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

  EVEN THE STUFFED PANDA ON THE SOFA REEKED OF CIGARETTE smoke. Happy nudged it aside to sit, conceding he wasn’t really one to judge, given his own habit of late.

  The bear belonged to Vasco’s daughter, Lucía, who often got stranded here for hours. “Time to myself,” the mother called it, which struck a more suitably parental tone, Happy supposed, than “heading out to tweak with the bitch patrol.” El otro equipo. Las marimachas. The other team. Lesbos. That’s what Vasco called them, at least when Chula, his wife, wasn’t in earshot.

  Vasco ran Puchi and Chato’s crew, a mishmash of rough-edged and luckless Salvadorans, most of them present or former Brown Town Locos who’d outgrown street dealing. They had big-heist pretensions now, with hopes of being regarded as bona fide salvatruchos: members of Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13. The gang had become to Salvadorans what La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, was to mejicanos, bigger even, because their territory covered all of Central America south to Nicaragua, and cities as distant as Boston, Washington, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and the hub: Los Angeles. But as yet it was a sprawling, hydra-headed mess. No one had established the kind of command and control that could confer on any of its would-be clicas status as bona fide or bogus. There were too many wannabes, even out-and-out phonies.

  But that was Happy’s in. He had a message from the emperor. He had status to confer.

  Vasco’s office sat perched atop the garage for the truck yard where they parked and maintained the three long beds used for American Amigos and the other strong-arm movers. Downstairs, Chato and Puchi and a few other vatos were working late, sharing a blunt as they lazily swept out the bays and hosed down the trucks.

  Lucía wasn’t there, for which Happy felt grateful. The child was a homely rag of a girl, both needy and remote. More to the point, she was mean. Not that Happy blamed her. She always seemed to be suffering from pink eye, a phlegmy cough, some kind of rash, and who wouldn’t get a bitch on with Vasco and Chula for parents.

  Coils of copper wire lay stacked in the corner, stolen from empty houses and office buildings and even the pull boxes for streetlights, from which the wire had been dragged out by force after sawing through the bundled cable, latching it to the hitch on the back of a pickup. Quite an operation, as Happy knew firsthand; he’d been part of the crew that ripped out this particular batch. It was big news in Rio Mirada, the number of public buildings vandalized, the intersections where the streetlights merely flashed because the conduits had been gutted. No sooner would the repairs be complete than Vasco’s malandrines would strike again.

  “This is a cash-strapped city,” the police chief had intoned on TV the other night. “We really could use the public’s help on this.”

  In the opposite corner, handbills for mortgage assistance lay scattered in haphazard piles: In Foreclosure? Save Your Home! We Buy Houses for Cash! Vasco was the local ghetto hump for the company that worked the scam, tricking people into refinancing plans that stripped out all their equity through cash-back-at-closing schemes, disguising the payouts as costs and fees. Sometimes they snatched title outright, leaving the homeowners with nothing. Happy wondered if they were in league with the crooks who’d screwed his father and Lucha.

  Vasco was yammering away on the phone, dressed in a black cowboy shirt with white piping, black jeans, white sharkskin boots with a matching belt, rocking in his chair and clutching his cigarette like a dart. He’d wrapped up the conversation minutes ago but was dragging it out, trying to show Happy who was boss, who could be made to wait.

  Finally Vasco signed off and tossed the phone onto his desk, after which he rubbed his eyes, scratched his paunch, gazed out the window. His neck bore a patch of shiny flesh, the ghost of a tattoo he’d had removed. “Pinole was a problem?”

  Happy didn’t answer right away. Two could play this game. “That a surprise?”

  Vasco waved the question away while exhaling a final plume of smoke, stubbing out his butt. “You said there was something to discuss.”

  Happy could feel, like a thumb flick, the pulse in his throat. “I’ve got a proposal. Not just me. Me and some people back in El Salvador.” The words sounded odd inside his skull, bats fluttering out of a cave.

  Vasco mustered a yawn but his eyes betrayed his interest. “What people?”

