by Manuel Ramos
I trusted Jerome told the same story. He had no reason to lie. He could be accused of nothing more than contributing his share of bullets, in self-defense, when Manuel started the carnage by shooting Salvador. Jerome really was an innocent bystander.
I used the few and rare minutes on my own, away from the hot lights and bad breath of my interrogators, to think about the many mistakes I had made on the path that led me to the bloody hotel basement. Artie stood at the center of several concentric circles of misery that included Misti and Lorenzo Ortiz, my sisters, Isabel and Jerome. They were all involved, but Artie had set the play in motion and I kept it going with my ill-advised moves against the Butcher. I carried a truckload of remorse.
I hated the intense light in the interrogation room. I developed a headache that split my forehead like a butcher knife. My back ached like someone kicked me in the kidneys. Small black dots danced on the periphery of my vision.
Reese slammed his palms together after the twelfth time he heard my version of what happened.
“It’s all bullshit, Gus,” he shouted in my face. “You’re not telling us why any of this happened.” Robbins tapped him on the shoulder, he straightened up and switched to a softer tone. “Why would these cartel guys force you to take part in their double-cross? It doesn’t make sense. Why would they bother to snatch the women just to get you and your buddy in the shootout? What’s the connection between Ortiz and you?”
“Ortiz used us so he wouldn’t have to rely on his men,” I said. “He was ripping off the gang, he didn’t know who he could trust and he was willing to waste Manuel and Salvador. He grabbed us out of the blue. We were expendable and by using us he saved his men for another day. That’s all I can make of it.”
“There were six dead Mexicans in the basement of the hotel, Gus, including one of Ortiz’s most trusted lieutenants, Manuel Guzmán.” Reese pointed out the obvious. “Yet, you and your buddy are still kicking. You see why your story doesn’t hold up?”
“I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“The only thing I can figure is that you’re tied to them,” Reese said. “Much closer than you’re telling us. You got a history with Ortiz you don’t want us to find out about?”
I shook my head.
“It goes back to your dead pal Artie Baca. Ortiz is connected to that, and he got you to be his mechanic for the hit.” “That’s crazy. I’m not a hit man.”
“He didn’t pick you and your buddy off the street, cold. You’re part of his gang. That’s the only logical conclusion. You guys did the dirty work for Ortiz in the hotel basement but because we busted you before you got away you think you can lay it all on him? You want to pin this lame excuse of a story totally on him and his boys? What’s going on, Gus?”
The stress and fatigue caught up to me. I started to believe what the police told me. I could be mixed-up with Ortiz, deeper than anyone imagined. I knew men would die, but I followed Ortiz’s orders. Maybe I did have secrets the cops needed to know.
I caught myself before I said anything too brainless. I was a pawn in a sick sport devised by Ortiz and his strange sister, and Artie Baca was one of the collateral victims. I remembered Artie, and what happened to him, and I regained my balance.
“I could use a glass of water,” I said to Reese.
He cussed in disgust.
I repeated my story, line for line, detail for detail. Reese stormed out of the room.
“You’re going down, Corral. It’s only a matter of time.” Robbins picked up where his partner had left it. “We’ve only just started.” The grilling continued.
At one dark point, I told the two cops, “I’m guilty. You know it, I know it.” Reese and Robbins shut up. They waited for me to explain. “Now leave me alone and let me get some sleep.”
“Guilty of what?” Reese said. “Finish your statement.”
“Of being as stupid as my sister thinks I am. Of trying to outthink you guys, when that’s nothing but a sucker bet. Of believing that men like Lorenzo Ortiz aren’t as bad as they really are. Of letting Artie Baca back in my life.”
“None of that’s important to us,” Reese said. “Especially Artie Baca. That’s Plan B now. Baca’s no longer a priority, not after the shootout in the hotel. Your ass is in a sling. You’re going down for a long time. This is some serious shit, Gus. Not even your loudmouthed sister can get you out of this.”
