Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  She looked through his text messages next. There were none from Gloria. Most of the messages were between him and Danzig, boring little remarks: My phones dying. Bring lighter. Bullshit. Ha ahaa ahahaha. Denver says yo become a muslim. It gave her a strange feeling to read the messages of a dead man. She thought of Semion again, saw his face in her mind, and pushed the memory out.

  After cleaning the screen with her shirt, she flushed the toilet, and stepped back into the bedroom. Roberts didn’t stir. She plugged his phone back in.

  Then she lay on her own bed, took out her phone, and googled: How much is one dose of MDMA. It was 80 milligrams. She googled: How many milligrams in a pound. Her phone revealed the number: 453,592. She divided that by 80: 5,670 doses in a pound. She googled: How many pounds in 200 kilograms. She multiplied the answer by 5,670 and got 2,500,045 doses. She multiplied that by $20 and got $50,000,895.

  Breathing slowly, she rechecked her math. It was correct. A shipment of Molly with a street value of fifty million dollars was coming to San Francisco.

  Part 5

  Arthur Meehan, prisoner number E17073 at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California, had set up the deal between Gloria Ocampo and Semion Gurevich. Gloria and Arthur had sold drugs and stolen goods to each other for almost twenty-five years; their relationship was professional, friendly, and mutually wary.

  Arthur first mentioned this deal to Gloria on a call placed from prison, made on a smuggled phone. Someone, he explained, had approached him looking to unload a regular shipment of ecstasy. “Regular, meaning every damn month. Big, too. Thought of you right away.” Gloria was suspicious, but she was willing to listen.

  “Here’s the thing,” Arthur said. “You’re gonna buy it from these Israelis, and then you’re gonna sell it to another dude I know, Shadrack Pullman. You never heard of him?” At that time, she hadn’t. She jotted his name down on a piece of paper.

  Her eyes, like she was looking for a snake, moved back and forth over the floor in front of her as she listened. The deal, as Arthur explained it, didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t he setting his Israelis up directly with this other man, Shadrack?

  “They’d never do a deal with a man like him,” he said, when she questioned him. “They need a professional—someone like you.” The phone cut out for a second. He had a way of speaking that made him sound country, like a cowboy.

  “And you?” she asked. “What do you expect out of all of this?”

  “Ten points on what Shadrack pays you.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” she said. “Ten percent? This is what we call a finder’s-fee deal.” She tapped on her knee with her hand.

  “Look, you’re gonna get this shit from these Jewish fellas, you’re gonna hold it for a night, two nights, and then you’re gonna flip it to Shadrack. You could damn near double the price. They’re gonna want to do this every damn month. Shit, you should be happy I’m not asking for twenty-five. I’m handing you this thing wrapped up like a damn Christmas tree.”

  And how, asked Gloria, was she supposed to know that Shadrack Pullman wouldn’t snitch if he got pulled in? She didn’t know what kind of spine the man had. She didn’t know anything about him.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Arthur. “That’s why you gotta pay me them points. The dude’s gonna understand that you’re working for me. He’s gonna understand that speaking your name is as dangerous as speaking mine. And trust me, he knows how dangerous that is. The boy served time with me. He knows it like a cock knows the sunrise.” Gloria stayed silent. “It’s natural law,” he added.

  It sounded intriguing, she had to admit. Get it, hold it, double the price. Arthur told her to call the Israelis’ man in San Francisco, David Eban, to set up a meeting. He gave her a number and explained that when Eban answered the phone, she had to say, Hello, I got your number from Uri. He would ask, And how is Uri? And she had to answer, Sadly, he’s sick.

  “You gotta say it exactly like that,” said Arthur. “He’ll give you an address after that.”

  They had dinner at Harris’s steak house. She left the meeting feeling impressed by Eban’s intelligence—certainly a step up from the normal crowd. Over the next few years, she bought every shipment of MDMA that his partners brought to her. Each month, after the deal went down, she’d have one of her sons drop Arthur’s 10 percent at a woman’s house in the Sunset District. Depending on the particulars of the deal, Arthur’s cut usually worked out to somewhere between forty-five and sixty thousand dollars.

