by Joe Ide
“Who was living there?” Isaiah said.
“Mostly junkies and hookers. Manzo gave them a hundred bucks each to move out. There were a few people who didn’t want to go, but the homies put guns in their mouths and threw their shit out the windows.”
Néstor said Manzo hired neighborhood people like him to repair the building, bring it up to code, and make the apartments nice.
“And not just Latinos,” Néstor said. “He was like an equal opportunity employer. He wanted everybody in the hood to be cool with us. Smart, huh?”
There was a green lawn in front of the building now and a playground with a fence around it in the parking lot. Manzo rented the apartments out to families and installed his brother, Jacinto, as the property manager. Jacinto weighed two hundred and sixty pounds and had a spiderweb tattoo that covered his whole face.
“It’s like the best apartments in the hood,” Néstor said. “Like there’s no graffiti, nobody drinking outside, no loud music, no screaming kids running around in the halls—and nobody’s late with the rent. I know a guy that sold his car so he wouldn’t have Jacinto knocking on his door. And if you invested in the building? You get a check every month like clockwork. You know what they call Manzo now? El Empresario.”
Isabel had lost interest in the second stick and was sitting in the dirt, picking up little rocks and throwing them down again.
“Hey, Isabel, don’t eat the rocks, okay?” Néstor said.
“Do you remember when my brother Marcus was killed in that accident?” Isaiah said.
Néstor wasn’t ready for that, his forehead screwing up like he was trying to see something on the end of his nose. “Uh, yeah, maybe. Wasn’t that like a long time ago?”
“It wasn’t an accident, Néstor. It was a hit.”
“No shit? That’s messed up, man,” Néstor said a little too earnestly. He took a swig off his empty beer bottle. “Say, you want something to eat? We got some leftover cholorio. Lucy’s a mean old bitch, but she can cook her ass off.”
“Do you know anything about it? The hit?”
“Me? Why would I know something about it?” Néstor was talking fast now. “I was just a soldier back then. You had to be in the upper echelon to know about that stuff.”
“I didn’t say anything about the gang, Néstor. I just asked you if you knew anything.”
Isaiah looked at him a long moment. Néstor groaned. “Come on, Isaiah, I took an oath,” he said. “Once a Loco always a Loco. I can’t betray my brothers—goddammit, Isabel, get the rock out of your mouth.”
Isaiah was sorry he had to break out the hammer. “I saw Teresa the other day,” he said. “She was playing soccer at the park. She looks good, all healthy and happy. Is she planning to go to college? You must be very proud of her.”
Néstor looked like he was holding four kings and still lost the hand. “This is fucked up, Isaiah. And you’re not gonna like what I tell you. Hey, I’m thirsty, I need another beer. Could you do me a favor and take the rock out of her mouth?”
Néstor went in the house, and Isaiah gently pried the rock out of Isabel’s mouth. Before she started crying again he picked her up, put her in the swing. She smelled like baby powder and candy. Isaiah swung the little girl back and forth while she squealed and laughed. He liked doing it, wishing he could be that happy playing on a swing.
Néstor came back with two beers and a bowl of peanuts. “Okay, you asked for it,” he said, sitting down. “So like Frankie was going to a money drop at Seb’s and somebody robbed him. That’s when he took the bullet that made him quit. Your brother had something to do with it.”
“I don’t understand. My brother had something to do with a robbery?” Isaiah picked Isabel up, set her down on the picnic table and gave her a peanut. She put it in her mouth but didn’t seem to know what it was. “Something to do with it like what?”
“I don’t know, I swear, Isaiah, that’s all I heard.”
“You must know more than that, Néstor.”
“Look, I was going with Lucy back then, and she wanted me to quit the gang. I didn’t want to, but she was giving me sex all the time so what could I do? I started pulling back, you know? I mean, shit was happening but I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Quit messing around, Néstor,” Isaiah said, getting angry. “I need to know.”
“Okay, okay, calm down, man.” Néstor took a sip of beer and ate a handful of peanuts. “See, the homies were talking about somebody named Marcus, and then—don’t get pissed at me, okay? I heard they put a hit out on him.”
“A hit on my brother?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Isaiah stood up. “Did they? Did the Locos kill my brother?”
“I don’t know, I swear to God, I don’t know.” Néstor put his hands up like Isaiah was aiming a gun at him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t have nothing to do with anything—could you sit down, man? You’re scaring Isabel.”
