My Bad

by Manuel Ramos

  “Too bad for Móntez and his need for closure.”

  “Yeah. Is there a list somewhere of all the dead?”

  “I’m sure there is but I haven’t seen it. Those lists are always wrong anyway, initially. Especially if they deal with violence across the border. Give it a week or two and the data will be more accurate, if not completely reliable.”

  “I guess we wait until it settles down in the prison, then check with Batista again.”

  “There’s something you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A handful of prisoners are still on the run. The news is saying that the Federales and marines have regained control of the situation, but that comes from the Mexican government. Our sources—Homeland Security, really—say that six of the prisoners are unaccounted for. We’ve got one report that at least two of them headed north across the border into the States.”

  “You think one of them is Paco?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. These reports have to be verified and they’re sketchy on details. I’m just saying you should know. Paco could be alive but not in custody.”

  “And he could be headed for the States?”

  “That’s quite a jump. I highly doubt that. Odds are that he’s either dead or back in lock-up. That’s most likely.”

  “But not necessarily the only outcome, right?”

  “Well, no. That’s why I mentioned it. Still, it has nothing to do with you.”

  I thought about that for a few seconds.

  “Gus? What’s wrong?” She didn’t sound worried, only curious. Ana never appeared to lose her self-control.

  “Paco doesn’t have any reason to come to Denver, as far as we know. So, it doesn’t matter. Nothing to do with me, as you say. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “What if he knows something about Sam’s missing money? Might be motivation to run to Denver. Nothing to lose by trying to come up here.”

  “Now you really are jumping to conclusions and getting all bothered about nothing.”

  “Maybe. But we thought Paco was dead. Wrong. He rose from the bottom of the ocean. Now, anything’s possible.”

  “Don’t let your imagination run wild. Even if he knows about the money, what’s that have to do with you? He wouldn’t know anything about you.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. If not me, then how about Luis?”

  “The guy’s been on the run, or smuggling drugs, and then in a Mexican prison. I can’t see how he would know anything about either of you guys.” If I believed such stuff, I would have sworn that I could feel my blood pressure rising. “Come on over,” she said. “We can talk about this. You’re tripping. I’ll calm you down. We haven’t been together in days.”

  Her offer was tempting.

  “Save that thought. I should call Luis. Get his angle on this. I’ll get back to you.”

  When I hung up, Corrine grabbed my wrist.

  “How serious is this thing with this person from Mexico . . . Paco?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s anything at all.” I shook off her grip. “I’m thinking out loud, mostly. Luis wanted to talk to him because he was with Sam Contreras when Sam died. He thought Paco might be able to shed some light on what happened to María Contreras when she disappeared. It was a long shot. Now, it’s a no shot.”

  Corrine leaned against her stove and stirred her cup of coffee. “You don’t sound too sure. Maybe your friend Ana should have a few cops talk with you, figure out some security. Couldn’t hurt.”

  “You may be right. I’m gonna see her later. I’ll bring it up.”

  18 [Luis]

  he’s a real nowhere man

  Gus called about the prison riot and the possibility that Francisco Abarca was on his way to Denver. At the time, I didn’t give Gus’ concern a second thought.

  “The guy’s running for his life,” I said to Gus. “He’ll disappear into the Southern California freeway maze of immigrants and wannabe actors. Denver isn’t even on his radar. No reason it should be.”

  “What if he knows about Sam’s money? What if he had something to do with María’s disappearance? Maybe she clued him in to where the money might be. You wanted to talk to him about all that, remember?”

  “I wanted to ask him questions about some of that. You’re worse than a law school exam with all your what-ifs. He’s been in Mexico smuggling drugs. Then in jail, apparently. When would he have had any contact with María? It’s not logical.”

  He sighed over the phone. “Yeah, you’re right. You and Ana. I’m just leery. Things don’t always go logical for me.”

  “Given your history, I can’t blame you. And we’ll be careful. But, really, what else can we do? I’ll talk with Batista and find out what he knows about where Paco might be, and whether he’s any kind of threat to you or me.”

  I added that he should try to relax until I had concrete info I could pass on to him. He said something about visiting Ana Domingo.

  We basically closed the office because of the storm, but Rosa and I continued to slog through retirement issues. We were at our desks dressed in jeans and sweaters, drinking too much coffee and scarfing down more doughnuts and empanadas than I’d eaten in years.

  Rosa efficiently mopped up the finish work for the files I knew I would never get back to. She called the clients, told them that I’d done all I could, and diplomatically terminated the relationships, usually with a cheery statement about how the final bill for services was in the mail. If needed, she offered a referral.

  “That Mrs. Trujillo is a trip,” she said at one point. “She absolutely refuses to believe that you are retiring. I repeated like a dozen times that you weren’t going to advise her anymore, and she just kept asking about when she could see you again to go over some business things about her grandchildren. By business, she means trying to keep them in school and out of jail. I think that woman is in love with you, Luis.”

  “Sounds right. She’s only about eighty-five.”