  It was a good arrangement. Everyone was making money. And it all worked smoothly until, without good reason, Arthur pushed himself further into the equation.

  He would call occasionally to see how things were going. It was standard stuff: the man wanted to keep abreast of the situation. She would tell him every time that things were fine. On one of their calls, though, about a month before Raymond Gaspar showed up in San Francisco, Gloria mentioned that Shadrack was becoming a little eccentric. She didn’t ask for help, didn’t say it was a problem; she just mentioned it.

  A few days later, Arthur called back. He told her he was going to send someone to check in on them. He said his man was going to straighten Shadrack right out.

  “No, no need for that,” said Gloria. “All I’m saying is that the man is strange. I don’t need your help.”

  “The boy’s just gonna look in on y’all, smooth things out,” said Arthur. Gloria could hear the sound of prisoners shouting in the background.

  She took a moment to formulate what she was going to say. This was the last thing she wanted. Finally, as firmly as possible, she spoke. “No, Arthur. We don’t need him.”

  “He’s a good old boy,” Arthur said. “He’ll be there in three weeks.”

  Gloria hung up the phone and sat staring at it. She knew what this meant. Wars didn’t always start with cursing and screaming. They didn’t always start with bullets flying. Sometimes they started calmly. He’s a good old boy. He’ll be there in three weeks.

  He was preparing to move on her. It was obvious. He wanted to control the whole thing.

  The next day she called Tom Roberts. She’d already used him a year earlier to figure out who David Eban was working for. Roberts broke in and bugged the man’s Oakland apartment, followed him everywhere he went, dug through his trash, poked around on his computer, read his e-mail, and did God knows what else until he had it settled: David Eban’s connection was a man named Semion Gurevich, a club owner. Gloria had looked at pictures of Semion on the Internet. He didn’t look like a gangster, even in his flashy suits. He looked soft and sad.

  Now she decided it was the perfect time to hear what Semion had to say for himself. Not that she would be calling him directly. But soon, if she was lucky, she’d be listening to him unwittingly telling her exactly what Arthur’s plans were. Even if he did nothing more than mention Arthur’s name, that in itself would tell her something.

  She told Roberts she’d pay four thousand dollars a day, and sent him to Miami to bug Semion’s apartment.

  Gloria was sitting in her living room watching television when Roberts called.

  “The shit has hit the fan,” he said.

  “Tell me.” She raised the remote control and muted her celebrity dancing show.

  “I swear to fucking God, so help me, it sounds like someone went into your boy’s apartment and he had a—um—he had some kind of serious accident.” Roberts always assumed his calls were being recorded. He spoke accordingly.

  “What happened?” she asked. She shut her eyes so she could listen more closely.

  “Your boy had an accident. I’ll tell you more in person.” His excitement made her feel annoyed. He sounded like a child. He dropped his voice to a lower register and continued.

  “There’s going to be a sale coming your way, too. It sounds like you could get ten times as many cases of wine for your party. At least two hundred—”

  “Tom, do me a favor, please—listen—” She
sounded out her words like a special education teacher explaining a complicated theory to a student. “Put the message in a folder, and I’ll check it tomorrow. All this talk about wine—I’m not in a mood for wine, okay, sweetheart? Thank you.” Putang tanga, she cursed him in her mind. Did he actually think she wanted his help interpreting things?

  Later, when she listened to the audio he’d uploaded, she felt sick to her stomach. It was disgusting to hear someone get killed, to hear his gasps. Her ears perked up when they called her a bitch, though. I am a bitch, she thought. The kind of bitch that has a microphone in your home. The kind of bitch that hears what you say.

  She let her mind process it all: Semion Gurevich was dead. He was dead and the Israelis were going to continue moving their drugs, only now they would be sending ten times more. Arthur’s man, she felt certain, was coming precisely because of this increase. Insulting, she thought. Send someone, then. Send someone and see what happens.