Isaiah thought a moment, then sat. “How do I talk to Frankie?”
“You don’t,” Néstor said. “He’s like a fucking hermit. He don’t talk to nobody, he don’t even answer the phone. Some of the homies think he’s dead—that’s a peanut, Isabel, you’re supposed to chew it.” Isabel grimaced and showed her teeth like a chattering chimpanzee, peanut gravel falling out of her mouth. “Will you look at this?” Néstor said. “She’ll eat sticks and rocks but not food.”
Isaiah sat in the car, turned on the air-conditioning, and tried to absorb the new information. The Locos had put a hit out on Marcus? Why? Obviously, they thought he was the one that robbed Frankie, but that was impossible. Marcus wouldn’t take a dime from Donald Trump if he was starving to death. The robber had set Marcus up, but who could identify him except Frankie? Maybe he could remember some clue, some detail that would put Isaiah on the scent.
Néstor had given him the address, and he drove over to Frankie’s place, a crumbling stucco house not far from Isaiah’s. A crinkled blue plastic sheet had been tied over a lowrider spotted with rust, the axles up on cinder blocks. Flyers were stuck in the chain link fence, beer cans and cigarette butts on the patchy lawn. Dos Equis, not Carta Blanca. Newports, not Marlboros. A number was missing from the address, the ghost of a 5 in the empty space. Without drug money rolling in, the gang leader had fallen on hard times. Isaiah thought about that. He drove over to Beaumont’s store and made a stop at Raphael’s house before returning to Frankie’s.
When the door opened, Isaiah almost didn’t recognize the man behind the security screen. The proud, fearless ex–shot caller for the Locos, nicknamed the Stone because he was a hardhearted motherfucker, was frail and gaunt and looked like an XXL T-shirt hung on a wire coat hanger. He was wearing an old gray bathrobe, nubs worn off the terry cloth, his shearling slippers flattened with wear and too big for his feet. Frankie was in his thirties, but his hair had gone the color of the bathrobe, white stubble on his concave cheeks, his dark eyes empty like the life behind them had vacated.
“Yeah?” Frankie said. His voice sounded sticky and he smelled like old people and vitamins.
“Frankie, my name’s Isaiah,” Isaiah said. “I live in the neighborhood, you might have seen me around. They call me IQ.”
“IQ, huh?” he said. “I might have heard of you. What do you want?” He took a quick glance at the six-pack of Dos Equis Isaiah had picked up at Beaumont’s.
“Something happened a long time ago. I need some information. Manzo said I should talk to you.”
“Manzo?” Frankie said, like he was trying to remember who that was.
“He can vouch for me. I can call him right now,” Isaiah said, thinking, Don’t make me call him. Please don’t make me call him.
Ever the gangster, Frankie turned belligerent. “Look, I ain’t got no time to talk, okay? So fuck off.” He started to close the door. Isaiah pulled a bag of weed out of his pocket.
“Trip Diesel,” Isaiah said. “Got it from Raphael. Let’s have a bee
r and light one up.”
The living room was clean, neat, and crowded. The shelves and end tables covered with knickknacks and souvenirs. Ashtrays from Mazatlán, Acapulco, and Disneyland, a snowball with a grass shack and palm trees in it, glass figurines of horses, cats, and the Little Mermaid. Votive candles. Two teddy bears in matching Santa hats. A white porcelain statue of Jesus, prayer beads hung around his neck. Lots of family photographs.
“Sit anywhere, relax,” Frankie said.
Isaiah’s eyes were still adjusting to the clutter. There were throw rugs with red and orange Mexican designs on them, embroidered arm covers on the moss-green velvet couch and a serape thrown over the chair back. A Raiders banner hung on the wall next to a carved wooden plaque of the Virgin Mary and a clock with different kinds of birds instead of numbers. Frankie went into the kitchen and opened a beer.
“You want one?” he said.
“No, thanks.”
Isaiah sat on the couch and immediately started rolling a joint. Frankie took the chair across from him. He drank half the beer, then put his head back like he was tired of holding it up. He kept his eyes on the weed.
“I wanted to talk to you about something that happened eight years ago,” Isaiah said. “After the war with the Violators.”
