Safe Read online

  SAFE

  RYAN GATTIS

  PICADOR

  For my family

  I went into one room and then I went into another.

  I was in a room inside a room.

  There I felt safe.

  —Emily Berry

  In this life, the only way to be safe is to be dead.

  —Big Fate

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  —Dylan Thomas

  Fuck Dying

  A Mix by Rose G. Stenberg

  Side 1: You

  1. “I’m Not a Loser” / Descendents (1:29)

  2. “Rise Above” / Black Flag (2:27)

  3. “I Can See Clearly Now” / Screeching Weasel (2:18)

  4. “I Want Something More” / Bad Religion (0:48)

  5. “Living for Today” / Pennywise (3:08)

  6. “Instant Hit” / The Slits (2:45)

  7. “Day to Daze” / NOFX (1:58)

  8. “Hey Holmes!” / The Vandals (2:45)

  9. “Just to Get Away” / Poison Idea (2:30)

  10. “Big City” / Operation Ivy (2:17)

  Side 2: Me

  1. “Los Angeles” / X (2:25)

  2. “L.A. Girl” / Adolescents (1:49)

  3. “She” / The Misfits (1:24)

  4. “Demolition Girl” / The Saints (1:41)

  5. “Quality or Quantity” / Bad Religion (1:35)

  6. “Please Don’t Be Gentle with Me” / The Minutemen (0:48)

  7. “I Love Playing with Fire” / The Runaways (3:21)

  8. “What Do I Get?” / The Buzzcocks (2:53)

  9. “I’m Not Down” / The Clash (3:08)

  10. “In Love” / The Raincoats (3:05)

  Contents

  Fuck Dying: A Mix by Rose G. Stenberg

  I: THERE’S ONLY THIS

  Ricky Mendoza, Junior, a.k.a. Ghost

  1

  2

  Rudolfo “Rudy” Reyes, a.k.a. Glasses

  3

  Ghost

  4

  5

  Glasses

  6

  7

  Ghost

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Glasses

  13

  14

  15

  Ghost

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  II: ¡SIN VERGÜENZA!

  Ricky Mendoza, Junior, a.k.a. Ghost

  23

  24

  25

  Rudolfo “Rudy” Reyes, a.k.a. Glasses

  26

  27

  Ghost

  28

  29

  30

  Glasses

  31

  Ghost

  32

  33

  Glasses

  34

  Ghost

  35

  36

  Glasses

  37

  III: LAST, DO NO HARM

  Ricky Mendoza, Junior, a.k.a. Ghost

  38

  39

  Rudolfo “Rudy” Reyes, a.k.a. Glasses

  40

  Ghost

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Glasses

  45

  Ghost

  46

  47

  48

  Glasses

  49

  Ghost

  50

  51

  52

  53

  Glasses

  54

  Ghost

  55

  56

  57

  Glasses

  58

  Ghost

  59

  Glasses

  60

  Ghost

  61

  62

  Glasses

  63

  Ghost

  64

  65

  Glasses

  66

  Ghost

  67

  68

  Glasses

  69

  Ghost

  70

  71

  Glasses

  72

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  I

  THERE’S ONLY THIS

  Ricky Mendoza, Junior, a.k.a. Ghost

  Sunday, September 14, 2008

  Morning

  1

  I’m on First Street, eyes up but slouching down, parked across from the Rancho San Pedro Projects at the absolute end of Los Angeles. Not for the first time today, I’m thinking that if I get into this safe and they leave me alone while I’m doing it, I’m taking the money.

  Not all of it. I’m not stupid. Just some.

  They said 0900 hours. It’s ten past. I’ve been here since 0850, but they’re not here yet. This happens with DEA sometimes. They come when they’re good and ready. No point complaining.

  The idea here is that it’s a Sunday so they come at church time. That’s how I know we’re hitting Spanish speakers. It cuts down on the numbers if some are up at church with girlfriends or mothers, and around here that’s probably Mary Star of the Sea on Seventh. I’ve been there once. For a girl too.

  DEA love them some Sundays. I’m a private contractor, so it doesn’t matter to me. A locksmith job is a locksmith job. When they got intel that they have a safe on the premises and need it open, they line me up and I open it. I got my laminate across my chest, hidden under my shirt. OFFICER OF THE COURT, it says. I got black license plates on my Jeep. Can’t ever have someone knowing I worked for DEA or FBI or the Sheriffs. Can’t have them knowing I busted their shit all up, see me driving away and figure out who I am and where I live from some numbers on a plate. That keeps me safe.

  As far as anyone’s concerned, I’m a ghost when I do this job.

  I said that once to Frank when he was first teaching me the trade. He laughed and liked it, so he made it stick. Called me Ghost after that. When he introduced me to anyone, I’d be Ghost Mendoza. Not Ricky. And it worked good because I got pale enough skin that maybe people don’t expect me to speak Spanish but I do. That’s just part of my street toolset now, another way to be underestimated. But that nickname was cool anyways, since Ricky Mendoza, Junior, wasn’t my real name, just one I took as my legal back when it seemed smart to. Like, the real me died back when I changed it and what’s left of me just floats.

