All Involved

by Ryan Gattis

  Cuz I’m already shaking my head. I need to focus, I think. Sharpen up good. I’m here for two reasons, and two reasons only.

  1.I’m here to find the money I know Momo’s got hid.

  2.I’m here to steal all the fucking drugs I can get my hands on.

  That I fucked Cecilita is just icing on the cake. Good icing. Cream cheese and dulce de leche, all swirled together. But just icing.

  See, Momo’s been living off me, and motherfuckers like me, for years. Overcharging. Putting me on the bad shit when he’s got perfectly good shit one room away. Sending me out on runs for whatever (like, last week it was a Pampers truck, I shit you not, cuz this perezoso can’t even buy them himself) and you know he never hits me off for what’s fair.

  Big Fe, he always pays out on what you deliver. And I think about them pages again and shiver before catching some new adrenaline.

  There’s no way he could find me right now anyway, I tell myself. He’s prolly into some shit of his own. But do I wish I hadn’t told that Aztec-looking motherfucker how many bullets were in it when I brought that big boy Glock last night, all taped up like it was? Shit. Did I wish he just paid me for the whole thing? You bet your fucking culo! But he didn’t, and that’s what I get. That’s this life. That’s how it works.

  See, if I can get over on you, if I can cheat you, if I can lie and you buy that lie, then it’s your fucking fault for being estupido.

  If I rob you, well, then you shoulda stopped me, man!

  That shit’s on you.

  And Fate, that motherfucker’s tried and true. He’s like a general or something. All strategic and shit. You can’t outthink him. Me and him, we’re different breeds. I can’t ever get over on Fate. Not even once.

  More important, he’d never say one price for such and such, and then when you risk your ass to bring it, never does he turn around and give you a lower price, all the while acting like you misheard him the first fucking time.

  With Fate, the price is the price. That dude has honor.

  But that shit’s never the case with Momo.

  Momo’s on his own in a whole other category specifically dedicated to motherfuckers who live for the scheme.

  And now’s the time for Momo to get fucking schemed.

  It’s his fault for not stopping me right now.

  Where I’m from, they call this shit payback. And sometimes it’s the only reason to keep living. For days like today.

  Days when you finally get to fuck the fuckers.

  I get up off Cecilia real slow and head for the bedroom with a grin as big as the Hollywood sign.

  7

  I clear the place top to bottom in less than a hour. I can tell by the time on the TV, cuz there’s a little clock in the corner. I guess when bad shit happens they want you to know what time it is always.

  Took me ten minutes to find the other safe. It was under the waterbed, built into the frame. Smart. Not smart enough though. I cracked that shit in thirty seconds. Guess you shouldn’t’ve left homeowner’s insurance statements and passports and shit in your bedside table, Momo. That shit tells people a lot about you. But then, I guess I didn’t really need it cuz you left the combination—your birthday, the exact same combination as your fucking gun safe, puto—and I already knew that one.

  When I pulled the little safe open, it popped its catch like a grown-up’s piñata. Like I hit it just right and I get all the fucking candy.

  Inside was $6,000 in six rubber-banded stacks of $1,000 each, and another $522 loose. I instantly decided that’s how much Momo owes me.

  The rest was just Christmas.

  Half a pound, marijuana. One pound, cocaína. One pound, H. No doubt about it. This shit was his backup, his oh-shit stash. It stinks of it. Total street value, as they say on them cop shows?

  That’s a good question. I don’t even fucking know.

  A lot though!

  It’s so much that I do a fuck-you-Momo dance on what’s left of his waterbed that I cut up with his knife I found in the bookcase.

  I put it all in a black garbage bag I snagged from the kitchen, and I throw Momo’s little scale in too.

  When I come back through the living room, I see Cecilia hasn’t moved a inch the whole time. Her bangs look like a broken fan the way they’re all spread flat over the carpet. She’s so still that I get worried and shoot two fingers under her nose, fingers that still smell like her, to see if she’s still breathing and she is, so I’m like, whew.

