Scout’s Honor: Chapter 21

No Tengo Nada

“You say, no tengo nada. I ain’t got nothing. Got it?” Roy Cross blew perfect smoke rings toward the low ceiling. “Say it, man.”

“No tengo nada,” the worried Stanford kid repeated, his arms crossed against his fleshy chest, hands jammed in his armpits, his shoulder-length hair greasy after two days’ incarceration. “No tengo nada.”

“Look them in the eye when you say it. You’re screwed if the malandros think you’re scared. Get it down and you’ll be OK. But never go in the yard by yourself.”

“Thanks, King. Thanks a lot,” said Marty Thompson, grateful. He’d been robbed of his money, his tennis shoes, and his hope the moment he’d arrived at La Mesa.

“No te preocupes, don’t worry, dude.” The fabled drug princeling held court in the prison’s restaurant almost daily. They sat at one of the tables in the small room, farthest from the open kitchen which smelled of fried tortillas, onions, oil, and old grease. Yellowed, peeling bullfight posters tacked to its yellowed, peeling walls. Two small windows, frosted with grime, faced the narrow street outside where Emilio the bodyguard chose to warm himself in the teasing morning sun.

“How long you been in?” Thompson took another gulp of El Globito’s coffee. 

“Four years, man.” Telling his story to the Americans who drifted through the prison—expanding it with every other telling—was perhaps Roy’s favorite pastime, his one sure escape from monotony. 

“What did you do? I mean, what did they bust you for?”

“Huge fucking drug deal. Two hundred kilos of blow.” Roy dropped his voice after glancing around the empty room and repeated the fantasy that sustained him like the promise of heaven. “We pulled it off. My bud, Wad, got across the border, sold the shit in Los Angeles and stashed the cash. As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll be totally rich.”

Thompson eyed the pretty blond hippie. He looked less a drug smuggler than one of those untethered free spirits that floated through life, the type the university elite dismissed to mask their envy. “Why don’t you bribe your way out then? You said I could.”

“You can. My congressman’s busting me out pronto.” That his congressman was more likely to vote his conscience than return another of his mother’s begging phone calls had yet to dispel this particular fantasy. Roy would abandon it one day, however, just as he had been forced to part with his other early release dreams. Wad alone was his Gibraltar, his unshakeable belief. Depending on his mood and how stoned he was—Roy was always high—Wad was either his dutiful sidekick awaiting their reunion or a Judas Iscariot who’d left him to die in Mexico. Either way, Wad had to be not only alive and well, but rich, luxuriating atop a mountain of cocaine money like Scrooge McDuck. Roy had correctly reasoned that, had the Colombians found Wad, they would have left his eviscerated carcass on the street, his bloodied remains yet another cautionary tale. He had also decided—incorrectly—that the Colombians would have pardoned him had they recovered their shipment. Thus, Wad had to be both alive and rich. Back at K-39, Wad had said he’d hide out in New York City. How hard would it be to find him there? When he did, his loyal retainer would either gladly hand over Roy’s ninety percent share (right was right) or his personal Judas would learn that cuchillo was Spanish for knife. 

“But why didn’t you bribe your way out four years ago?” Thompson had every reason to doubt the drug-running tale. He had yet to see Roy’s splendid carraca or learn that the fearsome Emilio lived to serve and protect the drug prince.

“It’s complicated.” Roy lit another cigarette with the butt he was smoking. “Buy you another coffee, tell you a—no, give you some tips. OK, this afternoon when you go to lista, the check-in, wait till the crowd thins out. Don’t get surrounded, stay in the back, think escape route.” Roy tapped his forehead with a finger. “You got any money?”

“No. I had—” 

“They rolled you. I’ll loan you ten bucks. You need to grease the head guard on the telacha patrol. Unless you buy your way out, you’re stuck on garbage for forty-five days. Sucks. Hardest part is figuring out who to grease. Oh yeah, watch.” He scanned the empty room from habit and rolled a shirt sleeve down to reveal a few hidden bills. “Get a long-sleeved shirt and keep your money in the sleeves like this and never let change jingle in your pockets. Got it?”

Thompson got it. 

Roy considered showing the kid his wicked switchblade, but decided it would only frighten him. “You really want to hear how I got busted?”

“Sure, King. Be great.”

Roy called for another round of coffee, undid the top button of his pinching jeans, leaned back and launched into his epic, meandering from his world-class surfing, the clamor for him in Hollywood, his picaresque border-running, how he duped one and all. He bragged of smuggling vast fortunes of cocaine and partying away his profits on endless Arabian nights. He explained how he’d created a diversion to save Wad’s life, hinting at the trail of dead cops on the wrong side of the border, describing the manhunt that, even four years later, had kept Wad and their millions underground. He said nothing about Juan Sierra or his arrangement with Rudy Schmidt. Nor did he mention the San Diego police department’s announcement several years back that Edward Kawadsky had been the victim of foul play. Roy knew that had to be a feint, a buckshot to flush a wily fugitive. 