  “The guys who helped me get across.”

  “I never heard this.”

  “Heard what?”

  “That you were involved with any, you know, people. Crossing over.”

  “How the hell else was I gonna do it?”

  “Beats me.” Vasco was already lighting up another smoke. “You still in contact?”

  “Would I be pitching this if I wasn’t?”

  “I dunno, you tell me.”

  Happy resisted an urge to get up, cross the room, tip Vasco out of his chair like a pumpkin from a wheelbarrow. “You don’t want the offer, I’ll take it to Sancho.”

  Emilio “Sancho” Perata was the shot caller for the 23rd Street Locos Salvatruchos, out of Richmond, as yet the only quasi-legitimate northern MS-13 clica outside San Francisco.

  Vasco said, “Sancho would laugh in your face. Then he’d string you up by the balls.”

  “Not for three million a year.”

  For a moment, it felt as though gravity had loosened its hold on things. The whole room seemed to float.

  Vasco said, “Get outta town.”

  “Things’ve been loose up till now, right? No el mero mero calling the shots for everybody. That’s gonna change. And the clicas that get in first, make the connection to the chiefs below the border—”

  “You mean L.A.”

  “L.A. answers to El Salvador now. That’s something you should know. Fuck, El Salvador is Los Angeles now. All the deportees.”

  “How the fuck you know these people?”

  “Prison. After I got sent down myself.”

  Vasco tipped back and pondered that, rocking. His face was pockmarked and sagging from all the abuse, the crank and the liquor, the pills and the smoke, plus the stress of his petty empire. The purplish fluorescence of the overhead light didn’t help. “Why should I trust some mensos in lockup? Especially when they’re thousands of miles away?”

  “Because if you don’t, somebody else will. Sancho, for one. You wanna end up answering to him?”

  “Won’t happen. Not me.”

  “Oh yeah. You.”

  “Bullshit. What is this, some kind of threat? You come in here, try to shake me down?”

  “I’m offering you a shot at one and a half mil a year.”

  “I thought you said three.”

  “Three tops, one and a half guaranteed. That sound like a shakedown to you?”

  In the window behind Vasco the moon peeked beneath a vast ledge of cloud. Downstairs, one of the vatos cackled, “Te lo dije, él es un malapaga.” I told you, he’s a deadbeat.

  Vasco met Happy’s eyes and let the stare linger. “Smuggling what, exactly?”

  “First thing, you help me get my uncle and another guy across the border.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “You wanna get to phase two it is. My people are in with the Valle Norte cartel. They’re gonna move the product by boat, it’ll sail out of Turbo, Colombia, hidden on pallets under loads of tropical fruit—bananas, plantains, mangoes. After a layover in Acajutla it’ll come into the Oakland port, my dad and I will know which shipments, he’ll work it so he gets the load. He’ll truck it to a warehouse in Richmond owned by an importer who’s already on board. You’ll divide up the shipment, send it to the various wholesalers around the bay. They pay you, you skim your share, the rest goes back south through the channel.”

  “These people have names?”

  “You buy in, then you’ll know what you need to know.”

  “This is bullshit. You’re winding me up. Buy in?”

  Happy reminded himself this was all for his father. “How else you think this happens?”

  “How much?”

&
nbsp; “Thirty grand.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “That’s five jobs like the couple in Pinole today. For one and a half mil a year on the back end. Guaranteed.”

  “Nothing’s guaranteed.”

  “You’re not paying attention to what I’m telling you.”

  “You think I’m handing thirty large to you with nothing but—”

  “You’re not handing it to me.”

  “Who then?”

  “You’re wiring it to El Salvador. Once it gets there, my father and this other guy I mentioned? They get brought up across the border. Once that’s done, you’re in on the franchise.”

  “Okay, that’s twice now you’ve mentioned this other guy. Who is he?”

  Happy paused for the proper effect. “He’s from the Middle East.”

  Vasco blanched. “You saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Once he’s here, he vanishes, you have no more connection to him.”

