The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Read online

  Also on my computer using satellite imagery, I learned the Poplar-Camada Ten Block, and re-learned all the areas adjoining our ten, including across the Zees into Reds grass. The streets, the houses, I virtually crept along the streets where the camera drones had passed, peeking down alleys, noting fences, factories, trees, and houses, possible paths and possible hides. If all I knew was our ten and was caught out, I’d be blind. I expanded the limits of my study again and again, took it all in, and remembered everything.

  My dream wasn’t something I could put in words. I liked the people in our ten. Part of my dream was enjoying meeting all those people, finding out about their lives, doing kindnesses when I could, kicking the crap out of muggers and burglars crazy enough to operate inside our ten, making money, being and staying free. We sold drugs mostly to people outside our ten who wanted to party. Addicts made up the rest. I once asked Nacho about selling to addicts, if it was wrong.

  He shrugged. “We ain’t in the right and wrong business, Jer. Mira. Say you don’t sell junkies what they need. Think they all goin’ to see the light, get in a program, get clean?”

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t dumb enough to believe that.

  “Mira, drugs don’t make somebody a addict,” he declared. “Addiction make a addict, ¿Lo entiende? Man wanna get clean, hijo de puta got a fight on his hands, hombre. None of my business. Be happy to drop him off at a meeting or a rehab. Man want to party and he got the cash to pay for it, that my business.”

  Unlike maybe two-thirds of the people in our ten, whatever we wanted, we had the money. Safe, too. No one messed with us because we had Nacho and the Kings behind us, no one turned us in because we did a lot for the people in our ten and almost everyone thought very highly of us. Señora Rodriguez really loved us as we took her shabby rental property and began making it into a beautiful place.

  I carried the product and Dylan dealt with the customers. I never thought again of the right or wrong of what we were doing. What we were doing was illegal, but so was any other kind of work for kids.

  We were too young or ill-defined citizenshipwise to hold down legal jobs, according to city, state, and federal law. What was left for us was what Dylan had told me back in UCH: robbing people, breaking and entering, murder for hire, male prostitution, begging, or selling drugs. Given the choices, dealing seemed the least objectionable and most profitable course. And it was profitable. Our little pile of gold got bigger.

  The opening to an escape route was called a thread. There were V-branches and W-branches, the thread of each branch leading to more threads and branches. Dylan always set up close to at least a W-branch, hardly ever at the end of a single thread. He figured after awhile our places of doing business would get known, and always using the same places would set us up to get hit by other gangs, feds, or loners long on jones and short on green. We’d tell our regulars the possible places where we’d be on the next few nights, but we’d never be exactly where we said. We’d be in sight of where we said so we could wave them in.

  Dylan would make the deals, collect the cash, then call me. I’d take the cash, pocket it, peel out a number of bags according to the amount of money, give them to the client, then fade back into the shadows, prepared to flash if the sale turned out to be a hit or a sting. Lots of runners had hides, but I didn’t believe in them. They were traps waiting to catch someone. A hundred times you use a hide, maybe you get away safe. That one time someone figured out your hide and is there waiting, then you catch it with a basket.

  Runners needed scrapers, things that could block or confuse the aerial observation of body heat. The purpose was to defeat the thermal imaging the drones used when their night imaging wasn’t sufficient. Running through crowds, past hot backyard grills, setting off fireworks, getting deep underground or in water often worked. Then, brand-new, we got optihoodies the same time the armed forces did. The hoodies did to heat just what the drone skins did to light. Keep your hands inside the sleeves, the hood up, the leggings on and covering your shoe tops, the drone can’t distinguish your heat from background heat. You couldn’t keep them on all the time because of the heat and they were no good for running and jumping; The fabric crackled almost like stiff plastic. We kept four or five in different hides in case we had a troublesome drone on our tails and needed to lose one, but for anything else they were impractical.

  Almost a year went by, it was the Fourth of July, the temperatures eighties and nineties (they used Fahrenheit in SA), politicians were out looking for votes, and the West Side Kings, the Black Lords, and the SAPD put on a big peace picnic north of the inner loop in Lords territory at Olmos Basin Park.