  I sit up and cut the world’s tiniest eyelid into the wrapping of the cocaína using Momo’s knife, and then, like a fucking scientist working on hazardous chemicals, I put just my long pinkie nail in, turn it, and pull it out full with a tiny mound of white shaped like a half moon.

  This’s why I kick everybody’s fucking asses at that one game, Operation. Just gimme them pliers, and watch me pull out all the white shit!

  This one I bump straight into my nariz and it stings me up before I go numb all over my face (nose, cheeks, eyes even), but that’s when I know it’s the shit.

  Colombiano. Pura.

  I cough a few times hard, but it fuels me up. It pushes me out the door in a hurry. Next thing I know I’m ripping open the van’s side door and tossing the black bag on top of the four boxes of every kind of liquor you can imagine, but mostly Puerto Rican ron. Forty-four fucking bottles. I counted.

  Oh shit, did I already mention I snatched all that?

  Well, I did. Every last one.

  That Momo, he’s a drinker. But I need it for something else.

  I grab the nearest bottle from the nearest box, whip its cap off, roll a rag I grabbed from the linen closet (yeah, motherfucking drug dealers have motherfucking linen closets, and they’re stocked too, cuz the serious ones always keep shit clean), so anyways I’m rolling a rag in my other hand like I’m rolling a big cloth joint and I push it so deep into the bottle that it touches the tea-colored rum and sucks it up like a sponge.

  After that, I light the top of the rag. It goes black as it takes the fire and springs up low and orange.

  This’s just a simple rule.

  When you burn somebody, you got to burn them.

  The bottle’s heavy in my hand as I feel the heat travel up my arm to my face. When the flame gets near the bottle mouth, I look at it for a minute, all yellow and red and orange, with little bits of burning black. I almost don’t want to let it go.

  Cuz this shit right here is for me, but it isn’t too.

  It’s for Ernesto cuz I owe that motherfucker more than I can ever pay.

  You know who went into that boxing gym all them years ago and told that motherfucking Garza if he ever messed with another kid again, the last sight he ever saw would be the wrong end of a shotgun?

  Not my parents. Fuck no. Old-school junkies, the pair of them. Junkies before anybody knew what a junkie was, or how a junkie was.

  It was Payasa’s big brother who went in heavy, that’s who.

  Never touched a gun in his whole life, but he was mad enough to say he would and mean it too. That fool, not even involved or nothing, he went in there and fucked shit up. He broke a trophy case with a baseball bat before he pulled his little brother, Ray, out (I think he was like thirteen at the time), pulled me out, and two other kids too.

  I ended up staying with him and Ray and Payasa and their madre for a minute. Good people too. They wanted to believe in me so bad. I mean, they really tried until my tastes got too big. And then Fate came in, and their madre moved out, and I was fucking up anyways, so, you know. I was just like them French people when I had to say, “La Vi,” and be out cuz this life can get crazy. Whatev—

  Shit! The glass bottle’s burning my fucking hand up so I just up and chuck it through Momo’s open front door. It spins through the air like the perfect chip shot, some Fuzzy Zoeller laying-up-onto-the-green shit, and when it hits the carpet in the living room, the whole thing goes up!

  Oh man, I love that sound when it catches too. Wa-fwoom!

/>   I could listen to that for days. Or . . .

  Hold up.

  Wait.

  Did I just—?

  Fuck.

  Cecilia’s still in there!

  But I’m already backing away. I can’t even help it.

  I’m telling myself, she’ll be okay. She’ll wake up, no problem. The heat, yeah, the heat will wake her up and she’ll run out.

  I mean, sure, I think about running in and grabbing her, about playing hero, but some dude rolls up on some kind of motorized bike blasting punk rock or something from a ghetto blaster he’s got bungeed down to the back of it, and I feel like I seen him around before but I can’t place where, and besides, he don’t look like much (cuz who the fuck wears red suspenders?!). But he’s staring at me good, so I bone the fuck out.

  I get in the van, man, and I go.

