by Manuel Ramos
“I need to prepare for the worst, don’t you think? I’m trying to be realistic.”
“You said you thought Móntez was overreacting, but to me it sounds like both of you are amping up the stress levels.”
I didn’t want to throw my anxieties at her, so I cooled it and hoped I sounded genuine. “Nothing I can do about any of this now, anyway.”
“That’s right, Gus. Let’s try to relax.”
For Ana Domingo “relax” often meant drinking an amazing amount of wine, crawling into bed and making love until we passed out from exhaustion. She chilled with sexual euphoria followed by a deep satisfying sleep. I had no problem with her definition.
I spent almost three hours in her bed, and near the end, I did drift away for a few minutes. We did outstanding things as we explored our bodies, as she put it, and my little cop friend certainly did her best to put me at ease. But I didn’t really relax. When we finished, Ana sprawled on the bed naked, and snored peacefully. I covered her with a blanket, put on my clothes and then helped myself to a beer from her refrigerator.
Paco and the missing money, as well as the nightmare scene from the Westwood house that had attached itself to my brain, had me going over as many scenarios as I could dream up, none of them resolved to my satisfaction. They all ended with me facing off against a killer over money that I didn’t give a damn about, for people I didn’t know. The only clear thing was my obligation to Luis Móntez. I would stick with him through this. It, whatever “it” was, had assumed an importance in his life that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t care about that. The guy stood by me when I needed help, and now I would stand by him. Thinking about it that way made me feel better. I woke up Ana so she could take me home.
On the way to Corrine’s I called Luis. We had the same idea: talk out the situation. Batista had filled him in on what was happening with our man Paco. That information, combined with the news coming from Mexico that Ana fed me, firmed up that we should prepare. Only thing was that Luis wanted me to prepare for war. At least, that’s the way he made me feel. This guy Paco had spooked him big time. We agreed to meet that night at his house.
Ana and I said our goodbyes in front of Corrine’s house while the SUV idled and the heater kept us warm. In a few minutes we didn’t need the heater. I pulled myself away when she started to play with my zipper.
“Baby,” I said, “you wore me out. I need to recharge.”
She disentangled herself from me and sat upright. “I hope you feel better, Gus. Don’t worry so much. It will be all right.”
“You bet,” I said. She drove away. As I trudged through the snow to the front door, I thought that it might be a good thing to have a cop as a friend. A very close friend.
For the next hour I watched a cop show on television. The detectives were silly asses, non-threatening men and women who joked around the office, or when they examined a crime scene and found a dead body. They solved the murder mystery with the help of a female tough-talking medical examiner, who in a matter of minutes, figured out time and cause of death, where the dead person had eaten his last meal and a possible motive for the crime. The lead actor employed clever use of Internet databases that apparently only police could access, and then relied on the coincidental good luck of a major reveal just before the final round of commercials.
Cops, cops, cops. Everywhere I turned, cops. I talked myself into thinking that a dark walk to the lawyer’s house would be invigorating, or at least a diversion.
The stalled storm left drifts, ice and cold. I wore a heavy parka that I scrounged from Corrine’s basement. One sleeve had a nasty rip and the zipper stuck halfway up, but it beat anything I had in the way of winter clothes. I also found scuffed boots and one of Corrine’s scarves. Double socks and gloves topped off my wardrobe. They weren’t enough. Five minutes into the walk and the cold reduced my fingers to painful, iced stubs. Fog from my raspy breathing lingered in front of my face. The parka’s hood held out hope, but I discovered that it had a hole near my left ear that conveniently allowed a cold stream of air to knife around my neck and down my back. By the time I reached Luis’ house I deeply regretted my hasty refusal of Corrine’s offer to use her car.
We talked in the warmth of his brick home. In the living room, hardwood floors gleamed around a colorful oval rug. A black leather couch sat in the middle of the rug, and a small mahogany coffee table squatted in front of the couch. A combination CD and record player sat in one corner, a television in another. There wasn’t much else. Apparently, he preferred clutter to accumulate in his office rather than his home. His gas fireplace gave off too much heat, but I didn’t complain. In fact, I stood as close as I could to the artificial fire.
