“ I need a lawyer, ” I told Agent Ramirez as they hauled me into the Jacksonville Federal building. “ Do you know any good ones?” I had asked as a joke because I figured that Federal agents were not in the habit of telling criminals where to get a good lawyer. Agent Ramirez didn’ t look surprised at all by my question.
“ Call Rubenstein, Rubenstein and Cohen. He’ s in the book.”
So Mr. Rubenstein ended up on my side. I doubt that Agent Ramirezever collected a referral fee. It is amazing how after all these years his name is the only one I remember of all the agents involved in my case. Another quality of a good lawyer is the ability to gauge how much the client is worth and to get every penny of that worth out of the client. If the client has a half million dollars, the defense will cost half a million dollars. If the client has a million dollars, the same defense will cost a million dollars. Again, such uncanny ability didn’ t come from a classroom but perhaps from working on a used car lot.
I paid without complaining; after all, it was blood money, you know, the one that easy comes and easy goes. There was too much at stake to try to be cheap. Sitting in a cell, I rotted alone because I knew too much and Ortega would put a price on my head if I were to be housed with the rest of the criminal population. From my confinement I deducted that the Feds wanted me for what I knew, not for what I have done.
Crime doesn’ t pay but punishment can be bargained with, and at this bargaining game Rubenstein excelled. Many times I sat at the table across the D.O.J’ s minions who spoke of nothing but the evil that would fell me if I didn’ t bend over and let them stick it to me. I said nothing, as instructed, and let Rubenstein argue with the Justice men, and argue they did, with me as a bargain chip. On one side of the table were the years of imprisonment that for sure were mine to suffer; on the other side was what I knew about Ortega and his business. I was just a gofer; it was Ortega whom the Justice men wanted. Rubenstein job was to see with how much I could get away with in exchange for what I knew.
At the end all came down to Sonia’ s murder. A good chunk of her body had washed out on the shore, half eaten by sea creatures but still identifiable, so the State of Florida had a corpse to argue for murder. I was the witness they needed to have Ortega tried for first degree murder in state court. The state would prosecute because then Ortega would face the chance of sitting on Ol’ Sparky, which was a lot more colorful that just a plain lethal injection if he were convicted in Federal court. Frying somebody alive is always more spectacular than putting them to sleep, and is more apt to loose tight tongues when used as a threat.
I ended up with a twelve year suspended sentence with no time to serve, ready to testify in court, the State of Florida vs. Raú l Ortega in the murder of a Sonia Aguilar. This meant having to enter the witness protection program after taking the stand against Ortega, and ending up like a washed out mobster living in Arizona and working in a car wash. I wouldn’ t be able to contact my dad, and that was the hardest part of the deal.
While it was true that my plans to become a hot shot airline pilot had fallen apart, the lesson learned about how the best laid plans can go to shit repeated itself right in front of my eyes when the grand plan of the Feds to nail Ortega blew to pieces with him. A bomb went off in his car and bits of Ortega blew all over Hialeah.. Bang!There goes the whole enchilada. I don’ t know why Ortega got whacked but I surmise that he knew more than I knew and powerful associates got wind of what was coming to him and wanted him to be quiet, for good.
Rubenstein, being a smart cookie, had already gotten the deal approved by a judge and in writing, so the Feds couldn’ t go back on their deal and sock it to me thus I got off the hook by a stroke of luck, good for me and bad for Ortega. Again, what is good or bad depends on where you are standing at the time, or in the case of Ortega, sitting.
Still, I got a felony conviction on my record, and that meant the end of my flying career. I would never be able to pass a security check and as per FAA regulations, I wasn’ t a man of good moral character so I could never qualify for an ATP rating. Being a convicted felon is not small peanuts; even when filling a job application at McDonald’ s the impertinent questions, “ have you ever being convicted of a crime?” and “ If yes, please explain” appear. Good luck explaining in a couple of sentences that you are a reformed drug smuggler, the type that used to smuggle coke by the ton.
I ended up on the street, a free but poor man who got to keep his original name, a convicted felon, and off the hook for the Atlanta incident; the Feds never connected the dots that would have put me in that mess. Debbie probably died of an overdose before she had the chance to get into trouble with the law and use me as a bargaining chip in her own deal.
Debbie, still in my mind after so many years. I often wonder whatever happened to her. An overdose probably did her in, or a crazy john, or a whack job of a boyfriend, or an inmate in a jail fight. Now, knowing how unpredictable life is, perhaps the woman is happily married with a minivan full of children and a fat husband who dots on her. Her smiling face still pops into my head for no reason, like a prehistoric fish emerging from the deep to take a quick breath of air and then diving back into the darkness it came from, leaving a small ripple on the surface.
My men are at work finishing the landscape outside another dot com company. I’ m in charge of a small Mexican army of gardeners and landscapers, all of them depending on my business acumen for a living. The drone of airplane engines overhead never goes away. Small planes tow gliders through the Air Force Academy sky. I hope that those wanna be pilots don’ t screw up like I did.
