Bulletproof Vest (14 page)

You file a police report and a few months later you leave for college.

*   *   *

Cars and minivans are parked all along the curb in front of the dorms, blinkers flashing in the late August mist. Other students rush past, carrying plastic crates, floor lamps, and pillows. I pull the last of my boxes out of my mother's grocery-store van.

“All these viejos are going to be living in the same building as you?” she asks, as we make our way to my dorm. She watches as a wave of students pours out of the building, mostly male. Not only am I living in a coed dorm, but because it sits across from the football stadium and the pool, most of the incoming athletes are in my building.

“Yeah,” I say.

“That's disgusting,” she says, scanning the lit dorm windows above, as if she can practically see everything unfolding there on the other side of the brick wall. All those men tossing and turning in their beds on the floor below mine, all those men stripping down in the showers and lathering up before heading out to the bars where the loose girls will be waiting.

When we reach my room, she starts unpacking one of the boxes.

“It's getting late,” I say. “You should probably head back.”

“Let me at least help you make your bed,” she says, pulling a set of sheets from the box.

“It's okay, Mom,” I say. “I can do it.”

She sets the sheets down on the bed, and we head back outside. Jorge is waiting in the driver's seat and starts the van when he sees us coming.

“Drive safely,” I say, climbing over the passenger seat and giving him a quick hug.

“I will,” he says. “Take care.”

I jump out and go to give my mother a quick hug, but she pulls me to her and holds on, and then her entire body is trembling in my arms.

“Ay, no, no, no,” she wails, pressing her wet cheek against my neck, the scent of Dove soap evaporating off her warm skin.

I loosen my embrace, let my arms fall at my sides, but she hangs on, and I can feel my heart going wild, am certain that she can feel it kicking against the wall of her sternum. She's never really hugged me before, and being held by her now makes me extremely uncomfortable. The only times she had ever laid her hands on me was when I was a kid and she used to pray for me. She would rub olive oil onto her hands and then place them on my forehead, and ask God to heal the wounds in my soul.
The wounds in my soul?
This always struck me as odd, because as far as I knew, I had no wounds in my soul.

“Amá, vámonos,” Jorge yells, pushing the passenger-side door open. “She didn't die, you can call her when we get home.”

She pulls away, wipes her tears with the back of her hand, and steps up into the van. I reach for the seat belt and hand it to her, make sure her khaki trench isn't in the way before slamming the door shut. She rolls down her window.

“When you go to those places, you know those fiestas where everyone is drinking?” She snaps her belt in place. “Make sure you bring your own cup. There are so many diseases out there, el SIDA and who knows what else, and you just never know.”

“Okay,” I say. “I will.”

They pull away and I watch them stop at the intersection, turn right, and then they're gone. It's raining harder and I stand at the curb for a long time, overwhelmed with a sadness that catches me off guard. Though I can't explain why, and I know it makes no sense—I suddenly feel homesick. Not for the home I just left but rather for the one I never knew.

 

9

THE FUGITIVE

 

 

HE HOSES BITS OF BROCCOLI
and blackened tilapia off white ceramic plates. Food tickets line the counter behind him, and the glow from the burners reflects off his arm as the line cook sends shrimp sauté soaring into the air.

“I need a side of remoulade,” the redheaded waitress yells as she comes through the tall stainless steel doors. They swing forward and back on the hinges and he catches a glimpse of the two officers speaking with the manager. Someone must have left without paying or used a fraudulent credit card—it happens all the time. He pulls down the coiled hose that dangles above the sink, presses the red button, and hot water rains down on silverware, plates, and coffee mugs.

“Eighty-six chocolate cake,” the cook yells, pulling a ticket off the counter.

“Eighty-six chocolate cake,” the redhead repeats as she goes out the doors.

He reaches into the sink and rubs pink lipstick off a mug with his thumb. Once again he pushes the red button, and turns his face away as the steam rises. He notices the manager and the two officers walking toward him.

