The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Page 14

  “Peddling blow, pills, or smack it’s important you don’t look too poor or too rich,” he told us one night. “If you dress pretty good, that mean your customers keep coming back; You not killing them off with bad shit. Mira, you look all poor and raggedy, no one trust you or what you selling, comprende? That white powder might be baby formula or Boraxo. Look good and sell a lot. Pero, look too good an’ they wonder what in the hell you doing down on the block dealing shit.”

  “Undercover maybe,” I offered.

  Nacho grinned. “Undercover or a college student doing an experiment for his sociology class. Just like Goldilocks, Jerry, you wanna look just right,” he said.

  The beginning of the second week Dylan and I arranged to rent that place on Delgado, a south facing single story white trimmed clapboard faded turquoise four room house and bath, surrounded by big trees, with a chain link fence out front, a screened in back porch overlooking a yard with a couple of big trees in it, a tool shed out back, and a ramshackle carport on the east side. That wasn’t important right then because we didn’t have a car. Didn’t need one. After our week long foot campaign to win the hearts and minds of the locals, any time we needed a ride, we asked someone.

  Our next door neighbors on the east side lived in a really big place on Delgado and Laza, and were named Fernandez—Luis and Taña. Four children: Francisco, Ana Paula, Carlotta, and Florencia. Luis sold new Subaru cars. Taña was a legal secretary. The children were baseball nuts: The Rangers.

  On the west side was a very well maintained tan stucco single story with darker tan trim behind a brick and arched-iron white picket fence. Señorita Isadora Valdez lived there. She was maybe late thirties, her neck scarred by gasoline burns, and she was retired Army where she had attained the rank of major. Every morning she went jogging carrying one of those harmless nine millimeter Berettas with her the holster strapped to her belly. She said her job in the Army was security related and she currently worked for a security firm in Shavano Park. When she learned of Dylan’s interest in cooking, Isadora Valdez said she was something of an authority on Middle East cooking, and would be happy to pass onto Dylan all she knew.

  Directly across the street from us was a much newer and better kept fresh turquoise clapboard single story in which lived a man named Emil Stark. He lived there with his deceased girlfriend’s brain damaged and one-eyed sixteen year old daughter, Dorothy Kinney, and a Yellow Lab named Amarilla.

  Emil was a retired butcher. Not much interest in cooking or learning how to raise a daughter, and all his spare time and money was taken up getting that daughter to physical therapy, hospitals, and special schools. But if we ever needed a knife sharpened, “I can turn out an edge that can cut you just by thinking about it.”

  He pressed me and I handed him Thiago’s knife to see what he could do. In a manner of speaking, it really could cut me just by thinking about it. It was so sharp I was just a little afraid of how sharp it was. Dorothy, who was already an expert at knife sharpening herself, thought I was funny. She had a one-eyed cat named Wiley.

  Our new place was almost livable, but a lot of inside and outside shabby needed repairing, beginning with the paint and the roof. The landlord was Señora Isabella Rodriguez. She was in her forties, a widow thanks to an earlier war in Egypt, and was short, about forty-five kilos, and tough as cold iron. She said if we would fix up the place, do the repairs, she would knock the rent off everything except what she needed for taxes and utilities for the first two years. What’s more, she would pay for the tools and materials.

  Since that saved us something like seven hundred dollars a month, we agreed. Dylan and I both had shop back at UCH and were at least schooled amateur carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. We borrowed the five hundred dollars to hold the place from Nacho, and while we were still staying at Nacho’s, we began working on the place in the few moments we had free.

  With some suggesting from me, Mrs. Rodriguez took over the task of turning Dorothy Kinney from a one-eyed knife-sharpening troll into a young woman.

  Surprising Checo

  Nights we’d meet with Jonny Brake and his runner, a very skinny Asian-looking kid of eleven who called himself “Ip-man Lee”. Everybody else called him either “Eep,” “ Urp,” or “Chino.”

