by Ammar Habib
Dressed in some comfortable work-out clothes, I open up the fridge. Dang it, I haven’t gone grocery shopping in far too long. The fridge is nearly bare, except for some milk, juice, and a few vegetables. I look down at a bag of carrots. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.
Grabbing a handful of carrots, I make my way towards Angela’s memorial across from my bedroom. I make a mental note to grab some groceries before the day is up. I crunch down on one of the carrots as I walk, quickly chewing and swallowing the mouthful. Can carrots go bad? Because these taste a bit off.
As always, the room is just as I left it. I stare at the wall covered in the web of facts and slowly make my way there. I stop a foot away from it and stare at Angela’s face. She is as beautiful as ever in this picture. Her smile says everything about her. It shows her love, compassion, and genuine heart. She was everything I hoped to be.
But that was a long time ago.
They never could find out who her murderers worked for. Police knew the drive-by happened on the orders of a drug cartel, but the shooters refused to say which cartel they were a part of, even when the DA offered to cut off some jail time. But I bet the shooters knew that most of them would get off easy being minors. They must’ve had no problems keeping their mouths shut.
I take a step back. My vision slowly widens out from Angela’s face and onto the entire web. Based on who the shooters were and their weapons, I know they belonged to one of the city’s larger cartels. But there are quite a few of those, so knowing that doesn’t help much. However, from researching where the shooters lived, I was able to narrow it down to three cartels: Free Streets, The Brotherhood, or Los Famila. Outside of that, I could never find anything else. At least, nothing strong enough to be taken as a fact.
Maybe that’s why I took this job. Maybe I thought that somewhere along the line, I’ll find something or someone who could help me piece everything together. The odds of that are almost one against infinity… but maybe the hope of one day finding the one responsible for Angela’s death is what has kept me going all these years. Even if it is only a glimmer of hope, it is still hope. After all, without hope, what do we have?
Knock! Knock!
Thrown out of my trance, I instinctively whip my head around and in the direction of the front door. Who could that be? I never get any visitors. I leave Angela’s memorial and quickly make my way towards my apartment’s entrance.
Knock! Knock! “Ana, are you there?”
Ramon? Why the heck is my brother here?
I immediately grab my gun off of the kitchen counter and hide it away in a drawer. Arriving at the door, I swiftly unlock and open it. Sure enough, Ramon is standing on the other side. Dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a polo shirt, he smiles when he sees me. “Hey, sis.”
“Hey Ramon, what’s up?”
“Laura and I were just passing by and were thinking about you.”
“Laura? Where is she?”
“In the car.” Ramon motions to his parked car in the lot behind him. “We were actually about to grab some lunch. Interested in joining us?”
Having lunch with somebody else is the last thing I want to do right now. I can’t get my mind off of the bust about to happen and just want to get some rest. Maybe even some sleep if my mind will allow it. “Uhh… well Ramon, I think I’ll actually take a rain check today. I’m a bit tired—”
“C’mon, Ana.” He playfully nudges my shoulder like he would when we were kids. “Don’t bail out on us. We only ever see each other at church these past few weeks.”
“I’m really not feeling it, Ramon.”
“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. And I won’t leave until you come with us.”
Knowing him, he’s telling the truth. He would literally stand at my door for hours unless I come with him. I let out a defeated sigh. “Alright. Let me change clothes.”
***
Right now, Bryan is overseeing the raid on the stash house. I visualize it all in my mind’s eye. Heavily armed SWAT teams break down the front and back door simultaneously, charging in with their weapons raised and ordering everyone inside to drop their weapons. Bryan is watching everything from afar or maybe even leading the charge himself, wearing a black ski mask over his face. The dealers are surrendering and dropping their weapons without a fight.
With the chaos over, Bryan walks up to the defenseless Moore and puts the handcuffs on the murderer himself. I hear Bryan reading Moore his rights. Maybe he even adds in a line about the people Moore murdered in cold-blood.
It’s as if I’m there myself.
“…Ana?”
Snapping out of my spell, I look up at Laura. Reality sinks back in. In a diner, I’m sitting across the table from Ramon and his wife. We’re in the corner booth, away from prying eyes. I notice the worry in their gazes. Oh God, how long was I daydreaming for?
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sorry.” I’ve got to get ahold of myself. “Just had some things on my mind.”
“Is anything bothering you?” Ramon asks.
“Nothing to be worried about. I was just thinking about a friend.”
“You’re so distant nowadays. Seriously, if there’s anything bothering you—”
“I’m fine, Ramon. Really.”
After a long moment, Ramon nods.
The waitress brings out our beverages and sets them in front of us before leaving without a word. Looking down at my Sprite, I take a quick sip of it as Laura breaks the uneasy silence. “How’s the new job?”
I clear my throat. “Doesn’t feel too new anymore.”
My brother slightly smiles. “Is the life of a receptionist already getting boring?”
“It has its high moments. You’d be surprised.”
Ramon takes a long sip of his iced tea. “Filing papers and answering calls? That must be absolutely exuberating.”
