THE day Vera was to arrive back in New York City I was walking out of our new building to go to work. As I stepped out I spotted a tall man in an Italian suit, standing in the bright spring sun glowing like an apparition. Some tenants were gathered around him as if he was manna from heaven sent by the Most High. Mothers kissed his cheek, fathers were bowing to him and introducing their kids to him and making them greet him. It was as if I’d woken up in a village on the mother island and on my way to get water I’d met fellow villagers acting with that modesty and politeness you only find in places so poor that all you can offer is your kindness.
“Julio, right?” Nazario walked over to me, extended his hand, and we shook. I knew I was to be the link between Bodega and Vera. I was determined to fulfill my part of the deal; once Bodega and Vera met I was completely free. I would sever all ties to Bodega. Now more than ever, I wanted nothing to do with Bodega because I was sure he was connected to Salazar’s death. I hated to know that that would include Sapo too, but I had begun to wonder if Salazar was the first man Sapo had killed. If Sapo killed that reporter then he deserved to go to jail. I thought that, but I knew I didn’t mean it. I felt bad for Sapo.
I also knew I would never rat out Sapo or Bodega. I wasn’t going to say a word. It wasn’t my job or my style. All I needed was to keep my part of the deal and get free of Bodega and free of my own conscience, which would nag me and call me names if I backed out.
“So Nene called you last night to tell you I was coming to meet you,” he said smoothly, as if he and I had been friends for years.
“Nene called me,” I said.
“Great.” I could already see that Nazario was a chameleon. He had the uncanny ability to be stoically cold under pressure and extremely warm with the people. But from the day I’d met him at the Taino Towers I knew it was Nazario who went around carrying out the favors for Bodega. Like Bodega had told me, he needed people to represent him in his absence. Who better than Nazario to visit the people and give them help in the name of Bodega? It was Nazario who, by blending his education with politeness, had made himself be looked upon with love, respect, and a little fear throughout the neighborhood. His smile could be magically disarming but his head was crowded with practicality and genius. Unlike Bodega’s eyes, which were pools of ghosts and sadness, Nazario’s were black holes, nothing could escape them, not even light, as if he could read your mind. He inspired and at the same time intimidated me.
“I was thinking of telling Bodega to meet me in some restaurant and then taking my wife and her sister, Negra, and Vera to dinner. A family thing, you know, and Bodega could walk right in. With people around them that should diffuse some of the tension. That sound good?”
“That’s brilliant, Julio,” Nazario said, smiling. Then someone who had just stepped out of the building walked over to us. She gave Nazario a small packet of food wrapped in tinfoil. “For your lunch,” she said. He refused to take it, gently suggesting she needed it more than he did. The single mother of two, who lived in 5E, told him it was last night’s pasteles, which should still taste good, all he had to do was heat them up. He finally accepted, telling her in Spanish, “Who am I to take from you the gift of giving?” After that she kissed his cheek, then left to take her kids to school.
“Are you late for work?” he asked me when we resumed.
“I’m going to be.”
“Then I’ll walk with you.”
“No, it’s all right. It’s just three blocks from here.”
“Exactly, three blocks. What’s three blocks? Some people have to take eight-hour flights in the company of uncomfortable people.” He knew he made me nervous and he was smiling faintly. “You, Julio, just have to walk three uncomfortable blocks, with me.”
Unlike Bodega, Nazario spoke cleanly and used his slang only when it suited him. Nazario’s and Bodega’s speeches were as different as a glass of tap water and a glass of wine. And unlike Bodega, who said exactly what was on his mind, Nazario would tell you only what he felt was necessary. Later on, as I sank deeper into all this mud, I would realize how much of his success Bodega owed to Nazario and his connections at City Hall. It was something about knowing who the important little people were, the forgotten ones who don’t wear suits, the mailroom clerk, the secretaries, the custodial staffs. They would hide letters, delay them, too, steal files, copy disks, shred documents, all for Nazario. These workers who sympathized with Nazario knew that they had a union, so it would be difficult for them to lose their jobs. What Nazario offered them in return was something their union didn’t cover, that if their sons and daughters needed legal help one day, he would be there. And so would Bodega’s financial backing.
“That’s a great idea, Chino. The restaurant. That way Willie can just walk in casually as if he didn’t know anything. He’ll see you, your wife, her sister, and Vera. Brilliant.”
“Well, I hope it works,” I shrugged.
“In theory, it works like a socialist peasant but in real life”—he stopped walking and placed his arm around my shoulder—“in real life we have to do what Willie says. He wants you to accompany him to the school this morning and see Vera.”
