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From the Channel 9 Spectrum 24-Hour Radio News Network:
“...Juan Perez, older brother of the recently slain gang members, Hector and Julio Perez, was spotted yesterday afternoon outside the alleged Jalisco New Generation Cartel kingpin’s downtown mansion on Lark Street. Sources who choose to remain anonymous confirm what’s already been suspected—that the Perez gang is said to be hoarding weapons, including both short and long guns, that is, judging from the armed security guards who surround the four-story, brick downtown fortress.
“Perez, who is still mourning the loss of his two younger brothers and the fact that their bodies were never found, is said to have vowed a swift and powerful revenge for the rival gangsters responsible for their deaths. The Albany Police Department, in cooperation with the FBI and Homeland Security, are rumored to be closely monitoring the potentially volatile situation. Said APD Homicide Detective David Danish, ‘We’ve managed to grab a couple of leads and even minute pieces of physical evidence related to the deaths of the two brothers. But thus far the physical evidence remains scant, while evidence from our leads is circumstantial at best...
“Danish went on to suggest the responsible parties are, in fact, members of the rival Sinaloa Cartel, which was run by El Chapo and famous for moving tons of Chinese manufactured fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth into major and minor communities all across the U.S., including Albany. He also stressed that his theory has not yet been established as fact. ‘It is something we, the police, are taking very seriously however,’ he said. It should be noted that Juan Perez adamantly denies having any connection to a Mexican drug cartel, referring to himself as a legitimate, green card holding, tax paying, licensed businessman who’s made his fortune as an importer/exporter.
“...In other news...”
I turn the radio off.
“If the police know where Juan Perez resides and that he’s no legitimate businessman,” I ask myself aloud, “why don’t they just arrest him now?”
I stare out the window of my mail truck and do my best to conjure up a logical answer to my own question.
“Because maybe, just maybe, the police can’t officially get him on anything. Armed security guards aren’t illegal. And from what I’m told, he runs several legitimate Mexican food trucks, a Mexican grocery store and wine shop. Legitimate on the surface anyway, just like our funeral home is going to be. Still, the police and the FBI have to know he sells tons of drugs to innocent kids. Yet they can’t do jack about it. Maybe they can get him on IRS fraud like they did Al Capone in the 1930s. Who the hell knows?”
I pull the mail truck into an apartment complex down the road a little from where Joanne killed Hector and Julio.
“You’re talking to yourself again, Bradley. You know it’s no good when you start talking to yourself incessantly. It means you’re anxious. Nervous. Maybe even crazy. Is it only a matter of time until the police and Hector Perez find out their enemy is not a El Chapo’s rival cartel, but instead a husband and wife who live in a middle class neighborhood of North Albany? Maybe...”
Time to concentrate on the job of delivering the mail to the great citizens of this community, come rain, come shine, come sleet or snow. Truth is, this run-in in particular drives me a little cray cray. Unlike your average house owned by your average family that might have a couple of bills and some circulars with their name printed on them, apartment buildings contain maybe eight or ten units that have any number of bills, circulars, and packages coming their way. It not only gets confusing who gets what some days, but it can also be backbreaking work for an older guy who’s not in the best of shape.
Pulling up to Apartment Building One, I throw the truck in park and allow it to idle. I go into the back and grab the big plastic bin off the rack that contains the mail and packages that’ve been pre-sorted for the building and drop it by the truck’s rear rollup door. Exiting the truck, I go around it to the rear, pull-up door, and open it. Taking hold of the bin, I thrust it up on my shoulder like a native African carrying a water jar from the river through the dense jungle. It’s a nice, sunny, eighty something late summer day, with a pleasant little breeze blowing from out of the north. Yet my armpits are soaked with sweat, staining my light blue uniform blouse. My muscles ache and so does my lower back. Even my ass crack is sweaty.
“When the hell can I retire?” I ask myself as I approach the apartment building door and drop the bin to the concrete landing. “Patience, Bradley. Soon you’ll be rich. That is, everything goes as planned. But that’s what worries me...everything going as planned.” I give my head a good shake. “You’re doing it again. Talking to yourself. Only nut cases talk to themselves.”
