Tequila Sunset (11 page)

“What do I got to do?”

“First thing you do, you meet Enrique. If he says you’re okay, then we go on to the next step, but
only
if he says it’s okay.”

“Who’s Enrique?”

“
El jefe
.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in the hole.”

“What did he do?”

“He kicked some white boy ass, is what,” Javier said.

Across the table, Rafael giggled like a little girl. Omar was silent, just watching. Flip looked to each of them in turn, trying to think of what to say next. Way across the chow hall, he saw McClain and a bunch of other white boys gathered together at their tables. They didn’t turn their heads his way. The bruise on his face hurt.

“Yeah, okay,” Flip said.

TWO

H
E SAW THEM WHEN HE EMERGED FROM THE
warehouse at the end of his shift. They were beyond the chain-link fencing, leaning up against a car Flip recognized. After a moment he placed one of the figures: Emilio, dressed in knee-length shorts and a t-shirt to go with the warm afternoon.

Emilio waved to Flip and Flip looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, but everyone was saying good-bye, splitting up, going to their cars. Then Emilio motioned Flip to come over.

Alfredo hadn’t come out of the warehouse yet. Flip checked over his shoulder once and then half-jogged to the fence line, where Emilio met him. “Hey,
esé
,” Emilio said. “What’s up?”

“What do you want?” Flip asked.

Emilio put his hands up. “Hey, don’t come at me like that, bro. I’m not trying to get up in your shit.”

Flip glanced back toward the warehouse. Cars and trucks were easing their way out of the gate, one after another, but there was still no Alfredo. He imagined Alfredo coming out at any moment, spotting them together, and then the questions he would ask. “It’s not a good time,” Flip said.

“I understand, I understand. José just sent me out to have a look at your place of business, you know? Check in on you.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Wrong? No. But José was talking about you. He wanted to know what kind of a place you worked.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. José tells me do something, I do it.”

“I got to go,” Flip said.

“See you around.”

Flip left the fence and hurried back toward Alfredo’s truck. They were the last ones left in the parking area. Alfredo stepped out and locked the door behind him. The big truck docks were sealed, the warehouse closed tight. He met Flip at the truck. “Ready?” he said.

“Yeah.”

They got in the truck together and as they pulled out, Flip saw Emilio and his nameless friend get into Emilio’s car. When they turned Flip looked in the side mirror to see if Emilio was following them, but he didn’t see anything.

He saw no sign of them when they headed south toward downtown. Flip gave Alfredo the address of the Parole and Probation office and they found it easily; it was in the County Court Building and next to the El Paso County Jail. It cost two dollars to park.

“You want me to come in with you?” Alfredo asked.

“What? No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Your parole officer might like to talk to your boss.”

“I’ll ask him. Maybe next time.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here.”

Flip left Alfredo with the truck and went around the building to get in through the front. The police manned a metal detector and an x-ray machine at the entrance and Flip had to empty his pockets. There wasn’t much to put in the plastic tray.

He followed the signs to where he needed to go and found himself in a large room lined with rows of plastic seats, facing two glassed-in desks with little metal grilles to talk through. The women behind the glass looked bored. Flip didn’t know which one to go to, so he chose the woman on the right.

“I’m here to see my PO, Mr. Rubio,” Flip said through the grille.

“Sign the clipboard and have a seat.”

Flip did what he was told. The chairs were slick and uncomfortable. Four more men waited, raggedly spaced along the rows, scrupulously avoiding looking at one another. Flip knew they had all done time; prison taught a man to keep himself to himself.

Nearly an hour passed. From time to time a door by the windows would open and a man would come out, check the clipboard and call a name. More people came in and signed up without having to be told. Flip waited.

At last the man called his name and Flip came over. “Are you Mr. Rubio?” he asked the man.

“No. Follow me.”

They went back into the area beyond the windows, where lots of little offices clustered together in a honeycomb. The man led him to a door that looked no different from any of the others – there was no nametag, no number – and rapped on the frame. “Felipe Morales,” the man said.