“But what exactly did you do?”

 Roy tossed his thinning hair. He always waited for that question. “I shot a federale.”

Thompson stared into his coffee mug. 

Roy stood and used his body to bob and weave his truth into his listener. In this telling, Wad had been his loyal compadre. He sketched Wad in the distant van, he jogged in place to show how he ran up the beach when he saw the lone federale. He’d shouted his getaway warning before the gun battle.

 “Wow. That’s cool, really cool.” Thompson swallowed the last of his coffee, licking the grinds from his teeth. “Hey, do you think they’ll let me call my girlfriend?”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” He barked for his bodyguard. “’Melio, ’Melio, vengas.” 

Emilio was famous throughout La Mesa for his frightening visage, his scarred face with its broken-tomahawk nose. He intimidated with a scowl. A small-time car thief, Emilio had accidentally killed the owner of a Buick when its owner surprised him in the act. At heart, Emilio was a gentle soul, devoted to Roy; each night he’d drag his foam mattress into the hall of their carraca and sleep outside Roy’s door. Yet because of Roy’s stature and the comandante’s protective orders, Emilio had little more to do than shoo away junkies, a chore at which Roy and his flashing blade had become adept. Rather than a bodyguard, Emilio was Roy’s factotum, from cooking to buying his marijuana and pills to exchanging money with Caesar, the middleman between the Americans and their consulate.

In passable street Spanish, Roy told Emilio to confirm the floating scrotum story, first asking Thompson, “You know what cojones means in Spanish?” 

There was a sudden commotion outside. A jostling crowd of prisoners had appeared, yelling at guards farther up the street. Thompson rose, peered out the window and saw the mob part. Four guards, each holding one limb, carried a body face down. He shivered and stepped toward the door.

“Don’t go outside, Marty.”

“What’d that guy do?”

“Maybe he cheated some dude in a drug deal or cards, maybe nothing. Maybe nothing. Oh, yeah, the guards. Treat them with respect. It’s always con permiso—with your permission. You want to go through the gate—you want to do anything—it’s con permiso. Got it?”

“Con permiso.”

“How old you guess I am?” 

“I don’t know, man.” He stared at Roy’s handsome face, focusing on his red-rimmed eyes and the web of fine wrinkles spun by smoke and sun. “Thirty?”

Roy recoiled as if slapped. 

“Twenty-eight, twenty-six, twenty-four?” asked Thompson quickly, bargaining down his mistake.

“Dude, I gotta split, got some business. We’ll walk you over to ‘Z’ and get you a spot in Don’s cell. He’s cool.” He tossed a coin on the table. 

“Pay him, ’Melio,” said Roy, admiring the miniature cowboy boot keychains, tap dancing a brown and gold pair across the coffee table. The carver, a slight man imprisoned for stealing because he had no other way to feed his family, dared not look at the drug prince. He’d learned woodcarving in La Mesa and now made charming keychains—some with cowboy boots, others with sombreros or miniature tequila bottles—that Roy’s mother sold at the Sav-On where she clerked. 

“Here,” Roy said, tossing a pack of Marlboros to the woodcarver. “Vaya con Dios.” 

Emilio glowered at the carver, mumbling against this extravagance. It was Saturday night, Roy’s weekly nadir, but Emilio had little cause to share in his gloom. He lived better inside La Mesa than he ever had in Ensenada. And his sex life was unchanged because, unless he paid, women crossed the plaza to avoid him. The prison’s regulars—the Sunday prostitutes who smelled of rose water—were as pretty as Ensenada’s. 

Had he shared his bodyguard’s gift for contemplation, Roy might have realized that he, too, was better off in La Mesa. He put aside the little boots. “That dickhead thought I was how old? Twenty-six?”

“You can do it, King. You’re a big shot here,” Marilyn Beck said. A high-school dropout who worked as a receptionist at a medical supplies company, she’d longed for the dreamy Roy back in the eighth grade. When Mrs. Cross lamented her son’s loneliness in prison one day at the five-and-dime, Marilyn had volunteered to come along on a visit. Now, the freckled strawberry blonde with the traffic-stopping figure came twice a month, insisting to her suspicious husband it was the Christian thing to do. “Emilio’s got to have ten cousins in Tijuana who’d do it for me. I’ll do whatever you want.” 

