Do They Know I'm Running

by David Corbett

  She kept to herself the fact that her heart was breaking.

  “You’re not a suspect, Lucha.”

  “Lucha is what my family calls me. My name is Élida.”

  The man’s smile weakened. His eyes remained unchanged. “You’re not a suspect, Élida.”

  Dunn cranked down his window again, a burst of cold air, smelling of brackish water and eucalyptus, a hint of the oil refinery over the hill in Rodeo. “You’re not a citizen, either.” A punctuating spit. The window shuddered back up. “Your right to a lawyer’s not absolute.”

  “I wish,” she repeated, “to have a lawyer when I talk to you.”

  “I understand,” Lattimore said, stepping back in. “But this isn’t El Salvador, especially the El Salvador you left behind. I mean, sure, we’re cops, not dancers. But we’re not here to hurt you. We just want the truth.”

  He thinks I’m stupid, Lucha thought. Like all he has to do is keep chattering away and I will forget about a lawyer. Will they ever stop insulting us?

  “The warrant’s a little sketchy on what this is all about, so let me explain a few things. Witnesses place Pablo Orantes and your nephew Godo at the scene of a home invasion this morning. The thing went pretty badly off the rails. The homeowner’s dead. His nine-year-old daughter’s in pretty bad shape too, not physically, but her dad was gunned down right in front of her. We’re still putting things together but it seems pretty clear that Pablo was the ringleader. Godo wasn’t just along for the ride, though. He was in deep, especially on the violence end.”

  She felt like she’d misunderstood. He couldn’t have said what she just heard. “Excuse me, I do not-”

  “We need to find both these young men. I could lie to you, try to trick you, say we just want to talk to them. But I don’t want to do that. They’re in very serious trouble. That trouble won’t go away. They need to come in, give themselves up, tell us what happened. It could get a great deal worse for both of them if they don’t do the right thing now. I can understand how frightened they might be. I would be, in their shoes. I can imagine why they did it, hoping to score enough money to get Pablo’s father back from El Salvador. Or maybe somebody else put them up to it, Vasco Ramírez, let’s say.” He paused, as though to see how she reacted to the name. It meant nothing to her, she just sat there. “They’re going to be caught, Élida. They won’t walk away free. They need to talk to me or Detective Dunn here, tell us everything. I promise, they’ll be treated fairly.”

  She could no longer look at his face. Such a cruel and devious thing to do, take advantage of her grief, play on her conscience, so soon after hearing that Faustino was dead-did they know that? Were they piling one misery on top of the other, just to get her to say something, get her to tell them where Godo was, where Pablito was? As if she knew. As if, supposing everything he’d just said had actually taken place, those two would tell her anything about it.

  By the time she realized what was happening she couldn’t stop it, the vomit churned up into her throat and out of her mouth, sour and hot, showering across the seat and onto the floor mats. Her skin was flushed, she felt repulsive, childish, naked.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am.” It was Dunn, his voice surprisingly gentle. “You’re probably the third person this month who’s lost his lunch back there. But I bet you figured that out already.”

  THEY HELPED HER WALK FROM THE CAR, ONE ON EACH ARM, LEADING her up the steep driveway and into the house. Everyone stared as she came through the door; their gazes weren’t kind. There were strange markings everywhere, circles drawn on the floor and walls, smudges of soot-like powder. Police officers milled about as though they had nowhere else to go. She wavered, feeling sick again but there was nothing left to bring up. Lattimore, sensing her unsteadiness, tightened his hold on her arm. A midair feeling, about to fall-from where?

  Lattimore addressed one of the uniformed officers. “The girl still here?”

  The officer glanced offhandedly at Lucha, then shook his head. “She was acting a little loose on deck. Mom pitched a fit, be glad you weren’t here. Meds all around, that’s what they wanted. Sergeant said screw it, take her to Kaiser in Martinez, patrol car drove them over about an hour ago. Son went with them. He came home from school while you were gone.”

  Lattimore frowned like he was adding up a sum. “Housekeeper’s still here, right?”

