Desperado

by Manuel Ramos

  The housing market in Highlands stoked talk about an economic upturn. The average price for a home in the neighborhood rose in the past few years during the same time that housing in the rest of the city tanked. Everyone said it was a miracle and from the looks on the faces of the excited crowd in Quixote Plaza, the miracle couldn’t have come at a better time.

  The party spilled out from the first floor party room, adjacent to a covered swimming pool and a metal sculpture that, according to the silver plaque attached to its base, represented old man Quixote riding a horse. It looked more like aluminum springs and copper gears welded into a blue-green blob of no talent.

  I grabbed a paper cup of red wine and strolled through the crowd. I saw what I expected—chrome and tinted glass and dark woods and potted plants and woodcut prints of the crazy Don and his sidekick, Sancho Panza, charging at windmills.

  The potential customers looked like what I expected, too. I might have appeared a little out of my element but I did my best to blend in. That got easier when I saw Shoe and Ice huddled in a corner, clutching cups of wine in all four hands.

  “Man, what are we doing here?” Shoe said.

  “Free booze.” I held up my paper cup to emphasize the point.

  “Tastes like Kool-Aid,” Ice said. Then he chugged what he had in one of his cups, which he promptly threw into a planter that held a fern-looking bush.

  “Let’s blow this,” Shoe said. “We got better things to do. I want the DL about what happened the other night. Way it was told to me, you got your ass beat bad. You look like it, for sure.”

  Ice nodded in agreement. “Yeah, let’s go. These things make me nervous.”

  “All right. I thought this would be interesting. Let me finish my drink and we’ll hit it.”

  A tall woman in a red summer dress floated by and for a second I didn’t believe she was Linda Baca. She circled the room next to an equally tall man wearing a white sport coat, turquoise pants and a pale yellow polo shirt. They stopped and talked with the realtor, Twittle—I recognized him from his picture in the paper. The three hugged, smiled, laughed. Old friends.

  I finished my wine.

  “So, we leaving or what?” Shoe said.

  “In a few minutes. I want to check something.”

  “What could you want to check out here?” Ice said. “This ain’t for us, bro.” Ice had no patience.

  “You see Linda Baca?”

  Shoe and Ice looked where I pointed.

  “Jeez—Artie’s not even cold in the ground yet,” Shoe said.

  “She didn’t waste any time, did she?” Ice said.

  “That guy with Linda. You know him?”

  Shoe and Ice looked at where I indicated with my empty paper cup. They shook their heads.

  “Why you interested?” Ice said. “He a friend of yours?”

  “In a way.” I looked hard at Linda’s escort, to make sure. He saw me staring at him. I thought he nodded at me.

  “What do you mean, in a way? What way?” Shoe sounded irritated. He never could handle wine.

  “He’s the asshole who visited me the other night. The prick who busted into Sylvia’s shop.”

  “You sure?” Shoe asked without taking his eyes off the man in the white sport coat.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure. I think I’ll ask Mrs. Baca what the hell is going on.”

  Shoe and Ice grabbed me before I could take a step.

  “Easy, Gus,” Shoe whispered in my ear although no one could have overheard us with all the noise in the room. “If he was looking for you, he might be the one who shot Artie. Linda Baca’s all over him. What’s up with that?”

  “He never saw me. Far as he knows, I don’t have a clue that he was in my place. Let’s see how they act when I stick my face in theirs. This could be good. Come on.”

  They followed a few steps behind. Linda and her man saw me coming. Once I was about a dozen feet from them, the guy made like he was leaving. I ran up and grabbed him by the arm.

  “Hey, what . . . ?” he said.

  Linda shoved my hand away from her friend. “What do you want, Gus? What are you doing?”

  “I think you owe me an explanation.”

  “If this is about the other day,” she said, “I’m sorry I was so rude.”

  The sweat rose through my skin. My throat tightened. My plan to play it slow and force Linda and her mystery man to take the first step in a little cat-and-mouse dance didn’t last long.

  He squeezed closer to me and stared in my face. A few lines of gray streaked his hair but his mustache shined pure black. “I don’t know who you are but I sure don’t like your manners. Answer Linda’s question, what do you want?”

  Shoe and Ice maneuvered behind the guy. When he realized he was surrounded, he flinched. He stepped back a few paces.

  “Why don’t you explain what you were doing in my place at three in the morning? You or Linda want to get into that?”

  Linda stood outside the small circle created by Shoe, Ice and me.

  The stranger in the colorful clothes lost the color in his face. He looked over at Linda. She smiled, weakly. A worry line creased her forehead. We waited for a long few seconds. He said, “Screw you,” and tried to rush past us. Shoe grabbed him and pushed him back toward me. They bumped into others in the crowd, prompting a few curses and return shoves. A ripple of tension shuddered through the crowd. Leave it to the locals to cause trouble.

  Linda’s friend stood a few inches taller than me and my pals. When he took off his coat and handed it to Linda, we saw his pumped-up biceps and chiseled chest stretching his yellow shirt. The noise in the room faded away. The crowd gathered around us. Before we understood it completely, we were outnumbered and lost our command of the situation.

  A pair of security guards hustled toward us.

  Linda stepped between us and waved away the guards. They ignored her and kept coming.

  “Not sure what this is about,” she said, “but if you want to talk about something, you know how to reach me.”

  “Oh yeah. I want to talk. With you and . . . ”

  “Right, you haven’t met Artie’s business partner, Raymond Olivas. He’s an old friend.”

  The guards separated Shoe, Ice and me from the others. The guard who looked to be in charge said, “You need to leave. The party’s over for you.” He turned to Linda. “You okay, Mrs. Baca? These guys giving you trouble?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s nothing. No one has to leave. Right, Gus?”

  I tried to match her poise. “Yeah, no problem. Actually, we’re leaving anyway.”

  Olivas offered his hand. I was surprised but I shook it.

  “No problem,” Olivas said. His hand clenched mine and squeezed for a few seconds too long. When I let my fingers go limp he released his grip.

  The crowd melted away. The five of us stood awkwardly in the middle of the room under the watchful eyes of the guards. Shoe, Ice and I walked toward the door. Linda and Olivas kept smiling, nodding their heads. They huddled together and whispered in each other’s ears.

  “We should’ve jacked him up,” Ice said. “He violated your space. You can’t let him get away with that” The two guards followed us.

  “Easy, Ice,” I said. “We’re about to get thrown out by security, and who’s going to believe that Olivas broke into Sylvia’s shop? We walk now, and I try to put this together. Maybe I’ll give Detective Reese a call.”

  I started through the wide glass doors when I saw Lorenzo Ortiz and two of his henchmen walking up the steps. I let them pass. Ortiz watched me through eyes reduced to slits as though the light from the party was too bright. His men waited for a signal about what they should do. He raised two fingers in a V—the old peace sign—and motioned for his men to keep moving. The older guard high-fived Lorenzo and shrunk against the wall to give him and his crew plenty of room. Twittle rushed over to shake his hand. Linda and Olivas waited for their introduction. Everyone smiled.

  “I need a drink,”
I said.

  14

  Ifound that drink and several of its pals. Shoe and Ice tagged along on my one-track slide into inebriation. They managed to keep up with me for most of the night. Denver has some sleazy bars if you know where to look, and we looked hard.

  The booze and earlier drama from the Don Quixote fiasco had me wired, not to mention the overall stress since Artie visited me. Shoe and Ice heard about my troubles with Lorenzo Ortiz, the police and how Artie Baca infected my life with his peculiar brand of poison. I held back before I spoke about my adventure in the expensive ride with the new-car smell. No way for me to tell that story and not look bad. They weren’t satisfied and got most of it out of me. Liquor loosened my tongue and I couldn’t shut up. Shoe and Ice hung on every detail of how I ended up in a restaurant parking lot rather than the strip club. I said too much but they weren’t likely to remember the finer points of my tirades.

  When I finished, they bought me a shot and toasted my survival.

