Tequila Sunset (34 page)

Flip got in the Lexus with José. The engine turned over and the air conditioner started to blast along with the radio. José turned it down so it was only a whisper.

“Why did you come to my house?” Flip asked.

“Is it a problem? Your mother’s a very nice woman. Too bad her fiancé’s such a fucking
puto
.”

José drove. Flip could not guess where they were going. He only hoped it would not be Juárez. He did not want to go back to Juárez again.

“Why did you tell her you wanted to hire me to be a carpenter?” Flip asked.

“You want me to tell her the truth? In my experience, mothers don’t handle that news very well.”

“She’ll know when she tells Alfredo.”

“I think he’ll keep his mouth shut. He hasn’t told her so far.”

A few turns later and Flip thought they were headed back to José’s house, but then they headed the opposite direction down a long street until they reached an apartment building painted sky blue with black railings. The building was shaped like a U and in the center of it was a pool. José parked in the lot.

“What is this place?” Flip asked.

“Come on.”

Flip followed José out of the car and through the gate onto the property. They passed the manager’s office and caught a flight of steps to the second floor. A few people were down by the pool, including a mother with her young child. The little boy wore yellow floaties on his arms.

José skipped a handful of doors until he came to one marked 212. He dug into his pocket and produced a key. The key unlocked the apartment. “Inside,” he said.

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

J
OSÉ WAS GONE BY THE TIME
G
RACIELA
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 were 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.