Safe

by Ryan Gattis

  To Lonely, I say, “How far is it?”

  “Not far, like ten minutes.”

  I’m not happy having to drive at night like this but I’m not about to be holding Ghost up instead. What I’m feeling right now is, I’m dreading how this’s gonna turn out. This Ghost is the first person I’ve feared in a long time.

  Normally, I know what’s happening or how things will break down. With him, I feel out of control, like I might do or say something I wouldn’t usually. He’s throwing me off.

  I’m rolling windows down as I take us the back way to the 710 on Clark, right on Millrace, left on Carlin, right on Olanda, left on Gibson, left on Rosecrans. I’m getting dizzy a little, sweating even. Ghost’s got his eyes on me the whole way too, studying me.

  I’m figuring by now that Collins got my message and DEA aren’t coming, but right now I’m second-guessing my call, thinking I should’ve told them to come and arrest everybody and me too.

  Ghost dropping the bomb about somebody being a rat in the room? Man, it was just over at that point.

  Terco’s gonna clean and go. They all are. The houses won’t just close temporarily now. It’ll be permanent.

  Business will shift, and what’s burning in me is how I set Terco up so nice for a fall and now everything is falling but him. Everything I’ve been building for months is gone. This whole parachute I’m putting together for myself? It burned up around me tonight.

  The dog will have no busts, no dope on the table, no money, and he will be hungrier than he’s ever been after so many meals set up right in front of him got taken away. He’ll eat somebody after that and it’s gonna be me if Leya don’t grab those call logs out of the safe.

  The worry of her forgetting hits me hard. If Felix was crying or fussy with getting taken to the car, I’m thinking, it would’ve been easy not to check twice that she had everything. The thought of it just balls my stomach up.

  I’ve got to call her somehow, to check and make sure she has them, but it’s not possible right now, not with Lonely in the backseat holding Ghost up. I reach for my pocket but my antacids aren’t there.

  I left them at home in my jacket, except I have to remind myself now how that house isn’t my home anymore and that’s all on some safecracker sitting in the backseat right now, looking smug as shit.

  Ghost

  Tuesday, September 16, 2008

  Early Morning

  59

  We’re in Carson, I think. At one of them office parks with nothing but one-level buildings filled with orange-doored storage units as big as car garages, and we’re pulling through the guarded front gate after Rooster’s car, and Glasses is nodding at the dude and the guy just straight shuts it down. Puts the little gate down behind us, turns the lights out in his booth, and walks away from it. Nobody else getting in now.

  But we’re way outside of business hours anyways. This place closed at 1800, and it’s going on 0138 in the morning now. My dash clock says so. It’s bouncing as we’re going over speed bumps to the back of the lot, into this alley of units that only faces a concrete wall about a hundred feet long and twelve feet high.

  Besides the one carrying Rooster, two other cars are here, some old Chevy and one of those ageless Toyota trucks that never stops running no matter how much you beat on them and make them carry shit. Frank calls them modern-day mules. Anyways, the lights of both of those are pointed at a garage unit that the other linebacker is opening right as we pull up, and as the door slides up, disappearing into the building and I can see what’s inside, I finally get it.

  Well, what I get first is chills going up and down my back and neck, all over my head too, and right after, I know they’re not about to kill me.

  They need me.

  And I’m sitting up now because I know I’m not about to end up dead in a Lynwood alley after all.

  At least, not yet. Not here.

  See, inside this storage garage is more safes than I ever seen in one tiny place before. Not even a showroom. It’s safes on top of safes. Stacked up three high, and I’m looking at them like they’re the Egyptian pyramids and I’m thinking, How the fuck did they even do that?

  It’s sinking in why Rooster was asking me all those questions about safes before. He wants me to open these for him. And maybe some that might be booby-trapped. And it’s making even more sense why the linebackers are with us, not just to deal with my dumb ass, but mainly to lift some heavy shit.

