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Part 1
THE RED DEVIL
an online short story: part 1 of 2
“We need to keep an eye on that Acuña boy,” Frank Ramirez said. “He lives in my barrio. And let me tell you, he is running with the Infiernos gang.”
The “Acuña boy” was actually not a boy at all—but a legal adult of eighteen, as was Patrick O’Brien, to whom Frank Ramirez was speaking. O’Brien and Ramirez were the night watchmen at the Longworth’s Ford dealership in El Paso, Texas. The two of them had been working together on the 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. shift for about four months.
O’Brien gave Ramirez a skeptical look. “Ah, Frank, Como se dice en español, ver es creer. Seeing is believing, right? José was in my graduating class at Elliston High School. He’s a good guy at heart, if a little rough around the edges. No podemos juzgar—”
“I’m not judging,” Ramirez shot back. “I’m simply stating what everyone already knows. I see who the boy runs with. I’ve seen his tattoos.”
They were walking the perimeter of the dealership. It was long after dark. Moths fluttered around the halogen parking lot lights, suspended on poles high overhead. Ramirez and O’Brien were surrounded by rows and rows of vehicles: trucks and SUVs and every kind of sedan manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.
“And please, Pat, no Spanish,” Ramirez said. “I haven’t spoken the language much since was my grandfather died—more than thirty years ago. You’re the one who speaks fluent Spanish. I know you spent those summers at the language school in Mexico.”
O’Brien nodded. He had taken four years of Spanish at Elliston High School; and he had indeed spent the past two summers in Mexico. “Okay. I like to practice my Spanish because it’s handy in El Paso; but we can speak only English if you prefer. Anyway, Frank, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about José.”
“He has a red devil tattoo on his bicep!” Ramirez said. “That’s the symbol for the Infiernos gang.” The Infiernos gang was one of the major drug cartels in northern Mexico.
“Anyone can have a red devil tattoo,” O’Brien retorted. “That’s a pretty generic design. You’re judging him by his ethnicity and class.”
“Pat, that’s ridiculous. I’m Mexican-American too, don’t forget. So don’t give me that politically correct mumbo jumbo. A wealthy white kid like you has no idea what it’s like to live in the barrio. Political correctness is a luxury that I can’t afford. Come on, let’s head over to the guard shack. We can make another round of the lot at midnight.”
Soon they were sitting in the little guard shack, listening to the radio. Tim McGraw was singing “Don’t Take the Girl” when Ramirez spotted José Acuña emerging from between two rows of SUVs.
José Acuña also worked at the dealership. The owner, Fred Longworth, paid Acuña minimum wage to wash cars, clean the showroom, and organize the spare parts in the service area.
“Is Acuña on the schedule tonight?” Ramirez asked, looking through the thin glass. His tone implied that he thought otherwise.
“He sure is,” O’Brien said, tapping a clipboard with a Longworth Ford promotional pen. “His name is right here: nine to five, just like us.”
“Well, it looks to me like he’s creeping around.”
“What exactly do you want him to do?” O’Brien laughed. “Should he walk around banging a gong?”
“It just seemed to me that he was creeping, that’s all.”
Ramirez returned his attention to the copy of Sports Illustrated that lay open on his lap. After a pause of perhaps a minute he said. “To tell you the truth, Patrick, I am a little on the edgy side. After everything that’s been in the headlines recently: the gang wars, the thefts at West Texas Honda, and then the discovery of those coolers in Juarez—right across the border.” Ramirez shuddered. “My God, that was ghastly.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Why do you think that the Mexican cartels cut their victims’ heads off like that? I mean, is that really necessary? When you’re dead, you’re dead, after all.”
O’Brien shrugged. “Not sure. If I had to guess, though, I’d say that it’s just a scare tactic. Wouldn’t you think twice about crossing someone if you knew that they were going to cut your head off?”
The thought gave Ramirez a shiver. “I’d prefer not to think about such things.”
“Well, don’t think about them, then. I’m sure not. Why would you want to worry about Mexican gangsters cutting people’s heads off when you could be thinking about….swimsuit models?”
Ramirez gave O’Brien an obligatory laugh. The kid had a way of cheering him up sometimes. Yes, some people would have suggested that he worried too much about the Mexican drug cartels. But it would be easier not to worry about them if you didn’t live in El Paso. The Texas border town was literally right next door to the Mexican town of Juarez, where two drug cartels were now engaged in a turf war.
The Infiernos gang’s war with their rival, the Chihuahua Junta, was characterized by bloodshed that could rival anything in Iraq or Afghanistan. Last week an anonymous caller had notified Mexican police that five coolers “with significant contents” had been left along one of the main highways near Juarez. The police went to the location specified by the tip. There were indeed five coolers along the highway: each one contained a severed human head packed in dry ice.
“Those heads in the coolers,” Ramirez said aloud. “Were those members of the Infiernos gang or the Chihuahua Junta gang?”
“You’re still thinking about those heads? Man, don’t take this the wrong way, Frank; but you can be a drag sometimes.”
“Sorry.” The younger man’s rebuke made Ramirez feel like a bit of a fuddy-duddy.
“I think the victims were from the Chihuahua Junta,” O’Brien said. “And what is their symbol again?”
