Tequila Sunset (30 page)

“You can hear it all the time if you come home.”

“Don’t keep pushing.”

“I will. I will until you give this up and come back to where you belong.”

“My sister says I could get legal work in Monterrey. We could move here.”

“And what would I do?” Matías asked.

“You could do private security.”

Matías thought about everything that had happened, everything
that was going to happen. The depot. The trucks. He shook his head, though Elvira couldn’t see. “I’d be no good at it.”

“Won’t you think about it?”

“All right, I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you.”

“Now tell me about your day. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Won’t you be bored?”

“I’ll never be bored with you.”

THREE

A
LFREDO CAME TO
F
LIP’S MOTHER’S HOUSE
for a quiet celebration of the Fourth of July. Graciela was there to make four and they cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill and set off fireworks in the back yard. The entire time Alfredo didn’t say a word to Flip, nor would he look in Flip’s direction.

Flip thought his mother must have seen what was happening, but she said nothing and neither did he. After a long, uncomfortable quiet where both men drank beers nearly side by side without speaking, Flip finally made his excuses and left with Graciela.

She took him to her apartment and they made quiet love on her mattress on the floor. Afterward they lay together with the sheet pulled over them as the air conditioner in the window rumbled away. Flip thought he heard something dripping inside.

“Party at José’s tonight,” Graciela said.

“I guess we have to go,” Flip said.

“Have you talked to José since… you know, since?”

“No.”

There had been no calls, no visits, no sign of any Indian. Some days coming home from work Flip almost felt like the storm had passed him over and he was still whole. The wire and recorder the detectives gave him was in his pocket. He had put it there that morning, perhaps unconsciously knowing that he would need it.

“What will you say to him? Will you tell him to leave Alfredo alone?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you would think about it.”

“I have thought about it, and I don’t know.”

Quiet, and in the silence the sound of water. The air conditioner was definitely leaking. Flip wished he knew how to fix stuff like that. He liked to do things for Graciela, the way a guy should do for his girl. Like Alfredo did for his mother.

“Flip, I have to tell you something,” Graciela said after a while.

“What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Flip started and looked at Graciela where she was settled against his body. “What did you say?” he asked, though he knew.

Graciela sat up and pulled the sheets around her to cover her breasts. “Don’t be mad! I promise I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“How can you be pregnant?”

“Well, you haven’t used nothing all the times we’ve been together.”

“I thought you were taking the pill or something!”

“No, I wasn’t. Oh, now you’re mad.”

Flip’s head whirled. He climbed up off the mattress and took two uneven steps to the couch before sitting down heavily. The couch was scratchy against his bare skin. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“I’ve missed a couple of times now, so I took one of those home pregnancy test things. It was positive,” Graciela said. Her face was screwed up and she looked as though she was about to cry. Flip felt the urge to go to her.

“I don’t believe it,” Flip said.

“Do you hate me?”

“No, I don’t hate you! Just give me a minute to think, okay?”

Flip had too many thoughts clamoring for attention at once. He flashed on Alfredo and his mother and the men at work and even his PO, Mr. Rubio. What would they say about this? What would they do? And there was José in the middle of it and he was
laughing at Flip for being a fool.

After he had been quiet for a long time, Graciela said, “I don’t have to have it.”

“What?” Flip said. “No way! We’re not doing that!”

Graciela sniffed and now she was crying, wiping away tears as fast as they could course down her cheeks. The sheets were still clutched around her, a dark pool holding her body unseen. “I didn’t know. Some guys—”

“I’m not some guys!” Flip declared. “And I say you’re not going to do that. You hear? It’s not gonna happen.”

“Flip, I love you.”

Flip pressed his hands to the sides of his head. He got up and stalked the room. “No, no, this is all wrong! It’s not supposed to happen like this!”

