The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria Read online

  “Picked up cyanide on the street?!” screamed Constancia. “That is the absolute stupidest theory—”

  I covered her mouth. She mumbled for a second in my palm, but then finally shut up. I removed my hand, but gave her an admonishing look. “What’s GruuvyJuuce?” I asked Dan.

  “It’s from one of those new powershake places that’re popping up all over the place. Can’t see the appeal myself. They’re really expensive, and they have all these weird fruit flavors I’ve never heard of. Like this one: It’s got this neon-peach-orange color, and it smells like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  “You see smells?” asked Constancia.

  I shot her a look, then went over to the nightstand, leaned over the cup and took a long whiff. “It’s mamey,” I said.

  “What?” asked Dan.

  “Mamey,” said Constancia. “Tropical fruit. Cubans love it.”

  Something was bugging me. I turned to our cameraman and asked him in Spanish, “Eugenio, mamey. Don’t people use them for home remedies?”

  Like any good cameraman, Eugenio was loathe to talk while we were still rolling. But he was also too polite not to respond, so after a moment’s hesitation he said, “Of course. They use it to cure everything: good for headaches, stomach problems, VD, warts, malaria, everything. They make a hair tonic with it in El Salvador to keep you from going bald. I should get me some, eh?” he said, patting his bald head.

  We all laughed, even Dan, whose Spanish was so bad he can’t even order at Taco Bell. But I could tell Eugenio wasn’t done. It took a minute of staring at him expectantly, but finally he continued: “And you can use the seed to make a drink that will induce an abortion. I had a cousin from Pilar del Río. You know the type: one of those bobas de la yuca who can’t keep her legs shut. Well, she got herself into trouble, and there was only one way to fix trouble like that. That mamey potion almost killed her, but she lived, and it worked. It got rid of the baby all right.” Eugenio’s mouth clapped shut. He hid behind his camera so I wouldn’t see him getting choked up. “Poor little baby. Never got to be born. My poor little nephew.”

  “What’d he say, Desi?” Detective Dan asked.

  I was about to answer Dan when Constancia’s cell phone/computer/surrogate brain went off. “It’s Alonzo,” she said, handing that overcomplicated gizmo to me.

  I took it, struggled to figure out how to work the stupid thing, let Constancia press the right button for me, and then, finally, said “Ai, Alonzo. How are you doing, niño?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “You know, rough day.” A beat. Then, “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

  “No sea estúpido. What were you going to do, crawl into bed with him? There was nothing you could do. This isn’t your fault.”

  He wasn’t convinced. But like a niño bueno, he said, “Okay.”

  “Hey, you’re not alone, right? You keeping busy?”

  “Yes, Mámi,” he sighed, just like Xavier would’ve. He imitated Xavier in everything.

  “Don’t lie to me. What are you doing right now?”

  “Ai, my job, Mámi, okay? In fact, I have good news. I found the abuelita. We can return the money to her.”

  “That was fast. Good work.”

  “She works at this place called GruuvyJuuce. Mámi, it’s perfect. I was thinking we could give her back the money right there, right at the store while she’s working. Man, what a great moment that’s going to be.” And then he added sadly, “Xavier would’ve loved it.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear. For a few seconds I thought I could hear the roar of the ocean. But it was the sound of my own blood surging into my head.

  “What is it?” asked Detective Dan.

  “It’s a homicide,” I said to him. “Xavier was murdered. And I know exactly where to find your prime suspect.”

  Latinos don’t like mysteries. The Brits, they’re a mystery-crazy people. Americans too. But us? All that confusion and ambiguity at the beginning, all those subtle clues to make you feel stupid when you see the solution at the end, all those red herrings purposefully put there to trip you up. No, what the New World mind likes is intrigue. Just lay it all out: this person wants this, that person wants that, and here’s everyone’s sordid past, and here are all the evil things everyone is planning to do. Now, sit back and watch it all play out. And judge them. Oh, that woman, she’s the biggest puta I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh, that man, he’s a salvaje; he’d eat his own father down to the skeleton if he thought it would help him get ahead. That’s the reason why the telenovela has become the art form of choice for us. Look, just let us know everything up front, so that for once in our lives we can make a full and fair judgment about something. To hell with mystery. Real life is all too full of them.

