by Toni Andrews
My stomach gave a sudden flip, and the excellent coffee took on a bitter taste. “Tino,” I said, “even your mother thought it was weird for you to be talking Hombres business with a woman. What makes you think the people you’re meeting with are even going to let me in?”
“They’ll let you in if I tell them to,” he said with bravado, but I shook my head.
“The Hombres, maybe. But aren’t those other guys going to be there—the Tiburónes and…what’s the group from Ghost Town called?”
“The Hermandad. Yeah, but just three of each. The leader and two tenientes—everyone else gotta stay outside. I was going to bring Gordo and Joaquin, but those two don’t get along so well, and I can’t trust Joaquin to hold his temper. So, instead, I’m gonna bring Gordo and you.” He gave me what was probably supposed to be an appealing smile and took a sip of his coffee.
“First, isn’t that going to piss off Joaquin? And second—” I looked around to see if anyone was paying attention, but we had the patio to ourselves and none of the staff was near the door “—how are you going to explain bringing a nonmember, a woman, to the sit-down?”
He grinned. “I thought about dressing you up as a dude, but—” He glanced appreciatively at my breasts. “That ain’t gonna work.”
“I’m serious, Tino. There’s no way they’re going to let me in.”
“Yeah, they are. See, the Hermandad operates in L.A. County, right?” I nodded, and he went on. “Well, you know last year, when they had the big sit-down with the police and all that shit?”
I vaguely remembered. A couple of times in recent years, multiple branches of law enforcement, gang leadership and some church-based organizations had negotiated what amounted to peace treaties between the highest profile Los Angeles gangs. These had been, at least temporarily, effective, and the strategy had become a model in anti-gang violence initiatives all over the country.
“It was mainly the Crips, Bloods and the Latin Kings, right? But other gangs had representatives there, too. The Hermandad was one of them.”
“Where are you going with this, Tino?”
“Just listen to what I’m saying here. It went pretty good for the Hermandad, who were having some trouble with the Kings over some territory north of Ghost Town. So they know about, like, working with outside negotiators.”
“But if I come in with you, there’s no way they’re going to accept that I’m an impartial third party. They’re not going to believe you.”
“No, but they’ll believe you. You just hypnotize them, and they’ll do whatever you say.”
“Tino, we’ve talked about this, and I told you, it doesn’t work that way.”
“It worked pretty fucking good on Marisol, back at the projects.” His tone was losing some of its persuasiveness and starting to sound pissed. “And when you got Gus to stop, when I was chasing him. You gonna tell me that wasn’t something you did?”
Careful, I warned myself.
He waited, and I thought. I didn’t want to do this, not even a little. I could refuse and, if he kept arguing, press him to get off my case.
But how would pressing Tino, without his knowledge or consent, be any less wrong than pressing a bunch of gang members?
I pictured a room full of killers and sociopaths, all undoubtedly armed, and shuddered.
“You’re scared, right?” Tino no longer sounded menacing.
“Fucking-A right, I’m scared. Tino, these guys are killers. Hypnosis isn’t going to do me much good if they decide to start shooting each other.”
“No way,” he said. “They agree to a sit down, it’s guaranteed no fighting. Everyone takes off their guns—one of the reasons the tenientes are there is so we can all search each other. It’s at a neutral place, and no one is allowed to come within this, like, safe zone around the building, and the guards—we each get one at the door—can’t fuck with anyone coming in or out. Long as I can remember, no one ever got killed at a sit-down.”
“I notice you say, ‘killed at,’ not ‘hurt at,’ or ‘killed after.’”
“Mercy, if it was just for me, I would handle this by myself. But I promised Mami I’d make sure that when I left the gang, I’d set it up so Gus would be okay.”
Yeah, hit me with the maternal guilt card. Good timing.
“If, hypothetically, I were to agree to come to this meeting…” Tino started to grin, and I went on. “And I’m not saying I’ll agree, what would I be doing, exactly?”
He’d been ready for this, and took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. I was surprised to see it was typewritten—probably done on Hilda’s computer. I wondered if she’d helped him with it, or if Grant had, which was probably more likely.
