Do They Know I'm Running? Part 10

In their previous phone connections, Happy had laid out the basic parameters of what he had to offer: Vasco Ramirez was ready to bankroll the movement of a terrorist into the country on behalf of Mara Salvatrucha, in exchange for sole control of a cocaine smuggling operation through the Port of Oakland. Happy had explained the involvement of his family, who he was, what baggage he brought to the table, probed a little of where Lattimore stood, what he could reciprocate, what he couldn't, all discussed cat and mouse, no cards shown, bluff and counter-bluff.

Strangely, Lattimore was less than thrilled with the case, at least from what Happy could tell given his reaction so far. He'd said, "You have any idea how many desks I'm going to have to clear this with?" From that and a few other remarks, Happy'd gathered that the thing was a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k of such grotesque proportion any agent in his right mind would say "Not me" and walk. But Lattimore wasn't backing away, he was just peeling the onion. Truth be told, Happy found his reaction encouraging.

The balding waiter showed up with Lattimore's pho, then held out an inquiring hand toward Happy's, wearing a vaguely offended frown.

Happy said to Lattimore, "You want it? Take it back to the office, have it for lunch tomorrow. I dunno, whatever your hours are, maybe dinner tonight."

Lattimore glanced up and held Happy's eyes with his own. He was looking for something, reading.

Happy added, "I didn't put anything in it."

Lattimore chuckled, then glanced toward the waiter, shook his head no. As the waiter carried it away-a perk for the dishwasher, maybe, or something to reheat for another customer-Lattimore unwrapped his chopsticks. "I'm going to have to 302 this meeting. Write it up, I mean. I'll also have to log my receipt. I know this sounds stupid, but it's just tidier, at this stage, if I don't buy you lunch."

With that small admission, said with embarra.s.sment at the pettiness of the great bureaucratic wheel ready to crush them both, Happy sensed the exact measure of his folly. He could finally calculate the full faith and credit of the damage this might do not just to him but to everyone in the family, everyone he meant to protect. It felt like the whole of his life, clutched in a stranger's fist. It felt like the weight of the world plopped onto his back but not before it had been calculated down to the micro-ounce by faceless n.o.bodies in a million identical cubicles buried underground in some bunker near Quantico. But what other options did he have? Every time he tried to think of another way out, whatever ideas came to bear soon drifted off like mist. Wishful thinking wouldn't cut it. It was up to sheer will now, that and luck.

"I trust your judgment on the paperwork," his voice so quiet he barely heard it himself.

Lattimore picked a strip of lean steak from his bowl. In the background, the Italian with the throwback bouffant struggled from his chair and lumbered out into the rain, no coat, racing sheet held aloft for an umbrella. "Who else knows about the terrorist angle to this thing?"

Happy drifted back. "Vasco's the only one I've mentioned it to. I don't know who he might have talked to about it. My guess is n.o.body."

"Your cousins?"

"There's no connection there. Not yet."

Lattimore raised an eyebrow. "Yet?"

"Vasco put down a condition for laying out the money. G.o.do, my cousin, he comes on board, teaches the guys a thing or two about weapons, stuff he learned in the marines."

Lattimore paused. "And that would be useful to him, this Vasco character, why exactly?"

"He figures this thing goes through, the money's real, he's gonna need heat."

Lattimore trolled through his bowl for another strip of meat, fished it out, let the broth drip off, brisket this time. "What about the other cousin? The younger one."

"Roque?"

"Pretty soon he's going to find out he's got a very interesting pa.s.senger for this trip he's about to make."

"I told him about it, before I put him on the plane."

"Told him what, exactly?"

"You're right." Happy scratched his ear. "I didn't tell him he was a terrorist."

"Because ...?"

"Because he's not. And because that would just freak Roque out."

"What about the people down there?"

"They think he's some guy I brought back from Iraq. Which is the truth, by the way."

"Okay, we'll get to that. I'm just trying to feel my way through this conspiracy you've created, figure out the reach."

"Right now," Happy said, "far as I know, just me and Vasco. But once he gets his guys in gear, they become part of it, right? They pull jobs to make the money so things move ahead, they're in, even if they don't know exactly what the money's for."

"Basically. Yes."

"Okay. It's just-"

"But as of now, this minute, as best you can tell me, there's no one in El Salvador who thinks they're doing anything but helping ship your father and some essentially harmless Arab dude up the pipeline. Have I got that right?"

Happy felt a trickle of sweat winnow down his back. He wished he knew what the correct answer was. "Yeah. That's right."

"If the guys on the Salvadoran end found that out-"

"They'd make me pay."

"You sure they haven't guessed?"

"If they had, I'd have the bill already, believe me."

