Jack in the Green

  Maria remembers opening the cigarette box in the wash near the barrio, the night sky tall with stars above her, Jack and the rest of his gang leaning in close to see what's inside. Now she's on her own, standing on an unfamiliar beach. It's still night, but everything looks and smells wrong. Or at least different. A boardwalk runs along the edge of the beach and she spies a lone figure sitting on a bench, looking out over the ocean. The sound of the tide is like the universe breathing, slow and steady.

  Maria walks toward the bench.

  "Luz?" she says as she draws near.

  Luz turns. Her face lights up with happy recognition.

  "Oh, hey, Maria," she says. "What are you doing here?"

  The question catches Maria off-guard.

  "I'm not sure," she says. "I don't even know where here is."

  Luz's only response is to pat the wooden slats of the bench beside where she is sitting.

  "Do you ever get that sense that everything happens for a reason?" she says.

  Maria slowly closes the distance between them and lowers herself onto the bench beside her friend. She's not interested in a philosophical discussion right now.

  "Where are we?" she asks. "The last thing I remember is opening that little tin cigarette box we left in the bottle tree man's yard back when we were kids."

  "So that's why you're in my dream," Luz says.

  Maria shakes her head. "I'm pretty sure I'm me—not some version of me that you're dreaming."

  "Of course you're you. I just meant you've come to visit me in my dream. I'm still asleep back in my cell at county."

  "I'm not asleep," Maria says. "I'm…"

  She was about to say that she's in the wash by the bottle tree man's yard, but the truth is, she doesn't know where she is or how she got here. The last thing she remembers is opening that cigarette tin.

  "This is more of your magic," she says.

  Luz shakes her head. "Our magic. We made this spell together."

  Maria wants to say that she doesn't know anything about magic, except she's here, isn't she? She opened the cigarette tin and—just like that—she was transported from the wash to…to wherever she is now. So instead of arguing, she decides to focus on the reason she wanted to see Luz. Everything else can wait until things are back to normal. If they ever get back to normal.

  "The—" She stumbles over the next word, but goes on. "—spell was supposed to bring you to me. Not the other way around. It was supposed to rescue you."

  "I'm pretty sure it wasn't," Luz says. "It was just supposed to bring us together and that's what it did. And maybe you should appreciate being in my dream instead of my cell in county. That place is pretty sketchy."

  "I wouldn't know."

  Luz laughs. "Of course you wouldn't. But I don't need to be rescued. I'm small potatoes. I have no record and they probably can't prove anything. Just get the guys to do a bigger score and set some aside for my bail. Then you come and bail me out. I know how to disappear after that."

  Maria doesn't like where this is going. "Another robbery. You want to make this worse?"

  Luz nods. "Oh, you don't have to be involved beyond posting bail. Just tell Jack and his merry band of men that they have to do at least one more score, and make it big."

  "I can't believe this. How can you even think about doing more?" Maria asks.

  "Well," Luz says, "there's a widow with MS on 42nd Street who's about to lose her home if we don't get some back payments to her.

  "And then there's a long distance driver who's going to lose his rig because his wife got sick and he borrowed against it to pay for her hospital care. Did you know that the cab alone for those things can cost up to a-hundred-and-forty K?"

  "But—"

  Luz doesn't let her interrupt. "The trouble is," she goes on, "long-distance hauling is down—like everything else in this economy—and there's no way he can catch up unless we help him."

  "How did this become your responsibility?" Maria asks.

  "It should be everybody's," Luz tells her, "but too many people just think about themselves these days. So I'm redistributing the wealth."

  "You should have been robbing the banks instead of bankers."

  Luz nods. "Sure, except the point is to take their own money and redistribute it. Make it personal. Hit them where it hurts. Maybe then they'll understand that there are actual people just like them being affected by what they do. Nothing else seems to work."

  "I don't know…"

  "So nobody you know's been hurt by the banks and the big corporations and a government that doesn't give a crap?"

