by Ryan Gattis
I catch Lonely’s eye sometimes as I’m going through and he’s helping move things. We read a mess of news in Spanish while we were waiting for the food, and we ran the battery all the way down on his phone. When it was dead, I made him put it in the trunk with the gun I was carrying so it was two less things to worry about.
We didn’t find out more about the grenades in the square or if any little kids got hurt. After, we didn’t talk about it.
Ghost’s slick. I mean that. I don’t want to compliment him, but credit where it’s due. He’s real. I get how Rooster wanted Lil Tricky to learn something, but being able to stand here and watch Ghost do what he does, you can tell it’s the type of thing that takes years and years of experience.
It takes feel. He makes it look easy too. I never seen anything like it. I can tell he’s messing with Tricky. He’ll send him off for a wrench or something, something dumb, and he’ll pop when the kid’s back is turned. It’s like he’s always keeping some trade secrets that way.
The more I think about it, I have seen something like how Ghost pops safes. The face he makes even looks like Kobe’s, like when the black mamba is mad and taking you one-on-one and there’s nothing you can do to stop him.
He’s going right through you, like it or not. They’re the same that way, I think. Both top of their game, unstoppable on their days, almost unstoppable anyway.
I’m not buying what he’s saying about the gun safes at all. I look at how he does everything else and I know he’s doing it on purpose. He don’t want Rooster to have more guns, simple as that, and I get it.
Since I don’t exactly want Rooster to have more guns either, I don’t bother calling Ghost out. Besides, what would he do if I did? Go limp on the asphalt and quit? No thanks. I just let it slide, so everyone else lets it slide too.
By the time Rooster finds out and thinks to ask me why I let Ghost get away with some weak-ass excuses for not doing it, I won’t even be here to answer. I’ll be in Cardiff, packing us up into a rental car or a used car I just bought, getting ready to drive us somewhere else as fast as I can, somewhere safer.
Ghost
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Early Morning
64
When the tally comes down, I’m tuning out a little. Feeling jittery and light in my boots. Also, I don’t even want to know how much drugs there were. They can just skip all that. I already feel bad enough about giving those poisons a way back into hurting people’s lives. Not just addicts, but their families. Their friends. Shit, even random-ass people unlucky enough to get caught up in drama. I know all that too good, and it burns in me. Up and down my arms. Because it’s been feeling like I opened a bunch of Pandora’s boxes, and some evil that was shut up and not hurting anybody can go right back into the world again and it’s all my fault.
C’mon, Glasses, I’m thinking. Get to the fucking money.
Let there be some good to come from it.
I keep telling myself, Bad money can do good things.
Glasses does jewelry next. I’m not listening. I’m watching the linebackers and the guys that came with the truck loading everything of Rooster’s into the bed. It’s got a hard-shell cover over it, but it’s open and propped up and taking it all in.
Gold’s next. My cut’s the four hundred coins and sixty-four little one-ounce bullion bars. I don’t know what that’s worth, maybe $750 an ounce, but the coins are heavy going down into my lockbox. Maybe it’s $300,000. Give or take.
Last comes cash. I do my own math real quick first.
$897,000 from the Rancho San Pedro Projects, already to Mira.
$48,000 from the first house tonight. Still in my tool cases.
And Glasses does one last recount before setting out my 40 percent on everything that came out of storage.
$1,133,284 it rounds up to. All that goes in a giant hockey bag that one of the linebackers carries to my Jeep like it’s not even heavy.
But I’m thinking, In California, in L.A., that’s not enough. It’s not enough houses.
Still, it totals out to—hang on. I’m not thinking so good.
I grab a pen out of the Jeep. I work sums out on my palm, fuck up, and start over. What I end up with when I’m finally done is: $2,078,284 in total.
$2,078,284 point 00, plus whatever the gold’s worth.
I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not enough, though. Even if Mira’s paying off scraps of what’s left on mortgages in parts of town most people wouldn’t dare to live, it doesn’t feel like enough. Especially with the money out to Frank. Especially with the trust money. Especially when 60 percent of this night’s work right here went to Rooster for almost $1.7 million.
I got to take a breath on that. A forced one. And I’m hearing Mira in my head asking me if I know what the word enough even means. It burns a little because the answer’s no. My whole life it was always a finish line that kept moving once I got something else. But it has to stop somewhere. Has to stop here. And I have to be good with it. Somehow.
So I think about people I’ll never meet getting to keep their houses. Ten, or maybe twenty, and not just them, but also their families. Kids. Uncles. Grandparents. I think about Frank not having to dodge calls from the bank anymore. I think about him living without that weight and how I lifted it off him. I think about Laura going to college, being whatever she wants. I think about young women, survivors, getting to go to college because of the trust. To help them start again. To live again.
When I push that breath back out, I’m feeling empty without it, but good empty. Like, I did everything I could. Like I couldn’t ever have done more if I had a whole lifetime. And maybe it’s not enough, because I don’t know if there’s any such thing, but it’s close. It’s something.
“Fuck,” Lil Tricky says, looking over Glasses’s shoulder.
