Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (8 page)

“I need to talk to Tomás,” I said, smiling and attempting to appear as nonthreatening as I could.

He shook his big rock head, his face expressionless.

“I know him. He knows me. Ask him.”

Not even a head shake, just a bored stare.

“Look, I’ve had a lousy night. Do you speak English? I smell like piss and I’m ready to go home. But I came down to your shit sewer of a
ciudad
to talk to your
patrón
, so I’m going to talk to him. Get the fuck out of my way,
cabrón
,” said Mr. Tough Guy.

At least that got a smile.

“Hey, Tomás,” I yelled over the giant’s shoulder. As Tomás squinted through the darkness in my direction, the giant gave me a straight-arm to the chest. He probably thought that he pushed me lightly, but it sent me tripping backward. I
Dick Van Dyke Show
-ed over the top of the table behind me, my hands grabbing at air. The table tipped, sending me and three empty highball glasses flying ass over tits. Glass crashed around me. I landed hard, but unhurt.

I got to one knee. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby getting up from his chair. His eyes focused on the giant. I whistled over the music, and he turned to me. I shook my head. Bobby sat back down, visibly reluctant. He shrugged, smiled, and pulled the nearest stripper onto his lap with a big laugh.

I stood up and walked back to the giant, who surprisingly didn’t apologize. Behind him I saw Tomás staring at me. I gave him a nod and yelled, “I must’ve read you
Billy Goats Gruff
one too many times when you were a kid. You hired your very own troll.”

Recognition lit Tomás’s eyes. He pushed at the girl, rushing her out of her end of the booth. He slid to his feet, his eyes never leaving my face. He smiled. “
Hijo de la chingada
” was his summation of the situation.

He rushed over and cuffed the giant on the back of the head, not maliciously but as a form of instruction. The giant showed nothing. He moved to the side, his face the same expressionless mask.

Tomás held out his arms. “Jimmy!”

As I stepped in, he held me away from his body. “You smell like beer piss.”

Tomás walked me back to his booth. The cowboy stood at the edge of the booth. His turquoise silk shirt would have been loud on a gay jockey. I didn’t let the clothes fool me. The guy’s face was stony with tough guy disdain.

“Jimmy, this is Alejandro. He works for me. And yes, he’s as mean as he looks.”

Alejandro gave me an almost imperceptible nod. The formality of a handshake seemed overly audacious for the particular moment and setting.

Tomás gave Alejandro a slap on the shoulder. “Why don’t you check on the room?”

He was being dismissed, but Alejandro’s face only allowed the slightest sign of insolence before he walked away.

Tomás and I sat down. Without any instruction or command, the two women slid in on either side of the horseshoe booth. It was a tight fit, everyone pushed close together. The girl next to me rested her hand on my crotch.

“It’s good to see you, Jimmy,” Tomás said. “Been a long, long time. Good to see a friend from the past. Seems lately I’m only around new people.”

“What about Mr. Morales?”

“
Mi abuelito
? I don’t see him as much as I should. I don’t think he approves of my lifestyle.” Tomás smiled.

I looked around the place and at the two women, then back to Tomás. “What exactly is your lifestyle?”

Tomás opened his arms wide. “This is it, Jimmy. Or at least part of it.”

“You own this place?”

“Not on paper. Never on paper. I use it as a form of office.”

“And what’s a day at the office like?”

“It’s like ruling the world,” Tomás said, putting his arm around the girl next to him. She dutifully laughed.

When he had spoken to Alejandro and the giant, Tomás had a hint of a Mexican accent. But as he spoke to me, I couldn’t help notice the accent fade, except when he chose to pepper in the occasional Spanish word with newscaster inflection. There was an ease to his voice, but a control in his language. Every word was enunciated and selected for its purpose.

“I guess that makes you upper management. I don’t know if you know this, Tomás, but most businessmen, you know, suit and tie guys, they don’t have henchmen.” I pointed over my shoulder at the giant.

“Little Piwi? He’s security.”

“Little Piwi. That’s clever. Because he’s a big guy. The old switcheroo. He’s big, but his nickname makes him sound small. I get it.”

“
Sabihondo
smart-ass. I didn’t name him. That’s the name he had when I picked him up at the pound.”