  Two days later, David Eban called and asked to set up a meeting. They went to Harris’s, as always. Eban had lost weight and grown his hair out since the last time she’d seen him. His clothes sparkled. He looked wealthy. He kissed her on both cheeks when she came in. A few minutes later, he leaned forward and asked, “Do you want to buy more stuff?”

  She acted confused.

  “Ten times more,” he said. “Between four and five hundred pounds.” He seemed nervous, almost desperate. Gloria pretended to be surprised. She played it out like an actress, shaking her head, pursing her lips, then told him she’d have to think about it. But before the meal ended, she said, “I’ll do it. We’ll do it. It’s on.”

  He told her the price. She didn’t fight him on it. They shook hands across the table. Eban looked very pleased. They ordered another drink to celebrate.

  “We’ll be rich,” he whispered.

  Two days after that, she called Shadrack Pullman and told him to come to her office on Mission Street.

  On the corner of Mission and Twenty-Third was a Laundromat. A stairway in the back led to a locked door. A camera pointed down at any callers. Twelve electronic poker machines stood inside, almost always occupied by Filipino senior citizens. The cost to play was a dollar a hand. The machines took credit cards.

  In the back of that room, a second stairway led to another locked door, monitored by another security camera. Shadrack Pullman had never been invited to visit Gloria there before. He wondered if he’d done something wrong.

  The door swung open before he reached it. A young Filipino man, wearing jeans and a sweater that made him look like a student, nodded and gestured for him to come up. When Shadrack passed through the threshold, the young man said, “Hands up,” and motioned for him to put his hands on the wall. Shadrack did as he was told, and the man patted him down.

  “Let me hold on to your phone,” said the man.

  Shadrack handed it over.

  “Sorry, homey,” the young man whispered as he slipped the phone into his pocket. Then he led Shadrack down a linoleum-floored hallway to an office.

  Gloria Ocampo sat behind a plain wooden desk, facing the door. She looked like a lawyer in her glasses, beaded necklace, and suit. A stack of manila files sat on the desk, and a pair of file cabinets stood against the wall to Shadrack’s left. The room was warm and smelled like cardboard. Shadrack stood blinking in the doorway.

  Gloria looked up and smiled. “Pullman,” she said. “You never visit anymore!”

  He had never visited her at all. When she wanted to speak to him, or vice versa, she picked him up, drove him around the block, and dropped him back off. Until a few hours earlier, he hadn’t even known she had an office in San Francisco.

  She rose from the desk, walked over to him, and took his hands in her own. They stood facing each other like dancers. Shadrack’s forehead became warm. He wasn’t used to dealing with people in the light of day, and he certainly wasn’t used to holding hands with Gloria and looking her in the face.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  “Nothing to say. Everything’s good. Shit, you know.” He shook his head, gently freed his hands.

  “Sit, sit, sit.” She pointed at a chair.

  Shadrack—after smoothing his pants and wiping his nose with his knuckles—sat. “You had me all scared, calling me in,” he said. “I thought you were about to yell at me for something.”

  “Why would I yell at you?” asked Gloria, sitting back down behind her desk.

  “Nah, just like yelling at me to change something.”

  “Well, now, see”—she pointed at him, raised her eyebrows—“you’re not so wrong there. You’re not so dumb as people say.” Her accent made her sentences sound percussive. “Maybe you’re smarter than they imagine.” She smiled at him, lifted her chin. “So, tell me then, Shadrack, in an ideal world, what would I like to change?”

  She’d raised the price last year. If she tried to increase it again, he’d have to argue. He didn’t want to do that. He shook his head.

  “Stop being so nervous, man,” she said. “This is a friendly call. You’re all”—she imitated a man holding his fists up, clenching her arms and shoulders, tightening her face like a child—“you’re all tense. Relax.”

  Shadrack took a deep breath. He tried to relax.

  “So tell me for real,” she said, smacking her lips, “For real, for real, as my boys say, what would you change, if you were me? Not you. Me.”

  An idea occurred to Shadrack. He didn’t like it. He sure as hell wasn’t about to utter it. He reminded himself, as he had many times before, that the best way to deal with this woman was to play dumb.

