Mr. Hooligan

by Ian Vasquez

  Riley rose from the table and turned on a small radio on the windowsill, a British voice droning about Pakistan sticking to its schedule for parliamentary elections. Riley raised the volume, sat down, leaned across the table and beckoned to Harvey. He put a hand at the back of Harvey’s head and pulled him close. “You’re in this with me?”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  “I need to trust you, I need to rely on you.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Their heads almost touching, Riley stared into Harvey’s eyes until he started to feel convinced. He sat back in his chair and said, “This is how they’re going to do it. Two guys are going with Carlo, two jokers if you ask me, Boat and Jinx. Everybody, and I mean everybody, will be armed. They’ll be going to a farm in Orange Walk that’s off the Northern and a couple miles down a dirt road, just past an old rum shop. I’ll draw a map closer to the time, but anyhow, a house on the farm is the place where money will change hands. One guy will be with Carlo at all times, the other man will be outside as a lookout. The Mexicans usually have a couple guys themselves, maybe one outside, two inside. No reason to think it won’t be the same this time. Now, you’re saying Lopez has two men still running with him?”

  “Yeah, and that’s it, far as I know.”

  “Surprise being the chief factor, nobody ever having done something like this to the Monsantos in all my years with them, they won’t be prepared for it.”

  “I don’t know if Lopez’s crew will want to do this. Remember before they had BDF and police working with them, but now?”

  “Now? Now you tell them they’ll get some assault rifles. Pistols if they want that too. And Kevlar.”

  Harvey dropped his head low and peered into Riley’s face. The radio newsman was saying that suicide bombings and other attacks in Baghdad had fallen significantly in the last month. Harvey glanced at the door as though somebody might be there, listening. Amusement creeping over his face, he said, “Riley, what the hell are you cooking up, you crazy fool?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Riley and Miles sat in the car across the street from the hospital, Miles at the wheel, Riley dozing. The day was blistering so it was good to be in the shade, catch a wink before events started churning.

  Miles said, “How long ago did this guy go in there?”

  Riley opened his eyes. “Twenty minutes? About that?” shutting his eyes, dozing off again.

  Another minute passed, maybe ten, then Riley yawned and stretched, sat up and looked across the way at the hospital gate. Miles was watching it, too, a hand on the wheel. “He’s taking too long,” Riley said. “I hate this shit.”

  “So your contact in the hospital that summoned him has to vouch for you, that’s how this goes?”

  “Apparently the guy doesn’t trust anybody, and I don’t think he’s got a phone either. People can’t reach him unless he wants to be reached.”

  “Cloak and dagger, huh?”

  Riley stole a glance at Miles, assessing how he was handling accompanying him on this deal. He said, “I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I can’t thank you enough.”

  Miles said, “Hey, no problem. Like I told you before, I’ve been restless. I don’t know what it is, brother.” He scratched his head. “Maybe I miss the ring, the training, the whole discipline. But domestic life, that nine-to-five routine day after day—it’s wearing me down. Anyway, don’t worry, and didn’t I promise I’d help you?”

  “I know that,” Riley nodding, “but it’s not like this is something you do every day, like taking out the trash,” and his eyes settled on Miles’s left hand resting on the wheel. “It’s not like you’re me. Who’s used to the gutter.”

  Miles shook his head. “Don’t start.”

  “No, it’s true. Just funny how we grew up close but life took us down some entirely different roads.”

  “Boxing, you know? It’s because of boxing I struck out on a different path. If it weren’t for that, who the hell knows what I’d be today, or where. Jail maybe?”

  “I don’t believe that for a second.” Riley staring at Miles’s hand on the wheel, half of his forefinger missing. “The guy that did that,” Riley said, “you ever run into him?”

  Miles looked at his hand. “I used to see him around. Not anymore though. Might be he’s in jail, or somebody finished off that beating I started and killed him. Now, if he’d done this during my career? I really would’ve killed him.”

  “But you didn’t, that’s what I’m saying, we’re different.” Riley leaned his head back and gazed out the window. “Sometimes I wish I could play it again. Rewind to that day, the moment right before I said yes to running that errand across the bridge for Israel Monsanto. I was sixteen. Damn, I didn’t know anything. Don’t laugh, but sometimes I wish—I wish I was innocent again.”