“I’m sorry! I promise I didn’t mean to!” Graciela said and the tears came faster than before. She was breathing erratically and her shoulders shook. Flip couldn’t stand it any longer and he went to her on the mattress and put his arms around her and pulled her close to him.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Flip said, and he said it calmly though his heart was hammering and he felt as though his head might float away. “It’s not your fault. I should have been more careful. I was stupid.”

“Do you love me, Flip?”

Flip closed his eyes. “Yes, I love you. I love you both.”

“You love our baby?”

“Of course I do. And you’re gonna be the best mamá there is.”

“You’ll be a good father, Flip. I know it.”

Flip shushed her and held her and rocked her gently back and forth. She cried freely, but he did not let go. A father. He would be a father. That was not something to hide from, to run away from. He was a father and Graciela was the mother.

When there were no more tears, Flip lifted Graciela’s head and
kissed her softly on the lips. Her face was flushed and her eyes redrimmed. It did not make her look beautiful, but Flip didn’t care. He kissed her again. “I want to marry you,” he said. “I don’t want our baby to be born without a mamá and a papá. I want it the way it should be.”

“Do you mean it, Flip?”

“Yeah, I mean it,” Flip said and he held her again.

FOUR

F
LIP WANTED TO KEEP
G
RACIELA WITH HIM
when they went to the party, but she went to circulate and he could not stop her. For the baby’s sake, he hoped she wouldn’t drink. Graciela was smart. She wouldn’t.

There was nothing to stop him from drinking and he set to it without any prompting, liberating two bottles of beer from a cooler and drinking them quickly, one after the other. When they were gone, he got more. One Indian, a kid named Oscar, cheered him on as he had a fourth and then a fifth.

Alcohol coursed through his veins and his head felt lifted before he finally headed toward the flaming heart of the party that was José’s grill. Flip armed himself with a paper plate and stood in line as José doled out servings of chicken and beef. It was difficult for Flip to remember a time when he wasn’t here, begging for food off José’s table; it seemed like it had gone on forever. He resolved to drink more beer.

“Flip!” José said when it was Flip’s turn. “Chicken for you!”

“Thanks,” Flip said without enthusiasm.

“I want to talk to you later. Out back.”

Flip felt sick to his stomach, the beers curdling. Out back. Where José ordered Emilio killed. A tremor started in his right hand, his gun hand. “Okay,” he said thickly. “I’ll be there.”

“Nasario will get you.”

Eating something quelled the sick feeling, but there was still
nervous pressure in his guts that did not go away. He cornered himself in the kitchen and found that his enthusiasm for further drinking was dampened. The taste of beer wouldn’t leave his mouth, despite the barbecue sauce and the spice.

He saw Nasario cruising through the partygoers like a barracuda. When Nasario spotted him, he jerked his head for Flip to follow and Flip did follow because to do nothing was to invite José’s displeasure. Emilio had died because of José’s displeasure.

Like before, the back yard was a place of peace, with the sounds of the party closed off, muted. Flip expected to see César, but instead it was one of the big men that served as José’s bodyguard. This man’s name was Angel, or maybe it was Fernando. Flip wasn’t sure who was who.

José shook Flip’s hand. “All right,” he said. “The man.”

“What’s up, José?” Flip asked. His words were relaxed, but he was not. All he could see was the way Emilio jogged to one side when the bullets started to hit him, the final barks of the pistol in Nasario’s hand as he shot Emilio in the face. The weight of the gun in his hand. The gun he never fired.

“Your boss, Alfredo, is coming back to work soon, huh?” José asked.

“Yeah. This week.”

“I want you to take my offer to him again, see what he says.”

“About the trucks coming in?” Flip asked.

“About the trucks coming in. The ones with our stuff on them. We make a call, tell him which truck to watch out for and he sets it aside. I’ll pay him a thousand dollars a truck, which is more than he ought to get.
Cabrón
.”

Flip nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

“You okay, Flip? You look a little sideways.”

“I’m okay. I think I drank too much.”

“At least you’re not driving. And listen, Flip: when this is over I want you to get your patch and come work for me for real. We’ll
have a lot of stuff to move and I need people I can trust.”