  Like the one I had on my hands now, concerning our seemingly courageous, self-sacrificing abuelita. More and more, she was looking like a monster.

  Detective Dan had discovered through a little research that there had been a strange upswing in cyanide poisonings in New York. The victims were almost exclusively boys and young men, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians—no Caucasians—ages fifteen to twenty-five. Almost all the victims had some gang affiliation, so the first thought was some kind of gang rivalry. But how would a gang get ahold of enough cyanide to carry out more than a dozen poisonings? So that’s when the focus switched. Investigators started looking for a chemist, exterminator, someone who worked at a job, probably at a large corporation, where he might have special access to deadly poisons.

  Yes, he. They were looking for a serial killer now, one with a score to settle with young men of color, and serial killers were almost always male. Almost always.

  You with me? Here’s what they had been looking for: a male, middle-aged, science nerd of color—probably African-American or Latino—who was picked on all through school and who now wanted to punish his former, or current, persecutors. The police didn’t once imagine that an old woman, who was probably illegal and probably had next to no education, would know how to extract cyanide from the seed of a mamey. Almost any abuela of a certain age remembers the old ways so well, they can never learn the new ways of this country. I’m sure our abuelita never learned to work the computer cash register at GruuvyJuuce. But making poison out of a mamey seed? What could be simpler?

  So now a new profile was forming: Abuelita was worried about her little Tito. She was willing to do anything for him. But he was reckless, dangerous. Getting involved with gangs. She had to remove the bad influences from his life. Keep him safe, no matter the cost, the risk to herself. So she takes a job at a GruuvyJuuce so she will have a ready supply of free mamey seeds, and she uses her campesino knowledge to kill the men she thinks are corrupting her Tito.

  But why kill Xavier? Sure, she thought he was a hit man, but she had paid him off, had collected that huge amount of money to do so. Why go to all that trouble just to kill Xavier a few hours later?

  Dan’s theory was that she had “buyer’s remorse” and wanted her money back. Constancia thought that her plan all along was to find out where the hit man lived, used the money as an excuse to get through the door, and then poison him when he wasn’t looking. Eugenio thought she was arrebatada and that you can’t figure out crazy people’s motivations. That’s what “crazy” means, right?

  All three of them were wrong. The money was found in the hotel room; if that’s why she did it, why didn’t she take it back before the police confiscated it? And unless she was an idiot, she wouldn’t have poisoned him using a cup that came from the place where she worked—and one look into her horse-eyes told you that woman was no idiot. And as for Eugenio: sorry, viejo, but even crazy people have motivations. They may be crazy motivations—they may think they are being chased by wolves or are covered in ants or were José Martí in a past life—but they’re still motivations. We just hadn’t figured out what motivated our Mamey Murderess to poison poor Xavier.

  But we didn’t need to figure it out. We just needed h
er to tell us. There were several ways you could do that. You could haul her ass into the station, stick her in a room with Bad Cop and Worse Cop and let them throttle it out of her. Or …

  “Or,” suggested Detective Dan, in a low, conspiratorial voice. We were going over the evidence in the police station, and he didn’t want anyone else overhearing us. “Or, we can go to her apartment, set up a few cameras, get some nice incriminating footage, then bust her. That way, we get our killer, and you get your ending. Everybody wins.”

  “What’s in it for you?” asked Constancia. That girl has all the finesse of a blind rhino, but I was wondering that too.

  “I’ve been a detective a long time,” said Dan. “I’m actually overdue for retirement. Maybe it’s time I tried a new career.”

  Uh-oh. I knew this day would come: the day Dan Burdock would ask me for a job. How do you tell someone whose help you desperately need that he’s too ugly—way, way, way, way too ugly—for television? Well, if you’re Constancia, you blurt it out, consequences be damned, and then you don’t get what you want. If you’re Eugenio, you’re embarrassed, you don’t say anything, and you fill your network with ugly people and you go bankrupt, and all those ugly people have to go out and find new jobs anyway.

