Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  They asked to see his driver’s license, and it was only then that he felt the beads of sweat break across his forehead, uncertain if his alias would hold. He fumbled for his wallet, pulled out his driver’s license, and handed it to one of the officers. The officer inspected the license, the stubs, and handed everything back to him, saying he was free to go. Had they actually counted the wad, they would have seen that the numbers were off. He climbed back into his car and pulled away, his heart racing, same as it’s racing now as he walks behind the two officers, follows them out the back door and into the alley behind the restaurant. Up above, a sliver of blue sky is stranded between the tall buildings—downtown Denver. At the end of the alley, young professionals hurry past on the sidewalk, carrying briefcases, conversing, and laughing loudly as they hurry back to their offices, the lunch rush coming to an end.

  “Mr. Gutiérrez, do you have any idea why we are here?” one of the officers asks him.

  He shrugs, though he thinks the dealer may have put the finger on him. For the past few months, he had been selling a bit of weed on the side, to friends and acquaintances mostly, to make ends meet.

  “What is your full name, sir?” the other asks.

  “Armando Gutiérrez,” he says.

  The vague stench of something rotting in the nearby Dumpster permeates the air around them. The officers ask to see his ID. He reaches into his back pocket and hands them his driver’s license. The officer turns the card over in his hand.

  “Mr. Gutiérrez,” he says, still inspecting the card. “We’re going to need you to come down to the station, no big deal, really. We just need to ask you a few questions, we’ll have you back here in no time at all.”

  He climbs into the backseat, goes willingly, confident that his alias will hold, but once they reach the station, they fingerprint him. Amazing that such an intricate whorl of lines and grooves, an identity he was born with, could not be so easily replaced. He doesn’t see the screen light up when they run his prints, but he sees the blue tinge of light reflecting off the officer’s face as he scrolls through his record. It must all be right there before him—the long trail of smashed cars and trucks he left in Illinois, the maroon Blazer he drove off the road and smashed into a mailbox, the blue Chevy he wrapped around a telephone pole, the black car he rolled twice before being stopped by a tree, and all the others. Though none of these offenses matters now. He had already done his time for being caught driving under the influence one too many times, had already spent six months in an Illinois penitentiary. Even the skipping out on bail for having used an unregistered weapon pales in the face of the real discovery—his identity. He’s Jose Manuel Venegas, a fugitive. Wanted by the Mexican authorities for murder. He’s arrested and held in solitary confinement.

  * * *

  A plate of food scrapes across the concrete as it slides through the small opening under his door. On the plate, it’s the usual, a heap of something gray and mashed, some type of starch, and though he has no appetite, he forces a few spoonfuls of the tasteless muck down and slides the plate back out. This is the extent of his human contact—nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, and night after night he curls up into a ball and attempts to sleep, though his mind won’t stop spinning. Who was the son of a bitch who put the finger on him? It was obviously someone who knew where he worked. He has his ideas about who it may have been, but is certain of nothing. Maybe it was the dealer, or maybe it was the woman he lives with. Each time they had an argument, she threatened to call the police. Or perhaps it was her brother: Lay a hand on my sister again and I’m calling the police, telling them you’re wanted in Mexico, he had threatened more than once. For all he knows, it was Pascuala or even one of his own kids.

  He stretches and tries not to think of the looming possibility that he may spend the rest of his living days in prison, and he can’t help but think back to that hot afternoon and the relentless argument that raged around him just before he pulled the trigger. How he wishes he could return to that day and undo what he did—retrieve that one bullet. Though he had taken out other cabrones, he had never regretted a single one. As far as he was concerned, each one of those culeros got what they had coming. With the neighbor, it was kill or be killed. The pendejo at the Gato Negro had started it with him, and though he hadn’t meant to kill him, he had misjudged that final blow. Real life is not like the movies. If you hit a man over the head with a full bottle of rum, it doesn’t shatter into hundreds of pieces. And before these two, there had been the one in Zacatecas, the one he had lent his friend a hand with. That one had been rough, because he really had nothing against the man himself, and while they were digging his grave, the man would not shut up. He kept going on and on about his wife and kids, saying he would pay anything, do anything, he would leave the area, anything if they would please, for the love of God, just let him live. His ankles and wrists were tied with rope and it was uncomfortable to see a man squirm on the ground and beg like that.