  I’m a block and a half up from where we’re hitting. I’ll roll up close when they’re done breaking the door in. The nose of my Jeep points down the hill towards the cruise ship terminal and a big white ship there. Behind it, and above it, are big cranes that might’ve been painted turquoise once if the sun didn’t beat the hell out of them every day. Behind those, it’s one of those gray mornings that’ll get hot and burn off eventually but now is just shoulder-to-shoulder clouds.

  There better be money in that safe, I think. Not drugs. I can’t do shit with drugs. Back in the day, sure, I knew too good what to do with drugs, but not now.

  If you wanna know where gangs hang out in Los Angeles, look for old white signs on stucco apartment buildings that say NO TRESPASSING, L.A.M.C. SEC. 41.23. That’s the posted municipal code. Or there’s newer signs, ones that say the area is closed to the public and violators will be prosecuted. That’s how you fight gangs if you’re a city with not a lot of options. You make it illegal to hang out outside.

  There’s one of those signs on every side of these buildings. It’s all L.A. Housing Authority property, stuccoed from bottom to top and barred up on all its windows and doors. Security doors don’t matter. If you don’t open when they knock, that’s when I come in.

  If it�
�s a Medeco or a Schlage Primus lock sitting there, you probably got an extra minute or two to jump your ass out a back window and run straight into an officer with his weapon drawn, just waiting on you to do something stupid. Or maybe you have a slider on the other side of the door. But DEA brings rams. Sliders don’t last long.

  The LAHA is cheap as hell and gangs won’t put their own security doors up because that’s like a neon sign saying WE SELL DRUGS HERE! So for normal doors, I got bump keys in my pocket and all it takes is two. One for the security-door lock. One for the front-door lock. They’re my little sharks. I cut their teeth a certain way on the grinder so that they’ll break down normal mechanisms when I wedge it in and give it a few hard taps with a screwdriver handle. Easy.

  I can tell by looking at these doors they don’t have anything that can keep me out.

  A woman comes out of her place across the way. She’s dragging a baby carriage out behind her before shutting the door in some grand sweeping motion. There’s no kid in the stroller, though. Looks like pots and pans, maybe stuff to sell. I don’t know. Don’t wanna know.

  Just being in these sorts of neighborhoods, my stomach gets that old familiar jump. Like the down-drop on a trampoline. The kind where you wonder if you’ll ever go up again. For me, that bounce back up was never taken for granted. Never. In this life, nothing is rock solid. No guarantee you ever get back up after you’re down.

  I got this saying, yesterday’s gone and tomorrow never comes. This right here is all there is. This moment.

  I know the insides of every single one of these sad-ass little apartments without ever needing to be inside. With their broken-door closets that never slide right no matter how much you try to line them up. With their rusty sink taps that maybe got plumbed wrong so if you turn the cold one, it gets warm but never hot, and if you turn the hot one, you get cold, and you can forget about stopping that drip. There’s rats or roaches or bedbugs or termites too, but hopefully only one of those. One you can live around. You can get used to avoiding traps in the dark, but please, God, not chinches de la chingada cama. Not having to buy an expensive-ass sleeve to stuff your mattress in for a year, or putting your bed’s legs inside little plastic bowls you dust with powder you’re not supposed to breathe or it’ll fuck up your lungs. One you can live with, but not two.

  Two makes you crazy. So crazy you never wanna go back.

  A tall box of a Mercedes SUV that’s got no business being in this neighborhood turns in off Harbor Boulevard and comes toward me on the opposite side of the street. It slows down like it shouldn’t and I’m shaking my head like, Don’t do it, dummy. I see the tanned-up, white face of the driver from here. He’s scanning the other side, looking for his hookup, but I guess he didn’t call ahead because there’s no one coming out to meet him. So he keeps going. Because even this rich motherfucker from off the hill has the sense to go get coffee and sit around and wait to buy before getting high.

  Him, I don’t care about. But it means there’s no one around doing business. And less people around to do business means maybe there won’t be a shoot-out. Maybe DEA’s right about hitting on Sundays after all. At least here, anyways.

  Down the street, I watch the cruise ship go out. A floating skyscraper on its side is what it is. The gray of the sky hasn’t moved any.

  All of L.A. is bad right now with people losing jobs, but this place is bad without telling anybody. Pedro looks fine on the outside, but if you keep your ear out, you hear. How there’s no casual longshore work. It’s been months. Unions are hurting because trade is down and the port’s not moving like it used to. And you can’t do that shit to Croatians and Mexicans, dude. Can’t have them sitting on cards with nothing to do. If those folks aren’t working, if food’s not on the table, trucks go missing. Shipments go out light or come in the same way. Corners get cut. That’s the shadow you never see because you need light to see it, and this is shit that always gets done in the dark.

  I read the papers because Frank reads the papers. I shouldn’t because it makes me sick to my stomach, but I do. Some Lehman brothers are about to be in the toilet. Good, I say. Serves them right for fucking with the mortgage shit. Packaging and repackaging so much that they can’t even tell what’s in those things anymore. Fucking preying on people. Chewing them up. Taking houses away from families that do nothing but try to pay anything they can and calling it business. Nothing worse than that to me. Nothing. Not even murder. Murder is one person. Maybe two.