  “I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “I really don’t. I’m clueless here. Everything’s cool, you know. I wouldn’t wanna guess in terms of what you would or wouldn’t wanna do.” He raised an arm, let it drop. “I trust you.”

  Gloria took her glasses off and rubbed the area between her eyes. Bass noise from the speakers of a passing car reached the third-floor window: boom-boooom-boom-boooom. Shadrack waited.

  “How did we meet?” Gloria asked.

  “How did we meet?”

  “I’m asking you, how did we meet?”

  “Arthur hooked us up.” He couldn’t avoid saying it any longer: Arthur.

  “So?” she asked.

  Shadrack stayed silent.

  “I have an offer for you,” said Gloria. “You’re acting too scared to speak, so I’m going to make it simple, explain everything, and afterward, you can say yes, I like it, or no, I don’t.” She sat looking at him for a moment, and then continued. “Arthur is sending someone to look in on us. This man is supposed to arrive soon. I don’t know when, but soon. Three times I said to Arthur: ‘Don’t send a man.’ And three times he insisted. So what does it mean?” Gloria’s gaze went from Shadrack’s eyes to his lips, and then back up. The space between her own eyes furrowed sympathetically, as though she was about to deliver a painful prognosis. “It means he wants to replace you. I’ve known him for almost thirty years. I know how he thinks, and right now, he’s sitting there locked up in his little cell, thinking: My ten percent is not enough. I need the whole thing.”

  Shadrack shook his head involuntarily.

  “He told me that rumors of your eccentricity are reaching him in Tracy,” Gloria said. “I said, ‘No, Shadrack is fine. We do business every month. He’s reliable.’ He tells me: ‘I just want my boy to take a look at him.’ I tell him again: ‘No, no need, don’t send anyone.’ He says, ‘I’m sending someone to help you deal with fucking Shadrack.’ He wants to make a move.”

  “So maybe he wants to replace you,” said Shadrack. His mouth had gone dry.

  A hint of anger moved across Gloria’s face, then transformed into a look of slight amusement. A silly idea, it seemed to say. She shook her head.

  “I’ll ask him,” said Shadrack, trying to project calmness into his voice.

  “Do that if you want,” she said. “You’re a free man in a free country, b
ut I wouldn’t if I were you.” She rested her elbows on the desk and watched his reaction.

  Her words sounded like a warning. Shadrack felt anger spread through his body. He wiped his forehead and cursed.

  “No, no, calm down,” she said. “Listen to me. My father used to tell me it’s easier to walk in the dark if you close your eyes than it is to do it with your eyes open. You know what that means?” Shadrack shook his head. “It means that if you admit that you’re blind, you end up taking the appropriate steps. Get it?”

  Shadrack still didn’t understand. Apparently sensing this, she changed tack. In a soothing voice, she asked whether they could agree that Arthur sending someone was a bad thing.

  “Sure,” said Shadrack. He flicked his hand up as though chasing a fly and nodded again. “But let me ask you a question,” he said, pointing at her. “If he sends someone out, how do I know this dude’s not going to push me out right away? Throw me on my ass?”

  “You don’t,” said Gloria. “Nobody does. You never do, right? But I’ve made it clear to Arthur, I’ve told him again and again, that any act of aggression against you will be considered an act against me. Against my organization.”

  Shadrack didn’t know whether to believe this or not. He warned himself not to feel flattered. Listen to what she says, he told himself. Take it in, but don’t give anything back. He studied her face: she looked perfectly unbothered.

  “One must take normal steps to protect oneself,” said Gloria. She put her hands behind her head, elbows out, and leaned back. “If a man comes to your house, you check if he has a gun. If he has a gun, you turn him away. Do you have a gun? Maybe you’d be safer if you did. Look, at the end of the day, he’s only sending one man, not an army. But you’re playing with sharks now. You’re not in Humboldt County anymore.” She dropped her voice all the way down to a whisper. “We are about to be moving ten times more. It’s a lot of shit. Arthur’s not going to come in shooting. He’s not going to come in and kill you. He’s sending this man—probe, poke, sniff—see what he finds out, see if he can find an advantage, and then, once he knows, then he’ll make his move.”