  “Shut him up,” he told his friend, but the imbecile was having second thoughts, saying, maybe they should let the man go. Let him go? You don’t drag a man out into the desert in the middle of the night, hog-tied and begging for his life, and then set him free. He threw his shovel aside, pulled out his pistol, and aimed it at his friend. “Either you take care of him, or I’ll make this hole big enough for you both.” His buddy walked over to the man, put two bullets in his head, and that was that.

  And before those three, there had been the one—the first. Back when he and Pascuala had only been married for three years and he had gone to Mexico City to work in a meatpacking plant, where he did everything from filleting entire carcasses into separate cuts to chiseling ice off the blocks with his ice pick and packaging the meat in plastic wrap. After he had been in the city for a few months and secured a unit in the tenements, he had sent for Pascuala. On Sundays after misa they’d go visit a museum or go for a stroll through El Zócalo, he always carrying Chemel, who was two at the time, and she carrying Maria Elena, their baby girl. During the week, he rode the trolley to work while she stayed at home, cooked, cleaned, and looked after the children. In the evening, they’d go for long walks in the plaza and, for a brief moment, it seemed they could go on living this way forever and be happy.

  But then there had been that one night when he never made it home. He had gone to a pulquería with a few other guys from the meatpacking plant. They had plowed through several rounds of pulque, and a few hours later, when he and his friend were waiting for the trolley, he felt it. The weight of the liquid in his bladder, pressing against the long white scar on his gut where the feds had sliced him open at a rodeo three years before. Back when he was a newlywed and feeling good, he had unloaded his gun into the blue sky as he always did. Then two feds were on him, demanding he hand over his gun, and when he refused, they wrestled him to the ground. Once the dust had settled, the feds were gone, and he was lying in a pool of blood, his intestines pushing through the long gash across his abdomen where they had sliced him open. Had it not been for his mother-in-law, and her two sisters’ quick thinking, he might have bled to death, right there on the dirt. But Andrea and her sisters tied their rebozos around his waist and got him to the hospital. The doctors thought he wasn’t going to survive, though after spending a month in the hospital, he had recovered, and now the scar only bothered him during times like this, when his bladder was bursting.

  He looked down the street, still no sign of the streetcar, nothing but the shining rails cutting across the cobblestones. He pushed himself to his feet and wandered into the moonlit shadows of the nearby trees, and there he unzipped his pants and while his bladder emptied, he listened to the whisper of the creek below. The evening breeze kicked up a few leaves and dust, and for a brief moment he felt as though he were back out in the country. The first sparks of the approaching trolley came snapping on the wires above. He zipped his pants, turned around, and walked smack into two feds. Standing next to each other, they made a pe
rfect ten: One was short and round, while the other was tall and slim.

  “You’re under arrest sir,” said short and round.

  “For what?” he said.

  “Indecent exposure,” said tall and slim.

  “Indecent exposure?” He roared with laughter. There was something about the way the fed said this that made it sound as if he had been caught exposing himself to passersby. He went to push past them, mumbling something about since when had it become a crime for a man to answer nature’s call, but they pounced on him, dragging him down, grappling with his flailing arms. He was aware of the ground rattling against his cheek as the trolley approached, could feel the weight of a knee against his spine and the wooden handle of the ice pick pressing into his hipbone. He struggled to break free, but the knee dug harder, and between the thrashing and the grunting, the ice pick rolled out of his pocket and onto the ground. He reached for it, grasped the smooth worn wooden handle, and, in a single motion, turned and rammed it into flesh.

