Do They Know I'm Running

by David Corbett

  Happy felt a trickle of sweat winnow down his back. He wished he knew what the correct answer was. “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “If the guys on the Salvadoran end found that out-”

  “They’d make me pay.”

  “You sure they haven’t guessed?”

  “If they had, I’d have the bill already, believe me.”

  Somewhere in the room, someone sneezed, somebody else laughed. From the kitchen, the sudden bright sizzle of meat hitting hot oil. “Remind me,” Lattimore said, “what are we talking about here, per head.”

  “Twelve grand. Twenty-four total.”

  “They’re not making you pay for your cousin Roque too?”

  “He doesn’t need a coyote. He’s got a passport.”

  “But they’re offering protection along the way, right?”

  “Look, I let them shake me down for more, I look like a stooge. Guys like that, they think you’re over a barrel, they’ll ass fuck you just because they can.”

  The plump brunette paid her tab, down to quarters and dimes, wrapped her frayed hair in a scarf, tucked her paperback into a purse the size of a saddlebag, then got up to leave.

  “Okay,” Lattimore said. “But twelve grand per, that’s still on the high end, don’t you think? I’ve heard nine, coming all the way from El Salvador, unless you’re talking about a boat.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “No point. Just thinking out loud. Could be they’ve already factored in a terrorist surcharge.”

  “Reason the amount’s as high as it is, I’m paying for a car. No way I’m making my old man jump trains to get here like I had to. Fucking brutal. He’s tough and all but he’s not young, know what I’m saying? And Samir, if they thought he was really a terrorist, believe me, I’d be paying fifty, maybe a hundred grand to get him here. No, I told them the story-”

  “What story?”

  Happy bristled, then reminded himself: Chill. “The truth.”

  Lattimore cocked his head a little to one side, the merest of smiles. “Well, if you don’t mind, how about giving me a dose.”

  “You saying I ain’t been straight with you?”

  “It’s a little too soon in the process for me to know one way or the other. I’m hopeful.”

  “I haven’t lied to you.”

  “That’s nice to hear. Now, about Samir.”

  The craving for a smoke became overwhelming, he almost asked if he could duck outside for just a quick drag or two, but Lattimore, he’d read delay as deceit.

  “Where should I start?”

  “A full name would be nice.”

  “Samir Khalid Sadiq.”

  Licking his teeth, Lattimore took out a notepad, jotted it down. “And you met him…?”

  “He was a terp, the company I worked for. He studied English and Spanish at Baghdad University, was pretty fluent in both. He always hoped to travel someday, Spain, the States, maybe Latin America.”

  “Pretty ambitious dream for the average Iraqi.”

  “He’s Palestinian, actually.”

  Lattimore stopped writing, cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “They’re no small minority in Iraq. Saddam liked having them around, to show some kind of support for the cause but he was, like, this paranoid motherfucker. Palestinians got certain work privileges but were watched real close. Samir told me all this, I didn’t know squat about Iraq or Palestine or anything over there till I was dropped down into the middle of it.

  “Samir was happy as hell the Americans showed up. He figured he could get a job working for the military, the press, State Department, whatever, and that would be his ticket out, you know? So he begged around, got the brush-off from you guys, no answer as to why, but kept on looking and ended up with us. Rode in my cab a couple times, when we convoyed between Najaf and the Isle of Abu-that’s what we called the warehouse compound at Abu Ghraib, that or Rocket City. The Salvadoran troops were stationed in Najaf, we handled their resupply and the redevelopment projects there.”

  “How did he end up in El Salvador? Samir, I mean.”