The Extenda-Key retractable key chain attached to my belt makes me look like a key master, there’s so many keys attached to it. Despite all those dozens of keys, I know precisely where to find the key to this building. I grab hold of it and unlock the door. Picking up the bin yet again, I drop it one final time onto the vestibule floor where I use a different key to unlock the mailbox cover. Opening the metal cover, I expose all ten mailboxes, and proceed to fill each one of them mostly with bills from everything from the cellphone company to the Policeman’s Benevolent Association. Don’t get me started with the boxed packages which I simply drop to the floor under the mailboxes.
By the time I’m done with the last box, I’m practically crushing the mail in my haste to get the hell out of there and onto the next building. Grabbing up the now very light, empty bin, I put my hand on the doorknob and notice something tacked to the small bulletin board mounted to the wall beside the door.
It’s an FBI Wanted poster with a computerized rendering of two people. The words above the rendering say Wanted by the FBI. Printed below the rendering are some physical details. Height, weight, skin color, and approximate age of both people. Below that it says, Suspected in the homicide of two gang members, this male/female duo are currently at large somewhere in the greater Northeast. If you come into contact with them both or one of them individually, do not attempt to engage. They are considered armed and very dangerous. Instead contact 888-545-9090 immediately.
My mouth goes dry, and a pit lodges itself in my stomach. Why? The renderings on the FBI Wanted poster very much resemble my wife and myself.
Grabbing my now empty bin, I quickly exit the apartment building and go to my truck. I toss the bin in back and pull the overhead door down. I go around to the driver’s side (which is on the right where the passenger seat is in a normal truck), hop up into the bucket seat and close the door. Only then do I breathe. I have three more apartment buildings to go before I can leave the complex. But right now, my heart is beating so fast, I just want to drive out of here and get lost.
But that’s not right either. Something occurs to me then. What if Joanne and I left behind some physical evidence the cops haven’t yet picked up on? We were quick and careless about hiding the bodies and unloading the money and the drugs. We might have left behind some hair follicles or a used Kleenex or even a pair of reading glasses. Joanne has like two dozen pairs of readers and she’s always leaving them behind at a restaurant or just plain misplacing them. It’s not like they’re valuable. She gets them for ten bucks a piece at the Walmart.
Throwing the truck in drive, I proceed to the first of the last three buildings. I distribute the mail and packages as fast as I physically can, which isn’t all that fast. It seems like every few seconds I need to wipe the sweat from my eyes since it’s pouring off my brow. By now my shirt is sticking to my skin and what I wouldn’t give for a cold bottle of water. Shit, what I wouldn’t give for an ice-cold beer. So what if it’s only ten in the morning? Like Sean says, it’s always five o’clock somewhere in the world.
It’s when I’m at the front entry to the final building on my run that he comes out of his apartment to grab his mail. He’s an old man who’s been living in the apartment complex since it was constructed back in the late 1940s. His name is Tom. He served in World War Two and he moved here not long after he returned from Europe as a spry twenty-one-year-old determined to grab a college degree with his GI Bill. Or so he’s told me on many occasions before, each time like it’s his first ever recounting of the event.
He tells me my arrival is one of the bright spots of his day since he doesn’t get many visitors. Just like it always does, his first-floor door creaks open the moment he hears my truck pull up outside, or so I imagine. I see him making the short flight of stairs down to the vestibule as I’m unlocking the door with one hand and balancing the mail bin on my left shoulder with the other. Opening the door, I set the heavy bin down and once more wipe the sweat from my eyes.
“Morning, Tom,” I say.
“Morning, Mr. Jones,” he says. “You sweating up a storm today, I see.”
He’s got a smile that’s still somewhat boyish, like even though his body has aged over the many decades he’s been alive, deep down inside he’s still that strapping twenty-one-year-old kid. He’s maybe five feet four or five and he can’t weigh more than a buck thirty, wet. His gray/white hair, what’s left of it, has receded about as far as it’s ever going to go exposing a scalp mapped with brown age spots. Sometimes he wears a black baseball cap with gold lettering printed on the brim that reads WWII. I like the baseball hat and I like the man who wears it. But today, I’m not liking making small talk with him. I just want to get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible.
I’ve already unlocked the master metal panel that gives me access to all the mailboxes and pulled it down by the time he slowly makes it to the bottom of the staircase. Bending over, I start filling the boxes with the mailers and the mail.
“You working extra hard today, Mr. Jones,” Tom goes on.