  This’ll be millions if it gets much worse. Families. Little kids. People getting tossed in the street. Bellies going empty. Here’s what you don’t read but most people should just know: when the economy goes down, crime goes up. Average people do what they can and maybe they don’t drown, but people on the bottom got to make ends meet somehow. Mouths don’t feed themselves.

  Last month this dude in group hung himself when his bank started foreclosure proceedings. We heard his twelve-year-old daughter and her friend found him when they came home from school. They’re adults now, basically. One moment is all it took to grow them up.

  Stories like that stick to me. I can’t shake them off.

  Just as I’m thinking that, I see the caravan rolling in coordinated, in my rearview and in front of me. Two trucks coming hot. No lights, just speed. They don’t say DEA, but they’re DEA. I sit up. There’s probably another one around back on Santa Cruz that I can’t see, cutting off chase routes. This is them, the boot that kicks you when you’re doing bad.

  They don’t care if you got no choices. Shit, they don’t even know what having no choices is like. On their off-hours they live in Pasadena. Seal Beach. Irvine. They come from that bright world where everybody has them. Where options grow on trees and you can grab them down like oranges.

  All’s I’m thinking as I watch la DEA pile out of their trucks in their marked vests to bust in this poor fucker’s door is I’m taking this money.

  I put my Jeep in gear and coast down the hill.

  How much money, I don’t know. Much as I can get away with. Much as I can line the inside of my toolbox with. Much as I can stuff under the foam holder in my drill case. Much as I can put in my socks.

  It probably won’t be $284,353, but it’ll be something.

  It will be a start.

  2

  The money’s not for me, if you’re thinking it. I don’t need $284,353 for a gambling debt or anything like that. I’ll be sober sixteen years in November. I’m in the black and I got a job. A good job. I got a place to live. Rent’s real low. There’s no rats or roaches or bedbugs or termites. There’s mosquitoes sometimes, but I can handle them. The money’s for somebody else. Somebody who needs it.

  I step into the spot, and I swear, it took me less than five minutes to roll down the hill, park, bump the shitty door locks, go back to my Jeep and grab my heavy tools (two drills, drill-bit bag, toolbox), lock up, and head back inside, but by the time I’m walking through the doorway, the place is already a screaming mess because DEA doesn’t play.

  All the vents are off the walls and there’s a pile in the middle of the room of supermarket baggies that came out with them. Inside those are foil-wrapped logs looking like tiny burritos. The dog is in and already barking at a wall with a Scarface poster on it, and a wall he must’ve already barked at is getting chewed up. There’s a guy with a stud finder and a guy with a circular saw working it. They cut huge chunks of drywall and then lift them out. Behind those is a whole lot of nothing, but they rip it up anyways.

  The inside of this place is how I thought it’d be. The living room mashes itself into a kitchen counter. There’s a ripped-up couch that has already been tossed. Behind that, in the kitchen, is a fridge older than black-and-white TV and next to that is a rusted-out range. No oven. It’s camping, basically. The drywall and ceiling just hide that this is a tent for running what they run till they need a new one. I know it’s true as soon as I see the only bedroom has two mattresses on the floor and two sleeping bags. Which is wh
en I start thinking maybe they got a tip.

  In the bathroom, the rippers find loose tile. Underneath that is a main stash so big they take the dog out and give him treats for being a good boy because if he stayed in when they pulled it, he’d lose his shit.

  Even halfway full, the hole is a crazy sight. And I’m thinking that maybe it was all the way full before the homies had to split, and they just took what they could as fast as they could. Maybe.

  If that’s the case, it might not be good news for that safe. It might be emptier than a bad nut. My face burns just thinking about it.

  “Is this,” somebody says before they even finish hauling all the little foil-wrapped goodies out, “all black tar?”

  Black tar heroin. If it is, it’s guaranteed from Mexico. And if it’s from Mexico, it’s from Nayarit. I thought all that shit was running through Norwalk or Santa Fe Springs or Panorama City straight to Downtown these days. And pounds don’t really make sense in that context, since they don’t deal in large quantities, but, okay, I think. I don’t need to know everything about everything.

  But then that makes me think about the white boy driving by, and how that doesn’t fit the profile of Mexicans from Mexico, because they deliver their shit like pizza, and my stomach doesn’t like that.

  I’m still thinking about that when Collins comes up behind me.

  “Ghost,” he says, talking over the drywall saw that never stops going. “Hey, Ghost, did you see that Diaz-Katsawhatsit fight last weekend?”

  Collins is in charge. He’s a cool fucker. Fiftysomething, give or take. Six feet tall with a crew cut that makes him six feet one. Ex-military, but what branch I don’t know. We always talk boxing, me and him, and the name of this boxer he can’t remember is Michael Katsidis, the Australian with a shitty sun tattooed on his back. You’d think TV boxers could get better ink for all the money they’re making, but that’s never how it is. You come up rough, your body always shows it.