“Armando,” the manager says, “why don't you take a break? These officers would like to ask you a few questions.”

He nods, wipes his hands off on his black-and-white checkered pants, and follows them, trying not to think about what they might possibly want with him. They probably just have a few more questions regarding his buddy, the weed dealer. A few weeks earlier, he had just pulled into the dealer's driveway when two police cars pulled up next to him. They had questioned him, asking what his affiliation with so-and-so was. He told them he and so-and-so were friends. That he was just stopping by to say hello, but still, they had searched his car and found the wad of cash in the glove box. He explained that he worked in a restaurant as a dishwasher during the day, and had a second job vacuuming empty office buildings at night. In fact, he had just cashed some checks. He searched his shirt pocket, pulled out a few stubs, and handed them to one of the officers.

They asked to see his driver's license, and it was only then that he felt the beads of sweat break across his forehead, uncertain if his alias would hold. He fumbled for his wallet, pulled out his driver's license, and handed it to one of the officers. The officer inspected the license, the stubs, and handed everything back to him, saying he was free to go. Had they actually counted the wad, they would have seen that the numbers were off. He climbed back into his car and pulled away, his heart racing, same as it's racing now as he walks behind the two officers, follows them out the back door and into the alley behind the restaurant. Up above, a sliver of blue sky is stranded between the tall buildings—downtown Denver. At the end of the alley, young professionals hurry past on the sidewalk, carrying briefcases, conversing, and laughing loudly as they hurry back to their offices, the lunch rush coming to an end.

“Mr. Gutiérrez, do you have any idea why we are here?” one of the officers asks him.

He shrugs, though he thinks the dealer may have put the finger on him. For the past few months, he had been selling a bit of weed on the side, to friends and acquaintances mostly, to make ends meet.

“What is your full name, sir?” the other asks.

“Armando Gutiérrez,” he says.

The vague stench of something rotting in the nearby Dumpster permeates the air around them. The officers ask to see his ID. He reaches into his back pocket and hands them his driver's license. The officer turns the card over in his hand.

“Mr. Gutiérrez,” he says, still inspecting the card. “We're going to need you to come down to the station, no big deal, really. We just need to ask you a few questions, we'll have you back here in no time at all.”

He climbs into the backseat, goes willingly, confident that his alias will hold, but once they reach the station, they fingerprint him. Amazing that such an intricate whorl of lines and grooves, an identity he was born with, could not be so easily replaced. He doesn't see the screen light up when they run his prints, but he sees the blue tinge of light reflecting off the officer's face as he scrolls through his record. It must all be right there before him—the long trail of smashed cars and trucks he left in Illinois, the maroon Blazer he drove off the road and smashed into a mailbox, the blue Chevy he wrapped around a telephone pole, the black car he rolled twice before being stopped by a tree, and all the others. Though none of these offenses matters now. He had already done his time for being caught driving under the influence one too many times, had already spent six months in an Illinois penitentiary. Even the skipping out on bail for having used an unregistered weapon pales in the face of the real discovery—his identity. He's Jose Manuel Venegas, a fugitive. Wanted by the Mexican authorities for murder. He's arrested and held in solitary confinement.

*   *   *

A plate of food scrapes across the concrete as it slides through the small opening under his door. On the plate, it's the usual, a heap of something gray and mashed, some type of starch, and though he has no appetite, he forces a few spoonfuls of the tasteless muck down and slides the plate back out. This is the extent of his human contact—nothing but his thoughts to keep him company, and night after night he curls up into a ball and attempts to sleep, though his mind won't stop spinning. Who was the son of a bitch who put the finger on him? It was obviously someone who knew where he worked. He has his ideas about who it may have been, but is certain of nothing. Maybe it was the dealer, or maybe it was the woman he lives with. Each time they had an argument, she threatened to call the police. Or perhaps it was her brother:
Lay a hand on my sister again and I'm calling the police, telling them you're wanted in Mexico,
he had threatened more than once. For all he knows, it was Pascuala or even one of his own kids.

