Gideon's Rescue

by Alan Russell

  It was easy to understand why Rafe was the spokesperson for the day laborers: his English was good enough for him to even use gringo slang.

  “Did any of the day laborers here resent Mateo for always trying to get the highest-paying jobs?”

  Rafe and Hugo shook their heads. “You got the skills, you get the money,” said Rafe. “That’s the rule.”

  “And you and Hugo get your cut from that money?”

  Neither man said anything.

  “Did that, or does that, cause any problems?”

  They shook their heads. “Someone’s got to organize,” said Rafe.

  “Tell me about the client known as Hitler,” I said. “I understand Mateo thought he shortchanged him.”

  “There was a misunderstanding on one job he was hired for,” said Rafe. “Hitler thought everyone was getting the same hourly rate, and Mateo thought he should have gotten more.”

  “From what I heard, Mateo held a grudge.”

  “He was sure Hitler knew about the different rates. Because of that, he wouldn’t work for him again.”

  “That was the extent of it?”

  I got nods.

  “Mateo was dispatched on a job from which he never came back. Do you remember Mateo’s last client?”

  Both men looked at each other, and then shook their heads.

  “Nothing stands out? Seeing as Mateo had construction skills, maybe someone was looking for a specialized kind of worker? Something like that ring any bells?”

  A big Suburban drove toward us, and once more I waved my wallet badge. The vehicle made an abrupt turn and drove away.

  “C’mon, man,” said Rafe. “That guy in the Suburban always wants at least four workers.”

  “I’m glad you know your regulars,” I said. “I need you to talk about a few of them.”

  Rafe sighed. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I need to hear about your odd clients. I want to know about anyone who behaves in a strange way around your workers or asks them to do strange things.”

  The two men started talking to one another in Spanish, and I was only able to pick up every third or fourth word. They said the word desnudo a few times, and both started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “There’s a dude we call ‘the naked guy,’” said Rafe. “He doesn’t wear any clothes once he gets to his house.”

  “Does he make advances on your workers?”

  “He’s not like that,” said Rafe. “But we like to send new guys to his house. It’s sort of a . . . ”

  He tried to think of the word and I said, “Initiation?”

  “Yeah,” said Rafe.

  They started talking in Spanish again; there seemed to be some debate about “the mamacita.”

  “Everyone wants to work for one lady we call ‘the mamacita,’” explained Rafe. “She isn’t young, but she’s had a lot of surgery.”

  He raised his hands and cupped them near his chest. “Every time our guys work at her place she goes out in the sun with just a towel. Whenever she puts on sun block or moves around, the towel mostly falls off. Everyone watches more than works.”

  It sounded like the scene from Cool Hand Luke of a scantily clad woman washing her car to an audience of chain gang prisoners, with the same expected results.

  Then Rafe said something about “Diego Rivera” to Hugo, whose reply made both men laugh. I tried to translate the words and was pretty sure they were something to the effect of “His stomach is so fat he can’t see his penis.”

  “Who is this Diego?” I asked.

  “That’s not his real name,” said Rafe. “He’s a heavy man, a painter. That’s why we call him Diego Rivera. He picks up a worker here once or twice a week.”

  “‘Home and garden work,’” said Hugo, mimicking the man’s words with a smirk. “That’s what he asks for. But that’s not what he wants.”

  “He offers more money if the men take off their clothes and let him paint them,” Rafe said, “than if they do landscaping.”

  “That’s why he wants the young and pretty ones,” Hugo said, gesturing with a limp wrist.

  Machismo still reigns in most of Mexico. There are as many gay people there as anywhere, but the culture still forces most to be closeted.

  The two men spoke in their native tongue, and Hugo replied in the affirmative. Then he said to me, “Mateo work for him sometimes.”

  That surprised me. “Mateo posed for him?”

  Both men nodded, but without the mock mincing that had accompanied their earlier words. “He do it for the money,” said Hugo.

  “Recently?” I asked.