“You read off my terms, one at a time. Then you hypnotize them to say they agree.” He handed me the paper, and I read aloud.
“One. All members of the Tiburónes and the Hermandad will recognize Luis Vasquez Quintillo as the new jefe of the Hombres Locos.”
“That’s Gordo’s real name. Maybe I should put that in—‘known as Gordo,’ something like that.” He bit his lip, and I thought about how hard he must have worked on this list.
“Two. After Señor Quintillo becomes the jefe, the borders of the turf controlled by the Hombres Locos will remain at their current location.” I looked at him. “Didn’t you say the Tiburónes were trying to take over some of the territory?”
“Yeah, that’s why that’s in here.”
“But they might not agree about where the ‘current location’ is. You probably want to put down the exact streets and blocks.” I heard myself and winced—he might think that because I was offering suggestions, I was agreeing to attend the meeting. Which I wasn’t.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s a good idea. Also, it gives us some…what does Grant call them? Some negotiating points, in case we gotta give something up to make it work for everybody. There’s a couple of blocks there, not too much happens on them, I’d be willing to let go, maybe.”
“Three. Javier Augustín Pelón—” I looked up, puzzled.
“I gotta put in ‘known as Tino.’”
Nice name. “Will receive twenty percent of the revenues received by the Hombres Locos from the following lines of business. Neighborhood insurance payments collected from businesses in the territory described in item two.”
I looked up. “The Hombres collect protection money?”
“Yeah, and we earn it, too. Someone breaks in to one of those places or causes trouble, we take care of it.”
“Like Flaco did for your mother?”
“Sort of. That was our apartment, not a business.”
“Are they going to agree to this? Sounds to me like they were collecting this money before you came along.”
“Some of it,” he admitted. “I expanded the territory, got it all organized.”
“Maybe this should be one of those negotiating points you were talking about.”
“Yeah, maybe. Keep reading.”
“Car and parts sales to All Star Auto Body.” A chop shop, I assumed.
“Sales of recreational materials inside the turf described in item two. Shit, Tino, is this about drug sales?”
He shrugged. “What do you think? Where’d you meet me, anyway?”
He had a point. He’d admitted distributing drugs during our very first conversation. I’d somehow managed to avoid thinking about it in the intervening months.
“You know, this money stuff, this seems like internal Hombres business. The Tiburónes and the Hermandad aren’t going to have anything to say about it. In fact, the only thing on here—” I scanned the rest of the document, which listed a few more businesses “—that even concerns the Tiburónes is the one about the borders.”
“That ain’t true. First, it’s important they see Gordo’s the new boss. And they’ll hear Gordo agree to the payment stuff, which is good—it reminds them that the Hombres are strong, got a lot of respect in the barrio. But the most important thing is, once
Gordo says he gonna do it, and the Hermandad kind of, you know, put their blessing on it, then guys like Joaquin and Nestor, they’re more likely to go along.”
Which will give them even more reason to resent being left out of the negotiations, I thought.
“Are you so sure the Hermandad is going to do it? Give you their blessing, I mean?”
“I told you, that’s where you come in. You hypnotize them, they agree to all of it.”
I shook my head. “There are going to be…how many people in the room besides you and me? Seven?”
“More than that, if the Hermandad invite someone from the Blood Brothers. Probably they won’t.”
“What about the Vietnamese gang?”
“No way. They stay in their neighborhood. They wouldn’t recognize the agreement, anyway—they keep to themselves.”
“Tino, I don’t think I can pr—that I can hypnotize seven people at one time.”
“You ever try?”
“No.” Though I’d done a couple of two-fers a few months back, and it had worked out just fine.
“Maybe you could practice. We could go to the mall or something—”
“Tino…” He was starting to sound like Sukey.
“Okay, forget it. Just an idea. But you wouldn’t have to hypnotize everyone. I already talked to Gordo, and he’s gonna go along with everything. The tenientes gonna do whatever their jefes say. So, really, it’s just two guys.”