  “And when he does whatever he’s gonna do, and they connect all the dots and find out how he got across?”

  “There’s no way to tie you to it.”

  “You said I’m wiring money.”

  “From somewhere here in the Bay Area to San Salvador, happens a thousand times every day. You smurf it down in smaller amounts, use a fake name, or have everybody on the crew send a piece, fake names again, and we bribe the guy at the envío de dinero window. It gets picked up by someone on the other end, again a fake name, he vanishes on that end. Who knows where he goes, who he meets or what he does with the money? You got ghosts on both ends and they can’t track one guy sneaking across the border regardless. Can’t be done, no matter what they say. Meanwhile, once he’s across and forgotten, you get rich.”

  Vasco seemed puzzled by it all and angry he had to work so hard figuring out the downsides. “You say this guy, this Arab, he’s coming across with your old man? He does, they get caught, that ties the Arab to you. You’re tied to me. I’m fucked.”

  “They’ll split up before they cross. Christ, use your head.” Happy decided not to mention Roque’s involvement and made a mental note to keep it a secret from here on out. “You think everybody’s stupid but you?”

  Vasco wasn’t backing off. “You got somebody on the border, somebody you’re bribing to get everybody across.”

  Happy shook his head. “Vasco, listen to me, it’s not your problem.”

  “Like hell it’s not my problem. Some bent fed gets caught helping a terrorist across, you think they’re not gonna fuck his ass bloody till he coughs up every goddamn name he knows?”

  “He won’t know yours.”

  “Prove it.”

  “The guy who takes the money in San Salvador is like twenty links removed from anybody taking a cut at the border, and that’s all cash, hand to hand.”

  Vasco’s gaze drifted toward the window again, met his reflection in the glass. “How long you been sitting on this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long you known about it?”

  “You think I been shopping it around?”

  “How long?”

  “The coke thing’s been in the works for a while. Since I’ve been back I get texted every few days, progress reports, questions. Then my old man got popped and I said, Let’s do it. Started putting a plan together, to bring him back and get this other thing rolling, the franchise. They added the curve, the Arab. Said the one depended on the other. I’ve got no say.”

  “And you chose me.” Vasco didn’t sound pleased or privileged. “Why?”

  “You want me to go someplace else?”

  “Answer the fucking question.”

  Happy told himself: Let him rant. It would make the prospect of getting the last laugh that much sweeter. “Just seemed wise, start with somebody I know.”

  “Not like we’ve ever been exactly tight, though. Am I right?”

  “No, which is why I won’t have a problem taking this someplace else, you turn it down.”

  “You’re setting me up.” Vasco cracked a sick smile, pointing his finger. “You’re setting me up, cocksucker.”

  Happy unbuttoned his flannel, opened it. “Pat me down, you feel that way.”

  “I want nothing to do with no ragheads blowing up buildings.”

  “You’re not seeing the whole picture. I take this elsewhere, you don’t just lose the Colombian franchise. You gonna find yourself on the bottom looking up at whoever grabs it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Guy who steps forward gets to play kingpin this end of the bay. El mero mero. Could be you. If so, you’re the one who gets to collect taxes. Nobody moves nothing without giving you a piece. You walk into any salvadoreño business you want, you tell them what they pay, you’ll protect them from anybody else tries to move in, shake them down. You’ll have the muscle to kick the norteños back into Sonoma, you’ll run things up here. This anoints you. You turn your back on this, though, all that shit rains down on you. You can ride or get ridden. Just the way it is. Meanwhile, you’re already set up to launder the money through the business here, all the other shit you got in play. That’s one more advantage you’ve got over the competition. They’re just street hustlers. They can’t take it to the next level.”