  “Creo que sí,” said Hugo.

  I think so, I translated. “Do you know Diego’s real name and do you have his address?” I asked.

  Hugo called to a few of the bystanders. His question resulted in some laughs and jeers. Although I didn’t get either a name or an address, the workers were able to supply some landmarks, as well as the concurso de meando that set the house apart from its neighbors.

  “Look for the pissing contest,” Hugo explained, adding that out in front of the house were statues of a boy, a girl, and a dog, all engaged in the act of peeing.

  I wrote down some notes while Rafe and Hugo talked about other crazy gringos. There was a client they called el doctor, not because he was an MD but because he was apparently afraid of germs and wore a mask and plastic gloves around the workers. I also heard about gringo culo, an older man who would get frustrated when the workers couldn’t speak English to his satisfaction, and would raise the volume of his voice as if that would help them understand better.

  By that time half a dozen cars were waiting in line, and everyone but me was ready to get on with their business. I looked at my notes and saw where I had starred one entry.

  “Macho Libre,” I said. “One of your workers said something about being recruited for a film project based on luchadores and lucha libre, but that the guys filming it referred to it as Macho Libre. Evidently, there was a fighting ring set up in a backyard and an outdoor set with oversized sombreros and props. There was even a painted donkey. I need to know if that sounds familiar to anyone.”

  Hugo called out to the crowd. I couldn’t follow what was going on, but a few of the workers referenced someone named Javier. Hugo called out to a man in a muscle shirt, but everything he asked was met with a shake of the man’s head.

  “What’s the problem?” I said.

  “The others say Javier talked of being in such a place,” said Rafe, “but now he doesn’t want to say nothing.”

  “Tell him to come over here,” I said.

  Hugo made the pronouncement; he was about the only man there bigger than Javier. Scowling, Javier came forward.

  I was the obvious reason for his reluctance. Mexican nationals don’t trust cops in Mexico or in the US.

  “Tell him I’m not here to hassle him,” I said. “Tell him that I just want to know where this house is located.”

  Javier responded before any words were translated. “I don’t know no street names,” he said. “But the house you want is up there.”

  He pointed east.

  “In the hills,” he added.

  “How about I pay you a hundred bucks for a few hours work?” I asked. “I’d like you to help me find that house.”

  He still looked unsure, so I decided to seal the deal. I took out my wallet and extended five Jacksons his way. He reached for the money, tucking the bills deep in the right front pocket of his jeans.

  “Once we find that house,” I said, “I’ll bring you right back here. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  War and Peace

  Javier Moreno sat in the passenger seat. He smelled of work, and his living conditions, and fear of me, and fear of Sirius. I opened both our windows, and I’m not sure which of us was happier at that. Javier stuck his nose out the window, as did I.

  Richa
rd Pryor once did a comedy skit that’s usually referred to as “the African hitchhiker.” After picking up a hitchhiker on an African road, Pryor described being hit by the man’s body odor. “He had that odor,” Pryor said, showing how strong it was with his face and body. Pryor described doing everything he could to avoid the stench; his physical comedy made the piece. His body gyrated and his face shifted anywhere and everywhere to try and escape the odor. And then Pryor said he happened to look in his rearview mirror at where the hitchhiker was sitting, and it was clear the other man was in as much olfactory distress as was Pryor. Two different cultures had collided, each with its own unique scents. Pryor’s antiperspirant was as offensive to the other man as his lack of antiperspirant was to Pryor.

  It was probably that way in my front seat. I had aftershave on, and body wash borrowed from Lisbet, whose scent I seemed to remember was called Alpine Lavender. Javier was apparently not as fond of it as Lisbet was.

  After a few stops and starts while Javier oriented himself, we drove in a mostly easterly direction, heading toward the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The route we took went through an upscale area, with most of the houses north of a million dollars.