  Miles said, “Why would I laugh?”

  “I’ve hurt people, Miles. I’ve done some vicious shit.”

  Miles was silent, giving the words thought.

  Riley turned his gaze down the street and saw himself, sixteen and skinny, riding away on a black Rudge bicycle, his pants cuffs clothespinned tight to prevent them catching in the chain; heading over the bridge with a stuffed manila envelope in his backpack.

  Riley said, “I’ve done things that made sense at the time but make me feel like a bully now. That feeling, it sticks to you, you begin to think, That’s who I am. All that shit, that must be the real me. You think it defines you, and you wonder if all these things, these things you did, if they were smart moves at the time, why do you get depressed whenever you remember them? And you always think about it, you can’t help it.”

  “If you’re referring to something you did in order to stay alive or to help somebody, like save their lives? Don’t beat yourself up, man. It might’ve been necessary. Lots of times when I was boxing, my early days? They put me in the ring with some boy who wasn’t in my league, same weight class, maybe similar record but no way, no how shoulda been in there with me. Physically, mentally, skills-wise just wasn’t ready. So what do I do? Let him look good? Absolutely not. A couple times, I carried guys for two, three rounds but I still ended up thumping them. Did I feel like a bully? Sometimes, little bit. Listen to me though, Riley, when you’re in the game, you’ve got to be in all the way. Or don’t play. Because you can’t win half-assing it. That’s the mistake people make, they don’t commit.”

  “I know you’re right but some nights when I can’t sleep, I wonder how my life would’ve been, and sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting for my old man to come home, hang out with my mother and me, and then, I’d let them show me the way.”

  “The way?”

  Riley nodded, looking off. “The way to live a decent life. For once.”

  With anybody else it would have been awkward. Not with Miles, who had known him since forever.

  Miles nudged his leg. “Look, he’s here.”

  A man came out and stood at one of the gateposts smoking a cigarette. He was a cool, skinny black guy somewhere in his fifties in sleeveless T-shirt and dress slacks, red Kangol cap, taking a deep draw on his smoke. He didn’t look at them and didn’t move from the spot until he’d finished, flicking the butt aside and crossing the street. He traveled with a self-conscious hood bounce, a hitch and a glide, going away.

  Miles said, “What, should I follow him?”

  “That’s what I was told but … this guy’s still walking.”

  They watched, the skinny man strolling on.

  “I don’t believe,” Riley said, “this guy’s got a car.”

  “So how…?”

  The skinny man kept going.

  “Let’s follow slow,” Riley said.

  Miles eased the car out and rolled after him, ten miles an hour. A horn tooted behind them and a car veered around. After another driver overtook them, Miles steered to the far right.

  The skinny man turned left onto Daily Street. Miles sped up to the corner, slowed way down into the turn,
the skinny man crossing to the right side of Daily Street. He sauntered on, not a worry in his head. Miles hugged the far right, grazing parked cars. Another driver tooted him, zipped around, then another one, a woman shooting him a glare. Miles said, “Okay, this is bullshit.”

  Crossing Queen Street, the skinny man lit up a cigarette, strolling to where Daily narrowed and became Handyside Street, dirtier and darker, the buildings shabbier, fences leaning. Maybe six houses in, the man stopped, turned casually and nodded, the first sign that he knew they were following him. Then he swung to the right and disappeared down a lane.

  Miles parked streetside and he and Riley got out fast, Riley carrying two big duffel bags. They saw the man entering a yard down the lane. By the time they hit the yard, he’d gone around the shambling clapboard house to another one just like it in the back. A dirt yard, a netless basketball hoop on a straight wooden pole. A rusted bicycle, one wheel off under a mango tree, buckets and other trash in the bush behind the corrugated zinc fence.

  The man opened a screen door, beckoned them with a nod. “Wipe off your feet.”

  Miles paused, searching for a mat.

  “Just fucking with you,” the man giving a half smile.

