by Mary Calmes
Benny came to pick me up at my new apartment in Joaquin’s tricked-out Escalade, and we made the usual rounds. He and Andre both seemed exhausted.
“What the hell’s with you guys?”
Andre had his sunglasses on, head back, and Benny, who was driving, had his on as well. But it rained with no bright light from anywhere.
“Party at the Mayan last night,” Andre muttered in explanation. “Stop at Starbucks, I need water and coffee.”
“My mother wanted me to eat eggs this morning,” Benny grumbled. “Fuck me.”
They were supposed to be scary. They were drug dealers. But right now they were both simply hung over.
“So what did you do?” Benny questioned me ten minutes later as we rolled up to Starbucks.
“When?”
“This weekend,” he clarified. “Me and T rolled by your place, but you were gone. You hole up with some bitch all weekend?”
It was Aaron’s fault. The separation was a fresh wound, and I wasn’t ready to lie. “No.”
“No?” Benny pressed.
“I don’t sleep with girls.”
Two sets of glasses came off; two sets of bloodshot, narrowed eyes stared at me.
I sat there and waited.
“Okay,” Benny shrugged after a moment. “So less of you gettin’ in my way. That’s cool.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Andre muttered, putting his glasses back on, shoving his phone at me. “Just go get my Venti Quad White Mocha, and that’s nonfat, you got it?”
I was confused.
“The phone has my Starbucks card on it.”
“I need a Venti Americano, and I want half and half in it, not milk.” Benny chimed in.
“One of you guys go. I don’t know what any of that shit is.”
But since the daystar wouldn’t fry me, I got elected. When I was back with their drinks and bottled water and coffee cake neither of them wanted—food bad—Benny explained we had a ton of cash to pick up that morning.
I was sipping my very regular cup of coffee, listening to a traffic report on the radio, when Benny disturbed my thoughts.
“Maybe we don’t tell anyone else about you bein’ a fag, huh?”
I gave him my attention.
“Yeah, that’d be good.” Andre yawned from the backseat. “It might be a problem for some of those guys, and I don’t wanna hafta shoot anyone today. I like this suit.”
Priorities were important. “Sure,” I agreed.
The first three stops were uneventful: just show up, take the money, give the dealer his cut, and walk away. At the fourth one, when we reached the door, it was already ajar and swung wide with just a gentle nudge from the tip of Benny’s boot. I saw the blood spray on the walls from where I was behind him and stopped him before he stepped inside.
“Awww, what the fuck,” Benny groaned from the doorway, pulling his phone from his breast pocket, as Andre and I tried to see how many guys were dead from the hallway.
“Freeze!”
Of course, the cops were there. Someone had to have called them. At least Benny and Andre had both finished their coffee.
THE question was simple: why were we there? At the police station, each of us got put into a different room with a different set of detectives, and we all said the same thing: we were there to see Pablo Guzman and nothing else.
“You a friend of Pablo’s, are you?”
“Sure,” I replied nonchalantly, waiting to be attacked with what they thought they knew: I worked for Joaquin Hierra, and Joaquin worked for the Modella cartel, which supplied half of the narcotics in the city.
“What is this, Ross?” Detective Craig asked, holding up a snub-nosed revolver.
I squinted. “I don’t know, Detective. I carry a 9mm, as you know from your records.”
“You have a permit for that?”
“You know I do.”
It was hours before all three of us were standing in front of the police impound yard, waiting for them to bring the Escalade around.
I pointed at Andre. “Your eye is swelling shut, man.”
“Fuckin’ cops,” Benny griped, licking at his cut lower lip. “You ain’t looking too much better, Tuck.”
I had gotten the elbow to the eye myself by accident, emphasis on the accident part. Not that I wasn’t guilty of doing the same to suspects in my custody.
The interrogation had eaten up our day, so I was not surprised we had to work well into the night to catch up. We had a lot of driving to do, a lot of places to visit, a lot of people to see, and a lot of cash to bring back to Joaquin’s bar, Jimmy Rig.
Once we were there, one of Joaquin’s hostesses led us back toward one of the rooms in the back.
“Why aren’t we going to the office or the VIP room?” Andre questioned as a man I had never met before, or even seen, opened the door.
Inside the sparse interior we were led to, a couch had been left vacant for us.
Joaquin stood with five men in the corner, and only then, stupidly, did it occur to me I had not checked in with anyone all day long. I had a 9mm strapped to my side, but I couldn’t get to it without risking someone putting a bullet in my head. I was at Joaquin’s mercy, and I had walked right into the fire all by myself. I had not done anything quite that stupid in a really long time.
“Get on your fuckin’ knees!”
So the couch was actually not for us.
Me, Andre, and Benny were all grabbed by the back of the necks and shoved down onto the cold concrete floor. As I watched, one man separated himself from the others. It only took me a second. I had seen a lot of pictures of Esau Modella; I had just never seen him in real life.
“Apparently we have a cop in our midst,” the man in charge of security for the Delgado cartel informed us. “And we’re about to find out who that is.”