“Do they both speak good English?”
“Yeah, man, they’re all Chicanos, like me. And they might agree to it all on their own. You might not have to do anything but read the paper.”
I couldn’t believe I was starting to consider the idea. I was, I had to admit, intrigued. I’d seen TV specials on gangs, which played up the violence and volatility of the members. But a lot of the guys they interviewed were surprisingly articulate. Certainly Tino was smart—he wouldn’t have survived, never mind taken over the gang while still in his early twenties, if he wasn’t. I wondered what the other jefes would be like.
“I been thinking about what you should wear. Gordo and me, we gotta be in our colors. You show up in Hombres colors, it’s maybe the wrong message. But you gotta be careful you’re not wearing one other gang’s colors. So the best thing is you wear all black. Not a problem for you, I’ll bet.” He grinned—he’d heard Sukey call my closet “the black hole.”
“Tino, I haven’t said I’d do this.” But, mentally, I was already picking out an outfit—black jeans, T-shirt and athletic shoes.
He ignored me. “Nothing sexy, no makeup and nothing low-cut. We don’t want their minds on anything but the negotiations. And no shoes with a logo on them.”
Scratch the athletic shoes. That brought me back to reality. Rose, my friend who ran a battered women and children’s shelter, said that in some Southern California neighborhoods, you could die because you wore the wrong brand of basketball shoes.
I was shaking my head again, about to speak, when Tino’s cell phone trilled. He looked at the readout and grimaced, but punched a button.
“Mami. What’s up?”
I could hear Spanish coming through the receiver, and, even if I couldn’t make out the words, the tone seemed agitated.
“Mami, Nestor ain’t got no business on St. Gertrude. I already told Joaquin, Gus ain’t there, and he knows it’s neutral—we don’t do no business on that block. You didn’t let him in, did you?”
He listened for a while, then went on. “Nestor got something to say to me, he needs to go through Gordo. Gordo’s got my cell number.”
Teresa’s voice seemed less strident, or maybe Tino was holding the phone at a different angle.
“Mami, I’ll take care of it. It’s all gonna be settled tonight, and no one should be messing with you after that. Gus? He’s fine—nothing to worry about. I promise, Mami, I got it handled, okay?
“Sí, Mami, I love you, too. I’ll come see you tomorrow, okay? Take you for a ride, get some dinner. Of course I like your cooking. I just thought…okay, Mami, I’ll call you. Hasta mañana.”
He ended the call, glowering. “What the fuck does Joaquin think he’s doing, sending Nestor over to Mami’s? Nestor wouldn’t go over there on his own.”
“Maybe they didn’t believe that Gus really isn’t there,” I suggested.
“I’m still the jefe—until tonight, anyway. I say Gus isn’t there, then he ain’t there. Even if he is there, you know what I mean?” There was a look in Tino’s eye that would have made me step back if I’d been the reason for it.
“Does Joaquin know you’re planning to make Gordo jefe tonight?”
“If he don’t, he’s stupid. Which he ain’t.”
“Do you think he might try to stop it from happening?”
He scowled. “No. Maybe.” He put his head in his hands, a gesture so uncharacteristic as to be startling. “I don’t think he’s ready. He’d have to get most of the Hombres to go along with him, and, except for Nestor, nobody’s going to go against me.”
“Would they go against Gordo?”
“Not once the Hermandad recognizes him. Which is why—” He turned to me, his expression almost pleading. “I got to have an ace up my sleeve at this meeting tonight. You.”
He put his hands flat on the table and stared at them. “Mercy, when Grant and me first started talking about starting a new life—a good life, one where I don’t have to worry about getting arrested or killed, or something happening to my family…” He looked up, staring intensely, as if he were trying to drill his meaning into my head. “I thought it was just a dream, you know? But then I took my real estate exam, and we did this business model, talked to investors, and it…it all seems like it can really happen. Grant wants me to forget the Hombres, move Mami down here somewhere, put all that behind me.”
