Desperado

by Manuel Ramos

  I’d asked Jerome to get me information about the woman who tried to squeeze money out of Artie, a woman who could be a threat to me, although nothing I knew about her supported that guess except that she was part of a family of criminals. I easily jumped to conclusions about her.

  Then my head went extreme with plots and subplots, all ending with Jerome having to shoot me because last night’s hitter had missed his chance. Jerome would say he was sorry, say “nothing personal, bro, just business,” right before he did me. I’d die with one word on my lips, “Why?” I would never know the answer.

  I called Max.

  “Geez, Gus,” she said. “You never call except to wake me up. This better be good.”

  I didn’t want to go into a long explanation with Max. She tended to minimize my anxieties when what I wanted was unquestioned support for my paranoia. For her own sake she should know as little as possible about my encounters with the recently deceased Artie Baca and the disappointed break-in artist.

  “I have an appointment in a few minutes with Jerome, remember him?”

  “Sure. I had breakfast at his place about a week ago. He asked about you.”

  Strange that Jerome hadn’t mentioned seeing Max. Why not? I tripped out on that dead-end train of thought for a few seconds until Max snapped me back to our phone call.

  “Gus? You still there?”

  “Sorry. I thought someone was coming in the shop. I can’t focus. I’m not sleeping all that great. Anyway, I’m meeting with Jerome. It shouldn’t take long. Give me an hour. Say between eight-thirty and nine. I’ll call you back then.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just go along, okay? This is important. If I don’t call you back by nine, do me a big favor and call me? Okay? If you can’t get me, come by the shop? Okay, Max?”

  “What are you up to? You in trouble?”

  “No, no. Don’t worry. There’s no trouble. I’m just being careful. Please, can you do this? Please?”

  “Whatever, Gus,” she said. “You’re going to have to explain, in detail. I mean it.”

  “You’re the best, Max. Love ya.”

  “Be careful.”

  I had a hard time waiting for Jerome. I couldn’t sit still. I drank too much of my cheap instant coffee. I yawned over and over and had the jitters. I walked out of the shop several times, only to rush back inside in case he called the shop’s number. No good rationale existed for me to doubt Jerome but that’s where I was that day. Call me weak, crazy, whatever. By the time Jerome walked through the front door I felt wiped out and uptight. Nervous energy flowed through me like bad water.

  He wore the same hat but a different version of the shirt he had on the last time I talked with him. He held two coffees in his hands. I had to hold the door open for him.

  “Here’s your cappuccino, bud.”

  I took the large Styrofoam cup with his logo—a cursive “Jerry’s”—and set it on the table. He looked surprised.

  “I thought you needed coffee?”

  “Yeah, I did, but I drank almost a pot waiting for you. I’ll drink yours later. Thanks.” He shrugged.

  “What you got for me, Jerome? What can you tell me about

  Misti?”

  I paced around my table and watched him. He took a long drink from his cup.

  “You sure you want to keep on with this? I meant it when I said you should leave her alone. Misti Ortiz is nothing but trouble, Gus.”

  “Just give me a phone number or whatever the hell you dug up. I don’t have all day.” I was more abrupt than I intended but I couldn’t control my mouth.

  “Hey, man. Relax.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Anyway. Her name is Marina María Ortiz but she goes by Misti. She’s the sister of Lorenzo Ortiz. You ever hear of him?”

  I’d read about him in a local weekly magazine but other than rumors about his gang connections, nothing from the article stayed with me. “Not much.”

  “Lorenzo’s as much of a professional gangster as there is in Denver. He’s involved in everything from drugs to gambling to you-name-it, including some very rough stuff, from what I’ve been told by guys who should know. He made his rep in Mexico, then migrated up north, where he got popped for drugs or guns, maybe both. He came out of prison five years ago tight with the Red Ones, los Rojos. A made man in that outfit. Now he’s their number one guy in this region. His territory stretches from Albuquerque to the Nevada border up to Cheyenne and over to Kansas City, more or less. Denver’s the center of his kingdom. It’s a huge area for one guy to be the jefe.”

