Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 22
A pelican flies over water that looks like an ocean of sapphires while two palm trees sway in a gentle breeze that barely shifts any of the crystalline sand on the beach. A woman leans over the famous car from a 70s American movie I can’t remember the title of, the bandana she’s using as a bathing suit disappearing between her thighs.
I’ve worked with El Búho for more than two years, and I never noticed the posters he tacked to the ceiling.
“Nice touch,” I say.
He nods, gives a half-smile. “I wanted to cover all the bases.”
“It’s only two bases.” I sit up, leaning on my elbow. “And that one’s bordering on pornographic.”
He just shrugs and runs the edge of a knife over a tomato, testing the blade, then pours alcohol over it. Blotting it dry, he picks up a needle then sets it down, turns over a pair of tongs and replaces the plastic wrap over the table. Three more slices in the tomato and I think he’s stalling.
“You promised,” I say.
His hand jumps, nicking his thumb. Hand to his mouth, he mumbles, “You’re sure about this.”
I just nod and lie down, close my eyes. A muted rainbow of dots floats across the flesh inside my eyelids. I focus, try to rearrange them into a halftone print of a family portrait with only two people. Inhale. The smell of damp smoke floods my nostrils, and El Búho gave up cigarettes years ago after his wife died of cancer. Exhale. The sound of actresses gasping with hands held over hearts drowns out the tenor of Pedro Infante’s voice. Inhale. A fist of cheap cologne, aguardiente, and the smell of explosives crushes my nose. Exhale. A whiff of ash, of carbon, of Amá’s shampoo from when I was younger that always reminded me of cut grass. Inhale. Nitrous oxide and El Búho’s liquid voice telling me to count to ten. Somewhere beyond my ears, past bloody eyelids and clenched fists and bruised legs and metal-burnt chests, Pedro Infante drags his voice over broken glass in the darkness.
Static white. Fields of snow and the feathers of doves falling around me. A thousand rose thorns stab my fingers and feet. El Búho’s voice sends the feathers into spirals.
I blink away the nauseating soot and see a brilliant blue swirl above me. Tiny fists reshape the inside of my head.
“Yesenia?” His voice is made of cotton and I can hardly hear it over the reverberations in my skull.
The air is claustrophobic, pushing down on me. Hot metal, copper and antiseptic. I blink, tell my fingers to move. One trembles, or that might be my vision.
“Yesenia, can you hear me, mija?” His snaps are cracks of thunder.
I hoist myself up to my elbows, swallow. An anchor must be tied to the back of my head.
“Do you know where you are? Do you know my name?”
He snaps his fingers to the left, right, left, up and down, testing my reactions.
I nod, swat his fingers away from my face.
“Talk to me.”
I clear my throat and point to a glass of water beside the tray that holds his tools. He hands it to me and I down half of it in two gulps, relishing the cool feeling against my parched throat.
“Your senses are all intact, hearing, cognition, reactions and such.”
I nod.
“What’s your name?”
My mouth opens and closes.
“Take your time. Don’t force it. Just make a noise.”
My mouth opens again, closes again. I imagine a curtain falling across Amá’s window, obscuring her from me, separating us.
“Yesenia.” El Búho takes my hand and looks me straight in the eyes, his voice shot through with tremors. “Yesenia, concentrate. I need you to speak.”
I close my eyes and focus. I picture Amá and Yerry and me riding the funicular above the city and describe to her the mountains that protect us and scrape the heavens. I picture Amá and me curled on her couch, listening to Las Juanas or Café con Aroma de Mujer or whatever she wants. I picture bringing home a beautiful woman so Amá can meet her for the first time, how Amá touches her face and how this beautiful woman and I regale Amá with stories of how we met and the adventures we’ve had and how gorgeous our children—her grandchildren—will be.
“Yesenia,” el Búho says. “Please say something.”
I open my eyes, then I open mouth.
