My clown walks into the room with a gun. I tell him to hide it.
“Put it in a bag.”
“I want him to see what we have.”
“We have forms to fill out, we have papers. This is a business meeting.”
The young inspectors want to look tough. Images from movies, stories from their fathers or their uncles. To me, they just look naive. There is more power, more threat in a municipal order. I know it and the chino knows it.
I look through to the kitchen where his wife is mopping the floor.
“Two beers here.”
She brings them.
I look at Mateo again. Thin, dark, bad hair. He had a young, hard body but the face was old. Not wise, but tired, hard, a little bit perverted. I remember now that I had worked with him on Nueve de Deciembre and Garcilazo, cleaning up the trash. That’s what we called it. Eight of us in a van with sliding doors, the whole gear, helmets, knee protectors, kevlar vest. We pull up next to some old woman and jump out, scaring her shitless. But there were some tough old bitches. Fighting for their cheap cakes, their chupes and marcianos. We tried not to hit them in the face. There were eight of us, hard men. But we weren’t too soft either. Teaching them a lesson. Lice and fleas, my father called them.
One time a car stops to look and the passengers start yelling. We let them have it, smashed a few windows. Mateo was there. Without order there is chaos.
We were young and having fun but what’s the point of it? I’ve got to think of the future.
So now I am working seriously. Now I am cleaning up the restaurants. Clausurado por infringir las normas. Closed for health reasons. A cockroach on the floor is all it takes. They are taking in a thousand a day so they soon see sense. If they don’t, there are plenty of new restaurants that want to open further up the road. Its zoned for housing only at the moment, but we decide.
There’s the new burger bar, the cafe and pizza shop, the Venezuelans on the corner, they are smart, and rich. And ciao chino, and adios the fancy postres.
I did a deal with the security man on the corner to hit the coffee shop. Go for a walk Tuesday night at twelve I told him. A friend of my cousin drove a truck through the front of the shop.
But it wasn’t worth it split four ways. And I got noticed. My boss called me in.
“I hear there’s been some trouble on Enrique Palacios.”
It cost me five thousand.
I have to be smart. I’ve got my commitments now, responsibilities. My girl’s going to college. I told her she should study to be a lawyer, that’s where the money is.
She said lawyers are too corrupt.
I almost laughed. But I didn’t say anything. Maybe I’m going soft.