“My sister takes care of me. She always has. I’d like to see her. Let me call her.” I slurred my words and my hands shook. A coughing fit bent me over. My eyes watered. Reese and Robbins huddled together.
“We’re taking a break, Gus,” Robbins said. He handed me a bottle of water. “Get some sleep, if you can. We’ll get back to this in an hour or so. You’re losing it. Think about where you are and how hopeless it is. Save yourself more grief and admit what you were doing in that hotel, and your link to Ortiz. That’s all we need. Give us that, it’s not much when you think about it, and we’ll take care of you. We want bigger fish. We need to close the circle, that’s all. Think it over.”
They left me alone but I didn’t fall asleep. I paced around the small room and thought about Max and her latest girlfriend and how happy they looked at the bar talking about their music. I remembered the smug look on Corrine’s face when I returned Pancho Villa’s stolen skull. I made a mental note to thank Sylvia for the job, meager as it was. I tried to imagine Reese and Robbins drinking beer in a back yard, grilling hamburgers. Two good old boys enjoying the weekend.
When the cops returned I repeated my story, which happened to be the truth, and made sure they understood I was not any kind of terrorist.
This went on for three days.
The cops complained about my smell and they made me change the jail house orange overalls I had worn since my arrest. I asked for a shower but that got no response.
In the middle of another endless interrogation destined for nowhere, without telling me what was happening, a district attorney paraded me in front of a judge who set bail at $75,000, and the police dumped me in a county jail cell. They told me to call anyone I wanted. The FBI did not say goodbye. Reese and Robbins let loose with a string of “goddams” and “motherfucks” and “hell noes.” They almost threw up when they read the lightweight charges filed against me.
Contrary to Reese, my loudmouthed sister did get me out of the mess. The change happened when Corrine’s and Isabel’s stories exploded in the press and online. They were heroines, brave women who escaped the clutches of notorious Mexican criminals. They were called modern-day Calamity Janes, Wonder Women, even Joan of Arcs—women who faced torture and death and came out on top against very bad men. The cops were forced to realize that I’d been telling the truth and my arrest would not make their careers. Far from a terrorist, I turned out to be a run-of-the-mill lowlife mixed up in something way over his head, more target than thug. Videos of Corrine’s press conference went viral and I rode out of jail on the wave of her popularity.
The prosecutor rigged up state charges against me for firearms and conspiracy and a few other crimes that didn’t amount to much, at least in the eyes of Paul Reese and Frank Robbins, but none of the law enforcement types had the guts to lower the hammer on me for the dead men in the hotel basement, especially after the women’s stories were aired and the entire country heard how they had been tormented, threatened and roughed-up. Daily stories of the continual and gruesome cartel violence in Mexico and along the border transformed Corrine and Isabel into twenty-first century heroines. Corrine gagged at the thought of being portrayed as a defender of the border against illegal brown hooligans.
“Ironic,” I told her when I had the chance.
But no reporter would make a hero out of me, and Jerome kept out of the spotlight as much as he could. All he wanted was to go back to running his coffee shop. Jerome and I didn’t fit the mold of crusading vigilantes that the reporters and politicians were looking for, and that was okay with me. Corrine milked it, of course. B
ecause her story helped set me free and stopped the interrogations, I wished her more power and all the publicity she wanted.
I had to deal with the charges, which meant hiring a lawyer. On Corrine’s advice I turned to a guy I had known since way back, Luis Móntez. He had practiced law in Denver for years. He hung his shingle back when all the Chicano lawyers knew one another on a first-name basis, and he had a lot of experience dealing with guys like me. I trusted him. I had friends who had relied on Móntez and had not been disappointed.
He met me in the jail and carefully listened to my story.
“That’s amazing,” he said. “I’m not sure I believe it all, but my job is to get you out of here and then make sure you get a fair trial. Neither necessarily requires that I believe you.”
“Thanks, that’s reassuring.”