  “I’m getting to that. The Shiites hated the Palestinians, the grief started almost as soon as the Americans showed up. But once the 2005 elections were over, and the Shia parties took power? Palestinians are Sunni and without Saddam around they no longer meant shit to nobody. Regular Sunnis could give a fuck. Shiite militias came around, making threats, nailing up handbills telling people that any Palestinians better leave their homes now or they’d get the boot, maybe the torch. That was before the mosque in Samarra got hit. Once that happened, all bets were off. The militias, especially Sadr’s thugs, the Jaish al Mahdi? They just began picking people off. Samir lived in the al-Baladiyat neighborhood of Baghdad and the cocksuckers just lobbed in mortars. No joke. Next came the death squads, house-to-house dragnets, roadblocks. Guys got whacked right there on the spot, bullet to the head, and their families were told to leave or face the same. Samir was, like, especially vulnerable, because he was working with the coalition. So his wife’s brothers, they say enough is enough, they take their sister-Samir’s wife, her name’s Fatima-and his daughter away, wind up at the refugee camp near Al Tanf.”

  “That’s in, what, Syria?”

  “Along the border. Syria won’t let the Palestinians in. Neither will Jordan. They don’t want Palestinians to get the idea that they can resettle permanently anywhere, except, you know, Palestine.” Happy watched as the buff preppy in the everything-must-go suit walked out and the goth girl tried to poach what he’d left behind on his plate, only to have the waiter swoop in like a bat, clear it away. “Samir was left in his house all alone, which was just an invitation. You never knew when the Mahdi motherfuckers were gonna throw up a checkpoint or come prowling around and his national ID card says right there he’s Palestinian. So he walked away from everything he owned, began sleeping at the Isle of Abu. He tried to get the Americans to listen to him, give him some sort of asylum, so he could bring his family over here? Like talking to a wall, if he was even lucky enough to get some low-level desk jockey to hear him out. That’s when he began to think he’d have an easier time getting to El Salvador.

  People don’t realize, but there’s a lot of Palestinians in El Salvador, over a hundred thousand. Last presidential election, both candidates came from Palestinian families, one an old guerrilla, the other some right-wing radio talk-show guy. They first came over right before World War I-again, I knew none of this shit before I met Samir. The Turks were recruiting young men to be soldiers in the army, they controlled most of the Middle East. So families in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, all over, they shipped their sons to Latin America, sometimes the whole family.”

  “He have any connections in El Salvador? Samir, I mean.”

  “Just me. But I told you about how I wound up in Iraq, the warden I was kicking back to? By this time I’d wised up a little, figured I had more leverage than I’d thought, especially after the ambush my convoy was in and the press it got. I could go to a reporter, expose them all. He’d never suffer as bad as he should, but the company would likely lose its contract and the warden would lose his cushy little niche at the prison. I told him to find a sponsor for Samir, so he could get a visa to El Salvador. He fought it, you know, bitch that he is, but I’d made him a fucking bucket of money, I asked for none of it back. It was the best deal he was gonna get. So Samir was on the same flight as me.”

  “What about his family?”

  “Last I heard? Still in Al Tanf.”

  “Why doesn’t he petition the Salvadoran government to bring them over?”

  “What kind of future they got there? No jobs, no family or friends, wife and kid don’t know the language. Just another refugee camp, this one full of strangers. Who speak Spanish. The game is all about getting here. He gets across the border, tries for asylum, then asks for his family. Only option that makes sense from his point of view.”

  “You two had this in mind all along?”

&nb
sp; “He was going to come with me when I made the trip north, but we couldn’t get enough money together for the two of us. So the deal was I’d come, see if I could work up some bread, then pay for him to follow. I didn’t know at the time my old man and Lucha’d been swindled out of their house. And then almost as soon as I get here, boom, Pops is snagged in an ICE raid, sent packing. So here I sit.”

  Lattimore, having done as much damage to his pho as he was going to, gestured for the waiter to take it away. He sat back, appraising Happy. “I can’t guarantee anything regarding Samir’s amnesty.”

  “You can put in a word?”

  “That I can do. But that’s not all you want.”

  “I want citizenship for my old man,” Happy said. “Me too. No more worrying when somebody’s gonna show up at the door, drag me or him away. I want immunity for my cousins. They’re both in this thing now and they’ve got no clue what’s going on behind their backs.”

  “They know they’re conspiring to bring a deported alien back into the country.”