  Me? I am a producer. Managing talent is what I do best. I hugged him. “Oh, Dan, I can’t believe how lucky I am! We’ve been wanting to hire a police consultant forever for ¿A Quién Quieres Matar?, but we just haven’t found the right fit. But who could be better than you? Oh, I’m so happy!”

  I kept on hugging him; it was the best way to monitor his reaction. I could feel his whole body processing what I had said. “Consultant?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Oh, you’ll love it!” I said, hugging him even harder. “Easy work, great pay, and you’re there on the set of the hottest show in Central and South America.”

  “And the Caribbean,” Constancia added.

  “Consultant,” Dan repeated. But this time it wasn’t a question; it was an answer. “Well, I guess that does sound pretty good.”

  He hugged me back to seal the deal. Constancia came around so I could see her and soundlessly mouthed, “You are my hero.”

  Making sure my chin didn’t touch Dan’s shoulder, I mouthed back, “Watch and learn, baby.”

  There are two kinds of justice: fairness and revenge. Fairness is infinitely better, but most of the time, it’s impossible. For instance, absolutely nothing about Xavier’s murder was fair. So what could we do? The only thing left was to get revenge.

  But you have to be strong. You have to have the stomach for it. Take Alonzo, for instance. He was so shook up, he might not do anything, or worse, he might even harm himself, stupidly feeling guilty for something that wasn’t his fault, while the person who’s actually guilty suffers no consequences. Me? No way was I going to let that hija de la gran puta get away with killing Xavier. I was going to get justice. Let the state stick her in jail for the rest of her life. Better yet, strap her to a chair and fill her veins with poison. That’d be nice. I’d be in the front row to watch her die.

  Yes, I believe in the death penalty, and no, I don’t give tres pepinos if those comemierda criminals suffer like hell on the way out. Look, I couldn’t work in this business if I didn’t love liberals, but on the death penalty you people are dead wrong. You and I can fight about it after I finish my story.

  I set Alonzo to tail the Mamey Murderess (code name: MM). He sat in that GruuvyJuuce all day, sucking on tropical shakes infused with Hoodia gordonii and ginseng and all sorts of expensive, worthless crap. He was suffering so much about Xavier, the worst thing I could’ve done was give him time off; instead, I gave him a job that he had to do in public. That would keep him safe, and it would help us nab his murderer.

  So Alonzo was watching the MM while we set up hidden cameras in her apartment. It was a dingy little place in the Bronx almost as big as a Rubik’s Cube, minus all the happy colors. Dan was the only person from the NYPD with us, both because we weren’t exactly going by the book on this one and because the place was so small, we wouldn’t have had any place to put more cops. As it was, I had to give most of my crew the day off. It was me and Constancia and Eugenio and our two skinniest audio/video interns. We paid off the landlord, set up our control room in his apartment (which was two floors down from MM’s), and armed every stairway and every room of her apartment with all-seeing cameras no bigger than the eye of a rat. Dan dragged himself under her futon frame. It was even money whether he would be able to pack his beer-gut under there, but somehow he managed. Everything was in place. We were ready. All we could do now was wait.

  So we waited. And waited. Apparently abuela was working a double shift. Great.

  We were half drunk with boredom—Dan had fallen asleep under the futon—when the front door opened. There in the control room, with the landlord peering over our shoulders, we scrambled to our battle stations, scanning the monitors.

  Into the apartment walked two teenagers. One I didn’t know, but he wore the GruuvyJuuce work uniform: It was just like abuela’s, save he wore a yellow button that read “Employee of the Month.” The other teen was Tito.

  As they walked through the door, Tito said, “She’s not going to be home until late tonight. You know, you work there. Jesus, stop being such a pussy.”

  “I’m not a pussy,” said the Employee of the Month. “Didn’t I prove I’m not a pussy?”

