South by South Bronx by Jr., Abraham Rodriguez Page A

times.”
    â€œSounds like involvement to me.”
    â€œHey, don’t you have any brothers or sisters? He sometimes takes care of his wayward little brother. But not crime. He won’t break the law.”
    â€œHow about the fact that Spook shows up at his apartment? He was there three times last week. Why is it that, if we watch David, we get Spook?”
    Some cold wind blowing from him. Somehow, some way my blood was turning to ice. I was burning and freezing at the same time.
    â€œSo you’ve been watching him,” I said.
    That’s the thing about feds, Jack told me. They might know things but they won’t tell you. Maybe not right off, maybe only when they want to use the information to make you do something. You don’t have the information. In many cases you don’t even see it. I expected Myers would get as cryptic as the Book of Revelations, but that wasn’t what was coming.
    â€œThat’s right,” he said. “I don’t have a big team, you know that. Three weeks ago I managed to place somebody with David Rosario.”
    â€œAn operative?”
    I was sucking on that cigarette too fast, or something else was making the surroundings shrink, all pressing in toward me.
    â€œLet’s just say a good friend .”
    â€œSo if you have the information David has it, why are you chasing Spook?”
    â€œI don’t have the information that it’s at David’s. But I know it’s the two of them. It’s between them somehow and I’m going to find it.”
    His insistence, pressing against my temples, my neck. I started the car.
    â€œYou told me you wanted to trace the money to its source, to follow it on its journey through those terrorist arteries. To know who’s who—who fills the trough and who feeds at it. You told me that just talking to Spook could give you valuable information. Now all you’re talking about is the money. So what do you want? Is it the money, or is it Spook?”
    He rubbed his eyes. “One leads to the other, that’s right.”
    â€œSo you want Spook to hand over the money?”
    â€œThe money’s course has been interrupted.” It was a night voice, a horror-movie narration. “The flow has to be reestablished. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble to set this up. A lot rides on this. There has to be a way to salvage this, to set the money back on its course.” Black mask, red parted lips, and some tongue-flicking like in that Marilyn Manson video.
    â€œSounds like you just want to give it back,” I muttered, more to my cigarette. “Is that right? Do you think you’re going to get Spook to give it back?”
    â€œThe important thing is that we find him, and find him first … before the others do.”
    Who says Myers had to be wrong about David and Spook? The two of them could be in perfect touch, symbiotic, instinctive. And what about those “others” who are after him? Good guys bad guys? Arab terrorists running around on American streets? See the first Back to the Future , also the ’80s classic Into the Night, with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum. Could imagine talking to people on South Bronx streets: Seen any Arabs around here lately? So many Arabs look like Puerto Ricans. All they have to do is learn some Spanglish.
    â€œThey don’t have to be Arabs,” Myers said, sick of my jokes. “They could hire anybody to do the job—anybody.”
    The feds working to retrieve money stolen from a group of terrorists? This was not a plot twist I wanted to deal with. My wife rented the Coen brothers. Blood Simple : how one simple mistake leads to another simple mistake, and after that, does it matter how it began? I was on my fifth cigarette that day. Some days it’s only two or three. