The Strain

distance, thinking trap. They could have a camera in any one of these other cars, watching him. Like on Cops, he’d seen that one: PD’d hooked up little cameras inside trucks and pulled them over on a city street, Cleveland or somewhere, and watched as kids and other yo-yos jumped in and took off on a joyride or a trip down to the local chop shop. Being caught was bad, but being tricked like that, getting hosed on prime-time TV, was much worse. Gus would rather be shot dead in his underwear than be branded a fool.

But he had taken the $50 the dude offered him to do this. Easy money, which Gus still had on him, tucked inside the band of his pinch-front hat, holding on to it for evidence in case things went south.

Dude was in the market when Gus went in for a Sprite. Behind him in line when he paid. Outside, a half block away, Gus heard someone coming up on him and turned fast. It was the dude—hands out, showing them empty. Wanting to know if Gus wanted to make some quick money.

White guy, neat suit, way out of place. He didn’t look cop but he didn’t look queer neither. Looked like some sort of missionary.

“A van in the airport parking garage. You pick it up, drive it into Manhattan, park it, and walk away.”

“A van,” said Gus.

“A van.”

“What’s in it?”

Dude just shook his head. Handed over an index card folded over five new tens. “Just a taste.”

Gus pulled out the bills, like lifting the meat out of a sandwich. “If you PD, this entrapment.”

“The pickup time is written on there. Don’t be early, and don’t be late.”

Gus thumbed the folded tens in his hand like sampling a fine fabric. Dude saw this. Dude also saw, Gus realized, the three small circles tattooed onto the webbing of Gus’s hand. Mex gang symbol for thief, but how would this dude know that? Was that why he made him back in the store? Why the dude had picked him?

“Keys and further instructions will be in the glove compartment.”

The dude started walking away.

“Yo,” said Gus after him. “I didn’t say yes yet.”

Gus pulled open the door—waited; no alarm—and climbed inside. Didn’t see no cameras—but he wouldn’t anyway, would he? Behind the front seats was a metal partition without a window. Bolted in there, aftermarket. Maybe truck full of PD he’s driving around.

Van felt still, though. He opened the glove compartment, again using the rag. Gently, as if a gag snake might jump out at him, and the little light came on. Laid out inside was the ignition key, the parking garage ticket he needed to get out, and a manila envelope.

He looked inside the envelope and the first thing he saw was his pay. Five new $100 bills, which pleased and pissed him off at the same time. Pleased him because it was more than he had expected, and pissed him off because no one would break a century from him without a hassle, especially nowhere in the hood. Even a bank would scan the hell out of those bills, coming out of the pocket of an eighteen-year-old tatted-up Mexican.

Folded around the bills was another index card listing the destination address and a garage access code, GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY.

He compared the cards side by side. Same handwriting.

Anxiety faded as excitement rose. Sucker! Trusting him with this vehicle. Gus knew, right off the top of his head, three different spots in the South Bronx to take this baby for reconditioning. And to quickly satisfy his curiosity as to what sort of contraband goodness he was carrying in back.

The last item in the larger envelope was a smaller, letter-size envelope. He withdrew a few sheets of paper, unfolded them, and a warm flame rose out of the center of his back and into his shoulders and neck.

AUGUSTIN ELIZALDE, headed the first one. It was Gus’s rap sheet, his juvenile jacket leading up to the manslaughter conviction and his being kicked free with a clean slate on his eighteenth birthday, just three short weeks ago.

The second page showed a copy of his driver’s license and, below that, his mother’s driver’s license with the same East 115th Street address. Then a small picture of the front door of their building at the Taft Houses.

He stared at that paper for two straight minutes. His mind raced back and forth between that missionary- looking dude and how much he knew, and his madre here, and what kind of bad shit Gus had gotten himself into this time.

Gus didn’t take well to threats. Especially involving his madre: he had already put her through enough.

The third page was printed in the same handwriting as the index cards. It read: NO STOPS.

Gus sat at the window of the Insurgentes, eating his fried eggs doused with Tabasco sauce, looking at the white van double-parked out on Queens Boulevard. Gus loved breakfast, and, since getting out, had eaten breakfast at nearly every meal. He ordered specific now, because he could: bacon extra crispy, burn the toast.

Fuck them, NO STOPS. Gus didn’t like this game, not once they included his madre. He watched the van, thinking over his options, waiting for something to happen. Was he being watched? If so, how close? And if they could watch him—why weren’t they just driving the van themselves? What kind of shit had he gotten himself into here?

What was inside that van?

A couple of cabrones came sniffing around the front of the van. They ducked their heads and scattered when Gus emerged from the diner, his top-buttoned flannel shirt flaring out behind him in the late-day breeze, tats sleeving his bare forearms in bright accents of red around jailhouse black. The Latin Sultans’ cred carried out of Spanish Harlem north and east to the Bronx, and as far south into Queens. Their numbers were small, their shadow long. You didn’t mess with one unless you wanted war with all.

He pulled out into the boulevard, continuing west toward Manhattan, one eye out for tails. The van bounced over some roadwork and he listened closely but heard nothing shift in back. Yet something was weighing down the suspension.

He got thirsty and pulled over again outside a corner market, picking up two twenty-four-ounce cans of Tecate. He jammed one of the red-and-gold cans into the cup holder and pulled out again, the city buildings coming up across the river now, the sun falling behind them. Night was coming. He thought about his brother at home, Crispin, that shitbag addict, showing up just as Gus was trying his best to be good to his mother. Sweating out chemicals on the living room sofa, and all Gus wanted to do was slide a rusty blade between his ribs. Bringing his disease into their crib. His older brother was a ghoul, a straight-up zombie, but she wouldn’t put him out. She let him lay around and pretended he wasn’t shooting smack in her bathroom, biding time until he would vanish again, along with some of her things.

Gus needed to put some of this dinero sucio aside for his madre. Give it to her after Crispin was gone. Stick some more in his hat and leave it there for her. Make her happy. Do something right.

Gus pulled out his phone before the tunnel. “Felix, man. Come get me.”

“Where you at, bro?”

“I’ll be down Battery Park.”

“Battery Park? All the way down there, Gusto?”

“So roll over to Ninth and drop straight down, bitch. We’re going out. Have ourselves a party, man. That money I owe you—I made me some flash today. Bring me out a jacket or something to wear, clean shoes. Get me into a club.”

“Fuckin’—anything else?”