The first thing he did on my behalf was to convince Sylvia that she should put up her house and business as collateral for my bail. That was a miracle and Móntez impressed me from the jump.
“Sylvia says she will personally cut off your balls if you do anything to jeopardize her shop,” he told me when I walked out of the jail.
“I expected no less. I’m surprised she didn’t ask for one of my cojones as collateral on her collateral. You must be quite the talker, Móntez.”
“I’ll take the credit, but, and I shouldn’t say this, it wasn’t that difficult to get her to agree. For whatever reason, that woman wanted to help. I won’t say she’s still got a thing for you, but there’s something.”
The wrinkles around his eyes shrunk into tight circles and his gray mustache stretched around a gold-toothed smile. He gave me a good feeling and I started to believe in my lawyer and the case for Jerome and me.
When I finally made it home, Corrine waited with a volatile mix of anger and relief and frustration. She hollered for an hour or so, even threw a punch at me and broke a plate in disgust. Then she cried, hugged me and broke down. She tried to talk but the words wouldn’t come and only the tears flowed free. I put my arms around her and held her. She let out all she had been forced to keep inside for days. After a few minutes she stopped crying and finally explained what had happened to her and Isabel. It was classic Corrine.
21
Corrine told me a story that made sense only because it was Corrine’s. She had always been my super sister and the way she outsmarted the cartel goons proved again that she had the courage of a crazy Aztec and the cunning of Old Man Coyote.
“I was pretty sure they were going to kill us,” she began. “Isabel knew it, too.”
She wanted to rush through the story and get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Give me all the details,” I said. “I only know what I saw on the news. That’s not enough.” I wanted it all, and I believed she needed to tell me everything.
She took deep breaths and calmed down. “But we had other ideas.”
That morning, while Jerome and I were carted away to what everyone assumed was our certain deaths, Corrine and Isabel decided that they would not make it easy for Ortiz’s killers.
“I’m not letting these pigs touch me or hurt me,” Corrine whispered to Isabel. “They’re going to have to kill me first. Then I won’t care what they do.”
“I’m sure you being dead won’t change their minds about what they want to do to you,” Isabel said.
“We have to go for it,” Corrine said. “Whenever we get a chance. These cranked-up machos won’t expect too much from two scared women, so we have to use that against them.”
“You think we can do it?”
Corrine hesitated. “Not really, but we have to try. What else we got?”
Isabel nodded.
They watched Manuel lead Jerome and me into another room in the building. They assumed that likely was the last time they would see either of us alive.
A short man with stringy hair tied the women’s hands behind their backs. The other men called him Inti. He shoved Isabel into the front seat of a white sedan—something expensive with leather seats and very dark tinted windows. Then he pushed Corrine into the rear seat.
Lorenzo Ortiz appeared from the shadows. He leaned into the car’s open window and spoke to Inti.
“All you have to do is take these two to the house on Fox. You know which one I mean?”
“Yeah, boss. Where I spent the night. I take the women there, wait for you or Enrique, then you finish it. I make sure they get to the house and stay there. It’s only that uh . . . ”
“What, puto?”
“I only wish that we could put them in the trunk.”
Ortiz slapped him on the forehead. “You know we can’t. Just do your job. I should send someone else with you but everyone has a job to do with the tilma, when we get our hands on it. You can handle the two bitches, right? Don’t make me regret this, Inti.”
Inti picked up his gun and let Lorenzo see it.
“It’s under control, boss. Don’t worry.”
“I do worry, that’s my job. Go straight to the house. Don’t try to have any fun with them on the way. I don’t want a scratch on them. Get them to the house safe and in one piece. That way I’ll know you didn’t fool around. Understand?”
“Yes, boss. I got it. I’ll take care of it.”
Lorenzo grabbed Inti’s left earlobe and tugged. He pinched until Inti grimaced in pain.
“You’ll eat your balls if you don’t.”