He offered me a drink.
“You got any hot chocolate? Coffee?”
“I can make some coffee. You don’t want a real drink?”
“I’m good. I just need to warm up.” He didn’t move. “Okay. Put a shot of whiskey in the coffee, if you got it. The cold’s in my bones.”
He disappeared back to his kitchen. I thumbed through a pile of vinyl albums near the record player. His records were older than the ones in Corrine’s basement.
“Rosa put together a file on Abarca,” Luis said when he returned. He handed me a cup of coffee and sat down. He pointed at an expanding file sitting next to him on the couch. “It’s got all the attachments Batista sent us, plus she typed my notes. I’ve had it for a few hours but I haven’t looked at it yet. I thought we could go over the material while we figure out what to do.”
I drank half of the coffee in two quick gulps and burned the roof of my mouth. The whiskey burned my throat. I set down the cup on the coffee table, leaned over and picked up the file.
The top sheet contained basic info such as Abarca’s name, contact numbers for Batista, a reference to the María Contreras file and so on. The second sheet was the printout of the photograph Batista had promised. Rosa had made it a full page, which she must’ve thought would help. Under the photo were a dozen or so more pages from Batista that included copies of police reports in Spanish that I assumed described Paco’s arrest, documents that bore official logos and seals that appeared to come from the prison and notes from Batista written in English with a few Spanish phrases. The final two pages were Móntez’s notes.
I moved away from the fire. My butt had warmed up enough.
“It’s kind of grainy but this should help us.” I pulled back the top sheet and showed Luis the photograph.
He jumped to his feet. “Let me see that.” He grabbed the file and stared at the picture.
“Goddamn. Goddamn.”
I didn’t want to ask but Luis simply stood on his fancy rug without saying a word.
“What is it now?”
“This guy,” he finally said, pointing at the photo. “Look at those eyes. The face is changed a bit, somehow, and the beard and mustache get in the way, but those eyes are the clincher.”
I looked where Luis pointed. The poor quality made it almost impossible for me to really see his eyes, but even with the limitations there was no doubt that they were intense, strong. I remembered that Luis once talked about Sam Contreras’ eyes and how he could make drunks leave his bar merely by looking at them.
“You think that’s Sam Contreras?” I asked. I grabbed the file from him.
“That’s exactly what I think. Paco Abarca and Sam Contreras are the same guy. And I’ll bet everything in my meager savings account that Paco or Sam is on his way back to Denver.”
“Batista didn’t know that? Wasn’t he investigating Contreras’ killing? He must have had a photo of the victim.”
“Maybe he only had a photo of the dead guy—who wasn’t Contreras. And remember that María said she buried Sam in Mexico. If she said the dead guy was Sam, then that would’ve been all they needed down there to conclude that it was Sam.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Even if Batista knew what Sam looked like,” Luis continued, “
he might not recognize him today. He has changed. Probably some plastic surgery. I spent many nights in his bar, sitting across from him as he served drinks. I saw him up close. Batista doesn’t have that history.”
Luis sat on the couch, leaned his head into the soft leather and closed his eyes. He appeared to smile. His hands rested on his lap. Had he finally found peace?
I studied the photograph. I resisted the idea that grew from a nagging pinprick to the slash of a cold blade. I turned the photograph on its side, then upside down. I held the photo up to the light.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“Trying to shake this thing that . . . that’s a little hard for me to understand.”
“What could be harder to understand than the fact that a guy everyone thought was dead is not only alive but apparently living the life of a Mexican smuggler? It makes easy sense. Or that this same guy is probably responsible for the death of his wife, someway, somehow?”
“Yeah, I get that’s a lot to take in. I’m not trying to complicate shit, but I think there’s something else that you might find interesting.”
He opened his eyes. “What are you talking about?” He sat up. His left foot tapped a steady rhythm on the rug.