INTERROGATION or torture, it was impossible to differentiate.
The first thing that happened was, I lost track of time. It was tough to tell one day from the next when you were locked in a dark room. It was impressive, really, what Mr. Modella knew about inflicting pain, but being on the receiving end of it, of his ingenuity and patience, was grueling. The worst part of it was they suspected one of the three of us: me, Andre, or Benny. Someone, they thought, had been wired for sound for six months, feeding the feds information. I wanted to point out I hadn’t even been with Joaquin for a month, but it came down to the fact that somebody was a cop and the other two knew or were covering. Or only one of us was covering. Mr. Modella didn’t know. Joaquin didn’t know. But they were determined to break us to find out. What that told me was that either Benny or Andre was on the job. I just didn’t know which. As the days slipped by, it was difficult to focus enough to figure it out.
I was beaten unconscious the first day, and then, because they took my watch, it was too hard to figure out how the days bled into each other. It was a kindness my shirt wasn’t ripped off so no one saw the stitches, or I was certain those would have been pounded on. Joaquin didn’t mention it, but still, occasionally, someone caught me there. It winded me instantly, the acute, splintering pain, and on my drop toward the floor, my face took some more damage.
My left eye was swollen shut, my nose broken, again, and between the piss and blood and vomit, the cell where they kept me reeked. We had been transferred at some point, or I was, having by then lost complete track of Benny and Andre. I couldn’t hear the others screaming anymore. I had been proud of myself for not yelling, but when they broke my right arm, I didn’t have a choice. The howl was involuntary and loud.
The questions were always the same: Was I the cop? Did I know who the cop was? What had I told him?
They only gave me water, nothing else, and when I saw no one for what felt like days, I thought maybe I had been left to die. My only regret was I had not gotten to live with Aaron Sutter. I would have really enjoyed coming home to him every night.
SINCE standing was no longer an option, I was dragged to an area of a warehouse an
d thrown down in front of Joaquin and Esau Modella. It was funny to see what appeared to be pain wash over Joaquin’s face. We were his men, after all. It couldn’t have been good for him to be the one with the weak links.
Andre had been beaten much like me. Benny was worse, and his breathing sounded wet.
“So,” Esau said, striding forward. “The only person who has said nothing at all is you, Mr. Ross. Why do you think that is?”
It took me a second to find my voice, since I hadn’t used it in however many days. “Because I’ve only been here a month,” I answered him.
“And what have you seen or heard from Benny or Andre?”
Both men were looking at me.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Unfortunately,” Esau Modella said, removing his gun from the holster under his Armani suit jacket and maneuvering around behind Benny and Andre, “that’s not the case.”
“No!” Benny screamed, and it was high-pitched and fractured before Modella pulled the trigger.
The blast splattered me and Andre before Joaquin moved behind us.
“Oh God.” Andre was trembling and looked over at me. “I’m so sorry.”
Which was basically a confession.
I gazed up at Joaquin as he pulled the trigger, and I was splattered with more blood the second time since I was closer. Both men were dead beside me.
“And now what?” Joaquin asked Esau.
He tipped his head at me. “Your man saw me. We don’t leave loose ends.”
“Sure,” my fake boss answered and lifted his gun and pointed it at me. “I am sorry.”
My eyes fluttered shut. I heard the gunshot, the sound followed by lancing pressure, heat. It felt like it tore open my left shoulder. Maybe all the blood was leaking out of my heart and that’s what the draining felt like. Too much to know. Too much to care about.
One regret was not bad, and it was all I had. I wondered if Aaron would track down the truth or just ponder for the rest of his life what happened to me. I really hoped I was worth looking for.
“Shoot him in the head!” The command came, dark and murderous.
“I’m so sorry,” Joaquin whispered under his breath.
I couldn’t speak anymore. He really needed to just aim. Wounded and bleeding to death was not a good time. Better to just be done.
The bomb going off couldn’t even get me to open my eyes and look.
Chapter 6
I ALWAYS had a strange way of processing trauma. Like when I was eight, my stepfather came at me again. He used to beat the holy crap out of me all the time, but unfortunately, this time, my brother Ian was home from military school where my stepfather had sent him—I wasn’t old enough to go yet—and got in the way. I had thought, we both had, that Philip Calloway was letting it go, but he came back with a bat and bludgeoned my brother to death.
He missed me by inches as I bolted out the front door. My mother had covered for the man since I was six and Ian was eleven. But my brother was murdered at thirteen, and in court, when I testified and cried, showed how my stepfather had held me down and punched me, and when the district attorney showed the huge 18x24 blowups of my bruises, it was done. He was charged, found guilty of murdering Ian and attempting to do the same to me. The sentence handed down came to thirty years. He never made it to the execution chamber at Utah State Prison; he had a heart attack and died in his sleep a year after his incarceration. The papers reported it was much too good for him. People who left letters and signs at the prison said it was far too easy an end for him. I, of course, could not have agreed more.