Somewhere in the room, someone sneezed, somebody else laughed. From the kitchen, the sudden bright sizzle of meat hitting hot oil. "Remind me," Lattimore said, "what are we talking about here, per head."

"Twelve grand. Twenty-four total."

"They're not making you pay for your cousin Roque too?"

"He doesn't need a coyote. He's got a pa.s.sport."

"But they're offering protection along the way, right?"

"Look, I let them shake me down for more, I look like a stooge. Guys like that, they think you're over a barrel, they'll a.s.s f.u.c.k you just because they can."

The plump brunette paid her tab, down to quarters and dimes, wrapped her frayed hair in a scarf, tucked her paperback into a purse the size of a saddlebag, then got up to leave.

"Okay," Lattimore said. "But twelve grand per, that's still on the high end, don't you think? I've heard nine, coming all the way from El Salvador, unless you're talking about a boat."

"What's your point?"

"No point. Just thinking out loud. Could be they've already factored in a terrorist surcharge."

"Reason the amount's as high as it is, I'm paying for a car. No way I'm making my old man jump trains to get here like I had to. f.u.c.king brutal. He's tough and all but he's not young, know what I'm saying? And Samir, if they thought he was really a terrorist, believe me, I'd be paying fifty, maybe a hundred grand to get him here. No, I told them the story-"

"What story?"

Happy bristled, then reminded himself: Chill. "The truth."

Lattimore c.o.c.ked his head a little to one side, the merest of smiles. "Well, if you don't mind, how about giving me a dose."

"You saying I ain't been straight with you?"

"It's a little too soon in the process for me to know one way or the other. I'm hopeful."

"I haven't lied to you."

"That's nice to hear. Now, about Samir."

The craving for a smoke became overwhelming, he almost asked if he could duck outside for just a quick drag or two, but Lattimore, he'd read delay as deceit.

"Where should I start?"

"A full name would be nice."

"Samir Khalid Sadiq."

Licking his teeth, Lattimore took out a notepad, jotted it down. "And you met him ...?"

"He was a terp, the company I worked for. He studied English and Spanish at Baghdad University, was pretty fluent in both. He always hoped to travel someday, Spain, the States, maybe Latin America."

"Pretty ambitious dream for the average Iraqi."

"He's Palestinian, actually."

Lattimore stopped writing, c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "Really?"

"They're no small minority in Iraq. Saddam liked having them around, to show some kind of support for the cause but he was, like, this paranoid motherf.u.c.ker. Palestinians got certain work privileges but were watched real close. Samir told me all this, I didn't know squat about Iraq or Palestine or anything over there till I was dropped down into the middle of it.

"Samir was happy as h.e.l.l the Americans showed up. He figured he could get a job working for the military, the press, State Department, whatever, and that would be his ticket out, you know? So he begged around, got the brush-off from you guys, no answer as to why, but kept on looking and ended up with us. Rode in my cab a couple times, when we convoyed between Najaf and the Isle of Abu-that's what we called the warehouse compound at Abu Ghraib, that or Rocket City. The Salvadoran troops were stationed in Najaf, we handled their resupply and the redevelopment projects there."

"How did he end up in El Salvador? Samir, I mean."

"I'm getting to that. The Shiites hated the Palestinians, the grief started almost as soon as the Americans showed up. But once the 2005 elections were over, and the Shia parties took power? Palestinians are Sunni and without Saddam around they no longer meant s.h.i.t to n.o.body. Regular Sunnis could give a f.u.c.k. Shiite militias came around, making threats, nailing up handbills telling people that any Palestinians better leave their homes now or they'd get the boot, maybe the torch. That was before the mosque in Samarra got hit. Once that happened, all bets were off. The militias, especially Sadr's thugs, the Jaish al Mahdi? They just began picking people off. Samir lived in the al-Baladiyat neighborhood of Baghdad and the c.o.c.ksuckers just lobbed in mortars. No joke. Next came the death squads, house-to-house dragnets, roadblocks. Guys got whacked right there on the spot, bullet to the head, and their families were told to leave or face the same. Samir was, like, especially vulnerable, because he was working with the coalition. So his wife's brothers, they say enough is enough, they take their sister-Samir's wife, her name's Fatima-and his daughter away, wind up at the refugee camp near Al Tanf."

"That's in, what, Syria?"

"Along the border. Syria won't let the Palestinians in. Neither will Jordan. They don't want Palestinians to get the idea that they can resettle permanently anywhere, except, you know, Palestine." Happy watched as the buff preppy in the everything-must-go suit walked out and the goth girl tried to poach what he'd left behind on his plate, only to have the waiter swoop in like a bat, clear it away. "Samir was left in his house all alone, which was just an invitation. You never knew when the Mahdi motherf.u.c.kers were gonna throw up a checkpoint or come prowling around and his national ID card says right there he's Palestinian. So he walked away from everything he owned, began sleeping at the Isle of Abu. He tried to get the Americans to listen to him, give him some sort of asylum, so he could bring his family over here? Like talking to a wall, if he was even lucky enough to get some low-level desk jockey to hear him out. That's when he began to think he'd have an easier time getting to El Salvador.

