The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Page 15

  I asked Dylan if he wanted to sit in the chair vacated by Ippy. Dylan shook his head. He looked even more worried. I sat in the chair and tried to relax. I could hear Ip-man’s voice, but couldn’t make out what he was saying, nor the questions Nacho was asking.

  When Ippy came out, he looked guiltily at Jonny and said, “I’ll be in the car.” He looked down at Dylan. “You’re next.”

  My brother wasn’t in there long. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. When he came out, he nodded at Jonny, told me to stay in the hall, and walked to the back of the hall to go upstairs. Jonny got up, placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, then entered Nacho’s office and shut the door.

  Voices. Nothing angry. Serious, though. Nacho sounded surprised more than once. Back to serious. I didn’t kill the DEA agent or whatever he was. If anything, I tried to help him. He wouldn’t have shot himself if I hadn’t startled him, but he also wouldn’t have shot himself if he hadn’t been running through a dark alley with a loaded gun in his hand, safety off, and his finger on the trigger. He had been out too eagerly hunting scalps.

  Nacho’s office door opened, Jonny came out, he cocked his head toward the door and said, “Go on in, Jerry.”

  Business

  Nacho was sitting in the leather upholstered easy chair and he gestured with his head toward the couch. I sat there looking at Nacho, he looking at the Dali print opposite where he sat.

  “Jerry, the pendejo who shot hisself four times —he wasn’t DEA,” said Nacho. “He is San Antonio PD’s finest. They got a new secret unit in the war on drugs.”

  “Why secret?” I asked.

  “They think it gets around us and the cops we have on the payroll. Mayor need a big crime scalp before next election. Decided to do an end run around the Council. That means a new mayor come election time, I think.” Nacho’s eyebrows went up. “That cop is an all-right dude. He taking the rap for shooting hisself. Pretty much an hombre for a cop. Shouldn’t been running in the dark with his finger on the trigger. He own up to that. He also told everyone you hung in there and save his life.”

  My curiosity got the better of my fear. “How do you know that?”

  He closed his eyes and waved his hand back and forth. “We got contacts in the PD, Jer.” He grinned knowingly. “We got contacts everywhere.”

  Nacho moved his butt until he was in a more comfortable position. “Right now our people, the whole SAPD, their secret cops too, are all feeling kind of warm and fuzzy about the Kings ‘cause what you did. The docs and paramedics say you did a pro job of field first aid on the cop. They curious how you know all that. I am too.”

  I shrugged. “I picked it up from things like TV, class texts, library books, looking at this and that and asking questions in the UCH hospital when I went in for tests.” I shrugged and held out my hands. “I never forget anything.”

  “That how you guessed which way Chino’d run?”

  “Maybe. I don’t really know. I mean, the cop figured it out, too. Computers or something.”

  “Sí, and my new orphan son Jerome did it faster than that cop or his fucking computer.” Nacho wiped the palm of his right hand over the top of his bald head, intertwined his fingers over his belly, glowered down at the coffee table. “Jerry, that cop didn’t fill hisself with bullet holes, he’d a catched Chino loaded. Don’t know how Chino’s memory going to be if they shake Gatesville at him.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like Ippy much, but him getting killed because he might have gotten caught didn’t seem like good business.

  “Ip-man is real fast, Nacho. Strong, too. He clears most fences without even touching them. He’s just been running the same places and patterns for years. I can show him how to bust up those patterns, make him unpredictable.”

  “Yeah? What if I team him up with Dylan and you? Do you trust him enough to run with him? You trust your ability to make him unpredictable? Careful how you answer, ‘cause he go down he might take others with him.”

  “What about Jonny?” I asked.

  “If I keep him on the street, he might want a runner who don’t get caught. Same if I replace Jonny with somebody else. Runners in cuffs don’t do no one no good.”

  Patterns and cross patterns seemed to play in my mind. If it worked out, we could carry twice as much stuff, the three of us making that much more. I nodded. “Give Ip-man to Dylan and me, jefe. Whether you have us keep him or pair him up with another lead, we’ll make him unpredictable.”