  “Closer to you in age than that miniskirt you escorted around town for a few weeks last summer.”

  “Olivia? You talking about her? She wasn’t that young.”

  “I’m older than her, and I think you’re too old for me, so what does that tell you?”

  “It tells me you should get back to the phones.”

  I dictated several letters to various clients advising them of my retirement and giving them suggestions about who could now handle their legal affairs. The files triggered images from across the decades. The office clutter stimulated memories that picked at my sentimentality. A dim face associated with a name and I recalled a particular incident that meant something to only me. Or a formal pleading transported me to a courtroom and a hard-fought trial. I flashed on bits and pieces of my attorney life: a question I asked during cross-examination that cinched a ruling in my client’s favor; a point I pressed in the oral argument of an appeal that ended up in the judges’ written opinion; a bottle of cheap cologne from a grateful elderly client who worried that I wasn’t married.

  The idealistic reasons I had for becoming an attorney rolled over me like the marijuana cloud at the annual 4/20 rally, and for a brief second I worried that I’d never succeeded at my own ambition. I’d wanted to be the Chicano attorney of and for the people, the fast-talking, clever abogado who could go mano-a-mano with the best legal minds in the state but who never forgot his roots in the housing projects of Denver’s Westside. I’d wanted to create change, change for the better.

  “But not much has really changed,” I muttered.

  I was slipping into reminiscences that had nowhere to go except regret.

  My imagination left me and the letters turned into rote and depressing exercises. I paused and surveyed my office. Forty years was a long time—for anything. Now what? The wave of nostalgia felt colder than the gusts of icy wind that cracked against the office windows.

  And where in hell was I going to put all the stuff?


  Rosa walked in and interrupted just in time.

  “The Mexican cop, Batista. Sent an email to our office mail box. He says he has something very important to talk over with you, and that he hopes you can use Skype to do the call today.”

  I’d rarely used that technology and I needed Rosa’s help to make sure everything was working on our end. Turned out to be simple, but I told her to stay in the room in case anything happened. The face-to-face format of a video call had to mean that the Mexican cop was very serious about his message. I worried before he said a word.

  When Batista flashed on my computer screen, I could almost hear Gus say, “I told you.”

  I saw only Batista’s face for most of the call, but somehow he gave the impression that he was a muscular, wiry man. He had a coarse moustache and wavy hair that gleamed in the florescent light of the office from where he made the call. That same light made the scar on his left cheek shine. His deep voice had the singsong quality that many native Spanish speakers carry, even when they’re speaking something other than Spanish.

  We got around the small talk quickly. Batista obviously wanted to deal with our business as soon as possible.

  “Esto es un poco raro. Very strange.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” I said.

  “Well, here’s the deal. The riot, to begin with. A massacre of guards and prisoners by members of a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. Most of the men who participated in the butchery are dead. The odds were always against them. They had little chance to survive, so we believe this was primarily a suicide mission. Only God knows why.”

  “Or the devil,” I said.

  “Sí, el diablo.”

  “Paco? Is he dead?”

  “This tipo, Abarca, is still on the run. He beat the odds and escaped. We are fairly sure that he connected with someone who helped him across the border, probablemente un coyote who does that for a living. He slipped through the roadblocks we set up around Tijuana. I’ve seen video of a man who looks like him jumping off the back of a pickup truck at a bus station in Chula Vista, in the States. After that? ¿Quién sabe? To be frank, we don’t know where he is now.”

  “Is there any reason to think he would be on his way to Denver?”

  “That’s an unusual question, señor.”

  “I’m sure you understand why I ask.”

  He scratched his scar, then ran his fingers through his thick hair. “You wanted to talk with him about your client, la señora Contreras. Which means you think he may have an interest in your city, or an association that would make it a good place for him to run to.”

  “Yes, exactly. Do you have any information about him that would indicate something like that?”

  “I said this was a strange situation. He resisted our interrogations while we had him in jail. We thought eventually he would yield, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t learn anything from him about his involvement with the death of Anselmo Contreras, or why he was reported as killed by the local police in La Paz, or where he’s been for the past several years. And now he’s gone. When I tried to find out more about this Abarca person, I ran into dead ends, as you say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There is documentation about his killing by pirates in the raid on the fishing boat. Police reports, newspaper stories, even tape of a television news broadcast showing a few pieces of the hull of the wrecked boat. Pero, I can’t find anything about him before that. No school, military or prison records. There’s no history of this man before he was thought to have been killed in the attack that also killed señor Contreras. That makes it difficult, impossible really, to look for leads to find him since we have no idea who his family or friends might be, who he might have worked for, where he might have lived. Nada, nothing.”

  “How could that happen? He’s been incarcerated. Didn’t anyone try to run a background check on him when he was arrested? Or when he was sentenced?”

  “These things sometimes happen, I’m embarrassed to concede. It’s actually not that difficult to get lost or forgotten or overlooked in the Mexican criminal justice system. Most often, a man, what do you say . . . slips through the cracks, when he’s a friend or relative of a powerful person, a politician or banker . . . someone with influence. I’ve come across a few in my experience who have no history, como Abarca. They were important men. I never would have thought Francisco Abarca fit that profile.”