  The Lords and the Kings were tight, in that they both conducted business rather than ran gangs. They also took all kinds but were mostly Mexican. There was a cop there in civvies, Juan Manuel Salazar. At the picnic he put on a ventriloquism show for the kids. He had a dummy on his right knee he operated with his right hand. The dummy had a patch over one eye, a bandana tied over his hair, a scar on his wooden face, black denims, gang tats on his bare arms, and electric green sneaks. The dummy’s name was Pablo Gringo, which gave Pablo plenty of excuses to get into funny fights.

  We were told ahead of time not to call any of the cops by their rank, title, or occupation. So Officer Salazar was simply Juan-Manuel.

  Juan-Manuel was tall, lean-faced, with a narrow nose, light brown hair, and pale blue eyes that made him look very Anglo.

  Dylan said Salazar was criollo, and when I looked confused, my brother said, “Straight off the boat from España. His people never mix with natives—at least, not with their dicks.”

  The cop was funny, though, and the dummy’s voice sounded like it actually came from Pablo Gringo. He also had voices coming from a black case next to him, and he had Pablo Gringo get in arguments with El Diablo in the box. His different voices came from different directions asking Pablo questions or telling him “Vete a la chingada,” making everyone laugh.

  The Black Lords also put leads and runners on the street, and the wrap-up ending on a day filled with puppet shows, mariachis, Mexican food of all kinds, beer, soda, pie, and cake was an obstacle course footrace called “Runners Run.”

  Forty of us were at the starting line, eighteen from the Lords, four SAPD cops in civvies who wanted to try their luck, and eighteen from the Kings. The starting positions were all mixed up so I had a Lord on one side and a cop on the other. In between us and the finish line two hundred meters away were logs, concrete curbs, walls, mazes that went nowhere, water and mud features, and all kinds of fences.

  We heard betting going on, the betting favorite being a Lords runner called Lalo. I looked around for him until a very handsome boy two places away on my left said, “Estoy aquí, Moco Despacio.” His hair was peroxided blond, which really made him stand out. Kind of stupid if one is being chased through a crowd of people with black hair.

  As I searched for an adequate rejoinder to being called a slow snot, I heard Dylan behind Lalo say, “Comer polvo, Lalo Pendejo.” It felt good that the other Kings runners and leads within hearing laughed and clapped. Indeed, Lalo, eat my dust.

  The starter was one of the Lords underbosses, a huge dark fellow with a wide nose, wide shoulders, and muscles that practically sang a steroids jingle all on their own. He called himself “The Fireman” and held up a small pistol.

  “Now this here piece got nothin’ but blanks in it. I’m goin’ pop one off to start the race and I’m telling you clean right now if anyone of you sick bastards shoot back, I got boys all around here set things straight quick.”

  We laughed at the joke and his comical expression.

  “Ready?” he yelled.

  Some got down into Olympic sprinter’s starting position, some crouched over and put a grim expression on. Ippy, two places to my right, nodded at me and I nodded back. On my left, Lalo leaned forward and gave me the finger.

  The Fireman fired the pistol, and it appeared most of the Lords runners and Kings runn
ers had entertained the same idea: Start a fight with the other side while your side’s fastest runners made for the finish.

  Screams, hollers, curses, but Ippy and I ducked the fists aimed for us and flat out ran. Soon we had two more Kings close behind us, one of the cops, and three Lords, one of them Lalo Pendejo. Then we hit the obstacles.

  There were easy looking welcoming lane entrances and entrances that looked already blocked. It seemed obvious to me, if one took the easiest looking route, one either wound up at the end of a channel, in mud up to his waist, or surrounded by impassable wire. Pick the steeps, walls, and blocked entrances and they’d be the easiest runs. Turned out to be true.

  I came in first. Ippy came in a close second. Surprisingly, the cop that had been close came in third. He was a redneck patrolman named Deke Beaumont. Very proud of his running was Deke Beaumont, and he was not happy about coming in third. A Kings runner named Bo came in fourth because he was fast and had followed Ippy like a police record. Lalo and one of his buddies came in fifth and sixth. I sniffed my nose at him just to show him how slow my snot was.

