Safe

by Ryan Gattis

  But more than that, I didn’t want anyone else ever having that happen to them on my account. I didn’t want to feel responsible anymore. That shocked me the most.

  Rooster knows about Collins since I got scooped up. I couldn’t hide being arrested and held. It was Rooster’s idea after that for me to be a double agent for him, to tell Collins I’d do it and then feed him bad information, or good stuff too late.

  Rooster didn’t know I’d already said yes, and he wasn’t going to know. That’s why Collins puts up with me doing that so Rooster don’t think I’m a narc. Collins must think all this trouble’s worth it if it gets him busts all down the Southland and takes a real player off the streets.

  So I said yes to snitching, but then what I said was, it’s got to be worth it to me. You have to unfreeze that money. You have to protect my family.

  When it’s done, you have to let us leave California. Send us anywhere but help us go, I said. You have to make us new people.

  Collins didn’t exactly say yes to any of that, but he didn’t say no to me either. He made it seem like the result that I wanted was up to me.

  The more incriminating stuff I came to him with, the more high-up people I put in their sights, then the more likely it was that my family would be safe. It got clear real quick that the only thing that was gonna save us was trading Rooster.

  So that was that, him, or me, Leya, and Felix. It was one weighed against three. Or more like two against three. Counting Jennifer. But that still don’t balance out. Not with my family.

  Me catching a conscience, that’s how this whole thing started. I guess it’s still a toss-up on whether that’s gonna kill me or not. If it does, I deserve it, but even if it only gets Leya and Felix out, lets them get at that stock money, it’s worth it.

  That’s what I’m thinking anyway when I’m on the 105 and passing the tall sign for Plaza Mexico with its little dome on top. There’s the feeling again coming up in my stomach that I’m a traitor.

  It’s true too. I don’t deny it.

  It’s just that I think there’s worse things than being a traitor. Being a monster with no rules, that’s worse. You can make a choice, I think.

  And I’d rather risk being dead than being that.

  Ghost

  Monday, September 15, 2008

  Evening

  28

  At night, Downtown feels like somebody opened a trapdoor and dropped all the people out. During the day, it’s Commuterville. That’s a Frank word. You got all these people driving in from everywhere else to work at the courthouse or banks or wherever, and then the workday’s over and they’re gone. Big buildings, empty. Parking lots with six stories, empty. Streets with a few cars only, and no semis. There’s the rattle of a dude pushing a shopping cart to trash cans and raiding them for bottles.

  I’m early, and there’s parking spots on South Main because there’s always spots on South Main after eight. Meters are free after six. Not that it matters. I roll into a spot right before Winston dead-ends into Main, and the pole for the meter is still there, but the top has been sawed off. That means it’s due for a replacement, but when that’s coming, not even the meter maid knows.

  I eject Rose’s tape, put it in its case, put the case in my jacket pocket, button it closed, and lock up the Jeep.

  Seems like every time I come to Downtown these days, something’s changed. More, and different, graffiti all up and down Winston since that Crewest gallery opened. The Regent Theater’s still a busted-up old mess, though. The art supply shop’s closed and gated and dark. Three people are eating at the Vietnamese spot on the corner, chopsticks up, hunched over wide-mouthed white bowls.

  I turn and walk up Main to Fifth, just to see how Skid Row’s doing.

  It’s been a while since we saw each other. I did my time up and around here in the nineties, doing things nobody sane and sober would ever be proud of. It was way worse then. It was bad all the way to both bridges: Fifth over the 110, and the other way, over the river, but the Row has been the Row since forever.

  The problem with Downtown in general, and Skid Row in particular, is people can smell it on you when you’re susceptible.

  That’s a word that stuck in me because of NA. “Open to influences,” it means. Mostly bad ones. And you don’t even have to be down near the missions to see it. All you have to do is walk past the Rite Aid on Fifth and Broadway and you got people not looking you in your eyes, putting that hustle whisper on you: “Oxy, Oxy, Oxy …”

  Or, “Any kind of smoke,” and just in case you didn’t catch it, “any kind.”

