Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  When they were safely in John’s SUV, Shadrack said, “Man, the apple don’t fall far from the tree with that lot, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said John.

  “They are a nasty bunch,” Shadrack said.

  “Give me that address,” John said. “I’ll put it in my little map, here.”

  Shadrack gave him the slip of paper. His hands were still shaking. John sat typing the address into his phone.

  “They had the young kid do it, too,” said Shadrack. He exhaled, then looked out the window at the stars in the sky. “Raymond was a good dude, man. Shit.” John nodded. “I feel sick about it.”

  “His ass just got caught between a rock and hard spot,” said John.

  “I liked him, though,” said Shadrack. “It gives you a damn pause, man, no joke. I mean, what the fuck we doing here?”

  “He was a good kid,” said John, shaking his head. “A good kid with bad luck.”

  At the storage facility, the guard stared at John’s license for a long time before handing it back. He returned to his booth and raised the gate. John parked in front of the unit, a garage-sized one with a roll-down door. They sat for a minute, watching the area, making sure they were alone. The place appeared to be deserted.

  “Give me that gun,” said John. Shadrack opened the glove compartment, pulled out a handgun in a holster, and handed it over.

  They unlocked the unit and pulled the door open. In the back of the space, pushed up against the wall, sat six plastic tubs—thirty-one gallons apiece.

  “Pull that door closed,” said Shadrack. “That is a lot of shit.”

  The tubs were sealed with packing tape. Shadrack pulled a knife from his pocket and flipped it open. He cut the tape at the corner of one of the tubs, pulled up the lid, and looked in: vacuum-sealed loafs of Molly stacked up in blue kilo packs. It was a beautiful sight.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” whispered Shadrack. “That’s what the fuck I’m talking about.”

  John moved the SUV so that the back of it faced the door. They put the backseats down, loaded the tubs in, and covered them with a wool blanket. Shadrack pulled the door of the unit closed and locked it. The guard watched them from his booth as they approached. John held up a backhanded peace sign as they drove past.

  “I wish you’d let me play some music,” said Shadrack.

  “Daddy told you he’s gotta focus,” said John.

  “Oh come on, not this daddy shit again.”

  “Daddy coming home!” said John. “Daddy hungry!”

  “Go to the damn drive-in, then!” said Shadrack.

  “Shit,” said John. He smiled and looked in the rearview mirror.

  They traveled east on Lemon Street. It was twenty minutes past midnight; there were no other cars on the road. Dark warehouses stood on both sides of the street. Fences topped with razor wire appeared here and there. The streetlights cast an orange glow over everything. Fog had started to roll in.

  Shadrack had just begun to say something—he’d gotten the first two words out, “All they”—when a violent boom interrupted him. The car jumped hard.

  “What the fuck?” yelled Shadrack. “What happened?”

  The men sat there in shock. Smoke was coming from under the SUV. When John pressed the gas pedal, the car made a terrible noise and didn’t move at all.

  “Shit!” said John. He was looking in the rearview mirror. Shadrack turned and looked that way: A black van with a red siren spinning on top had stopped fifteen yards behind them. A spotlight from the van lit them up.

  John took the gun out of his pocket and handed it to Shadrack.

  “We gonna shoot?” Shadrack asked. John tried to move the car again, but it was no use.

  Two lights hit them from the front, then. Both men looked that way at the same time. The lights were attached to large guns, held by two hunched men closing in fast. They were right on top of them. John and Shadrack raised their hands. There was nothing they could do.

  “Turn your phone on,” said Shadrack. “Record this shit. This ain’t no legal stop.”

  John was too scared to move. One of the men outside stepped to his window and smashed it with some kind of tool. Shattered glass fell in on them. A second later, Shadrack’s window exploded, too. Guns pointed in through the broken windows.

  “Open the back,” said the man on John’s side. They were dressed in black and had black balaclavas over their heads, but they were white men; Shadrack could see it around their eyes.

  “Okay, okay,” said John.