  Dylan and I would be off in the distance, out of sight behind a fence, or around a corner, listening to how Jonny worked the sale. There was talk, very respectful, and at no time did Jonny state or even hint that he possessed drugs, was selling them, or that he required an exchange of money for goods. Also, at no time did the customer need to state his wants or inquire about prices. The customer would give an amount of money to Jonny, Johnny would code the amount somehow to Ip-man, and Ippy would hand the proper amount of goods over to the purchaser. The purchaser would then hide the item somewhere about his or her person and leave. This routine, of course, required new customers to have been briefed, vouched for, and accompanied by a regular before approaching Jonny. If you didn’t know the routine, you couldn’t buy a thing.

  On Friday night we had our first chase, which was a bit of a test of my own memory as well as of the system. We were on Rivas near the back of the Dunkin Donuts near a tree and some bushes about forty meters from Zarzamora. Jonny was in the light, looking at his phone, and playing some game. The Ip-man, Dylan, and I were in the shadows behind the bushes. In the dark we could see Jonny between the leaves.

  After three silent sales and a referral by a regular customer, a large fellow in black jeans, olive tee, and bulky black denim jacket arrived. His eyes were hidden by wrap-around shades and he introduced himself with the name “Checo.” He was all by himself.

  That was the first sign he was bogus. The second sign was him wearing a heavy jacket in eighty degree temperatures. “Impact vest and weapons,” whispered Ippy. The third sign was when the man called Checo asked Jonny how much three bags of “hard” would cost thpeaking in abtholutely perfect Ethpañol Cathtellano.

  Jonny said he didn’t know what the guy was talking about. “Begone, thir!” answered Jonny. “What kind of thupido you think I am?”

  “Look, punk,” said the fellow in English, “I kick the shit outta you, nobody in this burg is going to shed a tear. Now I need that stuff. You selling or not?”

  The Ip-man looked at me and whispered, “Wanna play tag?”

  Before I could ask him what he meant, he stepped around the tree, a fistful of coke bags in each hand. When he was in the light, he stopped dead, did a cartoon double take, said, “Oops!”, then turned around and ran east on Rivas Street. The DEA man hot on his heels. So I took off after them both.

  Up ahead I could see Ippy clear the chain link fence on the north side of the street into an empty lot. The cop jumped the same fence and followed. He was pretty quick for a man carrying all that equipment.

  Chances are the Ip-man was going to get down to the fence in the back of the lot, jump the east fence, cross through Old Simón’s back yard, shake old Pepe’s chain thereby waking up the laziest, most addled and loud barking lab in the block, then jump the fence into the vacant lot on the other side of Simón’s house, and run back toward Rivas. I waited there.

  Ip-man abruptly cut east behind a small two room tan shack. He’d just gone into a trunk leading to a triple-W set of threads, not counting the additional double-W bunch of hides. Old Checo followed him in there, close in the maze.

  I thought on it. Jonny’s runner had to turn south sooner or later. The next street up was Poplar, which was the northern limit of our ten. Not cool to bring a trail of cops with you into another crew’s ten even if it is Kings grass.

  The farther he went east, though, his threads multiplied. I didn’t think the Ip would try and cross Calaveras. Chances were good that there’d be a little welcoming committee waiting for him there in the street.

  Ip was going to cross Rivas again to head south, but if he saw me, he might be forced into trying to get across Calaveras. I looked to the south side of Rivas. At this end of
the block, the thread leading to the most Ws was right in front of me, between the third and fourth houses from Calaveras Street. Ippy craved a rich-W environment.

  I ran to the fence, jumped it without touching it, made my way silently between the two buildings and looked for a place. Where the narrow access to multiple back yards doglegged to the right before it opened up, I placed myself in the shadows behind the right corner and waited.

  After about a minute, I heard very stealthy footsteps coming down the passage. I was going to surprise the Ip-man good. If he still had those bags of coke in his hands, we might have to spend some time gathering them up.

  The footsteps seemed to hurry, and suddenly the undercover cop appeared around the corner. I was already springing at him, screaming “Boo!” at the top of my lungs.