  Vasco’s black eyes jittered back and forth as he thought it through. He was sick of being dictated to by the men working the mortgage scam, you could tell by the way he talked about it. They were no smarter than he was but there were angles to the thing he hadn’t mastered yet, a degree of finesse he lacked. Sooner or later the moving racket would tap out and there was only so much copper wiring to steal and there were rumors the price was about to tank. Everybody was trying to get into identity theft, computer scams, low risk, high reward, but that wasn’t Vasco’s realm. He’d come up through street dealing and takeovers, spent a few years inside himself, Santa Rita on a possession beef, Folsom for the armed robbery. He’d emerged from prison pledged to a cagier tack, conning the dupes, but he wasn’t a natural. Basically, he was stuck, edging thirty, chasing around for his next good idea, tied to a crank-whore shrew and her demon child. If he didn’t make a bold move soon he’d get eaten alive from above or betrayed from below.

  “You say you and your old man, you work the port angle.”

  “Vasco, stop worrying and thank your luck.”

  “How much a piece you want for that? You haven’t brought that up.”

  “I figure twenty points.”

  “Twenty fucking points?”

  “The port’s where the risk is. That’s where they look the hardest.”

  “You just shaved three hundred grand off my one-point-five mil.”

  “Stop looking at the floor, look at the ceiling. Three mil’s easy you work it right, first year alone, and that’s just the coke run.”

  “Meaning what, six hundred grand for you, that right?”

  “Add in the protection money, the taxes, the other rackets you got going? You can be in the shit, you want. But you gotta step up.”

  Vasco turned away, glancing down into the truck yard. Puchi was hurling rocks at the crows perched on the telephone wires. Chato shadowboxed, the others looking on, cheering, mocking. “I say yes to this, Godo comes in.”

  Happy cocked his head, as though he hadn’t heard right. “Sorry?”

  “Godo. He helps pay off this outrageous nut you’re asking for.”

  “You seen him since he’s been back?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “He’s not good. I’m serious.”

  “Listen to me. I start seeing money like you’re talking about moving through here? Gonna need to weapon up. Godo knows more about that than the rest of us put together. At least, if he doesn’t, fucking jarheads aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.”

  “Vasco—”

  “He can teach us things. Things we’ll need to know, in case the norteños don’t pack off to Sonoma all peaceful.”

  “Vasco, listen. I mean it, Godo’s da
maged, way more than you know. He can’t remember dick one moment to the next, his mind wanders, he makes shit up—”

  “Okay,” Vasco cut in, leaning forward, his voice a whisper, “now it’s time you listen to me, chero. Godo comes in, gives the boys some weapons training, some tactics for protection, you hear where I’m going. Or be my guest, shop this can of worms around. Because you know and I know that anybody who bites is going to bitch you down to five points at best, or just push you aside altogether, maybe worse, when the thing is up and running. Here, you got a history. Nobody’s gonna turn you out. But there’s a price to that, right? Godo comes on board. This is not negotiable. I’m not so stupid I don’t know you brought this here first because this is where you wanna be. I don’t blame you. I’m grateful, matter of fact. And I’m not saying Godo steps up and pitches in somehow, helps us lean on anybody. Unless, of course, he’s okay with that. But the guys respect him, he knows things we don’t. So that’s the way it is, or yeah, I’m gonna pass. And I’m not handing thirty grand to nobody till I meet a real live human being, not just you, who can vouch that this isn’t a jar of smoke. The guy who owns this warehouse you talked about, maybe.”

  Happy suddenly found himself wondering what Vasco’s stint in Folsom had been like, how many nights he’d suffered through the kind of thing the mareros had inflicted amid the mayonnaise jars in the cell at Mariona. “I can try to arrange a meet. Probably not with the warehouse guy, not until you’re in. But somebody.”

  “If this thing is real, you can make it happen.”

  “As for Godo—”

  “You can make that happen too.”

  “I need some time to think about it.”

  Vasco lit another smoke with the end of his last. He was smiling. The smile said: Now who gets to ride, who gets ridden?

  Happy said, “Problem is, we don’t have time.”

  “Your problem. Not mine. Not yet, anyway.”

  “If anything happens, to Godo I mean—”

  “Like what?”

  “He has a meltdown. He freaks out. He almost shot two agents during a raid at the trailer park.”