The Perk

by Mark Gimenez

"Clomid? What's that?"

  "Fertility drug. Stimulates natural testosterone production. Keeps my body doing what it's supposed to do."

  "You have an answer for everything, don't you, Slade? Then answer this: What if you hurt someone else?"

  "It'll never happen again, Judge. I swear."

  "If it does, Slade, your dad won't be able to buy your way out. You'll go to prison. You understand that?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Nikki said you suffered depression. Is that true?"

  "Sometimes. When I'm off the stuff. But when I'm on it, I love the way it makes me feel."

  "How does it make you feel?"

  "Better than sex."

  Beck looked at Quentin McQuade and turned his palms up. Quentin just shrugged.

  "Hell, Judge, makes me want to juice."

  Beck turned back to Slade. "When you're depressed, have you ever thought about suicide?"

  "Suicide? With my future? No way." Slade smiled; it was the bright smile of a future NFL star quarterback. "Judge, I like me way too much to hurt myself."

  "Slade, if I agree to this settlement, will you promise to stop using steroids?"

  Stutz said, "Ja, Judge, he promises."

  "I asked Slade."

  Slade looked at his lawyer and then at his father; both were trying to nod a yes out of him. Slade turned back to Beck.

  "No, Judge, I won't make that promise because I won't keep it."

  Quentin McQuade exhaled loudly and threw his hands up. "Good thing the boy can play football because he'd never make it in the business world. If I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times: a successful businessman has got to be able to look a man directly in the eye and lie convincingly."

  Beck needed a coffee, so he was walking to the bookstore. He hadn't made it one block down Main Street when he was stopped by a business owner wielding the newspaper.

  "Judge Hardin, I heard the Mexicans are planning marches and street protests—on Thanksgiving weekend!"

  "I'm working on it."

  He kept walking, but the owner shouted after him.

  "When they marched in Houston over that immigration law, they shut down the businesses! That's not supposed to happen here!"

  He got halfway down the block before he was again stopped.

  "Judge Hardin, Main Street voted for you. We wanted change, but we don't want our businesses destroyed. The old Germans, they wouldn't let this happen. They know how to keep order!"

  "You want order or civil rights?"

  "I want to make a living!"

  He kept walking; the key was to not slow down. Two more blocks and four more business owners later, Beck turned down the stone path leading to the bookstore. At least this would be a friendly business owner.

  "I can't believe you would do such a thing!"

  Jodie jumped him before the door had shut behind him. She pulled him back outside—

  "Can I get my coffee first?"

  "No!"

  —and over to their bench.

  "What thing?"

  "Let Quentin McQuade buy you off."

  "Jodie, McQuade isn't buying me off. He's—"

  "Buying Slade off."

  "No. He's—"

  "What? What is Quentin doing?"

  "He's trying to buy Slade off."

  "So you haven't agreed to it?"

  "No."

  "And you're not going to agree to it?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Beck!"

  "Jodie, you need to know all the facts first."

  She folded her arms. Her face was flushed almost as red as her hair. By the time Beck had finished laying out the case, her hands were in her lap and her face was pale.

  "A raid at the turkey plant? Can you stop it?"

  "They're federal, Jodie. They don't answer to a state court judge."

  "Beck, you can't let that happen."

  "What if Slade hurts someone else?"

  "What are you going to do?"

  Beck checked his watch: 4:30.

  "School's out. I'm going to talk to Julio."

  "When will they unwire your jaws?" the judge asked.

  Julio Espinoza held up four fingers.

  "Four more weeks?"

  Julio nodded. They were in the living room. Julio was sitting in the chair, a soccer ball in his lap; Judge Hardin sat on the couch next to Julio's madre, who was cradling the baby. His mother's black hair was wet. She always bathed immediately upon coming home from the turkey plant. She wanted to get the smell of turkeys off her as quickly as possible. Maria Espinoza was thirty-six years old, but sitting there in her thick pink bathrobe with her face scrubbed clean, she appeared almost like a girl. She was singing a quiet Mexican lullaby to Juan.

