Tod Goldberg: The Reformed

Eduardo Santiago glared at me. Presuming he had a gun in his hand, the best he’d be able to accomplish from this angle would be to shoot himself in the foot and hope I was made squeamish by the sight of blood. He wouldn’t get that chance, however, because if I even felt a muscle twitch, I’d break his arm.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re Michael Westen. And I’ve been looking for you.”

I tightened my grip and Eduardo winced. “Who do you work for?”

A thin smile crossed Eduardo’s face. “God,” he said.

If you find yourself in a threatening situation, it’s best to take people’s actions at face value. If someone pulls a gun on you, more than likely he intends to shoot you. If someone is strapped with C-4, it’s probable she’s about to blow herself-and you-up. So if someone is facing serious injury-like, say, Eduardo Santiago-and is asked a serious question, it’s unlikely he’d tell a joke to lighten the situation. That only happens on television.

“I told him you were a priest,” my mother said to Eduardo. We were sitting in a small business office just off the main chapel inside the Church of the Gleaming Spire, and Eduardo kept rubbing at his elbow absently as we spoke. “He didn’t believe it.”

“No one does,” Eduardo said. “No one who knew me back in the day, anyway.”

Back in the days I knew him, Eduardo Santiago was a junior-level hard knock: the kind of gangster who played sports, didn’t commit crimes in his own neighborhood and still attended school on a somewhat regular basis. Even then, however, it was clear he was set for bigger and better things in the gang world. At sixteen, he was already well over 250 pounds and none of it was fat. He played linebacker on the high school team, and rumor had it that the University of Miami already had him penciled into their starting lineup. Rumor also had it that a few Hurricane alums had already put him on scholarship; the black Mercedes he drove to school seemed a bit outside of his credit rating.

The truth, though, was that he was on a Latin Emperors scholarship and was already working as an enforcer for the gang. It was a job he was uniquely qualified for and he rather enjoyed. He rose through the ranks until, by the age of just twenty-five, he was already a top dog, the kind of guy who both called shots and occasionally took some just for kicks, and to let the young ones know he was still in the game. Getting sent to prison only improved his stock, which was how I’d heard of him. That I hadn’t connected him to the kid I grew up with shouldn’t be much of a surprise-the name Eduardo Santiago is like Joe Smith in the Cuban community.

“Shouldn’t you still be in prison?” I asked.

“The old me? Yeah. Yeah. And he still is in prison. Or someone like him, you know? But this person? Who I am today? No, man. You’re looking at a man who changed. You don’t read the newspaper?”

“No,” I said. “No one does anymore. That’s why they’re all going out of business.”

“You got the Internet? You should Google me. I’m a success story, if I do say so myself.”

“Really?” I said. “Then why do you look like a guy who just got out of prison?”

Eduardo grinned big. He did everything big. He was still a pretty muscular guy, but he was also a guy who’d clearly spent some time in front of an all-you-can-eat buffet on more than one occasion. But beyond that, he didn’t exactly dress like a success story. He had on a tank top that revealed his dozens of tattoos, tan shorts that looked like they’d been cut off from an old pair of Dickies and, just like the kids, a pair of flip-flops. He wore a huge cross around his neck, but it was absurdly blinged up.

“Michael,” he said, “this is a car wash. You think I’m going to wear a suit to a car wash? And besides, this isn’t even my church.”

“Then what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Father Fremon took ill last week, and I volunteered to help out so he could get some more bed rest before the big Disney World trip. Plus, if I come out here, maybe a few more cars come rolling through because they know I’m involved.”

It sounded plausible enough, probably because it was perfectly plausible. Still, sitting across from Eduardo Santiago didn’t feel comfortable, especially not with my mother sitting there, too.

“Then I apologize for trying to break your arm,” I said.

“When was the last time you two saw each other?” my mother asked.

Eduardo chuckled. “Man, what? Back when you were a freshman? I remember you being one of those kids who wasn’t afraid to look me in the eye. You were a tough kid.”

“And you were a thug,” I said.

“I was a bad person,” he said, “but the Lord, you know, he taught me the way. Live by the gun, die by the gun. All that. You take a look at the Bible, and it’s in there, too, but that isn’t about how I’m living now. You recognize that and change, man, and the world opens up for you. I got a theology degree. Went to seminary. And here I am.”

“How much time did you do?”

“Fifteen,” he said.

“Out of what?”

Eduardo got a bashful look on his face, as if this wasn’t the kind of conversation he normally had in pleasant society. Either that or he’d figured out the subtext of my question: Who did you snitch out to do less time?

“Fifty,” he said.

“Fifteen out of fifty,” I said. “They don’t usually chop thirty-five years off a federal sentence for finding the Lord.”

“How’d you know I was doing federal time?”

“I’ll answer that as soon as you tell me why you’ve been looking for me,” I said.

Eduardo’s gaze shifted from me to my mother and back to me. When I didn’t say anything, he did it again. Life would be much easier if people just said what they wanted to say and didn’t bother with nonverbal communication.

I stood up. “C’mon, Ma,” I said. “Eduardo needs to tend to his flock.”

Eduardo stood, as well, and extended his meaty paw in my direction. He had scars on his knuckles from where he’d had old tattoos lasered off, but I could still make out the faint outline of the Roman numerals XII–V: the sign of the Latin Emperors.

“Why don’t you come by my church tomorrow?” Eduardo said as we shook. He told me where it was located-about five blocks from the old Orange Bowl, and just blocks from Little Havana. A good central location to save some souls, I guess. “I’ll show you around the campus,” he continued. “Let you meet some of the kids. And then we can talk about what you know and what I know, and what I need help with.”

“I can’t wait,” I said.

“Good luck with your car wash,” my mother said, and gave me the same look Eduardo had given me moments before, and then continued to do so until I set another twenty bucks on the desk. Sixty dollars for half a car wash. That’s inflation.

“Way I see it,” Sam Axe said, “the only thing Eduardo Santiago could need from you is the name of your investment guy.”

It was just after six in the evening, and Sam and I were eating dinner inside Perricone’s, an Italian restaurant that was housed inside an old barn shipped in from Vermont, which essentially meant it was just like every other tourist in town. Sam said he liked the place because it was inside a barn and it made him yearn for his country childhood, a childhood that-to the best of my knowledge-was lived nowhere near a barn or the country. It was also one of the few places in Miami that served Peroni beer, which, I suspect, was the true reason he’d suggested we meet there on this particular evening. I’d called him after I met with Eduardo and asked him to see what he could find about the good Father Santiago.