  Tito turned to him and, with a tenderness I didn’t think he was capable of, hugged him. “Yeah, you proved it,” Tito said into his ear. “You’re a Simpático now. No one’s going to fuck with you ever again.”

  Employee of the Month hugged Tito back. And started to cry. “Tito, I’m scared. I guess I am a pussy. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be. But I’m scared.”

  Tito broke the hug, but held his shoulders and shook him encouragingly. “It’s okay. This was your first time. The first time is always the hardest. You hear me? It gets easier from now on. You know why? Because now you’re a stone-cold killer. You proved you got it in you. You proved you’re worthy of being a Simpático. And nobody messes with the Simpáticos, Miguel.”

  “Miguel?!” the entire control room asked in one voice.

  That name was all Detective Dan needed to hear. While they had their little moment, Dan scurried out of his hiding place and, with a viciousness you’d expect from a man twenty years younger, proceeded to beat the will to live out of them. It was the most savage attack I’ve ever witnessed. All of us in the control room were wincing and oohing like a professional-wrestling audience as Dan landed blow after merciless blow. It made me a little afraid of Dan, knowing he had that kind of sociopathy available to him. I mean, those two were crying and begging for mercy, and they got none. I felt bad for them.

  I mean, I would’ve felt bad for them, if they hadn’t killed Xavier.

  Little Tito, eight years old, has a toothache. Bad. Mom and Dad can’t afford a dentist, so abuela whips up a home remedy, a poultice made mostly of mamey seeds. It’s worked for generations. He’ll be better in no time.

  Instead, Tito gets cyanide poisoning. The emergency room doctors save his life, but always after that he has a little trouble breathing. His life has barely begun, and his abuela had already fucked it up.

  That’s what his abuela thinks, anyway. She blames herself for all the misfortunes that have befallen the family: Her son died, then her daughter-in-law died, and then it was just her and Tito.

  When you’re a chicken-boned asthmatic going to high school in some Bronx neighborhoods, the pursuit of learning can be dangerous. The good news is that, no matter how chicken-boned you are, you can fire a gun. As long as you’re crazy enough to bring one to school, you get the kind of rep that will keep you safe.

  And the kind of rep that will draw people to you. Tito finds himself surrounded by friends even more desperate for protection than he is. So long as he’d shove his piece in the face of anyone who messed with them, they would do anything he t
old them to. Almost accidentally, Tito starts a gang.

  Tito calls it “Los Simpáticos.” Like Goodfellas, Tito’s favorite movie. The gang grows fast. He names some lieutenants, whips up a completely clichéd and plagiarized loyalty oath. As for initiations, well, there are plenty of putos he wants dead. But when the Simpáticos kill some puto, he wants all the other gangs to know who did it. And he’s been fascinated by cyanide since he was eight years old. He knows an old family recipe that will give him all he needs.

  One day, some Simpáticos and initiates are sitting around Tito’s abuela’s place—she lets him do whatever he wants, so guilt-ridden is she—watching ¿A Quién Quieres Matar? Everyone loves the show, except Tito.

  “Xavier Enamorado is bullshit,” he says. “He’s a poser. We’re the real deal. We kill people. That puto is bullshit.”

  Miguel makes the mistake of saying, “He’s got money and women, and he’s on TV. That ain’t bad.”

  By the time the show’s over, the only way Miguel’s ever going to be a Simpático is if he kills Xavier. And if he doesn’t join now, he’s dead.

  But Tito likes the idea of killing Xavier so much, he’s going to help Miguel. “I’ll pretend like I want to hire him to kill you. I’ll get him to come see you at work. You get him to buy some GruuvyJuuce. And that’s when you poison him.”

  It takes over a year to arrange everything. The hardest part was getting our attention, making us think Tito wanted to kill Miguel. Tito trolls the same chat rooms we troll when we’re looking for marks. He starts posting comments, making it clear he wants to hire a hit man. We saw his posts and thought we had an easy mark. We were so used to being right, we hardly even checked out his story. We were so proud and stupid a punk like him fooled us.