Desperado

by Manuel Ramos

  “You got more dirt that needs to be uncovered, Gus. I’m going to dig. We aren’t through, not by a long shot.” He did the fingers-pointing-at-his-eyes-then-at-me thing. “I’m still watching you.”

  “You gonna join me in prison, detective? You and I are done for a while. I’ll see you next year.”

  “You and me have just started. I got something to say to the judge today about you and your pals and your business with Lorenzo Ortiz. Even if your lawyer worked something out, I’m gonna say my piece, and I’ll be waiting for you when you get out. Remember that, Gus. I’m waiting for you.”

  Reese kicked my shin and I doubled over. He turned his back to me and walked into the courtroom.

  A lot of good that did him. The deal was set. Móntez had assured me of that. The District Attorney accepted that Jerome and I had been forced into participating in the hotel blood bath in order to defend Corrine, Isabel and ourselves, and no one was all that upset that I didn’t prevent the execution of Lorenzo Ortiz. In fact, Lorenzo’s death was a big plus in the negotiations, according to Móntez.

  “The killing of Ortiz broke the dam. People you wouldn’t expect are telling their stories about how the Butcher and his gang did them wrong. So many arrests, it’s a defense attorney’s dream come true. Even Artie’s partner, Ray Olivas, was brought in by the cops, for questioning, as they put it.”

  “I hope they made him sweat.”

  Móntez shrugged. “Don’t know how that’ll turn out. They did charge that real estate guy, Twittle. Turns out he and Ortiz were tighter than Cheech and Chong.”

  “Everything’s copasetic? All worked out? Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Montez said.

  “Artie Baca? Remember him? Anyone ever gonna do anything about his killing?”

  Móntez nodded. “They all think it was Ortiz, but there’s nothing concrete to pin on him. Not about that killing, at least. They know he tried to muscle in on Artie’s business and his property developments, and that Artie resisted. They figure that’s enough of a motive for a guy like the Butcher. The DA will close that file with a memo about Ortiz. Then it turns into a cold case. It’s not complete but it’s all Artie is going to get out of the justice system.”

  “The cops go along with that, too?”

  Móntez scratched his mustache. “Yeah, except for your buddy Paul Reese. His file will never be closed on that case, but he’s got no leads and his partner wants to move on. He’s sick and tired of you. He told me.” He narrowed his eyes and stared through me. “Everything’s getting hung on Ortiz.”

  Still, there was too much blood and too many headlines and more than enough Mexican Embassy posturing to let Jerome and me off the hook completely. It came down to another choice for me and I did what I thought had to be done. I took the fall as long as Jerome did not have to catch any heat—and I insisted on a guarantee. Mexico got its half-pound of flesh, the DA could close his file and the world became a better place with Lorenzo Ortiz dead and Gus Corral on his way to prison.

  The two cops could squeal and squawk all they wanted. I would do time, no doubt about that, but not for murder, not for racketeering, not for conspiracy to steal the blessed tilma, not even for standing by and watching a hopeless Misti Ortiz kill her brother Lorenzo. No, I was becoming a convict because I had let Mr. Cool, Artie Baca, talk me into his freaky scheme. I told myself that I owed the time I would have to serve, if only for being such a pendejo when it came to Artie. Forget about what I was really guilty of.

  I kept coming back to the one inescapable truth—it was all my fault. I was the one to blame for Corrine’s and Isabel’s trip through hell, the split between Jerome and me, and the Artie thing. All on me.

  The craziness started early, the night after Artie visited me at Sylvia’s shop when he talked me into acting as a go-between for him and Misti. The thousand dollars had tempted me and I fell for his rap, even though it came off wrong the way he explained it. I jumped over the edge when I should have sat back and enjoyed the view. I thought we worked out our plan to pay off Misti and make sure she understood there was only one payment for her and any attempt to extract more cash from Artie would be met with resistance and cops.

  Yeah, so I was surprised when he called me again later that night. He was desperate and angry. I shouldn’t have agreed to meet him. And yet, I said yes when he demanded that I come over to one of his projects. I’m not sure why I let him get to me again, like so many times before. That night I told myself that I had changed my mind and I wanted out of my partnership with Artie. I thought I would tell him to find another sucker.

  “There are two condos in the building,” Artie instructed. “They’re not quite finished. No one will be there. We’ll have privacy. I’ll let you in through the alley door of number 3202. We have to talk some more, Gus. There’s been a change.”

  “It’s past midnight, Artie. Can’t this wait? This isn’t a good idea.”

