Cooch

by Robert Cook

  “Roger east. I’m gone.” Alex hung up, searching the area. There was no one on the street.

  He walked back to his rooming house, and went up the stairs to his room.

  San

  Jose

  ALEX awoke before dawn, very hungry and still feeling the adrenalin depletion. A gym would have been perfect, but Paco would never have used one. He eased into a yoga position, losing his thoughts to a little bit of everything and not much of anything. Most of his troubles just seemed to float away if he didn’t dwell on them, and gently pushed them out of his semi-consciousness.

  Finally Alex rose, walked to the wall of the tawdry room, and rolled himself into a handstand, heels supported against the wall. He relaxed again for a moment, focusing, then walked on his hands to the middle of the floor, legs together, toes pointing and arched gracefully over his back. He concentrated, then brought himself to his fingertips, rocking from side to side to provide ease and a moment of lift when he did not have the strength to push himself up directly. Once Alex had settled onto his fingertips, he was reinvigorated. It was relaxing. It felt good. His mind was again free to ruminate and consider options. The strain was gone, if only temporarily, and his inner life was good; no thoughts of sex or danger could wander into his little cyst of peace.

  He slowly bent his arms and lowered his body to the floor, still supporting himself on his fingertips, feet floating arched above his back, then he even more slowly pushed himself back up. He stopped. And then he did it again. He never counted the repetitions; that would have been cheating and useless. Rather, he felt his ability to relax into the exercise begin to diminish. Then he devolved into weakness.

  The progress, or progressive failure, of moving from tangential meditation to serious, traditional Western exercise evolved over a period of perhaps five minutes. As the repetitions became more difficult, Alex found himself fading from the ability to react in a meditative sense to the strain. His mind became increasingly more focused on the increasing pain of doing the next repetition than on any pleasure in the sense of the world flowing around him.

  Finally Alex was entirely focused on performing the last repetition, until he collapsed in a sweating ball upon the stained carpet of his rented room. The smell of past cats and long-spent passion offended him in his exhaustion, and destroyed the last possible vestige of who he thought he would like to be in a perfect life.

  With a long sigh of luxuriant self-pity, Alex began to stretch. An aging instructor at the Farm had converted him to a stretching regimen, but not into the complete yoga routine that was being favored; that took four hours. A good stretching routine took Alex, who was quite limber, about an hour.

  Finally Alex stood and moved to the small sink. He grabbed an old white towel nearly translucent with age, wrapped it around his waist, and headed down the hall to the communal bathroom. He remained concentrated on his “Paco” persona. He held a second towel balled in his hand, which concealed his toiletry items and the Sig Sauer.

  He walked onto the job site a little early. Enrico was not present. His coworkers parted as he walked by and averted their eyes, perhaps to avoid his curse. No one appeared ready to work, a possibility that Cuchulain had not anticipated.

  What am I supposed to do now? Cuchulain thought. Tell them Lola said they should work hard?

  Just then one of the older workers approached him hesitantly and asked, “Should we go to work?”

  Alex decided he had to respond to the man, and to seize the opportunity to expand the legend of Paco that he and Mac had developed over the years.

  “Compadres, gather around,” he shouted, standing on the raised fork of a tractor that was facing east.

  The workers quickly gathered around him.

  “I bring to you words of wisdom you will not like, but you will hear the ring of truth in what I say. I am a simple man, strong as you know, but not a worthy leader for you. My mind and body are not a force like the stream, flowing and finding its way. I am rather like the pestilence, lying dormant until disturbed. If not disturbed, I am the least of you and happy. If disturbed as I was last evening, as I sense many of you know, I become a different person. I know much of violence. I, in a sense, may be the Prince of Violence. When my mind fades under pressure, I become another person, a violent but not evil person.

  “The foreman has not come to work today, because I hurt him badly, and his people as well. I did not plan to do that. I did not do it for you, but if one man like me can bring three of those vermin down without trouble, what can four of you do if you strike without warning? Yes! I struck without warning and humiliated the three of them! Where is it written that we must give them warning? They give us none, but rather come to our huts in the dead of night with more power than even the wives of your neighbors will allow to be challenged.

  “Never, never, give them the battleground! You are many and they are few. Yes, my friends, I am saying you should deal violently with them before they deal violently with you. Your wives will counsel you to stay back for the sake of your family. Bah! So your daughters can suck the cocks of unwashed brutes? While your sons watch your cojones shrivel in the land of ‘it’s just not worth it’? Ask yourself what I have that you do not. Do you want to know what my edge is? It is simple. No one lives forever, and I won’t be humiliated in the meantime. If you try, I will strike without warning. Always without warning.”

  The crowd of construction workers roared in approval, waving their hands and calling, “Bravo, bravo!”

  Alex held his hands up for silence. “No, no, my friends. Listen to me. It is at your great peril that you misunderstand me. I am a killer, not a god. I am not Pancho Villa, I am just Paco from San Juan. I am just one strange voice of reason. I do not suggest that you offend the legal authorities with your actions. I also do not suggest that you stand alone against the powers of the devil and his henchmen.”

  An older man, perhaps a grandfather, walked up and said to Alex, “What shall we do then?”