  You motherfucker, Happy thought. “Hey, I’m giving you gang members who, as far as they know, are helping bring a terrorist into the country. I read the papers. I know what that means to you guys. You can wire me up. I’ll testify, the whole bit. You look at the big picture, I’m not asking for so much. You throw in the fact my cousin fought in Iraq, got his face chewed to shit, his brain fried, his leg messed up. I’d say my family’s done its share.”

  Lattimore’s face assumed an impressive blankness. “I’ll have to run it by my supe, but I don’t think he’ll be the problem. The AUSA-the prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office-that’s where we’ll hit a snag. And what you’re asking for? All I can do is make a recommendation. I can’t promise any of it. Period. We get that straight right now or this conversation’s over.”

  Happy nodded. By now only a couple other tables remained occupied, the lunch crowd having thinned out. Using a hand towel, the waiter wiped away the glaze of moisture from the window, then stared pensively at the midday drizzle, the windswept street, as though he hoped to see his future out there. This was, after all, America.

  “If everything goes well,” Lattimore said, “you come in, have what’s known as a free talk. We can get you somebody from the Federal Public Defender if you don’t have your own lawyer. Then we make a proffer. After that and about two hours of paperwork, we wire you up, send you out for what, if this were a drug sting, we’d call a reliability buy. Get a chance to see you in action, hear what you can actually get these mutts to agree to on tape.”

  “This all happens how soon?”

  “You’re dealing with the federal government here. We’re a hippo, not a gazelle.”

  “Yeah, well,” Happy said, feeling in his pocket for his lighter, his smokes, “my cousin Roque’s down in El Salvador, hanging around, cooling his jets. Nothing goes forward till Vasco puts some money on the table. And he’s not gonna do that till he meets the guy who owns the warehouse where all this Colombian cocaine is supposed to wind up.”

  “Interesting.” Lattimore signaled the waiter, two fingers lifted-separate checks. “And how exactly is that going to happen?”

  A fly looped down onto the tablecloth, landing next to Happy’s unused spoon. “Funny,” he said, shooing it away. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Thirteen

  THE SECOND DAY ROQUE WAS IN SAN PEDRO LEMPA THE GUITAR arrived, a gift. Rumor had spread through the village that he was a musician, a guitarist from California. Someone collected the old forgotten thing from some dusty corner or perch, and it arrived with a bag of green jocotes and a jar of pickled cabbage called curtido, delivered by three giggling sisters in blue school jumpers, the oldest of whom looked no older than twelve.

  The instrument was hopeless, scuffed pine with tired nylon strings, tin pegs that couldn’t hold a tuning for more than five minutes, but at one time it must have represented a considerable expense on someone’s part, a month’s pay at least. Without a word about cost, though, they had given it to him, the sisters said, so he could play for Carmela, the tiny indígena woman with the ropelike braid in whose home he and Tío Faustino were staying. Carmela showed little interest in being serenaded, though-she spent all day in her garden, tending to the flowers she sold at market-and so Roque was free to practice his fingerings and scales and passing chords, plugging away for hours on end to the breathless amazement of the three sisters, as well as the flock of pals who straggled along after school each day as that first week bled into the next.

  They were waiting on the money. Roque had no idea what the holdup was, Happy refused to discuss it over the phone and so there was nothing to do but settle in. Time passed differently here. With so few distractions, every minute seemed to swell like a breath, full of silence except for the continuous pizzicato of his guitar, the crunch of Carmela’s spade, the large black pijuyos cawing in the mango trees. Roque could only imagine that, given the curious distension of time, the incessant repetition of his scales became maddening to anyone in earshot-major, minor, pentatonic, heptatonic, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, aeolian, mixolydian, ascending, descending, chord fingering, arpeggio fingering. No one ever said as much, though; everyone here was cursed with an excess of humility and patience. And the children, they plopped down in the dusty yard and gripped their knees in rapt attention as though this stranger had come all those hundreds of miles just to play for them.