Glasses shrugs him off and looks at me and nods like, Damn. Like, Did tonight even really happen?
I’m too tired to even nod him back.
$2,078,284. All that is what Rooster paid. Everything I took out of Pedro, everything I took out of the first Lynwood house, and then some. And that’s good, because it knocks something off my list that I’ve been stressing about but too scared to even entertain the thought of. That if I didn’t cover tonight, Rooster might go after Frank and Laura thinking they had the money.
But now, that’s off the table. Rooster got a good deal on me, and he’s going to see it that way. And that’s that. Now I just got to hold up the rest of mine.
The truck’s done getting loaded, and my Jeep’s buttoned up too.
As I’m trying to think on how best to coordinate meeting Mira at the drop-off spot, another car arrives. The driver splits off into the one that’s been here. It’s not explained to me what it is, so I wait. It’s not too long before Lil Tricky comes up to Glasses and me with a request. He wants to see me blow my brains out, he says. Glasses tells him maybe, he’ll think about it, till then though, drive the follow car. And that explains the extra car.
I go to the driver’s-side door of my Jeep. Glasses comes with me, moving to the other side and opening it up to get in.
“Oh,” Glasses says, “now you’re about to drive?”
I let that one sail right past me, don’t even react.
I get us out from under the gate one of the linebackers gets lifted, and onto the street. Glasses tells me to go the speed limit. To stop at all yellows. Under no circumstances am I to try something stupid to attract attention or get the cops to follow. I say that’s not a problem. I don’t say, Why would I? Because I don’t feel like I even have to.
What I do, though, is put Rose’s tape back in and finish out “Demolition Girl” before counting the five seconds with Rose, and then Bad Religion comes in with “Quality or Quantity” and how that’s some kind of choice I have to make, and I feel like today of all days, I actually did. I traded whatever time I got left for quality.
It’s a fast combo of a song. Over before it’s almos
t even begun, and I guess Glasses is being respectful because he waits till it’s over and quiet and I’m counting with Rose when he says, “You shouldn’t have said that about there being a rat.”
I push stop on the tape. I’ve got a headache coming in that’s going to be off the Richter scale. It’s been coming. All the ones that start where my neck connects to my skull do that. The last thing I need is to have any kind of conversation with Glasses about this shit.
And I’m not defending myself or anything, but I say, “Wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.”
But I’m also wondering why Glasses is bringing this up right now.
“Yeah, but you should know not to. Seeing as how it could endanger an officer already in the field.”
That’s when it clicks. I might be slow right now but I get it. I’m nodding. Glasses doesn’t need to say it’s him. Not flat out. He’s the rat. Undercover or informing. He’s the reason the DEA knows about those houses. No other explanation.
I get how he’s not been found out, though. I mean, he fooled me.
He comes across scary real good.
“You’re right,” I say. “You got me on that.”
And we drive a bit after that, saying nothing. I’m starting to feel my heartbeat at the top of my neck, hitting me with little slaps of pain.
We’re driving over the 110 on the 405 North, into Torrance, towards the drop spot Mira and I said a few weeks ago we’d use only in case of emergency, when I say, “You think Rooster’s word is good?”
“It is if yours is.”
“I need to hand all this off.” I look at Lil Tricky following us in an anonymous little Nissan. “Can’t have Rooster going after the person I’m giving it to, though. Not ever. And I can’t have anybody else knowing who’s got it either.”
What I’m saying but not saying is, I can’t have you knowing the person this goes to. Because I put everything on the line for this and I can’t have you fucking it up for whatever rat reasons you may have.
He comes back with “It’s got nothing to do with me.”
And he could be lying to me, though.
It’s possible.
And there’s this little look in his eye. Like, maybe it’s regret that he told me too soon about the dude he was. But it’s good for me to have. Because we got something on each other now, and besides, it’s not like I’ve got a choice.
I decide to risk it, to call Mira.
My prepaid’s in my hand and I’m dialing.
65
We’re turning onto Grant from Kingsdale, pulling up near the giant box of a concrete parking structure of the South Bay Galleria mall, when I go one more left and stop the car by the front entrance to it. Parking’s free here. Not like other parts in L.A. And there’s no little guard station, just a ramp that goes up. The morning’s turning orange around us. There’re no other cars. Nobody’s at work yet.
“You need to get out,” I say to Glasses. “There’s only one way in and one way out. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right back here to pick you up when I’m done.”
Because I can’t have him seeing Mira, or her car, or anything about anything.
He gets it.
He must not get it too well though because there’s a second exit that she’ll be taking, the one for East Artesia to go straight onto the 405, and he must not know I’m lying about there only being one.
Glasses looks at me like he doesn’t think I get to decide where he goes before getting out, and I roll the window down and tell him I’ll be standing up there with my back to a wall so I can be watching stairwells and looking down at him from above too.
For the last thing, I say, “Give me that phone you’ve got on you.”
He gives me a look like, Really?
My look tells his look, Yes, really.
He hands it over.