If only he knew. If only anyone knew. But they can’t. Right now, Ramon is thinking that I spent my day in an office, filing papers and answering phone calls. He doesn’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve seen. Nobody knows that it wasn’t too long ago that Miller tried to gut me for a quick buck. Nobody knows that even today I faced plenty of scenarios that could have easily gone the wrong way. And nobody in hell knows that after all these years I’m still trapped in the past, unable to accept Angela’s death.
But that’s the way it’ll stay. Because this is my burden. And there are some burdens that you just have to face… alone.
“So, Ana when—”
Beep!
Everyone’s eyes go onto the pager hanging from my waist. I quickly rise to my feet without hesitating.
“Are you leaving?” Ramon asks, eyebrows raised.
“That’s my… uh, boss. He’s the only one who has that number. I need to make a call.”
“I thought you were off work.”
“Must be an emergency.”
“Can’t it wait until after?”
“Sorry, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“R—Really?”
“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”
***
The diner’s phone is preoccupied, so I quickly find a payphone on the street corner. Inserting my quarter, I punch in the number for Bryan’s office. I impatiently tap my foot against the ground as I wait for the ringing to begin. It rings once. Then twice. Then—
“Bryan Fulton.”
“It’s me. How did it all go down?”
“Perfectly.”
Hearing that simple word, I feel a weight roll off of my chest. I barely stop myself from doing a fist pump in the air.
“It all went down like clockwork. Two teams of SWAT went in. One from the front and one from the back. We went in heavy. I went in with the front team. When we went in, the dealers were in total shock. They couldn’t even get off a single shot. It didn’t even take three minutes to get them all in handcuffs.”
“How many were there?”
“Three, not including Moore. And t
here were ten kilos of goods in the stash house, all the way from crack to cocaine.”
“Ten kilos?”
“I didn’t believe it until I saw it.”
“That’s amazing.” I take a moment to soak in what Bryan is telling me. The entire operation went down perfectly. Unbelievable. “What about Moore?”
“We nailed him. He surrendered without a fight. I got to put the cuffs on him myself. There’s no way he’ll be getting out of this, not after all the people he’s hurt. They’re interrogating him now. Do you want to listen in?”
I pause for a long second. I most certainly do want to be there, but there’s the little problem of my brother and sister-in-law waiting for me in the diner. I shouldn’t. It’ll only arouse suspicion. I know that. But… maybe I can get them to understand. “Yeah, I’ll be heading over in a minute.”
***
Ramon and Laura aren’t too excited to hear that I’ve been called in for work. Who can blame them? But they buy the lie. Neither tries to argue with me and they let me go without a fight.
Moore is grilled about his cartel. He doesn’t say anything about it that officers didn’t already suspect, including the fact that he’s a part of Los Familia. The interrogator is a good one and he pulls all the tricks of the trade, but Moore doesn’t budge. Whomever Moore is working for has him scared. From the look in Moore’s eyes, that’s no easy task.
The figure at the head of Los Familia is somebody with a lot of power. And a part of me thinks that it is somebody who will cause us a lot of problems.
With Moore locked up, I sense a feeling of closure in Bryan, at least for this chapter in his life. Zhen Hue’s killer, along with the murderer of several citizens, will finally face justice. If nothing else, at least the family of the dead will have some kind of solace.
***
Some days, Bryan and I work the streets together. But other times, we both operate as lone wolves. It’s been almost a month—or maybe it’s been over a month—since I went from jailor to officer. I’m sad to say that I’ve forgotten the exact date I received the badge.
I haven’t had any informants call in over the past few days, leaving me to simply drive around to all the hotspots in my area to see if any dealers approach me. Bryan was tipped this morning about a possible dealer who we’d been on the lookout for. I offered to go with him, but he said the informant was typically unreliable so he’d check it out on his own.
Taking the exit off of Beltway 8, I spot a run-down gas station just off the road. And parked at one of the pumps is a dirty, beat up Toyota Corolla with shining rims. I take a deep breath upon seeing it.
Well, it’s worth a shot.
I switch on my indicator to pull into the gas station. My car comes to a halt at the pump opposite to the beat-up car’s. The fair-skinned man has his back turned to me. Wearing a pair of baggy shorts and a shirt that’s two sizes too big, he watches the meter go up as he fills his car.
With my Glock concealed in my back-pocket, I switch my vehicle off and step out of it. The one thing that always worries me about my gun is that it doesn’t have a safety. Of all the ways to die on this job, accidently shooting yourself is not the most heroic way to go.
Feeling a presence behind him, the man turns his head and sees me standing on the other side of our parallel cars. He catches my slight smile, and after a long moment, he returns the gesture. But as I finally see his face, I can’t help but feel that there’s something strikingly familiar about him.
“What’s up, girl?” he says as he fully turns around to look at me.
“What’s up wit’ you, handsome?”
“Tryin’ to make money.”
“You work somewhere close?”
“I do, but I ain’t got a job.”
“What you do?”
“I got a buzi-nez.”