The silence devours me.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are too many people to thank and I will likely forget someone, but here goes anyway. Thank you first to Eric, Lance, and all of the Down & Out Team. Thank you to my agent, Stacia Decker, and everyone at Dunow Carlson & Lerner. Thank you to everyone who published any of these stories before. Thank you to the crime community who lets me rip off their stories I mean inspires me to write better: Eryk Pruitt, Ed Aymar, Angel Luis Colón, Chris Irvin, Scott Adlerberg, JDO, Rob Hart, Todd Robinson, Gabino Iglesias, Jordan Harper, Jen Conley, Thomas Pluck, Shawn Cosby, Jay Stringer, Joe Clifford and Tom Pitts, Ben Whitmer, Craig Wallwork, Axel Taiari, Chris Novas, Robb and Liv at Booked., Hector Acosta, Art Taylor, Tara Laskowski, Matt Iden, Chad Eagleton, and everyone else I missed. Thank you to mi parcero Diego Felipe Mena por los detalles cotidianos y rosquillas caleñas. Above all, thank you to Amanda, Donovan, and Ruby for everything else.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NIK KORPON is the author of The Rebellion’s Last Traitor, Queen of the Struggle, and The Soul Standard, among others. He lives in Baltimore.
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BOOKS BY NIK KORPON
The Rebellion’s Last Traitor
Queen of the Struggle
The Soul Standard
Punching Paradise
Old Ghosts
Wear Your Home Like a Scar
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Here is a preview from Countdown by Matt Phillips, published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books.
Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.
“…Marijuana is still illegal on the federal level. It’s listed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a ‘Schedule I’ drug—the same classification as LSD, ecstasy and heroin. While the federal government allows banks to work with cannabis businesses in states that have passed laws approving recreational marijuana, banks still have to file suspicious activities reports in addition to following standard banking guidelines. That means extra costs. And since the federal prohibition against marijuana is still in effect, banks fear they could be held criminally liable should a marijuana business run afoul of the law. As a result, many cannabis businesses become all-cash enterprises, with stories abounding of business people hauling duffel bags filled with cash, making them targets for robberies…”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 5, 2017
“We’re making money, okay? Making the money isn’t a problem. It’s more like—”
“Where to put it all.”
“That’s right. Where to put it all. Because the banks, they got federal insurance. And they don’t touch this marijuana money. Puts them in an awkward position, if they do.”
“Like, maybe the feds decide to go and do something about this marijuana thing. And if they do, shit, you get all your assets frozen. Banks get got, and so do you.”
“But it’s a lot of money. Like, bags of the stuff. I can’t spend it too fast—I do, and the next thing I know, I got the tax man up my ass about how I’m living.”
“All this money…You need to hide it.”
“But where? And how?”
—Overheard in a bar
THE FOUR
ONE
Donnie Zeus Echo ordered a double cheeseburger and a lemonade, sat on the boardwalk looking at the waist-high surf and girls walking by in bikini tops and cutoff jean shorts. The way the girls wore shorts now, with the bottoms of their asses hanging out and jiggling, not too classy a look. But Echo liked to watch those asses hang and bounce down the boardwalk. Makes a decent show when you’re chewing a burger and sipping something sweet, feeling that sea breeze on your face.
He wanted a cold beer but he didn’t know a hamburger stand where they sold any. He’d have to go next door to the Surf Shack Tap House for that. No problem. He’d finish the burger and head over there, get a little drunk before he met with Glanson, his old battle buddy.
Glanson? Shit. Still the same fuck up who shot himself in the foot with a Russian pistol.
Echo used to be a grunt. Did a couple extended vacations in Eye-Rack. Learned to embrace the suck. Also learned to pull teeth and rip off fingernails. Arabic didn’t come easy to him so Echo had to find other ways. That’s another thing he learned: There’s lots of ways to get a thing done.