Women at Work
The catering van speeds through I-25 southbound for DTC. Debbie drives and Ana sits in the passenger seat. Maria sits on the back, on the floor among coolers and boxes full of warm food. They reach their destination in front of a glass and marble building, a fortress of commerce, a business bastion among the other towers that house the engines that propel the new economy. They have done this gig before and like a well trained squad they deploy their boxes and tables and trade utensils fast and efficiently. With few words among themselves they have everything set up right before lunch hour.
A small group of men and women in casual office attires comes into the room and queue for their chance at free food. Debbie knows that there is no such thing as free lunch. Somehow the powers above will extract that lunch from these people, plus a little bit more. There is going to be a return for this investment. She smiles like a good hostess and slices cuts of beef and plops them on plates loaded with side trimmings. This is better than serving the slop in the jail’ s cafeteria, and she doesn’ t have to use a hair net either.
Debbie serves young women who have manicured hands and a college degree. At their ages she was walking the streets to snare a john, looking to score dope, living from day to day, from minute to minute. She serves beef with a polite tenderness. Debbie knows she is a survivor of sorts, still standing on her one leg and her prosthesis, flashing a smile of artificial teeth, but she is not bitter. She holds no grudge against these young women who came from good families and had their college and their first car paid for by loving parents. She had nobody, but hey, that’ s life; you do what you can with what you got. She made it this far, not in one piece, but made it this far and the future ... well, no point to worry about it.
But she does worry about it now and then, like when she went to Ana’ s sister wedding. Debbie felt lost among the wall to wall crowd of relatives that made Ana’ s family, and there was a bunch missing that couldn’ t make the trip from Chihuahua. Sitting at the table, surrounded by noise and people linked by blood and marriages, she felt like a ship wreck at sea floating on a coconut sack in the middle of the ocean. She didn’ t know were she was drifting to, and it didn’ t matter because whatever the direction the currents might carry her, there was nothing but emptiness.
After two failed marriage she had no intentions of boarding that boat again. The first one had been to Nicky, good hearted bu
t dumb as a rock and lazy. She got tired of working two jobs seven days a week while he slept on the couch all day long complaining about his back, a back that didn’ t hurt when it was time to go fishing or drinking. Marriage to her had seemed like an opportunity to share things but Nicky had been interested only in taking, taking her money, her time, her life, never giving anything back in return.
The second one had been to Billy. Debbie still cannot figure out how she ended up with such a loser. Sometimes she blames her eagerness to find a companion overriding her common sense. At other times she blames her innate ability at picking up losers despite their defects being as visible as the sun in a cloudless day. Billy the biker, the macho man, the wife beater, the ecstasy and meth dealer, the philanderer, the one that got caught cooking meth and distributing drugs and was still sitting in jail, where Debbie thinks he belongs. It had been a miracle that she hadn’ t been dragged into his mess. The cops had come around their shabby apartment with a search warrant asking questions, probing, looking for a way to send her away with her husband; after all, she already had a good size rap sheet.
They could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove. She had always made sure that none of Billy’ s crap was stashed in the house and her vigilance had paid off. The cops went away empty handed. The close call had scared her to death and she had filed for divorce right after his conviction. For once the courts had been on her side and she got a quick divorce. Listing in the sworn affidavit the occasions in which Billy had struck her had also helped her motion.
Debbie finds it unbelievable that she had put up with his abuse. At the first beating from a boyfriend she had always packed her bags in a hurry and left destination unknown. But that was when she was young and had nothing but her body to trade with and her addictions. Back then packing and moving was a matter of putting her few clothes in a gym bag and getting her money stash from under the toilet’ s tank lid. Boyfriends were nothing but a blip on her journey to nowhere. A husband had proven to be a little harder to get rid of because of the emotional investments, all false pretenses, poured into the marriage.
Still, there was no excuse. It was true she had been afraid of his bad temper and his mean streak that would flare with just a little bit of priming from alcohol or for no reason at all. Fuck him and the Harley he rode in, Debbie says to herself when she thinks of Billy.
After lunch the women pick up their things, clean up and load the van. Debbie drives through streets flanked by professionally landscaped grassy areas, all so perfect and yet so cold, as if there were not human beings to soil things and to litter the clean sidewalks, strips of bright clean concrete that look as if nobody ever walked on them. Ana and Maria talk to each other in Spanish and the radio plays a Mexican radio station. The gibberish doesn’ t bother Debbie because it gives her a excuse to keep to her thoughts.
Ana and Maria will go home to houses full of children and husbands. She has two spoiled cats waiting for her. When she gets sick nobody comes knocking on her door to see how she is doing. If death comes for her in her little place only the stench of decay will tell the landlord that she is no more.
But that is the price to pay to be free, free of love and commitments and passions that yield bitterness and disappointments. Free of assholes like Nicky and Billy. Even Lucy and Ricky Ricardo got divorced in real life. Nothing ever lasts; there is no such thing as perfect love. Love is nothing but a memory, like the most powerful and destructive of thunderstorms the day after when puddles and mud are the only witnesses to its passage. She had plenty of bad weather in her past, and only dried mud sticks to her memory, stuff that when examined closely, it crumbles into dust.
