Extract from Desperado A Mile High Noir: author, Manuel Ramos
Prologue
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, a combination of tourist destination and sacred church, did not use metal detectors or other screening devices. Guards did not search any of the thousands of daily visitors, and the administrators of the place admitted they had no organized system to prevent an attack. A few soldiers paraded around the grounds with guns, but they primarily snapped pictures at the request of visitors, using the tourists’ cameras. The light security contradicted the importance of the basilica's most valuable possession: the blessed tilma of San Juan Diego, the tattered maguey cloak with the Virgin’s image imprinted on it, miraculously preserved for more than 400 years, suspended behind an altar where it received believers' prayers and adoration.
When the thieves came, some of them dressed as priests. Others looked like tourists or office workers on break. They smuggled weapons under their coats and jackets. At a pre-arranged signal from one of the leaders, the men opened fire, indiscriminately, trying to panic the visitors. Hundreds of people rushed to the exits. In the midst of the chaos, an explosion ripped through the building. The moving walkway screeched to a stop. A trio of gunmen jumped over the walkway and, using ropes and grappling hooks, secured the frame that held the tilma, bolted high on the wall. They wrenched the frame from its anchors. Pilgrims and worshippers screamed in agony, desperation, and fear.
A priest rushed to stop the men. Several of the gang shot him repeatedly. He bled to death crawling toward the altar.
The tilma, frame, and glass crashed to the floor, missing by inches the men who hauled it down. The man who had signaled for the raid to begin picked shards of glass from the icon. With automatic weapons exploding around him and men and women screaming and crying, he cut the cloth from the broken frame with a long-handled knife.
He stuffed the cloth into a thick leather case. The gang ran out of the church to a waiting helicopter that sat on the vast plaza surrounding the basilica. The man with the tilma leaped into the helicopter. The other men ran furiously to the fence that surrounded the compound. A few fell, shot by the soldiers or the police who had finally arrived on the scene. Those who made it through the fence jumped into waiting vans that sped off and raced through the streets of Mexico City, headed in different directions.
One of the escape vans collided with a Volkswagen taxi. All of the men in the van and the taxi driver were killed when a rain of bullets from the pursuing police ignited a gas tank and both the van and VW erupted in flames. Meanwhile, the helicopter rose and disappeared into the smoggy Mexico City sky.
A day later the Archbishop of Mexico City received a demand for one hundred million dollars, the release of twenty-five members of the Rojos held in various Mexican prisons, and five more doing time in Texas jails. The neatly typed note warned that if the demands were not met, the cloak would be burned and the entire world could watch the venerated object go up in smoke, all played out on the Internet.
1
He looked as cool as ever. Clothes, hair, attitude. Same old Artie Baca – the hippest guy in high school and now coming across like a GQ cover boy, Chicano style. Sharp-creased slacks, form-fitting silk shirt. Reminded me of that song about werewolves in London. His hair was perfect. He had it working that day.
We sat on opposite sides of a metal card table on uncomfortable wooden chairs painted a disturbing bright red. I hadn’t dug out the floor fans from the storage room so the recent heat wave left Sylvia’s Superb Shoppe stuffy. Even Mr. Cool had a few drops of sweat on his upper lip. Mustiness surrounded us.
I transacted business at the table when the rare customer bought any of Sylvia’s second-hand junk, what she called antiques. I rang up sales on an ancient cash register, accepted cash or ran credit cards, handed out receipts and change, provided bags when necessary, and updated the inventory on a laptop. Highly-skilled, no?
The store had large windows through which I watched the traffic on Thirty-Second Avenue. They also magnified the outside heat or cold and were always in need of a good cleaning, as Sylvia reminded me almost every week.
“I need help, Gus.” Artie’s voice wasn’t what I remembered, not as deep. “I don’t know who else to ask. It’s not something I can talk about to just anyone.”
A thin smile and a subtle wink. Yeah, except for the voice this was the Artie Baca I remembered from my less than memorable high school years. I hadn’t seen him all that much since we graduated – I never made it to the tenth-year reunion – but here he sat, asking for something in that way he had that came off as though he were doing me a favor just by asking. He did that all through North High and got away with it. Almost everyone liked him, some even loved him. I was more in-between ignore and hate. He was a pal, though, don’t get me wrong. At least, that was what I told anyone who asked.
“What kind of help, Artie?”
“This stays between us.” The clipped words rushed from his mouth. “You can’t tell anyone, not Sylvia, no one. Okay?”
