by Jeff Johnson
“Unbelievable.”
“Santos needs an example of a fuck-up who beat the odds, and you are all I have at the moment.”
“Fine.” It wasn’t like I had a choice. “How do we get the dog out?”
“Ah yes. My plan is a masterful one.” Gomez rose to get us refills. “My plan is for Delia to figure it out.”
“Mine too!” I smiled, and then I remembered for the first time that day that she was leaving.
Delia had a way of laughing that reminded me of cartoons. Too big for her tiny frame, too loud, overfull by every measure. Maybe it was that her mouth seemed to open unnaturally wide.
“Enough,” I said finally. We were in the office lounge at the Lucky. Chase and one of the new guys were cleaning out front. “The dog. Focus, Delia. I know my recap of this thing was terribly funny, I do. I laughed too. But the dog. Think about the dog.”
“Right. The pony dog. This Santos kid won’t be available until tomorrow?”
“Correct. He’s a janitor at Saint John’s Hospital. So we have twenty-four hours to figure this shit out.”
“Easy enough. As in I already did. We can’t move that big-ass dog tonight. Too many people around, and when they all go home it’ll be all the more obvious. Plus it would thaw out and start leaking. Did you see how big?”
“Not yet, but think massive. Rottweiler-mastiff mix. We’re talkin’ monster here. Gomez has it wrapped in an army blanket, says it looks like a fat man with his legs chopped off.”
“Vivid and disturbing. These are the salient factors,” she said. “We have police roll-bys every fifteen minutes. Your car is marked. But thankfully Gomez has a car collection.”
“I like it so far. The cars, I mean. As in not my car.”
“First, our colleague Chase Manhattan. This will be his formal initiation into our inner circle. About time anyway. We’re gonna have to see if he lives up to his rep.”
“Go on.” It appeared she had developed an idea with multiple applications. I knew Chase from the old days, and it would be nice to know if he’d gone soft. But it was more than that. We routinely came across complex situations, and it was more than just an evaluation of his mettle she was after. If he blew it and one of us got busted with a dead dog in someone else’s car, it was not the end of the world. Just disappointing. But if Chase went James Bond on the situation, that would be disappointing too, because we’d have to fire him. Players play, after all, and that eventually comes full circle. He’d be a threat then, scheming to rule it all. Chase was going to have to hit the middling ground.
“You leave your car in your parking lot tonight. Santiago will just have to deal with it. Then you go out and make a scene. Get drunk and raise hell. Make it clear that you’re way too blasted to drive home, which is why you took a cab. With me so far?”
“I like your plans, Delia. They’re always so convincing that I fall for them myself, even when I’m the key player.”
“Of course you do. Now, in the morning I want you to wear a very specific outfit.”
“Ah ha!” I leveled a finger at her. “You’re scheming to pick out my clothes. You love doing that.”
“Like putting a sweater on a cat. It’s hysterical. So. Jeans, white tee, bomber jacket, your Dead Moon baseball cap. Then you ramble around looking cool and come in at 9:30.”
“All doable. Believable.”
“Chase gets here at nine. Red pants, red shirt. He has them, I’ve seen it.”
“Christ.”
“No shit. Now.” She got up and began pacing. “Here’s the tricky part. Gomez and Flaco will have moved the frozen dog into position by the back door of the Rocket. You and Chase switch clothes and Chase blazes out in your ride like he’s running from the devil. As the tires are screeching, you hump that frozen dog into the back of one of the lowriders of Senor Gomez and blow out in the other direction.”
“I’m not wearing Chase’s clothes. And why aren’t the cops going to wonder why Gomez has a car parked in the alley?”
“You don’t have to wear the red pants, idiot. Bring your own in a bag. Gomez and Flaco buy a ton of shit at Costco every week. Tomorrow morning they will be loading in bag after bag of it.”
“So they finish unloading and take up their stations, I toss the dog in and blow, go pick up the kid.”
“Then give him spiritual advice while you help him bury his dog, yes.”
