by Ryan Gattis
“No point waiting,” Blanco says to me, and it’s obvious from how he’s talking that he wants me to open the front door, not him.
I look to Terco, but he just stares at me like it’s not on him, so I walk over to the front door, taking each step over the carpet like I’m walking on a high wire and it doesn’t really matter which side I fall off.
When I get to the door, I unlock it and open it.
Outside is a guy about five inches shorter than me. And I can tell right away I never knew this dude back in the day. It hits me then how almost everybody I knew back then is out or dead. How sixteen years is a lifetime in Lynwood. More than a lifetime. And even I know not to bother dwelling on all that loss. It’ll be my time to exit real soon too.
Rooster’s eyes do a circuit of the room, looking past me to the guns in the middle of the floor, and then to Lil Garfield sitting on his ass and licking his tail all sad like I broke it, then coming back up to me.
He’s Chicano for sure, but maybe a little bit of something else too, around the eyes. Hard to tell because he’s got on a Dodgers hat, all black on black with that L anchored to the middle line of the A, where the logo’s just a little bit glossy from the silk thread. He’s got a dark beard and mustache, close trimmed.
He smiles at me. And it’s not cold or weird or anything. It’s just a smile.
And it’s polite somehow. Like he’s happy I opened the door. Like he’s been waiting to talk to me and now he’s glad to see my face.
This could only be Rooster.
Because he’s looking square at me and saying, “Mind if we come in, Ghost?”
52
Wow, he knows my name. That’s as bad as it gets. I don’t really give an answer to his question about coming in, so much as step back into the living room and make way, because the we is three homies he’s got behind him. Two big motherfuckers. Like football linebackers or something. They’re the ones that were digging out in the grass, picking up everything that got tossed from the safe. The last one is a funny-looking dude with a messed-up eye and glasses. He’s skinny, and I get a vibe just looking at him. I’m sure Glasses is his street name. If it’s not that, it’s Gafas. Guaranteed. But I’m also getting a feeling like he knows pain backwards and forwards. It clicks for me right then. The big two are just for show. It’s these other two that are no joke.
Rooster comes through the door first. He takes his hat off when he steps into the house. His hair’s tight to the scalp but not clean shaved. Dark, maybe black, with a little gray at the temples. He’s around forty, wearing a black T-shirt, no logo. Black jeans at the waist. Not baggy. Relaxed. Not Cons or Nikes. Some simple black leather tennis shoes, the kind I can’t tell the brand on just by looking at them.
The only thing real remarkable about this guy is his tattooed sleeves.
It’s expensive shit too. The best ink around. Chicano-style. Black and gray. Art from Pint, a crazy-eyed skull. Big Sleeps with some insane letters I can’t read from here. But I can see Chuey Quintanar did some work on there with a portrait of a Bernini sculpture on the forearm, just the face of the girl as she’s turning into a tree, and it’s so clean that it looks like it was cut out of marble yesterday. Probably this guy has all kinds of terrible old-school tattoos on him, or maybe he lasered them or had them covered with better stuff when he really came up, but either way, right now, his arms are sending the whole room messages.
And they’re saying that he’s sure-as-shit real.
They’re saying he’s a grown-up gangster. With taste. Class. Like he knows all about expensive tequilas but prefers mezcales, even knows about the different agave types and has a favorite region. Guerrero, probably. He still pounds a King Cobra every now and again, though. Like, it don’t matter, whatever.
They’re saying he embraces pain so long as it’s in service to goals, and when he starts in on something, he fucking finishes it.
So, that’s when I know.
In this moment.
This is it for me. The end. Let there be no doubt.
But I also know he won’t be the dude that kills me. Just the one ordering it done.
“Rooster,” Blanco says.
“Heard you were in the neighborhood, Blanco.” Rooster nods at the guns on the floor and his linebacker homies pick them up with the clips while Rooster moves to the couch to sit down. All casual. Like he’s an invited guest and we’re just hanging out. Like this isn’t a big deal at all.