  “Lourdes? For now. DHS called, they put dibs on her.”

  Lucha felt Lattimore’s grip slacken. “DHS? Christ, what the… They’re going to deport her. Best wit we’ve got, only one-” He cut himself short, glancing to Lucha and Dunn then back at the officer, looking sheepish, tense. “Never mind. Not your problem.”

  “She’s still in there,” he pointed, “you want to talk to her.”

  “Yeah. Good. Thanks.”

  Lattimore guided Lucha into a spacious, dimly lit kitchen. A greasy black stain coated the wall above the stove, the lingering smell of a grease fire. A mejicana sat napping at the table. Lucha felt a shudder of contempt. The woman was short like a stump, flabby arms, pudgy hands, dyed hair. She looks like one of those troll dolls, Lucha thought, even as she recognized the scorn for what it was. Fear. What has this puta cochina said, what does she know?

  The woman lifted her head, rubbing her eyes, blinking, then staring at Lucha with the same instant distrust. They were opposites, they were mirrors.

  Lattimore said, “Élida, this is Lourdes. She was kidnapped yesterday morning by Pablo Orantes and two other young men, Puchi Parada and Chato López, shortly after she finished cleaning this house. They threatened to kill her daughters if she didn’t help them rob the family who lives here. She was here when the robbery took place, when Mr. Snell, the owner, was murdered. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, she’s now in trouble with immigration. She’s not lucky like you, temporary protected status, green card in the pipeline. She may get sent away with no chance of ever coming back. I’ll do what I can but I don’t have much pull. What will happen to her daughters is anybody’s guess. In any event, I thought you might like to meet her, or she might like to meet you, seeing as your nephew and stepson-”

  “I told you-”

  “-were the leaders in the robbery. She picked out-”

  “My marido is dead.” The words escaped before she even had the thought formed. Everyone stared. “Faustino. He was murdered by bandits in Mexico. Yesterday. We were together six years.” She looked at Lourdes with an indifference that felt limitless. “I have nothing to say to this woman.”

  ON THE DRIVE BACK TO THE TRAILER, LATTIMORE TOLD HER THAT HE knew about Roque, how he had been driving north through Mexico with Faustino, intending to bring him back home. He did not say how he’d learned this and she felt too numb to ask, staring out the car window, seeing nothing but blurred lights and hulking shapes. He told her he was sorry about Faustino’s death-whatever his sources, she thought, the chivatos had not filled him in on that-but Roque’s involvement made him an accomplice in a conspiracy. She needed to consider that carefully. Everyone would suffer if she did not step forward, tell the truth.

  “I will get in touch with a lawyer tomorrow,” she murmured. “I will see what advice he has to give. He or I will contact you.” Or not, she thought.

  After they dropped her off at the trailer, she stood for a moment listening to her wind chimes, enjoying them, resenting them. How many little treasures, she wondered, how many fleeting joys slip past as we fail to pay attention?

  Inside the trailer, she couldn’t get her bearings. She moved from spot to spot as though looking for something but had no idea what it was. The next thing she knew she was standing in the doorway to his bedroom, looking at the freshly made bed, thinking: My lonely funny Godo, always the wily one, the character, the demon. Do you remember, m’ijo, that time you got so angry when your mother did herself up like a tart and went out, another night at the bar, leaving us alone together like always? How quiet you became, so intense, but I didn’t see that for what it was. Then,
behind my back, you found the scissors. By the time I realized you were up to something you’d torn her pillow to shreds, stabbing at it, ripping it, like some crazed little fiend. I grabbed the scissors away and slapped you so hard. You did not cry, though. You bit your lip, daring me to hit you again. I shouted, What do you think you’re doing? But you said nothing, glaring at me. I slapped you once more, harder still. Tears ran down your face but you refused to wipe them away. I dragged you to the couch, told you to sit. If you move, I said, I will beat you like a mule. Later, when your mother stumbled in with the man she dragged home that night, I was lying in bed and I heard the door to my room open, felt you slip into the bed behind me in the dark. For once, I did not shoo you back to your room. I felt guilty and, yes, alone. We lay there, me on my side, my back to you, you on the edge of the bed, so still, and we listened as your mother and her man went at it. Do you remember what I told you? Your mother is going to get pregnant, I said. You are going to have a little brother, maybe a little sister-how are you going to handle that, m’ijo? Only then did you cry. And I did not turn over to comfort you. I let you cry yourself to sleep, thinking: Now, my little monster, now you will learn what it really means to want what is impossible.

