The Book of Lost Saints

by Daniel José Older

  Finally it seems like they’re going to let us go but then the head guy asks to see what’s in the trunk. Sebastián hesitates for a split second and in that moment I know, I know, I know that yes, there are weapons in the trunk, which means we’re both going to die, probably on TV, our insides splattered in a dark gray across the wall and the voices of a hundred angry witnesses screaming Paredón fading in our ears.

  The soldiers see it too and they hurry around to the back of the car without waiting for an answer, because really, that moment’s hesitation was all the answer they need. I realize I’m clenching my whole body, every muscle I have, as if I could somehow crawl into myself and disappear. Sebastián’s just staring straight ahead and I close my eyes and hear the trunk pop open and cringe deeper into myself and wonder if they’ll arrest us or just shoot us right here and now, which I think I’d maybe prefer, and then they walk back around to the window and say, Okay, we can go on, buenas tardes.

  And we putt-putt off and I exhale what feels like my entire life in a single breath. When my legs finally stop shaking a few minutes later, I look over at Sebastián but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look back at me. He just looks angry, angry like he wants to kill someone angry, and I think if he speaks fire will come out, enough fire to even topple a mountain like Papi and keep burning, burning till the whole city is leveled and smoldering.

  * * *

  Ramón rises, writes the sprawling dream out over five scribbly pages in his journal, and then makes a hearty breakfast. He’s off work for the second day in a row and I can see his whole mind is music, the beats churn through his head as he finishes his scrambled eggs and sausage. He’s not looking at anything in particular, occasionally mumbling a line from the María Teresa Vera song and then beatboxing, stopping, repeating.

  “You’re sort of like an idiot savant,” Adina announces. She’s standing in the kitchen, looking fresh and regal in those silky black pajamas and staring at Ramón.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Like, an hour, man.”

  “No!”

  “Okay, maybe five minutes, but still: dude.”

  “Yeah. I’m trying to get that piece finished by tonight so I can play it in my set. At least a demo.”

  “The one Kacique sent you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “You bringing that coffee or nah?” a voice calls from Adina’s room.

  Ramón perks up. “Oh. Don’t let me keep you.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Adina says. She fills two cups from the cafetera and disappears. A sultry R&B song bumps out from behind her closed door and Ramón rolls his eyes, grinning to himself. He picks up his own coffee, brings it with him to his own lady-in-waiting, albeit a colder, grayer one, and is about to settle in when his cell phone blips to life, all flashing lights and manic drumming. It’s a blocked number.

  “Yes?”

  “Ramón, Alberto.”

  “I don’t remember giving you my phone number.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I see. Perhaps that was for a reason.”

  “Well, anyway, I’m well, thank you for asking. I’m calling on behalf of my grandfather.”

  “How nice for you.”

  “He wants to know if you’ve considered his proposal.”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  A pause, where Ramón and I both imagine Alberto to be silently cursing and gesticulating violence at his phone. “And what did you decide, Ramón?”

  “Oh, I haven’t yet.”

  Another pause. Slightly more ominous for no discernible reason. “I see,” Alberto finally says. He sounds exhausted suddenly, like he can’t even be bothered with all these games anymore. “Well, he’d like to have an answer by tonight. Someone’ll be in touch, Ramón.”

  And the call cuts off before Ramón can muster up a comeback. He rolls his eyes, puts on his headphones.

  I pass several hours being perfectly still, watching Ramón fidget and fuss with the rhythm strips and dancing guitar riffs, while a few more Cuban tracks download at an achingly slow pace. Those old-time recordings are tricky, I’m sure. Seems Señorita Vera played in her own time signature, pausing and slowing slightly down whenever she felt the song called for it, so Ramón has to get meticulous to make it all click. I remember Nilda pausing dramatically at the end of each chorus as the final couplet repeated itself and we’d all sing it together, then fall out laughing.

  Sometime around two he walks out into the kitchen for lunch and finds Corinna sitting at the table in Adina’s bathrobe, eating a sandwich.

  “Oh,” Ramón says too quickly to make it sound warm.

  Corinna raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “I didn’t know you were here. Hey.” He’s still a little ditzed out from being in the beats and melodies zone for the past couple hours.

  “That’s it?” Corinna demands with a sly smile. “Hey. The fuck’s wrong with you, Ramón? Gimme a hug.”

  He does, not totally sure if he’s supposed to or not considering all the back and forth. “Sorry, I’m all caught up in a song.”

  “Adina mentioned. You gonna play it tonight?”

  “Think so. You coming?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Hey, Ramón.” Adina emerges from her room looking, quite frankly, well fucked. “You make me a sandwich too?”

  “Naw,” Corinna says. “You were sleeping.”

  “Oh good, then I can have the rest of yours.” She swipes the half-eaten sandwich up and makes like she’s gonna take off with it before Corinna grabs her and hefts her into her lap.

  “Not so fast, girly. We can share.”