  Artie definitely screwed with the wrong girl.

  “The Rojos are a unit of the Mexican gang run by Danny Ochoa out of Nogales. Small time, for now, but they’re working on building up their empire here in the States.”

  He drank from his cup. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. I noticed that his shirt had long-sleeves, and that didn’t make sense. Not on another hot day. His pants pockets bulged with a cell phone, wallet and other lumps I couldn’t make out. I remembered his ambition to make as much money as possible, never mind the risks.

  “Lorenzo,” he said, “who’s also known as Carne, is a very important man. Anyone in his immediate family is also important. Meaning that his sister, Misti, is someone you don’t mess with because that’s the same as messing with Carne Ortiz.”

  “His nickname is meat?”

  “Actually, it’s Carnicero, the Butcher. The story is he gave it to himself in prison.”

  I liked the guy less and less.

  “One other thing,” Jerome said. “Misti Ortiz is only fifteen years old. I think that alone is enough to earn Artie a couple of bullets in vital organs. When I heard that, I lost whatever little bit of respect I had for the asshole.”

  I flashed on the video Artie had shown me. Only fifteen.

  I mapped out a theory in my head about Artie that I thought I could pass on to Reese and Robbins. Artie got involved with the wrong woman, a habit he should have outgrown years before. Either Carne did not like the idea of Baca with his sister, or he didn’t like the idea of Baca giving his sister a hard time about paying the blackmail. In any case, Artie paid the ultimate poon tax. It made sense to me. I had to find a way to sell it to the cops.

  Jerome reached behind his back with his right hand. He struggled with something in his back pocket or the waistband of his pants. Without knowing I was going to do it, without any plan or idea what I would do next, I jumped him and knocked him down. I bent over him and slugged his nose. Blood immediately flowed.

  “Motherfucker!” he shouted. He took a swing at me, but I dodged the blow. He tried to stop the blood from his nose.

  “What the fuck? You’re crazy. Look what you did to my shirt.” Blood splattered his shirt, pants and the floor. A few drops of blood stained his hat, which had managed to stay on his head. “Stand up, slow.” I grabbed a rusty golf club from a bag of old clubs that lay near the door. I dug out a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to him. He balled it up and pressed it around his nostrils.

  “Goddamn you. My nose could be broken. What’s wrong? Why’d you jump me?”

  “What you got in your back pocket? Turn around, yeah, turn around.”

  He turned and stopped. I didn’t see anything that looked like a gun.

  “What were you reaching for?”

  “Jesus, that’s why you hit me? It’s a card with a phone number. You said you wanted to find out how to talk with Misti Ortiz. I was giving you the number, you son-of-a-bitch. You’re going to pay for this, Gus. Count on it.”

  I took the card and saw the handwritten number.

  “No way I let you get out of this without breaking an arm,” he said.

  “You got every right to be pissed, Jerome. Hurting me is not the answer. Heh-heh.” I tried to sound low key, like I knew his threats were coming only from his immediate anger and that he couldn’t possibly mean what he said. We had a history together that
had to count for something.

  The hardest thing I had to do in years turned out to be my apology to Jerome. I struggled with the words. I flinched whenever he moved. I went into too much detail about the break-in of the back room by the guy with the gun and how I thought the worst. I described my paranoia, my stress and my general fucked-up mood. I wasted my time. None of that mattered to Jerome. I reminded him of all we had been through. That only made the situation more tense.

  “I’m a goof, Jerome. You know that. Whatever I need to do to make this up to you, I’ll do it. I mean anything.”

  Jerome’s nose finally stopped bleeding. I expected him to hit me the first chance he had but I put down the golf club. We stood a few feet from one another. There wasn’t anything else I could say or do. I screwed up and Jerome had every right to pound my ass.

  On cue, like the guardian angels they were, Max and Corrine walked in the shop. Max stopped with her mouth open. Corrine turned from Jerome to me and back to Jerome.

  “Good God, Gus Corral,” Corrine said. “What in the hell have you done now?”