“Wha’!” I was angry. “Hey, man, Bodega has waited more than twenty years. A few hours won’t kill him. I gotta go to work. You know, it’s bad enough I was going to miss a class tonight so he can see this woman. Now work, I can’t miss work.” Truth was I was angry because I was in the dark. I could tell something else was happening. Something big. Something that worried Nazario enough that he wanted to do anything he could to keep Bodega calm and happy. I didn’t want to get more involved, but not knowing what was really happening might hurt me. With Salazar dead, I didn’t want the cops coming to my house asking questions because Blanca would kill me, maybe even leave me. I couldn’t chance that. Right then I wanted Nazario to level with me. But I decided to wait and ask Bodega himself, because if I asked Nazario anything, he would only do that lawyer thing on me, say a million things while telling me nothing.
“I understand.” His voice was like small waves, like the swells at Coney Island. “I know exactly where you’re coming from. You can’t miss work.” As Nazario said this an old man who was about to open his barbershop on 110th and Lexington crossed the street to greet him.
“Don Tunito, bueno verlo.”
“Bueno verte a ti, mijo. ¿Y cómo va todo?”
“Bien. Este es Julio.” The old man shook my hand and said I could get free haircuts at his shop. Their conversation was purely small talk. It was a silent agreement in which each party knew what proper respects to pay, a polite farce created to ease the strain of acknowledging who owed who and what.
Looking back, I figured Bodega must have taken a lot of pride in these favors he handed out through Nazario. It made Bodega feel like some kid with a lot of toys who is happy to share them with the kid next door who owns a broken tricycle. Bodega took pride in helping someone who had just arrived from Puerto Rico or Nicaragua or Mexico or any other Latin American country. He’d get them jobs, legal jobs that didn’t pay a lot but got them started on their new life here in America. His buildings were run by good, hardworking men from Puerto Rico who just wanted to work. Bodega would make them supers or plumbers or dishwasheros at his pizzerias or anything. As long as they had some way of feeding their family and could hope to someday find something better they were happy. No wonder Bodega’s name had spread like a good smell from a Latin woman’s kitchen.
So, if someone wanted to set up a small business, be it a bodega or a fruit stand, but only had half the money and couldn’t get a bank loan, that person would get in touch with someone who knew someone who knew this Willie Bodega. Bodega would then dispatch Nazario to talk with this person’s neighbors and, depending on what he heard (whether this person was “good people” being honorable and trustworthy or some cheap-ass who would rip off the neighborhood), Bodega would offer or deny him support. All Bodega asked in return was loyalty. For them never to forget that it was Bodega who got them on their way. Nothing dramatic would happen if they’d forget. Nothing would be broken. Nothing would be thrown. But usually they’d remember. Usually that small business Bodega had loaned money to, that just-graduated kid whose tuition had been taken care of, that person who’d just passed the bar and whose prep course fees had been paid for, or that family just arrived from Puerto Rico who had been set up in an apartment, never forgot who had helped them in their time of need. They were loyal to Bodega without ever having seen his face.
Sapo had told me one day, when he was drunk on his fifth forty-ouncer, that Bodega had met Nazario after the Young Lords broke up. Bodega was selling dope and Nazario was just getting out of Brooklyn Law School. Nazario had told Bodega to get himself a hot-dog vendor’s license, place the dope inside a frankfurter cart with real franks in it and, before taking the money, to tell the customers that the heroin was free and that they were really paying for the hot dog. That way if an undercover cop bought from Bodega, he couldn’t bust him for selling heroin. A year later Bodega did get busted. Nazario represented him and used the frankfurter cart as Bodega’s defense. He told the judge that Bodega, as an American citizen in business for himself, could set any price he desired on hot dogs, since hot dogs were not controlled substances. That his client specifically let the undercover officer know, before taking his money and giving him the dope, that the officer was really buying the hot dog for five dollars and that the substance was free. The transaction did occur, which meant that the officer had agreed to the terms. It was brilliant.
The entire courtroom knew Bodega was guilty, but the officer had agreed that he was buying the hot dog and that the heroin was free. Nazario had found a loophole, though it was closed right after that case. But Nazario was always one step ahead. So instead of Bodega getting fifteen to twenty for selling drugs, he only got five for possession, then got paroled in three for good behavior. And now, years later, Bodega and Nazario were running an entire neighborhood.
“Where do you work?” Nazario asked me after the old man left.
“Right there, the supermarket. Only till I graduate and then I don’t know. I have to find a real job; besides, I have no choice. I got a kid coming.”
“The A & P? The one on the same block where the Aguilar public library is? No kidding?”
“Yeah, it’s convenient. During lunchtime, I go there to read or study. It’s the best library in the city.”
“Hey, I should know,” Nazario said, “I practically grew up inside that building. My adopted family were librarians and books.”