“You’d do it anyway.” Roy lifted an end of the stained fabric couch and felt along its seam. “Got to find my stash. Hope to Christ Mom didn’t throw it out again.” He shoved his fingers into the side of an upholstered chair, retrieving candy wrappers and a brown apple core. He frowned.

“What about me, Roy? About my feelings?” 

“You? How about me? My feelings. Stuck in this goddamn prison, having to listen to you two yap about God when I’m sober. Why doesn’t God get me the hell out of here? Or at least help me find my stash. Yeah, like with a belt of lightning. Hey, what’s this? Score.” He inspected a half-inch long butt. He tore off the top half of a matchbook, rolled it tight and, using it as a cigarette holder, lit the roach. “Yeow, that’s harsh.”

“God’s all your mom wants to talk about, and you’re not saying nothing. What am I supposed to do?” She waved away the acrid smoke and hugged him. “If you really loved me, you’d do it.”

 “Let’s get this off of you.” He toyed with the oversized buttons on her denim sundress. 

“Here.” Marilyn slipped a torn sheet of notebook paper from a pocket. “Wheeler lives in National City. Nobody has to hurt him, just scare him. You know, get him to leave me alone.”

“So I just go to one of my guys, ‘scare this dude, slap him around a little, show the blade.’ Like this?” In a practiced motion, he whipped out his switchblade, shooting it open with a press of his thumb, carving his initials into a foe.

“Oh, King. Will you? Please, please, please?” A perpetual innocent, Marilyn believed his stories about snuffing rivals before breakfast—his life sentence was proof—and envisioned him dispatching her boss with a snap of his fingers. “He really deserves it. That old bastard follows me into the mail room every time, tries to corner me. What are you laughing at? I hate it when you do that.” She covered her chest. “If you don’t care about me, maybe you ought to find another girlfriend.”

He laughed harder, pulling down her arms, cradling a breast in one hand, fingering her nipple, unbuttoning his jeans with the other. 

“I’m going to punch you if you don’t quit it. I mean it.”

Still laughing, he kissed each breast. “Maybe the old dude just can’t help himself. Look at you, Mare. I couldn’t either and if they busted me, I’d go, Judge, check her out, I had to do it.”

“Do you really think I’m pretty?”

“Not pretty, Mare, awesome.” He eased down her dress, slipping a homing pigeon finger under her panties. 

“But I’m too fat.” 

“You’re fat like I’m fucking Geronimo. These are perfect. If I was out of here, all I’d do is sell your pictures to Playboy and that new one Hustler and kick back on the beach all day.”

“Talk to me some more. I like it when you talk to me. You really going to marry me when you get out?”

“You want to know—how’s Mom say it—the Lord’s Truth?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The first goddamn day I’m out of here, me and you are getting totally wired and flying to Vegas and doing it right in one of those love chapels. That cool? Or maybe you’d like it fancy, with the white dress, honor guard—”

“Maids of honor,” she said, her eyes shining. She rolled her panties down, pulled his jeans off and took him in her hand. 

“Yeah, maids, church, flowers, like, the works. Mom would dig it. Can you see me in a suit?”

“A powder-blue tuxedo, King. Tell me more about it,” she whispered in his ear, pumping him hard.

Visiting hours were over. Marilyn dressed and brushed out her matted hair. He’d still promised nothing about Willard Wheeler. “You going to help me with that old creep?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Roy sought the right phrasing. “Just go, ‘soon as my boyfriend gets out of La Mesa, he’s kicking your ass, old man’. Go—”

“My boyfriend? Wheeler’d have a cow. Remember I’m still married, I can’t have a boyfriend in jail. Jesus.” She rolled on her cherry lipstick. “Then he’d really think I’m easy. Maybe I should ask one of my brothers; they’d be more help than—”

“No. It’s cool. Give me, oh, ten days and it’s done.”

“You mean it? I love you, King.” She hugged him, hesitated for the sake of her fresh lipstick, then kissed him on the lips, playfully squeezing his crotch. 

“De nada,” he said, smiling over her shoulder at his found stash, the baggie of marijuana buds. He wanted to be alone, to smoke a joint, to imagine a scene where one of his gang roughed up the lecherous geezer, untroubled by the fact that he knew no one, save his mother, who would deliver a pizza for him, let alone a threat. 

He kissed her one last time, inhaled her perfume, clenching his groin muscles to remind himself of how exquisitely Marilyn worked his cock. He rolled a joint seconds after shutting the door behind her, took a hit, picked up his Martin guitar and began strumming. He wasn’t half bad. 

As it happened, Roy’s native optimism and perpetual high were his two best friends in La Mesa. Together, they kept him from realizing that Comandante Garcia would never release him, that only after Garcia’s successor had himself been succeeded—and the Trujillo interdict long forgotten—would he have a chance of bribing his way out. That day would be years off.

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