Jackpot! When my mom told me that you attract certain people by the way you dress, she definitely wasn’t lying. He wouldn’t have said that if I was dressed and talking the way I normally do. And the state of my dirty undercover vehicle is only icing on the cake for why he’s so candid. “My neighbor got a buzi-nez too,” I reply. “Maybe you got the same kind.”
“What kind he got?”
“He sells stones. But he a rip-off.”
He pauses as if he’s taken aback by my forwardness. “Your neighbor?”
I nod.
“What’s his name?”
I say the name with all the conviction in the world. “O. W.”
He immediately buys it. “Well, if you lookin’ for a better deal, I got it.”
“I’m lookin’ if you’re offerin’.” So far so good.
The man doesn’t reply. Not right away, at least. It’s a long enough silence to make the situation awkward. And the stillness makes me start to feel uneasy. Weird. His eyes slowly change for the worse as his smile disappears. They tell me this situation just took a nosedive. There is suddenly a strong presence of suspicion, and ill-intentions manifest behind it. His voice changes with his expression. “Ya know, you look like someone I seen before.”
If this is his way of hitting on me, then it’s a really weird way of doing it, but I play along by letting out a girlish laugh. “I get that a lot.”
He doesn’t share my amusement. “Seriously, there was this girl I met—a jailor.”
Oh, s—
“I ‘waz locked up in county and she was there.” He takes one small step closer. “You look jus’ like her.”
The memories suddenly flood in. Holy crap, he’s right. This man—Nate Hopkins—was arrested for a DUI and locked up in county for a few days before he paid his bail. Keep your composure, Ana. “I don’t know no jailors.”
He squints his eyes as if that’ll make him remember my face better. “You look just like her.”
“When were you in county?”
“Two years ago.”
“Two years is a long time.”
“Yea’, but I don’t forget faces. Especially one as pretty as hers… and yours.”
I see one of his hands reach towards his side. He’s got a gun. Crap.
“She was a real hard-ass,” he continues. “I swore that if I ever saw her again—”
Think fast, Ana. “You think I’m her?”
Nate’s hand creeps closer to his concealed gun.
My eyes are in sync with my character and suddenly fill with disgust. I spit out my next words. “My brother and my sister are both locked up for life and you call’n me a cop! You better take that back before I break your damn legs.”
He hesitates for a moment. C’mon, back off. If he touches his gun, it’ll be a race to draw first. He doesn’t know I’m packing. By the time he does, I’ll make sure it’s too late for him to do anything. But drawing my gun will blow my cover. And the last thing I need is a corpse instead of a bust.
Nate’s hesitation doesn’t last and he touches his gun through his shirt.
I need to get him to back off. Quickly. Think, Ana. Think. He hasn’t pulled his gun out so he’s not fully sure of himself. There’s still a chance. If you believe what you’re saying, he’ll believe it too.
“Keep touching tha’ gun and you’ll be on the ground pumped full of lead.”
The warning doesn’t cause him to waver. “That a threat?”
“A promise. I roll with Ant.”
“…who?”
I make the name up on the spot. But I speak with enough conviction that even a lie detector would believe me. “Antonio Juarez. Arms dealer in Cypress. You mess with me, then you mess with his family and him. And there ain’t nothing more importan’ to him than family.”
There is a long moment of silence as Nate blankly stares at me. I see his fingers slightly back off of his gun. I’ve got him. All I need to do is hammer the nails into the coffin and I’ll have his trust.
“You remember that jailor’s name?”
“…last name was Rocha.”
“Rocha? Hell of a strange name.” Quickly figuring out m
y next few moves, I reach into my back pocket and whip out my driver’s license—the fake one. I feel his gaze burning on my face as I toss it towards him.
Nate easily catches it with one hand. After a long moment of staring at me, his gaze shifts down onto the card. He silently and subtly mouths the name on there: Isabel Garcia. His eyes go back and forth between the name and picture on the license before he finally looks up at me.
“I could’ve sworn…”
I stay silent.
He holds the license up to the sunlight, acting as if that’ll help him determine if it’s real or not. But after a few seconds, his focus returns to me and he tosses the license my way. I catch it without breaking my gaze with him and slide it back into my pocket. End this already. “You happy? Or you gonna keep wastin’ more of my time? There are plenty of homies out there who’d be happy to work with me.”
“Sorry… just had to be sure. Been to prison once. I ain’t takin’ no mo’ chances. Queen Bee was pretty ticked when I did go and she let me know it when I got out.”
Thank God. “It’s coo’. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”
I can end this now. Just hop in my car and drive off. It’s already a tricky situation and one false move is all it’ll take for him to realize that I am the jailor he thought I was. The sensible part of me wants to get out of here. But the other part wants me to keep pushing. And sadly, this job has taught me to listen to this part of my brain.
“So, how much for a bill?”
***
“You’re serious?” Sitting across his office desk, Bryan’s eyes are wide with awe. “He recognized you as the jailor—was actually about to pull his gun out—and you not only got him to back down but still got him to set up an exchange with you for tomorrow?”
I simply nod with a grin spread across my face.
He slams his hand onto his desk with excitement. “Wait until Mark hears this!”
I can’t help but laugh at Bryan’s amusement.