  “Fuck me!” he yelled at the same time firing some kind of sound suppressed fully automatic pistol first into his own right foot, then into his left thigh and left hand, then across the sky. Moaning he collapsed face down in the dirt.

  “Motherfucker,” he said rolling over. With his good hand he pushed himself up until he was sitting. He gave me a close look, then his eyes seem to blur as he began weaving in place. “You aren’t the little shit I was chasing. What in the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Trying to surprise that same little shit you were chasing,” I answered.

  His left leg was bleeding really bad. I could see it flowing in the reflections from a distant light. “You got a mobile?” I asked. “Nine-one-one. They don’t come fast to this neighborhood, but they do come. I can get you a thing to tie around your leg to cut down the bleeding.”

  He pawed at himself gently with his left hand, but it was busted and bleeding. He nodded. “Yeah. In my left cargo pocket. Get it.”

  I got over on his left side, unsealed the flap, reached in and found the mobile. I turned it on, got the code from the cop, punched on the phone app, and punched nine-one-one. When the emergency services operator answered, I said, “I have a wounded man here bleeding real bad—”

  “Tell ‘em officer down,” said the man.

  “Officer down,” I said and gave the address on Rivas and started to tell the operator that we were in back, when she cut me off and told me that the line was reserved for emergencies, not for childish telephone pranks, which is when the cop dropped his weapon to free his right hand. “Give me that, kid.”

  I handed the cop his phone, and while he was communicating heatedly with the nine-one-one operator, I took out my knife and carefully began cutting away the cloth of his trousers over the wounds. He had two holes in the top of his thigh, one of them really pumping out the blood. I cut strips from the cloth, tied it tightly above the wounds, then looked around for something to tighten it. I found a broken wooden hammer handle in the dirt, brought it over, stuck it beneath the cloth strip, and began cranking it just like I’d seen in the movies, until the bleeding stopped, then tucked the end of the handle inside the remaining fabric of his pant leg so it wouldn’t unwind.

  The man didn’t cry out. I looked up and he was slumped over, his phone on the ground. I checked and he was still breathing. Looking at his right foot, I saw he had a bullet hole right through the laces. It didn’t seem to be bleeding much. His hand was bleeding more than his foot, and I took the rest of the cloth I’d cut away from his left leg to wrap his hand and tie on the bandage.

  “What you doing, Geronimo?” Ip whispered from the passage.

  “I startled him,” I answered. “He shot himself. We called nine-one-one.”

  “Shit, man, we can’t be here when the meat wagon show,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “I gave them Lucho Morales’s address. If Lucho opens up those gates, an ambulance can almost get back here.”

  “Close, right.” Ip looked around, then at me. “Man, you covered in blood. We got to get outta here. You can bet the DEAs got more’n one gun on the street and out for revenge.”

  “First I better tell old Lucho where this guy is.”

  “Covered in blood like that? You give the old guy vapor lock. I go tell Señor Morales where the cop is and about letting in the ambulance. Then we got to hook up with the others.” He studied me and the unconscious man for a beat, then said, “What you two doing back here?”

  “Waiting for you,” I said as I lowered the DEA agent down until he was flat on the ground, found a cardboard box and put it beneath his feet and calves, raising them above his heart.

  “Done yet, Geronimo?” asked the Ip-man.

  “All done, Ippy, and unless you want me to start calling you Chinoshit, lose the Geronimo tag. Got it?”

  He paused for a moment in reaction to the rebuke. “Cool,” he said at last. “What about the phone and the piece?” he asked.

  “They got GPS in both. Leave ‘em. We grab those things cop drones’ll be all over us.”

  “How you know?”

  “I went to school,” I answered with exactly as much scorn in my voice as I intended. “Dylan and Jonny okay?”

  “They’re okay. They’ll be in Dunkin Donuts waiting for us.” He paused for a beat. “You weren’t kidding? About the cop here waiting for me?” He asked anxiously. “And you, too?”

  I nodded and said, “Better shake up your pattern choices, Ip-man. You’re predictable.”

  “I been runnin’ these streets since I was nine,” he said angrily.