  Sparks rained down from the wires as the trolley came to a screeching halt. Even in the dark, he could see the frozen whites of the eyes, the fed with the ice pick in his neck staring back at him. He pushed himself to his feet, shoved past the passengers that were filtering off the streetcar, and broke into a sprint, the other fed already yelling for someone to stop that man, but no one dared, and soon he was running along the cobblestone streets, past midnight revelers and parked cars. The first blast shattered a windshield as he went by. He picked up the pace and started zigzagging as more blasts rang out, breaking car windows and mirrors, and all the while he could almost feel the bullet that would pierce his skull, sever his spine, or fracture his heel. He reached an intersection and turned right, then left on the next, and right on the one after, until he had cornered himself and was running toward a dead end. Up ahead, the bullets were already hitting against the brick wall, demolishing the brown and green jagged glass that lined its top edge. He crossed himself and in a single leap, grabbed onto the sharp edge, felt the glass slicing his hands as he pulled himself up and over. Even before his feet hit the ground on the other side of the wall, he was already running.

  There is nowhere for him to run now. He sits up, draws his knees to his chest, and wraps his arms around them, his back pressing against the coolness of the cinder-block wall as once again he goes down the list of possible snitches. He dozes off and wakes to the sound of footsteps coming toward his cell. Soon the plate of muck will come scraping across the floor, he thinks, but instead there is the jingle of keys, and then the sound of metal sliding over metal as the heavy door falls open. It’s dark out, and they lead him onto a bus bound for the border. The bus is filled with other Mexican men who are being deported for one reason or another. They all wear the same bright orange jumper, their hands cuffed and resting on their laps. An armed guard boards the bus, and they pull out of Denver in the dark hours of predawn.

  Sixteen hours later, they reach the border. The bus barely comes to a full stop when already it’s surrounded by patrol cars. Two Mexican feds board the bus and stand guard at the front.

  “Ismael Córdova,” one of the feds calls out. A man stands, walks to the front of the bus, and is escorted away.

  “Miguel Ramírez,” the same fed reads from a list, and again a man stands and is escorted off the bus.

  “Jose Venegas,” the fed calls and no one moves. The fed glances at a piece of paper in his hand, and then looks at the men, scanning their faces as he makes his way down the isle, the scent of tobacco trailing in his wake.

  “Jose Manuel Venegas,” the fed hollers, from the back of the bus. A few men cough and handcuffs clank, but still, no one stands. Then again the boots are moving toward him and he watches them pass out of the corner of his eye. When the fed reaches the front of the bus, he turns to face the men, examines the piece of paper in his hand, and the other fed leans in and whispers something to him.

  “Armando Gutiérrez,” he calls out.

  Slowly, Jose stands up, rising to meet that borrowed identity under which he has lived for the past four years. The other men turn to look in his direction as the fed walks toward him.

  “¿Cómo te llamas?” the fed asks.

  “Armando Gutiérrez,” he says.

  A wicked grin spreads across the fed’s face, fanning his black mustache over his exposed yellow teeth. He flicks his wrist and the sheet of paper he’s holding flips open. Jose follows his gaze and there, on the paper, he sees his own eyes staring back at him. In the photo, he’s wearing a white cowboy hat and sporting a full beard, but there is no denying that it’s the same face. Under the photo the caption reads, Wanted for murder in Zacatecas. Considered armed and dangerous.

  “You’re not Armando Gutiérrez,” the fed says, still grinning. “You’re Jose Manuel Venegas and you’re wanted in Zacatecas for the murder of Manuel Robles.”

  He’s dragged off the bus and escorted to a patrol car. They switch out his handcuffs for a much heavier pair. A long chain connects the cuffs around his wrists to a pair of ankle cuffs, and once he’s in the backseat, they bolt the chain around his ankles to a metal rod that runs beneath him. There’s no room to stretch and a fifteen-hour drive looms ahead. Two feds climb into the front seat. The last light of day is fading in the sky when they pull away from the border, and by the time they are snaking around the curves of the Sierra Madre Occidental, night has fallen.

