Ruling. Interesting.
“Was he top dog in prison?” Sam asked.
“Oh, indeed,” K-Dog said. Just then, one of K-Dog’s three cocker spaniels came bounding into the room and leaped onto the couch with Sam. For a guy named K-Dog, it didn’t really fit that he was housing spaniels, but even Sam had to admit they were cute. He could have lived without seeing K-Dog giving the one on the sofa a kiss on the lips, however. “Know what I missed most in prison? These little guys. All my life, I’ve had spaniels. They’re just good, nice dogs. Now, Junior? He was bad news my first couple of years. But by the time I got out? He was working in the library, leading education groups, had the warden’s ear on things. Complete turnaround. Homeboy had already done twenty-five, right? He learned to play the game like all the rest. Me? I just had five years, so I knew I could get out in three, four, if I kept my nose clean. Ernesto? He had my back until that shank, but even still, people didn’t give me too much trouble, on account of what I could do with paper and ink. But Junior was LE to the fullest. Even if he was toeing the line, you knew he was running that gang, inside and out.”
Sam reached over and scratched the dog behind its ear, which caused the dog to emit a low growl of pleasure. If only all things were so easy. He decided to move the conversation closer to the finer points, seeing as the dog’s growl echoed in his head like he was at a Pink Floyd concert in 1974, minus the floating pig and the laser, though he had the feeling that any more pruno would bring those forth, too.
“Did you know Father Eduardo was a Latin Emperor?” Sam said. “I saw him on television the other day and then got on the Google, and there it all was. Can’t see him doing that gang-life stuff.”
K-Dog took a deep gulp of his concoction and then grimaced. It occurred to Sam that K-Dog might want to get his liver examined by medical experts, because there was no way he was human. “He was out of Coleman, time I got there,” K-Dog said. “Man, those peppers. That’s some burn.”
“What was the word on him, though? He must have caused a stir getting out of prison like he did and becoming a big deal.”
“Oh, you didn’t say his name around the LE. You say his name around Junior and you were asking for a beat down. Know what I heard? After he found Jesus and all that? After he started writing kids’ books and shit, he actually turned state’s and rolled up on Junior and maybe ten or eleven soldiers.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Man found God,” K-Dog said. “What can you do? You can’t do anything, that’s what. You can’t very well go out and kill a priest, right? Because those LE boys, they might be gang affiliated, as they say, but half of them are Catholic, go to church on the regular, all that. You kill a priest. They bury you under the prison. So what can you do?”
“You can’t do anything,” Sam agreed. “But now that they’re both out on the streets again, you think Father Eduardo has a reason to be worried? I just see him on TV all the time, and you tell me this Junior is a lunatic. Wouldn’t that put him over the edge?”
K-Dog shook his head slowly. “See, that’s the kind of thing that makes you forget dude is of the cloth and all that. Pride. Loyalty. All that crap? I wouldn’t be surprised if Father Eduardo wakes up dead one day soon. You won’t be able to put Junior on it, I’d bet, because he’s smooth now. But if Father Eduardo trips and lands on an upturned blade? That shit could happen on the real.”
K-Dog clicked on the flat-screen TV he had mounted above his fireplace, and for a few minutes he and Sam watched Bobby Flay challenging someone to make the best apple pie on earth. “This guy?” K-Dog said, and motioned at the television. “He’s a real gangster. Shows up at someone’s house and tells them he’s gonna beat their ass in what they do well.”
Sam watched the show in silence for a bit while K-Dog kept up a running dialogue about how Bobby Flay was going to lose the competition because he didn’t understand you gotta put your heart into a good apple pie. All Sam had learned up to this point was what he sort of knew already, so he decided to make a leap.
“You end up doing any business with Junior after you saw him at the market?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” he said. “You see a guy like that on the outside? You let him know it’s all cool. Because two things can happen: He can think you’re avoiding him because you’re scared of him, or he’ll think you’re avoiding him because maybe you snitched on him or something. And either way, if you end up back in prison-not that I intend to ever go back to prison, you understand, Axe Man-that’s a death sentence. And even on the street, I don’t want the LE having me down as an enemy. I mean, I pay my taxes now and I’m running a legit business.”
“Really?”
“For the most part. For the most part. You know how it is, Sam. Nothing that’ll put me away. So I gave Junior my card and told him if he needed any printing or laminating or what have you, to come see me at my shop, avoid those Kinkos assholes. Couple weeks later, he brings me photos he wants blown up. Dead homies and the like. I also did some invites for one of his girl cousin’s wedding. He’s actually a pretty steady client.”
“He always bring the stuff?”
“Nah,” K-Dog said, “he’s got homies who do his running around most of the time.” K-Dog refilled his glass and Sam’s, too. Crap, Sam thought. How much have I drank? He looked up at the television and Bobby Flay was gone, replaced by the Starship Enterprise. How long had he been sitting there watching television? Or had the channel just changed? Sam looked over his shoulder and through the window and saw that it was dark out. He had no idea what time it was. That was why pruno was good in prison. It messed with your time-space orientation.
“Why you so interested in Junior Gonzalez?” K-Dog asked finally, though Sam wasn’t sure how much time had passed since they’d actually spoken.
“You’re the one who started talking about him,” Sam said.
K-Dog whistled and then started to laugh like he’d been told something especially hilarious.
“What are you laughing at?” Sam asked.
K-Dog got up from the sofa and disappeared into his kitchen. Sam could hear him rummaging around for something. Sam hoped to God it wasn’t more ethanol. K-Dog came out a few minutes later holding a piece of paper, which he handed to Sam. It had an address on it.
“What’s this?” Sam asked.
“Where Junior’s been kicking it,” he said. “One of my delivery guys made a drop there about a week ago.”
“Why would you think I’d want that?”
“You’re wearing a wire,” K-Dog said. He pointed at Sam’s chest, and Sam realized he’d unbuttoned his shirt at some point. It was those damn peppers.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t want to forget anything.”
“It’s all right,” K-Dog said, “I’m not gonna remember that you were wired up, either. That’s the joy of pruno, right?”
“Right,” Sam said. He read the address aloud so that it would get on his wire, since he was pretty sure he’d lose the paper before all things were said and done with K-Dog.
5
The aim of terrorism, in all its forms, is maddeningly simple. If you blow up a plane or yourself or a car parked in front of a busy hotel, or even if you just walk up and shoot a political figure, the reasoning can usually be broken into one of three things:
A desire for revenge.
A desire for acknowledgment.
A desire for publicity.
On the occasion that terrorism is used for strictly religious purposes, it’s very rarely what any god has told someone to do, but rather the skewed interpretation that a god seeks revenge for being put behind the eight ball of some other religious idol.
The difference between a terrorist organization and a prison or street gang is negligible. The Latin Emperors didn’t rise in prominence because of their political bent in the late nineties; they rose because they controlled a vast network of drug dealers and gave back to their own community-which is to say, they hired people in their own neighborhoods to do menial tasks, handed out money on holidays and gave the people of the projects a sense of identity and even a little bit of hope. When you’re hopeless, even a gang seems like a good idea. The difference between Hamas and the Latin Emperors isn’t that large: for both, it’s about defending a piece of land and defending a particular identity, and the conflicts between power and preeminence.