The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  He dropped Tinafey at the motel and went by the hospital. It was late, after visiting hours, but the ICU nurse bent the rules and let him in to see Sam, who was still asleep in her alcove. He stood over her bed and listened to her breathe, like he had when she was a baby. The whisper of her tiny lungs was the first thing that had ever taken him out of his own head. Until then he’d half believed the world disappeared each night when he went to sleep and was re-created every morning upon his awakening—that his was the only mind that mattered. The realization that Sam was as alive as he was, as actual, doubled the size of his universe in an instant, but truth be told, nothing changed for him. What was bent didn’t straighten, what was iced over didn’t thaw. In fact the only thing the revelation did was give him someone else to fail, and fail her he had.

  That night he tossed and turned for hours, dozing off and waking up every fifteen minutes. This time tomorrow he’d have the rest of the money. This time tomorrow he’d be rid of Tony for good. He couldn’t tell if it was worry or excitement that wouldn’t let him sleep. He gave up the struggle at dawn, lay in bed trying to get his bearings. The chair, his watch, Tinafey beside him, in a ball under the sheet. One pale rivulet of daylight streamed in through the gap between the curtains and flowed across the floor. He felt no more rested than when he’d lain down the night before. His knee popped when he stood. A muscle in his neck ached. He pulled on his sweats and staggered out onto the walkway, already texting Beck, the day already heavy upon him even before the sun had shown its face.

  24

  NOTHING HAD CHANGED IN THE FIVE YEARS SINCE DIAZ HAD last driven down Soto Street, during a Christmas leave. Carnitas Michoacan, with the giant burger and plastic T. rex on its roof, Pioneer Chicken, Ramirez Liquor. A new apartment building had gone up, but that was about it. Same corner market where he bought Lunchables and chili mango lollipops when he was a kid, same middle school, same storefront church. He couldn’t wait to get his money and get the fuck out again. Between here and Afghanistan, he felt like he’d been living in the ghetto his whole life.

  He hadn’t told anybody in his family he was coming. Not his dad, not his brothers and sisters, not Tony. He’d ridden the bus from North Carolina. Two and a half days. His joints were still vibrating, and he could still smell the body odor of the kid claiming to be a chef who sat next to him from Dallas to Los Angeles and kept trying to sell him sips from a fifth of Smirnoff he was nursing. “Dollar a pop!”

  Arriving in L.A. late at night, he’d checked into a room in a downtown flophouse. Cash only, shared bathroom. He stripped the bed to the bottom sheet, rolled up his hoodie for a pillow, and slept in his clothes.

  Someone pounding on a wall and screaming for help woke him at dawn. He peeked out his door and saw a security guard standing in front of a room down the hall.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Nothin’,” the guard said.

  When things quieted, Diaz tiptoed to the shower and washed off the grime of the trip. Someone had left behind a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. The soap, no way, but he figured the shampoo was safe. He grabbed breakfast at McDonald’s and took the subway to the Budget car rental kiosk at Union Station.

  Everybody was on the way to work in the old neighborhood. The 7-Eleven was full of gardeners and painters and plumbers picking up coffee and Gatorade. The ladies in line at the Starbucks drive-through put on their makeup in their rearview mirrors and called their kids to make sure they’d gotten off to school. And me, I’m up to no good, Diaz thought. It made him feel like a spy.

  He didn’t have to worry that Tony would be leaving for a job. The kid had been on the government tit since getting his leg blown off. And Creeper, the dude he was going to see first, was another vato who wasn’t blowing through stop signs in order to clock in on time anywhere.

  Creeper ran his hustles out of an apartment in Ramona Gardens, a Boyle Heights housing project hard by the 10 freeway. He was a veterano in Big Hazard, the gang that claimed the Gardens as their territory. Diaz had never lived in the projects and had never joined a gang, but he and Creeper had teamed up when they were kids to rob houses and steal cars. Los Thrill Killers they called themselves, like they were a band. They’d exchanged sporadic texts since then, and, thinking that someone with Creeper’s connections might be useful during his visit to L.A., Diaz had written his old homey a month ago to say whassup and tell him he’d be in town soon. Fall by whenever, Creeper wrote back.