  I’m getting out of the car, on my own steam. Frank’s phrase.

  Rooster’s walking up, his hat down real low over his eyes, saying, “Make sure homeboy has a socket for his drills.”

  And then, looking over to me and up a little, with the same first smile I ever saw him with, he says, “Time to do what you do.”

  We’re talking twenty safes, maybe thirty.

  Hours of work. The ultimate marathon.

  Now that he’s showing me what he wants to show me, Rooster’s got a different tune to him. He’s lighter, more relaxed.

  He says, “You need some water or anything? You hungry?”

  “Sure,” I say, still feeling fuzzy looking at all these safes in front of me—a bunch of Sentries, some American Securities—but smart enough to know this might be my last meal, though where the hell is open this time of night around here, I don’t even know. Norms maybe.

  I say, “Where’d you even get all these?”

  Rooster nods at one of the linebackers to go take orders and grab food, then turns to look at the safe stacks with me, the two of us putting long shadows over the open cave of the garage while an extension cord gets plugged in and spooled out all the way to my feet and dropped with a little clack.

  “Here and there,” he says.

  So I come back with “I’m going to need fifty percent of any cash and gold I pull out of these.”

  Rooster laughs.

  “So,” I say, “forty then. Look, I got no use for the other metals, no gems, no guns, no dope. Straight cash and gold, that’s it. If there isn’t any, I don’t get any.”

  Rooster looks to Glasses and says, “This one, owes large and still thinks he can be the one negotiating.”

  They stare at me. Together.

  But I know something they don’t know I know. See, a lot of safes went missing in the ’92 riots. And I know me and Frank flat out refused to open stuff when it didn’t have papers or the people coming in asking seemed shady as hell. I’d always heard there were some janitors out there during the riots who just didn’t give a fuck. They were more than happy to tell crews where safes were, even unlock gates and doors, let people in, and point them out. And that information got acted on. I’m standing here staring at the living proof. Every last one of these is stolen. Guaranteed. There was only one problem with that, though. Once you got them out, you had to get them open.

  Obviously, they didn’t figure out that part. Shit. It’s obvious they’ve been trying, for years, to get these popped, and nobody could ever do that for them till tonight.

  And now that they got me, they’re going to need to pay for my services.

  “For me it’s simple,” I say. “How many years have these been sitting? More than a decade, at least. So, how long was it really before you gave up on a more private office space with a bigger door and more storage and just dumped them here in an eight-by-twenty garage? I bet you couldn’t believe your luck when you heard about me getting wild tonight. You saw the angle quick.”

  Rooster’s not saying anything, but his eyes are. They’re angry at me for seeing him, for seeing through him.

  “Forty percent,” I say, “or you can just kill me right here and these motherfuckers stay closed forever.”

  The game just got real.

  Everybody knows it.

  The eyes of this crew are on me hard now, and on Rooster too. They’re going back and forth like ping-pong. I got sweat creeping up on my lower back. I got both linebackers and Glasses and the silhouettes from the other cars all looking at me and itch
ing to do whatever Rooster says.

  And when he sniffs, they shift.

  Like it was almost a command. Almost.

  Rooster looks at his fingernails. “You really don’t want to live, do you?”

  I decide to be honest. A hundred percent.

  “I’m not living anyways, so whether I do this or not doesn’t matter to me.” Then I lower my voice and keep it lowered, just for us. “I got cancer. Brain tumors, back for more. Couldn’t get enough of me when I was younger, I guess.”

  Rooster’s looking at me like he already knows this. “Okay, so what’s the money for? Where’s it all going?”

  That’s Rooster. The dude needs his whys.

  “Families,” I say. “It’s paying off houses.”

  He shoots me a look then. Like, You cannot be serious!

  But I am. And he sees that and shakes his head.

  So that’s when I say, “I need something else too.”

