by Manuel Ramos
“You’re Artie’s friend. You tried to reach me after he was killed. Wanting to find out what happened to him?”
“Yeah . . . well, I know what happened to him. I’m not sure what I was trying to do, except that I thought I needed to talk with you. I was trying to find out more about why. I don’t know, something like that.”
I couldn’t tell her I tried to lead the cops to Lorenzo in my clumsy way. It seemed incredibly stupid when I stood in the early morning darkness of a deserted building, a prisoner of her criminal brother, at the mercy of thugs and whatever she was—whore, blackmailer, killer?
“Maybe you were after Lorenzo? He must have been the one who killed Artie. His men brag about it.”
Her talk made me nervous. It didn’t seem the time or place to bring up the sordid mess between her, Artie and her brother.
“I’m not after anyone. That’s why this is crazy. All of this . . . it makes no sense. Why would your brother want to drag us into this? What is he trying to do?”
Corrine stirred and mumbled incoherent words. Isabel turned on her side. Jerome watched us.
“No one understands why Lorenzo does what he does,” Misti said. “I think half the time he doesn’t know himself. He just acts. He’s a simple man, with simple pleasures like causing pain, tormenting people.”
The way she said it convinced me she knew too many details of her brother’s fondness for causing pain.
“But me, and my sister, my friends? We have nothing to offer him. There’s nothing we can do for him.”
“Like I said, it gives him pleasure to watch the pain of others. When he finds someone to target, he doesn’t stop until the end, whatever he decides the end is. You made it to his list, and now he’ll do whatever he wants with you. He’ll do it because he can, and he doesn’t think you can stop him. He doesn’t care if you’re killed, if everyone in this room is killed. It’s the way he enjoys life.” She stopped and looked around, remembering where she was and who might be listening. “Do you think you can do something? Can you finally stop him, Gus Corral?”
Before I could answer, she reached into a red leather purse and flashed a handgun. I shuddered, and for a second I thought I would pay for Artie’s sins. I silently cursed that thousand dollar check again.
“This is all I can get you now,” she said. “This extra gun will give you an advantage. The men outside think I’m here to bring them and Manuel some food and beer. I’m lucky they didn’t search me. Too afraid of Lorenzo and what he might do if they disrespected his sister.” The ugly Ortiz laugh escaped from her mouth. “Tomorrow, Manuel will do what he can. Follow his lead. If you don’t get away, Lorenzo will kill all of you once you take the tilma. If you get a chance, you have to kill Lorenzo.”
I stammered, “How? What . . . ?”
She shook her head to silence me. She rubbed her hands down the front of her jacket, wiping away the deadly words she had said against her brother.
“I hope to see you again, but the odds are that I won’t.” The coldness of her words matched the dead air in the warehouse. “Cuídate. Be careful. Any mistake and you’re dead,” then she turned away into the dark building.
I stuffed the gun in the waistband of my pants. Manuel walked over to me.
“Tomorrow,” he said in a whisper, “you either escape or you die. Those are the only two things that can happen, and we both know which one is more likely. When we get to where the tilma is hidden, you have to make your move quick. You’ll know it’s happening because I’ll start shooting. Warn your friends tonight. Get them ready.”
“Why? What’s in this for you?”
He snapped open a golden lighter and methodically lit a cigarette.
“I can’t go along with stealing from La Virgen,” he said. “He hecho algunos desmadres. I’m no saint. But I can’t do this, what Ortiz is asking. It goes against everything I still believe. If I get my hands on the tilma, I’m returning it to Mexico City. I’ll put it back where it belongs.”
The hard set of his face loosened. His jaw bone relaxed.
“You don’t think we’ll make it,” I said. “Is it worth it?”
“None of us are worth it, like you say. But I’ll do what I have to do.” He threw away his smoke. “Son los años. I’m getting too old. All my true friends are dead, or never going to leave prison. I’ve become expendable. Lorenzo expects me to get killed tomorrow. I’m not going to go out the way he thinks.” He turned to walk away. I grabbed his shoulder. He jerked and grabbed my hand.
“Easy,” I said. “I have to ask. Why is Misti doing this? Her own brother?”
