Righteous

by Joe Ide

  “It’s good to see you, Manzo,” Seb said. “I hope you are well and prospering.”

  “It’s all good, busy, you know. I could use some help,” Manzo said, glancing at Ramona, “but people don’t want to change, adapt to the new environment.” Ramona sighed and leaned her head to one side. Gahigi gave her an amused look and her eyes fired back a Fuck you.

  “How’s my money?” Manzo said.

  “Yes, down to business,” Seb said. He dabbed at his phone. “Your last deposit was distributed as we discussed. Eighty percent in large-caps, the rest in an Oppenheimer ETF, which can also serve as ready cash. You should be able to see the buy orders online.”

  “I have.”

  “Of course,” Seb said. He lit a cigarette and held out the pack to Gahigi. “Cigarette, my friend?” he said, smiling. Gahigi took one grudgingly. “What do we have in our shopping bag?” Seb said.

  “Fifty-five grand,” Manzo said, putting the bag on the desk.

  Ramona was still eye wrestling with Gahigi. “You got some kind of problem?” she said.

  “No,” Gahigi said like he didn’t want ketchup for his fries.

  “What’s happening with the house on Latimer?” Manzo said.

  “The seller says he will take forty percent in cash but no more,” Seb said.

  “Okay. Make the deal.”

  “What’s the house on Latimer?” Ramona said, meandering over to the Tusker calendar.

  “I told you, but you didn’t listen. Pay attention, okay? I didn’t bring you along to look at calendars.”

  “Oh yes, a small matter,” Seb said. “A hundred dollars was missing from one of the debit cards today.”

  “I wondered if you were going to bring it up,” Manzo said, the two men exchanging a brief smile.

  “I can replace it or credit your account, whichever you prefer,” Seb said.

  “Put it in the account. Do you want to count the money?”

  “No, it’s not necessary. We are men of honor, are we not?”

  “Hey, where’d he go?” Ramona said. Gahigi had slipped away unnoticed.

  “Yes, he has a way of disappearing,” Seb said. “But you may rest assured, he is around.”

  When Seb first arrived in Long Beach, he hung out with the shadier elements of the small East African community. Broke and without a lot of options, he started selling weed for a local distributor. He earned enough to rent a small shabby room and keep his clothes clean, but that was all. He needed an occupation. Something to use as a front, a way to be presentable to the straight world. Nothing nine-to-five, of course, and an endeavor where his background in economics and finance would be useful. He saw an ad in the paper. TRAIN TO BE A TAX PREPARER. There were courses and licensing and such, but it was a long and drawn-out process. Instead, Seb studied the tax forms, learned some vocabulary and put up flyers. EXPERT TAX PREPARER. LICENSED AND BONDED. Who would check? There were dozens of practitioners in Long Beach.

  There were only a few customers at first. He met them in their homes and reassured them with his fancy suit, his warm smile and lilting educated accent, and his rates that were less than H&R Block. If there was a tax issue Seb didn’t understand, he read up on that specific item. Who had time to read all nine thousand pages of the tax code?

  More and more customers sought Seb’s services. He opened an office and started giving financial advice, patiently teaching his working-class clients about mutual funds, ETFs, and municipal bonds. He advised them on buying property and businesses, negotiating for them, always learning just enough to do the deal. All the while he looked for a way to exploit his position. Ponzi schemes were a shortcut to prison, stealing was hard to hide, and people around here wouldn’t call the SEC, they’d bust down your door and beat you with a tire iron.

  His break came when Manzo walked into the office. He wanted to buy a house for his mother and needed a cutout, a straw buyer. He didn’t want anything in his name or his family’s name that the government could take away. Could Seb help him out? Seb used his corporation in Kenya to buy the house. Then he quitclaimed the property over to Manzo, who held on to the deed but didn’t file it. When Manzo’s mother died, Seb sold the house at a profit and gave the money to Manzo less his commission. The process took a fair bit of trust, and when it was done a new business relationship was born.