  “You’re just full of those tonight,” he says, and he’s not exactly gritting his teeth, but he’s close. The important thing is, though, he’s lowering his voice too.

  So it’s just us now.

  “I do this for you,” I say, “and you let me drive myself down south.”

  He’s not even looking at me now. “Where you looking to drive, thief?”

  “San Pedro.” For Rose. But I don’t say that. “Everybody knows the cancer’s back. My boss. DEA. FBI. Everybody. They’ve all seen how I’ve been acting weird lately. Uncharacteristic, they’d say.”

  Rooster’s not saying stop, so I keep going.

  “You let me drive my own way down to Pedro, and I’ll kill my own damn self. You can send people with me to make sure I do it. After, there’s no questions. No investigation. Cops think I got depressed and killed myself over the disease. It’s the perfect crime. Nobody in your crew catches a charge. Business keeps going. You got my obituary to hold up to anybody that knows I took what I took in Rancho.”

  He cuts in with “That doesn’t pay back the money, though, does it?”

  “That’s sunk cost at this point. Perils of doing business. Besides, you must not’ve loved that money too much if you had it stuffed in there with the explosives. You were already ready to lose it, I think.”

  And I don’t say why because I don’t know why. I don’t speculate on how either. I just finish with “And I know you’ll just have to pay it back in installments if I can’t cover it on your cut of what I bust out of these.”

  I wave a halfhearted hand at the safe stacks. Like, Only if I feel like opening these. And I keep going, voice low, “But if you at least let me do it my way, you’ll have something way more useful: the story of it.”

  He screws his face up then, like, Fuck you. Like, Stories are worthless.

  But I’m on it, still keeping it down so nobody else hears, “Dude like you already knows how that’s the best thing out of all this. I mean, nobody needs to know I’m dying. Just think of the story your people will be spreading after this. How you talked an officer of the fucking court into killing himself after giving up those raid addresses because that’s how damn cunning you are. How psychological. You got a guy to do himself so nobody in your crew would go to jail for it. That’s criminal-mastermind shit right there. That’s untouchable crime. Crime done with the mind. You’ll be a legend.”

  I know this appeals to someone that doesn’t even carry his own cell phone for safety’s sake, but this is me just priming him for the knockout, aiming straight for his ego.

  “And I bet that story unlocks a lot of doors for you. I mean, people wouldn’t be talking about Blanco beating some kids with a baseball bat twenty years later then, would they? They’d be talking”—I pause here, building up just the right amount of anticipation before saying—“about you.”

  I swear, I don’t even have to watch that fly through the air between us and land on him. I know it sinks in. Heavy. Deep. He’s looking down. Furrowing his brow, I’m sure. And in a hot second, he’s sniffing and smirking, and right then I can already see it. How the story has him. How it’s grabbing him and lifting him up inside.

  I don’t go on about how they can make you. Rooster knows this one can turn him into a king. All he has to do is give me that dignity to do what I need to do myself. Just me going out, not hurting anybody but me. How clean that’d be. How good.

  “Twenty percent,” Rooster finally says to me, and puts his hand out before whispering, “and just so we’re clear, I’m also going to let you keep what you took off my other house tonight too.”

  “Forty,” I say, and shake his hand, “or you can kill me and not get shit. You’ve never had anybody this good come near these safes, and you never will again either.”

  His eyebrows go up and I let go. I give him a look that says, Tell me I’m fucking wrong. Rooster sniffs and nods at me. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s forty.

  When he does that, and I see my toolboxes get set down in front of me, relief runs up and down my spine like cold spiders with extra legs. Rooster’s giving me a look then too, like, If this were different, I might actually like you.

  Glasses

  Tuesday, September 16, 2008

  Early Morning

  60

  Lonely’s driving to go get everybody food. Normally, I’m not getting sent on runs like these since I’m above that, but I volunteered since he hadn’t left by the time Ghost and Rooster had finished negotiating.

