by Manuel Ramos
She almost dropped the glass. She turned away quickly and helped the two guys who couldn’t seem to get enough of her show. I picked up a bad vibe off Jackie and it bothered me. We went back a long ways and I recognized her signals. I sipped on my beer and out of the corner of my eye I could see her looking at me through her heavily accessorized lashes. Again, I felt foolish. This was not like Jackie.
She reached under the bar and grabbed a bottle of what I was drinking. She opened it and brought it to me although I hadn’t ordered another.
“Let’s have a smoke, Gus. I need one bad.”
Now we had moved into strange. For one thing, Jackie knew I didn’t smoke. For another, although the anti-smoking ordinance meant that all smoking had to be done outside the premises, I couldn’t remember when that particular law had ever been enforced in the Holiday, especially during the day shift when there wasn’t anyone in the bar, to speak of.
But I went with it. She snapped her fingers at the women playing pool. “I’ll be right back, Lori. Come get me if anyone comes in.”
One of the women shouted back, “Whatever.”
I followed Jackie’s sashaying hips into the alley.
She lit a smoke and dragged on it, all nervous. I waited. Like most of the women in my life—Sylvia, the prime example—Jackie loved drama. Jackie could emote, that’s for sure.
When she finished sucking the life out of half the smoke, she whispered, “I shouldn’t say anything. But we been friends forever, Gus. You backed me up when I needed it. You can’t ever let on that you got this from me. I’ll call you a damn liar. I mean it, Gus. You swear, on your mother’s grave, Gus? On your mother’s grave.”
Her face disappeared in the twilight and the glowing tip of her cigarette didn’t give off enough light for me to see how serious she was, so I took her at her word.
“Okay, Jackie. I swear. I never heard nothing from you. Which so far is the truth.”
“Jessie Salazar was in last night.”
I heard that name and I wanted a cigarette.
“I thought he was in the pen,” I said. “Limon or Cañon City. Supermax.”
“He did five years. Doesn’t seem that long, does it? He came in last night. I had to fill in for Ritchie, he got sick or something or I wouldn’t even know Salazar was around. He showed up with his old crew. Dressed in a suit, smelling like Macy’s perfume counter. Talking loud and mean. Same old crazy Jessie. He said things about your family, and you. That chicken-shit stuff between the Corrals and the Salazars. He said the great payback had begun, that’s what he called it, but that there was more hell to pay. He talks like that, remember?”
I felt like someone had punched my gut.
“He never got over that Corrine testified against him,” Jackie said. “I didn’t think anything about it last night. That happens in here all the time. Guys blow off steam then the next day forget all about it. More so if the guy just got out of the joint. But when you said someone broke into Corrine’s house, I put two and two together. Salazar’s that kind of punk. He could have trashed Corrine’s house, easy, but if he did, that’s just the beginning. You got to tell her, and you watch your back, Gus. He always thought you should have stopped her, controlled Corrine. He blames you for him doing time.”
Jackie stomped on her cigarette. “I better get back to work. Cuídate, Gus. Be careful.”
I gave her a weak smile and walked away through the alley. I stopped and turned and waved at Jackie. “Thanks,” I said. She blew a kiss at me.
Crazy Jessie had been my number one problem for most of my life. He played the role of school bully and then the neighborhood gangster. Eventually he passed through reform school and the state penitentiary. I tangled with him several times when we were younger. My mother and his mother were rivals when they were low-riding North Side cholas, and I’d heard many stories about parties gone bad, fights on school yards and in nightclubs. That nonsense just kept on when they had their own kids. Corrine and I often brushed up against Jessie and his brothers and sisters, not always coming out on top. But we held our own.
About six years ago Corrine was having dinner with her latest honey when Jessie stormed into La Cocina restaurant waving a handgun. He terrorized the customers, pistol-whipped the owner and took cash, wallets, purses and jewelry. Jessie was strung out bad on his drug of choice. Corrine talked to the cops and identified Jessie without hesitation, but her date denied recognizing the gunman. Hell, he wasn’t sure that there had even been a disturbance. Didn’t matter to Corrine. She didn’t see it as snitching. She had to protect her family and her turf even if that meant speaking up in court and pointing her finger at Jessie.