  “Tell me the truth: You full of shit, chico, bleeding for this kid, or you know what you’re talking about?” he asked, his gaze fixed on me.

  “Give me the Ip-man, Nacho, and we’ll find out,” I said.

  He nodded once, a look of relief in his expression. “Okay. Chino stay with Jonny until we move Jonny upstairs. But you tell Jonny what you tell me about making his runner unpredictable. Then you and Chino go figure out how you going to do that. They outside in Jonny’s Corolla. I told Jonny to wait.” His eyebrows went up. “¿Algo más?”

  “Sí, Nacho. One thing more.” I pointed with my right hand toward the Salvador Dali print. “What does that mean.”

  He laughed. “Dali like elephants with skinny legs, maybe. Want what I see in it?”

  “Very much.”

  He nodded. “Bien. Todo el mundo es uno. Same all over, Jerry. See two huge elephants up there looking down on those two little people? Big government, big crime, big business, big unions up there above everybody, think they got it all, hand down orders to those two little fucks down there. Mira?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Think the two little fucks do what the big bastards tell ‘em all the time?” Nacho stood, walked over to the print, and pointed at the center of the print’s bottom. “These two people. I call ‘em Lead and Runner.” He pointed at the spindly legs of the elephant on the right. “Chico, see how skinny the legs are, how big and fat the bodies of the elephants are, the size of the terrible burdens on their backs? Call that ‘top-heavy’.” He pointed at the tower on the back of each elephant. “See the space between the back of each elephant and its burden?”

  “I see it.”

  “They’re falling off. The whole thing is coming down. But Lead and Runner get around faster than a bunch of overloaded elephants with flamingo legs. If they’re ágil—quick—smart, when it’s all fallen down, Lead and Runner will be on top.”

  “Is it, Nacho?” I asked. “Is it all falling apart?”

  He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. Letting the hand fall to his side, he said, “I watch the news. Listen between the lines. The big ones up in Washington say everything fine, everything getting better. We got AmeriCare, but someone in your territory need an operation quick, you see who they go to for help.”

  “Who?”

  “You, Jer. Once you get broken in they ask you. They ask you because they know you, like you, and know the Kings can deliver the goods without a lot of crap, red tape, or breaking the bank.”

  “How?” I asked. “With doctors, operations?”

  “Simple. You call me, I see what doctors we got who’d like to do their job for cash without all the government and lawyer bullshit, we put the two together, pay off the doc, and we got people who love us and owe us and a doctor who is available for future jobs. Maybe we need a favor down the way, someone to vote the right way, maybe only to help out at a block party. We already got ‘em. Maybe we got a brother need a few stitches and no questions asked. We got ‘em. Feds come down here wanting to investigate illegal medical practices, the docs and the little people don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Business,” I observed.

  “Business,” he confirmed with a nod. “Works the same with food, jobs, money, what to do with grandma, and keeping Paco out of the gangs.”

  He looked at the print for a moment, held his head to one side, then turned and looked at me. “Those maricóns in the art world piss on Dali, say he more showman than artist, and he had a thing for ele
phants, and that is all Les Elephants mean. Me, I think Salvador Dali was a revolutionary. He dance around like a clown, make silly faces, say stupid shit, but all the time he telling little people a secret: Wheels coming off, Jose; it is all falling apart. When the pieces land, you be someplace else.”

  I stood and looked at the print. “Say it all does fall apart, jefe, what will rise to take its place?”

  Nacho opened his door, turned off his office lights, and stepped into the hallway. The clock on the wall above the table lamp said it was almost three in the morning. “In answer to your question, Jerry, what will rise to take its place? It will be like it has always been: More elephants. Different colors, different decorations, new names, same old bullshit. Buenas noches.” He looked down and studied me for a long moment. “You know how to use a gun?”

  I nodded and asked, “Why?”