“Oh, you know me, Tom,” I say. “I’m determined to bring efficiency back to the Federal Postal Service.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Back in the war we used to have to wait weeks for our mail and Red Cross packages. And that’s if they arrived at all. Nowadays you can get your mail on your phone in the middle of a battle.”
I find Tom’s mail and hand it directly to him. It’s not much. Just a circular for a sale at one of the two Walmart’s located in our area and what looks like a social security check. He’s always a little bit more chipper on the days when his social security arrives.
“Times change, Tom,” I say, as I fill the last box, quickly pull the metal panel back up, and relock it.
Again, I wipe the sweat from my brow and my eyes with my sweat-soaked hanky.
“You want a drink of water, Mr. Jones?” Tom asks. “I don’t like seeing a young man like you working so hard. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack if you keep up that pace. You might wanna think about getting in better shape, get rid of that gut.”
Young man...God bless him...Think about getting in better shape...Goddamn him...
“Oh thanks, Tom,” I say. “But I’ve got some water in the truck.” It’s a lie of course, but like I said, I just wanna get the hell out of there ASAP.
“Suit yourself,” he says. Then, his eyes squinting, and his face going a little tight. “Hey, what’s that pinned to the bulletin board?”
My pulse picks up a little. I turn and spot the same FBI Wanted poster that I’ve been seeing in all the buildings. It dawns on me that maybe I should be pulling them down. Too late for that. Inhaling a calming breath, I try and play dumb.
“I guess there was a double murder not far from here, Tom,” I say.
“Heard about that on the news,” he says. “Right down the road a bit. Two Mexicans. They were slaughtered. Rival gang members, I guess. Maybe even a husband and wife. Crazy times we live in, Mr. Jones.”
The husband-and-wife comment pokes me in my underbelly.
“Couldn’t agree more,” I say.
He brushes a little past me to get a better look at the poster and the renderings of the suspects printed on it.
“Say, Mr. Jones,” he says, not without a slight laugh, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the man in that there drawing looks an awful lot like you.” He turns back to me, eyes me up and down, then turns back to the rendering. He laughs a little louder this time. “Hot damn, if I didn’t know you as the friendly, kind a soft, laid-back guy who delivers my mail on time every day, I’d say you were a stone-cold killer, Mr. Jones.”
Together we both stare at the rendering. The man has my eyes, my narrow face and somewhat puffy, beer fed cheeks. He’s got my tall brow and receding salt and pepper hair. He’s even got my thin lips and pointed chin.
The rendering of Joanne isn’t very far off either. The hair is long and pulled back in a ponytail, just like on the morning she killed the Perez brothers. Even though a computer came up with the portrait, the woman depicted is very pretty. Her pronounced cheek bones are there, her thick, heart shaped lips, her round chin, and stunning deep brown eyes. It’s clear whoever got a peek at us when we were packing up the bodies and the contraband, got a very good look as he or she was speeding past.
For a split second, I wrack my brain. I just don’t recall anyone going by that morning. I recall Joanne mentioning the three or four cars plus one motorcycle that went by when she was in the midst of killing the brothers. But I just can’t recall seeing anyone go by when we were busy cleaning the scene. Maybe we were so caught up in our work, we just didn’t notice anyone going by. Certainly, I would have remembered if a cop went by.
My eyes back on the old man.
“Well, one thing is for sure, Tom,” I say, “that killer is one very handsome man.”
We both enjoy a little laugh over that one. But I can tell his laughter is a little bit too faked for my taste. He’s also slow to take his eyes off the rendering. But when he finally does, he turns, brushes past me once more, and starts his slow climb back up the steps.
“You need me to do anything for you, Tom, before I go?” I ask.
On occasion, I pull something down off a high shelf for him, or heft something that’s too heavy for him. Stuff like that.
“I’m okay for now, Mr. Jones,” he says, as he reaches the first-floor landing. He turns to face me once more. “Nothing needs doing right now.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”
He’s looking at me, but not looking at me, meaning he’s looking over my shoulder at the FBI Wanted poster again. He’s absolutely fascinated with the likeness of me in the picture.
Shaking his head, he says, “Sure does look like you, Mr. Jones.”
Opening his apartment door, he heads back inside with his mail. As soon as he closes the door behind him, I reach for the poster, rip it off the wall.