  “Three, two—”

  John leaned forward and pulled the latch for the back door. The man beside him raised a fist, and the spotlight on the van went dark. Shadrack could hear it begin to turn around. For a moment, he thought it might drive away, but then it backed up so that the rear ends of both vehicles faced each other. The back doors of the van popped open, and a third man jumped out. He pulled open the back door of the SUV. The men in the road held their guns pointed at John and Shadrack.

  “Ten seconds!” said the man on John’s side.

  “They ain’t cops,” whispered John.

  “Clear!” said the man in back.

  “Careful,” said the man on John’s side. He looked in at both of them. “Wouldn’t want to kill you.”

  The men in the road jogged to the van. John and Shadrack watched them in the side mirrors. They jumped in the back, the doors slammed shut, and the van took off.

  “What the fuck was that?” asked Shadrack.

  “They just took our shit,” said John.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “We got jacked!”

  “They hit us with a damn land mine!”

  “I thought they were feds!”

  “I thought they were gonna kill us!”

  “Fuck me,” said John.

  They sat there for a few seconds, then unfastened their seat belts and stepped out of the car. Both of the front wheels sat bent out at an ugly angle. The fenders had been blown off.

  “You better get rid of that gun,” said John. “Cops probably gonna be here in a minute.”

  “You know who that was?” said Shadrack. “You know who masterminded that little operation?”

  “No,” said John.

  “Arthur,” said Shadrack. “I guarantee it.”

  Gloria knocked on the door, waited a moment, and then entered the room. Jackie, lying on the bed, pushed herself up. A small television played quietly on the nightstand.

  They’d been holding her for the last three days. Except for being handcuffed to a chain locked to the bed frame, she’d been treated civilly. They fed her regularly, let her use the restroom. She’d even taken a couple showers. Still, she found herself in a constant state of fear. She was sick with it.

  On the second night, Gloria had come into her room after midnight. She wore a white sleeping gown, something a grandmother might wear; it was loose, and looked expensive. Her face had a distant look to it. Jackie had sat up and waited for the older woman to say something. Gloria’s breath had smelled strongly of white wine, and her eyes were bloodshot. Instead of speaking, she’d sat down next to Jackie and taken her sweaty hand in her own. Then she’d painted Jackie’s fingernails with clear polish.

  Jackie let her do it. What else could she do? When Gloria gestured for her other hand, the handcuffed one, she held it out. The older woman began to speak as she continued applying the polish. She said things that were supposed to sound soothing: Don’t worry, everything will be fine. You’ll be okay. You’ll see. Good, good, good.

  When she was done, she squeezed Jackie’s hand, looked her in the eye, and asked if she was all better. Then she stood back up, said good night, and left.

  They hadn’t spoken about it since then. Jackie spent most of her time watching television or sleeping. Her mind had spun itself into a mess of repeated thoughts. She felt like she’d aged ten years in three days.

  Gloria was in a pantsuit, now. “Good morni
ng,” she said. She went to the television and turned it off. Jackie tried to read her body language for any signs, but beyond a new perkiness, she didn’t see anything. She sat up and let her feet rest on the floor. The room she was being held in had been, it seemed, a girl’s bedroom; the colors, cream and peach, didn’t speak of any boy having lived there.

  “Did you eat?” asked Gloria.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Jackie.

  And then she saw it: Gloria seemed happy. She stared at Jackie for a moment, smiling with her eyes.

  “He texted,” she said. She held up Jackie’s phone and shook it like a baby’s toy. “Shit is salt.” She looked at Jackie meaningfully. “That’s all he said: ‘Shit is salt.’”

  Jackie nodded her head. Gloria came to the bed and sat next to her. “You did it,” the older woman said.

  “They did it,” said Jackie, feeling embarrassed.

  “Yes, but you made them do it,” said Gloria. “That’s the secret of these things.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Make them do it.”

  “So?” asked Jackie, trying to find the most charming and beautiful version of herself. “Will you let me go?”

