David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

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 damaged, 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.”

“I heard.” Vasco chuckled. “I like that, actually.”

“You weren’t there. Way it got told to me, it was fucking spooky.”

“Godo scares people. I don’t see the problem. Now what’s it going to be?”

“Like I said, I need time.”

Again, that smile. Stop worrying, it said. Thank your luck. “But, chero , you said it yourself. You don’t have time.”

Happy pictured it then, Vasco face flat on the concrete floor, held down by the others, a rag stuffed in his mouth as one by one they took him, shamed him, made him their punk. “If anything happens to Godo, I hold you to account.”

Vasco waved him off. He propped his boots on his desk, ankles crossed. “Since when are you two so close? Don’t remember you guys having one good thing to say about each other.”

Happy got up to go. Glancing back at the foul-smelling panda, he said, “Ever think of washing that thing? Can’t be good for the girl, way it is.”

Vasco looked at him like he’d just proposed the absurd. “What, you get your ass deported to El Salvador, you come back an expert on kids?”

ROQUE HAD TO TELL HIMSELF: STOP STARING. IT WASN’T JUST the bruise-strange how, even with the plum-colored swelling and the gash across her cheek, the girl somehow remained stunning-or the fact that, from time to time, her uneasy eyes met his. She was a prisoner. Pity wouldn’t free her.

He’d been in El Salvador a total of four hours, arriving at the airport in Comalapa before dawn. He’d skated through customs, not so much as a glance inside his knapsack, then ventured out into the soft green heat of daybreak outside the terminal-the sidewalk jammed with well-wishers greeting friends and relatives back from Gringolandia , cabbies hawking fares to the capital, touts with bullhorns steering grenchos to the psychedelic chicken buses headed for the smaller provincial towns.

He stopped milling and chose a spot to wait against the terminal’s dark wall of glass. In time, a droop-lidded cholo , thin as a tomcat, edged his way through the crowd. He wore a T-shirt three sizes too large emblazoned with the Arizona Cardinals logo and the words “World Champions, Super Bowl XLIII.”

The cholo snagged Roque’s arm. “You’re the musician.” His lips curled in a slack smile, as though both offering a compliment and slapping down a challenge. “Call me Sisco.”

He led the way out to a parking lot shaded by eucalyptus trees where a battered Volkswagen Golf waited, tapping out a drumbeat against his thighs as he sang under his breath, “Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.” The singing brought on a coughing jag and when he went to cover his mouth Roque noticed the gang tats on his hands, a sinewy art nouveau X on one, three simple dots the other, the telltale thirteen.