  During the drive, my passengers got acquainted with one another. Javier didn’t have much of a choice, as Sirius kept sniffing him appreciatively. At first Javier tried to shrink away from my partner’s probing nose, but before long a rapprochement was reached and he began running his fingers through Sirius’s fur.

  “What his name?” he asked.

  “Sirius,” I said.

  “Serious?”

  I pointed upwards and said, “Perro estrella.”

  “Ah,” he said, “Sirio.”

  That sounded right to me, so I nodded.

  Javier had a sense of direction that I envied. Some people always seem to be able to orient themselves. You can spin them around until they’re dizzy, but when they come to a stop they can still tell you what direction they’re facing. I am one of those people who are extremely glad that GPS surfaced in my lifetime.

  Every so often, Javier would lift his index finger, and then, compass-like, point it in a direction. It was my job to find the right asphalt surface to get us to where he was pointing.

  “Who hired you for this job?” I asked. “Did he tell you his name?”

  Javier nodded. “He tell me to call him Hitch.” He thought about it. “Yes, Hitch.”

  “Describe Hitch for me.”

  “He young. I think he my age, mas o menos. But he pick me up in a new Lexus.”

  Millennials in luxury cars are ubiquitous in LA. “And how old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Was Hitch clean-shaven?”

  He nodded.

  “Physically, was he fat, regular, or skinny?”

  “He is flaco—skinny.”

  “What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

  “He have nice boots,” Javier said, sounding a little envious. “And I think his watch a real Rolex.”

  “Did Hitch talk a lot?”

  Javier nodded. “He talk fast. And he keep saying, ‘Right? Right?’ He like a loro.”

  “Loro?”

  “Bird,” he said, and then came up with “Parrot.”

  “What was Hitch talking about?”

  “He ask me if I like boxing. I tell him yes. And he ask if I ever fight.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Javier shrugged. “I say I fight a few times when I young.”

  My passenger opened his mouth to say something else, and then closed it. His mouth stayed closed. I wondered about his sudden clamming up, and figured my profession was the cause. It’s tough opening up to a stranger, and even tougher opening up to a cop. I wanted to make it easier for him.

  “You don’t have to be afraid that anything you say might get you in trouble,” I said. “I want to find out what happened to Mateo, so I need you to be honest with me. Whatever you tell me, I won’t use against you.”

  Javier nodded to show he’d heard, but I could tell he was still uncertain as to whether he should believe me. Finally, he must have decided to take a chance.

  “Hitch laugh a lot. He say I too serious. While we drive, he ask me if I want to smoke some mota.”

  He stopped talking, probably gauging my reaction. Mota is Spanish for weed.

  “So you and Hitch did some smoking during the drive,” I said.

  “‘Loosen’—is that the word?—‘Loosen up,’ he keep saying.”

  I nodded and smiled, doing my best to make him feel at ease. Like Hitch, I wanted him to loosen up.

  “During the drive he ask me if I ever go to see lucha libre, and I tell him I had. That make him happy. We talk about the wrestlers, and he get very excited. Hitch say they making a movie with masks and fighting. Then he say I would make a good Frito Bandito. I ask him what that is.”

  I only knew about the Frito Bandito because I took a course on racism in advertising during one of my six years matriculating at Cal State Northridge. The Frito Bandito ad campaign ran for four years and wasn’t pulled until the early seventies. If a mustachioed, pistol-toting Fritos thief wasn’t stereotypical enough, the commercials had their own jingle, sung in heavily accented English to the tune of the classic folk song “Cielito Lindo.”

  “Hitch say I can be like a luchador and wear a mask of the Frito Bandito. I act like I understand what he’s saying, but he talk too fast. When we get to the house, I begin to see what he mean.”

  In the backyard of the house, Javier told me, he met Hitch’s two friends, along with another day laborer, named Octavio. A boxing ring was set up in the yard. Beneath it were pens with chickens and a pig, and a donkey painted with stripes. A converted Tuff Shed served as the costume and mask room. The outfits weren’t like what luchadores wore, but were getups exploiting Mexican stereotypes. Javier said there were huge sombreros, bullfighter outfits, and iconography featuring questionable-looking saints, including one who was pregnant. There were also masks featuring chili peppers, frijoles, and hot sauce. And, of course, there was the Frito Bandito.