He let go of my hand. “Her brother, yeah. Y también, her pimp. Since she was twelve. Using her to trap men, and then forcing them to pay money. So young, but she’s too old, también. Old and tired.”
Jerome moved in the background. He mumbled a few grunts to let us know he was awake. He eagerly accepted the second gun after I explained the visit from Misti and Manuel’s part in the plan.
“At least we have a chance now,” he said when I removed the tape from his face. “Why’d they do that, Gus? Why help us? That girl doesn’t even know us.”
Corrine and Isabel were awake, listening to us. I removed the tapes from their mouths.
“Manuel has his own reasons. Misti? It’s not so much that she’s helping us,” I said. “She’s trying to get away from her brother, get him killed really. She’s finally had enough.”
“She wants you and Jerome to do her dirty work.” That was Corrine. “You’d think she’d want to pull the trigger herself. She must be afraid of him.”
“Whatever she’s been through, she’s just a kid, a young girl,” Isabel said. “Her brother is a monster. She’s doing the only thing she can think of.” I agreed. Misti Ortiz lived in a world I could never understand or accept. She had survived terrible things that had forever warped her, but she was a kid. A very dangerous, twisted kid.
18
Morning arrived like a kick in the head. Manuel and his men ran into the building, shouting, cursing. They rousted us from the concrete, hustled us into a small room and before we were fully awake we were instructed on our simple task: steal the Blessed Virgin’s image from heavily armed, cold-blooded killers. Lorenzo Ortiz was nowhere in sight.
“There will be four guards and they won’t be expecting any trouble—not from us for sure,” Manuel said. He took his time, giving details that had double meaning for those of us who intended to use the heist as the cover for our escape.
Salvador, a short muscular man with a bald head and a thick mustache, stood in a corner, listening to Manuel. Tattoos covered his Popeye arms and what I could see of his neck.
“We’re going to the basement of a downtown hotel, the Majestic. The jefes have arranged for a sale to a sinvergüenza from California, a collector who thinks that the tilma will look good surrounded by his Nazi flags and Hitler photographs.” “You’re kidding,” Jerome said.
“He’s got the money and the bosses think it’s a better idea to sell to him than to the pope. Too risky with el Papa.” “This is sick,” I said. Manuel didn’t disagree.
“You two and Salvador and me will go through the hotel’s parking garage to the basement. The buyer is staying in the hotel. He wants to view the merchandise, up close, so the tilma is only minutes from him. It’s been there for a few days but he doesn’t know it. Lorenzo runs the kitchen in the hotel. I mean, he has men that run it, so he’s got an in. He arranged for the hotel room, a ride from the airport, todo. We’re supposed to get there around ten this morning. The buyer shows up at ten-thirty, but by then it will be over. If things work out the way Lorenzo wants them to, the Mexico City guys will be dead, the tilma will be gone and the buyer will be left holding the bag since the cops will be alerted to check out the basement at the same time that the buyer is supposed to show up.”
“What if it doesn’t work? What if we’re the dead ones? The collector gets what he bargained for? How does that make Lorenzo happ
y?”
Manuel and Salvador grinned at my questions.
“If it all goes to hell,” Manuel said, “Lorenzo is still covered. The sale goes through, Lorenzo gets his cut and you guys are labeled ‘home-grown terrorists’ killed in a suicidal attack on the hotel. Since you’ll be dead in the hotel basement, who’s to say otherwise? Lorenzo can arrange for it to look like all of us followed orders from almost any group of locos anywhere in the world. If his plan works and by some miracle we escape with the holy image, he ends up with the tilma and can sell it himself to the buyer, or to anyone he wants—for the price he wants to set, and he doesn’t have to split it with anyone.”
Jerome shook his head. “We’re dead men either way. As soon as the shooting starts the cops will bust into that basement, not to mention the hotel security. The Mexico City guys shoot us, or the cops take us out, or Lorenzo finishes what he started.” He looked Manuel square in the eyes. “Or you.”
Manuel grinned again.
Jerome finished with, “We have no reason to do this.”
“You understand that Lorenzo will be holding the two women?” Manuel asked. “That’s your reason, hombre. At least it’s Gus’ reason. Doing what Lorenzo wants is the only chance you have of making it out of here alive.”
He gripped his handgun just in case Jerome missed his message. I forced myself to believe that Manuel and Jerome were playing hard ass with each other for the benefit of Salvador and the reports that he had to be sending to Lorenzo at least every hour.
“Yeah, I know what we have to do,” Jerome said. “Don’t worry about that.”
“When we get to the basement, we’ll be about ten minutes early,” Manuel said. “We park on the lowest level, walk through the parking lot, take the freight elevator to the sub-basement and walk down a hallway to storage rooms filled with hotel scrap. Old pictures, furniture, beds, that kind of junk. We knock on the middle door, the boys inside let us in. They’ll be watchful but not too excited. They know we’re supposed to be there. Immediately we get it done. We start blasting, duck for cover and hope we survive. Those guys have to go down in a few seconds or it’s over.”
Jerome and I nodded.
“The tilma’s in a fancy metal chest, protected from everything, including bullets. As soon as we can, we grab the chest, me and Salvador, and we run like hell to the stairs, we can’t wait for the elevator. You guys cover us from behind. We run up to our ride in the parking lot. The tilma doesn’t weigh anything at all but the chest is heavy. Salvador and I can handle it. We jump in the van and drive three blocks, where we ditch it and transfer the chest to Lorenzo. Then the four of us split up and walk away, like nothing is going on. Four guys who don’t know each other walking around downtown Denver. You two wait for the women to show up at Jerome’s house”
No way, I thought, for the hundredth time. But we had no choice.
Our training ended as abruptly as it started. Lorenzo’s crew marched Corrine and Isabel through a side door, then they herded Jerome and me into a windowless van. Someone handed us Styrofoam cups with strong black coffee. We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye or good luck. Everything happened too fast, with too much of a blur for me to get my bearings.
Jerome and I didn’t talk during the ride. Salvador clogged the air in the van with cigarette smoke. I was hungry and exhausted but the coffee did make me feel better. Jerome drank his quietly without comment. He had to be thinking about his own coffee business a thousand miles, and years, away.
For a hot minute I considered using the gun Misti Ortiz gave me to disarm Salvador and take over the van. But the Mexican cradled an old-fashioned shotgun with a short handle. He never took his eyes off Jerome and me. He occasionally lifted his doublebarreled weapon in our direction. I didn’t have to be an Einstein to see that he wanted any excuse to use it on us. We didn’t have a chance in the van.
I did not expect any of us, Corrine, Isabel, Jerome or me, to be alive at the end of the day.
19
Iconvinced myself that I had to get the drop on Manuel and Salvador before we confronted the Mexico City guns. That much I knew for sure. After that, it got a bit hazy. I guessed that for Salvador’s benefit, Manuel intended to go through the motions of Lorenzo’s plan and pass guns to Jerome and me just before we entered the storage room. I also figured that after the shootout, assuming we were still alive, Salvador would finish us off like Lorenzo must have ordered.
The Majestic rose for nineteen stories from the Sixteenth Street Mall. Manuel waited for traffic to clear, then he drove into an entrance to the parking lot off of Lawrence. We quickly descended through the parking levels. We jerked around tight corners on the hard-curving ramp until the van slowed and stopped near a space with an orange cone. Manuel left the van, moved the cone, jumped back in the driver’s seat, then parked.
Manuel took the lead across the gray parking lot. He carried a canvas shopping bag with a yellow smiley face logo. Salvador waited for Jerome and me to get in line behind Manuel, then he followed us.
“I thought it’d be cooler down here,” I said to Jerome. He grunted.
In the dim light the lot looked half-full but I didn’t see other people. Manuel walked briskly to the freight elevator doors, almost running.
“Follow me,” he said. “Don’t forget why we’re here, especially when the shooting starts. Stay on point. It’s your only chance of walking out of here today.”
Salvador pounded his palm against the stock of his shotgun. Drops of sweat fell from his nose.
Our footsteps echoed from car to car. Our shoes scraped on the concrete floor. I touched the handle of my gun hanging under my shirt. The solid metal reassured me, but only for a second.
We stepped into the roomy but grimy elevator, each one of us separated from the others, wary and watchful. Manuel punched the SB button and the elevator moved slow and with a lot of noise. I jumped at a loud screech from the top of the elevator. Jerome smiled. Manuel smiled back. They appeared relaxed, as if they’d been born to end up in that parking lot, that elevator, that day.
