While it was true that my plans to become a hot shot airline pilot had fallen apart, the lesson learned about how the best laid plans can go to shit repeated itself right in front of my eyes when the grand plan of the Feds to nail Ortega blew to pieces with him. A bomb went off in his car and bits of Ortega blew all over Hialeah… Bang!There goes the whole enchilada. I don’ t know why Ortega got whacked but I surmise that he knew more than I knew and powerful associates got wind of what was coming to him and wanted him to be quiet, for good.
Rubenstein, being a smart cookie, had already gotten the deal approved by a judge and in writing, so the Feds couldn’ t go back on their deal and sock it to me thus I got off the hook by a stroke of luck, good for me and bad for Ortega. Again, what is good or bad depends on where you are standing at the time, or in the case of Ortega, sitting.
Still, I got a felony conviction on my record, and that meant the end of my flying career. I would never be able to pass a security check and as per FAA regulations, I wasn’ t a man of good moral character so I could never qualify for an ATP rating. Being a convicted felon is not small peanuts; even when filling a job application at McDonald’ s the impertinent questions, “ have you ever being convicted of a crime?” and “ If yes, please explain” appear. Good luck explaining in a couple of sentences that you are a reformed drug smuggler, the type that used to smuggle coke by the ton.
I ended up on the street, a free but poor man who got to keep his original name, a convicted felon, and off the hook for the Atlanta incident; the Feds never connected the dots that would have put me in that mess. Debbie probably died of an overdose before she had the chance to get into trouble with the law and use me as a bargaining chip in her own deal.
Debbie, still in my mind after so many years. I often wonder whatever happened to her. An overdose probably did her in, or a crazy john, or a whack job of a boyfriend, or an inmate in a jail fight. Now, knowing how unpredictable life is, perhaps the woman is happily married with a minivan full of children and a fat husband who dots on her. Her smiling face still pops into my head for no reason, like a prehistoric fish emerging from the deep to take a quick breath of air and then diving back into the darkness it came from, leaving a small ripple on the surface.
My men are at work finishing the landscape outside another dot com company. I’ m in charge of a small Mexican army of gardeners and landscapers, all of them depending on my business acumen for a living. The drone of airplane engines overhead never goes away. Small planes tow gliders through the Air Force Academy sky. I hope that those wanna be pilots don’ t screw up like I did.
Women at Work
The catering van speeds through I-25 southbound for DTC. Debbie drives and Ana sits in the passenger seat. Maria sits on the back, on the floor among coolers and boxes full of warm food. They reach their destination in front of a glass and marble building, a fortress of commerce, a business bastion among the other towers that house the engines that propel the new economy. They have done this gig before and like a well trained squad they deploy their boxes and tables and trade utensils fast and efficiently. With few words among themselves they have everything set up right before lunch hour.
A small group of men and women in casual office attires comes into the room and queue for their chance at free food. Debbie knows that there is no such thing as free lunch. Somehow the powers above will extract that lunch from these people, plus a little bit more. There is going to be a return for this investment. She smiles like a good hostess and slices cuts of beef and plops them on plates loaded with side trimmings. This is better than serving the slop in the jail’ s cafeteria, and she doesn’ t have to use a hair net either.
Debbie serves young women who have manicured hands and a college degree. At their ages she was walking the streets to snare a john, looking to score dope, living from day to day, from minute to minute. She serves beef with a polite tenderness. Debbie knows she is a survivor of sorts, still standing on her one leg and her prosthesis, flashing a smile of artificial teeth, but she is not bitter. She holds no grudge against these young women who came from good families and had their college and their first car paid for by loving parents. She had nobody, but hey, that’ s life; you do what you can with what you got. She made it this far, not in one piece, but made it this far and the future… well, no point to worry about it.
But she does worry about it now and then, like when she went to Ana’ s sister wedding. Debbie felt lost among the wall to wall crowd of relatives that made Ana’ s family, and there was a bunch missing that couldn’ t make the trip from Chihuahua. Sitting at the table, surrounded by noise and people linked by blood and marriages, she felt like a ship wreck at sea floating on a coconut sack in the middle of the ocean. She didn’ t know were she was drifting to, and it didn’ t matter because whatever the direction the currents might carry her, there was nothing but emptiness.
After two failed marriage she had no intentions of boarding that boat again. The first one had been to Nicky, good hearted but dumb as a rock and lazy. She got tired of working two jobs seven days a week while he slept on the couch all day long complaining about his back, a back that didn’ t hurt when it was time to go fishing or drinking. Marriage to her had seemed like an opportunity to share things but Nicky had been interested only in taking, taking her money, her time, her life, never giving anything back in return.
The second one had been to Billy. Debbie still cannot figure out how she ended up with such a loser. Sometimes she blames her eagerness to find a companion overriding her common sense. At other times she blames her innate ability at picking up losers despite their defects being as visible as the sun in a cloudless day. Billy the biker, the macho man, the wife beater, the ecstasy and meth dealer, the philanderer, the one that got caught cooking meth and distributing drugs and was still sitting in jail, where Debbie thinks he belongs. It had been a miracle that she hadn’ t been dragged into his mess. The cops had come around their shabby apartment with a search warrant asking questions, probing, looking for a way to send her away with her husband; after all, she already had a good size rap sheet.
They could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove. She had always made sure that none of Billy’ s crap was stashed in the house and her vigilance had paid off. The cops went away empty handed. The close call had scared her to death and she had filed for divorce right after his conviction. For once the courts had been on her side and she got a quick divorce. Listing in the sworn affidavit the occasions in which Billy had struck her had also helped her motion.
Debbie finds it unbelievable that she had put up with his abuse. At the first beating from a boyfriend she had always packed her bags in a hurry and left destination unknown. But that was when she was young and had nothing but her body to trade with and her addictions. Back then packing and moving was a matter of putting her few clothes in a gym bag and getting her money stash from under the toilet’ s tank lid. Boyfriends were nothing but a blip on her journey to nowhere. A husband had proven to be a little harder to get rid of because of the emotional investments, all false pretenses, poured into the marriage.
Still, there was no excuse. It was true she had been afraid of his bad temper and his mean streak that would flare with just a little bit of priming from alcohol or for no reason at all. Fuck him and the Harley he rode in, Debbie says to herself when she thinks of Billy.