I looked toward the bar and saw Alejandro talking to one of the dancers. He rested his hand on the back of her neck. It wasn’t an affectionate gesture, but an unsubtle expression of dominance. When he sternly jerked her toward him, I physically flinched. I turned back to Tomás.

“And that other guy? He security too?”

“He’s necessary. A bit of trouble, but necessary. He serves a present purpose. Watch him long enough, he’ll do something that’ll make you want to kill him.”

“Yet he works for you?”

“I’m an equal opportunity employer. I even hire my enemies when necessary. He’s helpful for what I do.”

“So what is it you do, Tomás?”

The smile left his face. “
Pinche cabrón
,” he muttered under his breath.

“I didn’t mean to get personal,” I said, seeing something in his eyes that warned of potential violence. Something that I immediately knew I didn’t want to face.

“Is that that white-haired freak, Bob Maves?” he asked.

I looked over my shoulder at Bobby, who was laughing with the stripper on his lap. She had her top comfortably off. They shared a bottle of tequila, passing it back and forth.

“He’s here with me.”

Tomás turned to me. “Talking of trouble. That
cabrón
’s dangerous. You know he tried to burn down my
abuelito
’s bar?”

“They worked it all out. He apologized a couple hours ago.”

“Bob likes to fight too much. He’ll get you in trouble.”

“Or get me out of it. You have a hired goon. You should understand,” I said. “Who do you need protection from?”

Ignoring my question, Tomás turned to me. “You know how I wanted to be a businessman? When I was a kid, young, how that’s all I talked about?”

“Yeah, I worried about you a little bit. But if a kid wants to carry a briefcase around, let him, right?”

“But being a kid and all, I didn’t know that being a businessman wasn’t really a job title. That all things were business. That there aren’t any classified ads asking for just ‘businessmen.’” He air-quoted the word. “But that’s what I am. That’s what I’ve become. I’m a businessman. I see opportunities and I take them.”

“Legal or not?”

“This is Mexico, Jimmy. Nothing is illegal—if you have the money.”

Tomás gave a nod to the woman sitting next to him. She slid out of the booth, followed by the other woman. When we were alone, Tomás caught me up.

“The day after I graduated Holtville High, I got on a Greyhound with one hundred and fifty-eight bucks and the worst hangover of my life. Got the hell out. I was in San Diego for two years. At first, working for an uncle at his
taquería
. But eventually I got a job at this investment firm, Statler & Moore. Mail room, but I was in. I’m smart. Ready to learn. I was taking classes at Grossmont College at night. Learning business, accounting, marketing. But people like you and me, we go into the city, we still have the desert in us. We have the border in us. You ever feel one hundred percent right anywhere else? Even in LA. I mean, completely like you fit? I worked hard, but I saw quick that I wasn’t going to be anything more than ‘the Mexican.’ I could have worked harder, but I couldn’t work whiter.

“When you close your eyes and picture a Mexican, is he wearing a suit?

“I learned what I could’ve guessed. Nine to five is pointless, unless it’s nine at night to five in the morning. I found different businessmen that I could learn from. And they had no problem working with me. It was good money, but I didn’t care about all that gangster, macho bullshit. I wanted to go into business for myself. I wanted money, not some skewed idea of respect. Nothing against them. They have a strong business model, but too much unnecessary violence. Not for me. I’m not a tough guy. I’m more—what did you call it? Upper management.

“When I got back down here, back home, I found any opportunity I could. I did a little smuggling, a little coyoteing, a little pimping. It’s like there was a dollar in the wind and I was chasing it in whatever direction it blew.

“Here’s the most important thing I learned. The harder the government in the North tries to stop something from getting in from Mexico, the more money there is to be made from it. Doesn’t matter what it is. Seems like the demand is always getting bigger and the supply is getting smaller. Makes prices go up. Makes people like me rich.

“Used to be, back in the day, the
campesinos
, the farmers, ran the heroin trade out of Sinaloa. Steady trade, everybody was happy, everybody made money. Then, boom, Reagan. The War on Drugs happens, and the narco-cowboys take over and turn Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Mexico City into war zones.