  Lalo shrugged and nodded. It was an acknowledgement of the results, grudgingly delivered.

  There were two judges at the finish line: One was Joaquín Cañón, boss of the Kings, the other was Ángel Murrieta, boss of the Lords. It was the first time I had ever seen Boss Cañón in the flesh. He was surprisingly young, but very fit looking, with the face of an old movie star: a dark James Mason. Boss Murrieta was tougher looking, more like Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone. After Ippy, Deke, and I were declared the winners and invited to dine at the table of the bosses, despite our recent exertions, Ippy and I weren’t real hungry we were so nervous. The cop dug in like he had no food at his house.

  At one point toward the end of the eating, Señor Murrieta said to me, “Jerry Track, many congratulations on your win.”

  “Muchas gracias, señor.” I answered.

  He grinned widely. “So, how much I got to pay you to become a Black Lord and run up here where the rich people live?”

  Surprise all over my face, I turned and looked at my boss.

  Joaquín Cañón shrugged and said, “It is okay, Jerry. Ángel is a good friend. It would be a great loss for the Kings, but a great opportunity for you.”

  “I take you right into the Lords,” urged Señor Murrieta. “No probation. You learn the neighborhood, go right in making a Lord’s share.” He grinned even more widely. “People up here buy much product because they can afford it. They ain’t a house in Lords grass ain’t got one or more runny noses. What you say?”

  “With all respect for you and grateful thanks for your generous offer, Don Murrieta, I cannot leave the family that took me and my brother in when we had no one. I like my ten and the people in it.” I shrugged and smiled. “And I wouldn’t know what to do with more money. I am very well taken care of. Thank you again.”

  Señor Murrieta looked at Ippy and said, “How about you, Chino?”

  I felt the muscles in the back of my neck tighten as Ippy took a deep breath, let it out, and looked right at the boss of the Black Lords. “I am with Jerry, Don Ángel. I am happy with the money, and with the company. And almost no one in the Kings call me Chino. They call me Ip-man.”

  There was some uh-oh whistling and a rise in tension at Ippy’s answer, until Ángel Murrieta asked Deke Beaumont if he would come to work for the Lords. The laughter broke the tension. Everyone there knew that Officer Deke already worked for the Lords and in a much more sensitive capacity.

  We finished our burritos, watermelon, beer, and sodas, then with the other probationers helped clean up the area prior to going home. As Nacho put it, “We don’t go home and leave the place looking like fucking hippies molted here.”

  While we were picking up papers, Nacho walked up to Ippy and said, “I hear you unhappy if people call you Chino.”

  I could see it on Ippy’s face: In for a centavo, in for a billion. “Nacho, sir, you happy when people call you beaner or spic?”

  “Nobody call me that! Never!”

  I felt like stepping away from Ippy, but I still carried the scars of the Geronimo years and remained next to him. A guy’s got a right to his own name. Nacho looked at me. “Look at you, chico. You want to fight me?”

  “No, señor. I just think a man has a right to his own name; He ought to be called what he wants.”

  “Man?” He looked around to make some disparaging remark to a crowd, but everyone was away from him except Ippy and me. He spat on the ground, looked up at Ippy and said, “Okay, man. This Ip-man. Who is he?”

  “Ip-man was the wing-chun master who taught Bruce Lee to fight.”

  Nacho folded his arms and said, “So if I call you Chino, what you do?”

  Ippy arched his eyebrows and grinned. “Then I start calling you El Spico,” he said, then grinned. “But, jefe, with great respect.”

  I laughed, and then Nacho smiled and laughed. “Está bien, Ip-man. You got ‘em like grapefruits. So when you two done cleaning up and playing around, I’ll be in the parking lot meeting with the bosses. Wait at my car.”

  He turned and walked off toward the parking lot. I faced Ippy and said, “I thought we were going to be buried here.”