A man has to be creative. Six years in the service and Echo got himself an honorable discharge and not a damn thing besides. Also of note: A panther tattoo on his chest and an M16 on each wrist. Talk about a gun show. Echo drove a ’99 Honda Civic with a leaky head gasket. He lived in a studio apartment off Garnet—fell asleep to the sound of coeds vomiting in the gutters. Close to the beach though. That was something he liked. And those asses hanging out. He liked those.
He chewed faster and watched a brunette waddle past him. Man, he’d like a piece of that. Something juicy besides a cheeseburger. She ignored Echo’s big probing eyes, one of them a bit off point—his somewhat lazy eye. He was used to women ignoring him. Best way to get a girl’s attention was to wave some money in her face. Didn’t have to be much either. Enough for a decent meal and a cab ride. Simple pleasures, you know?
That’s what he and Glanson should do, run down to Tijuana and get themselves a couple whores. Make the girls wear towels over their heads so the two grunts could pretend they were back in Eye-Rack. Good times, baby. The bad thing about Middle Eastern girls is they hold still while you fuck them. Far as he knew, Mexican girls bucked like wild horses.
Yes, sir—he craved some señoritas with some decent ta-tas.
Echo finished his burger, sucked down lemonade until the straw whistled. He watched a skinny blonde roll past on some roller blades. Not bad. But it’d be better with a few beers in him.
He stood to go next door, careful to cover the bulge of the .45 tucked into his waistband. He touched the gun tenderly through the fabric of his Hawaiian shirt—oh, you wanna wanna lay her?—and smiled. Echo knew Glanson. Sure he did. But that didn’t mean he trusted Glanson.
No fucking way. Not in this life. And not in the next one.
TWO
Abbicus Glanson had a small dick and he knew it. Sure, it bothered him. The way to make up for that—in Glanson’s mind—was to act crazy as shit, draw as much attention as you can. That worked in a war zone. It worked damn well. Not so much back home—in Murica, as Glanson liked to call it. Not when he needed a job, money, a place of residence.
When he left the service, Glanson had a neon green Honda CBR crotch rocket, three shotguns, and a respectable collection of pocket knives.
He rode the bike cross-country, decided to rent an apartment in San Diego. He liked the weather and, growing up in the Midwest, he dreamed about living near the Pacific Ocean. Didn’t use it much, but he liked to know all his childhood buddies back home were talking shit about him living in California. Let those suckers freeze their asses off in April. Glanson wore flip-flops and board shorts every fucking day, walked around in December with his shirt off.
Fuck Glanson? No—fuck the small-town Midwest.
Fuck you, motherfuckers.
Still, Glanson had a bitch of a time finding steady work. He could always go back to the war zone with a private firm, but you can’t wear flip-flops and fuck surfer girls in Eye-Rack. About the best you can do is smoke a joint and drink a forty oz. But you had to avoid being killed.
That was the big thing, the hard part.
So, no private security gig in Eye-Rack. No steady job. Nothing. Nada.
But then he met a guy at Ray’s in Ocean Beach, a favorite locals spot for live music. Glanson liked Ray’s for the drink specials and the scent of marijuana hanging in the air.
This short bald guy, burly as hell in a blue tank, nods at Glanson and says, “Where you do yours, amigo?”
“My what?”
The guy points at a tattoo on Glanson’s wrist: An M16 wrapped by a hissing serpent. “Your tat, man. Where’d you get it?”
“Eye-Rack,” Glanson says. “What’s it to you?”
The guy turns around and lifts his tank over his head. His back is covered with a detailed soldier in full body armor. The soldier’s eyes squint at Glanson and the gun in his hand is pointed right at Glanson’s heart.
Glanson says, “Holy shit.”
The guy lowers his shirt and turns around, says, “Fucking A. Grunt through and through, baby.”