“Used to be, being a coyote was a fifty-, hundred-buck-a-head, low-end job. Barely worth it. But now with all the fences and sensors and
La Migra
agents, fucking Homeland Security. Now you can get two, three grand a head to get someone over. It isn’t inconsequential money anymore. And when there’s real money, there’s real competition. And when there’s money and competition, that’s when the guns finally come out. And that’s not for me either. Although I’ve been known to dabble.

“I knew I wouldn’t last long if I tried to compete with
La Eme
or the Sinaloans or the Colombians or Mara Salvatrucha. They’re all chainsaw crazy with a serious amount of blood on their hands. I needed my own thing. And I knew that they couldn’t own all the financial opportunities that a guarded, but leaky border provides. I was about to go legit, open up a T-shirt stand or something—steady, not flashy—when I figured out what it was I could do. Had a what-do-you-call-it—epiphany.

“I’m a people person. While I do run some of my own businesses, my strength is as an arranger. I do favors. I make friends. And sometimes, my friends need help from my other friends, and people come to me. I’ve introduced smugglers to border agents. I’ve sold baby urine to the Mexican police. I even helped the Mexicali Zoo acquire a new tiger from a recently incarcerated drug lord’s holdings.

“The businesses make me money, but people give me power. Most gringos don’t think Mexicans are smart enough to work a computer, but there’s a whole new generation down here. There’s tons of kids that can do things on the computer, Web pages, digital shit. Put your face on a bodybuilder’s body, make it look like you’re a muscleman. For real.

“It’s like computers and the Internet were made for one thing.
El Porno
. All of a sudden, porn from all over the world could be sold anywhere else in the world. No more videotapes, no more copying, no more warehousing, no more shipping. And like religion and drugs, it’s recession-proof. No more borders. It’s all just information. And no taxes to Uncle Sam if production is in Mexico.
La mordida
is a bargain compared to self-employment tax. Low overhead, high return. And Mexicali has all the talent I need. Fresh talent coming in every day.

“Like Anna, the
señorita
that was sitting next to you. She speaks no English. Tiny, sweet thing. Same story. She came to Mexicali from some village in the south. Paid her money to some coyote. Probably every dime she earned or stole to get to
El Norte
. Coyote left her in the desert.
La Migra
brought her back. Now she’s far from home. In a strange and dangerous city. She has no money. She’s desperate. And that’s where I can help her. She’s got marketable assets, and I got the market. She does some work for me, I help her get to Los Angeles. Between movies, she works here to pay for her room and board. Her own room, instead of some cardboard and tin shack in one of the
colonias
. Everyone wins.

“I maintain over a dozen Web sites. Credit card orders. New movies every week. I got a director that went to film school at UCLA. He uses lights and sets and everything. Makes it look nice. It’s all about a good name:
Spanish Flies
,
Latin Lessons
,
Toss My Taco Salad
. Most popular site I got is called
Brown Bagging
. Good, huh? In it, there’s a guy in a Border Patrol uniform, and we shoot it like he just caught the girl, and he tells her that he’ll let her go if she has sex with him. Then they do it, of course. And at the end, he still sends her back to Mexico. The site didn’t get popular until we did the switch ending. It’s like unless the woman is completely used, the customers can’t get off. But it’s all acting anyway, so who cares. Give the people what they want. Even if those people are repellent.

“Makes a good net profit. Only reason Little Piwi is around is because I like to carry cash and there’s a lot of
pinche ladrónes
in this city. Lots of bad people with no sense of right and wrong.”

I really didn’t want to hear any more. Hadn’t I just finished talking to Bobby about not wanting to see this kind of shit? I knew that the world could be a fucked place, but to have someone throw it in your face was a little much. Especially with the amount of alcohol I had in me and on me. It seemed that everyone in Mexicali was either predator, prey, or both. I wanted to say something, but I kept reminding myself that I was down here to find a prostitute, so who was I to judge. I wanted to make Pop happy, and right now, more than anything I wanted to crash on that ugly, orange couch back at the house.

“I need to find a prostitute,” I said, not waiting for an opening.

Tomás paused, absorbed what I had said, and then laughed loudly. He said, “You need a girl? That’s why you came to see me? Why didn’t you say so? I’m talking and talking and you just want to get laid. Take your pick. Take a couple.”