Inti drove without speaking to the women. His gun rested on the seat between his legs. A card with a picture of the Virgin Mary dangled from the rearview mirror. After a few miles he turned on the radio and soon he was humming and shaking his head to brassy banda music. Occasionally he talked on a cell phone.
Corrine understood him to say that everything was all right. The women were quiet and he was almost to the house. He would be on time, with the “merchandise,” according to the plan.
Corrine saw that her door was not locked.
Isabel appeared to be asleep. Her dress had ridden up her thighs and Inti couldn’t keep his eyes off her legs.
“Inti,” Corrine said from her twisted position in the back seat. “Inti,” she repeated when the man did not answer. “We haven’t eaten for days. We’re starving. Can’t we get something to eat? Anything, even a burrito or a hamburger. We don’t care. We need something. Please, in the name of Our Blessed Lady, our Holy Mother.” She spoke in Spanish.
Inti looked surprised but he shook his head. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “I have to deliver you two at the house, without delay. If I’m late, Lorenzo will kick the shit out of me.”
“It won’t take five minutes. Turn into a drive-through and order something to go. What can it hurt? We’re tied up. You talk to the order box. It’ll be over in minutes. Not even five minutes.”
He didn’t bother to answer.
“How about something to drink?” Isabel stirred and shook herself. “I feel like I’m going to pass out.” Isabel spoke in English but Inti understood her. “I really need some water. I’m dizzy. I might have to throw up.”
“Ah, la güerita finally speaks. You thirsty, baby?” He laughed as though he had just cracked the funniest joke he had ever heard.
“Yes. I need water. We haven’t had any since . . . ” Her voice faded and she slumped against her seat.
“She’s in trouble, Inti,” Corrine said. “She’s dehydrated, weak, thirsty and hungry. She’s got diabetes and needs medicine. What if she dies before you get her to Lorenzo? How will that go over with your boss? He’ll hold you responsible. You guaranteed that you would get us to the house okay. Isabel’s had a rough couple of days. She might not last. All she needs is something to drink.”
She saw Inti frown in the mirror.
Isabel moaned.
“She’s not doing so good, Inti. There, look. A McDonald’s on the left. Get her something to drink. Please.”
Isabel moaned again. She coughed and rolled on her seat.
Inti wavered. He slowed the car, alm
ost to a stop. The picture card of Mary swung in the early morning light. He couldn’t decide.
“Inti?” Corrine said.
Isabel moaned.
A loud honk bleated from the car behind. All three jumped. Inti jerked against his seat belt. He swerved into the drive-through lane—too fast, too sudden. He slammed the brakes inches from the rear of the car ahead of him in the line.
Corrine heard the gun slide off the seat and clatter to the floor. She bent her body and with her hands behind her jerked open the door and rolled backwards and sideways out of the car.
She tumbled on the asphalt, scraped her knees and banged her forehead.
She hollered. “Help! Police! Help!”
She struggled to her knees, still shouting at the top of her lungs. Horns honked, men shouted. A child cried.
Inti tried to maneuver out of the drive-through lane but a car sat behind him, squeezed up against his rear bumper. He twisted the steering wheel to the right, stomped the gas pedal and slammed into a white pickup with a Mexican flag decal in the window. A tall man with a large belly who wore a brown Stetson jumped out of the small truck. He glared at Corrine, then slapped his palms on the passenger window. He stopped when he saw Isabel’s face. He opened the door and she tumbled out, landing on his boots.
Inti jumped from the car and made a run for it. The cowboy in the Stetson moved faster than Corrine expected. He tackled Inti near the bicycle rack and the two men flew and rolled into the metal tubing. Blood spurted from a cut on Inti’s arm. The cowboy stood up, dazed but not bleeding. Inti sprawled, unconscious. Corrine continued to scream until one of the McDonald’s employees assured her that everything was all right. In minutes, police cars filled the parking lot, paramedics loaded Corrine and Isabel into an ambulance and uniformed cops handcuffed Inti.
