by Sam Hawken
All of a sudden Flip was back at Emilio’s apartment, sitting on the couch in the darkened living room with the other Indians, passing judgment on him. The party feeling that came after was just a shadow of the rest. He only saw Emilio, pleading his case, pleading for life. And then he died in Juárez anyway.
“You coming in?”
Flip was unfrozen. He passed through the door into the apartment and smelled the odors of air fresheners and carpet cleaner. The blinds were open, allowing brilliant sunlight into the front room where new-looking furniture stood around. José closed the door after him.
“What is this place?” Flip asked.
“Your place,” José said. He moved beside Flip and pressed the key into his hand the way he’d pressed the pistol into it. “Fully furnished. The rent’s paid for the first three months. After that it’s up to you.”
“José—”
“Don’t thank me right away. I know you have to get used to it.”
The apartment wasn’t large, but it was palatial by the standards of Graciela’s one room, or Flip’s space at his mother’s house. There were two bedrooms and a good-sized kitchen. Everything was made up and there was even art on the walls, as if this were a showplace. Flip did not know what to say.
Flip found his voice: “What do I do for this?”
“I told you before: you work for me. Somebody has to take Emilio’s place. You got to get your ink, fly the flag, represent for your family. And I know you won’t fuck up like Emilio because you’ve already been on the inside and you don’t want to go back. That makes you smarter.”
“José, I don’t know nothing about selling drugs.”
“What’s to know? You’ll have tiendas working for you, moving the stuff. You just got to learn how to break down the shipments. You’re like a distributor. Like wholesale, you know what I mean? Let the other Indians handle the retail.”
“They busted Emilio.”
José put a finger to his head and poked his temple. “That’s because Emilio was stupid. He didn’t take care of things. I know you aren’t going to make the same mistakes. Enrique wouldn’t vouch for somebody undependable. And you already showed me you’re down for the cause. I’m not going to forget Juárez.”
Flip wanted to forget Juárez. The images kept coming unabated. He tried to blink them away. “What about my job?”
“You can keep it. Your PO wants you working and I need you to make sure your boss does what he’s supposed to do. What you do for me here, you do on the side. Like I said: you’ll have help. And when you’re not on parole anymore, we’ll talk about stepping you up in the organization. You can do it full-time.” José took a step forward. “Are you all right, Flip?”
“Yeah, sure,” Flip said, though he felt that lightheadedness again, the same sense of unreality that seized him at his mother’s table. He went for the couch and sat down. “It’s just a lot all at once, you know?”
“I wouldn’t bring you in if I didn’t think you could handle it, Flip.”
Flip just nodded. If he hung his head down he could catch his breath and he no longer felt suffocated. Every time José spoke it was like a weight pressing on him until he weighed a thousand pounds.
“You down, Flip?”
“Yeah,” Flip said. “Yeah, I’m down.”
“You’re gonna need this place anyway, Flip. You have a family now.”
Flip jerked his head up. “What?” he said.
“You and Graciela. I heard there are congratulations in order.”
“Where did you hear that?”
José made a vague gesture with his hands. “Around. You see, I always have my eye on you, Flip. That’s why I know I can believe in you. You’re not a snitch or a bitch. You understand me?”
“I understand.”
“Anyway, tell your mamá that you got a raise at work or whatever and move your shit in here. A sargento shouldn’t be living at home.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, José.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. Just say ‘thank you’ and we’re square.”
“Thank you.”
José smiled at Flip and sat down beside him on the couch, lounging with his arms out along the back. “It’s all about what you can do for the family. I have high hopes for you, Flip. You’re my investment. Together we’re going to be big. No limits.”
“No limits,” Flip repeated.
“Go ahead and call Graciela,” José urged. “Tell her to come around and see the place. She’s going to go nuts for it.”
“I’ll call her in a minute,” Flip said, and he rose from the couch. Once again he wandered the rooms, smelling their artificial clean smells and seeing the perfect way it was all laid out for him. The lightheadedness hadn’t gone.
“You going to be okay, Flip?” José called.
“Yeah, sure,” Flip said. Unconsciously he touched the wire running up his body. Was it getting everything? “I just got to decide which room is going to be ours.”
“Let Graciela pick,” José said. “Always better to let the woman pick.”
THIRTEEN
JOSÉ WAS GONE BY THE TIME GRACIELA arrived. She knocked on the door quietly, with hesitation, and stood on the threshold biting her lip when Flip opened up.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi. Come in.”
Flip let her walk from room to room just the way he had and did not bother her until she came back to him and let him put his arms around her. “It’s great,” she said, though her voice was hollow.
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it fine,” Graciela said. She stepped away from him and Flip thought she looked very small in the broad front room. “I just…”
“If you don’t want to live here, that’s okay,” Flip said. “I’ll understand.”
“It’s not that.”
