Fifteen more minutes pass and I realize why cops prefer their stakeouts from cars. Heat. And the ability to pee into their empty coffee cups. It also dawns on me that maybe I’m not cut out for this type of work. It’s the lack of movement, I think. The act of not acting.
“So move,” I say aloud, confirming what my father had often told me, that I liked the sound of my own voice too much.
Nonetheless, move I do.
TWELVE
I’m relieved to see there isn’t a sign above the doorway that reads, NO GRINGOS WELCOME, and the group steps aside as I turn in toward the door, one even reaching out quickly and pulling it open for me.
“Gracias,” I say, showing off those two years of UMass Spanish. Hell, I might even be able to order something off the menu.
“Sure thing, dude,” he replies, bringing laughter to his friends and reminding me I have another open mike scheduled for tomorrow night.
The restaurant is warm and busy, one large room with a full bar along the right-hand wall, small round tables covered in wine-colored cloth arranged in front of a small stage elevated about a foot off the floor. There’s a tall partition to the left of the stage with a built-in alcove where the waiters and waitresses enter their orders and beyond that, a swinging door that must lead to the kitchen.
Martine Andino is already onstage when I walk in, lifting a sunburst acoustic Gibson from his case. On the wall behind him is a mounted canvas ad for Modelo Especial beer. Much more dignified than the Budweiser poster. No sizzling semi-nude Latinas with impossible cleavage. I take the only open seat at the bar and I’m about to order when the woman behind the bar greets me with “Estas perdido?” which brings laughter from the patrons closest to me. I don’t know what it is about me, but apparently I bring joy to the Latin community just by showing up.
“Uno Budweiser, por favor,” I manage. What can I tell you, I’m advertising’s easiest mark.
The bartender leans both her elbows on the bar in front of me. Her black eyebrows are a symmetrical masterpiece, her full lips shiny like pink tin. Andino spins the Gibson deftly, the move like a seasoned gunfighter spinning his revolver and coming up with his finger on the trigger.
“I didn’t ask you what you wanted to drink,” the bartender says. “I asked if you were lost.”
“He’s not lost.” The man with dark hair from outside fills the newly vacated seat beside me. “He’s just taking in the neighborhood. Perhaps a little advance scouting for Google? Maybe Starbucks? How are you, my friend?”
“I’m good. You?”
“No complaints. Am I right?”
“About what?”
“You new to the neighborhood? Looking for a spot for a nice coffee shop, maybe? A Chipotle.” The man purposely mispronouncing Chipotle to sound like Chip-Otle.
“I grew up two miles from here,” I say.
“Brookline?”
“Other way. And I used to work at the Hi-Lo on Centre.”
“In which case you might have carried groceries for my abuela.” The man smiles warmly. “Xiomara. Where are your manners, the man ordered a drink.”
Xiomara doesn’t look happy with my change of fortune but brings me a frosty Budweiser and sets it down on a matching coaster. It doesn’t come with a side order of hot Latina, though there are plenty in the restaurant, a lot of dark hair colored in various shades of pink and copper. In the last seat of the bar a young woman with bright red hair and a haltertop that barely halts anything stares at us openly with a slightly bemused smile on her face. She’s not quite Cleopatra, but in this neighborhood, she’s sure to launch a thousand Camaros.
Onstage, Andino makes a couple of twangy adjustments, his fingers adorned with heavy silver rings, turquoise and amethyst, skulls and saints. There’s a tall glass near his weathered snakeskin cowboy boots and he picks it up and tilts it our way in greeting before taking a sip.
I’ve either been made or Andino knows my host. “This your place?” I say.
“Yes.” The man extends his hand and we shake, exchanging names. Andino watches me and Arturo Moreno closely over his drink, sets it down, and unrolls his sleeves to expose a burst of tattoos that rival Zero’s, but with a more Latin/Christian/Death theme. “Is it to your liking?” Moreno asks.
“It’s cozy,” I say. “And live music is always good.”