  11

  That wasn’t the first time my sisters saved me from a beating, or worse.

  It helped that Jerome respected Corrine. I never doubted that Corrine’s rep was solid all over the North Side, and Jerome was nothing if not North Side.

  The best was that Jerome was sweet on Maxine. She let him down easy but one thing about Max, she knew how to get what she wanted. She had our parents wrapped around her little finger when we were kids, up until her coming out. Teachers loved her and let her get away with silliness that meant at least detention for the rest of us. She dropped onto the local music scene as the front person for the Rakers and quickly carved out a leadership role among edgy musicians, tough managers and flirtatious bar owners, even though her own talent was limited to banging a tambourine and occasionally singing for what passed as a slow song for the Rakers.

  Max sized up the situation between Jerome and me and she did what she had to do for her older brother. First, to set the stage and butter up Jerome, she gave me holy grief for being an idiot, not holding back on any of the “how could you do this” or “what’s wrong with you” or “you ought to be locked up.” Then she tended to Jerome’s bleeding nose, cleaned him up, offered him water and aspirin, all the while telling him the kinds of things that men like to hear from women who are taking care of them, things that their mothers told them when they were children, although they never would admit it. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her sing, “sana, sana, colita de rana.”

  The scene made me nervous. She was my sis, the baby of the family who would forever be spoiled by her only brother. I had a hard time processing that she was her own person, and all that it meant. On that day, in an overheated second-hand shop with bloody rags piled in a corner, it meant easing the bruised ego and battered nose of a guy I knew as a hustler, petty criminal and con artist. A guy I punched only minutes before because I thought he was about to kill me.

  I cleaned up the floor and Corrine helped, but the two of us stayed away from Jerome and Max. By the time Max finished, Jerome calmed down. He asked questions about my early morning visitor, Artie and Misti Ortiz, the whole mess. So that meant Corrine and Max heard everything. They had to ask their own questions. After about twenty minutes of trying to explain what had been going on, as truthfully as I could make it, I silently wished that Robbins and Reese would show up and arrest me. The third-degree from Jerome, Corrine and Max had to be worse than what the two cops could deal.

  All three agreed that I should leave town for awhile. Lay low. Hide out. Go underground.

  “That’s easier said than done,” I said. “It takes money to disappear, at least so that no one can pick up my trail without a lot of digging. Money? Ha. If I disappear, that makes me look even guiltier to the cops, when they should be watching Ortiz. I could go homeless, I guess, hang out at the shelter and food banks, but I don’t think I can handle that. I’d rather face this guy and stop whatever this is.” My hands gestured to include the entire North Side, the city, the world.

  “And end up dead,” Corrine said in her usual merry fashion. “You don’t know when the creep will come back. He knows where you sleep, he probably knows all about you. Where you drink, who your friends are, even us.” She indicated everyone in the shop. Max looked concerned.

  “What I don’t understand,” Jerome said, “is what this guy wants. Yeah, he may want you dead, but why? You haven’t crossed anybody, not lately anyway, and not enough to call in a trigger. So maybe he wasn’t here to use his gun on you but he wanted to talk to you, threaten you, sure, or even take you to someone else. We don’t know since you got out of bed at just the right minute, otherwise, we’d be having a different conversation.” He sounded disappointed.

  “I can’t get over how you woke up just in time, Gus,” Max said. “What if you had been sleeping when the guy broke in?”

  “I didn’t wake up just in time,” I said. “I hadn’t been sleeping. I moved out of the room at the right time, that’s for sure. If I hadn’t, then Jerome is right on. We would be having a very different conversation now—maybe I wouldn’t even be here. Whatever was going to happen, I was awake when the guy chose to visit.”

  “Jerome’s making sense,” Corrine said. “What did that guy want? This has to have something to do with Artie Baca’s killing. But you don’t really know anything about that. You want to talk with Misti Ortiz to satisfy your curiosity, I guess, but is that enough for a man with a gun to show up in your room at three in the morning? No one but Jerome knew you were interested in Misti Ortiz.”