People don't realize, but there's a lot of Palestinians in El Salvador, over a hundred thousand. Last presidential election, both candidates came from Palestinian families, one an old guerrilla, the other some right-wing radio talk-show guy. They first came over right before World War I-again, I knew none of this s.h.i.t before I met Samir. The Turks were recruiting young men to be soldiers in the army, they controlled most of the Middle East. So families in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, all over, they shipped their sons to Latin America, sometimes the whole family."

"He have any connections in El Salvador? Samir, I mean."

"Just me. But I told you about how I wound up in Iraq, the warden I was kicking back to? By this time I'd wised up a little, figured I had more leverage than I'd thought, especially after the ambush my convoy was in and the press it got. I could go to a reporter, expose them all. He'd never suffer as bad as he should, but the company would likely lose its contract and the warden would lose his cushy little niche at the prison. I told him to find a sponsor for Samir, so he could get a visa to El Salvador. He fought it, you know, b.i.t.c.h that he is, but I'd made him a f.u.c.king bucket of money, I asked for none of it back. It was the best deal he was gonna get. So Samir was on the same flight as me."

"What about his family?"

"Last I heard? Still in Al Tanf."

"Why doesn't he pet.i.tion the Salvadoran government to bring them over?"

"What kind of future they got there? No jobs, no family or friends, wife and kid don't know the language. Just another refugee camp, this one full of strangers. Who speak Spanish. The game is all about getting here here. He gets across the border, tries for asylum, then asks for his family. Only option that makes sense from his point of view."

"You two had this in mind all along?"

"He was going to come with me when I made the trip north, but we couldn't get enough money together for the two of us. So the deal was I'd come, see if I could work up some bread, then pay for him to follow. I didn't know at the time my old man and Lucha'd been swindled out of their house. And then almost as soon as I get here, boom, Pops is snagged in an ICE raid, sent packing. So here I sit."

Lattimore, having done as much damage to his pho as he was going to, gestured for the waiter to take it away. He sat back, appraising Happy. "I can't guarantee anything regarding Samir's amnesty."

"You can put in a word?"

"That I can do. But that's not all you want."

"I want citizenship for my old man," Happy said. "Me too. No more worrying when somebody's gonna show up at the door, drag me or him away. I want immunity for my cousins. They're both in this thing now and they've got no clue what's going on behind their backs."

"They know they're conspiring to bring a deported alien back into the country."

You motherf.u.c.ker, Happy thought. "Hey, I'm giving you gang members who, as far as they know, are helping bring a terrorist into the country. I read the papers. I know what that means to you guys. You can wire me up. I'll testify, the whole bit. You look at the big picture, I'm not asking for so much. You throw in the fact my cousin fought in Iraq, got his face chewed to s.h.i.t, his brain fried, his leg messed up. I'd say my family's done its share."

Lattimore's face a.s.sumed an impressive blankness. "I'll have to run it by my supe, but I don't think he'll be the problem. The AUSA-the prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office-that's where we'll hit a snag. And what you're asking for? All I can do is make a recommendation. I can't promise any of it. Period. We get that straight right now or this conversation's over."

Happy nodded. By now only a couple other tables remained occupied, the lunch crowd having thinned out. Using a hand towel, the waiter wiped away the glaze of moisture from the window, then stared pensively at the midday drizzle, the windswept street, as though he hoped to see his future out there. This was, after all, America.

"If everything goes well," Lattimore said, "you come in, have what's known as a free talk. We can get you somebody from the Federal Public Defender if you don't have your own lawyer. Then we make a proffer. After that and about two hours of paperwork, we wire you up, send you out for what, if this were a drug sting, we'd call a reliability buy. Get a chance to see you in action, hear what you can actually get these mutts to agree to on tape."

"This all happens how soon?"

"You're dealing with the federal government here. We're a hippo, not a gazelle."

"Yeah, well," Happy said, feeling in his pocket for his lighter, his smokes, "my cousin Roque's down in El Salvador, hanging around, cooling his jets. Nothing goes forward till Vasco puts some money on the table. And he's not gonna do that till he meets the guy who owns the warehouse where all this Colombian cocaine is supposed to wind up."

"Interesting." Lattimore signaled the waiter, two fingers lifted-separate checks. "And how exactly is that going to happen?"