Graciela went to one of the chairs and sat down. Flip wondered when she would start to show. Right now she was still slender and gave no hint of what was going on inside her body. He couldn’t imagine her living in her little apartment after months had gone by; it was not enough for her.
“What’s wrong?” Flip asked.
“José really wants you,” Graciela said. “He wouldn’t do this for just anybody.”
“I guess so.”
“Flip…” Graciela started and then trailed off.
He came to her and knelt down by the chair. When he held her hand, it seemed cold. “What?” he asked.
“I thought you had plans. Things you wanted to do.”
“I do. I got lots of plans.”
“How are you gonna do them if you’re running around for José? When are you going to get a job as a carpenter? That’s what you want to do, right?”
“Yeah.”
Graciela looked him in the eyes and Flip saw they were dark and filled with an emotion he couldn’t put a name to. She closed her fingers around his and held them tightly. “If you wanna do those things, you got to be your own man,” she said.
Flip was quiet for a while, just holding her hand. After a while he took a deep breath and said, “I’m doing what I can do. I don’t have a lot of choices right now, but it’s going to get better. I promise.”
“I don’t want to end up like Emilio’s girl, Alicia. He’s run off to Juárez and he ain’t coming back. You got responsibilities, Flip.”
“I know. I didn’t forget.”
He thought she might cry and so he gripped her hand more fiercely. Graciela took a long, ragged breath and let it out slowly. She was on the edge. Only he could hold her there.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Flip said.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know. I never told you what I went to Coffield for.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” Flip said.
“Okay.”
Flip told her about his friends, Roberto and Manuel. They were all in the same grade together growing up and their houses wer
e close by one another. When Roberto started stealing, they all started stealing. Little things to start with, then bigger and bigger. Once, when they were seventeen, they stole a car and drove it until the gas tank went dry. Then they broke out all the windows and jumped up and down on the roof until it caved in. That was fun.
After high school they weren’t so close, but they still got together. Roberto did some time in county jail. Manuel got a job doing concrete on construction jobs. Flip lived off his mother because he could and she let him. They partied with some of the neighborhood girls. Roberto liked the ones still in school.
It seemed like a good thing when Roberto came to them with his idea. He knew a man on the South Side who kept a lot of money from his liquor store business in his home safe. Flip said he didn’t know anything about breaking open safes. Roberto said he wouldn’t have to.
They wore bandanas over their faces and Flip kicked in the front door. The guy was home with his wife and his kids. Roberto had a gun from somewhere and he herded everyone into one of the bedrooms. When they were all down, he told the guy to open his safe.
At first the guy said there was no safe and Roberto beat him. After that the guy was a lot more cooperative. He showed them the safe under a tile in the kitchen floor. He opened it for them.
Roberto promised lots of money. Hundreds, maybe thousands. The guy had five hundred dollars in the safe, plus a bunch of papers that weren’t worth anything. Roberto took the money and he beat the guy again. Flip said they should go; he could hear the guy’s wife and kids crying in the other room.
After it was all over, Flip could not say when Roberto pulled the trigger or why. The gun made a loud popping noise and the guy was on the floor of the kitchen bleeding from his head and ear. Roberto was in a hurry to go then and they ran for it. Everybody went a separate way. Only Roberto had a car.
The police found Flip a mile away, walking for home. They saw he was sweating and the sweat didn’t stop when they brought him to the station. A detective showed Flip how his shoe left a clear print on the dead guy’s door. After that Flip told them the truth.
They charged Roberto with manslaughter and Flip and Manuel as accessories. The judge gave Flip sixteen years. His mother cried in court that day. Flip felt shame.
Roberto went to a different unit in the system and Manuel to another. They sent Flip to Coffield, and that’s when everything changed. Flip became an Indian.
When he was finished with the story he searched Graciela’s face for a response. He did not know what to expect, but she didn’t take her hand from him and she didn’t look away. “You didn’t kill nobody yourself?” she asked finally.
“No, I didn’t. I swear.”
“Are you gonna kill people now?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that. Not for anybody.”
“What if José said to?”
“Not even if José said to.”
“I can’t be married to no killer, Flip.”
“I swear on my baby’s life, I won’t.”
“But you still got to do what José says.”
“For now, but things can change.”
“How?” Graciela asked.
Flip felt the digital recorder in his pocket. All of this was being recorded. The detectives would hear it. The FBI agent would hear it. But he was not ashamed of this. Of what he had done, of what he let Roberto do, yes, but not this.
“If I had to go away,” Flip said, “would you come with me?”
“Go away? Like where?”
“Just somewhere. Away from El Paso. Maybe to California or something.”
“Why would you go to California?”
“Just tell me,” Flip said. “If I had to go, would you come with me?”
Graciela looked at him and Flip feared the answer. She said, “Yes, I would. You’re my baby’s father. How could I let you go away without me?”
Flip rose and gently pulled her from the chair. He kissed her on the lips, held her in his arms and enjoyed the warmth and pressure of her body against his. She put her hands on his hips and then tugged his shirt free of his jeans. Her fingers touched the skin of his waist.