  “If he’s important, is he also dangerous?”

  “Often there is no difference between the two. I can tell you this about Abarca. He deceived everyone for years, so he is no fool. For his disappearance he needed help in high places. He adapted to prison without any problems. If he was an unknown, his life would have been hell, at least at the beginning. Obviously, he had friends en la cárcel who were willing to help him.”

  “He’s one of the few who survived the riot and escaped,” I said.

  “Yes, you see what I mean. If indeed he is making his way to Denver, and he’s looking for people who knew Anselmo or la señora Contreras, then I would tell those people to be careful and to watch for this man.”

  My concern turned into an awkward pause on the computer screen. He tried to reassure me.

  “But, señor Móntez, we don’t know that he’s on his way to Denver. Nor that he knows about your connection to señora Contreras. I’ll talk with the Denver authorities and alert them to the possibility of Abarca ending up in your city. They will take all the necessary steps. If you let them know your worry, perhaps they can help you. Meanwhile, I’ll send you a photograph of Abarca, by email. You and your office staff may have the advantage on him if he does show up. You can be waiting for him, while he will have to work to find you.”

  Shouldn’t be too hard, I thought. I’m in the yellow pages, paper and online. I asked him to send me all he could on Abarca. He said he would but he reminded me that there wasn’t that much.

  19 [Gus]

  oh mercy, mercy me

  things ain’t what they used to be

  Ana picked me up from Corrine’s house at two o’clock in the afternoon. She drove an all-wheel drive SUV that she borrowed from one of her brothers out of an excess of caution. The snow had stopped falling but driving was still an iffy proposition. Ana drove the vehicle over our usual route. Slow and easy on the snowy side streets, and then she let the SUV rip on Twenty-Second, then Lawrence, which had been cleared by the city crews. She had to slow down again when she turned onto Thirtieth, near her place.

  She wore a pink down jacket, pink gloves and a purple hat that covered her ears. She didn’t look like a policewoman, or, at least, like the image that I tied to the concept of a woman who works for the police department.

  I had no doubt, though, that Ana could take care of herself. I’d seen her physical strength, in more ways than one. We worked out a few times together at the rec center. She lifted weights and stretched muscles like a pro, and I sweated trying to keep up with her. She’d grown up with a quartet of brothers who didn’t spare her from their macho games. At an early age she learned how to box, play football and shoot a gun. At my early age I learned how to fight without the discipline of boxing, how to play games on the unsuspecting and how to run when the guns were drawn.

  She told me that her brothers—Tony (Junior), Chris, Paul and Gabe (Baby Gaby)—were the most important people in her life. They’d watched over their sister her entire life. She was the second youngest and she didn’t argue with the idea that they spoiled her rotten. “Anything I want,” she said, “they try to get for me.”

  I took that to mean that if she couldn’t handle a problem, her brothers were ready, willing and able to jump in if needed.

  I had no doubt, either, that she was smart. She graduated with honors from the University of Colorado in Criminal Justice. She told me early in our relationship that she wanted to be a police officer since she was a child. Her father was killed in a robbery at the auto repair shop he’d created out of doing fix-ups for hi
s neighbors.

  “Of course, my father’s death changed my life,” she said. “The police did all they could to help our family, and when they finally arrested someone, they made sure we had a voice with the district attorney about what should happen to the killer. I’ve wanted to do police work ever since. That must sound silly to you, Gus.”

  “Not silly, just unreal. I come from a whole different experience. My point of view is the opposite of yours. No surprise, right?”

  “And yet, here you are, getting next to a cop. Aren’t you afraid you’ll pay a price for being with me? Lose your cred on the streets?” She half-laughed when she talked but the laugh didn’t hide the thin line of tension under her words.

  “It’s not my cred that’s at risk,” I said. “The Denver Police-Community Liaison Officer has more to lose, way more, than an ex-con who doesn’t answer to anyone except his parole officer and his big sister.”

  That made her laugh even more.

  “Let me worry about what I got to lose or not lose. I can deal with it, all of it.”

  A big chunk of what she had to deal with was the reaction from her family. According to Ana, her brothers thought she’d blown a brain fuse because of me. They didn’t appreciate their little sister cuddling up to a convicted felon. When I asked if there was anything I could do about the brothers, she said only that I should stay away from them. So far, I’d managed to do just that.

  “It’s madness in Mexico,” she said as she guided the SUV through an icy intersection.

  “I think some of that is heading our way,” I said. “There’s a pot of money waiting for someone like this Paco. He needs the cash. He’s the last one to have any dealing with Contreras. It makes sense that he’s running to Denver. He wants what Valdez wanted. The missing body and the fire tell me that there’s somebody else willing to kill for it. I don’t doubt that Paco would, too.”

  “You don’t know that. You’re speculating, and that’s foolish. You should deal with what you really know.”