A fly looped down onto the tablecloth, landing next to Happy's unused spoon. "Funny," he said, shooing it away. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

THE SECOND DAY ROQUE WAS IN SAN PEDRO LEMPA THE GUITAR arrived, a gift. Rumor had spread through the village that he was a musician, a guitarist from California. Someone collected the old forgotten thing from some dusty corner or perch, and it arrived with a bag of green jocotes jocotes and a jar of pickled cabbage called and a jar of pickled cabbage called curtido curtido, delivered by three giggling sisters in blue school jumpers, the oldest of whom looked no older than twelve.

The instrument was hopeless, scuffed pine with tired nylon strings, tin pegs that couldn't hold a tuning for more than five minutes, but at one time it must have represented a considerable expense on someone's part, a month's pay at least. Without a word about cost, though, they had given it to him, the sisters said, so he could play for Carmela, the tiny indigena indigena woman with the ropelike braid in whose home he and Tio Faustino were staying. Carmela showed little interest in being serenaded, though-she spent all day in her garden, tending to the flowers she sold at market-and so Roque was free to practice his fingerings and scales and pa.s.sing chords, plugging away for hours on end to the breathless amazement of the three sisters, as well as the flock of pals who straggled along after school each day as that first week bled into the next. woman with the ropelike braid in whose home he and Tio Faustino were staying. Carmela showed little interest in being serenaded, though-she spent all day in her garden, tending to the flowers she sold at market-and so Roque was free to practice his fingerings and scales and pa.s.sing chords, plugging away for hours on end to the breathless amazement of the three sisters, as well as the flock of pals who straggled along after school each day as that first week bled into the next.

They were waiting on the money. Roque had no idea what the holdup was, Happy refused to discuss it over the phone and so there was nothing to do but settle in. Time pa.s.sed differently here. With so few distractions, every minute seemed to swell like a breath, full of silence except for the continuous pizzicato of his guitar, the crunch of Carmela's spade, the large black pijuyos pijuyos cawing in the mango trees. Roque could only imagine that, given the curious distension of time, the incessant repet.i.tion of his scales became maddening to anyone in earshot-major, minor, pentatonic, heptatonic, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, aeolian, mixolydian, ascending, descending, chord fingering, arpeggio fingering. No one ever said as much, though; everyone here was cursed with an excess of humility and patience. And the children, they plopped down in the dusty yard and gripped their knees in rapt attention as though this stranger had come all those hundreds of miles just to play for them. cawing in the mango trees. Roque could only imagine that, given the curious distension of time, the incessant repet.i.tion of his scales became maddening to anyone in earshot-major, minor, pentatonic, heptatonic, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, aeolian, mixolydian, ascending, descending, chord fingering, arpeggio fingering. No one ever said as much, though; everyone here was cursed with an excess of humility and patience. And the children, they plopped down in the dusty yard and gripped their knees in rapt attention as though this stranger had come all those hundreds of miles just to play for them.

Come dusk, the adults gathered at the outside table for the evening meal: pupusas, curtido, casamiento meal: pupusas, curtido, casamiento, the last a kind of leftover ca.s.serole, beans and rice, fried with onion and an aromatic flower called loroco loroco. Roque set aside the practice grind and played a few of the traditional songs he knew: "Sin Ti," "Hay Unos Ojos," "Pena de los Amores," even El Chicano's "Sabor a Mi," more a sentimental favorite than a cla.s.sic. The others were Cuban boleros, Mexican rancheras rancheras, nothing especially Salvadoran. From what he'd learned listening to the older ones, given the annihilation of everything indigenous over the past century-culture, crafts, people-there wasn't anything like a uniquely native repertoire except maybe chanchona chanchona, a cheesy kind of dance music, full of spicy jokes and a thumping c.u.mbia c.u.mbia two-beat, big with hicks and lounge acts. Regardless, the old songs obliged him to slow down, concentrate not on technique but feeling. And the key to feeling, he'd learned, was simplicity. two-beat, big with hicks and lounge acts. Regardless, the old songs obliged him to slow down, concentrate not on technique but feeling. And the key to feeling, he'd learned, was simplicity.

At times someone or other would sing along, if only under his or her breath, then chuckle soulfully when the song concluded, perhaps leaning over to squeeze Roque's shoulder and thank him. Tio Faustino seemed particularly fond of "Sin Ti"-Without You-and Roque found himself increasingly moved by the deep whispery tone-deaf voice. He couldn't recall, not once in the years since Tio Faustino had entered his life, hearing the older man sing. And in the pauses between songs, as he retuned the peevish guitar, he'd glance up and catch his uncle gazing at nothing, seated in one of the sc.r.a.p-wood chairs they called trastos trastos here, head propped on his hand, fingers lost in his graying hair as he nursed a gla.s.s of beer. here, head propped on his hand, fingers lost in his graying hair as he nursed a gla.s.s of beer.