The things she remembers, that still hold a shine and a freshness that doesn’ t die with time are few, and she treasures them even if she doesn’ t quite understand why those memories keep their youth. She stands in the beach, looking at that frothy seam where sea and sand meet. The seam goes far down, as far as the horizon, and Ken walks next to her. Such a silly memory. Or the time they were in the jetties, naked under a pool of sea water, or having dinner, a cheeseburger, onion rings and a beer, at that little place in Port Orange. Every thing had been, and still is, so silly, so unreal. She feels ashamed of the memories at the same time she relishes them. She sees Ken as a creature of her imagination, not as a flesh and bone man, but the memories of him making love to her are too real; he had to be real. Making love? He was a john, a paying customer; still, she had made love to him even if he didn’ t know it at the time.
“ Debbie? Hello?” says Ana, smiling.
“ What?” says Debbie, startled.
“ Wake up girl. You were in dreamland.”
“ Oh, sorry.”
Debbie’ s memories recede like a wave, and like a wave, they will come back again. She cannot stop them.
Tough People
Somebody, I don’ t know who and where, or where I read it, once wrote that men lead lives of quite desperation. That quote has drilled deep into my head for the simple fact that it is true. Perhaps it has taken a deeper meaning as my waist has grown around me and the hair on my head has started to thin and the ones on my back have increased. It’ s my middle age crisis. There are two antidotes for this malady: divorce the wife and marry a younger broad, or buy a sports car or a motorcycle. I got the Harley but the disease has not abated; instead, I got one more payment book. Anyway, a fancy Harley is way cheaper than a young broad and a divorce.
There is a dullness, an apathy in the things I do, in my relationship with Helen, my wife. A trip to Victoria’ s Secret won’ t kindle my interest. It’ s something that goes deeper, a tiredness that suffocates me and presses on me like a dark and gloomy day when it feels like you can reach up and touch the bottom of the dark clouds.
It is not her fault, but I don’ t think it is mine either. I, we, have walked in this path for so long to end up at the edge of a desert that offers no comfort, and we stay where we are because there is nothing worth going for anywhere else. We are stranded.
Helen and I sleep in the same bed out of habit but not out of a desire to share our lives. We try to be civil to each other and for the most part succeed at it but now and then the dryness of our relationship rubs hard and we cross words, bitter words spoken softly that hurt more than screams and flung dishes.
I have thought about calling it quits, and I’ m sure that she has had the same thought many a time. Our son, Dorman, calls from college up in Boulder when he’ s broke and when he is going to come home to visit but I’ m sure he can feel the stress between Helen and I, like cold water running unseen under the ice crust of a frozen river. So Dorman stays in Boulder as much as he can, and I don’ t blame him. Who needs this shit?
My Harley rumbles like a machine from hell as I go through the tunnels on Highway 6, riding up the canyon towards Central City. I’ m a speck against the walls of stone on each side of the road where curled up trees hang to life on rocky ledgers defying gravity and the impossible elements. You gotta be tough to make it; you gotta be relentless on your desire to survive. I like riding into old mining towns, walking through their abandoned cemeteries because the misery and hard times of the folks underground make me look like a whiner, me, fat and rich and expecting to live past sixty five, and bitching about nothing. I lay my hands on miners’ tombstones as if expecting to draw their hardness into myself, as if the will to keep on going could come from an old stone and the bones underneath.
I never ride with Helen; she won’ t get on my bike for anything. She hates the damned thing. So I go riding alone and she goes shopping or visits one of her many relatives living around the Front Range. To tell you the truth, I don’ t care what the hell she does. Sometimes I ride with my buddies and those are good times because I get to share small talk with other human beings, and that keeps me grounded. Solitude is a double edged sword; it can do you good but it can also make you insane. It is hard to tell which edge I have against my throat.
The Night Owl Presents Pin
k Floyd
Debbie smokes behind the counter, inhaling hard and holding the smoke as long as she can. It’ s her fourth smoke and she has to make it last; she has to get as much nicotine as she can out of each precious drag. The jukebox is playing Pink Floyd’ sThe Great Gig in the Sky.A weird song for a jukebox, thinks Debbie. The female singer’ s voice raises and the vocal chords tickle Debbie’ s spine. The song may be an old one but that powerful voice is timeless. Debbie tries to guess who dropped the quarter for that song. Randy? He was an old hippie. Carl? probably not, he is more of a dead head.
The jukebox stops for a few seconds and a new song starts: Pink Floyd’ s Money.What the hell? Debbie shakes her head and smiles to herself. Somebody is going back in a time machine fueled by alcohol and music. The song goes strong and heads start to bob up and down with the beat. Some of them don’ t even know they are doing it. The old guy by the corner is either high as a kite or he’ s digging into the music, or he’ s both. Debbie would bet money he is the one responsible for the jukebox’ s unusual repertoire.
Charlie shakes his empty glass in front of his face and smiles at Debbie. She fills it up with foamy tap beer.
Snapshots of Modern Love Page 10