  The Gardens had been built in 1940, and not much had been done to it since. Every turn Diaz took led him deeper into the maze of two-story brick buildings, all painted the same depressing shade of tan. Surrounded by dead grass, they looked like army barracks, but with bars on every window.

  If you had to be a stranger here, 9:00 a.m. was the best time. The streets were practically deserted. An old lady hobbling along, two teenage moms pushing strollers. Not a gangster in sight. The peewees were at school, jacking their classmates’ phones, and OGs like Creeper didn’t stir before two or three in the afternoon. Diaz pulled up in front of his old partner’s unit and got out of the Ford Escape he’d rented. A squirrel tugging at something stuck to the sidewalk waited until the last instant to move out of his way.

  A twelve-foot sound wall stood between the Gardens and the freeway, but it didn’t help much. Diaz could still hear the traffic, the rattle and whine of the tail end of the morning rush hour. He knocked three times at Creeper’s door before a pockmarked chola yanked it open and glared at him through the steel security screen.

  “Is Carlos around?” he said, using Creeper’s real name.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the chola said. The baby on her hip burst into tears.

  “Tell him it’s Mando Diaz.”

  The chola’s eyebrows, tattooed way up on her forehead, made her look perpetually skeptical. She had a diamond stud in her upper lip—a Marilyn, they called it. The baby pulled at her T-shirt, exposing a black bra strap. She slapped the kid’s hand and carried him off into the darkness. Diaz smelled weed and dirty diapers.

  After a muffled argument, Creeper materialized out of the gloom, shirtless and bleary. It had been more than ten years since Diaz had last seen him. He’d gotten fat. His face looked the same, but his head had doubled in size around it.

  “What the fuck, holmes?” he said.

  “You sleeping?” Diaz said.

  “It’s barely nine o’clock.”

  “I can come back later.”

  Creeper yawned and scratched his big belly. It was covered with a tattoo of a Big Hazard placa.

  “You get up this early in the army?” he said.

  “This is lunchtime in the army,” Diaz said. He put his mouth close to the screen and lowered his voice. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “What?” Creeper said.

  “Getting hold of a cuete.”

  Creeper didn’t flinch. Creeper never flinched. He drew his head back real slow to look Diaz up and down.

  “Damn, ese,” he said. “Nice to see you again, too.”

  He gave Diaz a choice. He could take the .22 he had hidden in a Pampers box in the bedroom or wait a couple hours for someone to bring by something bigger. After fifteen minutes of the baby crying, the chola glaring, and Creeper’s bullshit gangster swagger, Diaz was ready to move on. He paid a hundred dollars for the .22 and lied about stopping by again before he left town.

  He parked across the street from Tony’s place around ten. Someone had stuck a brick in the gate, so he got into the courtyard without having to buzz. An old man in coveralls was hacking with a machete at a banana tree in one of the planters, and the sound bounced off the stucco walls. Fresh jet contrails crisscrossed the square of sky overhead. A fat orange cat stared up at them, ears twitching.

  The old man nodded hello. Diaz nodded back. He went to Tony’s apartment and knocked at the door. No answer. He moved to the window and tried to peer inside, but the blinds were shut. A voice in his head said, Kick the door dow
n. Instead he called to the old man, asked in Spanish if he knew where Tony was.

  “I don’t live here,” the old man said. “I don’t know anything.” He started swinging his machete again.

  Diaz went back out to the street. He walked down the driveway to the parking garage under the building and peered through the gate. Tony’s truck was there, the one they gave him when he came back with one leg. The kid had sent him a photo. Diaz felt a rush of panic, a need for answers right now. He couldn’t return to the apartment, though, without looking suspicious. And maybe the kid was just at the corner store.