  They went on to money-laundering. Small amounts were smurfed. For bigger amounts Seb set up shell companies and made investments in them, the money coming back to Manzo as profits. Seb’s shell companies sold nonexistent Porsches to other shell companies, the money recorded as sales. The money was wired to a holding company Seb had created in Mauritius, an island nation and tax haven seven hundred miles off the coast of Madagascar. Some cash was held there. The rest was wired back to a shell corporation as foreign investments, which, Seb liked to point out, were tax-exempt. Seb paid retainers to corrupt attorneys that were returned less a processing fee or got the money back as proceeds from nonexistent litigation.

  Seb invested the Locos’ money in the market and in real estate, the enterprise operating like a mutual fund. Gang members could buy shares, collect dividends, or let them accumulate. In the beginning, they’d demand meetings at all hours, wanting to know where their money was, cashing in shares just to be sure, threatening Seb with death and worse if he was fucking with them. Things settled down after a while, Manzo ordering them to chill, personally guaranteeing their money back if things turned to shit.

  Presently, the gang owned four houses, an apartment building, two laundromats, a tire and muffler shop, a check-cashing store, and a Mexican grocery store. There were no loans to service so profit margins were better than most. Manzo encouraged membership, but a lot of the homies were skeptical and didn’t like getting their money in such small increments. Owning equities required a belief in the future. Other criminals heard about Seb’s services and signed on as clients; corrupt politicians, drug dealers, bookies, burglary and car theft rings. Seb was instinctively thrifty, an outcome of growing up with nothing, and a shrewd investor. He was a wealthy man now.

  After the meeting with Manzo, Seb and Gahigi left the office and stopped at an Ethiopian restaurant. Seb thought the food was boring, and he’d eaten enough goat stew to last several lifetimes, but it made Gahigi happy and that was reason enough. Seb was optimistic. He’d made an offer on a house in Brentwood and was waiting to hear back from the broker. The house was just below Sunset, a three-bedroom Tudor, a million two, with an expansive lawn, mature maples and oak trees, the neighborhood crawling with doctors, lawyers, and show business types. It was time he left Long Beach and lived somewhere more suited to his new persona as a legitimate investor who was doing well. He imagined his grand entrance and thought about what he’d say and how he’d say it. The defenses would go up at first, but they’d come down soon enough. He was a charming man, was he not? The only thing holding him up was how to make that first contact. A delicate matter. It had to appear absolutely random. A contrivance would be seen as dangerous and obsessive. He was close, though. All that was needed was that perfect point of convergence, and everything would fall into place.

  Isaiah sat in his easy chair and watched the tape of Seb and Manzo on his MacBook three times. They’d obviously been doing business together for a while now. They were comfortable with each other and trusting to a degree. Isaiah wondered what Manzo and Ramona’s relationship was all about. They weren’t related and yet Manzo seemed to be mentoring her, and not enthusiastically.

  Isaiah needed to think and took Ruffin for a walk. He was a strange dog. An anomaly among guard dogs but especially pits. He had no aggressive instincts, and he wasn’t protective. He was also indifferent to people and had an aversion to kids. If he saw a squealing four-year-old tottering toward him he’d quickly leave the area. He shied away from conflict. Isaiah was sitting on the stoop one afternoon, resting after trimming the azalea bushes, Ruffin just waking up from his fifth nap, yawning and stretching, maybe wondering what t
o do now. Should he go for his sixth or eat some grass and throw up? Two pigeons started squabbling six feet from his nose, one chasing the other round and round. Any other dog would have at least been curious, but Ruffin got up, crossed the yard, and lay down under the lemon tree.

  Another time, Isaiah was in his easy chair, reading, the dog lazing on the floor beside him. An argument broke out next door, Mrs. Fielding was yelling at her husband to get his lazy ass up off the damn sofa and do something useful, Mr. Fielding saying why didn’t she shut her fat mouth and go make him his supper like a good wife was supposed to. Ruffin listened a moment like he was waiting for them to stop. When they didn’t, he got up, sighed wearily, and trotted off into the bedroom. Isaiah wondered what the dog would do if he was ever attacked. The dog was unruly too. He pulled on his leash, obeyed commands sporadically, and if he deigned to like you, he put his paws up on your clean shirt and nearly knocked you over.