He smiled, but it was a ghost of his normal pirate’s expression. “Grant don’t know Mami. It’s gonna take a SWAT team to get her out of that house. When Flaco was the boss, then me, we kept everyone off that street. But when I’m gone, I can’t be sure. There’s people might mess with her, just because they had something to settle with Flaco.”
“You’re worried for her safety?”
“If I just walk away like Grant wants, yeah. Gus is too young to protect her, and he don’t have no standing in the gang, not yet. What respect he’s got, it’s because he’s Flaco’s son and my brother. But with Flaco dead and me gone…” He shrugged.
“Do you really think you can get her to move out of the neighborhood?”
“It won’t be easy but, if Gus comes, too, yeah. She ain’t gonna leave as long as Gus is still in the barrio, though.”
“And to keep Gus out of the gang—”
“I gotta make sure Gordo is jefe. And for that, I need the Hermandad.”
And for that, he needed me.
Life was so much simpler before I had friends.
The Rendezvous Ballroom was located upstairs over some Main Street shops that had, so far, managed to escape the renovation taking place just a few blocks away. According to Tino, it had been the venue for countless wedding receptions, anniversary parties and quinceañera celebrations—the Latino version of the coming-out party, given on or shortly after a girl’s fifteenth birthday. For that reason, it was neutral.
An enormous disco ball hung from the ceiling, about a quarter of its mirror tiles missing. A few spotlights with red, blue and green lenses were mounted nearby. An empty bar ran along one wall, opposite a stage framed by dusty purple velvet curtains. Stark illumination from hanging fluorescent lights lent a dismal quality to the room. One, thankfully not over the table, flickered at about the same rate as the pounding of my heart. The windows that ran along the front were too high to reveal anything except the tops of streetlights.
Too high for someone to shoot through.
We’d met Gordo in the parking lot at Papi’s, the drab Santa Ana bar where I’d first encountered Tino. It hadn’t changed since I’d last been here—a c
oncrete square in the middle of a parking lot strewn with broken glass. I saw that the graffiti I’d noticed on my first visit hadn’t been painted over: Gangsta Girls and, more prominently, Mad Tino. Now that I recognized it, the Hombres Locos symbol was ubiquitous. We were too deep in Hombres territory for the Tiburónes’ shark to be displayed.
Gordo turned out to be at least as big as his name implied, but, despite his enormous gut, he looked too solid to be properly called fat. He had more tattoos than Tino, a bullet-shaped shaved head, and a single eyebrow that stretched across his forehead like a wooly scar.
“Who’s she?” Gordo’s voice was surprisingly soft, with a not-unpleasant hit of gravel. He didn’t look at me after his initial sizing up.
“She’s a negotiator. She’s coming with us.” Tino’s tone implied that the matter was not open for discussion, and Gordo nodded. The other guys—I counted twelve of them leaning against the building and cars—shifted uncomfortably, cutting their eyes at me and away again. There was a quiet buzz of comment, which Tino ignored.
Inside the bar, I recognized Papi, his basset-hound eyes sadder than ever, carefully not watching as Tino, Gordo and a few of the other men gathered around a table and spoke in Spanish. I waited at the bar, and saw Tino point to me and use the word negociador. The other men didn’t seem quite as sanguine about the idea as Gordo, but, from what I could make out, Tino wasn’t opening the table for debate. They spoke for only a few minutes before Tino stood and called to me.
“We’re ready to go. Come on, Gordo’s riding with us.” I followed him out of the bar, avoiding looking at the other Hombres. I hesitated, not sure which car door to open, and Gordo solved my dilemma by sliding into the front. Most of the other men resumed their casual poses, but four got into a club-cab truck with heavily tinted windows and too much chrome. As we pulled out of the parking lot, they trailed behind us.
“Tino, I wanted to ask—which of those guys are Joaquin and Nestor?”
“They didn’t show up,” said Tino, and Gordo punctuated the statement by muttering a couple of Spanish curses and spitting out the window. “I already told Joaquin he wasn’t coming inside at the sit-down. But they still should have been at Papi’s. I woulda had them in the backup car.”