“Okay,” came a voice from inside.

“Here you go,” the man told Flip.

The office was barely large enough for a desk and another plastic chair just like the ones from outside. Rubio was a short, round man with a brush-like mustache and thinning hair cut military-short. His tie was loosened and he wore short sleeves. “Come in and have a seat, Mr. Morales.”

Flip wedged himself into the chair between wall and desk. He had nowhere to put his elbows, so he sat with his arms extended out in front of him, tucked between his knees.

“The first thing we’re going to do is get you fingerprinted, but let’s get some basics down beforehand. Address and that kind of thing.”

The question and answer session was short. Rubio asked for
Flip’s home address, his telephone numbers and for the license plate number of his car, if he had one. After that he took Flip down the hall to a room where a big machine with a glass plate on the top squatted, humming, beside a computer monitor.

His fingerprints were taken by rolling his fingers across the glass plate so the machine could pick them up. They displayed on the computer monitor. The whole process happened without ink. Rubio had some trouble with Flip’s right ring finger, but they got through it and went back to Rubio’s office.

The man had photographs tacked to a cloth-covered cork board on the wall. None of them were of children, like Flip would expect, but all of dogs. Sometimes Rubio was in the picture with them, sometimes the dogs were alone. One dog was a pit bull, the other a German Shepherd.

Rubio noticed him looking. “My dogs,” he said. “They’re my babies. You like dogs?”

“They’re okay. I don’t have one.”

“You should get one. Pet ownership is a good way to practice responsibility.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, maybe not. It’s not for everyone.”

Rubio then asked questions about Flip’s work. He got his supervisor’s name, the address of the warehouse, the telephone number there. Flip didn’t tell him that his supervisor was his mother’s boyfriend. Maybe that would work against him. “I’ll be calling to check up on you,” Rubio told Flip. “So if you start missing work, I’ll know.”

“I understand.”

“Now for the rest. You’ll find I’m a pretty relaxed guy and I won’t come down on you for little things. You stay out a little late or you take a sick day… these things happen. But part of the terms of your parole is that you stay clear of bars and clubs and you don’t have any contact with felons. You’re not allowed to possess a firearm.
You have to submit to random drug testing and home inspections. If you fail a test, or if you violate your terms, I
will
put you back where you came from. I’ll do it in a heartbeat. You get me?”

“I get you.”

“All right, then. Let’s get the drug test over with so you can go home.” Rubio got a plastic jar and a sealing bag out of the deepest drawer at his desk. He handed the jar over. “There’s a temperature strip on the side, so if it’s not warm piss, I’ll know. Bathrooms are down the hall.”

Flip left the office and took the jar with him.

THREE

M
ATÍAS WATCHED THE
A
ZTECA NAMED
Ramón Ayala through one-way glass.

Ayala was just a kid, twenty years old, but a longtime member of Los Aztecas. According to the records Matías requested and received, Ayala had first gotten into Aztecas-related trouble when he was twelve years old. He had already served time in jail.

There was no mistaking his affiliation: both of his arms were sleeved with tattoos that told the story. On one side, a profusion of images associated with the ancient Aztecs. On the other side, guns and women and the number 21. Matías hadn’t yet had a look at the ink Ayala wore on his chest and back, but he was sure it would be more of the same.

Of the ten men they’d taken from the Azteca house in the raid led by Muñoz, two names had floated to the top consistently. Ramón Ayala’s was one of them. At this point Ayala had been kept up for forty-eight hours, denied anything but water and then given no access to the bathroom. Both Sosa and Galvan had visited him at regular intervals.

Matías could see it in Ayala’s eyes, though Ayala did not know anyone was watching. Desperation had its own particular look, a tightness in the facial muscles, a pallor of the skin that artificial light only made more pronounced. And Ayala was sweating heavily, such that the material of his shirt clung to his body.