“Excellent.” I considered. “What the hell am I going to tell him?”
“That’s the hard part.” Delia sat down next to me again. “What do you want to tell him?
“Are you crazy?” I stared at her. “I don’t want to tell him anything! What if I fuck him up somehow? It sounds like he already has problems.”
“Let me rephrase that. What would you tell your young self?”
“Don’t get caught.” I shrugged helplessly. “Maybe wear a rubber. Check out the Doobie Brothers. Shit.” I thought about it. “I guess I should tell him to try to beat the odds on a minute-by-minute basis. That kind of thing.” I looked at her. “Doesn’t everyone know that already?”
“No.” It was her turn to think. “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned since you were a teenager, Darby? That would help a kid like this, I mean.”
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
Delia smiled. “Then this will be good for both of you.”
She left me sitting there thinking about this. While she mopped in front and listened to Bathory at D for Deaf sonogram level, I ruminated on the next best step. Santiago was probably down at the restaurant already, combing over receipts and scrutinizing incoming fish orders and drinking espresso with his pinkie up. He’d be good to bounce this Santos bummer off of. Plus, I had to visit Nigel and tell him what was going down. For a guy who never worked anymore, I had a ton of stuff to do. I decided to start with Flaco and a second opinion. He’d give me one whether I wanted it or not, but it was worth the two bucks it would take to hear it. No education is wasted.
Flaco’s squalid little hole in the wall had just opened. The smell of white onions and cologne wafted out, nauseating at the best of times, and the old man beamed at me and chortled in delight, knowing exactly what my morning had been like. Flaco’s Tacos had withstood the beautifying tides of Disneyfication with the same implacable gusto as the Rooster Rocket, but with different results. The signs, painted on old plywood, had somehow failed to take on a magical “antique” or “authentic” aura and instead remained boldly crappy. The white and yellow base was peeling around the edges where the wood was warping, and the scrawled, semiliterate descriptions of the food, all in Spanish, had been rain-blasted away in places and redone with Sharpie, also fading. The tiny stainless steel counter was bent and dented from a service life it had endured years before it was installed. Its time at Flaco’s had added an additional patina of scratches and dings and even a hole or two. The sticky bottles of hot sauce looked straight-up evil. To top it all off, Flaco had taken to leaning out the window as he was now. Perhaps as a sorcerous talisman to ward off errant health inspectors because of the frozen dog situation, he’d added a hairnet to his ensemble.
“Two juniors,” I said gruffly, cutting short his morning bullshit. “Hold the dog hair.”
“Culo!” he spat, the huge grin instantly replaced with fury. He glanced both ways. “Keep it down! This is all your fault anyway.” He yanked himself back in and glared at me.
“Two juniors,” I repeated.
Flaco made a hissing sound and whacked a giant metal spoonful of congealed red meat product down next to the tortillas on the griddle. My stomach made a sproinging noise at the sharp sizzle.
“I’m responsible, how? And I should keep it down, why?” I leaned casually on the counter. It had a sign on it saying not to.
“This would not be an issue,” Flaco said quietly, “if you had not put the Lucky back on the radar. You have surveillance, then so do we.”
“Whatever.” I took two dollar bills out of my wallet and t
ucked them under the edge of the window.
“Delia says you have a stalker.” He spread the meat out, avoiding my eyes.
“She talks.”
“It’s a woman, Darby.” He sighed dramatically. “One of your many curses. Your Amazon moves north and like magic the next one appears, as troubling as the last. I know this curse well, my ignorant friend.”
“Flaco, dude, just because you read the story section in your porno magazine does not—”
“You should listen to someone, someday,” he continued. “See a therapist under an assumed name. Maybe a priest in your case. Wear a fake beard into the confessional.” He looked at me suddenly and the grin was back. “I know! An Indian shaman who is also a lawyer! But soft, with a grandmother’s belly. She can help you.”