  Rosita, the two-year-old, had climbed onto the judge's lap, but he seemed unconcerned that she might throw up on his nice suit. The judge now looked around at Julio's small home—the sparse furnishings; the few toys; the bare walls except for the framed image of the Virgin Mary and the crucifix; Margarita, the four-year-old, and Gilberto, the six-year-old, sitting cross-legged in front of the little television and watching Sesame Street; Jorge, the ten-year-old, picking his nose—and Julio saw in the judge's eyes the pity of Anglos.

  Julio pulled out his small notebook and pen and wrote: I do not want your pity, Judge. I want McQuade's money. I want my mother and my father out of the turkey plant and out of the barrio. I want to go to college. I want to be visible.

  He tore out the page and handed it to Judge Hardin. The judge read it. "Visible." He turned to Julio's mother and asked, "Mrs. Espinoza, do you and Mr. Espinoza want the settlement?"

  Julio's mother stopped singing and first looked to the judge and then to Julio. She spoke to Julio in Spanish.

  He wrote: Mi madre, she is embarrassed to speak to you, the judge. Her English is not good. But she wants what I want.

  The judge read the note and said, "Julio, Slade hurt you badly. He should be punished."

  Julio wrote: My jaw will heal. Slade in jail will not give my family a better life. His father's money will. That is what I want.

  He tore the page out and handed it to the judge then again he wrote: Señor Delgado said they have threatened a raid if I do not make this settlement. My parents are fearful. Everyone in the barrio is afraid. If there is a raid, we will be punished, not Slade. Do not let that happen.

  The judge read the note then pointed at the soccer ball. "You play?"

  Julio nodded.

  The judge said, "Have you ever been tested for steroids?"

  Julio laughed then wrote: Yes, 5 times last year, twice so far this year. Only Latino soccer players are tested.

  Julio was embarrassed each time the coach came to his class and pointed at him and he had to walk out past the Anglos while the hulking football jocks laughed because they knew they would never be tested.

  The judge read the note and sighed. "Eight people live here? Where does everyone …"

  Julio wrote: Sleep? He tore out that page and handed it to the judge, who read it and nodded. He wrote again: My father works nights at the turkey plant and sleeps during the day. My mother works days at the plant, so she sleeps in the bedroom with the niños. The others sleep in here.

  "And where do you sleep?"

  Julio stood and motioned for the judge to follow. They walked out of the living room, through the kitchen, and then into the small bathroom. Julio pointed at the bathtub.

  "You sleep in the bathtub?"

  "Es."

  When they returned to the living room, Julio's mother was breast-feeding Juan; his eyes were closed and his mouth was tight around the nipple of her plump brown breast. The judge turned away.

  "Julio, let's go outside."

  They stepped outside and into the small yard. There was no driveway, so Beck had parked the Navigator on the grass not ten feet from the front door of Julio's tiny house.

  "Let's take a walk."

  They walked down the narrow asphalt street past small
houses, nothing more than shacks, sheds, and shanties. Several houses were clustered on lots intended for a single residence. Some weren't even houses in the structural sense. Some had once been on wheels, others tilted at precarious angles, and still others were actually travel trailers with wheels sunken into the ground, as if relatives had come to visit and refused to leave. Some were small outbuildings or one-car garages that had been converted into residences of a kind. Some were brightly painted, most were dull and unpainted. One had a full Nativity scene out front; Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus were fake, but the goats, turkeys, and chickens were real. In the yards young children were playing and speaking in Spanish. A girl who appeared no older than Julio stood watch; she was very pregnant. She waved at Julio.

  "Are the children citizens?"

  Julio wrote on his pad and handed a note to Beck: Yes. Born in the USA. Isabel, she is 15 and Mexican. The young girls, they want to have the babies as soon as they get here. They think the government will let them stay if they have American babies.

  "Do most people rent these homes?"

  Julio wrote again: Most own. The law says they cannot work here, but they can own homes here. Who makes these laws?

  Beck nodded. "Doesn't make much sense."

