David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

Strange, he thought, how things were lining up. There was reason to breathe easy. Sure, the thing was crazy but you heard stories all the time, snitches working both sides. And the government always looked the other way. They were greedy, like everybody else. They wanted what they wanted, wanted it big, wanted it yesterday.

When it came time to take the stand, he’d tell the jury: I had to do it, they gave me no choice. It was all Vasco’s idea. Ladies and gentlemen, the only way to get my father back to the States was to go along with the plan, this stupid home invasion. My father was kidnapped, we needed the ransom, the government wouldn’t front the money. What was I supposed to do? But I was afraid that, if I told Mr. Lattimore what I was doing, the government would pull the plug, my father and cousin would get stranded. My father, he’s not a young man, he could die down there just waiting, while I’m scrambling around trying to scratch up the money all legit. It was a lot of money, more than my family could put together. And this was the only way to keep the case on track. We don’t bring my father and Samir to the States, the thing falls apart. I was doing the prosecution a favor.

I did it for my family. I did it for the government. I did it for this country I love so much.

Remember, he thought, you won’t be the one on trial. It will all work out, so long as nobody gets hurt.

Efraim returned with tortas for lunch and Happy sent him right back out for paper and pens. They shared a sandwich and a soda, he and Lourdes, while the others ate in another room. The intimacy was intentional on his part and apparently welcome on hers, she seemed to hearten a little. Her nibbles turned to bites, she settled into her body.

He asked about her life and in a voice that gradually lost some of its fearful whisper she explained she was from Santa Clara del Cobre in Michoacán, a village known for its copper artisans. Many in her family were in the trade but she had no such skill and so, when she was twenty-one, she traveled north to work. She’d been in California twenty years, wanted to improve her English but could never get to adult school regularly. Both her daughters were born here, their father left five years ago for another woman. He sent money sometimes. “He a weak man, not a bad man,” she said. “Señor Snell-he is weak and bad.”

Happy sensed it, the turn. Don’t overplay it, he thought. “How you mean?”

She corkscrewed her hips, trying to get comfortable. “This family I work for them three years now maybe. But him I talk no more five, six times, okay? He away at work when I there. But each time him, me talk, he treat me like I am stupid. Treat his wife, Veronica, like that too. Yell at her like she is a child. To myself, I think, how lucky for her if he die in Iraq. But he come back. And he is worse. Veronica, she cry sometimes, talk to me, tell me his business. I not supposed to see them, the guns-they all in the basement, I don’t go there-but she show me. She is very strange, Veronica, very lonely. She drink.” She picked at a bit of lettuce caught in her teeth. “She crazy a little too, I think.”

Happy stopped chewing. “Crazy dangerous?”

“No.” Her copper-colored ponytail wagged back and forth. “Crazy scared.”

He took a sip of soda, passed the bottle to her. The house felt as cold as a cave. “You understand, Lourdes, those guns, the ones in the basement, it’s all against the law.”

She nodded timidly, took a sip, handed the bottle back.

“He won’t complain to the police. He knows he’ll have to lie about what we came for, about what we take. He won’t risk that. Better to lose the money, the guns, than risk that. They find out what he does, who he sells to, the taxes he doesn’t pay? He goes to prison.”

Her eyes drilled his face. “He not need the police, a man like that. He come for me, my daughters. He come alone.”

“When we tie up the family, Lourdes, we’ll tie you up too, make it look-”

“He have this hate, this thing inside him-”

“You’ll have to tell him you don’t know nothing. You’ll have to convince him.” A conspiratorial wink. “Don’t tell me you haven’t lied before.”

“He will come, hurt me. Hurt my girls.”

“You’re going to have to be an actress, Lourdes.” He felt a surge of impatience, fueled by guilt, pitying her, resenting her for it. “There’s no other way, I’m sorry.”

Out in the front room, a sudden spate of goofy laughter: Puchi, Chato. Not Godo.

“Why you do this?” Her hand drifted across the space to touch his hand. Her fingers were ice-cold. “You are different, not like them, out there, those pellejos , those chusmas.” Lowlifes. “I can tell you have family, you love somebody, somebody love you-”

One of those chusmas is my cousin, he thought of telling her, though he imagined Godo’s face had made an impression that wouldn’t get undone with words. Then the front door opened and closed-Efraim, back from the store. Happy pulled his hand from under hers. “You’re right, I have family. You wonder why I’m doing this? For them.”

Efraim appeared in the doorway but Happy realized something else needed saying. He asked for just another moment. Efraim, clutching the bag with Happy’s paper and pens inside, glanced curiously at the woman as though trying to determine if she was still their prisoner or something else now, then set the bag on the floor and shuffled down the hall, joining the others just as another spurt of idiot laughter erupted.

Happy turned back to Lourdes. “Once this is done, Snell won’t harm you or your daughters. You have my word.”

OVER THE NEXT TWO HOURS HE HAD HER DRAW OUT THE FLOOR PLAN for the house, upstairs, ground floor, basement. During the day, Snell worked as a claims adjuster out in the east county, an hour’s drive away most days, given traffic. Lourdes had only seen him at the house once since he’d come back from Iraq. She didn’t know what time he got home in the evening, didn’t know where any guns might be other than that one locked room in the cellar. She’d never come across any in the closets, under the bed; there were no display cases upstairs. Snell had a safe down in the basement as well but Veronica, the one time she’d shown the place to Lourdes, had admitted she didn’t know the combination.

The couple had two children, but they’d be at school till four or so-a boy of thirteen named Samuel, a girl of nine named Samantha.

“Two Sams.” It was Godo. They were all in the room together now, watching her chart out the house. “Weird.”

“It is a strange family,” Lourdes replied.

HAPPY TOLD LOURDES TO CALL HER DAUGHTERS AND SAY THAT one of her housecleaning clients had been in a bad wreck. The woman was in the hospital, she’d be there overnight; the husband was away, couldn’t get a flight back till tomorrow. The family needed Lourdes to stay with the kids. “They pay me,” Lourdes assured her oldest, whose name was Carla, “a lot.” Then the younger daughter, Angelica, got on the phone and Happy thought it would never end, back and forth: a kitten, the dentist, homework, a boy named Terrell. Finally he made a cutting gesture to his throat and Lourdes told her daughter she had to go.

“Your daughter’s needy,” Happy said as she flipped closed her cell.

Lourdes sank into herself. “She’s at that age.” It was decided she’d stay at the farmhouse, with Happy and Efraim trading shifts watching her. Efraim went off to fetch blankets and a kerosene lamp and one more meal. They’d do the takeover tomorrow, show up in the van, wearing coveralls from Vasco’s moving operation, get inside the house in the morning, tie up the wife and Lourdes, raid the secret room, then wait for first the kids to come home, then Snell, force him to open the safe. If they were patient, they’d be fine. Once Efraim was back, they ran through everybody’s role, rehearsing as best they could as it grew dark and even colder in the empty farmhouse: Chato watching the front door; Puchi clearing the ground-floor rooms then guarding the back; Godo and Efraim upstairs to clear the bedrooms; Happy in the living room with Lourdes, a pistol to her head.