  “Now, Gus. Right now. Ortiz is up to something, we have to stop her.”

  “What do you mean? What could she be up to?”

  “Get over here. We need to talk, now.” I felt the strain in his voice through my cell. “Okay, okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

  I drove over to the new condos, several blocks from Sylvia’s shop but still in the North Side. The streets were quiet and I encountered only an occasional car on my way to the meeting. The neighborhood can be like that—quiet and peaceful, or rowdy and loud, and often at the same time, if that makes any sense. Like that night. The sky was clear, the moon was yellow, and yet there was trouble tumbling down.

  I walked from my car along a construction fence until I came to a brick sidewalk that circled the condos. A six-foot half-finished concrete wall bordered the path. The section of the wall that was finished had been sealed and dyed to look like adobe. Wooden frames marked where the rest of the concrete would be poured. I followed the path to the back and knocked on door number 3202. Artie opened it immediately. He nodded and quickly turned away, back into the room. His face was flushed and his skin glistened with sweat. His lip looked swollen. His eyes were yellow and his hands shook—no more Mr. Cool. Words flowed from Artie like blood from a knife wound.

  “They want in on my business. That bitch Misti Ortiz and some ugly Mexican, her brother. They just left, right before I called you. They came by and the guy slapped me around. He said he could kill me but he’d rather go to the cops because his sister is under age.” He caught his breath. “They’ll kill Linda and my kids. He wants fifty thousand now, a down payment he called it, and then a payment every week—twenty percent of what my businesses make.”

  He paced around the small entryway to the condo and rarely looked at me. He spewed the story of his shakedown.

  “He said he would get me cheap labor and materials, and take care of permits with bribes. He guaranteed no problems. But he’ll ruin me if I don’t play along.” He punched his hands together. “They said they were coming back for the money, here tonight. That’s when we finish them off.”

  It would have been easy to say, it’s your own damn fault. “Take it easy, Artie.”

  “The dirty little bitch. I’ll kill her, smash her pretty little face, cut . . . ”

  His mouth hung open. He looked stunned, overwhelmed. His adulterous fantasy had busted open on him and threatened to sink him and everything he worked for.

  “Artie, now’s the time to go to the cops. Let them deal with this. You can have her arrested and the threats will stop. It’s the only thing you can . . . ”

  “No fucking way,” he shouted at me. He leaned into my face, tight fists at his sides, his jaw bones mechanically clenching and unclenching. I stared into red eyes and a grotesque smile. “You think I’m going to prison because of her? For rape? They have me by the balls. There’s only one thing I can do. We’re taking care of this trash. You and me, tonight.”

  He reached into a box on the floor and came up with a gun in each hand. He tried to give m
e one. I refused to take it. He dropped one gun, grabbed my wrist and squeezed. His grip was hot and solid and he forced my hand open. He stuck the gun on my palm and closed my fingers around the handle.

  “This won’t work, Artie. I’m not doing it. You can expose them—it’s extortion, blackmail. Plus the threats to harm you and your family. You can’t . . . ”

  “Listen, you piece of shit. You’re going to do what I tell you to do or your pathetic existence is over. Remember, I know what you did that night we broke into the drug store, I know you killed that guy . . . ”

  He was wrong but I wasn’t about to correct him. In Artie’s crazy brain he thought he recounted reality and that his twisted version of what had happened so many years before was the truth. He blocked out that he was the one who killed the bum who barged in on us going through the pills and powders and boxes of drugs.

  We were less than a year out of high school and I thought I was desperate for money, excitement or something. Artie came to me with proposals and I went along, including trying to get rich quick with stolen drugs. We thought we were outlaws, desperadoes we called ourselves. It was all a dangerous joke, until that one night.

  Artie smashed the homeless guy’s head before I could do anything to stop him. I panicked and ran, leaving Artie to clean up his mess. The story in the papers had the cops concluding that two men from a nearby shelter broke into the drug store, argued about the take, and one killed the other. They even found a confused and psychotic man who slept along the banks of Cherry Creek to confess to the killing.

  That same week Artie and I were arrested for a previous break-in where we had been caught on tape. We spent a month in the county jail before our public defender worked out a misdemeanor charge that set us both free. We were young idiots without a record, and the take in the burglary had been minimal. Our defender told the judge that we had learned our lesson, that we were harmless, and that there wasn’t any reason to think that we’d ever be back in court. The judge bought it and Artie and I were given a second chance that neither of us deserved.

  The last time I spoke to Artie before he called on me at Sylvia’s store had been when we both walked out of the jail.