When Lil Tricky pulls in behind me, I get out and I go and take his phone. I also take his keys. I tell him the same things I told Glasses. Stay here. Don’t move. He doesn’t look to me, though. He looks to Glasses, and Glasses nods like, It’s cool, and goes to take something out of his pocket but his hand comes out empty and he frowns at it.
Then I go up. I watch both of them in my rearview and then floor it to the top, screeching the whole way.
On the top level, I see her, arms crossed hard beneath her breasts, looking like she’s trying tears on before wearing them for real.
And I’m completely exhausted and thinking, Not hurting people is impossible. You can’t go through life with that as a priority. I mean, you can try. I tried. But it’s happening anyways. Pain happens. Despite best intentions. That shit’s inevitable.
I pull past Mira and park out in the open-air part so I can get out and look over the edge of the little wall to the garage entrance where Glasses and Lil Tricky are at. They’re cool down there. Glasses, smoking, then looking up at me, waving. Lil Tricky, in his own world, reenacting some story for Glasses, and he’s doing some shitty kung fu kicks and laughing.
Mira’s behind me, walking towards the Jeep. I’m doing the breathing exercises they taught me to push my headache back down and get me ready to see her face-to-face. I don’t think they’re working for either one.
I knew she’d get here before me. She lives closer. She’d put a sweatshirt and jeans on. She’d come. As fast as she could. I didn’t tell her to put the magnetic covers on her plates that I got her, but it’s good to see she did it. When she leaves here, she knows to sell her car and get a decent used one. Something reliable and cheap.
When I take her keys from her and pop her trunk, she says, “What’d you do?”
She’s saying it over and over, staring at how fucked-up my cheek looks. At the blood on my shirt.
No use telling her what I did. Or that I did it because I had to. And it’s good she’s at least not asking about the cancer, and just to make sure she won’t, I give her everything. One point one million dollars and change isn’t as heavy as you think it is. Feels like twenty-five pounds, maybe.
When Mira puts her face in the hockey bag and starts going through it, her “What’d you do?” turns into “What the fuck?”
And she’s thanking me as I dump the gold and the toolboxes in her car. I tell her to take the cash out of them before giving my tools back to Frank.
I give her the address of the shop. Tell her when to go by and do it.
After that, I don’t give her words. I can’t. My headache’s starting to take me over.
So I just kiss her like, Please.
I kiss her like, Be better without me.
And when I break it off and turn to get back in my Jeep, I don’t look at her. And when I drive out, I keep myself from looking in the rearview because I can’t be looking back. Not now.
Because this’s me. A ghost. Floating in and floating out.
Glasses
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Morning
66
Ghost’s even smarter than I give him credit for, taking my phone like that and taking the keys? He’s on it.
I was thinking I’d have the opportunity to call Leya and I was getting excited for it, just to hear her voice and hear if she had the call logs so I could stop worrying about it so much, but then Ghost’s taking it and speeding off into some parking garage.
He has to know that I know there’s another exit. I’m not exactly sure why he thinks he’s fooling me. When we were coming in, I actually was looking at the parking structure next to the mall and thinking to myself how if I had to plan a drop, then that was where I’d do it since there was a clear exit onto Artesia, and that means a clear exit to the freeway too.
I’m sure there’s entrance and exit security footage on this garage. Most all malls have them these days. When I get my phone back, I could make a call and we could put a push on somebody for security footage of the parking lot for about the last hour.
I bet there’s no other cars, so it’d be simple to find a license plate num
ber and go meet this partner of his if we wanted to. I shake my head at that. It’s not even worth doing that when I’m trying to get out, and I’m thinking how lucky Ghost’s connect is and doesn’t even know it.
Lil Tricky asks me what I’m thinking about, since he’s sixteen and stupid, the type to ask dumb questions when he has no business doing it, and like most little guys, he’s only asking so he can get to talking about himself.
I don’t bother telling him anything. I figure if I just stay quiet long enough, he’ll jump into saying whatever he wants to say anyway, and I’m right.
“Oh, man, Glasses, you don’t even understand what this night was like for me. So, I was getting with this girl, and I’m thinking it’s all good, right? My boys are next door, and things are going hot, cuz you know she’s down for whatever, but then like I hear this whistle, and I look up and see some guns with dudes behind them, and I’m like ‘Oh, shit!’ and I’m trying to get up off her and she’s screaming …”
He goes on, but I tune him out. After he’s done telling me how, if things had gone just a little bit different, if he’d looked up sooner, he would’ve jumped up and kicked the big guy in the dick, and then he does some kicks in the air right in front of himself to show me, like it would’ve been easy.
I smile at that since he’s being funny but he don’t know how he’s being funny. If Lil Tricky tried that on with Blanco, he would’ve had a hole in his head before he finished swinging his leg back.
Lil Tricky tells me he stayed there with his hands tied for a long time, maybe an hour. He’s not sure. The other guys tried to get up, but they weren’t getting far, not until the door opened and somebody they’d never seen before rolled in and cut them loose.
He was there to clear the house and empty the safe, this guy, but there wasn’t anything worth taking in it, so he put his hand up in the top of the closet and took the three pistols from in there instead. He made sure they were safetied if they had safeties and put them all in a bag.