The TV’s off and black, but I see a reflection of Rooster in its screen, and he’s looking dead at Blanco. He hasn’t stopped looking at him. And Blanco hasn’t stopped looking right back at Rooster.
We go a rough moment like that.
A moment for everybody else in the room to soak in that whatever’s about to go down in here is going to be worked out between these two, and the rest of us will have to just deal with the consequences.
It’s Rooster that fires the first shot with his mouth, though.
“Bring me my phone,” he says to the dude in glasses. “Get them to text me that one thing.”
Glasses pulls a phone out of his pocket, and all’s I can think right then is Wow, man, this Rooster is something else. I mean, if a dude doesn’t even use his own phone, if he pays someone else to take all the risks using it, it’s not going to go well for you. And it’s about to get a lot worse.
Instead of the little ding that signals a text coming in, Vin Scully’s voice pops out of Rooster’s phone saying, “Home run!”
And then Glasses is clicking on whatever needs to be clicked, and he’s holding the phone up to me and Blanco, so we can see the screen, and as soon as I see it, I wished I hadn’t, because I’m looking at evidence.
I barely met the dude, but even I recognize the picture of Snapper on the carpet of Elvia’s place with some thick-looking blood all over his face. I don’t know what it is, a brutally busted nose or a gunshot or what. He’s too messed up to tell. But I don’t need to be able to tell either. It’s bad. And it’s safe to say he won’t be snapping on anybody anymore.
“Delete that,” Rooster says.
Glasses presses the screen once, twice.
And like that, Snapper is gone.
53
That was Rooster just setting the tone. Like, showing us how high the stakes were and how rigged the game was. He’s the house. He’ll take our bets, but he’s always going to win. Terco can’t keep himself from smiling at that too. He’s overdoing it a little, even if he is just grinning at carpet. Blanco’s not showing anything.
To him, Rooster says, “So what’s going on with you, big man?”
Rooster’s tone adds all kinds of questions for Blanco. Like, What the fuck were you thinking? Were you feeling bored, or what? Why even do this?
But Blanco only answers the actual question: “This and that.”
He doesn’t say anything more, just stands there, head held high. Eyes still glued on Rooster. He’s not justifying shit, never going to give anybody easy whys about his life. Never will. And I find it hard not to admire that.
“You can play it however you want to play it,” Blanco says. “But I brought him here. So you can give me his price, I walk, and we can be done with it.”
Figures there’s a price on me dying. Figures Blanco would know that and not tell me, just keep it in his back pocket till he needed it.
I don’t find any of it that surprising. It confirms everything I was thinking about the drugs house in Rancho San Pedro when I was down there taking all its money, that the people in that neighborhood definitely saw my Jeep, definitely noticed how I was walking out with a bag, definitely saw my face. Word must’ve gotten spread.
Figures even more that Blanco wouldn’t say anything about it till he needed to. It’s part of his Get Out of Jail Free card.
“If you want the price,” Rooster says it nice and slow like it’s the most logical thing in the world, “you have to do what the price asks.”
They’re talking about killing m
e.
Casually.
Using euphemisms.
It’s how I’ve always known when I’m in a room with some for real bad people. They say more with what they don’t say than what they do. And most of the time, they make decisions without saying anything at all.
Blanco looks to me.
He’s weighing up putting a bullet in me against whatever the number is for doing it. I’m looking right back at him, sending the mental message to do whatever it is he has to do, since I know he’s going to do it anyways. It feels like we’re looking at each other a long time.
“I’m good,” he says, and sniffs, putting his eyes back on Rooster. “But I’m gonna need to tax you on all the chiva you threw out that back window. I’ll take my third and be on my way.”
Rooster’s impressed by the bravado of this, if nothing else. “So what is it that you’ll be taking a third for?”
“For hitting you before la DEA hits you. For making sure none of your people go to jail. For making sure there’s no case on you. This address’s on the list. There’s more of yours on it too.”