  Ramón chooses to block them out, retrieves a container of Chinese leftovers, and plops in front of the TV, letting his mind go blank to the cawing of telenovela oblivion.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The club is full tonight. The crowd is usually mostly Cuban and Jerseyite, but folks have congregated from all over the tristate area, lured by a winking write-up in last week’s Village Voice proclaiming North Jersey the new “Havana-flavored” Brooklyn and Luis’s club, La Paz, its cultural epicenter. Ramón, or DJ Taza, as he’s known, got a special shout-out for his “innovative, edgy, and Latin-tinged” skills. He rises to the occasion, sending up a furious dirty grind of thump-thumping and clack-clacking that has the crowd at full tilt.

  Sliding along beneath his skin, feeling those raucous vibrations bounce through him and then back out again, I see that there is not so much space between the orchestra in my sister’s hands and the one her son unleashes out of his turntables.

  With his left hand, Ramón spins a record and then scratches it to a halt as the other one rotates around to the spot he wants. The beat trundles along beneath, gathering, rising, and then Ramón drops the needle and an urgent attack of electric guitar cackles out, exploding over the drums. Then the beat gets even heavier and so does the guitar, and sure, in sound alone, they are worlds away from my sister’s tinkling piano, but the rhythm and melody swerve together in the air, swaying above the dancers just as those notes shimmered and swooped above our heads as we clacked over those linoleum kitchen tiles. And the dancers, entranced, respond, lovingly drawing closer together, closer to Ramón, filling the room with their unabashed revelry.

  I take the opportunity to slip into the back room, where Luis Cavalcón holds court over his nightly domino game along with a couple other old heads from the neighborhood. It’s tantalizing, how familiar the man seems. But I can’t find him in the scattered shreds of my memory. I study that lumpy nose, the half-closed eyes, and billowing gray hair, trying to reconstruct it backward into a younger version. An elaborate mermaid tattoo covers his left arm. Her body twists out of an explosion of waves and crustaceans; her head’s turned away, toward some unseen shore. Luis grunts as he plops another ficha o
n the board, smiles almost imperceptibly.

  I got nothing; just the same gnawing certainty I’ve known him before. I’m close, my breathy nothingness just a few centimeters from his face, and at one point he looks up from the dominoes and right at me and I freeze. Does he see me? Does he understand something I don’t? Hold a missing piece somehow? His eyes open wide momentarily and then droop back to their normal sleepy-looking state. Luis goes back to the domino game, grumbling to himself.

  “¿Qué te pasa, Luis?” one of the other old guys asks.

  “Nada.” Luis waves him off gruffly. “No pasa nada.”

  Nothing didn’t happen. Which means something happened. Well, in English something happened. In Spanish, nothing happened even more emphatically. I choose to take the English meaning, double-negative be damned, because I know something did happen.

  Something.

  I just don’t know what.

  A collective hurrah explodes from the club and I follow the men in to see what the fuss is about. It’s Ramón’s new track, intertwining guitar riffs over sneaky beats. The crowd is going nuts and I’m flushed with pride for my nephew. The old men, less impressed, parade back to their domino game but I remain, taking in all the warm collision of bodies and minds that’s floating up from the dancers, filling the thick, sweaty club air.

  Ramón sends the song off into a record-scratch improv over a shimmering jazz beat. Marcos pitter-patters along beneath him, punctuating with a soft bolero rhythm on the congas. People are going nuts and it’s beautiful to watch, right up until the music cuts off. A groan rises up from the crowd; everyone looks around irritably and then the lights come on. It’s like jumping out of a warm bath into a cold, rainy day. The club fluorescents burn into squinting faces.

  Marcos looks up at Ramón. Ramón shrugs, tries to see past the glare toward the sound booth to find out what’s going on. Christian, the sound guy, looks as confused as everyone else though, and he shakes his head at Ramón.

  I spread myself. It’s nothing I do often because it leaves me groggy and shakes my already fragile sense of self. But I’m curious. And, quite frankly, pissed. I was enjoying the music and if this is what I think it is, well … I fill the room with myself. Everything is a little less precise, a little glazed over but I can see the whole club, a global perspective that seems to waver slightly like the world is breathing against it. I’m in the corner next to a sleeping teenager who snuck in with a fake ID and drank more than he could handle. I’m in the middle of the dance floor beside a gorgeous couple in their thirties, still holding each other, still caked with each other’s sweat, still breathless with the rhythmic grinding they were deep into when the music died. I’m behind the bartender, an ornery, beautiful matancera who’s just about had it with these over-capacity nights and going straight to her day job at the accounting firm.

  It’s all very benign. I’m about to spring back into my more focused self when I notice the doorway down to the basement. It’s ajar. It’s never ajar. I’m all in one, collected back into myself and hurtling through the sweat-thick air toward the basement door. But my flow is jacked up from spreading so thin. I keep feeling I’ve left parts of myself behind, only to spin around and get caught in my own ether. By the time I reach the door, Luis has just stormed through it and Ramón is close behind.

  Down a narrow stairwell into a narrower passageway. Luis clicks on the light but it’s dim and fragmented, just an open bulb. Up ahead, there’s a clattering noise and scattered footsteps. I’m recovered, somewhat, and I flush forward, through the gooey thickness of Ramón and then Luis, trying to ignore how familiar he smells, and down the corridor, around a corner, up a small flight of stairs to where a tall guy in a black ski mask is fumbling with the padlocked door. The door leads out onto the streets. The man has a tool kit and an expanding billy club and I have not one single doubt that he’s one of the Gutierrez family asswipes.

