As they drove back to the truck yard, the sun peeked through the gunmetal haze along the horizon. Something like a plan started taking shape in Happy’s mind. The smallness of the amount, he thought, was interesting. It wasn’t a real kidnap, they weren’t trying to bleed the family. They must’ve already known we were tapped out, he thought, the fee paid to Lonely. They just want a little something to make up for their trouble. They killed a few men, from what Roque’d said, and that deserved fair compensation. The ransom was just a way to tax the salvatruchos without actually causing ill will. Lonely was no doubt delighted: Stick it to the pollos. It made it look like he’d made a deal but it cost him nothing. Every business should catch breaks like that.
He considered phoning Lattimore, hitting up the bureau for the ransom. Not like it isn’t in their interest to keep this thing afloat, he thought. They had flash and drop money, twenty grand was in the realm of possibility, theoretically. Small or large, though, the amount would mean dick to Lattimore. The bureau’s not a bank: Happy had actually heard him say that into the phone to some other snitch. It doesn’t hand out money it doesn’t expect to grab right back. You flash it for a buy, you drop it on the table during a sting, that’s it. Even when a kidnapper’s threatening a child, an agent’s going to make the family bargain for more time, cash out a policy, work a loan on the house, whatever. The bureau always holds out, Happy’d learned, hoping you get itchy and scratch up the money on your own, helpful fuckers that they were.
Meanwhile Happy had yet to see dime one for his undercover work. The case had moved forward at a bouncing clip, while the wheels of the bureaucracy churned along at their usual speed, slow as a root canal. The money he made from Vasco barely paid expenses. Lucha was broke and he didn’t want her fully in the loop regardless. She’d just fret herself into a state.
No, the only answer was Vasco, hit him up again. And he’d refuse. Too much thrown at this deal already, he’d say, with pinche nada to show for it. Your uncle and cousin got themselves snatched? Not my problem. Let Zipicana handle it, the cocaine kingpin with the hard-on for terror. He’s the one who wants to bring the raghead across anyway, right? About time he anted up for the privilege.
And who could argue with that, Happy thought as he eased the moving van into its parking stall, secured the brake, turned off the ignition. He jumped down from the cab and went to his locker.
He left the wired flannel shirt he’d received from the bureau on its hook; he’d done no recording of Puchi and Chato in the phony mover deals for weeks. It didn’t rise to the level of actual fraud, he’d been told-contractual misunderstanding, it could be said, the money at issue small-claims stuff-and thus wasn’t a crime, federal or otherwise. It was getting to be an issue, the recordings. Pitcavage, the AUSA, was pushing for deeper involvement of Vasco and his crew in the terror angle: Get them to talk about helping pick out local targets, the Fed Building, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Bridge. Think of what Hollywood would want to blow up, he said, then get video of Vasco or Puchi or Chato casing out the place.
But Happy was the least chatty guy on the planet. After that initial meet with Vasco, everything felt forced. He wasn’t comfortable bringing stuff up out of nowhere, it wasn’t his nature. He was convinced everybody would see right through him, then what? That’s why so many of his tapes were filled with brief bits of idle chat separating long, worthless silences. He never engaged and no one took the initiative to engage him. He was the world’s worst rat, except he’d brought them the case of a lifetime, Mara Salvatrucha meets al-Qaeda, and he couldn’t understand why they didn’t seem happier with that, especially since, if Lattimore’s offhand suspicions were true, if Samir wasn’t really who Happy thought he was, that might very well be what they were looking at. His stomach lurched. Samir, a true jihadi. Christ. If that’s true, he thought, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life trying to convince anybody who’ll listen I was played just like everybody else. He had a pretty good idea a lot of that convincing would take place in prison.
He took his cell phone, which served as both a transmitter and a backup recorder, out of his pants pocket and placed it on the locker’s upper shelf. Ironic, since he was finally about to initiate a conversation worth recording. But it just seemed best that the next few minutes not exist, not as far as the government was concerned.
Chula was coming down the stairs, dragging little Lucía behind her, as Happy made his way up. As always, the mother had a smoke lit, cigarette dangling from her lips as she stuffed a wad of bills into her purse; the child was sniffling, her eyes wet and red. Girls’ night out, Happy thought, listening to the heels of Chula’s pumps hammer the wood-plank steps. No words were exchanged as they passed but Chula, as always, tossed him a look of lukewarm want while Lucía, clutching her smoky stuffed bear, regarded him with the distant needy meanness he knew her for. I pity that child, he told himself, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Vasco sat stewing in his usual post-Chula funk, facing the window in the lamplight, chewing a fingernail on one hand, holding a smoke in the other, white sharkskin boots propped on his desk. He’d developed a rash of some kind in the past week, a blotchy redness on his neck, and he’d scratched at it so savagely the skin was bloody and raw. A pair of Band-Aids covered the worst of it. Jiggling one foot like he needed to pee, he cocked an acid eye toward the door as he heard Happy knock, but otherwise did nothing. Happy accepted that as invitation to enter.
The coils of copper wire were gone, the mortgage flyers remained. Happy sat on the sofa and the cushion emitted a stiff vinyl sigh. “We’ve got kind of a situation,” he began, invoking Roque’s words.
To his credit, Vasco heard the story out without a single damning comment or insult. His face remained inert as once or twice he tapped his cigarette against his ashtray. When Happy was done, he said simply, “Kidnapped.”
Happy nodded. “Fucked up, I know.”
“And they’re only asking twenty grand-total, right?”
Happy explained his understanding of things, the likelihood the money wasn’t a ransom at all but a kind of secondhand fee. Vasco heard him out, then: “Doesn’t matter either way. I’m not fronting any more money.”
Down in the truck yard, someone dropped a tin bucket onto the concrete floor. A wail of surprise, a chuckle.
“I don’t blame you,” Happy said, “especially after what Godo did last night.”
He was referring to the sabotage of the gun buy at People’s Fried Chicken. He’d heard about it from Puchi during the shift, Chato chiming in, the usual speed-freak rag.
“Godo can kiss my ass but that’s got nothing to do with this. I’m not throwing good money after bad, simple as that.”
Happy folded his hands and leaned forward. The sofa cushion creaked like he’d squeezed a balloon. “I want to make good on what Godo did.”
Vasco, slit-eyed, took a drag from his smoke. “What do you mean?”
“I want to make it up to you.”
“Yeah? Like how?”
“Puchi told me he got the license number off the van this guy drives, the guy selling guns. I know a girl, works at the DMV, she can trace that plate to an address. Godo’s been training your guys on how to use an M16, how to clear rooms, all that. Puchi and Chato can’t shut up about it, they’re jacked. So-what say we take this guy’s house down?”
Just lay it out for the man to see, Happy told himself. Let the crime sell itself.
Vasco plucked a stray bit of tobacco off his tongue.