He went rigid and pushed away from her. Graciela nearly fell back into the chair. “What?” she asked. “What did I do?”
“It’s nothing,” Flip said, and he felt the heat of burgeoning sweat on his face. Had she felt the wire? He stepped back a pace and then another, his heart beating hard. “I just got to use the bathroom, that’s all.”
“You scared the shit out of me, jumping like that.”
“Sorry,” Flip said. He retreated into the bathroom, closed and locked the door behind him, and stood with his back to it trying to catch a breath that did not want to be caught. His chest hurt.
He stripped off his shirt and undershirt and stood looking at himself in the mirror. The wire snaked up his body, white and thin. Peeling the tape was like pulling a Band-Aid.
Graciela spoke through the door. “Are you okay in there?”
“I’m fine. Just a minute.”
The recorder and the wire went into his pocket. The skin where the tape had been was pink, but it could have been anything. Graciela would not suspect. He put his clothes back on and flushed the toilet and noisily washed his hands in the sink.
She waited for him in the hall outside the door, her expression displeased. “What was that all about?” she demanded.
“Sorry. I got some bad food with José. It’s okay now.”
He tried to hold her again, but the spell was broken. Flip felt like a stranger in this apartment that was supposed to be his. Graciela was already gathering up her things. “I can drop you somewhere,” she said.
The pool was empty when they left the apartment and the manager’s office was closed. The sun lay heavily in the west, though it would be a long time setting. At least now there was a breath of wind, even though it was hot.
At first Graciela did not want to talk and Flip waited until he felt the time was right before he asked, “When do you want to move in?”
“I got two months left on my lease,” Graciela says. “It’ll cost me if I break it.”
“So I just stay there on my own?” Flip asked.
“Yeah, I guess you do.”
“It won’t be the same without you.”
“You’ll survive.”
She brought him back to his mother’s house and stopped in front. Flip reached across to touch Graciela’s hand, but she did not take his. She stared out the windshield, her jaw set. The Hyundai idled unevenly.
“Graciela…” Flip said.
“What?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
The hard line of her profile softened and Graciela turned toward him. This time she reached for him and he was glad to take her hand. He wanted to bring her inside with him, put her on his bed and make love to her, but that was impossible. Maybe she would take him to her place if he asked. He did not ask.
“I don’t know how to figure you out sometimes, Flip,” Graciela said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. Just don’t be weird.”
“I won’t next time. I promise.”
“Do you want to go out tomorrow night?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t been dancing in a while. Maybe the club?”
“You can’t drink. The baby.”
“I won’t,” Graciela said. She leaned across to kiss him and Flip tasted her. Her arms twined up around his neck. His hand touched her breast. Slowly they came apart.
“Hey,” Flip said.
“Next time,” she said.
“Okay.”
Flip got out of the car and waved good-bye to Graciela from the curb. She left him in a slowly swirling cloud of exhaust and vanished down the street into the lowering sun.
He went up to the house and let himself in. His mother was watching telev
ision in the living room. “Was that Graciela?” she asked.
“Yes, Mamá.”
“You should have asked her to come in! I have some carrot cake I made and there’s plenty to share.”
“She’s busy tonight, Mamá. Maybe next time.”
“You want to watch Wheel of Fortune with me?” Flip’s mother asked.
“In a little while, Mamá.”
He went to his room and closed the door. The recorder and the wire went back into their hiding place. Flip slipped his father’s knife from his pocket and flicked open the blade. His face was reflected in the steel. It felt sharp enough to draw blood when he tested the edge. “What would you do, Papá?” he asked out loud.
Flip put the knife away. It had no answers for him.
FOURTEEN
WHEN CRISTINA CAME DOWN HER STREET she spotted the FBI detail immediately. Their car was new and shiny and did not fit in on a dusty street in Segundo Barrio. Two agents were inside and Cristina caught a glimpse of them as she drove past: a pair of nondescript men in jackets and sunglasses.
She parked and looked back to where they were. She raised a hand. A second later one of them waved back.
If they were obvious to her, they would be obvious for anyone coming down the street with intent to do her harm. Cristina felt awkward about the arrangement; she hoped that El Paso police officers would handle the duty of watching out for a fellow officer. In the end it was probably better this way, because with the feds doing the mundane jobs, the local cops could concentrate on handling the situation on the ground. Still, she would have liked to know the names of the people watching her.
Ashlee was in the kitchen when Cristina came through the front door, cleaning up plates from dinner. She came into the living room wiping wet hands on a simple apron. “Hi,” she said. “You’re early, aren’t you?”
“A little bit,” Cristina said.
Freddie was at his place at the computer, fully engrossed in his game. When Cristina spoke, he didn’t react at all. He kept his eyes on the screen when Cristina came for a kiss, and she was forced to leave one on his cheek. Only then did he speak: “Mom, you’re home.”