  The room was cramped, dark and dingy, low ceiling. It smelled of sweat and chicken grease and stuff Riley didn’t want to imagine. He could make out dishes piled in a washtub in a makeshift kitchen to the right, daylight peeking through a round hole in the wall. They followed the man deeper into the house, where a light was shining. A kerosene lamp on a table. A woman in a headwrap sitting there, half her face in shadow.

  Something creaked, and after Riley’s eyes adjusted he saw the playpen in a corner, a baby inside tottering around.

  “These the fellows?” the woman said.

  The man indicated yes with his cigarette.

  The woman tipped her head back to appraise Riley and Miles. It was hard to see her eyes in the poor light, but she could’ve been the skinny man’s sister: same sinewy arms, wolfish face. “Mawning,” she said with a brief smile, no front teeth. “What’s the password?”

  Miles threw Riley a look. Riley looked at the man, then the woman.

  She flashed her gums. “Joking, mahn, joking.”

  Same sense of humor, too.

  “What you need?”

  Riley told her and she nodded at the man. He went into another room. They could hear heavy stuff being moved around, dragged across the floor. He returned dragging a wooden trunk. Left it by the table and went back to the room, Riley all the while trying to be polite and not look around at the grungy house, the floor filthy, clothes lying about; the woman doing the opposite and being impolite, staring at Riley and Miles, sizing them up.

  The man came out dragging a second trunk, a little boy sitting on it. The man shooed him off, the boy skipping over to the woman. She patted him on the back, told him to go play outside little bit till she’s done. He left, gaping at Riley and Miles.

  The man set the kerosene lamp at the edge of the table and opened the trunks. He threw a length of oilcloth on the table, and one by one he took guns from the trunk and laid them down. Various assault rifles, black carbines, magazines curved and straight, one pump-action shotgun, pistols.

  Riley said, “Any more light?”

  The man shook his head, moved the lamp to the center of the table and adjusted the flame to better illuminate the hardware. The woman said, “Sorry, sweetie, I have a condition. Too much light’s not good for my eyes.”

  Riley recognized the Garand, the World War II rifle, looking classic and clean. He handled the pistols, checking if the chambers were empty, dropping out the magazines and slapping them back in; locking back the slides, releasing them with a snap; dry firing with muzzles pointed at the floor. He hefted two of the carbines to his shoulder, flipped up the dust cover and checked down the sights. He put them back with a “Hmm,” touched an AK-47, nodded.

  Half for show. Riley didn’t know that much about firearms beyond what Brisbane had taught him. But these, he recognized, were fine, well-maintained pieces. That’s because they were Brisbane’s.

  “My friend said you might need some Kevlar?” The man pulled out the body armor from the other trunk and flopped the vests on the table. Next he set down two boxes of .223 caliber rounds and a military green ammo can.

  Riley, faking it, picked up a vest, held it tight to his chest and looked down at it with a frown. “Yeah, yeah…” dropped it back on the table. “So how much?”

  The woman said, “How much for what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?” glancing at the skinny man then smiling at Riley. “You a serious consumer.”

  Riley stayed quiet.

  “Why don’t you name a price?”

  Riley waited, before he said, “Five thousand.”

  The woman produced a soft pack of Newports from her bra and shook out a cigarette. The man took the occasion to fire one up himself. The woman, head tilted back, let out a cloud of smoke. “You gonna have to hit me again, sweetie.”

  From the playpen the baby whimpered.

  Riley gave a deep-thinking performance and said, “Five thousand five. With no ammo.”

  The woman didn’t bother. She twisted around in her chair and reached a finger out to the playpen, the baby grabbing it.

  Riley said, “Let me show you something,” stooping to unzip one of the duffel bags on the ground. The skinny man quickly shifted his feet, reaching behind his back. Riley said, “Easy, easy, it’s not like that.” The man lowered his hand, stepping away. Riley brought out a Ziploc filled with cocaine, lifted it high and set it down amid the guns. “Colombia’s finest. Two kilos.”

  The woman turned around and straightened. The skinny man lowered his cigarette. Except for the baby—ga ga ga—not a sound in the room.

  “Uncut. Weigh it yourself. You got a scale? Over ten thousand dollars right there in that bag.”