  8

  So I got a confession to make. Sometimes, I don’t always know what I’m doing. Sometimes, I just fucking do it.

  Impulsive, that’s what Clever says. Like, I live on urges, on shit popping up in my brain and then my muscles are moving and I’m acting on it before I even know it.

  And as a result of that, sometimes good shit happens, and sometimes bad shit happens. It depends.

  Do I have regrets? Sort of.

  But not really though.

  Like I said, if I can get over on you, it’s your fault for letting it go that way.

  If she don’t wake up and walk her ass out of there, Cecilia’s on Momo. Plain and simple. See, if he doesn’t leave her in charge, that shit never happens.

  Man, fuck Momo for making me do that shit.

  I scream that out the window to everybody and nobody, and I’m hitting that curve in the streets around Ham Park, where Josephine turns into Virginia, eyeing that dumb fucking handball wall made out of wood and I just think of how many splinters it gave me when it sticks some shit in the ball when you bang it good but then it comes back hard and you hit it again but the only thing you really do is mash some splinters deep into your palm (or worse, in the webs between your fingers) if you’re not wearing no gloves, and that’s when I know that fucking wall has to go!

  I cut the wheel hard, bunny hop the fucking curb, and roll up fast to the wall. Too fast, actually, cuz you can’t stop on grass like you can stop on concrete and I find that out when I whip the van all the way around trying not to hit the fucking thing and that’s when I go into a skid, ripping up divots in two big lines like skaters leave marks on ice by cutting it up. Shit. I almost tip my shit over.

  Almost.

  When I’m good and stopped, I grab a bottle up, unscrew its cap, and douse another rag in rum before stuffing it in the neck. I rummage in the van for a lighter then and come up empty before I realize I still got one in my pocket.

  I light it and the cloth takes it quick! A little fwoom right there in my hand.

  I don’t even think. I pitch my best fucking fastball at the wall.

  It hits the bottom and catches real quick.

  It goes orange and starts smoking.

  I’m proud of it cuz I know they’ll have to build us a good handball wall now. A concrete one or some shit. Something that’ll actually last.

  It’s a good feeling. What would you call it?

  Pride.

  Yeah. That’s what it is. Pride.

  9

  I wake up in the grass and fuck, do I ever have a headache bad. Like, pressure everywhere. It’s like when I get a really bad cold and it feels like my whole face’s gonna cave in. And at first I’m like, how’d I get here?

  But then I remember the van and the grass and doing Momo’s place up, and I look over and the van’s still there, still sitting on top of some big fucking tire marks of torn-up grass.

  The fire’s extra loud now. It sounds like a wild animal eating the wall, just chomping on it and breathing hard, tearing it up in big chunks, and it’s gone black in one big patch.

  I back up to the van like it’s gonna eat me too and I pick myself up slow.

  This shit’s starting to be a pattern now.

  I’m losing time somehow, like a cut in a movie.

  A time jump, you know?

  That’s my life right now. And it makes me wonder, like, should I slow down or what?

  At first that sounds like a really good idea, to just chill out, you know? Find a hotel with a pool somewheres and just fall asleep on one of them chairs that fold down halfway.

  But then I think, nah.

  I got to keep fucking going.

  Cuz I’m a bomb.

  And if I don’t keep moving, I’ll explode.

  10

  I’m fixing to get up on the 105 Freeway, and this thing isn’t even done being built yet, cuz fuck it, why not? I’m laughing as I fly past them UNDER CONSTRUCTION signs and up on a ramp that ends in the sky with a bunch of girders sticking out and no asphalt. It’s a good parking spot, man. Up here, it feels like my road, like it’s been built just for me. I got my eyes north on fire dots and a smoke smudge so fucking big that it goes all the way across the sky. It’s black everywhere, like it got dark early. I can’t see no San Gabriel Mountains. I can’t see Downtown. I can’t see shit.

  But I can see more than I seen all day. And it kind of feels like I been in a submarine for hours, looking through one of them Paris scopes, but now I’m up on the surface and I open the hatch and look out.