  “Lorenzo more or less admitted that he took care of Artie,” Shoe said.

  “He didn’t admit nothing. Ortiz was only protecting his rep with his men,” Ice said. “He never clearly said it, did he? If he did the job on Artie, why not take care of Gus, too? Gus is going around making accusations. Foolish, but that’s Gus. You’d think the Butcher would want to shut him up. You’re lucky you got nothing more than a beating.”

  “I don’t feel lucky.”

  Shoe had a different take. “Ortiz doesn’t need to whack Gus,” he said. “Gus doesn’t really know anything. He explained he was only covering his butt to make sure there was no misunderstanding about his role with Artie. Right, Gus?” I nodded.

  “Our friend here needed to clarify that thousand-dollar check,” Shoe said. “Now that’s been done, and Ortiz moves on to bigger fish. He accepted Gus’ excuse, and he gave Gus a direct and painful warning. That should be enough.”

  Ice didn’t buy it.

  “I ain’t no Sherlock,” he said. “But if the City and County of Denver paid me to look into shootings and other crimes of violence, I sure would spend a lot of time with Artie’s old lady. Open and shut. What’s the names of those two dicks that questioned you? We ought to call them. Better yet, Crime Stoppers. Get the reward.”

  We lifted our beers to that idea.

  “It’s too obvious for the cops,” Ice said. “They’ll never figure it out. Without someone confessing they don’t know how to solve a crime. I’m just sayin’.”

  “I don’t think she did it,” I said. “With the way divorce goes these days, she had no reason to shoot her way out of her marriage. A lawyer’s all she needed, not a gun.”

  “You’re assuming Artie got killed over money,” Ice said. “You know about crimes of passion? Say he pissed her off real bad, for whatever reason. Odds are another woman’s in the picture. Or she’s tired of taking his crap and putting up with his knocking her around. You know how he was. We’re talking about Artie Baca, remember? She lost it and capped him before she knew what she was doing. I can see her pumping bullets into Artie for all the years she didn’t fight back. Then, her boyfriend helped her cover it up.”

  “Hate to admit it,” Shoe said. “That makes sense.”

  “Could be,” I said. “But I still like Lorenzo Ortiz. More in his character and line of work.”

  We were in a place called the Silver Key, another new club on Thirty-Eighth that hadn’t settled if it wanted to carry on business as a yuppie sports bar or a neighborhood joint. After the tour of dives we had been on for most of the night, the Silver Key seemed almost upscale. We couldn’t handle it—too much alcohol accumulation by the time we walked into the place—and not only were we loud and obnoxious, we didn’t know anyone. A couple rounds of microbrews and shots and we must have tipped the balance in favor of the yuppies.

  Shoe looked like he could still captain a full-court press.

  “How you stay in shape?” I asked. “Playing ball?”

  “Not so much. I run every day, through the streets, usually between Lowell and Tejon. No gym for me, except maybe in winter. Love it.”

  “That’s good,” Ice said. “Keep moving. Stay healthy.”

  “You ever see Linda Baca on your runs?” I said. “She’s into physical exercise.”

  “She looks like she could handle herself,” Shoe said. “There’s always runners on the streets. If she was one, I didn’t notice. I tend to zone out when I run.”

  “That’d be trippy, if you and Linda ran together,” Ice said.

  “No way could that ever happen,” Shoe said. “Different crowd. Let’s get another round.”

  Drinking with my old friends triggered the usual nostalgia and regrets. Classic reasons to drink in the first place. Ice and Shoe had been part of my life since the time I started to keep memories. Each one brought something different to the table.

  During various times of the night I recalled that Shoe carried a torch for Sylvia, but in my more lucid moments I understood how it didn’t matter. Shoe and I went back long before Sylvia, and we were going ahead without her.

  Ice carried his life’s disappointments openly. He failed at trying to crank up a career in music and he resigned himself to stick with the first real job he found, working for the City and County. He had aged more than either Shoe or I, and that said a lot because I thought more and more like a has-been every day. When I mentioned that to Ice, he said, “If you’re a has-been, then I’m a never-was.”