  Isaiah’s friend Harry Haldeman had been the supervisor at the Hurston Animal Shelter for seventeen years and knew everything there was to know about dogs. He’d warned Isaiah about pit bulls, how they were a high-energy, potentially dangerous animal.

  “He’s not like other dogs, Harry,” Isaiah said.

  “So I gather,” Harry said. “But all you need is one accident with a pit. If they bite you they don’t let go.”

  “I know, Harry,” Isaiah said.

  “You don’t know crap, and just because this dog is a sweetie doesn’t mean the other dogs are. You’ve got to socialize him. Get him out with other dogs while he’s still a pup; let him learn what he can and can’t do, learn the signals, when to play, when to back off, what a growl means; get him out with people so he’ll get used to them and not be so damn goofy.”

  “Okay, Harry.”

  “Don’t say Okay, Harry, just say you’ll do it.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “And obedience training every day.”

  “Right.”

  “Screw right, just do it.”

  “Okay, Harry, okay.”

  “Don’t disappoint me, Isaiah, or I’ll put you in the idiot column with the rest of the world.”

  But the dog lived like Isaiah; isolated, with few outings except their long walks and with little contact with other people or dogs. Pedestrians crossed the street to avoid them, cops looking at them as they drove by. Isaiah didn’t like that part, people thinking he was one more gangsta with his big bad dog. Training went by the wayside. As long as the dog was on the leash, he was fine, Isaiah telling himself he was too busy to go through all the exercises.

  Isaiah thought about the tape again. The house on Latimer Seb and Manzo were talking about was another way to wash money. Say the seller wants a hundred and fifty thousand for the house. Manzo gives him fifty thousand in cash, and the seller agrees to list the price at a hundred thousand on the closing documents. Just like that, Manzo’s money is equity in the house, and even if he sells the house at the original hundred and fifty thousand he still has fifty thousand dollars of sparkling-clean money.

  But what kind of gangster buys real estate and Oppenheimer mutual funds? A smart one, Isaiah thought. Gangsters usually spend their money as fast as they make it. On cars, clothes, weed, big-screen TVs, and whatever else. If they have cash they carry it, nothing like flashing a big roll of bills when you’re buying a pack of Juicy Fruit. But Manzo was taking the gang’s money and investing it. Must have taken some convincing to make that happen.

  All that was interesting but not on point, the point being, did any of this have anything to do with Marcus. Maybe. The three thousand dollars in used twenties had to be drug money. Nobody but dealers had cash like that, and the Locos sold cocaine, crack, weed and heroin as well. Were the Locos somehow mixed up in the killing? At least there was a connection there, however vague. Eight years ago, Frankie Montañez was the shot caller. He would have been the one who ordered the hit, but that was all supposition. Isaiah needed real information. He needed to talk to a Loco who was around back then. None of the current membership would talk to him. They’d kick his ass for asking. He was watching the dog pee when it came to him. Néstor.

  Néstor González had a successful plumbing business, and he owned a house in Wilmore, raising a family there. His wife, Lucy, was always sending Isaiah homemade biscochitos and tamales, grateful to him for saving their daughter, Teresa, from rape and death. Néstor was surprised and pleased to see Isaiah on his front doorstep.

  “What’s up, Isaiah? Long time no see,” he said, clasping hands and bumping shoulders.

  “I need to talk, Néstor,” Isaiah said.

  “Sure, whatever you want. Let’s have a beer.”

  It was hot outside but hotter inside the house. They sat at a picnic bench in the backyard under the shade of a shaggy eucalyptus tree. Néstor’s three-year-old daughter, Isabel, was toddling around the swing set waving a stick and singing a song about mice.

  “Why does Manzo use Seb to wash his money?” Isaiah said. “The Locos must have their own connections.”

  “Why are you asking me this?” Néstor said.

  “Because you used to be a Loco, and I need to know.”

  Néstor considered that, took a swallow of beer. “Manzo uses Seb because he knows more about investing than putting money into your cousin’s body shop. He’s smart too. I think it was his idea to set up trust accounts.”

  “Trust accounts?”

