I have worn lots of white for almost a year now. Chiva is my teacher. He helped me since I got here, like I knew that he would. Everyone needs family of some type.
Chiva gave me a new identity, a new name. He was always good at the paper crimes. He fell back into that as soon as he got down here—there’s lots of business here for anybody who is good at forging documents. So Chiva hooked me up.
Criminal record? Gone.
Prison record? Nonexistent.
Work history? Steady. Just ask Social Security. Turns out I’ve been paying into it since I was sixteen. At least that’s what their records show. I’m a new man, but not a newborn. And the IRS is very satisfied. No problems with my account. Even my credit is good. I’m still a Puerto Rican. I have an American passport. I even got a clean driving record, so my insurance rates are nice and low. It’s the fresh start that everybody dreams of.
One thing was weird: looking at my own death certificate. I figured it was necessary. A crafty detective might ID Tony’s body, run his sheet, look up his old case files, find that I was his codefendant on the armored-car heist, discover that I had been released a month before the casino job, and figure me as a prime suspect for the guy in the gorilla suit. It was also possible, though not likely, that they would lift a print off the Magnum. If any of that ever happened, I needed the trail to me to lead to a finding of SUSPECT DECEASED for the case file.
Chiva showed me the forged death certificate for EDUARDO SANTIAGO ROSARIO and the medical examiner’s report.
I touched myself in the ribs. “Why did it have to be that I was eaten by sharks?”
Chiva said, “No body to present, no body to dig up and test against DNA or dental records. You just certified dead. Nobody know where to find the tiburones that ate you. Besides,” he said, “a dramatic guy like you? I couldn’t just take you out with the flu.”
I can’t say here what my identity is. But I will reveal that it takes some getting used to, people calling me by a different name. It can be frustrating, although mostly it’s all right.
Of course you can’t erase memory. A person’s more than just the record of who they are. That’s why I’m in atonement now.
Chiva instructs me on how to hollow out the shell of the drum. There are very specific tools and techniques. It’s firm, but somehow gentle, the way he does it. He shows no frustration with my rough hand, though I’m sure it offends him.
I pay attention and try to do it the way he tells me. I get lost in the act and mostly I think of nothing, or I think of the things I’ve learned since I got here, and it feels like I am studying something, I’m training, I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m becoming, my life has a purpose.
Sometimes I think of the past. How much I lost. How close I came. I think of Xochitl often. She caressed me in those final days, and she was right that we had been kind. I will always be grateful.
Xochitl was at the motel after the heist, like I asked. I ditched the car downtown and caught a train, changed trains, changed cars, changed directions even, then switched to a bus and walked part of the way with the baseball cap I stole from that house pulled low over my face. I kept the shades on in case my mug shots had been on the news. When I finally made it to the motel, I was so tired, I could barely knock on the door. Xochitl waited inside.
She pulled me in and shut the door behind me. I collapsed on the bed. Xochitl looked nervous and stood over me.
“Are you all right?”
I didn’t have the energy to really answer. But no, I was not all right.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Don’t be.”
“Was that you?”
“What?”
“In the news?”
“What’d they say?”
“Some guys stole money from a casino.”
“They got away.”
“What makes you think it was me?”
She didn’t answer.
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t believe everything you see on TV, Xochitl. Put it on.”
We watched the midday WGN news. The reports were of a daring Halloween heist on a casino boat. They had video stills of the three of us: Tony, the clown, up on the blackjack table, Cabezón, the lion, with his shotgun, and me, the gorilla, giving orders. Nobody was hurt. Brian, the kid who maneuvered the dinghy, was interviewed on camera. He said at first he was afraid, but the guy in the gorilla suit was “real polite.”
Police scoured the area. I knew it would be no time at all before they found the skid marks where we went off the road, found the wreckage and Tony’s corpse, found the bodies in the woods. The bloodhounds would find my scent and it would lead them to the house where I stole the clothes and the stolen car report from next door. The car itself would then turn up downtown.
But I was far from downtown. All that hustling I’d done on the subway system would throw off any bloodhounds. I still had time.
“Shut it off.”
Xochitl killed the TV.
“You got my money?”
“It’s under the bed.”
I got down on all fours and found it down there. My money belt. I opened it. It was filled with green. On top of it was the Purple Heart that Coltrane stole from me my first night back in Chicago. I zipped the money belt shut.
“Ten thousand.”
I knew that Coltrane and Johnson would have never agreed to release my full forty G’s, even if they thought they would double-cross me later and get it back. Why risk losing the whole egg? I took what I could get my hands on.
“Beautiful.” I tossed the money on the bed. “You got my tape player?”
Xochitl dug it out of her purse. She gave me my cell phone too. “Eddie, if you needed money, you should have come to me.”
“What, so you could ask your husband for it? I didn’t need money. I had my own stash that I needed to recover. That’s all. Did you listen to the tape?”
“You told me not to.”
“Good. Were you able to rent a car?”
“Yes.”
“In your own name, Xochitl?”
“Of course. It’s the white one right outside the door here. The keys are on the dresser, next to the room key. Am I gonna be implicated?”
“I already told you no. I’ll drop the car at Miami-Dade and that’ll be that.” I added: “If I get caught, I’ll just say that I forced you. Threatened to hurt your kids if you talked—that kind of thing. You say the same thing. OK? You bring my change of clothes?”
“In the bathroom.”
I went in and shut the door behind me. I took the fastest shower and changed, but did not put on a shirt. When I came out, Xochitl was standing by the exit with her purse on her shoulder, looking nervous and sad. She winced when she saw the bruise on my bare chest.