  Julio wrote: The trailers are rented. Maybe 15 men live in each one. They work at the plant, send their money home to Mexico.

  "How can fifteen men live in each trailer?"

  Julio wrote: The trailers, they are just for the sleeping. Each man pays $400 per month for a pad on the floor. To the Anglo landlord. He owns many such trailers in the barrio.

  "Four hundred each? That's six thousand a month. They could rent the fanciest house in town for that."

  Julio wrote: No, they could not. The city would not allow 15 men to live in one home north of the creek, but looks the other way here, so there are workers for the plant.

  Old cars were parked in the yards or jacked up on cement blocks. Chickens and goats were in pens like backyard pets; a Hereford bull grazed in one yard. Junk was piled everywhere. Neat rows of tall green cornstalks grew in one vacant lot, agave plants in another. Julio wrote: Pedro makes homemade tequila, from the agave.

  Appliances sat on porches, and furniture—couches, recliners, rocking chairs—sat in small yards, arranged as if they were in a family room but the walls had blown away. Clothes hung from lines and blew in the breeze. The people here lived outside, except apparently when they watched TV: most houses and even the trailers had satellite dishes attached to the roofs.

  They were only five blocks south of the glitz and glamour of Main Street, but they were no longer in Fredericksburg. They were in Mexico. Beck's senior class trip had been to Nuevo Laredo. He had seen the same living conditions there. Looking around now, it was as if an entire neighborhood from Nuevo Laredo had been set down whole in the middle of Fredericksburg: Mexicans living in the same third-world conditions, albeit with more TV channels.

  They walked the streets of the barrio: Buena Vista, Santa Rosa, St. Mary's, St. Gerelda. Just down the road stood the turkey plant, a gray windowless building with white steam rising into the blue sky above it and a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on top surrounding it. The plant looked like a prison.

  Julio pointed at a trailer. And he wrote: At that trailer, you may obtain the fake ID cards, social security numbers, driver's licenses, so you can work at the plant.

  "It's done out in the open?"

  Julio wrote: Sure. The plant managers, they send new workers to that trailer, so they can tell the government that they did not know they were hiring illegals. It is a game.

  The new Milam Road extension provided a shortcut around downtown and cut right through the barrio, like the interstates in urban areas always cut through the poorest parts of town. Milam was a wide roadway with the only curbs and gutters in the barrio.

  Julio wrote: When it rains, the water runs to the creek, but not fast enough. The houses and trailers are often flooded.

  Beck had never been in the barrio. He wasn't sure there had even been a barrio twenty-four years ago. But maybe they had always been here, these people who lived and worked just a few blocks from Main Street but don't come onto Main Street or eat at the restaurants on Main Street or shop in the stores on Main Street. Walking down Main Street, you would never know this place or these people existed. Julio was right: they were invisible.

  And the boy sleeps in a bathtub.

  "Two million to the Mexican boy," Quentin McQuade said. "And curbs, gutters, and paved roads for the barrio? What do I look like, the public works department? Curbs and gutters don't come cheap, Judge. You're talking two, three million. I offered one million, you counter with five. That's not fair negotiation."

  "Like you said, Quentin, life's not fair."

  Quentin shook his head and chuckled. "And for that Slade's case is dismissed?"

  "Yes. And ICE stays out of our town."

  Quentin smiled. "You've got a lot of hard-ass in you, Judge. I like that. When the Germans vote you out of office next year, maybe you'll come work for me."

  "Maybe not. Besides, you've already got the biggest hard-ass in the county working for you."

  "Yeah, but Bruno's got the loyalty of a pit bull. He'll turn on me if it suits his purposes."

  "How do you know I wouldn't?"

  "Because you're one of those rare creatures, Judge—an honorable man burdened with the need to do the right thing. My secrets would be safe with you."

  "Do we have a deal?"

  Quentin McQuade stood, looked Beck directly in the eye, and said, "Yep, we sure do."

  Quentin stuck his hand across Beck's desk. Beck started to reach out, but hesitated. He felt as if he were making a deal with the devil. Maybe he was. But that's what lawyers do. He just wasn't sure a judge should. They shook on it.