We reached the supermarket. I told Nazario that I could meet Vera either later that day or some other time but I couldn’t miss work. Nazario said that was okay and that he would like to talk “bookshop,” as he called it, with me maybe even at the Aguilar branch, since he hadn’t been inside that building in years.
A few minutes later I punched the clock and checked the schedule. I was penciled in at meat packing. I went to my locker and brought out my green apron along with a stained heavy sweater. I hated meat packing, it smells like what it is, a bunch of frozen dead animal corpses. Your hands get cold even if you wear gloves, and after your day is done you come out with a cold. But I had put on my gloves, sweater, and apron and was ready to get all bloody and smelly when I was called to the manager’s office.
“Julio, you’re sick, go home,” he told me in front of the other employees.
“I’m not sick,” I answered.
“Yes. Yes you are.” He gave me this meaningful look that told me he didn’t want the other employees to think I was getting special treatment. “You’re sick. No shape to be in the freezer packing meat.”
I got it. I coughed loudly and played it to the fullest.
“With pay, right? I get today off with pay?” I asked.
“No, you know we”—he looked at the other employees’ faces—“we don’t pay you for sick days.”
“Well then, I can hack it. I mean, I’m sick but I can hack it, just put me shelving or something away from the freez—”
“Okay, but just this once,” the manager said over the other employees’ protests. “New policy. What do you want me to do? I can’t have Julio give everyone the flu. Knock this place right out of business,” he said to save face.
I ditched my apron and punched out again.
Outside, when I crossed the street, there was Nazario. Standing straight, hands at his sides and stone cold, he told me, “The manager owes Bodega. We’re going to your place. You have to change clothes.”
On the way home Nazario asked me what I was studying. I told him. He nodded. Then he asked me, “You ever thought of going to law school when you graduate?”
“Nah, I hate lawyers. No offense.”
“That’s fine, but consider it. We’ll take care of the expenses. We will need people like you in the near future. We will need as many as we can get.” It was obvious by now who he meant by we. “A single lawyer,” Nazario continued, “can steal more money than a hundred men with guns.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Everyone’s a thief. Crime is a matter of access. The only reason the mugger robs you is because he doesn’t have access to the books. If he did, he’d be a lawyer. I’m not sure what you have access to”—he gave me a look as if I was guilty of something I myself was too afraid to say out loud—“but whatever it is that you have access to, that is what you will steal. What you are already stealing, Julio.”
“If you see it that way it’s cool,” I said. “But like my father always said, ‘El dinero robado tú te lo gastas con miedo.’ I’d rather make five bucks honestly and spend it knowing it’s all mine than fifty and worry about my back.”
“Then you don’t understand, Julio. See, what Willie and I are trying to do is make sure that you, the future of the neighborhood, doesn’t break its back. That this neighborhood isn’t lost. Sure, some people are going to get hurt, but that’s just the law of averages. Listen to me, Julio.” He stopped walking.
“You guys,” I said, laughing, continuing to walk, “are crazy, man.”
He yelled at me and grabbed my arm, stopping me. “You, Julio, think small! You live small and you’ll die small! Always paying rent because you never thought big. Like most of the people in this neighborhood you think that things are impossible!”
“So what? You puttin’ down your own people now!” I shouted back and he calmed down and took a deep breath.
“Don’t you see that it’s always been only about our people,” he said calmly. “All I ask is that you walk with me four more blocks north—”
“I thought you said Bodega was meeting me,” I protested, preferring to be in Bodega’s company than Nazario’s. At least with Bodega you knew where you stood.
“Humor me. We don’t even have to speak to each other,” he said, laughing a bit. “I just want to show you something.”
I nodded. The rest of the way neither of us said a word. Those four silent blocks with Nazario lasted an eternity, one of those moments in which you live a lifetime. I tried to think of other things, but all I could think about was why Nazario didn’t just leave me alone. He must have something else to tell or show me; he was too practical to take pointless walks.
We stopped at 116th and Third Avenue, in front of what looked like a bodega. It wasn’t. Inside that small space were framed gold records and instruments hanging from the walls and the ceiling. It was jam-packed with salsa memorabilia. There were the drumsticks Tito Puente used when he played Carnegie Hall in ’72. There were album covers, Joe Cuba’s congas, guitar picks, ticket stubs, all from salsa’s golden days in the sixties and seventies.
“It’s the salsa museum, Julio. The only one in the country,” Nazario told me. I was in awe, because I didn’t even know it existed. I had lived here all my life and didn’t know we had this. I started to read labels of the gold records on the wall: Willie Colón, Hector Lavo, Cheo Feliciano, Celia Cruz, Rubén Blades, the Fania All Stars—all were represented. It was the history of salsa. Nazario pointed. “See that ticket stub? I went to that show. It was at Madison Square Garden, the old one. Great show. I danced salsa all the way home.”