“The night I staked out the house in Westwood? The female Contreras was there, as well as another guy in a hoody sweatshirt, and someone who looked dead.”
“Yeah? I remember.”
“Give the guy in this photo a shave, rearrange his nose a bit, make it bigger, and he’s the dead ringer for the man in the hoody. Maybe dead ain’t the right word. But you get what I mean.”
Luis shook his head in frustration. Without saying anything he yanked the cup of coffee and whiskey from the end table and finished it.
20 [Luis]
people get ready, there’s a train a comin’
It all looked obvious after the fact. Maybe I should have put it together before Gus identified Paco as Sam. I think I was hit hardest not by the actual revelation but, rather, by what my slowness in figuring it out said about me. I not only wanted to retire; it was in everyone’s interest if I did.
The little things that creep up on an aging man suddenly were bigger things that worried an old man. Sometimes in conversations I would have a relevant thought about whatever was the topic, but before I could inject my idea into the discourse, I’d forgotten it. Other times I couldn’t think of the right word and I stammered as my mouth waited for my brain to catch up. I hadn’t had an uninterrupted night of sleep in years, and lately I’d found myself clumping to the bathroom four or five times a night because I couldn’t resist the urge (if not the actual need) to urinate. If I didn’t put something in its usual place, like keys, wallet or reading glasses, I paid for my indiscretion by forgetting where I laid the damn thing and then having to look all over the house or office for several minutes—the frustration growing into an ugly boiling mass in my gut. With every so-called senior moment, my confidence shriveled, along with other critical parts of my being. Old age, decrepitude and dementia bore down on me like an out-of-control freight train.
When I told Rosa about the latest developments in the Contreras matter, I made the mistake of complaining about my advancing senility.
“Shut up,” she said. No emotion. Only a direct command. “Shut up about your age. I hate it when people start whining about getting older. It happens to everyone. No big deal. Be grateful you’re not dying, or dead.”
“Words of wisdom, but then you’re not even forty-five.”
“And you’re not old, not really. I don’t think you’ve earned the right to call yourself an old man, not yet. You got all your smarts, you can walk and talk okay most of the time. You have plans, right? I thought you wanted to retire so you could do all those things people want to do, like see Paris and Havana or hike up a volcano in Hawaii? Better get with it, Móntez. You aren’t old but you aren’t getting any younger.”
Apparently she’d given my retirement some thought.
“Thanks for the pep talk. Not sure where that’s coming from. You can’t deny that I’m slower than when you first started working here, what, more than a dozen years ago? I’ve lost a step in the courtroom. I’ve . . .”
She waved her hands in the air and shook her head. “I don’t want to hear it. I can’t dance all night anymore, like I did when I was eighteen. I can’t eat two of the giant burritos at Tacos de México, like I could when I was twenty-five. I can’t drink more than four beers before I start slurring my words. It’s all part of the circle, Luis. Enjoy it, because there’s no jumping off at this point.”
“You’ve gotten quite philosophical in your old age.”
She grabbed for me but I managed to jump away. She held only air.
“Hey, still have decent reflexes, don’t I?”
“I don’t have time for this,” she said as she walked away. “When you figure out what you’re going to do about this guy who’s coming to Denver and who might want to shoot you, let me know. I’ll want to make sure I have a safe place to hide.”
Gus and I’d decided on a plan, of sorts. He wanted me to go over the situation with his old running buddy, Jerome Rodríguez. I knew Jerome’s reputation, and from what I understood about the shoot-out that ended with Gus in prison, I believed that if anybody could help us prepare for the return of Sam Contreras, Jerome was that guy. What else he brought to the table remained to be seen.
They walked into my office late in the day. Jerome looked exactly as I expected. The man had done a little bit of everything during his life, as verified by dings and scratches that couldn’t be smoothed out by age or an expensive haircut. Scars marked the backs of his hands, his neck and his hairline. He walked like a professional fighter, maybe a boxer or a lucha libre masked hero. His eyes didn’t rest on one thing or person for too long; he constantly surveyed his surroundings, even when they were only the boxed-up furnishings of my law office.