I’m about to say something else when Xiomara clicks something on a black electronic board behind the bar, the stage lights rotating and bathing Andino in color. In response, Andino sits upright, tilts his hat down as if he’s about to take a nap, and opens with an elaborate rasgueado, a finger-strumming technique commonly associated with flamenco guitar music. It also happens to be where my knowledge of flamenco music ends.
There’s no microphone, but instantly the room quiets, the clinking of silverware ceasing, the busboys no longer collecting plates off the tables. In the beam of colored light wisps of smoke drift onstage from the outside smokers, the only sound now Andino tapping his foot to establish a beat and then singing in Spanish, his head tilted down, not looking at the crowd.
“Holy shit,” I say, too loudly, which makes Moreno laugh and Andino smile as he continues in a smoke-sonorous voice that fills the room and sets it back in motion—no conversations, but the waitresses and busboys hustling around, dishes being collected, drinks served.
Andino sings:
“La droga inunda sus calles,
y el congreso lo sabe,
Pero como es buen negocio,
a los güeritos les vale.”
His fingers move effortlessly along the neck of the guitar, causing the muscles in his snake-inked forearms to shift and stir, and now I notice thick braided scars, like rope on the back of one hand, shiny skin like melted wax, the type you see on burn victims. Under the lights it’s hard to tell how old Andino is, but at least hard into his fifties with lacquer black hair and thundercloud eyes that lighten or darken depending on how the stage lights hit him.
Moreno leans into me so he doesn’t have to raise his voice. “Do you understand the song?”
“No. But I get the vibe. It’s some kind of ode.”
“Yes, exactly. You know narcocorrido?”
“They’re songs that glorify the Mexican drug bosses.”
“Yes.” Moreno seems impressed.
“Is that what he’s playing?”
“Of a sort. It’s quite an honor to have someone so well known play here.”
“Unscheduled.” I point my beer to the playbill of the week’s acts taped behind the bar. Andino isn’t on it. But if I come back tomorrow night it looks like I’d be treated to a dueling death match between accordion players.
“Yes. What’s the word in English … preempted? He has preempted our scheduled performer tonight. But there are no hard feelings. Señor Andino is quite well known in Mexico. It is a great coup to have him in my humble establishment.”
I can see why. Andino continues to play, singing in a haunted voice, his hat tilted to shade his eyes, totally immersed in his music. I don’t know much about narcocorrido music beyond being able to identify it when I hear it, but I do know that narco bosses in Mexico commissioned songs to be written about them as lasting tributes, aware that their exploits would probably be short-lived. Who was Andino paying tribute to? Arturo Moreno?
Definitely not the young striker who comes in behind the bar and leans across to whisper in Moreno’s ear. Up close I notice that his elaborate pompadour also includes the modern twist of shaved sides with lightning bolts and arrows pointing skyward like instructions for the barber as to which way the tornado should flow. I also notice just how short Elvis really is, the hair and the boots adding five inches at least. And yet still not enough to reach Moreno’s ear without standing on his toes.
Andino brings the song to a close, the guitar fading until there’s only the echo of his voice lingering past the last note before being lost to applause and shout-outs I don’t have to be bilingual to understand.
“D
id you like it?” Moreno waves Elvis away as Andino tips his hat and sips from his drink.
“It was beautiful. Maybe even more because I didn’t understand the words; it just frees me up to catch the tone.”
“Yes, exactly.” He taps his heart with his fist. “You only absorb the feeling.”
“Hey, this might sound like a strange question, but you ever do anything here besides music?”
“Such as…?”
“I don’t know, comedy? Stand-up.” I try to think of a funny Mexican comic for reference but can only come up with George Lopez, and I’m pretty sure Freddie Prinze was Puerto Rican.
“You tell jokes?” Moreno laughs even though I hadn’t told a joke yet.
“Just starting out,” I say. “Practicing.”
“Okay, so practice. Tell me a joke.”
This is not an uncommon occurrence when I tell people what I’m working toward. As if every comic is some kind of joke vending machine they could slide a quarter in and get a funny line out. “What kind?” I say.
