“Hola, mi amigo.”
Guillermo’s voice made me think of a frog. He looked like he had fallen back into the chair. His prodigious gut was pushing against his yellow shirt and his blue shorts would only look good in man a third his size. His face was relaxed, his pupils dilated to the size of dimes. He smiled at me slowly, the way people do when they’re looking at you and suddenly remember something stupid you said or did. I didn’t have to ask to know he had just fixed himself, but that slo-mo smile gave it away. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to talk to him about the previous night.
“How’s it going, Guillermo?” I replied in English because saying Hola, mi amigo and ordering tacos was all he could say in Spanish. Los padres de Guillermo tenían miedo de que su hijo fuera discriminado, así que nunca le enseñaron español. Pendejos.
“I don’t know, Nando. You tell me. I wasn’t expecting you until Friday or maybe Saturday morning. Now you’re here and Consuelo sounds concerned. If you don’t have some money for me and drop by to talk, it’s usually because you need me to help you with something.”
He was right, but I didn’t feel bad about that. He was my boss. He made sure the drugs reached my hands and I made sure the money reached his. No teníamos por qué ser cuates. I had asked for some help at the beginning with things like getting my hands on a fake license and buying a car with fake papers and insurance. Though I hadn’t asked him for help with anything like that in years, he liked to remind me how many favors he had done for me. I worked hard for him and never cheated him out of a fucking centavo, so I figured we were a mano.
Guillermo closed his eyes and dropped his massive jowls onto his chest. The caballo was riding his veins hard because it was still fresh. If I talked for too long, the chances of him slipping away to a better place increased. Tenía que decirle algo que fuera como un golpe, something that would hit him as hard as the perla negra filling his body with warmth and his head with gentle nothingness.
“They killed Nestor last night. I was there when it happened. A motherfucker had him tied to a chair. He chopped his head off with a knife.”
Guillermo sat up. His eyes turned into black slits. For a second I expected him to laugh, to say I was pulling his leg. Instead, he slowly brought a hand up and touched his moustache, which wouldn’t be out of place on a walrus.
“Take a seat and tell me what happened.”
He signaled to the chair across from him. I sat down, suddenly realizing the air in the room was heavy with old sweat and fat man farts.
I told him the story until I had to stop. The images were coming back and taking my breath away. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run back and ask Consuelo to make all the bad memories go away with some of her magic.
“You okay?”
Guillermo’s question was stupid. I wasn’t okay and wouldn’t be okay for a long time. Going on was my only choice, and I was starting to question my commitment to it.
“A man named Indio wanted me to give you a message.”
“A message?”
“He said they want to run things downtown between I-35 and Mopac and from MLK all the way down to the river. He said you can keep the rest and…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Guillermo. I didn’t know if his doped brain was processing everything too slow or if he was unclear on the facts. “So you’re telling me this motherfucker killed Nestor to scare your ass into submission and then basically said he wants the heart of Austin for himself?”
“He also said you don’t have to give everything away, just work with them,” I said.
“Fucking fantastic! So I get to work just as hard as I work now but, instead of keeping my money, I can give it away to some fucking gangbanging monkeys with tattooed faces? You understand what you’re saying to me right now, Fernando? Did this son of a bitch at least tell you if he was working for a cartel? Did he mention the Sinaloa Cartel sending him? Did he say he was delivering a message from the Gulf Cartel? Anything other than the MS-13?”
More than angry, Guillermo seemed surprised and a bit amused, as if what I was saying were nothing more than the most ridiculous joke he had ever heard. Maybe the barro Mexicano running through his veins had something to do with that.
“No, Guillermo. They just said they were from la Salvatrucha and that they came to town to take over. They killed Nestor and told me they wouldn’t mind getting their hands even dirtier if you didn’t agree to their terms.”
“Listen, Nando, I like you. You work hard and don’t run around flashing your cash and drawing attention to yourself. You show up on time and don’t let those pills you take interfere with your work. We’ve never had any problems and you always deliver your money untouched. But this is fucking ridiculous. I can’t just pick up the phone and tell my brother to send some reinforcements because some gangbangers scared the shit out of you last night. Austin belongs to the Zetas and you know that. Everyone knows that. If these guys that picked you and Nestor up last night don’t know that, they’re bound to find out soon enough. They’d be crazy to mess with us if they knew, and once they know, they’ll disappear and move to California or something. The Salvatrucha packs a mighty punch south of the border, but here, they’re nothing. They’re idiots who apparently don’t mind getting killed for a few bucks and nothing more. That’s why La Eme sends them on suicide missions; they’re fools who like violence but never cover their asses. I’ve never had to worry about them and I don’t really think I should start doing it now.”
Guillermo stopped and looked at me in silence for a few seconds. Every time he blinked, it looked like he had to fight to lift his párpados again.