The elevator ground to a stop and opened onto a narrow hallway bathed in garish white from flickering light bulbs. Manuel headed for the middle door—a gray piece of metal with a small rectangular window protected by wire mesh. Salvador stayed behind us, still gripping his shotgun.
Manuel reached into his bag and took out a pistol. He aimed it in my direction. I jerked my hidden gun from my pants but then I froze in place. Manuel squeezed the trigger and I fell to my knees. Salvador crumpled at my feet. Blood gushed from his tattooed throat. He gurgled and thrashed on the floor. My pant cuffs soaked up his blood.
The door jerked open and the smooth dark face of a young man with a broken tooth smiled at us. Manuel shot the face and repeatedly fired into the room. Bullets whizzed from the room into the hallway. I gripped my gun but Manuel and Jerome stood in my line of fire. They sprayed more bullets into the room. Manuel leaped through the doorway. More shots, a scream. My ears buzzed from the sharp explosions. A flash of adrenaline shot through my spine. Jerome looked at me and I nodded.
We rushed into the room—a layer of gun smoke floated at eye level. Manuel slumped against a chair, blood seeping from his belly. Four other bleeding men sprawled in awkward positions. Blood pooled on the floor and spotted the low ceiling.
We did a quick scan of the bloody scene. A golden box sat on a table in a corner of the room. Embossed angels adorned the lid.
Jerome grabbed an iron bar sitting on a shelf. He pounded the lock and the lid sprung open. The box was empty.
Jerome checked Manuel, shook his head and motioned with his gun toward the door. He dashed from the room. I followed as fast as I could. We jumped over Salvador’s body and scrambled up the stairs.
The narrow stairwell closed in around us. Jerome puffed and wheezed in front of me, and occasionally muttered a curse. Air erupted from my lungs in shallow and hot bursts. The walls, covered with peeling gray paint, bounced and exaggerated th
e sounds we made. Repeating bursts of an alarm bell rang up and down the stairwell. Jerome swung open a door and we rushed through to the first level of the parking lot.
Sirens blared. I heard shouting, doors slamming, men running. My knees ached from racing through the stairs. Somewhere along the way I had scraped my elbow. I rubbed the bone to get feeling back in my arm. Exhaustion overwhelmed me and I quit running. We dropped our guns, collapsed on the concrete and waited for the cops. We didn’t wait long.
20
Ilanded in a purgatory of city cops, federal agents, all sizes of jail cells and more cops. Denver detectives, including my old friends Reese and Robbins, interrogated me for hours. When they weren’t insulting me, rude teams from the FBI and Homeland Security took over, dead set on nailing me for terrorism.
They kept me isolated from other prisoners and allowed no visitors. I asked for a lawyer, or to talk with Jerome, or make a call to my sister Maxine—everything denied.
I repeatedly demanded info about Corrine and Isabel. The cops looked at one another as though they had a dark secret they were busting a gut to tell me, but they only shrugged their shoulders or rolled their bloodshot eyes and made me feel like I was the dumbest human being on earth.
The cops explained they could keep me under wraps because of the Patriot Act and, as Robbins put it, “Who gives a shit about you, anyway?”
I lost track of time and drifted in a fuzzy, gray awareness. Although exhausted, I did not sleep. I craved water but I couldn’t eat much. A candy bar and a bag of peanuts kept me going. A trio of cops wearing bullet-proof vests moved me from one government building to another, at night, and the only constant was that no one believed my story.
I told all of them the truth. At least, as much of the truth that I had to reveal to protect myself. My story was clean and uncomplicated. Four of us had been kidnapped by Lorenzo Ortiz’s gang. They forced Jerome and me to participate in the hotel robbery because of threats made against Corrine and Isabel. The gangsters killed each other. I didn’t fire a shot. I didn’t know about terrorism or smuggled drugs or Mexican cartel warfare. I had no idea why they picked us. I never saw the religious relic. I explained the importance of Juan Diego’s vision of the Virgin Mary on a rocky cactus-covered hill near Mexico City and the legend of the miraculous transformation of his cloak. The cops groaned, shook their heads and told me to quit the fairy tales.