  And it’s shit like this, promises honed, calculated, and damn near guaranteed to get that addict inside you going.

  Making that voice inside me rev up and start telling me how it wouldn’t be so bad if I did walk a couple blocks down, to Los Angeles Street, to San Pedro—just to see if I knew anyone around there still, if they made it this long. It tells me how I’ve been doing so good for so long that I can totally kick back.

  That I’ve earned it. Shit. I deserve it.

  And that’s the thing about living with addiction that I can’t explain to anybody except people living it. That having it is like practicing every day on which thoughts to listen to, and which to keep in the background. Not ignore it, not all the way, because that’s how it gets strong over time and one day just smashes into you because it’s been growing in your shadows and you thought you were stronger than it. So, this is me, just like every day, trying to tune in just enough to that addiction radio I got going inside me that I know what it sounds like, to know that it’ll always be inside me, and that it’s strong, but it doesn’t own me so long as I’m aware it’s there. So long as I just keep it in the background, you know? Like, white noise.

  I can’t ever go down to the Row again.

  But that doesn’t mean I can’t look at it.

  I stand on that corner and tell myself it’s a beach. I tell myself that everything past this here curb is water. Main Street’s nothing but water. The building on the opposite corner is nothing more than a beige tugboat with its anchor down. And everything past its ass end—the bow?—everything down that slope of Fifth Street is a river, and I can’t go down there because I won’t come back up.

  Not for a week, or maybe more. Not if I’m honest.

  That place has a current to it that’s too strong for me. Too strong for what I got inside me. So I stand on the shore and I look at a pair of hypes going by and away, at the street folks coming up and out like they forgot what land looked like, and I get lost for a minute, because thoughts of Laura and Frank cutting me out are creeping up inside me, and I’m thinking about swimming a little, about how I really used to like doing that back before I discovered what consequences were and what permanent meant, so I just listen.

  I listen to the night, to two seagulls fighting over trash, to a car horn punching the air a few blocks away, but my feet don’t move, I don’t go towards it, and I sure as shit don’t get anywhere near wet.

  I turn my back on that water and walk up the block, not looking back, and for me, right now, that’s enough.

  29

  Being inside Pete’s Café is like being warm without there being a fire going. Lamps hang from ceiling poles like yellow cake donuts about to get glazed. I tell the hostess that’s reading some thick book that I’ll seat myself in the bar, and she doesn’t even look up, which is fine.

  Sometimes you can tell when a place is trying too hard, but this place tries just right. High white ceiling. Tile from the early twentieth century that got restored. It’s not like this place shuts the world out, because you can still see out the big front windows to the night people walking past. You know you’re still in Downtown. You know people a block or two away are still out sleeping rough.

  Pete’s has been on Fourth and Main for a long time—I want to say from ’02, which was still back when Downtown was all kinds of bad news. Raves. Junkies. Stabbings. All that. After the Hippodrome got itself k
nocked down in the eighties and it was just a parking lot for a long time, there was a Porta Potti across the street from Pete’s, and I’ll never forget how this one time I went to go use it and I opened the door on a passed-out junkie getting head with a needle stuck in his arm.

  You can’t unsee that, and believe it or not, I wouldn’t want to. It was a warning. See, that could’ve been me. Shit. It still could.

  I’m still only one full needle away from bad decisions like that.

  Walking past the bar, I nod at the bartender and he nods back. We don’t know each other or anything, it’s just the polite thing to do. Janine’s sitting at one of the bar tables, a tall circular thing. I take the red leather booth behind it because there’s no one wanting it.