We both laughed. A car sloshed past and I glanced at it, then up and down the street. No sign of my federal tail, but that didn’t mean anything. I turned back in time to see Flaco sniff the onion tub and scowl.
“Tell me about the kid,” I prompted.
“No, no,” he said slyly. “Gomez already did. I have nothing to add.”
“Huh. That actually tells me a great deal, Flaco. Thanks.”
He stopped working and squinted at me.
“Gomez knew I was going to pump you so he told you to keep your mouth shut. Means the situation is worse than he let on, right?”
“I said nothing.” He tried to cover his alarm by sniffing the onions again.
“Yes you did. Loud and clear. And your face, Flaco. Jesus, man, you’re an open book.”
“Madre de—” His mutter went too low to make out. Angry again, he pulled down two sheets of wax paper and laid them out, slapped the tortillas in place, two thick, and used an iron spatula to scrape up the meat and dump a load on each. Then he sprinkled them with the questionable onion and thrust them through the window.
“So this kid, Santos, right?” I shot a blistering line of squeeze-bottle hot sauce on the first junior. “Piece of shit? The black sheep. Batshit lunatic vato outcast with—”
“Santos is a good boy!” Flaco said with suppressed fury. I ate casually while he continued. “The men of the Familia, especially the young ones, there is always trouble there. Like a shadow, it follows us. It is in our minds, you see, and a man must learn to trick his way past it or he goes away. If a young man cannot learn, it is because he has the wrong teacher. Simple. Santos is not bad.” Flaco gave me a shrewd look. “We have just not found his guide.”
“I’ll be damned.” I picked up taco number two and gestured at him with it. “You part Hindu? Cause that sounded downright Bhagwan, dude.”
“Hmm.” Flaco flashed me his grin again, but with less energy this time. “So playful. Such . . .” He looked for the right words. “So much dick in you, Darby. So much asshole.” He shook his head and turned back to the flat top. “Gomez is wise.”
I didn’t have a snappy comeback for that, so I left. The street at eleven a.m. was so different than it had been five years ago. I owned part of the block and almost every yuppie I passed averted their eyes. Some of the brave ones scowled. I scowled back every time, but it was tedious. At the end of the block, the restaurant that had replaced “mitri’s izza,” my old landlord’s failed pizza joint, was already alive with lunchtime traffic. I went in and the atmosphere washed over me in a startling way, just as it did every time.
Alcott Frond was tasteful where other bistros were uniform in their adherence to the stony code of New Portland chic. The reclaimed barn wood and art-meets-steel, exposed brick and visible but possibly fake ductwork, was not Santiago’s vision. Instead, Frond reminded me of a ’70s French movie, with Alain Delon, transvestites, and something else, something I could never quite put my finger on. But it had clean lines, tablecloths that didn’t drape, none of the waiters had beards, and there was no chalkboard special menu. It was unique, in a city that had largely sold that quality. There was a single open seat at the long bar and with a nod to the hostess I took it.
“Soda water, little bit of lemon,” I said to the bartender. His name was Rob or Bob. We knew each other enough to chat every once in a while.
“You got it.”
I felt the heat in the air against my back before he spoke. Santiago is that big.
“You on the wagon, little man?”
I turned and looked up into his wide face. “Who you callin’ little, you fruity midget?”
“C’mon then.” Santiago tossed his head in the direction of his office. “I got maybe three minutes. And some measuring tape.”
With a nod to the bartender, I took my pink glass with fruit and followed my giant business manager through the polite diners to his office, which was far nicer than mine. He closed the door behind us after a quick word with the hostess and we both sat down, Santiago at his cluttered presidential desk and me in the plush chair opposite it. He steepled his fingers.
“Delia tells me you have a stalker,” he began evenly.
“Shit.” I didn’t have it in me to try to be pissed. “I do indeed have a stalker.” I shook my head. “Went and shot my mouth off to Dessel and Pressman so they’d follow me again.”