  “Okay, say like you’re in the joint, right? Well, you can set up a trust account and transfer money from there into your commissary account for like cigarettes, chips, shit like that. But the thing is, there’s no limit on how much you can deposit. So say like somebody on the outside owes you money for something. All he’s gotta do is deposit the cash in the trust account. Shit, man, there’s some homeboys who got twenty, twenty-five thou in there. And check this out. You can write checks to anybody you want. You could pay for drugs, bribe a guard to get you a cell phone, whatever, and the pigs can’t do nothing about it—hey, Isabel, don’t eat the stick, what’s wrong with you?” Néstor shook his head. “Whatever you do, man, don’t have daughters. You gotta watch them every second.”

  “What about boys?” Isaiah said.

  “Who cares what they eat? I used to eat stuff that would put me in the hospital now.”

  “Tell me about Frankie.”

  “El Piedra? Shit, man, Frankie was like the Mexican General Patton. If we were going to war he was like, the man. All that strategizing stuff, getting intelligence, figuring out the best way to attack. If they had him in Iraq, Fallujah would be part of the US right now.”

  “What happened to him? I don’t see him around anymore.”

  “Remember the war between the Locos and the Violators?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “He got wounded, and then right after that he got shot during a robbery. That was like the fifth or sixth time. He couldn’t take it no more so he stepped down. Everybody thought Manzo would just take over, like a smooth transition, you know? But then some bullshit happened with Vicente.”

  “Who’s Vicente?”

  “That crazy vato with the hairnet. You seen him around. He was like the gang’s enforcer, you know? If somebody had to be taken out, he was always down for it. That motherfucker liked to kill people. I stayed away from him and so did a lot of people.”

  “What was his problem?”

  “Vicente wanted to be shot caller. He thought he was the most badass so he should get the job, saying shit like Manzo wasn’t a real gangsta, like implying he was soft. Manzo heard about it and they got into it.”

  “They had a fight?”

  “Yeah. It was like legendary. You remember in Lethal Weapon when Mel Gibson and Mr. Joshua threw down on Danny Glover’s front lawn? Same kind of shit. They beat the hell out of each other. You couldn’t believe it, man, they were all busted up and bleeding, but at the end of it, Vicente kind of gave up. Manzo had more heart, that’s all. After that, Vicente lost
all respect. He’s kind of an outcast now—hey, Lucy? Isabel won’t stop eating the stick.”

  Lucy was in the kitchen, noisily washing dishes. You could see her through the window screen. “Then take it away from her, estúpido,” she said. “If she chokes I’m going to cut you.”

  Néstor groaned, got up, took the stick away from Isabel and threw it in the bushes. She immediately started bawling. Néstor found another stick and gave it to her. “Here, okay? Don’t eat this one.” Delighted, Isabel gurgled and went back to singing about mice.

  Néstor sat down again and finished his beer. “That fucking Manzo is like revolutionizing gangbanging,” he said. “He like changed the whole culture, man. Like he started by getting everybody off the street. Like no more business out in the open. They do everything indoors now. I mean like, at the time that was some radical shit.”

  “I still see the Locos hanging in front of the Capri,” Isaiah said as Néstor came back to the picnic bench.

  “Yeah, but to socialize, not to deal,” Néstor said. “Nobody’s carrying and have you noticed there aren’t any drive-bys anymore? At least by the Locos. Manzo decreed that shit is over. No more banging just to bang. You can’t even do little stuff no more. No fighting, jacking somebody, stealing a car. Nothing that’s bad for business, nothing to bring the cops down here. The Locos are more like a corporation now. Oh, they’ll shoot you if you mess with them, but other than that it’s all about capitalism.”

  “What about the other gangs?”

  “Manzo made alliances with all our enemies. The Violators, Pimpside Family, Boulevard Mafia, and those fucking Samoans—hey, Lucy? Could you bring us a couple more beers?” Lucy didn’t answer and slammed the window shut.

  “Did you know Manzo buys real estate?” Néstor said. “Like at first, everybody thought he was crazy. The first one was this fucked-up place on Del Orto, over by the wrecking yard? The plumbing was leaking, wires hanging from the ceiling, rats and roaches everywhere.”