his face he wore no matter what was happening. In the driveway, the woman with the basketball belly stood there aghast, hands in the air, watching her husband try to claim back some manhood. She was dressed in a shapeless smock, a stretched-out cardigan, kneesocks with worn heels, scuffed clogs. Roque wondered what they intended to name the baby.

  The neighborhood was one of those forgettable developments shooting up everywhere now, the houses all basically the same, neat but slapdash, too close together, bottom rung on the American dream. No one was looking out their windows at the wrestling match. Why bother? The new neighbors would be gone, or you would, before any favor could be returned.

  Finally Puchi broke free, stood up, brushed himself off. Sure enough, he was chuckling. The teacher scrambled to his feet, scavenged around for his glasses. “You’re not getting away with this!” Tufts of hair stood out from his head, his face shiny and red.

  Puchi signaled to the crew: Back in the truck. “Let’s go,” he said.

  The teacher found his glasses. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I have to call the office,” Puchi said. “You attacked me.”

  “You’re cheating us!”

  “May be an extra thousand on top of the three you already owe. Have to call, find out.”

  That was when the woman spoke up. “For God’s sake just pay them, Peter.” Her eyes were dull with disappointment but her voice had an odd allure. Throaty, an alto, it reminded Roque of a young Celia Cruz. The man’s head snapped toward her. Something between them suggested a bitter history and Roque guessed the baby played a part in that. He sensed as well that the woman had reached a truce with her life in a way the man resented.

  “How am I supposed to—”

  “Peter, please,” she cut him off. “Don’t make things worse than they already are.”

  Listen to her, Roque thought, but the guy just seemed more pissed. Turning back, he said, “This is why people want to send you all back where you came from. For Christ’s sake, we’re on your side.”

  Of course you are, Roque thought. Who else would be chump enough to hire a company with a name like American Amigos Moving? But that was when the guy did the strangest thing. Spinning toward Chato, he lashed out with a wayward backhand. “What the hell are you grinning at—eh, pendejo?”

  The guy wants to get pounded, Roque thought, so he can hold it against his wife, but then Happy stepped in. With one arm outstretched to keep Chato at bay, he met the man’s eye, not threatening, almost sad. “Let us unload your things,” he said quietly. “We’ll get you into your new home, then we’ll be gone.”

  “Listen to him, Peter.”

  “Whose side are you on, Belinda?”

  “Let me help you,” Happy said. “Let’s get this thing done.”

  Smooth, Roque thought, like he was daring the guy: Raise your game. Trust me. Strange coming from Happy, who expected nothing from people anymore. Stranger still, it worked.

  Happy and Puchi and the history teacher drove off to wire an extra three grand through Western Union. Roque and Chato waited on the sidewalk while the pregnant wife locked herself inside the house, nothing but her and the bare rooms and all that fresh paint. Roque chased chord progressions around in his head, visualizing the various fingerings for the inversions, wishing he were someplace else. Chato patted his hairnet, murmured insults, did a couple dozen push-ups, shadowboxed, cracked his knuckles, the whole time wearing that same wiggy smile.

  When Happy and Puchi came back in the truck, the teacher parked across the street, slammed his car door and told the crew to unload everything on the driveway, he didn’t want them inside his house. That seemed to work for all concerned. The guy could either lug it all in himself in a pique of sucker’s pride or call whatever old friends wouldn’t hold his cheap tacaño stupidity against him.

  “Don’t think this is the end of things,” the guy said when Puchi and Chato climbed up into the back of the now empty truck. “I’m calling the Better Business Bureau. I’ll post notice on the Web. I’ll make it my daily business to see nobody gets screwed by you fuckers again.”

  Too late, Roque thought as he slammed the door to the cab. They had jobs lined up through next month, same scam as for these two birds, if not through American Amigos Moving then Nuevo California Shipping and Transport or Marko’s Movers or half a dozen other names, each with its own ad on the Internet, each with its own sham address. It was part and parcel of the American way of life, cheap Latino labor. Who with his head on straight could act surprised if once in a while the tables got turned?

  And yet, Roque told himself, that was just another kind of messed-up thinking, like tigueraje, the peculiarly Latino answer to conscience. If something was there for the taking, only a fool wouldn’t grab it. It explained a lot of things south of the border, like how a subcontinent filled with basically decent, generous, hardworking people, millions upon millions of them, could be enslaved for generations by a handful of smug, prissy, sadistic thieves. Sooner or later, you bought in. You learned: Gotta go along to get along, every man has his price, greed is the grease on the wheel. You recognized the tigueraje in your own soul.

  Happy’s cell phone rang. He plucked it from his coat pocket, listened briefly, and said first “Okay,” then “Cuídate” before snapping it shut and stuffing it back in his pocket. To Roque, he said, “I’ll drop you off at home. Start packing. You’re on the redeye to Comalapa.”

  HAPPY SEEMED UNUSUALLY SOLEMN ON THE DRIVE TO THE AIRPORT, even by his standards, but that didn’t keep him from repeating the same instructions over and over. Roque nodded absently, oc
casionally adding a “Sure” or “I get it” just to convince Happy he was listening. As they pulled up to the curb outside the international terminal, Happy put the truck in park, clicked on his flashers and reached across the seat for Roque’s arm.

  “One last thing. This is important.” Happy licked his lips, an odd show of nerves. “You’re not gonna just be bringing my dad back. Okay? There’s another guy coming.”

  Roque felt like a hundred pounds of deadweight just got lashed to his back. “How long you known this?”

  “He’s Iraqi, I met him over there. His name’s Samir.”

  Something wasn’t getting said. “Iraq?”

  A woman cop pacing a nearby crosswalk let out an earsplitting whistle shriek, trying to get traffic to move. The crowded terminal glowed and hummed, a temple of chrome and glass.

  “He was our terp, for the company I worked for. He went out on convoys with us.”

  “How am I supposed to find him?”

  “It’s taken care of.” Then: “He’s a good guy. If things get tricky, you can trust him. He’s smart, he knows his way around. He can help you.”

  The roar of an airliner in takeoff drowned out everything else for a moment, the honking horns, the cop and her whistle, the cries of the skycaps, the loudspeaker announcements. But Roque felt it even stronger than before, a charge in the air, something left hanging.

  Finally, Happy said, “Samir saved my life.”

  It came out like a guilty secret. Roque couldn’t help feeling he’d just been enlisted in an impossible promise. “This another one of those long stories you’re always coming up with?”

  “Yeah.” Happy seemed to drift back from somewhere far away. “You better go. But ask him about it. Samir. He’ll tell you.”

  Roque murmured, “Whatever,” and reached for the door handle, but Happy reached across the cab again, gripping Roque’s shoulder and turning him back. Their eyes met. Happy’s were hard and grave as he said, “I’m proud of you—know that? We all are.”