  “Me too.” He looked at me, his expression one of distress. “I got to pee, Jerry. Now.” He turned and headed toward the portable toilets. As he was running he called, “Thank you for sticking! I never forget it!”

  After we and the rest of the prospects from the Kings and Lords finished the cleanup, the bosses meeting in the parking lot was still on. I saw Juan-Manuel Salazar, the cop who put on the puppet show for the kids, putting away his stuff in two big black cases after talking with some little kids and their mothers.

  I walked over and said, “My name’s Jerry Track, señor. I really liked your show. You were really good.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “So, if you’re so good, why are you a cop?”

  “Why are you a runner?” he asked in turn, his eyes twinkling.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Silly question,” I said. “How do you throw your voice like that, making it sound like it comes from anywhere but you?”

  “That’s tougher to answer. Involves making sounds in my abdomen,” he patted his stomach, “and forming my tongue in different positions to make it sound like it’s coming from different directions.”

  “But how?”

  “You have a computer?”

  I nodded. “Sure.’

  “So look it up.” As he stood there, I heard a deep menacing voice from above and behind me say, “I’m back here, Jerry!”

  I whirled around and no one was there. Just an empty space where folding chairs had been and a board fence. I laughed and his smile showed how much fun surprising me had been.

  “I was watching your lips, man. How did you do that? Please.”

  “Look it up. It’s pretty involved and takes a lot of practice,” he said. “There is something you can do right away, though. Like to see?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned and walked about five meters from me and stood with his back toward me, both hands down at his sides. Then suddenly a deep voice from my left said, “Watch out!”

  I laughed again. That was so cool. He turned around and pointed at the board fence to my left. “I bounced my voice off that fence, made it sound like I was over there.”

  “How? Your head was looking straight ahead and your hands were at your sides.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding approvingly. “I directed my voice just with my mouth, lips, and tongue. You can do the same thing with your hand.” He turned his head to the left, cupped his right hand around his mouth, and a deep voice from the hot dog wagon behind me said, “Pablo Gringo is hongry!”

  Riding in back with Ippy and Dylan late that afternoon, Nacho said to me, “You did good at the picnic, Jer. The boss is very proud of you, and he even thanked me for making such a good runner out of you, even if you did mo
st of the work yourself. I’m very proud of you, too, Ip-man,” he said with a very satisfied nod. “Family. We a family, goddammit, and that not for sale. Not for any price.”

  The Move

  Soon after that, Dylan and I were both officially made Kings. There was a little ceremony at a restaurant downtown presided over by Boss Cañón in which we and four others swore our allegiance to the West Side Kings, and the brotherhood of Kings swore its allegiance to us. The new Kings were all pretty young.

  The main advantage to being a made King was that no one could kill us now without the support and unanimous approval of the Council, and that included the PD member. We also got a much bigger cut from sales, but we were already doing so well we voluntarily paid the landlady her full rent, the work we were still doing on the place gratis. When Nacho called a meeting now, we attended but kept our mouths shut unless asked a direct question.

  When Dylan became eighteen, I was already thirteen. Whatever the trouble with Bingwen Lee and the Sun Tong had been was now over, Nacho got some of his men back from the boss and eight more newcomers to fill out the spots left vacant by the Reds killings. Jonny and the Ip-man returned to break in two of the teams while Dylan and I trained the other two teams.

  There were good chases, funny things, some sadness over favorite people in our neighborhood dying or moving away. Some really great people moving in. While I had fun learning about throwing my voice, Dylan got Major Valdez to teach him how to drive. He did well and got his license three weeks later. He came back with a white Subaru Grand Forester all paid for soon after. It was good we had repaired the garage roof and put in a concrete deck.

  In between everything else, we managed to help Colonel Belton build a detached garage in back of his home to house his restored black Mercedes coupe. We dug the ground, put in the forms, the colonel had a contractor come in to pour the concrete deck, which was a squeeze getting the truck backed in between the east side of the house and the fence. Listening to a lot of the colonel’s jazz, we did the framing on the garage, the roof, and finished it off with paint to match the house. I’d never built anything before, and so big. It gave me a fine feeling.