“Their what?”
“Their symbol. The Infiernos identify themselves with a red devil tattoo. What about the Chihuahua Junta members?”
“Uh, I think it’s a snake.”
“Like a rattlesnake?”
“No. A cobra, I think.”
Ramirez snorted. “There are no cobras in Mexico.”
“Well, what do you want me to tell you? Maybe the Chihuahua Junta doesn’t realize that.”
“Stupid gangsters. Idiots.” Ramirez said. “You know, I’m still thinking about how one of those gangs stole eight cars from South Texas Honda last month. Did you hear the whole story? They pulled up in the middle of the night with a car carrier truck, shot the security guard in the back of the head, and then stole those cars. Just like that.”
“I know,” O’Brien said. “I read about it in the paper too. That’s why Fred Longworth insists that there are two security guards on the night shift. That’s also why we have that shotgun in the locker.” He gestured to the locker in the corner of the guard shack. “I think we’re safe.”
But Ramirez did not feel safe. And despite O’Brien’s naïve assessment of José Acuña, Ramirez believed that the other young man was involved with the Infiernos gang. He had heard the gossip in the barrio. And where there was smoke, there was usually fire.
The cartels had recently begun recruiting Mexican-American teenagers to do their bidding in the U.S. These youths were perfect agents for the cartels, because of their dual perspective. On one hand, they could speak Spanish and were familiar with Mexican culture. At the same time, their status as American citizens gave them the ability to operate freely in the United States.
Ramirez had first learned of the practice from a feature report on CNN. The cartels recruited American teens to be “sleeper agents.” They were paid a retainer of perhaps five hundred or a thousand dollars per week—a lot of money to an American kid, but pennies to the cartels. Then when it was time to carry out a job—a narcotics drop-off, a kidnapping, or perhaps a contract murder—the cartels gave their young agents bonuses. For murder, an American teen might receive as much as $50,000.
The cartels had thought of everything. They even sent the kids down to Mexico for intensive training in weapons handling, car theft, and other black arts of the criminal underworld.
This practice reminded Ramirez of those al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan, where Bin Laden & Company churned out jihadis. What the Mexican cartels were doing really wasn’t so different, when you thought about it.
“You’ve seen those stories about Mexican cartels recruiting high school kids, right?” he asked O’Brien.
“Yeah, I’ve seen ‘em.”
“And what do you think about that?”
O’Brien tilted back in his chair and folded his arms. “I think it’s mostly an urban legend, something cooked up to justify the racial profiling of Hispanic kids. That’s what I think.”
Ramirez laughed. “Pat, you are a good kid; but you are incredibly naïve.”
“Coming from you, Frank, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Okay, okay. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here. But—“ Ramirez squinted into the parking lot, which now looked quite surreal and incredibly lonely beneath the halogen lights. “I wonder where José Acuña is.”
“He’s probably mopping up the floor of the service building about now.”
“I don’t see any lights on in the service building.”
“I think that Longworth also wanted him to put temporary plates on some cars out in the lot.”
“Wouldn’t we be able to see him if that were the case?”
“Not if he’s in one of the back rows. And we can’t see the east lot at all from here.”
Ramirez nodded. He had told Fred Longworth just the other day that the dealership needed a security camera system. This would allow them to monitor various points on the lot from monitors inside the guard shack. Longworth had expressed general agreement with the idea; but the tightwad hadn’t actually committed to purchasing the equipment.
“Well, then we would have seen the beam from his flashlight by now.”
O’Brien sighed. “Frank, you’re such a worrywart.” He glanced at his watch. “Would it make you feel better if I went out and checked on José?”
“Yeah, why don’t you do that? I want to write up a formal memo for Longworth about that security camera system we need while I’m thinking of it. Then come back and we’ll make another round of the perimeter together.”
“Okay. I’m sick of sitting here anyway.” O’Brien stood up.
“Do you want to take the shotgun?”
O’Brien waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t need it. José Acuña’s out there if I get in jam.”
“There you go again.”
“No, there you go again.”
Ramirez watched O’Brien as he headed out the door. For a moment he felt intense envy for the younger man. How wonderful it would be to view the world from an eighteen-year-old’s perspective again. At that age you were only vaguely aware the concept of death, and ignorant of the degree of human evil that inhabited this world.
What does Patrick O’Brien know about death? To him it is little more than an abstraction, Ramirez thought. Well, I hope he lives a long time before he has to find out otherwise.
Ramirez went to work on the memo for Frank Longworth. He had been writing in longhand for more than an hour before he was finished. He was quite satisfied with his results, confident that he had laid out all the reasons why the security camera system was necessary.
Now the old man won’t be able to hem and haw when I ask him about buying it.
Afterward, Ramirez slouched back in his chair and relaxed. He began to consider the different kinds of security camera systems that he had seen in catalogs and on the Internet. That was one detail he had omitted from his memo. He should make a recommendation of a specific brand and model.
Then Ramirez sat up straight in his chair, thoughts of security camera systems instantly forgotten.
Where was O’Brien?
He should have returned by now. He was supposed to check on José Acuña, then come right back to the guard shack.
Copyright 2008 by Edward Trimnell. All rights reserved.