“Oh, I don’t know. Like a gringo walks into a Mexican bar after taking pictures outside.”
Moreno and I smile at each other for too long, neither of us meaning it. I finally go with: “What can I tell you, from outside your place has a glow. I was trying to capture it.”
“And did you?”
I shrug, knowing any more words would be wasted, having felt, a few moments after Young Elvis had left the building, that the room had already tightened on me, a subtle shift I would have picked up sooner if I hadn’t been distracted by Andino’s talent and now by the static building again between my ears.
“If it’s really that much of a problem I’ll delete them.”
I wince into the lightning reverb, a Letters to Cleo song already in my rotation starting to come in clearer: “Here and Now,” Kay Hanley filling me in on how she’s spending her Sunday morning.
I drop a five on the bar and lean for my bag, which I’d stashed under my seat, but Moreno places his foot on it. “Don’t,” he says. “Come. We’ll discuss this outside. Do you smoke weed, Zesty, or is that a foolish question?”
I look around the bar. Onstage Andino eyes me placidly, tuning his guitar for another song; Elvis is planted at the front door, no doubt the crew of smokers out front in case I hurdle him.
“Twist my arm,” I reply, hoping nothing’s lost in translation.
THIRTEEN
We walk behind the partitioned wait station and through the swinging door to the kitchen, not a single member of the kitchen staff looking up as we tread our way on slick black rubber mats and out the side door into the crook of the alley.
Moreno chirps a quick whistle and two men posted on each side of the bend draw in closer, forming a small huddle. Elvis to my right strikes a flame to a joint that smells like a skunk bathing in Chanel No. 5, takes a hit to get it going, and passes it clockwise to one of his crew members as I whistle the chorus from “Pass the Dutchie (on the left hand side)” by Musical Youth.
“You’re a fuckin’ clown,” Elvis informs me, recognizing the tune.
“Thanks. I prefer the term ‘jester.’”
When a fifth member of the golf club exits the kitchen, he has my open bag with him and shows Moreno the contents.
“So it seems we have a problem.” Moreno nods solemnly.
“If it’s the gun,” the half-smoked joint reaches me, “I can totally explain.” I take a hit, drawing in deeply. “I want you to note it’s not loaded.”
Moreno lifts his eyes to the bag holder, who confirms it with a nod. “He’s got a clip, but it’s in another hold.”
“Exactly.” I exhale.
“So explain. Are you, A, the world’s dumbest assassin—”
“Whoa, hold on a—”
“Or B, a racist who believes he needs to bring a gun into every neighborhood of color for protection?”
I smoke weed because I like how it makes me feel, not as a salve or to relieve stress, though it does that for me sometimes. Only I don’t rely on it for that, or anything really. In fact, I’ve noted that pot sometimes gives me a clean-window clarity that brings on stress because it forces me to see things the way that they really are, stripping away my layers of deniability, the minutia of minor distractions that allow me to justify shelving the issues I should be confronting head-on. It’s not an overwhelming sensation like paranoia. I’m just more open to the flow, even if it exposes that golden nugget of truth, which hurts sometimes.
“What’s C?” I take another hit when Elvis stings me with a right cross, sparks exploding from my mouth and behind my eyes, the roach spinning smoke to the ground.
Wasteful.
When my eyes clear, it looks as if nothing had happened, Moreno and his men rendered to still-life models, Elvis contemplating the moon. But my lip is cut and I can taste blood with the smoke, the thick scar I carry on my inside lip from the last time I caught a beating opened up and leaking.
“Listen.” I spit blood into the alley. “This is embarrassing. I mean for me, but I’ve never seen West Side Story before. Are you supposed to be the Sharks or the Jets?”
“Maricon.” Elvis tries doubling me over with a punch to the stomach that I knife away from.
“See, that I understand.” I straighten up. “So Sharks it is.”
“Enough.” Moreno reaches into the bag and lifts the camera, his face and chest lit by the readout, clicking through all the pictures of Martine Andino that Solarte and I had taken. “Who sent you?”