  He went back to his rental car, got in, and moved it to a spot with a clear view of the driveway and the front gate. The watching and waiting nearly killed him. He sat nodding his head to nothing, like a bus-bench loco. Every slamming door made him jump, and he tensed whenever a car drove by. At one point he found himself holding the .22, unconsciously dropping and reinserting the magazine over and over right there in the car, where anybody walking by could see.

  In two hours the only people who entered or left Tony’s building were the viejo with the machete, who drove off in a battered pickup, and the mail lady. When a passing police cruiser slowed so the cops inside could look him over, Diaz decided it was time to go.

  His dad had been living alone since his mom died, six years earlier. One of Diaz’s brothers had stayed with him for a while, but the old man drove him away with his drinking and temper tantrums. The few times Diaz had called since the funeral, his dad had responded to his questions with grunts and one-word answers. Diaz’s sisters had filled him in on what was going on: the old man didn’t work anymore or go out much. The house was falling down around his ears, but he ignored the leaky roof and rotting floorboards and spent most of his time on the couch, beer in hand, staring at the ceiling. No cable, no computer, no cell phone. He pissed in empty milk jugs instead of getting up and walking to the bathroom.

  The front yard of the little three-bedroom rancher was nothing but dirt. Diaz could remember when there was a thick, green lawn, playing football on it. Now it was strewn with bloated trash bags and old tires. A motorcycle frame poked out of a mound of dead leaves like a crime coming to light.

  Diaz stepped over the brittle yellow newspapers and faded junk mail piled on the porch. The front door was ajar. He pushed it open. The inside of the house was as cluttered as the yard, unsteady stacks and overflowing boxes everywhere. An ancient doo-wop song, a whisper from the radio, swirled the dust in the air.

  “Dad?” Diaz called out.

  His father’s head popped up over the back of the couch.

  “Yeah?”

  His hair and mustache had gone all the way white since Diaz had last seen him. The stubble on his chin, too. He hadn’t shaved in a while.

  “It’s Mando,” Diaz said.

  “Mando?” the old man said like he didn’t believe him.

  “What the hell are you doing in the dark?” Diaz said.

  “Taking a nap. What’s your problem?”

  “No problem.”

  “Good. You want a beer?”

  They drank the Bud Lights sitting side by side on the couch because all the chairs were covered with junk. A two-inch crack in one of the walls zigzagged from floor to ceiling, exposing the lath behind the plaster, and tendrils of ivy had wormed their way in through a broken window to cling to the china hutch and twine around a lamp.

  “You should clean this place up,” Diaz said.

  “It’s fine,” the old man said.

  “It’s like a crazy lady’s house on TV.”

  “I don’t have a TV. TV’s for pendejos.”

  Something rustled in the kitchen, going through the trash piled there, the pizza boxes and KFC buckets. Diaz stomped on the floor, and the sound stopped. The Rays sang softly on the radio about two silhouettes on the shade.

  “I don’t have money to fix stuff anyway,” Diaz’s dad continued. “I been laid up because of my back. Disability’s nothing.”

  “What’s wrong with your back?” Diaz said.

  “Hanging drywall since I was fourteen is what’s wrong with it. I should’ve joined the service like you. Three hots and a cot plus a steady paycheck. But we had Hector junior and Lupe by the time I was eighteen, and I couldn’t leave your mother alone with them.”

  “What if Mom could see you now?” Diaz said. “What would she think about how you keep her house?”

  The old man made a face. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I thought you were in Afghanistan. They finally kick you out?”

  “The war’s over,” Diaz said.

  “Ha! Those fucking animals? They been fighting since the Bible. That war’s not over.”

  “We’re out of it, anyway,” Diaz said. “Mostly.”

  “Hip hip hooray! God bless America!”

  Diaz noticed something moving on the coffee table. Ants.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” he said to his dad.

  “Yeah?” his dad said. “And what are you gonna do for me?”

  There was a knock at the front door. Loud, like whoever it was meant business.

  “Who’s that?” Diaz said.

  “Kobe Bryant,” the old man said. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” He pushed himself up off the couch and walked stiff-legged across the living room to answer. The knocking came again before he got there.