  “Stay away from me, Artie,” I had said.

  “Don’t worry about that, Gus. I promise you, you’re the last guy I ever want to see.”

  We never mentioned the homeless man. We never tried to explain it to ourselves.

  He had kept his promise until the hot stuffy day he walked into Sylvia’s Superb Shoppe and talked me into helping him with Misti Ortiz.

  Artie stopped his tirade against Misti and me and anyone else who would try to jerk him around. He slouched, almost bent in half from whatever heavy load he carried. We stood in the entrance to the condo, a semicircle of walls that merged into a hallway that led back into the living areas. A bare bulb hung over our heads, and unfinished drywall surrounded us. A pile of tools took up space in one of the corners. Paint cans, rags and oily boards cluttered the floor. The place would be worth a fortune when it was finished but that night it looked empty and minimal, unfinished and cheap.

  He picked up the gun he had dropped.

  Artie aimed at my left eye. He said, “You have a choice, Gus. What’s it going to be?”

  He was asking me if I chose to go along with him, again, or to take a bullet. But in that stark light and wrecked space, with the photo of Misti Ortiz swirling in my head, I took it a different way. I thought he offered me another choice. The desperate, pleading look in his eyes emphasized the options. The seconds that turned into hours that turned into years while he held his gun on me and did nothing convinced me that Artie saw that he had reached his end.

  “What happened, Artie?” I asked. “How did it go wrong for you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all gone to hell. My business, my marriage, everything. I’ll never survive this . . . I’m done.” His hands shook but he kept his gun pointed at me.

  “You had it all, Artie.”

  Light returned to his eyes. “I still do. I’ve taken care of my family. Anything happens to me—anything—Linda gets it all. She and the kids will be all right, no matter what. Ortiz and her brother can’t touch them. I’m too smart for those pigs.”

  The light went out. “It’s only me. Only me.”

  I slowly raised my gun. He stared at my hand. He slumped even more. His lips trembled. The gun in his hand quivered. Tears and mucus dripped off his chin. He moved his eyes from me and looked at the incomplete walls and the construction debris of his last business venture.

  We shared the room with ghosts.

  “You can’t do it,” he said. “It’s not in you. You’re not me.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  I leveled the gun and shot him.

  I picked up his gun, avoided him and his blood, pushed the door open with my foot, and left without touching anything. I waited a few seconds outside the door. No one approached. A dog barked from the darkness but there were no other sounds except for my hurried breathing and hard-working heart.

  I drove a few blocks to another construction site, all the while listening for the cops. I dropped the guns in the wooden frame of an unfinished foundation and prayed that the concrete would be poured soon and the guns forever buried. Then I returned to Sylvia’s back room and waited in vain for the cops.

  After that I did what I could to throw off the police and get them interested in Lorenzo Ortiz. But Reese and Robbins were determined to nail me, maybe they were too smart after all—they knew something was up with me but they couldn’t prove it. My contrived chess moves only stirred up more trouble than I had anticipated, and put the people I loved at risk.

  25

  Móntez approached. He carried a battered briefcase and he looked old—gray, wrinkled and a slight stoop in his posture. But his smile was diamonds. Trailing him were my sisters, Isabel, Sylvia, Shoe and Ice. Even Jerome showed up—I told him I’d appreciate his visits. He didn’t say he would make any but he didn’t deny it either. None of them smiled and they looked way too serious. I stood and followed Móntez through the courtroom door.

  I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I deserved my sentence and more. My sisters and friends didn’t agree but they didn’t know the whole story.

  The homeless guy had started to show up in my nightmares even though that was all Artie. Misti Ortiz was there, too, and I wondered how she coped while a crew of state doctors tried to undo the years of damage caused by her brother. I didn’t hold it against her that she already had the tilma when she gave me the gun she hoped I would use to kill Lorenzo.

  I didn’t know what happened to the fake tilma, or whether it really was a fake. The archbishop’s cover story was too convenient for the Church. I promised myself that when I had the money and the time, I would visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and stare long and hard at the mysterious piece of maguey cloth. I’d be looking for stains from Lorenzo’s blood.

  I had no problem also imagining that the tilma ended up with Corrine, stored away with the skull of Pancho Villa.

  The thing about Artie—who’s to say it wasn’t what he wanted after all? It sure looked like it to me that night at the condos. But then, I’d been wrong before. Only Artie knew for sure and he wasn’t talking to anyone.

  I focused on Corrine’s favorite slogan.

  Only the strong survive.