Rooster blinks. He takes the information in and thinks on it before saying, “I’m happy to know how you know that.”
And then he spreads his hands. Like, Impress me.
Blanco points a hitchhiker’s thumb at me and says, “This motherfucker’s an officer of the court. His connects told him four warrants came today. He got all the addresses.”
“This one?” Now Rooster’s pointing at me too. “Almost nine hundred is what he took from some South Bay homies. Could’ve disappeared after and maybe been good, but this is him, Greedy Gus, back for more.”
Blanco’s trying to help when he says, “Maybe look at that money like it bought you something smart. No arrests. No court cases. No DEA. No lawyer bills. That’s a lot of fucking nothing.”
Rooster sniffs and nods. Like, Fuck you, Blanco, you talk too much. And he turns his face to me even though he’s still talking to Blanco when he says, “Or I could look at it like he’s a thief and that never gets forgiven.”
“Yeah,” Terco says, like it’s even his turn to speak. “Cuz this is Lynwood, motherfucker.”
Blanco doesn’t bother replying to that. He knows it’s decided, that there’s no helping me now.
And Rooster just nails it all in. “You’re going to walk out of here without him, Blanquito. He’s mine now.”
Rooster using the little suffix doesn’t escape notice in this room. It’s a slap. It’s Rooster putting himself on a higher rung than Blanco. Being magnanimous and disrespectful at the same time, and it’s pretty good, but it’s an act. Nothing more.
Rooster’s just playing like he’s in charge of Blanco walking out of here unharmed, but they both know he’s not. Not even close. It’s a show for Rooster’s little ones. To save face. To keep looking tough. Strong.
See, with Rooster and Blanco, it’s feeling like they’re both on the same level. They’re both big. Above this neighborhood bullshit, really. Nothing’s happening to either one of them here. Their fates are for bigger homies to decide. A case will be made at a sit-down that they probably won’t even be invited to, and it just might go Rooster’s way, and I can see Rooster feels confident in that, and I get why. Blanco overstepped. He came in and took what he shouldn’t have. He disrespected. But the thing with big homies is they own the big picture. People like me don’t even get a picture. People like Terco and Glasses have a tiny scrap of it. People like Rooster and Blanco have chunks of it. Like, little kingdoms. Big homies see the whole landscape, all the Southland, and beyond too. It’s what they do. And if Blanco’s going to stay valuable because of that Armenian and Russian business, then it doesn’t matter what he did tonight. If the business he’s bringing is bigger than this fuckup, he’ll do something to atone and he’ll keep breathing. Simple. He’ll keep making bigger people money, and that’ll be that. Rooster will live with it because he’ll have to. And nobody else will even get to have an opinion. Not Terco. Not Elvia. Not the little homies probably still leaning on that couch in zip cuffs waiting for somebody to save them. Not anybody. That’s how this whole game works. The big people make the rules. The rest of us just deal with it.
Rooster nods to Terco, and Terco’s got explosions blowing up behind his eyes when he has to dig out a third of the chiva that went out the window and hand it to Blanco. Blanco takes it without so much as a thank-you.
To Rooster he says, “You tell Big Fate I said what’s up.”
Rooster doesn’t react. Won’t give Blanco the satisfaction.
But I feel a little pain go pop in my chest. It’s been so long since I heard that name. Too long.
“Fuck dying,” Blanco says as he nods to me then. “Give a big hello from me to your girl when you see her.”
He means Rose because he knows Rooster’s going to send me to her soon. And this’s him saying he’s sorry but also how he knows it’ll be a relief for me. All these years without Rose. Too many.
“Fuck dying,” I say back to him. Like now it’s our thing somehow. And in this moment, I guess it is. And I’m okay with it. And I think Rose would be too.
With that, Blanco just turns and goes.
The door closes behind him. Gets locked.
And Rooster leans forward on the couch and says to me, “Now let’s discuss how you’re about to pay me back for every penny.”