Glanson got lucky. Turns out this other grunt—Abel Sendich—hit on an innovative business idea. With the legalization of marijuana in California, and the federal illegality of the drug, there’s a teeny weeny money problem. You can grow weed. You can sell it. You can smoke it and you can eat it. You can do just about whatever you want with it. But the money you make off it—there’s the motherfucking rub. You can’t put it in a bank because the IRS will start asking important questions. You can’t keep it at the dispensary—that’s asking for an ass whipping.
So, what do you do with it?
“Fuck if I know,” Glanson says. “You gotta launder it some way, clean it.”
“Whatever you do,” Abel says deep into his fifth beer, “You got to move it, and you got to store it. No two ways about that—move the money, store the money.”
Okay, then. Glanson thought about that for about half a beer. Next thing he knows, Abel’s asking Glanson if he needs a job. Bada-fucking-bing.
Yes. He. Does.
Two weeks later, Glanson found himself wearing a 9mm and a collared black Dickies shirt, watching the parking lot outside Acee’s Apothecary on Thirty-Second and Adams. “Might as well do it now,” he said. “Light traffic and it’s the end of business.”
Next to him, in the driver’s seat of the white Econoline van, Abel nodded. “I’ll pull in along the door. Make sure you unclip the nine. Be ready, Glanson. We haven’t got pinged yet, but a couple guys got shitcanned up in North County just last week.”
“I read about that,” Glanson said. Two private security guys shot down by ’bangers knocking over a dispensary in Del Mar, of all fucking places. The ’bangers escaped. The security guys were still sleeping. Taking permanent naps. “Came at them with automatics.”
Abel chuckled. “We need to gear up, baby. I’m looking to get us some more shotties.”
“Need a fucking grenade one of these days,” Glanson said.
Abel didn’t say shit to that. He fired up the van, let it roll away from the curb, drift left across the street, and bounce into the parking lot. He stopped. “Your chariot awaits.”
Glanson unclipped the holster for his nine, rested his right hand on the gun.
He opened the passenger door and walked briskly toward the steel-reinforced door, pushed it open and disappeared into Acee’s Apothecary.
This new job Glanson had—it paid the bills and it came with a perk: Mary Jane in spades.
THREE
Jessie Jessup didn’t come from money. She came from three generations of cattle ranchers in east Texas. She was a woman, but for all her beauty—petite at five-three and a hundred seven pounds—Jessie came from men. She was of men—hard fucking men. At thirty-seven years old, she still carried a hint of her Texas drawl, but a decade living in SoCal had drained most of that lilt from her speech.
Jessie’s daddy taught her to invest in herself, in her own operation. He used to say you don’t got a damn thing until you can’t help but give yourself all the money you make. That didn’t make much sense to Jessie when she waited tables, or when she sold used cars, or when she worked at a place called Gino’s Nursery.
It made sense now, after an ex-lover named Amos French taught Jessie a growing technique called aquaponics. That is to say, French taught Jessie how to grow weed using fish—that’s right, fucking fish. And you could do it inside, away from the prying eyes of neighbors and cops.
Turned out, Jessie had herself a green thumb. Two green thumbs.
She grew that dank motherfucking weed.
But Jessie didn’t have any street smarts. Hell, she knew how to tell a horny cowpoke to fuck off, and she knew how to save a horse and ride a cowboy when she needed to, but she didn’t know how to negotiate the gangs and woe-be-gones of the gritty SoCal underbelly.
That’s what LaDon was for. LaDon was big, he was black, and he was mean as shit when it came down to it. He also knew where they could open a dispensary operation and keep it under wraps. No way Jessie could get a legit dispensary license. That shit was too complicated. She took one look at the paperwork after reading through Proposition 64 and decided she’d do this shit on the sly.
Enter LaDon, another regular at The Zip Zap Bar in City Heights. He used to tease her about drinking cosmos in a dive bar, but they got along. Sure, LaDon wanted a piece of her, but he also had an ex-wife and daughter.
Jessie liked to fuck and run. She was a one-night stand kind of girl. That made LaDon off-limits.