  “Hold on!” he yelled.

  He opened the door. A white man in a sport coat and tie stood on the porch. His hair was greased back, and he had on sunglasses.

  “Mr. Diaz?” he said.

  “Yeah,” the old man said.

  “Detective Blackburn, with the Gang and Narcotics Division.” The guy flashed a badge. “I’m afraid we’ve got a situation here.”

  A cop. Diaz tightened up. He wiggled the .22 out of his pocket and slipped it between the cushions of the couch but kept his finger on the trigger.

  “What’s that, a situation?” the old man said.

  “The local bangers have been stashing drugs on your property.”

  “What? I’m here all the time, and I ain’t seen nothin’ like that.”

  “There’s a garage out back, correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, in that garage right now is two kilos of cocaine.”

  “Bullshit,” the old man said. He seemed like he was about to close the door.

  “I’m serious,” the cop said. “What they’re up to, these knuckleheads, is they hide their dope on someone else’s property so we don’t find it when we search their houses.”

  “But I don’t know no gangsters,” Diaz’s dad said. “I’m too old for that shit.”

  “That’s why they picked you,” the cop said. “Why would we even think to look for dope here?”

  “That’s right, why?” Diaz’s dad said.

  “I’m saying we wouldn’t,” the cop said.

  “That’s right,” Diaz’s dad said, either playing dumb or being dumb.

  The cop hadn’t noticed Diaz yet, and Diaz sunk low on the couch to make sure he didn’t.

  “I’m here to ask your permission—” the cop began.

  “Go ahead and get it if it’s there,” Diaz’s dad said. “I don’t want nothing to do with no cocaine.”

  “So I have your permission?”

  “Sí, yeah, take it. The fucking thing’s unlocked.”

  The cop thanked Diaz’s dad for his cooperation and headed for the garage. The old man closed the door and came back to the couch. He picked his beer up off the floor and said, “You hear that?”

  “He should have a search warrant,” Diaz said.

  “Yeah?” the old man said.

  “Something.”

  “You can go tell him,” the old man said. “I don’t fuck with cops.”

  Diaz put the gun back in his pocket and got up and walked into the kitchen. Whatever had been digging in the garbage earlier fled at his approach. He heard its claws scrabbling on the warped linoleum. He went to the
window above the sink, the one that looked out onto the detached garage slumped at the end of the driveway. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Diaz breathed through his mouth as he watched the cop lift the garage door.

  As cluttered as the house was, the garage was worse, stuffed to the rafters with old paint cans, greasy car parts, and boxes of Christmas decorations. The cop knew right where to go, though. He moved aside a tamale pot and a sleeping bag, reached into the newly exposed hollow, and pulled out two 99 Cents Only store bags. He glanced inside the bags, backed out of the garage, and closed the door.

  The guy’s dirty. It hit Diaz all of a sudden. Cops didn’t work alone like that. A snitch had told him about the dope, and now he was going to steal it and sell it himself. Diaz fingered the gun, pictured himself walking out there and taking the bags off the dude, teaching him a lesson. But then he remembered the two million dollars waiting for him. One more hurdle, and it was all his.

  The cop didn’t come back to the house. He walked right out to the street with the bags, got into a Mazda SUV with Enterprise Rent-A-Car plate frames, and drove away. Diaz swatted at one of the flies buzzing around the sink.

  “Bring me another beer,” his dad called from the living room.

  Diaz grabbed a can out of the thirty-pack in the filthy refrigerator and took it in to the old man.

  “I need you to call Tia Maria,” Diaz said.

  “Por qué?” the old man said.

  “I need to get hold of Tony. But don’t tell her I’m here. Say you want to talk to him.”

  “I’m not gonna do that,” the old man said. “I don’t play those kind of games.”

  Diaz took the .22 out of his pocket. He held no grudges against his dad—didn’t give a shit about him, really—and had never intended to involve him in this thing. But it had happened, and now he had to deal with it. Collateral damage is what it was. The price of victory. You’re gonna make that call, he thought. And then you’re gonna die.