  "Oh, I'll need that tape recording, Judge, from the examining trial," Quentin McQuade said. "Can't have that played on ESPN."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The time bomb was defused on Monday morning.

  Julio Espinoza signed a settlement agreement that included a release of all claims against Slade McQuade and a confidentiality clause. Quentin McQuade wired $2 million to Julio's new bank account and signed an agreement to construct roads, curbs, and gutters in the barrio. Judge John Beck Hardin signed an order dismissing all criminal charges against Slade McQuade and turned over the only copy of the tape recording from the examining trial to Quentin McQuade. Everyone was happy: the victim and his parents, the offender and his father, the D.A. and the Germans, Main Street and the Latinos. Everyone except the judge.

  "Hi, Judge Hardin."

  Beck nodded at the woman. Julio's parents could now afford a few acres and a nice house. Julio and his siblings would go to college. Main Street would have a booming holiday shopping season. The old Germans would get their state championship and their money from building homes on Quentin's golf course. The Mexicans would not be deported; the barrio would not flood again.

  "Judge."

  Beck nodded at the man. But had he done the right thing? Had he misused the law? Had he abused his power? Was the black robe the only difference between Quentin McQuade and Beck Hardin?

  "You did a good thing, Beck," Jodie said.

  Beck was running on the treadmill next to Jodie at the gym.

  "Hi, Beck."

  Gretchen was suddenly standing between Beck and Jodie and casting those blue eyes up toward him.

  "You sure you should be seen talking to me?"

  "Oh, you're safe … for now. No telling about tomorrow in this town."

  "How are y'all doing without Ms. Rodriguez?"

  "No one's speaking Spanish at the primary school. But I'm still fighting for my kids." She shook it off, then smiled at him. "So, Beck, how about that dinner, Saturday night?" Gretchen leaned in close to Beck—and Jodie leaned over so far he thought she might fall off her treadmill—and whispered, "I still have needs."

  Jodie cleared her throat loudly en
ough to get the attention of a walker three treadmills away. Beck looked at her over Gretchen's head. She was giving him the look. He sighed.

  "Gretchen, I'm too old for you."

  She looked him up and down.

  "You're in pretty good shape for an old guy."

  "Oh, thanks. I've been working out again and …"

  Another loud throat-clearing from Jodie. He looked at her and then at Gretchen.

  "But I'm still too old for you."

  Gretchen shook her head. "Call me if you change your mind."

  She walked off. That butterfly. That bottom.

  Jodie cleared her throat again. He turned to her. Again the look.

  "You're staring at her butt."

  "It's a nice butt."

  "Yeah."

  She increased the speed on her treadmill.

  J.B. said, "Took Luke fishing down at the river after school."

  "He wouldn't go with me."

  "I'm safe. He knows I didn't kill his mama. He figured you could save her. You were his hero and that's what heroes do. His mother dying for no better reason than she had the bad luck to get cancer, that's a hard thing for a boy to get his mind around."

  Beck nodded. "Did he talk?"

  "Yep."

  "About what?"

  "Matters of the heart. His heart's broken, Beck."

  "I don't know what to do for him."

  "He needs a woman in his life."

  "He's too young to date, J.B."

  "I'm thinking Jodie."

  "You want him to date a lesbian?"

  "She's a woman, she's smart, and she's a mother. Figure maybe he should spend a little time at the bookstore, seeing how this is the slow season down at the winery."

  "You think Jodie would be up for that?"

  "She said yes."

  Beck scanned through Annie's emails over the summer months when she had had a chemo treatment every three weeks and then six weeks of radiation, every day. He found an email from September:

  Dear J.B.,

  I'm still fighting. Trying another kind of chemo. My bones hurt. And I'm gaining weight. I can't eat but I gain weight because I'm on steroids for the nausea now. How stupid is that? This is the dumbest disease I've ever had. And the only disease I've ever had.

  The kids are back in school, Beck goes to work, and only my hard-core friends come around now. The others, it's like when they look at me, it scares them.