  The loneliness became unbearable. Shrugging back into the coat she’d just removed, she went out to the car, drove over to Food 4 Less.

  A sense of nakedness swept through her as she marched in, everyone glancing up. Did they know what had happened? How? Maybe they were just surprised, it was her day off after all. Only then did it occur to her that she hadn’t put on her makeup. She’d worn her normal face, her dark indígena face. She was the only woman she knew who went to such trouble anymore but only a fool trusts the open-mindedness of strangers. After a moment of stunned silence, Regina the checker broke into an uneasy smile. Alion the bag boy raised a power fist. The others quickly turned back to what they were doing.

  The manager’s office lay back off the storage room. She climbed the three wood steps to the door and knocked. A muffled voice called from within, “It’s open.”

  The manager on duty was named Rafael, a muscular Tongan with a high tight fade, a meticulously groomed Fu Manchu. His necktie was loose at his unbuttoned collar, one of his shirttails had worked itself free. A half-eaten lumpia laced with brown Chinese mustard and the discarded banana leaf from a patupat, both courtesy of the Filipino bakery next door, sat in a Styrofoam container on his desk. “Lucha, hey-whazzup?” He too stared for a moment at her face, then gestured her into a chair.

  Lucha hugged her purse to her belly, taking a second to compose herself. A fly careened about the remains of Rafael’s dinner. “I am going to need extra shifts,” she said, “if you can.” It seemed wise to stop there. No need to explain what the money was for-mention a lawyer, there would be no end to the rumors.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.” Rafael wiped his lips with a napkin. “Let’s take a looky-look at the schedule.” He plucked a clipboard from the top of the file cabinet behind him, pushed back the top page. “Gina’s been screaming for time off, her kid’s got some kinda skin problem. You want her Wednesday ten to six, Friday noon to close?”

  Lucha realized at that moment that in just a short while she would be returning to the empty trailer, spending the night there, nothing and no one to distract her from what she was feeling. And what would happen when these people found out what Godo and Happy had done-would she still have a job?

  “Lucha?”

  She snapped to. “I’m sorry. Could you say that again?”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. Yes. Tired, maybe.”

  He repeated the shifts he had to offer. She said, “Starting when?”

  “Day after tomorrow. That soon enough?”

  “That would be fine.” She considered asking for an advance on her paycheck but felt she stood a better chance by asking Monroe, the day-shift manager. He liked her-she reminded him of a babysitter he’d had growing up in Chula Vista, he said-and the extra shifts would serve as a kind of collateral.

  “Hey, almost forgot.” Rafael picked up his pad of message slips, ripped one free, tossed it across his desk. It fluttered to the floor, he said, “Sorry,” and Lucha said, “It’s all right,” and they both bent to pick it up. Lucha got there first. It contained one word, “Pablo,” and a phone number. Rafael said, “That came in through the message center maybe, I dunno, two o’clock?”

  She stared at the handwriting as though it came from another world. Leaving his office, she walked though the store waving a curt goodbye to everyone, whether they looked up or not, then went outside to the pay phone in front of the store, opened her pocketbook, took out her change purse and inserted three quarters into the slot. A disposable phone, she thought, that was his style. He picked up on the second ring.