  Come dusk, the adults gathered at the outside table for the evening meal: pupusas, curtido, casamiento, the last a kind of leftover casserole, beans and rice, fried with onion and an aromatic flower called loroco. Roque set aside the practice grind and played a few of the traditional songs he knew: “Sin Ti,” “Hay Unos Ojos,” “Pena de los Amores,” even El Chicano’s “Sabor a Mí,” more a sentimental favorite than a classic. The others were Cuban boleros, Mexican rancheras, nothing especially Salvadoran. From what he’d learned listening to the older ones, given the annihilation of everything indigenous over the past century-culture, crafts, people-there wasn’t anything like a uniquely native repertoire except maybe chanchona, a cheesy kind of dance music, full of spicy jokes and a thumping cumbia two-beat, big with hicks and lounge acts. Regardless, the old songs obliged him to slow down, concentrate not on technique but feeling. And the key to feeling, he’d learned, was simplicity.

  At times someone or other would sing along, if only under his or her breath, then chuckle soulfully when the song concluded, perhaps leaning over to squeeze Roque’s shoulder and thank him. Tío Faustino seemed particularly fond of “Sin Ti”-Without You-and Roque found himself increasingly moved by the deep whispery tone-deaf voice. He couldn’t recall, not once in the years since Tío Faustino had entered his life, hearing the older man sing. And in the pauses between songs, as he retuned the peevish guitar, he’d glance up and catch his uncle gazing at nothing, seated in one of the scrap-wood chairs they called trastos here, head propped on his hand, fingers lost in his graying hair as he nursed a glass of beer.

  One night, the older man remained outside later than usual, staring across the lake toward Guazapa, the gentle slopes of the volcano luminous, a dark silvery green in the moonlight. Roque was about to say good night when his uncle gestured for him to sit.

  – See that mountain, Roque? Celestina and I were living there when Pablo was born. We were part of the frente, and the volcano was a staging area for raids into the capital. I’ve never told you about all that. People your age know so little. It isn’t your fault. Hard to talk about. And what good does rehashing the bad do?

  He fussed with his shirt, waved away a nagging fly. Every little gesture, transformed by moonlight, seemed cinematic, even with the clumsiness of drink.

  – I was a mechanic, changing tires, this little shop not far from Chinameca, where I grew up. I knew nothing of Marx, Lenin, that was all lofty nonsense as far as I was concerned. I just wanted a better job. I wanted my girlfriend to be a little less sad, you know? I wanted a country
where I wasn’t scared all the time, where I didn’t have to go to work and listen to one of my buddies whisper, “Hey, Faustino, somebody heard you moping and groaning the other day and a couple guys came asking for you this morning.”

  Roque followed his uncle’s gaze across the lake.-What was it you said that pissed them off?

  – Roque, I could have complained about the weather, okay? If some government snitch wanted to make points with the local jefe, he’d say I was bad-mouthing the army or the regime or some colonel’s homely wife. Though, I admit, in this one case I’d shot off my mouth stupidly.

  There was this dentist named Regalado in Santiago de María, had connections with some colonels. Tight as turds in a frog’s ass, these people. He started what everyone thought was a boy scout troop, but these guys didn’t go hiking in the hills, learning knots and birdcalls. They killed people-teachers, union members, anybody Regalado considered a Communist. Bodies showed up at the edge of town, maybe just a severed head in a ditch. One time two hands were nailed to the door of a church where the priests were sympathetic to the campesinos.

  Celestina was a teacher in Las Marías, doing Bible-study groups, teaching people their poverty wasn’t a punishment from God, they had dignity. Regalado’s scouts came looking for her one day. She got word just in time, slipped out a window in the schoolhouse, one shoe in each hand, running barefoot through the coffee groves.

  I heard about it that night, no idea where she was, crazy with worry. At work the next day I was fuming, I wanted to butcher the little creeps who’d come to get her. There was a guy in the shop getting a flat fixed, some phone-company minion from Santiago. He heard me going on. We called them orejas, guys like that. Ears. They were everywhere, government informants, a hundred thousand of them, all across the country. Next day, it’s my turn for a visit. And like Celestina, I was lucky-never forget that, Roque. Call it what you want: the hand of God, the Virgin Mother, your guardian angel or just dumb luck. All of us who survived the war, we know some unseen force got us out. The ones who didn’t make it out, well, they weren’t so lucky.