“Good. Those two motherfuckers will find out who’s messin’ with you. Might be a little bit of a challenge when they do, but good. You better go see Nigel, though. He needs to know if the feds are back in the mix. They might try to crack him again, squeeze a little more dirt out of his head.”
“Yeah.”
“Do it today. I’ll call and book you for a visit.”
There was a knock at the door and one of the waitresses entered with a shot of espresso. Santiago thanked her warmly as he took it and I watched, smiling at his perfect elegance. When I first met him, he was working as the enforcer for a Russian criminal, and even then he’d had an air of grace. As soon as she left I went on.
“So, Oleg. Your old boss. You think any of his people may be out to even the score?”
“I would have heard about it,” Santiago said. He had big eyes that went a little smaller when he talked about his former boss. “When Delia called me, she asked the same thing. Oleg’s network is dead. The Russians seem to want to forget all about him, which means they also want to forget about you. And me. If the feds hadn’t seized all his money we’d both be in trash bags by now, but they did. There’s no angle there. What, ah—” He sat forward a little. “What about this guy you were having trouble with before I came along? Dong Ju, the Korean from San Francisco?”
“No angle there, either,” I said. “He’s in Argentina, maybe. Somewhere the feds can’t get to him.” He was in the river, dead, but Santiago didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. I did. But it’s bad manners to turn someone into an accomplice to a crime they had no hand in.
“Delia asked about our strippers.” He said it flatly, like he didn’t really want to talk about it.
“Your strippers, dude. I never go to the club, never will.”
“Prude.” He shook his head. “We make a ton of money off that place, Darby. Least you could do is stop in once in a while.”
“And do what?”
“Act like a nice guy, you arrogant little dipshit. Jesus.”
“I don’t think so.” I waved dismissively. “But you did rule that out, right?”
“As much as I could.” He shook his head again, like it was naïve to even ask. “What about your shady tattoo pals? Any weirdos there? Old customer with some kind of crazy busting out? Old employee with a grudge?”
“Always possible,” I admitted, “but unlikely. This feels like something else.”
“I’m here for you. I don’t want to put anyone in the trunk, but if push comes to shove.” He let that sink in.
“I have to help this kid bury his dog tomorrow,” I said, changing the subject. “Gomez’s nephew. Supposed to give him some kind of good advice, too. He’s maybe a year out of juvie, they don’t want him getting used to it.”
“Hm.” Santiago sipped fr
om the little cup and considered. He’d done time before he worked for the Russian. “That is a real danger. They like to turn the kids early. Get ’em used to the system, think of it as a way of life. Free labor. It’s a modern slave racket.”
“Gomez said the same thing. Fuck that.”
“What do you plan on telling him?”
“I was hoping you might have some ideas, actually.”
“What, because I’ve done time? Or because I’m out now and I have a good life?” Santiago tilted his head. “Not gonna be that easy, Darby. Gomez wants you to do this because he thinks you have something in your head the kid might be able to use. He didn’t ask me, homie. So don’t go looking around in my head for your answer. You ask Delia? You did. Of course you did.”
“Yeah. No dice.”
“Huh. You hungry?”
“Nope. Just ate. I guess now I have to go see Nige and then I’m supposed to go carry on and make a scene for the tail I have.”
“Why is that, exactly? Not that they won’t enjoy it.”
“The dog in question is frozen. Gomez has it in his freezer and I have to smuggle it out tomorrow morning. My getting too loaded to drive home tonight is all part of Delia’s master plan.”
“Then it’s good that you’re going to see Nigel after this,” he said distastefully. “Put anyone in a drinking mood. But when you get back, don’t park in the lot. We’re booked solid tonight and I need every space for—”
“Take it up with Delia,” I interrupted.
“I will.” He finished his espresso and rose. “Speaking of Delia, how’re we doing on the wedding? She get her famous chicken yet?”
I froze. “What the hell are you talking about, Santiago?”
He laughed and shook his head one last time. “Ask her yourself. But I expect to see you for dinner at nine, before you get too loaded to drive home. Agreed?”