“Not sure I can be much help,” he said when we settled around my conference table. “Gus tells me the cops are watching for this guy Sam. You and your staff are being careful, I assume. You carrying a gun?”
“Me? No. I won’t do that. And Gus can’t.”
He glanced at Gus. “Gus knows what he has to do.” His attention refocused on me. “If you’re not armed, how do you expect to deal with this guy if he comes after you?”
“I don’t. I’m counting on the police to handle him. My days of trying to be a tough guy are over. I just want to do all I can to keep Gus, Rosa my secretary and whoever else might be at risk, out of harm’s way. If necessary, I’ll close up the office.”
“Again?” Gus asked. “You just opened up.”
“So it won’t be much of a drop in business. I’m closing shop, Jerome.”
He nodded.
“Maybe it makes sense to just shut it all down now, instead of in another month or two. That way, we’re not sitting ducks in one place. Gus and Rosa can get on with their lives.”
Jerome shrugged and twisted his mouth. “Uh, yeah, maybe.”
“Jerome’s not exactly a wait-and-see kind of man,” Gus said. “He’d rather take the offensive. Right?”
“If it was me,” Jerome said, “I wouldn’t wait to be surprised by this guy. But maybe that’s just me. He’s a killer, a thug. I’d want to meet him on my turf, with the odds in my favor. Wishful thinking maybe, but at least I’d try to prepare for that.”
“It may be more than we can do,” I said.
“You don’t need a tank. Any preparation is better than nothing. Everyone who works for you should be on the alert. You all should know what to do if there is trouble, what number to call, where the exits are, how to hunker down in your offices here if necessary, what the signal is if something is coming down. Things like that.”
I made quick notes on my legal pad. “Thanks, Jerome. I’ll do all that with Rosa and Gus.”
“You should do it quick. The prison break was days ago. Paco or Sam or wh
oever could already be in Denver.”
I nodded.
“Thanks, Jerome. We should go,” Gus said.
“Yeah,” Jerome said as he put on his overcoat. “I’ll think some more on this. If I come up with anything specific, I’ll pass it on to Gus.”
“You want me to stick around until you’re ready to leave?” Gus asked.
“Go home. Nothing for you to do here. I’ll be leaving in a few.”
When I was alone with only the ticking of the office clock, I struggled again with the depression that the idea of retirement stirred up. That idea now mixed with the possible danger from Sam Contreras. The short days, freezing nights and gray scenery of winter surrounded me with melancholy. I paced from one end of the office suite to the other, mumbling broken sentences. I’d argued with myself for months about whether I should retire. No one forced me to quit. I could continue, turn down my practice and take on only the basic, simple tasks a lawyer can do without ever having to see the inside of a courtroom or hear the hostile voice of an opposing counsel. I could counsel wealthy widows on selling their too-big homes, or review business contracts for bearded hipsters looking for unique ways to spend their fathers’ money.
Then I bounced back when I remembered the uncertain threat from Sam Contreras. That problem began as a simple run-of-the-mill legal matter that I thought I could handle with a few phone calls. Did I really need to go over all the good reasons for stepping down? Did I really need to re-examine my life again, just so I could end up back where I started? Listen to Rosa, I told myself. The woman knows what she’s talking about.
I walked into the cold Denver night. Downtown noises mixed with a brisk wind. The skyline glittered against the black winter sky. I’d stared at some of these buildings all my life; others were new and unknown to me. The buildings changed faster than I could track. Old structures collapsed into dust and rubble, replaced with new towers of steel, glass and greed. I quickly forgot what had been before.
I imagined that somewhere in the noise and traffic, a desperate man on the run searched for money he thought was his. I felt him watching, waiting. I could see him recreating the last days of the woman who had the money. She’d escaped from him, somehow, some way. She’d always been smart. He traced her steps on the final day of her life, the day she visited the office of a lawyer she’d initially hired to help her double-cross the desperate man’s partner. He calculated what the woman must have told the lawyer. He was confident that the lawyer held the information he needed.