“But my job at the—”

“Hey, they can keep you on the books,” José said, “but you’re going to be a full-time
sargento
. You got to step up for the family now,
entiende
? I got faith in you, man. Don’t let me down.”

“Okay, José.”

“Now go back to the party. We’ll talk after you see your boss.”

“All right, José.”

“Oh, hey, Flip: keep an eye out for cops. I got my ear out and I hear there’s a couple of cops in the gang unit pushing all these busts on our people. We’re gonna deal with them, too, when the time comes.”

Nasario held the door for Flip and Flip went back to the noise and the bustle. The tremor in his hand was back, but making a fist made it go away. He went down a side hallway to the bathroom and locked himself in.

The bathroom was small and the mirror had painted filigree around the edges so Flip looked like he was framed in a picture. He saw that he was sweating and had circles under his eyes. How could they not know? How could José talk to him and not suspect? Flip didn’t understand.

He lifted his shirt and exposed the white wire underneath. He peeled the sticky tape that held it to his body and pulled the recorder itself out of his pants. The wire wrapped around the little black box and he shoved both into his pocket. Anything else that was said tonight would have to be off the record.

Flip closed the toilet lid and sat down on it, his head in his hands. If he concentrated, his breathing was steady and even. Alfredo’s face materialized out of darkness and sat squarely in his mind’s eye, staring at him with judgment in his eyes. His mother would be ashamed of him for this and so much more, and compromising the man she loved was yet another betrayal.

Graciela. He thought of her and the burden lightened. This girl,
this woman, would be his wife and only good things would come from her. When Flip turned in his recordings and said his bit in court, she would still be there for him and all of this would have been worthwhile.

Someone pounded on the door and jarred Flip out of his thoughts. “Hey, hurry up in there!” a man’s voice said. “I got to take a leak, man!”

He washed his hands in the sink and dried them on a little green towel. A stranger waited in the darkened hallway when he opened the door. “Sorry,” Flip said.

“Yeah, okay, man. I got to go!”

I’ve got to go, too
, Flip thought. He needed to find Graciela and leave this place. They could find a restaurant open and have something to eat that didn’t taste of José’s mesquite grill. And most of all it would be quiet, inside and out.

FIVE

R
OBINSON WAS ON
C
RISTINA’S PHONE WHEN
she returned to her desk. He murmured a good-bye and hung up. His mouth was a flat line underneath his mustache. Cristina said, “What?”

“I just heard from our boy, Flip. He was at a party with José last night.”

“Good,” Cristina said. “McPeek told me that the DEA got access to a house across the street and have José’s place under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Better than we ever got. They’re pulling every plate and face going into or out of there.”

Robinson did not look pleased. “Cris, he said José’s talking about green-lighting cops.”

Cristina sat down. “What did he say?” she asked. “What did he say
exactly
?”

“Flip says José’s got his eye on a couple of cops in the gang unit. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to figure out who he means. José’s talking about dealing with the problem.”

“He wouldn’t,” Cristina said.

“Wouldn’t he? This guy’s moving up in the world: he’s opening up a goddamned expressway for moving dope into the city, for Christ’s sake.”

“It’s a big jump from trafficking to killing cops,” Cristina said. “This isn’t Juárez.”

“Maybe he’ll bring in outside talent. The Aztecas from Juárez
won’t have a problem doing it. He could pay them off with money and guns, and they’d just disappear back over the border like they were never here.”

“He’s got to know we’d come down on him like nobody’s business.”

“Except he’d be clean. All his people would be clean.”

The idea settled in Cristina’s mind. She remembered the call from McPeek telling her that Matías Segura had been targeted and how she reflexively thought,
it can’t happen here
. But it
could
happen here.

Los Aztecas were used to having their own way on the streets of Juárez, accountable to no one but the cartel. Barrio Azteca was the original, but now they were like the shadow cast by their Mexican brethren, aping what happened across the border. Killing innocents. Killing their own. Killing cops.