“You need to get that x-rayed.”
“I’ll survive.”
She touched the bruise lightly, but did not ask what happened. She said, “Why are you trusting me with all this?”
I thought about it for a second. “You have the most unforgettable smile.”
Xochitl hadn’t smiled once that day. And she didn’t do so now. I stood in front of her by the door.
A kiss on the lips would not have been appropriate or fair to either of us. Xochitl put her fingertips just above my bruised skin. Her eyes watered. She leaned in and kissed me soft on the collarbone. I hugged her, and smelled her hair for the last time.
“Xochitl. . .”
“Please don’t.”
We were in each other’s eyes now. Xochitl opened the door.
“Cuídate,” she said.
I would have understood if she said, “Please don’t ever call me again,” but she didn’t.
I sat on the bed. I desperately wanted to take a nap, but I had one more task to confront, and it made sense to take care of it as soon as possible, before I got in the car and rode away from the motel.
I dialed Coltrane’s cell.
“Santiago!”
“What up, cowpoke?”
“Where the fuck are you? You lied to us.”
I had told Coltrane and Johnson about the heist all right. But I had given them all the wrong information. And I made sure that they did the money drop for Xochitl at the exact time when the crew left Pelón’s, to make sure they didn’t just follow us. At the time when we were in one state holding up one casino boat, these morons were more than a hundred miles away, in another state, thinking some other casino boat was about to get robbed. They waited at a fake rendezvous spot.
Coltrane said, “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”
“So will you when you hear what else I got.”
I put the tape recorder close to the receiver on my cell and pressed play. It was a recording of the conversation I had with Coltrane and Johnson by Buckingham Fountain. You could plainly hear each detective, who I repeatedly refer to by name, as they conspired with me to rob Tony, Pelón, and Cabezón after the casino heist. You hear them negotiate me down to ten thousand on the return of my stash, and also the part where they agreed to provide me with a bulletproof vest.
I shut off the tape. “Have you heard enough?”
Coltrane said, “What the fuck do you think you’re gonna do with that?”
I said, “The quality’s not the best, but you can clearly hear what’s being said, right? You recognize the voices, don’t you? I’ve made several copies.”
“Go on.”
“I have friends, Coltrane.”
“Bully for you.”
I said, “Anything happens to me? I get locked up? I disappear? That tape and a letter I’ve written explaining everything—explaining who all the players are—will be mailed to CPD Internal Affairs, the FBI, the Justice Department, the state attorney general, and every major news outlet in this city. You follow?”
Coltrane did not say a word. I could hear him breathe.
I said, “Don’t come after me, Coltrane. Don’t tell anybody you know I was the fourth man, because you are now in this to your tits and you don’t want that coming out. Make believe like I never hit your radar.”
Coltrane said, “Boy, you’re gonna shoot yourself in the foot one day.”
“Maybe. But at least I’ll be in control.”
After that, I jumped in the rental and split. Xochitl left the CD she bought me in the player, cued to “Go Your Own Way.” I slept a couple of times in rest areas, but never comfortably, since I kept expecting a contingent of state highway patrol officers to sneak up on me. They never came. I was in Miami by early afternoon.
I have followed the story since I got down here, on the Internet. Investigators found the car wreck, Tony’s body, the brothers in the woods. According to the news, the money was fully recovered. It is unclear who double-crossed who, since there were two homicides, one suicide, and the fourth man, the one in the gorilla suit, disappeared but did not take the cash. I don’t know if anyone is after me. I’ve never been named as a suspect. So far as I can tell from the news, the investigation seems to be at a dead end.
One news story did catch my attention: About six months after I left, two killers confessed to shooting that kid in the Humboldt Park bathroom. It was Nieve, aka “Sweetleaf,” and Nena, the girls Tony and I had hooked up with on day one. They got picked up for smoking a joint on the Hot Corner. Once they were fingerprinted, their fingerprints matched the ones recovered from the murder scene in the bathroom in the park. Confronted with this, they caved in and confessed that they had lured the kid to the bathroom with the promise of a blow job. They shot him to get props in the gang. No one had put them up to it. The gun was never recovered.
The Sun-Times ran a picture of the killers on its Web site as they were led out of the station by the arresting officers, Coltrane and Johnson. The landlords were cleaning up their neighborhood after all.
Chiva tells me to pay attention. “You gonna make this thing pleasing to the Orishas, you gotta do it right.” He shows me again how to tighten the skin of my handmade batá. The large one finally. It’s full-bodied and shaped like an hourglass, which makes sense, since it is female.
“Mira. Así.”
I do as Chiva tells me. Finally, the drum is ready. We both stand and admire it.
“It looks good,” he says in Spanish. “Bellísima.”
Me and Chiva and a couple of other investors work hard. Our little salsa label is off the ground. I got a woman I visit sometimes. Her kids are grown. I just bought myself an old motorcycle, and I have fun with it, although mostly I ride it slow.
But all of that is out of my mind right now. I look at my drum. It has no polish. It ain’t ever made a sound. But it’s my own creation. And I feel like, This is it. This is why I came here.
“Cúrate,” says Chiva. “Play it.”
I sit on a stump and lay the drum across my lap. The skin on both ends feels just right. I slap the smaller head and stroke bass tones out of the other end that speak like nascent thunder.
Chiva and I smile.
He winks at me. “Aché pa’ ti, Boricua. Your ancestors are listening to you.”
My drum sounds that good.
FIN