“Eight years ago?” Frankie frowned. “I don’t remember too good. Yeah, I got that post-traumatic stress. Doctor said it was because I been up in too much violence, like them soldiers from Iraq. Is that a trip or what? Can’t sleep without a whole bunch of drugs. Shit. I can’t do nothing without a whole bunch of drugs.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Isaiah carefully sprinkled weed on the rolling paper, making sure it was evenly distributed, expertly rolling the joint back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. Isaiah also knew how to cook cocaine into crack, smoke a bowl of meth, prep a syringe for shooting up heroin, and a dozen other drug addict skills. When your job is chasing criminals it helps to know their recreational habits.
“Yeah, I get these flashbacks,” Frankie said. He’d perked up some, like he was remembering that talking felt okay.
“There was this homie named Oscar,” he said. “He welched on a deal. Shit like that happens all the time. I coulda just kicked his ass but I fucked him over good. Stabbed him a bunch of times. I didn’t have to do it but that was my rep, right? So yesterday—was it yesterday? Yeah, yesterday, I’m watching TV, and out of nowhere I see it happening all over again. You know, blood everywhere, Oscar screaming, his ol’ lady screaming. I got all shaky and shit. I had to take some more pills.” A profound bewilderment filled the void behind Frankie’s eyes like the life he’d lived was beyond his imagining. “That shit is fucked up, man.”
Isaiah used the eraser end of a pencil to tamp down the weed spilling out of the end. Raphael had given him a pad of filters; strips of paper the size of a stick of gum. He folded the serrations on one end into an accordion, then rolled it up from the other end to create a tiny tube, the accordion folds inside it. It was unnecessary but it gave him more time.
“That’s kinda cool,” Frankie said. “I never seen them things before.”
A short wide woman in an apron looked in like she expected to see a cop. “Toda está bien, Mom,” Frankie said. The woman disappeared. “Yeah, I know some other homies that are messed up like me,” he went on. “Miguel, Mateo, Esteban. Everybody thinks they got Lyme disease or something, but it’s the stress thing. I guess it’s like karma, huh? The bad shit you’ve done comes back to bite you in the ass. Fuck man, if that’s the case I might as well kill myself.”
Isaiah inserted the filter into the tamped-down end of the joint. It was as neatly formed as a Newport fresh out of the pack. He gave it to Frankie. He lit up, took a hit and nodded appreciatively. “The draw’s a lot smoother,” he said. He offered the joint to Isaiah.
“No, thanks, I smoked at Raphael’s,” Isaiah said. “I get any higher I won’t be able to drive.” Isaiah waited until Frankie had finished his third hit. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Frankie said, blissfully blowing out a cloud of smoke.
“I heard you were making a money drop to Seb and got robbed.”
Frankie was still a moment, his mind thumbing through a fat photo album of deadly encounters. “Yeah, I remember,” he said. “I was getting out of my car and some motherfucker sticks a gun in my face. He says gimme the money and I tell him I’m not giving you shit and I try to grab the gun, right? So the gun goes off, the bullet goes through my—” Frankie started to lift his shirt but stopped like he couldn’t expend the energy. “My gut, the worst place to get shot. Ruptures all kinds of organs and shit. I fucking almost died. I shoulda just gave him the money.”
“Do you remember anything about him? The guy that robbed you?”
Frankie stared through the window like the memories were backing out of the driveway. He didn’t move or blink for what seemed like a long time, Isaiah wondering if he’d drifted off completely. A goldfinch whistled from the bird clock. Suddenly, Frankie sat up with a lurch and glared like he’d been blindsided. “The fuck you want to know for?” he said.
“Whoever robbed you might have killed my brother, Marcus.”
“Marcus?” Frankie said.
Isaiah nearly gasped. “You knew him? You knew my brother?”
Realizing the beer and weed were a ruse, Frankie stood up. “Hey, motherfucker. It’s time for you to go.”
Isaiah couldn’t believe it. There was only one reason for Frankie to react like this. The Locos had killed Marcus. Isaiah got to his feet, the hate coiling inside him. He stared at this mess of a human being who had ordered his brother’s death. “You put out a hit on him, didn’t you?”
Frankie was about to reply when the front door swung open. A girl came in. She was sixteen or so, pink streaks in her hair, dressed in a long pink sweatshirt and black tights. The set of her eyes and the shape of her face were just like Frankie’s. His sister. A guy came in after her, a hairnet draped over his shiny bald head. Vicente.