“I know los Zetas are in control here and I know no mareros should be crazy enough to come fuck with us, but they did. Indio is not like other mareros I’ve met, man. It’s like he enjoys being evil. He was smiling while he cut Nestor’s head off. He’s crazy enough to kill me and then come after you. I wouldn’t lie to you, Guillermo. You know I wouldn’t. This is not about a couple of newbie gangbangers talking big game. These dudes had all kinds of ink on them. They’ve all done hard time.”
“Do you really think these motherfuckers are gonna cause trouble again?”
I wanted to tell Guillermo about Indio’s eyes. I wanted to make him understand that there was something at the bottom of that bucket and that it ate Nestor’s severed fingers. However, every combination of words, every explanation my brain came up with sounded loco.
“Listen, Guillermo, they fucking chopped Nestor’s head off …”
“Okay,” he interrupted, “You think it’s serious. I’m gonna give Neal a call and tell him to go looking for some dudes with tattooed faces running around town. They’re probably new, so they have to be out and about, getting booze, drugs, and pussy somewhere in town. Neal will talk to them.”
Neal was a mountain of a man who used to play football for UT. A teammate found some gay pornography in his car and started cracking jokes. Neal beat him all the way to death’s door, raped him, and left him there, spitting teeth and shitting blood. He was kicked out of the university and never played football again. He didn’t serve time because the guy he left for dead refused to press charges. Neal had been working as hired muscle ever since. Usually he didn’t even have to hit people because of his size, which is why many businesses used him as a collector. However, he was not the man for this job. The size of Neal’s arms wouldn’t really matter to the kind of men who had kidnapped me.
“You send Neal their way and, if he can find them, you’ll be responsible for Neal’s death. And they’re probably going to be pissed that you tried to scare them off with a fucking gorilla and then come looking for you.”
Guillermo was not the kind of guy who took it lightly when someone disagreed with him, so I expected him to start screaming. Instead he sighed, rubbed his left arm, and looked at the guayabera on the chair. He spoke again, his voice calmer than I expected.
“So you want me to call my brother and tell him to send El Príncipe? That c
razy motherfucker will flaunt his guns around and scare everyone in sight if he doesn’t shoot himself in the dick first.”
El Príncipe was a guy Raúl, Guillermo’s brother, had on his team and brought along whenever he traveled. He was born in Puerto Rico to a wealthy family and started selling drugs because a friend told him having street cred was the only way to get his career as a reggaetón singer off the ground. He was in a few mixtapes and sang a big game, always rapping about selling kilos, making tons of paper, shooting people, and getting pussy. Then another singer, a man who went by Killa or some shit like that, was released from prison. Killa had done a few years on a weapons possession charge that fell on top of the drug charges that were already hanging over him. Soon after he was released, he dropped a tiraera song calling El Príncipe a rich kid with less street cred than Ja Rule. The song didn’t sit well with El Príncipe, so he went looking for the guy and popped him two times en la cara. Then he left Puerto Rico for Florida and somehow ended up becoming a hired gun instead of an artist. How he went from gangbanging in Florida to killing people for money in Dallas is a mystery to me.
“No,” I said. “El Príncipe es my ruidoso. He’s too obvious, too damn loud. He doesn’t know how to handle really dangerous people. He thinks every situation is one of his songs. That guy belongs inside a video game, not on the streets.”
“So what do you want me to do, put together an army and go after them? To kick every bush and storm into every shitty house on the east side until we find some guys with MS inked on their mugs? We can’t have that kind of noise in this town, man. This isn’t New Orleans or Detroit. We don’t do things that way here, Nando, and you know that,” said Guillermo, his face twisted like he’d just smelled putrid meat.
“No, don’t put together an army, just give The Russian a call and tell him to look for four mareros covered in black ink who are living or working out of the east side and drive a huge blue car with ridiculous rims.”
“The Russian? Are you kidding me? You think these gangbangers are that much of a threat?”
The Russian was an average looking middle-aged man with a thick accent who told folks he worked with plants for a living. In reality, he was a shadow made of razors, a fantasma who no one saw coming until it was too late. Anyone who had ever worked with him was satisfied, and no one dared speak ill of him because he seemed to have eyes and ears all over. If you wanted someone to disappear forever without a trace, you called The Russian. He was worth every damn penny. And he worked really cheap.
“Don’t think for a second you’ll be wasting money on this by calling him, Guillermo. I’m telling you these guys are for real. You weren’t there. I was.”
I stopped talking because I realized something was going to come out of my mouth that I didn’t even know was in my head: that if he refused to call someone like The Russian, the only option I’d be left with would be to pack up all my stuff and disappear forever, just like last time.
“I’ll tell you what, Nando, I’m gonna trust you on this. If you say these guys are the real deal and have bad intentions, I’ll give you ten long ones to call the Russian. That’s a lot of money, but if this is serious, then I guess it’s worth it. When you call him, tell him to pick up the dough with Sandra, like last time. And you make it happen. Leave me out of it. Just let me know when it’s done. I don’t want this to come back and bite me in the ass. And I’ll call my brother, ask him a few questions. Maybe he knows something or knows someone who has heard of these guys. If this is some trick or these guys are fucking nobodies with no history and no connections, I’ll make you pay me back the ten thousand. You better pray you’re right.”