I was proud of her but also a little bit nervous. We all relaxed when they turned Jessie over to the Department of Corrections. We thought he would be gone for a very long time. Five years didn’t seem long enough, but then I never understood the so-called justice system.
I knew where to find Jessie. But I didn’t know if I wanted to find him. I had to warn Corrine, and I gave serious consideration to forgetting about Panchito. The thug might have left us alone after he vented on Corrine’s property and he found the skull. I could see him shaking his head about his discovery in Corrine’s closet, thinking that the Corrals were way weirder than he’d always assumed.
I called Corrine but the service was weak. I got a busy signal, but that wasn’t right. I should have connected to her voice mail. I debated where to go—Corrine’s or Jessie’s.
To get to Jessie’s crib I had to drive in the opposite direction from Corrine. His small house overlooked the interstate from a hill where several new condos were going up. Yuppie hell, Sylvia called it. The house had been the Salazar home forever and it always had been a dump. With the wave of newcomers and the construction frenzy, the shack must have doubled or tripled in value since Jessie did his time, although Jessie would never know what to do with that piece of information. One of his deadbeat sisters technically owned the place, but as sure as I knew that Jessie’s urine stained my sister’s carpet, I also knew he lived in that house.
I could have turned it over to the police. That didn’t happen in my world. Where I came from, the cops weren’t the first line of defense. I grew up constantly squaring off against cabrones like Jessie. Every lousy week another clown would challenge my manhood and I would have to beat or get beaten. The cops did not help. Back then, I did not want to explain to my old man why my sister came home in tears and I didn’t do a damn thing about the bastard who slapped her around. The payback was my responsibility. I learned early about waking up in a cell in the City Jail, staring down the ugly face of what my life could become if I didn’t do the right thing. Not the cops, teachers or friends. Me. I had to do the right thing.
I stopped for gas and used the restroom at the 7-Eleven. Stalling, for sure. Driving to Jessie’s took a while but eventually I got there.
I parked about a block away and did my best to look inconspicuous. A few of the projects had crews working late, overtime. Steel beams stretched to the sky and white concrete slabs waited. Trucks, earth movers and bull dozers parked everywhere. I played ball in these lots when I was a kid, made out with girls and drank beer and shake-em-up with my pals. When I was alone I fantasized about Isabel Scutti. No one who ever lived in the new buildings would know that or care about those things. I hardly cared myself.
I made my way up the alley behind Jessie’s house. I picked up a piece of rebar, two feet long, not thinking about how inadequate it was for the job I had to do. The night had a gray tint from the construction lights. Hip-hop blasted from Jessie’s back yard. I crawled behind a dumpster and peeked through the chain-link fence.
Jessie sprawled on the dirt. An ugly hole in his head leaked blood and a messy soup of other stuff. I admit I was relieved.
The guy standing over the body, holding a gun, looked like a junior version of Jessie, except he was alive. Another worthless gangbanger, extracting his own revenge for whatever Jessie might hav
e inflicted, maybe in that back yard that evening, maybe in a jail cell that was too small for the both of them, maybe years ago for something that Jessie couldn’t remember.
I guessed no one heard the shot. The construction noise could have drowned it out or the rap music might have covered up the crime. Sometimes gunshots have no sound on the North Side.
The guy spit on Jessie. A strange thought came to me. “DNA, dummy.” He tucked the gun in the back waist of his pants and jumped over the fence. I inched closer to the dumpster and my luck held. He walked the other way, whistling.
I swung open the gate and tried to sneak into the back yard. I acted because I had to. Corrine and Panchito were counting on me. For a sec I held back. I didn’t want to end up like Jessie. I shook off my hesitation and moved. I did what I had to do, like always. No one else was in the house. I realized that whoever had capped Jessie would have made sure of that. I looked all over that yard, except at the oozing body at my feet.