“Manzo’s always bossing me around, you know?” the girl said. “I’m tired of that shit.”
“You should tell him to fuck off, Ramona,” Vicente said. “Thinks he’s jefe of the whole fucking world.” The pair saw Isaiah and Frankie, obviously some shit going down.
“Who’s this?” she said.
“Some asshole asking too many questions,” Frankie said.
“Oh yeah?” Vicente said. “About what?”
“Marcus.”
“What Marcus? You mean the guy from—” Vicente was immediately pissed. He pulled a gun from the back of his pants, racked the slide, walked quickly toward Isaiah, his arm held straight out, aiming at Isaiah’s heart. “You know what happens to people who stick their noses into Loco business?” he said. “They end up in the fucking grave.”
“You come into my house, motherfucker?” Ramona said. “You mess with my brother?”
“Wait. Let me explain—” Isaiah said.
Vicente was red-faced, his mouth in a snarl. He was more enraged than Ramona and she lived here. He pressed the barrel into Isaiah’s forehead. “We don’t need no explanation, cabron.” Isaiah thought, This asshole’s actually going to shoot me!
It was so over-the-top, Frankie said, “Are you crazy, Vicente? You’re gonna shoot somebody in my fucking house?”
“Don’t be stupid, Vicente,” Ramona said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Okay,” Vicente said, lowering the gun. “I’ll take him someplace else and shoot him.”
“No,” Frankie said wearily. “No more shooting. Just get him out of here.”
“You heard him,” Ramona said. “Get your ass moving.”
Vicente and Ramona ushered Isaiah out of the room. They got to the door and Isaiah opened it. He felt Vicente’s Converse All Star in the small of his back, and in the next instant, he was catapulted down the stoop and on to the cement walkway, banging his knees, catching hims
elf with his hands, nearly buckling his wrists.
“Mind your own business, cabron,” Vicente said. “I see you in our hood your ass is mine.”
“We’re gonna fuck you up,” Ramona said.
Frankie came and stood in the doorway with the other two, his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “It was your brother that robbed me,” he said. “Your fucking brother shot me in the gut.”
Isaiah hobbled away. Those sons of bitches had murdered Marcus, and sooner or later they’d pay the price. But the idea that his brother had actually stuck a gun in Frankie’s face, stole his money, and then shot him was unthinkable. Isaiah couldn’t conceive of a scenario where his rigidly moral brother would be desperate enough to do something like that. So if Marcus didn’t rob Frankie, who did?
Vicente was a possibility. According to Néstor, Vicente had suffered a bitter loss to Manzo in the leadership battle, and when Manzo assumed leadership he banned old-school banging and started his program to remake the Locos into a conglomerate. That left Vicente the enforcer disrespected and useless. Did Vicente harbor enough resentment to stage the robbery? He was a hothead, eager for violence, just the kind of personality who’d take revenge on the man who passed him over, and why not make a profit at the same time? But where would Vicente have had the opportunity to plant the money and drugs in Marcus’s backpack? Did he tail Isaiah and Marcus to the park that day, slip the stuff into the backpack, and then rush to get into the Accord so he could run Marcus over? No, too complicated. If Vicente wanted you dead he’d just shoot you.
Seb was another possibility. The money was being delivered to him so he knew the time and place, and if Marcus had worked for him, he would have had the opportunity to plant the contraband. Okay, so maybe he sent Gahigi to do the robbery. Then he tells Frankie that when Marcus was working for him, the sneaky bastard eavesdropped on their phone calls. It made sense but it didn’t. Seb was from a country where a kid could get his leg hacked off with a machete. A bullet in the head or slitting your throat was more in keeping with a survivor of a genocide, and Gahigi’s accent would have surely given him away. Not a lot of East Africans running around in the Locos’ hood. Then there was the backpack. Seb had plenty of opportunity to plant the contraband, but what would have been the point? He had no reason to give away three thousand dollars in cash and sixteen grams of heroin. Okay, yes, Seb’s phone number was in Marcus’s work log, but it could have been as innocent as Seb suggested, and he was too smart to risk robbing his biggest client for a onetime score, especially given the consequences if he was caught. It was depressing to think of how many other people might have known about the drop. Other Locos, Seb’s criminal clients. But that didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right.