  “That was the deal,” said Gloria. She pulled out a key and unlocked the handcuff. Jackie rubbed her wrist. The possibility of escaping with her life began to seem real. She exhaled, and had to stop herself from crying.

  Gloria had written the messages to Johnson Lake. She texted him from Jackie’s phone, in Jackie’s presence, showing the younger woman the messages before she sent them. Later, she made her call him. Jackie explained that she’d found out exactly when the package was coming. Lake pressed her for more, but she told him—acting breathless and excited—that she still had to confirm a few things.

  When she hung up, Gloria, taking the phone back, said, “Well done.”

  Over the next few days, she sent a steady stream of texts to him from Jackie’s phone: Happening soon. Get men ready. Tuesday night. Pickup will be from a storage center in E Bay. On the day the deal went down, Gloria made Jackie speak to him again. Jackie told Lake that her info was real, that she’d flipped one of Gloria’s boys. She told him that she couldn’t meet up with him because she had to stay with her source. To assuage his skepticism, she said, “If anything doesn’t feel right, just pull back—but it feels solid to me.” She put as much seduction in her voice as she could, realizing that she felt good doing it.

  Gloria watched her talk, smiling, and then took her phone away again.

  Later that afternoon, Gloria came back before sending the address. “Is that how you would phrase it?” she asked, holding the phone up for the younger woman to examine. Jackie read the message over twice, trying to project helpfulness, and told her it sounded right.

  The message laid out all of John and Shadrack’s movements for the night. It described the car, the men, the house in Hercules, the storage unit in Vallejo. It suggested that Lake’s men hit them directly after they’d left the storage facility.

  The soldiers trailed the car to Hercules first, setting remote-controlled C4 under the SUV’s wheel wells while Shadrack and John were inside the house watching Raymond Gaspar get murdered.

  But Gloria was playing the soldiers, too. The packages waiting at the storage facility in Vallejo had been fake. The vacuum-sealed packs contained nothing but salt.

  The real stuff was sitting in Gloria’s basement; it was going to be driven to Las Vegas in two days. She knew a man there she could sell it to. She’d even raised the price: $6.2 million.

  $6,200,000 + $5,600,000 = $11,800,000.

  Shadrack wouldn’t suspect Gloria: in his mind, she would never send a bunch of white men to do a job like that. But even if he did suspect her, there was nothing he could do about it. He was outmatched, and he knew it. As soon as the next shipment came in, he’d be waiting to buy it. He might be more careful next time, he might even have to ask her for a loan, but he’d still buy it. The cycle would continue. The scramble would start up again.

  As for Lake’s men, Jackie would have to explain to them that she’d been played just like they had. What more could she do? She’d given them the same information she’d been given. You win some; you lose some. Gloria hadn’t told Jackie that she was going to have the four men killed. They knew too much. But there was no point in explaining that. Not yet, at least.

  Tom Roberts—now perfectly under Gloria’s control—would handle the investigation of Raymond. He’d find the fake ID, the plan to move his mother, the ticket to Mexico. Gloria would bring all this information to Arthur, along with Shadrack’s story about Raymond disappearing with the money. Shadrack would go along; he didn’t have a choice. And what was Arthur going to do? Go to war over 10 percent? It occured to her that maybe he never knew the deal had become ten times larger. He might never find out. He’d get out of the hole—Gloria still had to pay off the prison guard she used for that—and find that everything in San Francisco had changed. The world moves fast. Hard to keep up, from prison.

  It was a perfect situation. She just had to keep the men in Miami happy, and they’d start it all up again next month.

  She smiled at Jackie again. “You know,” she said, “I moved to America from the Philippines when I was twelve years old. I never went to school. Even here, I went straight to work; I washed dishes at an Indian restaurant in the Tenderloin for five years. And look at me now. I have a family. I’m surrounded by people that love me. I have nine grandchildren. I own property. I get awards from city hall for my community work. I pay my taxes. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so,” said Jackie, even though she didn’t. She concentrated on matching her breathing to Gloria’s; when the older woman inhaled, Jackie did, too.