He closed the shade and cut off the view, collected his things
from the interview table behind him and left the room. Out in the hall he could hear jailhouse noise filtering down: snatches of shouts, clanging metal and the general din of many conversations happening at once, reflected off concrete.

At the next door he paused and made sure he was presentable, then he let himself in.

Ayala was hunched over the table. Up close Matías could see that perspiration had made it into his hair, matted it together. There was a bucket in the corner of the room. Maybe it wasn’t sweat at all. Matías had not watched Sosa and Galvan at work.

It was all theater, what Matías did. As he had done with all the interviewees up to this point, he made a careful show of laying out his notepad, his pen, his folder of paperwork. He knew he looked like Ayala’s polar opposite: clean and well-tailored and most of all rested. The illusion was that this could go on forever in an endless cycle and no one in authority would be bothered enough to even show a hair out of place.

Matías could smell the despair coming off Ayala. The young man reeked of urine and stale body odor. When he looked at Matías, he trembled in anticipation of the blow. It occurred to Matías that maybe they’d been too hard on this one, or maybe he was just letting sentiment obstruct his better judgment.

“Hello,” Matías said when he sat down.

“H-hello,” Ayala said.

“I don’t know if you smoke. Would you like to smoke?”

“I smoke.”

The pack came from inside Matías’ jacket. He slipped one cigarette free and offered it to Ayala. The man took it with his free hand. His lower lip was split and distended and Matías feared the cigarette would fall. Ayala barely kept the tip steady for Matías to light it.

Matías let Ayala smoke for a minute or two uninterrupted. The trembling was less pronounced now, but the air of distress didn’t leave the man.

“I think you know why I’m here,” Matías said at last.

Ayala exhaled smoke. “Someone snitched on me.”

“Yes.”

“And now I have to confess.”

“Yes.”

“How much do you have?”

“Five signed statements attesting to your role in the shooting of a half-dozen Salvadorans outside a social club. I could get more, but we’ve left the girls out of it for now. I’m sure you bragged to at least one of them.”

The tremor was back as Ayala took another drag. Matías let the smoke curlicue up between them, catch in the beam of the overhead light and dissipate at the ceiling. The smell of tobacco made Matías want a cigarette, too, but he had quit three years before and would not risk starting again.

“How much will I get?”

“Most likely? Life. If you’re willing to give me the names of the other shooters, then maybe concessions can be made. A better prison. Privileges. At the very least, you won’t have to go to prison alone.”

Ayala’s face screwed up and he rubbed at one black eye. “I was just doing what they told me to do.”

“You can give me the names of those who gave the orders. Then they can pay, too.”

A tear fell down Ayala’s cheek and Matías had to steel himself from wrinkling his nose in disgust. Men like Ayala did not deserve the luxury of tears. He wondered if there would be any tears at all if Sosa and Galvan had not made their case so strenuously.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want,” Ayala said.

Matías took up his pen. “You know, you’re very lucky this didn’t happen on the other side of the border. In the States they have the death penalty.”

“You still get my life.”

“But not fast enough,
mi amigo
. Not fast enough.”

FOUR

F
LIP WORKED ALL WEEK AND ON
F
RIDAY HE
was exhausted. Even working in the carpentry shop at Coffield had not been so demanding. All of his muscles hurt. He took a handful of ibuprofen and soaked himself in a hot shower for thirty minutes before collapsing on the bed for a nap.

His sleep was dreamless. A chiming sound intruded and when he opened his eyes it was after dark. On his bed-stand his phone was vibrating and ringing. He’d already missed two calls.

He answered. “Hello?”

“Flip?” A man’s voice.

Flip sat up in the dark. “Yes?”

“It’s José.”

“José, yeah. How did you get my number?”

“Everything’s easy to get.”

He rubbed his eyes and stifled a deep yawn that came up from his diaphragm. His mouth didn’t taste right. “What’s up? Is something happening?”

“Yeah, something’s happening: I’m having a get-together at my place. You want in?”