Panchito perched on a concrete block. A lime green sombrero with red dingle balls balanced on his slick shiny head and a droopy cigar dangled from his mouth hole. I was embarrassed for him. I removed the hat and cigar and picked him up. A dirty pillowcase spread out on the ground. I wrapped Panchito in it.
It was a long walk back to my car and a long drive to Corrine’s. I never heard any sirens, and no one stopped me. I drove in silence thinking about what had happened, trying to piece together coincidence and luck. I never thought so hard in my life.
My luck had been amazing and I toyed with the idea of going back to the 7-Eleven for a lottery ticket. But I wasn’t the lucky type. Never won anything in my life. I thought even harder about what had happened.
Corrine slowly opened the door. She let me in but didn’t say anything. I set the bundle on her kitchen table.
She smiled.
“How’d you find out about Jessie? Who was that guy?” I blurted my questions as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to give her time to make up something.
“You’re the smart one. Figure it out yourself.”
“Jackie. She called you, told you what she told me. Said I was probably going over to Jessie’s.”
“Close. She said you were on your way to get killed by that son-of-a-bitch.”
“The shooter? What’s his story?”
“You remember him. Charley Maestas. He lived here about six months, a while back. Too young for me, turned out. He owed Jessie for a lot of grief, something awful about his sister, but he had to wait for Jessie to do his time. I let Charley know that Jessie was out and where he could find him and the rest was up to him. I might have said that Jessie was getting ready to book, so he had to deal with him tonight. I thought the least Charley could do was give you some help if you got over your head. I guess Charley took care of the whole thing?” She asked but she didn’t really want an answer. “Only the strong survive,” she said.
I shrugged. It turned out to be simple. Corrine and one of the men in her sad love life. North Side justice often was simple. Direct, bloody and simple.
My older sister picked up Panchito and gave him a quick wipe with the pillowcase. She carried him to the closet, dug out the cooler, placed the skull in it and shut the door.
I walked out the back and I hollered, “I like the new rug.”
6
“Is this something stupid again?” Corrine said.
I hated when she used that word around me. “Don’t call me stupid. In fact, you can go to hell.”
Her eyes squeezed together. “Easy, little brother. If the cops are jammin’ you, you need my help. It’s always been that way.”
Obviously, but I didn’t have it in me to admit it. “I can deal with it. Like you say, only the strong survive.”
“And that’s you? A person needs smarts, too. Be strong, and smart.”
I should have given in. I didn’t. “I can deal with this.”
“Okay, Gus. Let’s start over. How about lunch? I didn’t have breakfast. I’ll eat and you tell me what the hell you got yourself into this time.”
“Sure, we can talk. Just don’t get all up on me. I don’t want the hassle.”
We decided to eat at Chencha’s Taquería, about a block away. We agreed that we had enough time before the weather hit, at least until we made it to the restaurant. Gusts of wind sporadically twirled paper, leaves and cigarette butts around us as we walked. The western sky turned to gun barrel gray but the rain hadn’t made it to the North Side yet. I smelled the rain coming and made the mistake of telling Corrine.
“Rain doesn’t have a smell,” she said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“I’m smelling something, and it’s the same thing I smell every time before it rains. How do you explain that?”
“Do I look like a weatherman?”
“Then how do you know that rain doesn’t have a smell?”
“Because I don’t smell anything except the garbage in that trash can, the dog shit on the curb and your B.O.”
I let her jabber on with only a few grunts from me. We stopped at the taquería and sat at one of the rickety tables, ordered our food and tried to act like a regular brother and sister.