  I congregate my entire being on the padlock. His gloved fingers cover me and I focus myself, allow the first hints of physicality into my being. It shouldn’t take much. Disrupting things is pretty easy and I only need a few seconds. He’s panting now and his desperation makes him even sloppier, but still he manages to slide the heavy metal bar upright and it’ll only take a good tug to pull the thing across the door and break free. Without thinking about it or even really meaning to, I thrust my focus even harder into my hands, my face.

  And I appear.

  I’m not fully formed, I’m sure; probably just a shimmering, shadowy visage. But it’s enough. The man’s eyes go wide and he screams at the pair of bluish ghostly hands over his. Then he looks up, glimpses my face, and loses his mind.

  He’s wailing and slamming his weight against the locked door when Luis and Ramón get to him. “Who the fuck are you?” Luis demands, and I see he is a warrior. Old and hunched over somewhat but still solid in body and fierce in mind and spirit. There’s no doubt he’s killed men; he’s faced his own death more than once. He’s certainly willing to again. Possibly right now. I wonder. Ramón stands behind him, less solid in determination but perfectly still and threatening if only for how massive he is.

  “The face … The…!” the intruder whines. “The fingers!”

  “The hell is he talking about?” Ramón says.

  Luis steps in with one foot and backhands the guy across the face.

  He stops writhing and slides to the floor, holding his cheek. Finally he looks up at Luis and it’s clear the threat of a solid beatdown overtakes what surely must’ve been a cruel trick of his terrified mind. Surely. “Ah! Lemme go, man. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Said the man in the motherfucking ski mask. You gotta be kidding me, son.” Luis’s accent gets thicker with the thrill of imminent combat. He raises his arm for another blow, but the guy in the mask cowers.

  “Don’t! Don’t! I’m with Gutierrez!”

  Luis sighs and rips off the guy’s mask. He’s not one of the ones that battered on my nephew, which is almost too bad, because I’d love to see them cornered and terrified. No, this is probably one of the brainier guys they keep around for lower impact sabotage like cutting the power to the DJ booth at a nightclub. Pathetic.

  “Comemierda,” Luis says. He hocks something atrocious from his lungs and releases it on the guy. “What’s your name?”

  “Pancho.”

  “First or last?”

  “It’s just my name!”

  “Alright! ¡Ya con esa mierda! Put him in the room.” A couple of Luis’s heavies shuffle past Ramón and scoop up Pancho and escort him down the corridor and through a door.

  “What you think?” Ramón asks as he and Luis pick up the scattered tools and knapsack.

  Luis shrugs as I flush past him. “La misma mierda.”

  “But … why? Why tonight?”

  “Well, I guess we just have to find out.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Pancho’s already taken a couple of hits when we get there. Nothing serious, he’s not even bleeding, but sweat pours down his face and he shivers like a fixless addict. Clearly, this kid doesn’t get sent into high-pressure situations very often.

  “Why you fuckin’ with my club, son?”

  “I—” Cadiz the bouncer baps him hard across the face and Pancho makes an oomf sound and spits out blood. “The fuck was that for? I was answering!”

  “Incentive to answer correctly.” Luis shrugs.

  “You act all tough but you can’t do shit, really. We both know who I work for. You’re not going to—” Luis nods at Cadiz and Cadiz wraps his huge arms around Pancho’s neck.

  “Gutierrez can only do something if they find the body. ¿Me entiendes?”

  Pancho nods, gasping. Cadiz lets him go.

  “The song,” Pancho says, catching his breath. “The one with the rap.”

  Luis shoots a look at Ramón, who raises his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders. “What about it?”

  “The rapper, Tranq 7.” A friend of Kacique’s whose words R
amón had laced smoothly in and out of the song yesterday afternoon.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s Cuban.”

  “We’re all Cuban, you piece of dogshit.”

  “No, he’s Cuban from Cuba. Todavía. He hasn’t left yet.”

  Everyone takes a step back. “This is true, Ramón?”

  “Yes,” Ramón says very quietly. “A friend sent it to me. We’ve been collaborating through an online forum.”

  “Shh!” Luis snaps. “Say no more.” Cadiz, Ramón, and Pancho are all staring at the old man. Strangely, I have to suppress an urge to hug him. It welled up out of nowhere, an unrelenting tenderness that I have no basis for or understanding of. I shrug it off till it simmers and I can ignore it.

  “Jus’ so I understand: Your Cuban boss sent you here to fuck with my Cuban club because my Cuban DJ is playing music made by a Cuban, but only the last Cuban part matters, because he is still on the island, and we are not. Is that correct?” There’s no way Luis is as incredulous as his voice would have you believe. He’s been well aware of the Gutierrezes’ extremist political machine and all its associated felonious mischief. He’s seen them at work, probably rivaled them for years now. I suspect he’s tolerated it this long mostly for self-preservation reasons, and it’s probably never come this close to his doorstep before.