  Alex spun and walked away from his stance, then slowly returned. “Father, I do not know.”

  The man stood for a second, and then said, “What would you do?”

  Alex looked around at the workers and said loudly, “I do not have children. I have little to lose. A wise Anglo named Francis Bacon once said that having wife and child gives hostages to fortune; your obligation to them limits your choices as to how you may live. That said, each of you still must ask yourselves how you wish to live your life.

  “The pain of death comes quickly. The pain of submission comes with time, exquisitely painfully. It becomes the hopeless pain of seeing your children suffer as a result of your weakness and cowardice.

  “People fear me. They think I am an agent of the devil. This is not true. No one can say I have intentionally hurt an innocent person. True, God has given me strength, great strength, and I have used it. Some of you saw that last night. God has blessed me to do that. Each of you can be equally blessed by God, by using the brain that God gave you.”

  Alex gazed over the small crowd; they in turn looked raptly back. “Look, let’s get this straight, because we have to get to work. I’m not going to last here too long, because the police are going to be looking for me. I have also have provoked trouble elsewhere. I ask you not to betray me to the police.”

  Alex raised his voice. “The law was originally designed to protect the community, the masses, so that we may do our work without worrying about the safety of our loved ones. Lately, the law hasn’t done too well at protecting our community. We have protection people, we have bums, and we have misfits making things hard for us. Clearly, the gringo law is not going to protect us fully, but we must let them do the best they can and allow them much room for error.

  “Some of our brothers and sisters work for the police and are trying their best to make it work for all of us. But when one of you has to use his knife to deal as a matter of honor with these scumbags we face, you should close ranks when the police or the man’s
associates come to ask questions. He was fishing with you, he was playing cards with you, he was with your mother; get your stories right. Try not to be stupid; wash blood from your weapons with gasoline. Think about these things in advance, and plan, plan, plan. That, my friends, is what separates us from the monkeys. When I am gone, as I shall be soon, talk about this among you, and plan.

  “Okay, let’s go to work!” Alex said.

  There was a murmur of cautious approval from the assembled men as they moved to their workstations, talking excitedly.

  Menlo Park,

  California

  A few miles away, in a second-floor office in the Menlo Park office building of Oro Distribution, Alberto Diaz was completing his daily meeting with Jesus, his manager of the San Jose drug dealers. They were from the same village, Alberto a few years older. The cash receipts had checked out properly, and he had told Jesus where he could find his supply of product for the day, handing the keys for a rental car to him. The car was in long-term parking at the San Jose Airport, and the cocaine was in the trunk. The car had been rented by one of their gringo customers, whose payment was a generous free sample. As he stood to go, Jesus turned to Alberto.

  “I suppose you heard about the wild man at El Tecolete last night, Alberto?” he said.

  Alberto looked up from his notebook. “No. Something exciting?”

  “You know that fat Mexican guy, Enrico Comperte? The foreman who runs the protection racket with the construction workers around San Jose? Well, he tried to shake down a new laborer in the bar last night and got his ass handed to him. He ended up with one of his hands crushed to a pulp. He’s in the hospital, waiting for them to operate on his hand.”

  “Really?” Alberto said. “The guy stomp him or what? And where were his two bodyguards? He never goes anywhere without them, and I hear the skinny one is the fastest thing with a knife that ever was. And he’s supposed to be not bad with a gun either.”

  Jesus chuckled. “They’re in worse shape than Comperte! This guy smashed them up somehow, really bad, before he started on Comperte. The word is that this guy, a Puerto Rican from his accent, is a crazy man and stronger than is believable. There’s all sorts of wild talk about a tattoo, and a woman named Lola. It’s so hard to figure out that I left. It’s none of our business.”

  Alberto thought for a second, then said, “Find this man, Jesus. Talk to him a little, and tell me what you think. Hint that you may want to hire him to sell our product for you, and let him know what it pays. I want to know more about him. Is he crazy? Is he stupid? Is he dangerous or just lucky? And send someone to get the details of this business at El Tecolete last night. I wish to know what happened.”

  Jesus looked at Alberto for a second, surprised. Then he shrugged and said, “Si, Alberto. It shall be as you wish. I will do it today.”

  Later, at the construction site, the food truck had just pulled away after servicing the workers on their lunch break. Alex sat alone in the shade on the running board of a rusty, yellow dump truck on the east side of the construction site with two tacos and a quart of bottled water, eating.

  A man walked around the end of the truck, looking around, then spotted him and approached. The man was of medium height, and thin, probably in his early thirties, wearing expensive black slacks and a blue silk shirt, open at the neck. His hair was greased and combed back, but well trimmed. He wore reflective sunglasses and walked with confidence.

  Alex laid the greasy paper holding his tacos onto the running board and stood up, turning to face him. At six three, he towered over the visitor.

  “Please, please, continue with your lunch,” Jesus said, stopping a few feet from Alex.

  “I know you have only a few moments to eat, and I would not keep you from it. I have just come to chat. I have heard you are a man of action, a decisive man, and I wish only to speak with you for a moment.”

  “What do you wish from a humble man like me, senor?” Alex said, still standing and balanced in front of the man.