“Gracias, Guillermo.”
“Call him today. I don’t want this shit to interfere with your work. Are you going to the club tonight?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Did they really stuff you in a trunk?”
“Yeah, they hit me with something and threw me in the trunk.”
I instinctively raised my hand and gently touched the bump in the back of my skull.
“Your head okay?”
“Yeah. Nestor’s isn’t.”
“Good. Nothing we can do about Nestor now. Let the Russian handle it. Let me know when this has been taken care of.”
“You got it, Guillermo.”
“Was Consuelo cooking something when you came in?”
The question threw me off. I had to think for a second. I hadn’t smelled anything, and if Consuelo was cooking, you could smell her magic before you entered the house.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Call me.”
Guillermo looked at the TV again. The two black ladies were gone. Two talking heads in blue suits were discussing something with creepy smiles on their faces. Probably something about building una pared en la frontera. I stood up, mumbled a goodbye mixed with a thanks and walked out of the room, craving some tamales for the second time that day.
Consuelo was waiting for me in the kitchen. She still had the egg in her hand.
“Siéntate, mijo, esto es rápido.”
I walked into the kitchen and sat down. Kahlúa was looking at me with her human eyes. Something in them spoke of calm and comfort, but there was also worry in there. And fear. I almost jumped when Consuelo’s hand brushed against my head.
She was saying a prayer under her breath while she rubbed my head, chest, back, shoulders with the egg. Kahlúa came over, placed her head on my right thigh, and whimpered. A second later, two more heads plopped down on my left thigh. It felt good.
After a few minutes, Consuelo stopped. She had looked well when I came in, but now she looked like she hadn’t slept in three days. She grabbed my hand and placed the egg in it.
“Take this outside with you and throw it away. Don’t do it in front of the house and don’t get any of it on you. Piensa en las cosas malas que viste cuando lo tires. This won’t take care of everything, but at least you will walk out of here with less weight on your shoulders. Ah, y reza esta novena. Get nine white candles for la Santa Muerte y pónselas a sus pies. Te va a ayudar. La Niña Blanca no defrauda a nadie.”
She gave me a few pieces of paper torn from a notebook. Her handwriting was easily legible. I’d have to do the prayers for nine consecutive days, and there was a lot written. The thought crossed my mind that it was impossible for her to write so much down in the time it took me to tell Guillermo everything.
I stood up, folded the sheets, and stuffed them in my pocket.
“Gracias, Consuelo.”
“De nada, mijo. Ven a verme pronto.”
The way she asked me to come back and see her soon was odd, full of an urgency I’d never perceived before. I smiled at her, feeling a bit better after la limpia, and looked at the dogs crowded around her legs.
“Te quieren mucho esos chingos, Consuelo.”
“Y yo a ellos, mijo, son almas viejas pagando sus penas a cuatro patas. A lot of us have to go through that process in our transition. I’m just happy to be able to help them.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but I was afraid to ask because the look on her face spoke of a deep pain. I gave her a quick hug, turned around, and left.
Once outside the house, I looked at the egg in my hand. It hadn’t been out of the fridge for that long, but it felt warm, as if it’d just been pulled out of the microwave. I walked down the sidewalk for a bit because I didn’t want to leave that mess in front of Guillermo’s house and Consuelo had been clear about getting rid of it elsewhere.
Three or four houses later, I stopped, brought my hand up, and dropped the egg. It cracked on the sidewalk and a thick black fluid that looked like overused oil oozed out. The sun hit the inky mess and something appeared to move within it. I bent over to get a better look and saw a few thin worms squirming around in the blackness. A shiver ran down my back. It was time to go home and start my prayers.
5
White candles
Manto sagrado – The
Russian
Ved’ma Nursery - Tatuirovannyye litsa
Pinche culero
One of the reasons I managed to adapt so quickly to life in Austin is that, while there are a lot of blancos moving around, you don’t have to scratch the surface too hard for the city’s Mexican blood to flow. Menudo, chicharrón, tequila, and totopos are as easily available here as they are on the other side of la frontera, and then there are radio stations that play nothing but música norteña, tiendas that only sell Mexican products, iglesias that offer mass in Spanish every day of the week, and many other things that make it feel like a home away from home. Another benefit of having our cultura so clavada here is that you can find candles everywhere, including the grocery store.
With the nine velas blancas set up in front of la Santa Muerte, I pulled the papers Consuelo had given me out of my pocket. I wanted to call the Russian and get everything squared with him right away, but something was telling me that praying before calling him was a good idea. I lit one of the velas and read, noticing Consuelo had left a blank space in the prayers where I was supposed to ask for my favors.
Novena a la Santa Muerte
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