“Nobody. I told you, I can explain. And Elvis, if you hit me again, I swear you’re gonna wish you died on a fuckin’ toilet.”
Moreno turns the camera around to the group, who collectively wince as they see the pictures. Striker mumbles something in Spanish until Moreno cuts him off.
“English,” he snarls. “I want our friend Zesty to understand.”
“We didn’t see him, patron. When we followed on Newbury, Harvard Square. Nada.” Only I hadn’t taken those pictures, Solarte did. And obviously she was good at what she did as I’d learned firsthand when she’d spooked me across from the Loews. The question is why were they following Andino, especially if he was coming to them tonight?
“Believe me, boss, this clown we would have spotted.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “And Moreno, I gotta tell you, this is now like officially the worst high ever.”
“So explain, then.” Moreno’s tone is diplomatic as he pops the chip out of the camera and pockets it. “Why have you been following my musical guest?”
I could ask Moreno the same question but I doubt he’d answer and I’m suddenly and acutely aware that therein lies the problem. I don’t even know the answer to his question, my don’t-ask-don’t-tell messenger ethos not serving me well here.
“No?” Moreno mugs a sad face and it brings to mind a mover who occasionally works for Zero, a quiet, bespectacled fire hydrant of a man with gentle eyes behind John Lennon glasses. I’d nicknamed him Johnny Thunder because he rarely spoke and when he did, it was in a hushed tone reminiscent of what a grief counselor might employ to comfort a struggling mourner. And if you so much as uttered a cross word or looked at him the wrong way, Johnny Thunder would punch you square in the face without warning, which probably explains why he’s never lost a bar fight in his life.
I kick Elvis square in the balls, feel a crunch of bone as I back-elbow Striker in the eye before a staccato of punches and a sharp echo of pain send me up against the brick wall, where I turtle into my rope-a-dope defense, letting my arms eat as many of the punches as I can, nearly sitting on Elvis writhing on the ground beneath my feet.
A punch that lands flush on my ear brings a ringing, tuning fork whistle and I wonder if something’s wrong with my eardrum. It hurts like hell, but fists I can deal with. The trick is to stay off the ground and away from their soccer skills.
“Let’s try this once more.” Moreno’s voice cuts off the punches. “Because perhaps we are having but a cult
ural misunderstanding, Zesty. I want you to see things from my vantage point. You’ve come to my establishment having followed my guest, obviously for days. You carry a gun, yet it’s not loaded, which for an assassin, I grant you, makes little sense. And you have no identification besides your business card, which would take five minutes to produce though it matches your shirt. Is Zesty Meyers really your name?”
“Yes.” I spit more blood to the ground, hear the still-lit roach sizzle at my feet.
“Would you by any chance be related to Zero Meyers?”
“Guilty as charged,” I say. “Brothers.”
“An interesting wrinkle.”
Really interesting, considering the slideshow of thoughts passing through Moreno’s eyes, a subtle movement of his jaw that I’ve been trained to notice. It’s the emotional decisions that get you in trouble. I can’t tell what Moreno’s thinking, but at least he’s thinking.
“Nonetheless,” Moreno arrives at a conclusion, a dark light I’d seen pass through, returning. “Why are you following Señor Andino?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I look at one of the Sharks, who holds his bloody knuckle that might have come from a blow to my jagged front incisor.
“Somebody has sent you. But you’re not going to tell me who.”
“Correct,” I say.
“Because that is how you operate in your family, a code of silence, yes? Your stock in trade?”
“We work with what we got.” Elvis finally gets to his feet, walks gingerly toward a Dumpster, and vomits against the side.
“So further beatings are unnecessary?”
“Totally.” I point at him emphatically. “See, that’s why you’re the boss.”
“So then.” Moreno reaches into my pack and pulls out Charlie’s gun, my reflexive flinch stiffened by the grip of two of Moreno’s men who hold me in place. I bang the back of my head against the brick wall as Moreno screws the gun past my teeth, forcing my mouth wide, my tongue cut on the sharp indentations of the scraped serial numbers.
A Town Called Malice Page 11