The Borzoi Killings

18.

Juan Suarez had faced so many changes in his life-the impoverished village where he was raised, the arid border between Mexico and Texas, the unbearable passage in the airless trailer (no water, no toilets) across half of America to the gigantic, strange streets of Manhattan-that, after the first weeks in solitary confinement, he managed to find a tense regularity in his new life. He was up at five each morning, well before the siren wailed, a sound that could wake the dead. He washed his face in the small basin in his cell, shaved, and dressed in the jumpsuit he kept as neat and smooth as he could. At first, food was passed to him through a slot. Eventually, as he was awarded small liberties, he was allowed to eat breakfast at a table with black and Hispanic men. Ordered not to speak with anyone, he swept and mopped floors until lunch. He spent the afternoons resting quietly in his cell. One of the guards gave him books in Spanish. Educated by Catholic nuns until the seventh grade, he was a slow but competent reader. One of the books was Don Quixote. As early as the third page, he was laughing out loud in his cell. He had never known books could be funny. By the end of each tedious day, he was usually asleep before the lights went out.

And there were the two hours every Tuesday and Thursday when he was let into the exercise yard along with dozens of other men. He learned to play basketball: the pleasure of the fast runs, the crafty passes, the graceful leaps. He had always been an instinctive, natural athlete. His basketball games were always with the black and Latino men.

And there were also the Friday visits from Raquel Rematti. Even at the first meeting Juan was at ease with her. They exchanged warm handshakes. Raquel wore tasteful suits, and Juan found that respectful. They often looked directly, calmly into each other’s eyes. After the first two visits, she had even started to kiss him quickly on the cheek when she left. He was looking forward to the day when he could give her a quick embrace. She was a shapely woman.

Juan eventually heard rumors-for there were always rumors at mealtimes, in the yard, in the communal weekly showers in the vast shower rooms-that Raquel was a “big, big” lawyer. He was sometimes asked how he had been linked up with a lawyer who, as one of the other prisoners said, was siempre on television and in the news. Once one of the prisoners had excitedly told him he had seen Raquel on television the day before. Juan was one of the few prisoners not allowed to spend any time in the recreation room where there was a television. The two other prisoners awaiting trial for murder-both white men, named Lombardo and Gianelli, who always had other men surrounding them in the yard because they were consiglieres in the Gambino family-weren’t allowed in the television room either.

Juan even felt safe in the prison. None of the guards ever screamed at him. They never pushed him. When they brought him to the cafeteria to meet each Friday with Raquel, who sometimes came with the kind Theresa Bui, the guards were in fact friendly. Juan was easy to get along with, a good inmate.

The sky above the concrete yard was clear. Voices in Spanish and English rang out through the cool, crystalline air. Some of the guards lifted their faces to the sun, their eyes closed, sunning themselves.

Juan didn’t notice the compact, muscular white man who hit him with a piece of a broken basketball hoop. Juan was stunned by the sudden impact, by the unexpectedness of the attack itself, the shattering of his sense of safety. He staggered a few feet, his hands at his back. He knew the sticky fluid he felt was his own blood. For a second he was so dazed by surprise and pain that he didn’t focus on the fact that he’d been hit with a piece of steel. He thought something must have fallen out of the sky.

Crouching, concentrated, furious, Juan spun around. The man, stalking toward him, screaming in Spanish, You fucker, and handling the curved piece of the basketball hoop as if it were a sword, lunged forward like a football tackler. Juan skipped to his left, athletically. The point of the rod, flashing in the sunlight, just missed him.

The squat, muscular man stumbled slightly, thrown off balance by the force of his own momentum in swinging the broken hoop. At that instant, Juan-who was at least five inches taller and almost as muscular-bent and bolted forward. Juan’s powerful, hurtling shoulders drove into the left side of the slightly off-balance man. Juan’s upraised hand clawed his face, peeling skin off his cheek and groping for his eyes. Juan had been a skillful fighter all his life. His only instinct was to kill this man.

When they fell to the yard’s concrete, Juan pressed his knee into the man’s chest and pushed his forearm into his throat. The strong man under Juan, who had the moves of a boxer, freed one arm and struck Juan on the ridge of his left eye with power and accuracy. Juan’s head flicked to the side, but that powerful fury that had protected him so well in the cocaine market that was his hometown, in the truck during the four-day drive to New York, and in the territory that Oscar Caliente ruled in Manhattan, overcame the pain in his face. The pain didn’t matter: Juan had work to do, and it was to kill this man.

Juan was still pressing his forearm into the now-frightened man’s throat-was the cartilage starting to give?-when a guard tackled him and another guard struck him over his shoulder with a black club. Juan immediately went still, releasing the pressure on the other man’s throat. As he lay on his back he was face to face with the frightened guard who had tackled him. Juan heard his attacker gasping for breath, gagging, sounding like a drowning man.

And then Juan thought about Oscar Caliente. The only thing I want from people who work for me is you keep your fucking mouth shut. You never heard about Oscar Caliente. Don’t ever forget it.

Motionless, Juan looked up into the completely blue sky. As he waited to be handcuffed, he knew that Oscar Caliente had somehow sent the now stricken, gasping man to remind Juan that he had never known Oscar Caliente.

Juan never felt safe again.