  – You lied to me, you son of a bitch. You told me Godo wasn’t involved in anything and that was a goddamn lie. You got him into this and now he can’t get out and shut up! Shut up and listen to me! They took me to the house in Crockett, told me about the robbery, the man you killed. I had to face the woman you kidnapped you selfish little shit, she may never see her daughters again. And now let me guess, you need my help. Well let me tell you something-your father is dead too, how’s that? Roque called me today, he told me, your father is dead, killed by bandits. Bandits like you. Look what you’ve done. This whole thing was your idea. You always thought you were smart. You’ve never been smart. You’ve always been the stupid one. The worthless one. Don’t come back, understand? If I so much as see you I will call the police, if I don’t kill you myself.

  She slammed the phone so hard against its chrome-plated stirrup it banged out of her hand. She fumbled for it, got it under control, redoubled her grip, then slammed it home again, over and over, harder, faster, time and time again until the plastic earpiece shattered, exposing the copper coils and tin diaphragm beneath. She threw it down, staring in disgust.

  From behind Alion the bag boy said, “Fuck, Lucha. Be trippin’.”

  She pivoted toward the parking lot, finger-raking her hair to hide her face, chin down, sucking in jolts of air as she stormed to her car.

  Thirty-Eight

  A SINGLE BARE BULB SCREWED INTO A WALL SOCKET LIT THE bathroom mirror. El Recio, naked except for tattered slippers and a silvery brown boa constrictor coiled around his shoulders, leaned over the basin, brushing his teeth. Happy stood in the doorway, waiting. A small desert gecko hid in the corner, outside the snake’s reach, lurking behind a coffee can stuffed with foul tissues, the toilet barely usable because of the trickling water pressure.

  Beyond the bracing whiff of shit, the house smelled of fresh cement, rotten fruit rinds and raw sewage from outside. They were in one of the new developments, if that was the word, on the outskirts of Agua Prieta. Happy had driven two straight days to get here, checking into a transient hotel downtown with Godo, then discreetly asking around, finding his way to El Recio. He was light-headed from lack of food, his body humming with adrenalin and foul with sweat.

  El Recio drooled a thin white spume into the sink. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, güey. Ain’t heard nothing from nobody down south about moving your people across.” He’d spent most of his life banging around Tucson, his accent flat and hard. “You say you paid them? News to me. I ain’t seen nothing. Ain’t heard nothing.” He affected a shrug, not wanting to disturb the snake. “Way it is.”

  Happy only half heard, Tía Lucha’s voice still echoing inside his brain: The stupid one. The worthless one. Let the scrawny bitch talk, he thought, she’s not your mother. Your mother was a hero, she died on Guazapa volcano.

  El Recio rinsed, spat, then stuck the toothbrush behind his ear. He had a manly, misshapen, bone-smooth head and stood tall for a mejicano, over six feet, but so skinny his veins popped. He gave the snake an attentive, leisurely stroke. “You want to get somebody over the wall, you know the freight. Fifteen hundred a head.”

  “I already paid,” Ha
ppy heard himself say. “Twelve large per.”

  “Not me you didn’t.”

  “It’s a lot of money. It was supposed to get them all the way.”

  “Look, you got a beef with Lonely, go down and talk to him about it.” He gestured for Happy to make way, he and the snake were coming out.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Call, then.” He edged past and shuffled bow-legged toward the front room, the tattoos down his back blending with the boa’s mottled scales.

  Happy, following: “Every number I got, plug’s been pulled. Best I get is a ring nobody answers. If you got a number-”

  “Last time I say this, right? Ain’t my fucking problem.” Entering the front room, he regaled the rest of the company with a hearty scratch of his balls. Over his shoulder: “You paid twelve thousand per head-for real? Man, those faggots musta seen you comin’.”

  Them or you, Happy thought. He couldn’t figure out who exactly was screwing him. The fact Lonely couldn’t be reached smacked of rip-off and yet maybe there’d been a raid down there, everybody popped or driven underground, something El Recio, sly motherfucker, would no doubt recognize as the genius of luck. He could say anything, demand whatever, who’d contradict him-how could he not know how much got paid and why? Either way, Happy thought, I’m stuck. And the kicker? My old man’s dead. All that money and trouble to keep him safe. A restless sorrow fluttered inside his chest. He saw the wisdom of keeping that to himself. It would only make him look weak.