  Maria thinks of all the unemployed people in her neighbourhood. All the people who've lost homes along with their jobs. And that's on top of third- and fourth-generation Hispanic citizens being treated like illegals by the cops, having to show papers every time they turn around, while no one else gets asked.

  Luz and Jack are right. Somehow they've got to send a message that real people are being hurt. This all reminds her of something else—how she never used to give money to homeless people, but Veronica always has. When she finally asked her roommate why, Veronica said, "Because there, but for the grace of Our Lady, go you or I."

  After that, Maria started giving, too. And she began talking to those people and seeing them as individuals, rather than as some nameless bunch of panhandlers. So many told her they never imagined that they'd be driven to ask for charity. And lately, things have only been getting worse.

  "I'm in," says Maria. "What can I do to help?"

  "Just give Jack my message," Luz says. "That's all."

  "I can do that."

  "Thanks," Luz says. "The sooner they get started, the sooner I can be out of here." She lifts a finger and moves it toward Maria's brow, adding, "So you'd better get to it."

  When the pad of Luz's finger touches Maria's skin, everything goes away. Now she's back in the wash, lying in the dirt with Jack looking down at her with a worried expression.

  "Hey," he says. "You okay?"

  Maria feels disoriented.

  "I don't know," she says.

  He eases her slowly into a sitting position. For a moment she thinks she can hear the ocean, but the sensation fades. She looks from Jack to the others, trying to find some sense in what she'd just experienced.

  "What happened?" she asks.

  "You fainted," Will tells her.

  "It didn't feel like that," Maria says. "It felt like I went away. I was here and then I was with Luz. She said I'd gone into a dream she was having."

  Her companions exchange glances.

  "I know, I know," she says. "It sounds loco. But it felt real."

  "It was magic," one of the Glimmer Twins whispers.

  "It was something like that," Maria agrees.

  She goes on to tell them what happened when she met Luz. What she thinks happened. She's not sure anymore. But her companions take it in stride.

  "It makes sense," Ti Jean says.

  The rest of them nod.

  "But the hit has to be somewhere we haven't been before," Will says. "They'll be watching Desert View and Silver Canyon."

  "There's that place in Sycamore Creek," one of the Glimmer Twins says. "The one we were checking out last week."

  "I've got a better idea," Jack says. "Let's hit the sheriff's house."

  No one says anything for a long moment, then they all break into laughter and start slapping Jack on the back.

  "When do we go?" Maria asks.

  Jack shakes his head and squeezes her shoulder. "This is what we do. Right now you should just walk away while you can."

  "Is that really what you want me to do? Walk away…like we never met?"

  "It's dangerous," Jack says.

  Maria smiles. "Maybe I am, too."

  Jack looks into her eyes, studying her hard. Then he puts a hand behind her head and gives her a fierce kiss. When he pulls away, Maria's head is swimming.

  Jack jumps to his feet and gives her a hand up.

 
"Let's go!" he cries.

  He leads the way back down the wash at a brisk jog. The rest of them follow, Maria right at his side.

  It's not hard to find where the sheriff lives. Ted Crase isn't shy about publicity—doesn't matter if it's good or bad, so long as they spell his name right. There have always been whispers of corruption surrounding his election and rumours of payoffs from the bandas, but nothing that has ever been proven.

  His house is deep in El Rio Valley, a gated community in the north part of the city. Its twelve-foot concrete wall, complete with ostentatious castle ramparts, looks ridiculous here in the desert. It also gives the appearance of being impenetrable, but getting over it is easier than Maria expected. One of the Glimmer Twins puts his foot in the stirrup Ti Jean makes with his hands, then Ti Jean shoots him above his head in one swift motion. The small figure seems to fly to the top of the wall. He fusses up there for a moment as he loops a rope around a rampart and tosses it down.

  One by one they go up, the boys scrambling like monkeys. Maria is slower, but she's done this before. The difference between now and climbing ropes in the gym back in school is that tonight it's fun. She drops the last few feet and lands lightly on the grass.

  Anglos, she's noticed, can be divided into two types: the ones that embrace Southwestern culture and the desert, at times almost to the point of being obnoxious about it, and those that try to reshape the desert into the same landscape as wherever they came from. A lawn like this on a golf course? She may not agree with it, but she gets that. But here in your backyard?

  This time there are no skateboards clattering on the pavement. Instead they move through the backyards like ghosts. Beyond the community's stone walls, the yards are fenced in, but everybody must get along since the gates between them are only closed with latches. But there's still security.

  Jack leads the way. He seems to have a sixth sense about motion sensors and which places have a dog. It's late and quiet, and the houses are mostly dark. Everything stays that way until they're in Sheriff Crase's backyard.

  Maria listens to the boys as they study the house.

  "Surveillance cameras on either corner."

  "I see them. Probably in front, too."

  "Alarms on all the windows. The doors will be wired."

  "Motion detectors on the ground floor."

  "Nobody home." That's from Will. He cocks his head, then adds, "Except…maybe a cat?"

  Jack nods. "Definitely a cat."

  "How can you know all that?" Maria asks. "We're just sitting here in the backyard. You haven't even walked up to the house yet."

  Jack smiles. "You have your magic, we have ours."

  "It's what we do," one of the Glimmer Twins explains.

  "And we've been doing it for a long long time," the other twin adds. He gives Maria a grin. "Now watch this."

  The twins leap up onto the fence surrounding the yard and walk along its narrow edge toward the house as though they're simply ambling through one of the wide dusty roads in the barrio. They take turns springing lightly from the fence top onto the roof, then one of them holds the other's legs as he dangles off the edge, fiddling with some box.

  "Show-offs," Ti Jean mutters, but he's smiling.

  Maria can't see what the twins do with the box, but after a few moments an owl hoots. Maria is startled by how close the bird sounds, then realizes the owl call was made by one of the twins. At the signal, Jack and Will emerge from the shadows on either side of her and start across the lawn toward the patio and its waiting glass doors. Maria hurries along behind until she catches up.

  "How does a sheriff even afford a place like this?" Will says as they step onto a back patio as big as Maria's whole apartment.

  "Cattle money," she tells him. "His family used to have this huge ranch north of the city."

  Jack is at the glass doors. He inserts a couple of thin strips of metal into the lock. He works them for a moment, then the lock clicks open. The Glimmer Twins swing down from the roof and land softly on the patio. A moment later and they're all inside. The room is cavernous—easily as large as the patio—with the shapes of furniture crouching around the centrepiece of a large stone fireplace.

  "Is there a safe?" Jack asks.

  Ti Jean lifts his head, nostrils working.

  "Front of the house," he says. "On the left."

  Maria doesn't even bother to question how they do it anymore.

  Jack pulls a couple of spray paint cans from the pockets of his jacket and tosses them to the twins.

  "Have fun," he says as he follows Ti Jean and Will to the front of the house.

  Maria waits where she is. She watches the twins spray messages on the white adobe walls of the living room and feels sorry for the maid who's going to have to clean this up.

  One of the twins writes: "Give back to the poor."

  The other writes: "Los Murrietas help you to share!"

  When they start to tag the other walls, Maria goes to the front of the house where the other boys are. She walks carefully in the dark, though the streetlights out front help illuminate the house, so her eyes adjust quickly.

  Maria enters a room where the boys have pulled a painting from the wall, revealing a safe. Jack leans close to it, smiling as he turns the tumblers. There's a final click and Jack steps back with a flourish of his arm. Will laughs and pulls open the door of the safe. They all step closer to look inside.

  "Holy crap," Ti Jean says.

  He reaches in and takes out a bundle of money, flipping through a stack of one-thousand-dollar bills. Maria's never seen that much money in her entire life. She's never even seen that denomination before.

  "There's got to be a half a mil," Will says, then he turns at Maria. "Cattle money?" he teases.