  “Later,” he said and turned up the hall toward his living room and family.

  Outside on the circular drive, Jonny and Ip-man were in Jonny’s dark green Corolla VII that looked black in the half-light. Jonny looked as though he was napping in the driver’s seat, his straw hat pulled down over his eyes. Ippy was wide awake and wide eyed. The window on his side was down.

  “Ip-man,” I said, “Nacho wants me to work with you to put more variety in your runs—make you unpredictable. If you’re willing, we can start tomorrow. Meet a couple hours ahead of when the four of us get together, and do some runs. That okay with you?”

  He looked at me a long time. Then he closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  Jonny sat up, pushed his hat back on his head, nodded toward me, and said to Ippy, “Say ‘thank you,’ Ippy. This kid just saved your life.”

  Ippy looked back at me, nodded, moistened his lips, and said, “Thanks. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. Tomorrow at two? You want to meet me at the Dunkin Donut?”

  “No. Meet at Magel and Rivas,” I said. “I’ll meet you there around two.”

  He frowned. “Magel and Rivas? Why there?” He looked at Jonny. “We never go there. No traffic, no pedestrians.”

  Jonny nodded at me. The Ip-man turned and looked at me.

  “That’s what the cops will be saying, too, Ippy,” I said. “‘Not much street traffic, nothing on foot, easy to block off. They’d be crazy to meet there’. That is what their computer is thinking, too.”

  Jonny was right about the puzzle coming together. At the beginning of the second week I knew the names of just about everyone, including the SA police officers assigned to the area: Vega, Santiago, Diaz, and Espinoza in the daytime, no one at night.

  It took three days, but Ippy finally got through his head what made him so predictable. He was fast, but when given a variety of familiar exit routes, he invariably would pick the one with the most numerous exits, which would seem to make sense. However, the police computer can use that “most always” to predict with a high degree of probability what route the runner would take.

  “So, I never take the best route?” he asked.

  “That’s just as bad as always taking the best. Understand? Never gives the computer something to use just like always does. You don’t want the computer pointing in a direction and reporting probabilities. What you want is the computer just as confused as everyone else reporting, ‘Maybe this, maybe that, man; who knows?’.”

  We did some runs and on the first day I was there waiting for him somewhere along his route. Same on the second day, Ip-man getting really frustrated. The third day I couldn’t catch him except at a dead run following his dust.

  I graduated him, then Dylan and I went back to helping the folks in the ten, watching Jonny and Ip-Man lead and run, and fixing up Señora Rodriguez’s place to make it the first real home I ever had.

  At the end of the second week Dylan and I moved in to our new place and we were in business. Jonny and Ippy were still in the area, but fading away, sending customers our way. Nacho would drop off the stuff at five in the evening, then pick up the money at two in the morning, giving us our cut right then. That first night Dylan and my cuts together were over a thousand dollars. We paid off our landlady, all the money we owed Nacho, and bought food, sheets, and towels with the rest. With the next night’s cut we got a TV, satellite input, a laptop for me, Wi-Fi, some kitchen utensils, and Dylan went to a culinary school in the inner loop to interview to become admitted as a morning student, twelve hours a week.

  We also had money left over. Dylan was keeping books on our efforts, and he sat there at the end of our first full week of selling drugs. “Hermano, there is one problem I never thought I was gonna have,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Too much money.”

  We couldn’t open savings accounts or invest money in the stock market. Both leave rather long paper trails, the kind pattern recognition software loves.

  We couldn’t just stuff it in a mattress, although we did hide it in our house’s crawl space beneath the kitchen. I asked Jonny what he did, and Jonny gave me the name of a reliable dealer in gold who did a cash and carry business and didn’t care what your name was. For every twenty-four hundred dollars (when we started), we would get a beautiful U.S. twenty-dollar gold piece.