He stretches and tries not to think of the looming possibility that he may spend the rest of his living days in prison, and he can't help but think back to that hot afternoon and the relentless argument that raged around him just before he pulled the trigger. How he wishes he could return to that day and undo what he did—retrieve that one bullet. Though he had taken out other cabrones, he had never regretted a single one. As far as he was concerned, each one of those culeros got what they had coming. With the neighbor, it was kill or be killed. The pendejo at the Gato Negro had started it with him, and though he hadn't meant to kill him, he had misjudged that final blow. Real life is not like the movies. If you hit a man over the head with a full bottle of rum, it doesn't shatter into hundreds of pieces. And before these two, there had been the one in Zacatecas, the one he had lent his friend a hand with. That one had been rough, because he really had nothing against the man himself, and while they were digging his grave, the man would not shut up. He kept going on and on about his wife and kids, saying he would pay anything, do anything, he would leave the area, anything if they would please, for the love of God, just let him live. His ankles and wrists were tied with rope and it was uncomfortable to see a man squirm on the ground and beg like that.

“Shut him up,” he told his friend, but the imbecile was having second thoughts, saying, maybe they should let the man go.
Let him go?
You don't drag a man out into the desert in the middle of the night, hog-tied and begging for his life, and then set him free. He threw his shovel aside, pulled out his pistol, and aimed it at his friend. “Either you take care of him, or I'll make this hole big enough for you both.” His buddy walked over to the man, put two bullets in his head, and that was that.

And before those three, there had been the one—the first. Back when he and Pascuala had only been married for three years and he had gone to Mexico City to work in a meatpacking plant, where he did everything from filleting entire carcasses into separate cuts to chiseling ice off the blocks with his ice pick and packaging the meat in plastic wrap. After he had been in the city for a few months and secured a unit in the tenements, he had sent for Pascuala. On Sundays after misa they'd go visit a museum or go for a stroll through El Zócalo, he always carrying Chemel, who was two at the time, and she carrying Maria Elena, their baby girl. During the week, he rode the trolley to work while she stayed at home, cooked, cleaned, and looked after the children. In the evening, they'd go for long walks in the plaza and, for a brief moment, it seemed they could go on living this way forever and be happy.

But then there had been that one night when he never made it home. He had gone to a pulquería with a few other guys from the meatpacking plant. They had plowed through several rounds of pulque, and a few hours later, when he and his friend were waiting for the trolley, he felt it. The weight of the liquid in his bladder, pressing against the long white scar on his gut where the feds had sliced him open at a rodeo three years before. Back when he was a newlywed and feeling good, he had unloaded his gun into the blue sky as he always did. Then two feds were on him, demanding he hand over his gun, and when he refused, they wrestled him to the ground. Once the dust had settled, the feds were gone, and he was lying in a pool of blood, his intestines pushing through the long gash across his abdomen where they had sliced him open. Had it not been for his mother-in-law, and her two sisters' quick thinking, he might have bled to death, right there on the dirt. But Andrea and her sisters tied their rebozos around his waist and got him to the hospital. The doctors thought he wasn't going to survive, though after spending a month in the hospital, he had recovered, and now the scar only bothered him during times like this, when his bladder was bursting.

He looked down the street, still no sign of the streetcar, nothing but the shining rails cutting across the cobblestones. He pushed himself to his feet and wandered into the moonlit shadows of the nearby trees, and there he unzipped his pants and while his bladder emptied, he listened to the whisper of the creek below. The evening breeze kicked up a few leaves and dust, and for a brief moment he felt as though he were back out in the country. The first sparks of the approaching trolley came snapping on the wires above. He zipped his pants, turned around, and walked smack into two feds. Standing next to each other, they made a perfect ten: One was short and round, while the other was tall and slim.