  “I guessed that,” I said. “Same pattern choices back then, too, right? They got behavioral analysis programs, Ippy, that can predict what you’ll do in the future by what you did in the past. The computer saw Jonny and Ippy on the block and gave a little cheer right after assigning a guy to flush you out.” I stood up and looked at Jonny’s runner. “They got your number, Ip-man. Time to change your address.”

  Jonny’s runner vanished into the shadows, returning I supposed to the donut shop. I stayed near the cop until the ambulance arrived and I was sure the paramedics saw him. Then I ran to the donut monger’s to meet with Jonny and Dylan. Ip-man was waiting outside for me. I had him go in and let them know I was there.

  When the pair emerged from the all-night donut works, Dylan nodded at me and Jonny waved me toward a black Jeep Wrangler parked in the shadows. As he did so, a man got out of the Wrangler. It was Nacho Azul. Once he got a look at me, he said, “¡Carajo!” He pointed toward the other side of his car. “In the shadows, chico! Rápidamente.”

  He reached into his car, got something from the glove compartment, then walked around the hood until he was standing in front of me. Ippy, Jonny, and Dylan watched from the other side of the car. Nacho turned on a small flashlight and played it up and down my shirt and pants. “¡No chingues!”

  He opened the back door to the Wrangler, took out a dark plaid wool blanket, and held it out. “Wrap this around you, Jer, and get in the middle. Don’t want that shit getting all over my upholstery.”

  “Sí, señor.” Despite how hot it was, I wrapped the blanket around me.

  He shined the light on my shoes. Despite their dark blue color, it was obvious they were both soaked in blood. “¡Cristo! You take a bath in this guy’s blood?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but he told me to shut up and to take off my shoes and sox, put them on my lap, and to keep my feet inside the blanket.

  I opened my mouth a second time to explain, and he held up a hand, palm facing me. “I listen to explanations later. Now we get the hell out of here.”

  On the way back to Nacho’s house not a word was spoken. Dylan was on my right in back and Ippy was on my left. When he looked at me, Dylan’s expression conveyed that he was very worried. I looked at Ip-man and he was staring at his own knees and nibbling at his lower lip.

  Back at Nacho’s around midnight, Nacho told all four of us to wait in the hall outside his office. Me he had strip down to my underwear and put his blanket and my bloody shoes and clothes in a plastic garbage bag after removing my knife. Nacho called his son Eduardo out of his bed to go into Dy
lan’s and my room and bring down a pair of my jeans and a clean tee shirt. Once Eduardo had done that, Nacho instructed his eldest son to dispose of the bag of bloody clothing in the fire pit they had out back. As Eduardo left, I put on both the tee and the jeans. I looked down at my feet, half expecting to see patches of blood, but there were none. There was blood on my hands, though, and I washed them in the downstairs bathroom.

  Nacho called us into his office one at a time and I was first. The boss wanted to know what happened. I gave my version first, then Ip-man, then Jonny. When I gave my version, the crew boss didn’t change expression at all. I was certain I’d done something terribly wrong. Should I not have played hide-and-seek with Ippy?

  Should I not have said “boo” when I didn’t know for certain who was approaching? The DEA man had been dying, I was sure. Should I have just let him go? King’s policy on feds was pretty obvious: No outright murders, but if a fed is throwing himself over a cliff, what profit is there in interfering? Nacho stared at me the entire time. When I was finished, all he said was, “Send in Chino.”

  I went out into the hallway. Ip and Jonny were sitting in straight backed chairs on either side of a small table with a dim table lamp on it. Ippy was on the edge of his seat looking at me. Jonny was slouched down, his straw cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. Dylan was squatting on the floor across from them and resting his butt against the corridor wall behind him.

  I looked at the Ip. “He wants to see you,” I said.

  Ippy got up, went into Nacho’s office, and softly closed the door. I looked at Dylan then turned to Jonny. “Are we in trouble?”

  Jonny smiled for the first time I ever saw, and said, “Apache brother, we been in trouble since before our ancestors came over from Siberia.”