  I said I was hungry but didn’t know what I wanted. Being on the road now gives me some time to think about how Ghost said he wanted to save homes for people, and when I heard it, I didn’t believe it, but the more I think about it, there’s no other explanation, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, him pulling a ghetto Robin Hood.

  What I wonder after that is, how true he is to his word. Ghost killing himself will solve a lot of problems for me, but that’s only if he actually pulls a trigger. It’ll mean I can go back to Collins and blame it all on Ghost having access, snagging all those addresses, and hitting Rooster before DEA could come.

  I can turn it on Collins how there’s leaks in his house, and that made everything unsecure, including and especially me. It’s not my fault if they can’t keep my information safe. That’s on them.

  On Rooster’s end, it looks obvious that it’s all Ghost’s fault, that those addresses couldn’t possibly have come from me. And I’m liking that, since it’s no longer about me being suspect. It’s about Ghost being wild. It’s about how he screwed everything up.

  If he does what he said he’d do on top of that, he’s giving me my life back. He gets all the blame and I can keep going as I’ve been going, getting new addresses and feeding them to Collins on my schedule. I can even make Terco look like the rat while I’m at it. Then I don’t have to be out to Cardiff for real until there’s a SWAT team knocking down Rooster’s door.

  Hey, it could work. But it’s all depending on Ghost doing what he said. If he does, it fixes everything. I can drive right to Cardiff and bring Leya back. That’d be good too, seeing as how us disappearing right now is the only thing that would 100 percent convince Rooster I’m the rat.

  But if Ghost don’t kill himself, I’ll have to. Rooster will make sure of it and that’s a whole different scenario to deal with, since Collins would never help me if it ever looked like I had anything to do with a body.

  All I need to do is talk to Collins. I need to hear a good explanation from him on how he could’ve gotten the addresses without me, and I’m thinking hard on that until Lonely breaks my quiet.

  “I got this alert on my phone.”

  I ask him what he means by alert exactly. Rooster’s strict about certain homies never having phones on them, and since Lonely does so much, he’s one of them.

  “News alerts, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re not even supposed to be carrying your own phone when we do what we do. You know this. It’s a smartphone, man! It has trackable GPS!”

  “You’re r
ight. I shouldn’t’ve brought it. It’s just that things happened so fast tonight. I get that call from you while I was in the bathroom, and then I had to dress, and then I’m in the car in a minute, already driving. It’s only halfway to your place that I even realize it’s in my pocket, and it was too late to turn back then.”

  His last few words hit me. We go a couple blocks in silence.

  “Can’t change it now,” I say to him.

  Lonely pulls up to a red light and hangs his head a little. There’s no cars coming the other direction. I’m about to tell him not to tell Rooster about having a phone, that he can maybe just run the battery down and leave it in the trunk of the car, but a cop car pulls up beside us on the driver side.

  We’re in the middle lane, going straight. They’re in the left, going straight. I can see the logo just fine where I’m sitting and it makes me go cold inside.

  It’s Sheriffs. On my right, I never would’ve been able to see it, but on my left, I seen it too good. It makes my mouth dry.

  I’m looking at the one riding shotgun looking at Lonely, taking in his polo and his shaved head looking straight forward before moving his look to me. It takes a lot to do it, but I nod down at him and do a half smile. He turns away.

  And I think we’re good since my glasses can be helpful that way sometimes. Nobody up to no good would wear them, I guess. But right then, the sheriff in the shotgun seat says something to the driver, and then the cruiser’s roof lights pop on. My heart jumps inside me.

  I’m thinking about how I’ve still got a gun on me. Unregistered. But my heartbeat gets back to normal again when I see they’re just running the red and turning the flashers off when they get to the other side of the intersection and speed off.

  Me and Lonely look at each other. It wasn’t an escape exactly, but we know we’re lucky. And Lonely nods at that before frowning.

  “This news alert,” he says, “it’s saying how something happened in Morelia.”