  The man approached it and said, “A little taste?” Riley nodded. The man unsealed the bag, sank a finger in the powder and dabbed his tongue. He looked at the woman, who said, “Lemme see that thing.”

  While she rubbed some on her gums, Riley said, “That plus a hundred dollars ought to do it.”

  The woman put the bag in her lap and said, “Wait now,” by her tone, sorely disappointed.

  “You saying that’s not fair?”

  And so the real negotiations started. It went back and forth for maybe two minutes, the woman remonstrating, never letting go of the Ziploc, Riley insisting they were taking advantage. “Ain’t that right, buddy?” to Miles; Miles, the only words he said the whole time they were in there, “You got that right.”

  In due time a deal was struck, and they came out of the house perspiring. The Ziploc bag and two hundred dollars for everything—guns, ammo, Kevlar. While the man and woman weighed the bag in a back room, Riley and Miles paced the stretch of yard at the side of the house.

  Miles palmed his forehead dry and shuddered. “Hoo boy, she got some serious BO. It was like a spirit in there, like a dark presence, sweet Jesus.” Walking along the fence, he stopped. “Hey…”

  The woman, sporting gigantic sunglasses, was standing in an open doorway at the side of the house. She took a long drag on her cigarette, blowing smoke from the side of her mouth. She said, “Price increase. Forty dollars more. Think you could handle that?”

  Riley said, “I guess I have to,” reaching into his pocket, peeling open his wallet. “Inflation is a bitch.”

  She snatched the money and said, “Come inside and pack your things,” and returned to her cave.

  Miles said, “Man, I’m sorry about that.”

  Riley shrugged. “Hey, the truth hurts.”

  Minutes later, they crossed Handyside Street to the car, each carrying a heavy duffel bag that occasionally clinked like tools.

  * * *

  That evening at Miles’s house, Harvey said, “Lopez just called me. He’s in.”

  Riley
lowered the book he was reading. “In all the way? As in tell Riley James he’s not a target anymore?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Riley knew that look. “But?”

  “Well. Part of it I’m not comfortable with.”

  “And that is…?”

  “He wants me to do the driving.”

  “To the farm?”

  “Yes, but I told him, I let him know, man, I don’t want to be involved hands-on like that.”

  “Harvey? Shut up. Seriously.”

  Harvey shook his head and released a big breath. “That’s what he said.”

  “It’s just driving.”

  Harvey clucked his tongue. “No, it’s just me getting pulled along as insurance. Insurance that you, or we, don’t fuck him over.”

  Riley smiled at Harvey. “That’s true, no doubt about that. So let’s not fuck him over.” Getting in a dig, but Harvey was off somewhere in his head. Riley said, “Think about it, then when you have your mind settled, grab two beers from the fridge and meet me upstairs. We’ll talk some more and I’ll show you the kilo you’ll give Lopez as a sign of good faith. Then I’ll show you the weapons you’ll present to them tomorrow that should put their minds to rest.”

  He lifted his book, his worn copy of the Tao Te Ching. Harvey sat like he wanted to say something else, then got up and sloped out of the room.

  Riley searched the pages for words that he might find reassuring. It was a habit, but a man had to draw support from where he could find it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Riley drove off the Western Highway and down a rocky dirt road that curved around an overgrown pond and snaked through a row of shade trees and brush in the cool morning light. The truck squeaked and trundled over ruts and splashed through a patch of mud. After a bend in the road, the land cleared, and he heard the gunshots in the distance.

  He parked in the field and walked toward the shooting. He came upon a group of young men lounging on camp chairs and perched in the backs of two big-wheel pickup trucks. He traded nods with them as he passed, clean-shaven faces, good-looking guys, some of them he recognized as occasional bar patrons. Brisbane, in boots and shooting jacket, stood poised with a shotgun, facing the skeet field. He lifted the gun to his shoulder, hollered, “Pull!” A clay disc flew out of the high house, Brisbane tracking, tracking, then the gun boomed and the disc exploded in a puff against the cloudless sky. “Pull!” From the low house this time, the disc sailing up to the left, Brisbane tracking, tracking and a boom, the disc shattering into small pieces that sprinkled to the ground.