  “First, let’s sit,” Jesus said with a smile, removing his sunglasses and slipping them into his shirt pocket.

  “Please.” Alex gestured to his right, waiting for the man to sit. He sat down next to him, close, then looked over at him. “You don’t seem like the gringo police, senor, but if they come around this truck looking for me, you will be the first to die.”

  Jesus laughed easily. “If they come around this truck, I may die of shock before you have a chance to kill me. I am a businessman from Colombia, spending just a few years here to better provide for my family back home.”

  “I recognize the accent,” Alex commented. “What do you want of me?”

  “I just want to get to know you a little,” Jesus said. “You are much discussed around the barrio this morning, because of your activities last night. You are from Puerto Rico, no?”

  Alex turned his head to face him. “I have been to Puerto Rico. I have been many places. I come to this place to live in peace, where no one knows me. I mean no offense, but I do not want to know you, and I do not want you to know me.”

  “It is okay, my friend,” Jesus said. “Perhaps you would like a job that pays far more than this one? One better suited for your skills. I could help you with this. I have a friend in business here who might hire you.”

  Alex looked into his eyes coldly, and said, “And what would I do in this better job? What would I have to do and how much does it pay?”

  Jesus looked back at him calmly. “It pays many hundreds of dollars per day, if you are good at it, and don’t allow your customers to steal from you. It is not legal, of course, but also not hard work. My friend has a product that many desire, often above all else. You would provide it to them and make sure you are paid the proper price.”

  Alex relaxed visibly and leaned back against the door of the truck. “Ah yes, the coca, the white powder of dreams. This is a good business. Avery good business, and I could certainly use the money. Unfortunately, it brings one to the attention of the authorities, the police and gringo drug enforcers. I am tempted, but I cannot stand that kind of attention just now, nor do you want what that attention would bring to you and your friend when they identified me. I came here to be invisible. It is important that I do so.”

  Jesus hesitated, and then stood, Alex coming smoothly up beside him, still close. “It was just a thought. I will leave you to your work and your invisibility.” Jesus had walked to the end of the truck when Alex spoke.

  “Senor, I have spoken to you truthfully and treated you with respect. If you betray me to the police, I will come for you and cause you great pain. Your protectors will be as if they are smoke.”

  Jesus stared at the scruffy man looming by the truck door. He was tempted to tell this shabby peasant who he was threatening, but hesitated. There was no benefit in doing so, and he felt oddly chilled and threatened in the man’s presence. He merely acknowledged the threat with a curt nod and walked quickly from the construction site to his car, willing himself not to look back.

  Jerome Masterson pulled his eye away from the six-power sniper scope and rolled his neck to loosen it. He was 247 yards from the dump truck, in a room located in a cheap rooming house. From several special cloth banners he had tied onto construction equipment early that morning, he happened to know there was a three-knot wind, quartering from the west across the site. Knowing the exact range and the wind allowed him to be confident he could put a bullet into an area about the size of a quarter every 1.5 seconds or so until his 30-round magazine was empty. The Heckler and Koch PSG-1 sniper rifle cost Uncle Sam about $11,000, but it was the best sniper rifle in the world. Jerome thought of himself as an insurance man, with a policy where body armor wouldn’t prevent collection.

  Menlo

  Park

  SEVERAL hours later Jesus was back before Alberto.

  “He turned me down,” Jesus said. “He said he would like to have the money, but was afraid of how visible he would be to the authorities. It would be
bad for us and bad for him if he is discovered, he said. I think he understands our business and has much experience of violence. Comperte is so terrified of him that I expect he will never again work in protection. He babbled when I questioned him about this man. He thinks this peasant is the devil. I have never seen such a thing! And there is a woman named Lola of whom he is also terrified. I do not know who she is or where he met her.”

  Alberto smiled. “It probably doesn’t matter. If we need her, we will find her.”

  Alberto turned in his chair and looked out the window, then turned back. “Is this peasant a man to fear, Jesus?”

  Nodding, Jesus gathered his thoughts. “He is big and is extraordinarily muscular, particularly in his upper body. He moves well. I think that neither of us, nor even the two of us together, would last ten seconds in a fight with him. Still, that alone would not be a problem; there are many paths available to us. It’s that he has such an air of menace about him that it feels like you are sitting beside a hungry jaguar. This is a dangerous man, Alberto. I sense he knows much about weapons and death, like some of the specialists we use from time to time. It is my advice that we do not bother him, or that we kill him now.”

  Alberto smiled and leaned back. “Jesus, such timidity does not become you. I would like to meet this man whom you think is so dangerous. Go to him and tell him I would like to meet him, and offer him one hundred dollars to come to me this evening for a chat.”

  Jesus nodded and walked from the room.

  The Offices of

  Oro Distribution

  AS the streets of Menlo Park faded into the shadows of the low hills to the west, Jesus escorted Alex into Alberto’s office. Two young men, each with a silenced 9mm Beretta in his hand, stood on either side of Alberto’s desk, eyes fixed on Alex.

  “That will be all, Jesus,” Alberto said. Jesus turned to the door with a nod and walked out.