Glasses
Monday, September 15, 2008
Late Evening
54
The room’s getting warm with so many people in it. And it’s interesting words Rooster uses when he says he wants Ghost to pay him back too. I don’t let my surprise for that show. I’m still tripping on the showdown with Blanco.
On my life, the last person I thought I’d see when that door opened was him, and that forced me to have to reconsider Ghost, like what else don’t I know about him if he has a guy like Blanco to reach out to?
I don’t take my eyes off Ghost through the whole thing. I know it’s him the second I see him. He’s five-eight and brown, like the description said. Wood brown and weathered, the way fences get from lots of sun.
He’s skinny but muscled. A fighter, I’m thinking. With his puffy boxer’s eyebrows from old scar tissue and his sharp eyes underneath, the type where you know he’s thinking all the time. Weighing odds. Trying to shift things and maybe make it so you don’t know it’s him doing the shifting.
What’s off about him is the dark circles under both eyes. Big ones, almost like black eyes from getting punched. They make him look all worn-out, like the world is heavy, but also like killing him is the only thing that will ever make him stop fighting.
He’s no joke. I watch his eyes all throughout the negotiation and exchange between Rooster and Blanco. Agitation, I seen. Nervousness too. What I didn’t see much of was fear.
It was mostly acceptance. I mean, he didn’t even look upset when Blanco gave him up. He knows how this is about to end. He’s known for a while. I can tell just by looking in his eyes. They look tired but ready, like whatever it is we’re about to do to him will finally be an opportunity to rest.
That messes with me too, since I know how exhausting it is to put plans together, to put things in place to be able to roll out at a moment’s notice, to have to keep heavy secrets from crashing down.
Just looking at him, I see how he knows all that the same way I do. What I’m guessing the only difference is, is that I have people close to me, sharing my everyday, and he don’t. He’s got books and records in boxes. He’s pure solo when Blanco sells him out.
Blanco saying what he said about warrants tells me Collins put my addresses in, and by the time they came back out the other side, Ghost knew every one.
I been trying to think of who might be able to pass that information on, but it’s just a waste of time. It don’t matter. That’s a done deal. What matters now is what happens next, and what Rooster means when he says he needs Ghost to pay him back.
I’m f
idgeting where I’m standing, feeling the barrel of the gun getting warm against my tailbone, just waiting for his response.
We all are. It feels like the whole room’s waiting on a cliff-hanger.
So I guess it’s funny how the next thing to come out of Ghost isn’t actually words. It’s blood. His nose just starts bleeding all down his front.
Terco looks like he can’t even believe it. He’s about to blow up and lose it, but that don’t change that it’s happening, that Ghost’s just sitting there, about to drip all over the living room carpet.
Ghost
Monday, September 15, 2008
Late Evening
55
Blood’s coming out my nose, and it’s not stopping. I got my head back and everything, using the cuff on my longsleeve like it’s a towel and it’s getting soggy on me. The paint on the ceiling’s looking like spread cream cheese above me, and I can only see the top of Terco’s head when he yells at me not to bleed on anything, but it’s too late.
Dabs drip down my face, my chin. Onto the carpet.
Terco says, “Fuck!”
And right then I know which one is the clean freak around here. Maybe it’s not by design. Maybe it’s just the dude Terco is.
“Get him a towel,” Rooster says.
The top of Terco’s head goes away and I hear him stomp off down the hall to the linen closet with the empty-ass safe in it. Soon after, I’ve got a big brown fluffy thing stuffed in my face too hard.
I almost laugh that it’s brown, because of course he picked that color so I don’t stain it.
I decide to sit.
Why this is going down right now, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve definitely been up for hours and hours. I’ve not been drinking much water. Could be that the Santa Anas’ dryness is hanging around in the air. Could be the tumor giving up and popping or something. But if that happened, my whole brain would go with it. And I can see. I can hear. I’m not fuzzy or nothing. I’m just bleeding, all down the front of myself.