Moist

Twenty-three

ROBERTO CAME TO a stop with the rest of the traffic. He liked his new car, a metallic green Volkswagen Beetle. It looked like Kermit the Frog from Sesame Street. Friendly and cool, childish and groovy. Perfect for El Jefe’s new consultant and second-in-command. Perfect for him.

He also liked that it had a small trunk. That meant he wouldn’t be stuffing anyone in it anytime soon. The car had been Amado’s idea. Why not go for a whole new image? The green bug and his slick new clothes — Felicia had decided he should wear khakis and guayaberas like Diego Rivera, sunglasses like that French actor who played the cool hit man in The Professional — everything about Roberto caught people off guard.

Members of La Eme wondered where he came from. How did he earn Esteban’s trust? Had Roberto killed the other gringo? Just who was this dapper man in the froggy-colored car?

The word on the street was that Roberto was smart, fearless, and very ruthless. Amado backed up this story, telling everyone he knew how he’d been skimming some of Esteban’s profit and that Roberto found him out and marked him for death. Only after Amado begged for his life and promised to quit the business did Roberto show mercy.

He only took Amado’s arm.

This story spread quickly throughout the criminal subculture of Los Angeles and earned Roberto some serious respect.

It also afforded him some latitude. Roberto wasn’t a man of violence. He didn’t like all the kidnapping and killing. So, except in extreme cases, he put a stop to it. He wanted the crew to be run like a legitimate business. Like that hippie ice cream company where everyone has long hair and is happy all the time.

It took a little while to convince Esteban that this kind of strategy would work. But even Esteban had to admit that he was tired of running drugs and stealing cars, he’d much rather move into the legitimate business world. So he gave Roberto the authority to slowly begin the process of transforming a hard-core criminal enterprise into a legitimate and diversified holding company.

Roberto was surprised at how eager his employees were to make a change. It seemed that, deep down, they all wanted to work on the right side of the law. They were tired of living in constant fear of arrest, deportation, or worse, some kind of hostile takeover from a rival crew. After their initial suspicions that Roberto was some kind of highly skilled FBI agent, almost everyone in the organization came around to his way of thinking.

And why wouldn’t they? Roberto was open, friendly, smart, and persuasive. He would stop in at the chop shop and take all the guys out to lunch. He would give the coyotes gifts for their kids. He instilled a pride of belonging in members of Esteban’s crew.

For the more unpleasant work, still, sadly, a necessity, he hired a couple of bikers from the Mongols outlaw motorcyle club, earning their devotion when he paid for their rehab to cure a nasty crystal meth addiction.

He instituted a profit-sharing plan that gave everyone in the organization a big fat bonus. Roberto had even set up retirement plans for anyone who wanted to participate. That way your money would be laundered for you and you’d have something to live on when you decided to retire or got out of prison.

Roberto wasn’t just respected, he was loved. Occasionally he would remember what it had been like to be Bob. But as time passed that was less and less often. He had been born a Bob. He had grown into a Roberto.

Roberto made his way toward the freeways, huge, slow-moving rivers of steel and glass. He popped a CD into the stereo. A stern yet reassuring voice came over the speakers and began to teach him how to conjugate verbs in español.

All around the city, the jacaranda trees were in full bloom. Fantastic explosions of purple, courtesy of Brazil, they dotted the landscape and reminded Roberto that he lived in a special place. A tropical place with palm trees and sunshine. A city where roses and cacti grew side by side and bright orange-and-purple birds of paradise sprang up out of cracks in the sidewalk.

The sun was beginning to make its way west, the light filtering through the jacaranda trees, splashing the city in gold and lavender. Roberto listened carefully to his CD. He repeated the words in Spanish. It was like a magical mantra.

The beautiful language of revolution.

Roberto loved this city. With its millions of people from hundreds of countries, speaking ninety different languages, Roberto felt truly at home. People came here to find transformation. They surrendered their past and looked for a future. They lived sin banderas, without flags, they weren’t Mexicans or Cambodians, Peruvians or Laotians, Salvadorans or Koreans, Africans or Americans, Pakistanis or Ecuadorians, Thai or Argentine; they were Angelenos.

Roberto was happy to be alive. He was happy he lived in Los Angeles, city of the future, hope of the world.

Amado walked out into the hallway and plugged some coins in the soda machine. He was getting used to this one-armed thing. It wasn’t going to be as bad as he’d thought. At first he hadn’t thought he’d be able to wipe his ass again. Now he could do all kinds of stuff. Well, he couldn’t move heavy objects like Norberto’s big dead body, but he could do lots of other stuff.