Every Man a Menace (29 page)
“I have a job for you,” said Gloria.
“What is it?”
“Someone told me that Shadrack Pullman didn’t even pay with his own money. You know that? The five million, it came from a new partner of his. Some rich techie, an idiot,
a white devil. He wants to pretend he’s some kind of drug lord. So, we show him. We say,
Welcome to San Francisco
.”
Jackie had a good guess who Gloria was talking about: Brendan Moss, the host of the party that Raymond and Shadrack had attended. She’d already started a file on him.
“The same little bird told me that Shadrack took a bag of jewels to this man,” Gloria went on. “A big bag, left it as a deposit on the money.” She counted on her fingers: “Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies.” She dropped her hand. “All of it.”
Jackie smiled.
“That’s your thing, right?” asked Gloria. “Getting into men’s apartments?”
That same morning, Gloria Ocampo’s older driver, the man with the pockmarked face—Salvador Luis Macaraeg—arrived at the Wolf Point Yacht Club, in San Mateo. He parked the minivan on the south side of the lot and rummaged around in the glove compartment until he found some sunscreen. He dabbed a little on his nose, forehead, and the bald spot on the crown of his head. Then he got out of the van, looked around, and walked to the clubhouse to borrow a dock cart.
When he returned to the van, his nephew—the younger driver, Mario Ocampo—opened the back door, and together the two men lifted a 250-pound manhole cover from the back. The manhole cover was wrapped in a large black trash bag. Next, they opened the side door and pulled out a large green canvas Christmas tree bag. It was heavy, and they struggled to balance it in the cart at an angle. Inside the bag,
wrapped in a blue tarp, which itself was wrapped in packing tape, was Raymond Gaspar’s body. The manhole cover was going to sink it, and keep it sunk.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was perfect weather. Salvador Macaraeg was a firm believer in doing his dirty work in the light of day.
Nobody sees you,
he liked to say.
You can do anything in the daytime.
Together, the two men wheeled the cart through the front gate of the club and onto the dock. They wheeled it all the way to slip C-17, where the
New Moon,
a 26-foot Farallon Walkabout, was docked. Its diesel engine was already running. The captain of the boat, Chi Xingyou, a sixty-one-year-old fisherman, sat shaking his head disdainfully as the two men approached. He didn’t like doing these jobs, but they paid him a thousand dollars each time, and, besides that, he didn’t know how he was supposed to refuse a request from Gloria Ocampo.
He greeted the men with a nod as they carried the heavy bag onto the boat. A sunburnt white man accompanied by a blond woman walked by and waved; Chi Xingyou waved back, pasting a fake smile on his face and nodding his head uncomfortably. The two Filipino men returned to the cart and lifted the manhole cover out, straining and bent, breathing with their cheeks puffed out. They carried the thing onto the boat and set it near the bag. Then they opened the bag up and struggled to get the manhole cover inside, so that it rested on top of Raymond Gaspar’s wrapped body. Salvador Macaraeg zipped the bag closed. It resembled a snake that had swallowed something too big for its belly.
Both men dragged the bag to the back of the boat’s work deck. Salvador borrowed a pocketknife from the captain
and began poking holes in the bag; when the time came, it would fill with water.
Mario told him to call him when he got back. He didn’t like going on the boat; it made him seasick. He waved once, then took the cart and wheeled it back to the clubhouse. Chi Xingyou and Salvador began pulling in the lines and anchor chains. When everything was clear, Chi Xingyou went to the bridge, and they began motoring out. Salvador sat on the work deck and watched the view recede behind them. The bay was too shallow for this job, so they motored past the airport and under the Bay Bridge, passing Alcatraz on their right and crossing the Presidio Shoal. After piloting under the Golden Gate Bridge, they headed due west, out into the Pacific Ocean.
After forty-five minutes in open waters, Chi Xingyou killed the engine. The boat drifted and rocked on the little waves. The water, here, was a perfect shade of navy blue. The captain joined Salvador on the deck, and both men looked around. Except for a large tanker some distance west, there were no other ships in sight. Salvador took off his sunglasses and placed them in a cup holder. He moved toward the Christmas tree bag, and the captain joined him. They didn’t speak as they bent and strained and lifted the heavy thing up, rolling it over the back of the boat and into the water. Afterward, the captain went back to the bridge and closed himself in. In the water, the bag—straining between the downward pull of its contents and the upward push of trapped air—looked like it might float. Salvador watched as it slowly began to fill with water, until finally, without spectacle, it sank under the surface of the sea.
During the writing of this book I was helped in innumerable ways: people fed me, housed me, gave me socks, gave me shoes, took me into the jungle, read my book, answered my questions, told me when I’d gotten off track, encouraged me, gave me ideas, edited the book, designed the cover, and inspired me again and again. I sincerely want to thank my agent Charlotte Sheedy. Thank you to Morgan Entrekin, Allison Malecha, Deb Seager, Charles Rue Woods, Judy Hottensen, Julia Berner-Tobin, Paula Cooper Hughes, and everyone at Grove Atlantic. Thank you to Jordan Bass, Walter Green, Eli Horowitz, Eric Rosenblum, Jason Schwartz, Jason Blaylock, David Hoffman, Jane Rogers, Chesa Boudin, Kent Lam, Amelia Hassani, Jason Richman, Andrew Koltuniak, Barbara Poldino, Uncle Jimmy, Brigid Hoffman, Ali Nelson, Becca Nelson, Nigel Philips, Tim O’Brien, Nate Thayer, Phearith Tit, Mey Sopheakdei, Kris Kelder, Nick Berry, Andrew Tsui, Stacey Crevello, Sarah Lannan, Simon Evans, Bear Korngold, Willow Schraeger, Shem Korngold, Violeta Garcia, Billy McEwan, Megan Winters, Avi Lessing, Dante Ortiz, Ashley Ortiz, Kent Simpson, Ben Roberts, Basho Mosko, Brendan
Morse, Nathan Burazer, Gina Macaraeg, Ed Loftus, Stevie Infante, the BMFB’s, Jet Martinez, Kelly Ording, Maggie Otero, Jonathan Holland, Heather Hickman, Dan Johnson Lake, Carlos Garcia, Alexis Georgopoulos, Brendan Francis Newman, Ezra Feinberg, Caroline Paul, Wendy McNaughton, The Center for Fiction, Tomo Yasuda, Pat Harmanci, Cem Harmanci, Kerim Harmanci. Mostly, thank you to Reyhan Harmanci, who helped and inspired me in every way, without her I couldn’t have done it.
RIP to Lucas Goettsche.