  Gloria studied the younger woman’s face for a long time. “We started off on the wrong foot, you and me,” she said. “I’d be willing to bet that we had very similar lives, growing up.” For a moment, her eyes seemed to fill with tears. “Too many problems in this world, you know? Too much hatred. Too much violence. When I was young, I was like you: beautiful. I only cared about dancing. It’s all I wanted to do. Disco, you know—” She shook her shoulders. “Dancing, flirting, drinking, singing. Things change, though. Things happen. You can’t dance every day. You have to make money, too.”

  Jackie nodded. Her nervousness faded. She couldn’t help herself; she liked this woman.

  “Women need to help each other,” said Gloria, as though she could read Jackie’s mind. “It’s the most important thing. Men are dangerous. They ruin everything.” She raised her eyebrows.

  Jackie nodded her head. Her own eyes filled with tears. It was exactly what she’d been thinking.

  “I have a job for you,” said Gloria.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone told me that Shadrack Pullman didn’t even pay with his own money. You know that? The five million, it came from a new partner of his. Some rich techie, an idiot, a white devil. He wants to pretend he’s some kind of drug lord. So, we show him. We say, Welcome to San Francisco.”

  Jackie had a good guess who Gloria was talking about: Brendan Moss, the host of the party that Raymond and Shadrack had attended. She’d already started a file on him.

  “The same little bird told me that Shadrack took a bag of jewels to this man,” Gloria went on. “A big bag, left it as a deposit on the money.” She counted on her fingers: “Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies.” She dropped her hand. “All of it.”

  Jackie smiled.

  “That’s your thing, right?” asked Gloria. “Getting into men’s apartments?”

  That same morning, Gloria Ocampo’s older driver, the man with the pockmarked face—Salvador Luis Macaraeg—arrived at the Wolf Point Yacht Club, in San Mateo. He parked the minivan on the south side of the lot and rummaged around in the glove compartment until he found some sunscreen. He dabbed a little on his nose, forehead, and the bald spot on the crown of his head. Then he got out of the van, looked around, and walked to
the clubhouse to borrow a dock cart.

  When he returned to the van, his nephew—the younger driver, Mario Ocampo—opened the back door, and together the two men lifted a 250-pound manhole cover from the back. The manhole cover was wrapped in a large black trash bag. Next, they opened the side door and pulled out a large green canvas Christmas tree bag. It was heavy, and they struggled to balance it in the cart at an angle. Inside the bag, wrapped in a blue tarp, which itself was wrapped in packing tape, was Raymond Gaspar’s body. The manhole cover was going to sink it, and keep it sunk.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was perfect weather. Salvador Macaraeg was a firm believer in doing his dirty work in the light of day. Nobody sees you, he liked to say. You can do anything in the daytime.

  Together, the two men wheeled the cart through the front gate of the club and onto the dock. They wheeled it all the way to slip C-17, where the New Moon, a 26-foot Farallon Walkabout, was docked. Its diesel engine was already running. The captain of the boat, Chi Xingyou, a sixty-one-year-old fisherman, sat shaking his head disdainfully as the two men approached. He didn’t like doing these jobs, but they paid him a thousand dollars each time, and, besides that, he didn’t know how he was supposed to refuse a request from Gloria Ocampo.

  He greeted the men with a nod as they carried the heavy bag onto the boat. A sunburnt white man accompanied by a blond woman walked by and waved; Chi Xingyou waved back, pasting a fake smile on his face and nodding his head uncomfortably. The two Filipino men returned to the cart and lifted the manhole cover out, straining and bent, breathing with their cheeks puffed out. They carried the thing onto the boat and set it near the bag. Then they opened the bag up and struggled to get the manhole cover inside, so that it rested on top of Raymond Gaspar’s wrapped body. Salvador Macaraeg zipped the bag closed. It resembled a snake that had swallowed something too big for its belly.

  Both men dragged the bag to the back of the boat’s work deck. Salvador borrowed a pocketknife from the captain and began poking holes in the bag; when the time came, it would fill with water.