  Janine’s got her nighttime, going-out glasses on—the black rims with the sparkly bits down the temples. Longsleeve red blouse. Black jeans. Blacker boots. You’d never know she had about ten tattoos, or that I steered her to tattooers I know for most of them. She’s the clerk for Judge Warren F. Olney in the federal court. Olney’s the conservative everybody knows has a soft spot for drugs warrants so he gets hit up a lot, and anything that crosses his desk, she sees, and whatever she sees, she remembers.

  Janine’s good to me. Always has been. Always will be. We got history.

  See, she was divorcing her cheating husband and he’d squirreled away a bunch of money in a safe that only he had the combination to. Even though the court ruled that she was entitled to it, they wouldn’t do anything about him refusing to open it for her, so I went in there and popped it when he was at work, called her, and had her come over with a bag and we filled it all up. After, I got Mira to do a safety-deposit box for her. The husband could’ve given her half, but didn’t, so he got none. That’s a life lesson, man. Don’t be greedy. Don’t tempt someone out there to come take what you got. Because somebody will. And that somebody might be me.

  I order a water and a plate of nachos that will come out too hot on blue-corn chips, with cheese, black beans, and sour cream mounded up higher than my head. I watch Janine finish her drink without looking like I’m watching. She checks her phone. She texts somebody that isn’t me, then grabs her purse and walks to the stairs, the ones that lead down to the little lounge where the bathrooms are.

  I watch her go and count thirty while the TV above the window looking out at a cheese shop in the building next door shows highlights of the Dodgers beating the Pirates, 8 to 2.

  When they’re over, I get up, adjust my belt, and go downstairs like I don’t need anything from anybody.

  30

  There’s a half flight, and then a landing before you take another half flight of stairs down into the basement. All along the way, the staircase walls are full of old black-and-white photos, all of them showing what the neighborhood used to be like in the 1920s and ’30s, showing how this was a banking district before Bunker Hill got snatched and turned into skyscrapers.

  There’s a couch downstairs and Janine’s waiting for me on it.

  She’s careful as all hell. I know this isn’t even going to take three minutes.

  I start. “I need search warrant addresses for upcoming DEA spots.”

  She takes a small piece of paper out of her purse. It’s square and has an advertisement on it for high-blood-pressure medication. She writes one address fast, then two, then three.

  I don’t want to stop her, but I have to know. I say, “All of these have safes?”

  It’s not a photographic memory, she has. It’s better.

  She says she just remembers things. She doesn’t have to picture it. You ask her and it’s there. Like an Internet you can talk to.

  “Paperwork mentions it, but you’ll never know until you’re in there.” She writes a fourth address and then looks up. “You don’t need more than this, do you?”

  She’s holding my stare with her own, and a whole lot goes back and forth between us. Twelve years she’s known me, and she knows I’d never be asking about this unless I was about to do some of the stupidest shit I ever done in my life. She knows that can’t last long. And I know she wrote down the best ones, the closest to yeses, and none of the maybes. That’s who Janine is.

  I look at the paper in her hand. “How many of these are acted on?”

  What I mean is, how many have already been served by law enforcement?

  “That I know of? None.”

  “You know any time frames?”

  She gives me a look like I’m asking a stupid question, but then she says, “They all came in today, late afternoon. Judge signed off on them before the end of the day. I don’t know what all they need to make these—if it’s SWAT or what—but you know as well as I do that they go when they’re ready, couldn’t care less about business hours.”

  I do know. “Is this Nayarit stuff or what? Xalisco Boys? The dudes that got caught up in Operation Tar Pit way back?”

  Janine covers her mouth so she won’t laugh in my face. When she’s done, she says, “Oh, honey, it’s not been like that in a while.”

  That’s when I know all this is about to take a turn. And I’m thinking about that bad feeling I had when I saw that white boy driving up to pick something up himself in those Rancho San Pedro Projects. I mean, that shit just doesn’t happen when it’s Nayarits running things. It bugged me then, but I was focused on other things. Too focused. It’s a fire in me now. Already, I’m sweating and the back of my neck’s hot.