My mother was charged with child abuse, neglect, endangerment, the whole gamut, and sentenced to ten years. The death of any child is horrendous. For a mother to allow the murder of her child and still support the killer was completely beyond the comprehension of the jury. I was informed when she killed herself three years into her sentence. She never apologized or, as far as I knew, expressed even a moment of regret. I did not mourn her passing.
My juvenile records were sealed, and afterward, I went to live with my father and his new family in Detroit, Michigan. My old man was a mechanic and had his own shop. My stepmother, Susan, was a secretary at one of the largest Baptist churches downtown. Both she and my father were extremely religious, but whereas when she caught me doing something wrong, I got a lecture, when my father caught me, he got out his belt.
Henry Stiel’s punishments were nothing like my stepfather’s had been, and so I simply took them, dealt with them, and moved on. He only beat me when I did something wrong, not for sport. By the time I was the same age as Ian had been when he died, my father had put his belt up for good and simply roared at me and took things away. I had to sleep on the fire escape or go without dinner. The punishments seemed fair.
I learned to be sneaky and lie, and soon, once my two younger sisters hit fourteen and sixteen respectively, everyone forgot about me. I was wild in private; Lydia and Karen were wild out in public. As soon as I could, I signed up for the Army and was off to boot camp a week after graduation.
With my father and stepmother being ultraconservative, having grown up with faggot jokes under Henry Stiel’s breath and Leviticus from Susan, I did not come out to them. They sent Christmas cards; I sent one of those Hickory Farms cheese and meat baskets every year. It was the extent of our interaction.
Mostly during the holidays, when I was alone at night after dinners with friends, I thought about my brother and what our relationship would have been like. And while I knew I over-romanticized it a bit, we had been close as kids, even though separated by five years. It was why he had rushed to my defense the night he died. He wasn’t about to let me get hurt again.
So, because of losing Ian and all the events that went along with it, because of growing up hiding who I really was, hiding in the Army, losing friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, being a homicide detective and hiding who I was yet again, having two men I knew killed in front of me didn’t send me over the edge or spiraling down a rabbit hole. I just went still.
An anonymous tip lead the feds to the warehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they found me alive and Benny Aruellio and Andre Franks both shot in the head. They arrested Joaquin Hierra but Esau Modella got away. I didn’t care. The fact of the matter was, through trauma, I was golden. Nothing else mattered.
THE second night in the hospital, I nearly passed out from shock. A man I had not seen in three years came breezing into my room.
“Oh shit.” I grinned even though my lips cracked and my nose hurt along with the rest of my body. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.
He moved fluidly to the side of my bed and took hold of my left hand.
“What the fuck, T?” I breathed out, gazing up at Terrence Moss, who I had been friends with from fifth grade until we graduated. We had even joined the Army together, but he had gone off and become God knew what else, while I had just stayed a grunt.
“You weren’t where I left you.” The man smiled at me; his eyes glowing. The contrasts were beautiful on him: his dark skin, white teeth, and the bright spring-green eyes. I always mentioned to him he could have done something on a runway instead of shooting people in whatever third-world hellhole he found himself. I knew he had become a mercenary, but there was no record of him anywhere, not even in the Army. I gave up looking, and just accepted I would see him when I saw him.
“You check on me a lot, do you?”
“I do,” he said frankly, squeezing my hand and as his gaze ran over me, I got the feeling I looked like absolute crap.
“Oh, it’s not that bad.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, and I saw the furrow of his dark brows.
That fast it clicked. “Anonymous tip, my ass.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save your friends, but the only way to do that was to kill everyone, and that would have meant them as well. Either way… it was a done deal for them.”
“They weren’t my frien
ds; we worked together. But thank you for my life.”
“’Course.”
It was his way. He came, imparted some information, normally we had dinner, I got a hug good-bye, and that would be it for another year or four. It was no different this time. He had come to check on me for whatever reason, maybe even a hunch, not found me, and so had searched like only he could. I owed him my life, but he was not there to get an award or be thanked by anyone but me.
“How long was I there?”
“You mean how long did those thugs have you?”
“Yeah.”
“Five days.”
Huh. “Seemed longer.”
“No doubt.”
He stayed an hour; walked around the hospital room in that fluid, almost predatory way he had, and finally gave me a number where I could leave a message if I needed him. I laughed because it was so out of character.
“You going soft?”
“What?”
“I mean, really? An actual number?”
He flipped me off, didn’t explain how he’d gotten by the police guard at the door, and then left without even a word. It was always like that. I could turn a corner and there he’d be; turn another and be alone. Funny we’d ever even become friends, as different as we were.
He was a soccer star in high school, a track star as well. I played football—defensive lineman—but only well enough to stay on the team, not enough to be drafted. He’d had his own drama at home: his father gambled, couldn’t keep a job, and his mother drank. We had gone to his place one day and found his father on the front steps with a note in his hand. T never saw his mother again. What was good, though, was that after his mother left, Terrence’s father stepped up and changed. He eventually became a bus driver, until he was killed trying to stop a robbery at the bodega close to their home. It was why Terrence joined the Army with me instead of going to school. He didn’t want to be him anymore.