  We ran out of new things to talk about the same time I accepted that I was drunk. I tuned out their off-color puns and repetitive slurs against the economy. I prepared myself to call it a night.

  Three women our age walked in the club. They quickly scouted the situation, talked among themselves and then headed in our direction. They knew us, we knew them and they had no problem sitting with us for a drink.

  Isabel Scutti, Janey Martinez and Molly Gallagher were at the tail end of a bar-hopping night similar to ours, although they had enough sense to designate Janey as the sober driver. Before long, all six of us were laughing at stories of the old times at North High and the craziness in our present lives. The good party vibe returned and I caught my second wind.

  I hesitated on specifics about me but the women knew more than I expected, including my divorce, my residency in the back room of Sylvia’s shop and my loose connection to Artie Baca’s recent demise. Thankfully, no one wanted much in the way of explanations.

  I did say a few things about Artie. I thought it was the least I could do. I spoke about his funeral, the cop visits his death had generated and the strange encounter with Linda and Raymond Olivas. That stirred up the trash talk. Artie had no allies at the table, and we dredged up several stories about him, and Linda, that cemented his rotten reputation. Some of the stories I’d never heard, others I knew too well.

  “That all seems long ago,” I said. “Like it happened to someone else. Someone who had a better idea of what to do with his life.”

  “We’ve become less than we expected but more than we deserve,” Isabel said. I remembered she graduated third in the class.

  Her light brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. She had worn it very short in school. Her mouth smiled at everything and everyone. Gray eyes lit up with her smiles.

  “You’re having a good time,” I said. “Celebrating something?”

  “It’s summer vacation. That’s enough. This is one of those nights when good things happen. Like running into you three. It’s been way too long since we hooked up with anyone from North. We always liked you guys. Too bad we didn’t hang out more.”

  “Wish I’d known that back then,” I said. “I had a serious crush on you. Thought you were out of my league.”

  “What a bunch of bull. Same old Gus. But I did like you. You were smart. Lazy, but smart.”

  “That’s what my counselor said, too. At least about the lazy part.”

  She laughed and I moved my chair closer.

  “How�
�s the teaching job? You been at it for a while.”

  “I love the kids. You’d be surprised . . . well, maybe you wouldn’t. I know teachers who don’t even like their students. Don’t know the families or their neighborhoods. No clue to what is going on in their kids’ lives. Too many teachers are simply putting in their time for the pension.”

  “I had plenty of teachers like that. They kill school for a kid.” “So true. It’s not all the teachers’ fault. The families have to help, be involved. But the biggest thing is that the administration and bureaucracy freeze out creativity. At least, they try to. CSAP rules.”

  “What?”

  “The Colorado Student Assessment Program. In some schools, that’s all that counts. How the students do on those goddammed tests. Many of us plug along doing what we can. We spend our own money for supplies, set up special times for the parents, visit their homes. We never have time for ourselves. We battle principals and other teachers. I . . . God. I’m starting to sound like a union meeting. Old and dreary. I want to have fun. You want to have fun, don’t you, Gus?”

  “That’s an invitation I’ll never refuse. There’s nothing old or dreary about you. I know dreary. I live it. You’re not any way close.” She smiled like the sun coming up over the Eastern plains. “Molly’s got some pot in the car,” she said. “Want a toke?” “I thought you were a good Italian Catholic girl.” “I am. That’s why I’m offering to share.”

  We left but no one noticed. Shoe and Ice were on their own, and doing well.

  Isabel scurried out the back door when the sun popped through the window and warmed my cot and our naked bodies. I was embarrassed for her, leaving through the alley without breakfast, not so much as a kiss goodbye. I tried small talk, but we were caught up in morning-after awkwardness and she didn’t want to talk with anyone, especially me. Her hangover was worse than mine. The night before, I traded Ice and Shoe for Isabel. More correctly, Shoe and Ice moved on when they realized that Isabel and I were going to be an item, at least for a few hours.