  By daybreak, they’re already in the state of Zacatecas, descending into the valley of Valparaíso. It’s Sunday, market day, and traffic crawls along the dusty two-lane road that leads into town. There’s a new gas station on the outskirts and cars and trucks are lined up at the pumps. The sidewalks are crowded with people carrying bags from the mercado as they rush past. At El Pollo Feliz, the chickens rotate on the rotisserie in the window, juice and grease dripping, making his mouth water.

  The plaza is alive with Sunday morning commotion. The patrol car pulls up in front of the steps that lead to the prison. It hasn’t even come to a full stop and people are already staring, whispering behind cupped hands, and pointing. The man flipping tortillas at the taco cart ducks his head out from under the awning and looks right at him. He mouths something to the men and women who are standing around his cart, washing down taquitos with ice-cold Coca-Colas and Jarritos. A few heads turn and glance in his direction. The door swings open and all the scents and sounds from the plaza flood the car. Grease hisses on the skillet and the relentless bell of the paletero sounds out all around him, while under the shade of the gazebo, men stand with one foot propped on the shoeshine stand, eyeing him as one of the feds unlocks the cuffs around his ankles. The heavy chain rattles as it falls away from his feet.

  “Vamos,” the fed says.

  It seems the entire plaza is watching as he steps out of the car, and a shock shoots up his spine as gravity takes him down.

  “Puta madre,” he mutters as his knees smack against the cobblestones, his body curling in on itself.

  “Levántate,” one of the feds demands, giving him a slight nudge with his boot.

  He tries to push himself up, but every muscle in his body is spasmic and again he collapses onto the cobblestones—the same cobblestones where he and his cousins played at las encantadas when he was a kid. Not much has changed in the plaza since then. The cathedral still sits next to the prison, the livestock registry across the way, and the house with the pink limestone arches that once belonged to his grandfather still stands on the south end of the plaza. When his grandfather passed away, he left the house to his parents, and for all he knows, at this very moment, his parents are somewhere just on the other side of the arches. The news of his extradition has probably already reached them, traveling faster by word of mouth than in a rickety patrol car. His only hope of not living out the rest of his days in prison is the promise his mother made, all those years ago, when he was twelve years old and shot a man for the first time. If you should ever land in prison, we’ve got money.

&nbs
p; The two feds reach down and grip him under his armpits, one on either side. They count to three, hoist him up, and drag him up the stairs, the cuffs around his ankles hitting against each limestone step all the way to the top.

  10

  A FINE YOUNG BULL

  (Zacatecas, Mexico, 1950s)

  FIDEL HAD SPENT A SMALL FORTUNE on his bull, and had been inquiring around town since the day it went missing. It was a handsome red Angus with a solid square frame, a wide muzzle, and a scrotal circumference that practically guaranteed prized offspring for years to come.

  “I think the Venegas boys have a bull similar to the one you just described up at their father’s ranch,” someone in town informed Fidel.

  The Venegas boys may have been opportunists, but they were not thieves, and the minute they had seen Fidel’s bull grazing on their property, they recognized their good fortune. If they could get the bull to breed with La Negra, one of their mother’s finest and best milk-giving cows, they might end up with a fine young bull to breed with their herd well into the future. They rounded up the bull and La Negra into a stacked-stone corral that was built into the side of the ridge on one end and concealed by the eucalyptus trees that grew along the creek on the other. Had La Negra not turned out to be a bruta, their plan might have worked beautifully. Instead, for two days, they had watched as each time the bull attempted to mount La Negra, he was greeted with her long sharp horns.

  “If she doesn’t take him by the end of the day, we’re going to have to let him go,” Jose said, watching as La Negra locked horns with the bull yet again.

  “Ey,” Salvador said.

  Salvador was a few years younger than Jose and always went along with whatever his older brother wanted. They were sitting on the corral wall, under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. The leather satchel with the gorditas their mother had packed early that morning sat on the wall between them. Jose reached into the satchel and pulled one out, bit into it, and from the foot of the wall the two dogs eyed his hand, panting and salivating, as a thin thread of orange grease ran down the side of his arm. He and Salvador sat in silence, chewing and listening to the whisper of the waterfall behind them, watching as, again, La Negra turned and locked horns with the bull.