  See, Nayarits, they come to you. You call a number, get given a meet point, and a driver comes out with the stuff and spits balloons in your hand. And for a while, that worked real good. But then the gangs caught on and jumped right in the middle. They’d buy the black tar from the Nayarits and then sell for triple.

  I heard shit like this was going down. Street gangs coming in hard, buying from Nayarits and marking up prices. A cold feeling balls up on either side of my jaw, and I feel it, and I know it’s true: that much money in the safe meant this was always some hardcore L.A. gangster shit, not Nayarit-style Mexican-capitalist street selling out of little cells with drivers and cell phones.

  Worst part is, I should’ve seen this coming from miles away. I should’ve known as soon as I saw that white boy driving his Mercedes up the block, looking to buy. I should’ve known. Shit.

  I punch my thigh, hard. I should’ve known!

  Janine blinks and turns her head to side-eye me.

  My mouth’s dry. I don’t want to ask her, but I have to. “So who is it?”

  She tells me the name of the gang and it’s like I don’t hear it at first. My ears are already ringing and I lean in, mad because I thought I missed it. But I didn’t miss it. My brain just took a couple seconds to process it, and it’s there now, hot and white at the front of my face. Like a flash knockdown in boxing, I just didn’t see this punch coming. It buzzed me. It buzzed me good.

  See, the problem is, this crew is a Lynwood crew. It’s made up of homeboys from the area I grew up in. Old-schoolers that might know me by my face, that would kill me without even blinking because years ago I got told to lose myself and never come back. That if I ever showed again, there’d be no questions, only bad things.

  And hearing that gang name, it’s like I’m eighteen all over again. I’m feeling all the old feelings from when they first told me if I ever popped my junkie face up again, they’d shoot it, stuff what was left of me in an oil-drum trash can in Little Tijuana, throw some lighter fluid in, flick a match, and let it burn till there was nothing left to find. Homeboy cremation, they called it.

  And they meant it. Every word.

  These fools are nuts for real.

  I shake my head. I try to get my bearings back. “On which of these addresses?”

  Easy, I’m thinking, I’ll just avoid whichever one is theirs. Like, no problem.

  “All of them,” she says. “DEA don’t play.”

  This is no bueno.

  All of it is like stepping through hell and knowing it. And even that’s okay,
but the worst part is feeling like there’s no way to get out of this without hurting people. Last, do no harm. I mean, I can forget about that because if I’m going at this crew, I need to let that shit go. And I might have to let it go quick.

  Because they’ll be about it.

  And I’m sweating that, but I can’t shake the feeling that good people need more. It’s burning inside me. And that’s rough because taking when DEA had my back was one thing. Taking when I’m solo is something else altogether.

  And that’s how I make my decision.

  It’ll cost me my life. Of course it will.

  But I knew that going in. It was always going to end. That’s how life works.

  So, I look up at the ceiling, at its dimples and paint scratches and scuffs.

  And I decide I’m doing this.

  I’m fucking doing this.

  I nod at that ceiling, just so it knows too. Janine’s got big, worried eyes when she grabs my shoulder. Like she’s trying to steady me or something. But she doesn’t know that walking into this kind of thing is guaranteed lights-out in a real bad way.

  “Thanks, Janine,” I say, but it comes out weak, like I still can’t catch my breath when I slide out of her grip and get up off the couch to go to the bathroom.

  When I’m done throwing up, when I’ve flushed and rinsed my mouth out, I make a call I promised myself I’d never make again as long as I lived.

  Glasses

  Monday, September 15, 2008

  Early Afternoon

  31

  A name came in, Ricky Mendoza. Junior. What that gives us is a address, and a reason for me and Lonely to head to Hawthorne even when we’re super sure that he’s not there anymore. We go anyway.

  The market’s dumping like crazy, so I’m trying not to trip out with checking the phone, but when I see the BBY stock price as we drive, I see it’s not so bad at all.