  By the end of the month, we could sell that first double-eagle for over twenty-five hundred. We didn’t sell, but we did get instructions from Nacho to up our prices five percent. Surprisingly, we got very few complaints from the customers. Most of them were from the suburbs and knew that the government was printing currency by the bale, and the more paper dollars there were, the less they were worth. No one seemed to know what to do about it except increase prices.

  We would have recommended investing in precious metals or gems, but we were hardly financial advisors and letting druggies know we were into gold didn’t seem real intelligent.

  A safety deposit box would have been ideal except for all the cameras to which the FBI and DEA had unfettered access. Leaving the money with Nacho seemed too much like UCH. Until we could come up with a better answer, we continued hiding the gold in the crawlspace.

  Family

  Our territory was mostly small residences, little backyard rental shacks, a few small businesses, and quite a few really good looking homes. Lots of backyard fences, abandoned buildings, really good hides, most with multiple escape routes. Most of our customers came from outside the ten. The people inside were mostly honest law-abiding workers scraping by and looking to us for occasional assistance.

  We told them buenos días, held doors for them, carried their groceries, helped move some into houses, helped move others out, learned everybody’s names, shopped and hired locally when we could, and even rescued a few purses, cats, and children, and busted the hell out of a few muggers and one pedophile we turned over to Nacho and never heard from again. We fixed drains, found babysitters, tilled gardens, fixed fences, sold drugs, and slipped a little money here and there to help put a meal on a table, get some teeth fixed, or make up a pro résumé to up the chances of someone landing a high-paying job. Mrs. Rodriguez tapped us to finance a cosmetic eye for Dorothy Kinney. It took only a quarter of our pile, and when she got it, Dorothy was looking good.

  As far as drug sales, the cops knew what was going on and looked the other way in exchange for keeping things quiet, the voters voting the right way, and the fifteen percent paid from Nacho’s cut. It seemed to me like paying tribute, the way ancient rulers would profit from conquering a country without having to occupy it.

  Nacho set me straight. “SAPD got the biggest and best armed and organized gang in town. Anytime they want the PD can shut us down. It’d be one bloody battle, lots of dirty laundry getting aired taking out cops and politicians both. They do that, chico, they standing on rubble, maybe half of them left alive, but they win. That fifteen percent we pay avoids warring with cops, keeps rest of the pain-in-the-ass local government out of Kings territory —building inspectors, social workers, licensing slugs. Business more free in Kin
gs territory than if they was in Washington. SAPD even warn us when they can if federales heading for the West Side. As long as we keep the body count down, keep our voters happy, we cruise. That fifteen ain’t tribute, Jer; It an investment.”

  On my computer I found a free internet school that encouraged me to learn what I wanted, and once I got past the hated word “school,” I found there were things I did want to learn: challenging things, interesting things. The school was set up mostly for illegal immigrants and was conducted in Spanish, but I wanted to learn Spanish well. I also wanted to improve my English, and those classes were in English. I wanted to learn geography, science, music theory, geo-political events, art, history, military science, and mathematics.

  Dylan said he would join me for the English and Spanish studies. He said he needed to improve how he was coming across to people at the culinary institute. The people there told him being a chef was being, in part, a showman. When a satisfied diner calls for the chef to proffer a complement and someone who looks like a gangster or an extra in a horror movie comes out of the kitchen, he’d likely clear out the dining room. There wasn’t anything he could do about his looks except stay clean, hair trimmed, and smiling. Once he did a practice smile at his instructor’s behest, his instructor told Dylan that his teeth, his scar, and how he spoke were things he could change.

  Dylan began getting his teeth fixed, got a preliminary assessment on his face by a plastic surgeon who told him that repairing the nerves in his chin would be routine, he bought a big refrigerator that worked well, took his classes, began reading eBooks in Spanish and English out loud to me, and really began learning how to cook. His dream still was to become a chef. He tried his homework experiments out on us. At times his creations were dreamingly excellent. At other times they were okay. At still other times we ordered out, cleared the smoke out of the house, and Dylan took notes about what had gone wrong.