Chencha had redecorated. Several framed black and white photographs of early Denver hung on each wall. The same mass-produced pictures greeted tourists in downtown bars and restaurants. I hadn’t expected them in an old North Side favorite. The poster-sized photos showed scenes from the city’s history that recalled Wild West legends and boom town excitement: a trolley rolling down Larimer Street, a well-dressed crowd under the arch at Union Station, a horse dragging a wagon in snow in front of the Capitol. I would not have been surprised to see portraits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or H.A.W. Tabor and his main squeeze Baby Doe. No photographs of Mexicans. Guess we weren’t around when the photographer set up his equipment. We were probably picking crops for shipping on the next train, or lugging silver from Tabor’s mines, or standing lookout at the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout.
“What are you smiling about?” Corrine said.
“Nothing. Just enjoying the company. I got hungry.”
“You’re a strange one, brother. I ever tell you that?”
Corrine and Maxine were my best friends but they didn’t know me. They thought they had me figured out, but how could they? The puzzle of Gus Corral was all illusion—disappearing fog on a cracked mirror. My sisters looked for answers about their brother that didn’t exist.
I had disappointed them for years. They often told me how they expected a lot from me because of my grades in school and my arrogant talk about what I wanted to do with my life. In my teen years I played with the idea of an engineer or scientist. I could handle math, numbers made sense. Their logic came easy. But the dreams and ambitions from several lifetimes ago never panned out. The years after high school slipped by almost unnoticed by me. I lacked whatever made others succeed. I couldn’t find the secret that would move me to the next level. I failed at work, my marriage, and in my own head. Strange as it sounds, I sometimes blamed Artie Baca for my failures.
On the other hand, my sisters jumped all over life and, each in their own style, beat it into submission. Corrine didn’t let anything get in the way of her having what she wanted, including men. She poured her heart’s blood into neighborhood projects, volunteer work and having a good time. Flamboyant, that was Corrine.
Max tried to fly under the radar. She couldn’t pull that off. She wanted to lose herself in the crowd, but that would never happen. Despite her built-in reluctance, she succeeded in whatever she tried, from computer tech to managing a head banger band. She enjoyed the company of several boyfriends and girlfriends. Max had “popularity” written all over her lifestyle, which remained a mystery to me and something I’d never dug into too deeply. Not because I didn’t care. Her world blurred gender lines, reversed accepted roles and shattered expectations, but those things were irrelevant to me as long as Max was happy.
When Corrine and I had
taken a few bites out of our tacos—pollo and carnitas for me, asada and hamburger for Corrine—she started with her questions.
“What do you know about Artie getting shot? What are you even doing with a guy like Baca?”
I kept eating. One thing about Chencha Hernández is that she makes the kind of salsa that will cauterize your tongue but you can’t stop eating it until you are about to pass out. I chugged Chencha’s strong iced tea. It didn’t help.
“Well, Gus? What did those cops want with you?”
I couldn’t ignore her, seeing as how she was about six inches from my face. I put down the tea and dug out the photograph. I handed it to Corrine.
“My, how decadent. So bourgeois.” Corrine could talk like that without being aware of how phony she sounded. “Artie give you this? Who’s the girl? The cops ask you about her?”
“No, no. They don’t know about her. At least they don’t know about this picture. I got it from Artie. He came by the other day, talking about his trouble with the young lady.”
“Don’t tell me. She’s knocked up and wanted Artie to pay for the kid.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But, no, that ain’t it. She just wanted money, period. Seems there’s a video that exposes much more of Artie.”
“Blackmail? Really? You don’t hear that one much anymore.”
She chomped into her taco and chewed. The salsa did its job and she reached for her glass of water. Her eyes welled up. After she swallowed, she said, “If the cops don’t know about this picture and the girl, then what were they talking to you about?”
“They found a check on Artie’s body, made out to me. For a thousand dollars.”
She dropped her fork.
I explained Artie’s visit and the job he wanted me to do. I emphasized the thousand dollars. I went over how Artie and I sketched out the drop, and I made sure she knew my reservations about the plan. In fact, I had decided not to do it. I added that Artie hadn’t talked with me since his visit.