  “Except for the guys I had to talk with to get the number I gave Gus,” Jerome said. “I had a hard time finding the info and somewhere along the line, someone easily could have leaked that I was nosing around about Misti Ortiz. Like I told this pendejo, this family and this woman are bad news all around. They don’t like it when strangers start digging into their business.”

  “Ironic, no?” I used a word I thought Corrine would appreciate. “I wanted to talk with Misti Ortiz because I got a little shook up after I heard about Artie’s shooting and the cops finding that check. I thought she might know something that could help me. My wanting to talk with Ortiz in my own defense caused the nighttime raid, precisely what I wanted to prevent.”

  Corrine shook her head. “You should have confronted the guy instead of ducking for cover.”

  Jerome smiled, Max winked. Ah, Corrine.

  After Corrine and Max left, Jerome and I spent several uncomfortable minutes with each other. I apologized again but he cut me off. “Sorry” was not enough—he knew that, I knew that.

  I stood in front of him and waited with my hands at my sides, my eyes half-closed. He placed his hat on the table and bent down a bit, for leverage. When his fist hit my nose, my head spun around and I tumbled sideways. Instantly I felt the intense pain, a stinging, crunchy jolt that split my head and settled at the top of my skull. My eyes watered. Blood dripped from my nose. Not as much as had flowed from Jerome’s nose, but enough to satisfy him.

  I held my nose with a piece of towel from the sink in the back room. I bent over in pain. Jerome stood next to me for a minute.

  “Damn, you Jerome,” I said. “Damn me. Damn my nose. It hurts like hell.”

  “Welcome to the club. That’s a start on payback, Gus.”

  “No, that’s it. I paid what I owed you.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Another minute passed. I cursed again. He touched the bandage on his nose and grimaced.

  “Come on, Gus,” he said. “That’s enough. You can quit with the play-acting. I got over it. You will, too.”

  “It hurts like hell.”

  “It’s supposed to.”

  I opened my mouth but before any more swearing filled the air, I spit up blood. I coughed, then I choked up another cough that sounded like a laugh. I couldn’t stop, and I laughed again. Jerome didn’t laugh, but he
eased up considerably. We both relaxed.

  He sat on my red chair and talked about the phone number he had given me.

  “It will connect you to someone who can put you in touch with Misti Ortiz. That’s all I really know. I got it from a guy who works for Lorenzo Ortiz, and who I knew long before he hooked up with Lorenzo’s outfit. I can’t say more without putting that guy, and me, at risk. You call that number and play it by ear. Maybe you’ll get to Miss Ortiz, more likely not. Either way, don’t mention me, Gus. I repeat, these people don’t fool around.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Jerome.”

  He picked up his hat, flicked his thumb at the spots of blood staining the crisp whiteness, sighed and said, “Laters, Gus. I’ve wasted enough time here.” He walked out.

  I didn’t tell Jerome that I blamed him for my late night visitor. His old buddy, whoever that was in Ortiz’s gang, must have talked about Jerome’s interest in Misti, and that led to my visitor and our mutual bloodied noses. My nose throbbed and I had to keep dabbing at dripping blood. I quit feeling bad about hitting Jerome.

  I pressed the numbers on my cell and waited. If my late night visitor was sent as a warning, I didn’t get the message.

  A man with an accent answered.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m trying to get in touch with Misti Ortiz. I got this number from a friend who told me that this is the way to find her. Can you help me out?”

  “Who are you, and what’s your friend’s name?”

  “Look, I only want to speak with Misti Ortiz. Can you help me or not?”

  He hung up.

  I debated calling again but decided it would have been a waste of time. Jerome’s information, and his bloody nose, had been for nothing.

  I swallowed four aspirin and spent the rest of the morning staring at the street through the store’s front windows. I waited for the man with the gun to show up again, or maybe a different hoodlum who would make sure I was at home before he barged in. I expected the two cops to stroll in again and pick up where they had left off. They were no-shows. When my stomach rumbled I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything except coffee. I resigned myself to taking a walk to Chencha’s.