Why would I tell my ex anything? But I let it slide. He had my attention, for sure.
“Whatever, dude. Unless you’ve killed someone and you want me to get rid of the body, I won’t talk to anyone about what you say. No need to.”
The skin around his eyes twitched when I said “killed someone” and the healthy tanned hue of his face faded a bit.
“No. Nothing like that. It’s about a woman.”
That didn't surprise me. Artie copped more tail in high school than the entire football team put together. Girls acted like robots around him. He’d say “Good morning” and they'd drop their panties and bend over. Really, it was almost that bad. Of course, that meant he often hid from one girlfriend while he fooled around with another. Plus, he had more than his fair share of run-ins with angry fathers, brothers and cousins. I said almosteveryone liked him. He took the hassles in stride – called it “poon tax.” “I got punched out by Gloria’s brother – paid the poon tax,”he'd say, and then try to laugh. It never sounded like a laugh to me, more like a half-assed giggle through clenched teeth. He could be coarse like that, but we were high school kids.
“Aren’t you a little old for women problems, Artie? I thought you were married? What happened to that?”
“No, no. I'm married. Linda's a wonderful woman. I got a couple of kids almost in high school. I …” His voice trailed off. I filled in the blank spots.
“But one night, probably in a bar, you forgot all about your happy marriage and your kids almost in high school because the young woman flirting with you had beautiful eyes and a pair of chi chi’s like …”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I screwed up. Bad. I admit it. You don’t know how sorry I am that I let it get out of hand. But this was the only time I did anything like that since I got married. I love Linda. I wouldn’t hurt her. I just screwed up. One time, and now it’s like I’m in hell. This girl is crazy.”
“You get her pregnant?”
“Not that, thank God. She wants money, but not for a kid. She’s trying to get what she can out of me. It’s classic. She said that for ten thousand I can have peace of mind for the piece of ass. That’s the way she put it. She’ll go to Linda if I don’t pay. She set me up. We were both kind of drunk, at least I was, and I let her, uh …” He couldn’t finish. He pulled out a pocket comb and ran it through his hair. A quiver of nostalgic regret ran through me. I could’ve been standing in the high school hallway next to my locker, waiting for Artie to set the agenda for the day.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. We was just partyin’. I didn’t think …”
He caught his breath and turned away when I tried to look him in the eyes. He opened his expensive phone and tapped a few icons. He showed me the video. They were naked on a rumpled bed. A hard core sex scene that I didn’t want to see played out before me. I said, “A sex tape? Really?”
“This could end my marriage,” he said, the words dull and flat. “I have no choice. I'll pay her the money.”
I almost laughed out loud. The coolest guy in the world became the victim of the oldest con in the book. I stifled my laugh, sat up and tried to sound sincere.
“Wow, Artie. That’s crazy. You hear about this kind of stuff, but you never expect that it’ll happen to someone you know. A scam out of something like a detective movie, blackmail, who knows what else. What you gonna do?”
“That’s why I’m talking to you.”
I thought about all the options that he could be referencing. I started to feel uncomfortable with where the conversation with my old high school buddy was headed.
“You want me to lend you money?” I calculated that this was the least disagreeable of the ideas he might have floating around in his head.
He gave me one of those as if looks and I felt insulted.
“No, no. I got the money,” he said.
At this point I started to re-think my relationship with Artie Baca. I sat upright and leaned forward. We did stupid things in high school and for a year or so after. Typical teen-age antisocial behavior and other messes not so typical. The kinds of things that might make him think I'd be up for taking care of a blackmailer. But that wasn’t me, never had been. I couldn’t be the muscle on a job if my life depended on it.
I should have had a better understanding of Artie, but I relied too much on memories and the secrets we shared, and, well, things went the way they went, all crazy and weird. After it played out, when the dust settled, as they say, I finally realized that I never caught on to his trip, and that turned out to be a big mistake for me, for Artie, for everyone involved.
“I want you to give the money to her,” he said. I eased back against the inflexible chair.
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| Manuel Ramos |
Manuel Ramosis Director of Advocacy for Colorado Legal Services, the statewide legal aid program, and the author of eight published novels, five of which feature Denver lawyer Luis Móntez. For his professional and community service he has received the Colorado Bar Association's Jacob V. Schaetzel Award, the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association's Chris Miranda Award, and others. His fiction has garnered the Colorado Book Award, the Chicano/Latino Literary Award, and the Top Hand Award from the Colorado Authors League.
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