Cool in Tucson by Elizabeth Gunn Page A

extra dish of flan and hogged the ball. 
    By the end of the year, standing beside his grandfather at his father’s funeral, Rudy had already figured out how to make a fortune in the tire business.
    The first move was the hardest because Raymundo was a cautious man, and even Rudy’s mother, whose resentment of the old man matched his contempt for her, would not listen to her son’s plan to stage an open revolt. 
    “Your father loved him and made me promise to look after him,” she said, “I would go to Hell.”  She crossed herself and added thoughtfully, “But talk to the old bastard again, flatter him if you have to.  It’s a good idea.”
    His grandfather did not dispute his suggestion that an auto repair shop would help the tire store and vice versa.  But it was still too risky, he said, Rudy was too young.  His attitude changed when Rudy said, of the man whose shop he wanted to buy, “Cisneros says if you’re not up to working full time any more maybe he’ll buy you out and make me a partner, would you like that?”  That was a lie; Cisneros had a bad heart and was only hanging on till he could sell, but Raymundo didn’t find that out until later.  When he did, he began to watch his grandson more carefully, pleased that his acquisitiveness had been passed along but wary of the extra edge of ruthlessness Rudy had shown him.  He told his wife, “Who would ever have expected Alberto to nurture a viper?” 
    Raymundo had great credit at the bank, so Rudy made the deal easily for less than the asking price.  He might have haggled it lower but the purchase price, he knew, was almost irrelevant, because as soon as he was out from under his grandfather’s eye in a separate store he began to set up the part of the deal he never told his mother about.
    He started with small orders of marijuana that he could receive and dispense himself to a growing circle of friends.  At first he sold only to people he knew well, but as soon as he saw the potential he began accepting referrals.  He ran all the cash through the till, ringing it up as brake linings, motor tune-ups, lube jobs.  That made it all taxable but he compensated with some very creative paid-outs, so that most of the extra cash ended up being just that, extra.  By the time his grandfather was ready to retire, Rudy had paid off the second shop and was able to arrange a nice pension for the old man. 
    “ Mire ,” Raymundo said when they concluded the deal, “for the record I am not such a fool as you think, I know you have not made all this money fixing old cars.  You had better watch your back from now on, Señor Smart Pants, I will not be here to turn away questions.”  They regarded each other coldly for a moment before Rudy nodded.  Raymundo walked out of the store where he had spent his whole working life and never came near it again.
    With access to both cash registers Rudy could handle more dope, so he hired a pusher named Brody, an outcast and bully from just outside the barrio who also helped fend off would-be competitors.  Later the same year he hired Emilio Sanchez, an unassuming distant cousin who was happy to sell tires in the afternoon and dope in the evening.  Emilio enjoyed both trades because they fed his real vocation, which was gossip.  Gradually he sold less and less as he became, in effect, the company spy.  Rudy loved getting these little extras from the two of them, but he tired of the constant arguments their odd working arrangements generated, so from then on he set up his drug traffickers as franchisees, who bought from him and sold on their own.   
    By the time his fourth child was born, Rudy was looking around for another business.  And it had to be something bigger, because he was getting into the cocaine trade.  He had hesitated a long time because it felt like roller-skating at the edge of a cliff; cocaine suppliers were stony-eyed killers who would cut off your head if they got angry.  Some of them