“This is awesome, man,” I said, and for a moment I forgot about everything and wrapped myself in the glory days of salsa. Back then it was a different dance music than the one in my time. The salsa music was new and always evolving into something else, but it always returned to its afro-jíbaro-antillano roots. This place had a deep association with my parents’ time, when the neighborhood was still young and full of people and not projects. It was a symbol of past glory, of early migration to the United States and the dreams that people brought over along with the music.
“That conga there belonged to Ray Barretto. Hearing Ray play was like watching Changó, the thunder god who suffered the consequences of playing with fire and became lightning itself—that was Barretto in his heyday. Night after night.” Nazario went over to the drum and circled his finger over the skin. For the first time I thought I had seen in his eyes some sort of nostalgic sentiment, a weakness maybe.
“Hey, no toque!” the curator of the museum said, joking. Nazario quickly turned around. The two men embraced as if they had known each other for years. The owner was a kind man in his fifties. When Nazario introduced me, he proudly declared, “See, Chino, there’s two museums in Spanish Harlem.”
“Your daughter,” Nazario asked him out of the blue, “did she get in?”
“Sí, sí.” They embraced again. They kept talking about the man’s daughter, who would soon start med school. The man was thanking Nazario and telling him to thank Bodega for him. Nazario said he would do just that and then told the man he had to go. I shook the man’s hand again and followed Nazario. The salsa museum was free, but upon exiting, Nazario put a twenty in the donation box. I had only three dollars and wished I could give more.
“I’ll walk you home now,” Nazario said, looking straight ahead.
“Sounds good,” I said. Somehow that experience had made me like him. A little bit. I still wanted Nazario to go away but I knew he wouldn’t, not just yet. I knew he hadn’t taken me to the museum just because he’d wanted to show it to me. He’d wanted me to see something else. For me to understand something that escaped me. I tried to think, but I couldn’t see what it was. The music of our people? No. Bygone times? Then it hit me. It was the man’s daughter.
“The girl who got into med school,” I asked Nazario, “she’s in Bodega’s program?”
“That’s right. I was hoping she was around. I wanted her to talk to you.”
“About what?” I asked, because I was just catching on that with Nazario and Bodega you had to see the big picture. Their minds were not nineteen-inch screens but those of the big drive-in movies. They were so ahead in their visions and dreams that they left you behind, with your mouth open, trying to piece it all together.
“Don’t you see what we’re trying to do?” he said, and this time it was me who stopped walking. I wanted to hear it. “Willie likes financing Latinos who are going to college to study law, medicine, education, business, political science, anything useful. He plans on building a professional class, slated to become his movers and shakers of the future.”
I wanted to tell him it was crazy. But then I thought, why not? Why not us? Others have dreams, why not us? It was from that moment on that I realized all these hopes were bigger than me, more important than any one person. If these dreams of theirs would take off, El Barrio would burn like a roman candle, bright and proud for decades. If Spanish Harlem moved up, we would all move up with it.
“Willie plans on building a professional class. One born and bred in Spanish Harlem.” So now I knew why he was renovating all those buildings. He planned on housing his people there. “But it goes deeper than that, Julio. It’s about upward mobility. It’s about education and making yourself better. It’s about sacrifice.” We started to walk again. He would lecture like he always did, steely but committed. “If someone is a janitor, that’s noble, it’s a respectable job. But they should make sure their kids grow up to own a cleaning business.” It was really an old idea, but never before had I thought that it was possible. With Nazario leading the fight for political, social, and economic power, anything was possible. It was going to be fought by intellect and cunning. Bodega and Nazario had seen what guns could do. They knew you could not attack the Anglo like that. You had to play by his rules and, like him, steal by signing the right papers. Nazario would lead, leaving Bodega to take all the hits, absorb the stigma, because of what he was. It would be Bodega and the likes of Sapo who would have the skeletons in the closet, all so Nazario could help create new hope for the neighborhood.
“This neighborhood will be lost unless we make it ours. Look at Loisaida, that’s gone,” Nazario said. “All those white yuppies want to live in Manhattan, and they think Spanish Harlem is next for the taking. When they start moving in, we won’t be able to compete when it comes to rents, and we’ll be left out in the cold. But if we build a strong professional class and accumulate property, we can counter that effect.” We were two blocks away from my building. I could see what Nazario was really after. “This is not the sixties. The government isn’t pouring any money in here anymore. It’ll take some time. But one day we might be strong enough, with enough political clout”—and he pointed at the Johnson Houses—“to knock those projects down.” Then he smiled at me as if he had just seen the sunrise for the first time in his life. “And we’ll free our island, without bloodshed.”