  Maria shakes her head. There's only one way anybody around here gets that much cash.

  "It has to be drug money," she says as Ti Jean and Will stuff the bundles into their backpacks. "The sheriff must be involved with the cartels."

  Jack grins. "This just gets better and better."

  "No, it doesn't," she says. "Put it back. Nobody screws around with the cartels. Don't you read the news?"

  But Jack only continues to smile.

  "Perhaps the good sheriff should have thought of that before he got into business with them," he says.

  "Seriously," Maria says. "The cartels are too dangerous for us to mess around with."

  "Don't worry," Jack tells her. "No one will be hurt—except, perhaps, for the sheriff, and he made this bed for himself."

  He doesn't understand, Maria realizes. None of them do. They don't know how deadly the drug cartels are.

  "Let's just leave," she tries again. "We should put the money back and leave right now."

  "This money can help a lot of people," Jack says.

  "I know. It's just…"

  She doesn't want to lose him. She doesn't want him to be another casualty in the cartels' savage drug wars. That's what she wants to tell him. But she doesn't know how to say it without sounding clingy. She and Jack have only just met. They've only ever kissed so far.

  The Glimmer Twins drift into the study while they're talking. One of them sprays "Liberated by Los Murrietas—all the sheriff's drug $$" on the wall beside the safe. The fresh paint looks like blood glistening on the white adobe surface. The other twin takes a picture of it with his phone. The flash is a momentary flare of light in the darkness.

  Jack puts his finger under Maria's chin and looks into her eyes.

  "Just what?" he asks, his voice soft.

  Before she can answer he stiffens, head cocked as he listens for something Maria can't hear. But then she hears it, too. Tires on the pavement. On the street outside. Turning into the driveway.

  "Everybody out, now," Jack says.

  Maria is so scared she can barely join the scramble to get to the back door, but Jack keeps a steadying hand on her upper arm as he steers her toward the back patio.

  "Stay together or split up?" Will asks as
they run to the gate in the back fence.

  "Together," Jack says.

  He hands Maria off to Ti Jean and stops at the sheriff's koi pond. It's surrounded by a band of smooth loose pebbles the diameter of silver dollars. He grabs two handfuls and dumps them in his pockets, then hurries to catch up with the others.

  "Don't worry," he tells Maria. "We'll be gone before the first cop car arrives at the front gates."

  One of the Glimmer Twins is thumbing his phone as they make their way through the next yard.

  "Posting your pictures?" Jack asks.

  The twin nods and grins.

  They keep going through the next yard, slipping from one into the next, darting across silent streets until they reach the outer wall of the community. Their rope is still hanging where they left it. One by one they shimmy up and over the wall. Maria listens for sirens, but the night is still quiet. She grabs the rope, but she's trembling so hard that she can't hold on to it.

  Jack gives her a quick hug. "Trust me," he says before he climbs the rope to the top of the wall.

  Ti Jean offers his hands to Maria as a stirrup, like he did with the Glimmer Twin on the way in. She steps into his laced fingers and up she goes like she's popping out of a jack-in-the-box. Jack catches her and swings her easily onto the ledge.

  Ti Jean joins them, then quickly goes down the other side of the wall.

  "Hang on until I let you go," Jack tells Maria as he takes hold of her wrists and eases her into a kneeling position, facing the community. Using the rampart to brace himself, he lowers her down the other side of wall, holding on until Ti Jean's strong hands on her hips lower her the rest of the way.

  "I feel like such a wuss," she says as Jack makes his own nimble way down the rope.

  "Don't," he tells her. "It's your first time. We've been doing this for ages."

  She hugs herself. "I still can't figure out why there aren't any sirens."

  "Maybe he didn't call his own officers," Will says. "Maybe he called his drug-running buddies instead."

  Maria shivers. and Jack puts his arm around her shoulders.

  "Let's get out of here," he says.

  Once they get well away from El Rio Valley and there still aren't any sirens, Maria begins to relax.