  It’s quiet too. Quieter than you’d think. I don’t even hear any sirens.

  Traffic’s way good though. I can see the 710 from here and nothing’s on it. Every fool’s either at home waiting it out or getting into some shit. They ain’t out driving. Which means the best time to drive in L.A. is when it’s burning to the ground. I think that shit’s funny as hell! Even funnier, days like this come once every couple decades around here.

  See, when it comes to Mexican people in this city, we know all about the zoot suiters getting beat the fuck down by white marines and navy dudes and shit. Everybody’s abuelo has got a good story about that. What was that, like 1944 or something? Close enough.

  So that shit was about race. It was simple, like: see a brown dude looking slick, smack the shine straight out of his shoes with all your white brothers. Unleash on that fool for dressing prettier than you, you know?

  After that happens, everybody looks back and is like (in my best white-newscaster-dude voice), “Wow, that was terrible, just awful, no way should that ever happen again.”

  But then they forget about it, and they forget they even thought it was bad, and for a while nothing happens, but nothing got fixed either, it’s just getting drier, ready for another burn, and that’s when Watts happens, which I guess blew up in the ’60s, cuz nobody’s old-as-fuck uncle will shut up about that shit either. (I don’t know much about families—shit, I don’t know anything about families, but it seems like the kids never listen. Me, I always listen to the older people. I might not look like I’m listening, but I always am. I might not actually do what they say, but I hear it. I hear them. My ears never turn off, man.)

  And then after Watts, the same thing happens as before, right? Everybody looks back and is, like, “Wow, that was terrible, no way should that happen again,” and the fucked-up thing is they mean it this time, but they sure as shit don’t remember last time, and still nothing changes.

  And shit hasn’t changed since. So that’s, what? Twenty years apart for race riots? Enough time for everybody to forget again, right? Cuz it’s nineteen-ninety-fucking-two, and this’s what? Like, thirty? Probably a little less? Doesn’t matter. The way it’s blowing up, this one’s overdue.

  This shit is like a bank loan. With interest.

  And I might never say much that makes sense to anybody but me, but make sure you write this shit down. Or underline it. Whatever.

  If L.A. ever dies, if the people all give up and leave, carve this on its fucking tombstone . . .

  L.A. has a short fucking memory. It never learns nothing.

  And that’s wh
at’s gonna kill this city. Watch. There’ll be another race riot in 2022. Or before, I dunno.

  Shit.

  Hold up.

  It occurs to me right now I really shouldn’t be driving around up here too much cuz it could collapse or something. I turn around in my seat and look at the moneybag before busting out in a huge smile. I think about the heroin and weed in there while I dip another fingernail in the cocaína and rub it in like a gum treatment, then I turn this van around and ease down the ramp.

  Shit is scary sometimes, sounding all crumbly! Was definitely easier going up than coming down. But when I’m back on the ground, I know that what I need is to go back to the hotel. I need to hide this shit good. The money and everything.

  But here’s another thing about L.A. It’s big as fuck but people keep to their corners. There’s whole blocks where people only speak Spanish or Ethiopian or whatever.

  It’s like every race’s their own fucking boxer, and when that happens, when you get that mentality, it’s easy to look at everybody else as an opponent, somebody to beat, cuz if you don’t, you don’t get what’s yours. You don’t get the prizes, you know?

  And maybe that’s it right there, in nutshells, like they say.

  You plunk a bunch of people down from all over everywhere, keep them in their corners and don’t let them mix and figure shit out, and they all got minds to compete, cuz shit, everybody in L.A.’s hustling all the time for everything.

  Wait, where was I?

  Shit.

  Man, this headache’s fucking killing me.

  Like, it’s so bad I can feel my heartbeat in my head.

  Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

  I dip into my white stash again and put it under my tongue this time. It tastes like when I had to swallow aspirins without water, except worse. More bitter. I take a big breath through my nose right about then, trying to fill my lungs all the way up before I let it go and push the taste out.

  So, uh, like I said, there’ll be more of this same shit in 2022. Just watch.