  Octavio was glad to see Javier, because he didn’t speak any English and Hitch’s two friends spoke very little Spanish. It fell to Javier to do most of the translating. The three friends, who referred to themselves as “tres amigos,” explained to their workers that they were moviemakers.

  “They say they want to film us fighting. And they want each of us to wear costume. At first we say, ‘No, no.’ But then they say they pay us good money.”

  “So you put on the costumes and got in the ring?”

  Javier nodded. “And they make us up with paint and hair. I got this long mustache, and Octavio’s face was painted red like the devil. They said that when we fight we need to yell things like, ‘Time for a siesta,’ and ‘I am a bad hombre.’ And during the fight they keep spraying the back of our shirts with water. And when the pig walk across the ring, we are told to yell, ‘señorita’ and ‘mi amore.’ And they tell us to pound our hearts and pretend the pig is our true love and that we fight over her.”

  “Did you catch the names of the other two men?” I asked.

  “One tell me he Quentin, and the other say he Martin. But that’s not the names they call each other.”

  Hitch, I thought, short for Hitchcock, and then there was Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. The young filmmakers had quite the egos. They’d also proved adept at the bait and switch. While Javier and Octavio continued to drink and smoke, the filmmakers said they wanted their action film to “look realistic.” To that end, they proposed that Javier and Octavio do more than play fight—they asked them to fight for real.

  The two men declined at first, but the offer was sweetened, and sweetened some more. They agreed to the fight and a purse of eight hundred and fifty dollars. The winner was to get five hundred dollars, and the loser three hundred and fifty dollars. But the match would continue until only one of the men was standing. They were told anything wa
s legal. They could kick or head-butt; they could pile-drive and rabbit punch. The only thing they couldn’t do was cry uncle, or at least not without their pound of flesh. One man would win by beating the other man into submission.

  Martin did the announcing, while Hitch and Quentin worked the cameras. Before the actual fight, Javier said, there was lots of starting and stopping for such stunts as the chickens walking through the ring, Martin dressing up as a mariachi and pretending to play “El Torero” on a trumpet, and the pig parading around in a folklórico dress while the two contestants threw roses her way. Javier admitted his memories of much of the day were hazy, clouded in drink and smoke and blows to the head. The fight, he said, was bloody and long.

  Javier couldn’t remember how many rounds they fought. He and Octavio were evenly matched; after a time they didn’t have the strength to run around the ring. They ended up toe to toe, each having to muster the strength to throw a punch. Their arms became weights that could only be raised with effort. Late in the fight neither of them could even raise their hands to try and deflect the other man’s blows.

  Their staggered swinging at one another was the last thing Javier remembered while being in the ring. He wasn’t sure whether he was knocked out or whether he passed out, but he recalled that he fell in a bloody heap. When he awakened, he found himself lying on a pool chaise. On a chaise next to him was Octavio. Both men were given ice bags, Advil, and Band-Aids. Over the course of about an hour, they recovered—and sobered up. And then Hitch drove Javier back, and Quentin took Octavio. Both were given the money they had been promised, although in retrospect Javier didn’t think his three hundred and fifty dollars was worth it.

  He was okay with his black eye and the bruises, Javier told me, but not his broken nose.

  “It still hurt,” he said, reaching a hand up to touch it.

  Luckily, he didn’t need to use that nose to sniff out the house. Javier’s sense of direction never faltered, and we were finally able to reach what he referred to as el casa de boxeo.

  Like the other homes in the neighborhood, el casa de boxeo was situated on about half an acre. All the residences in the area had been built in the early sixties, and almost all had been rebuilt and added on to since that time. The homes felt as if they were out in the country, even though they weren’t very far from Ventura Boulevard and the 101 freeway.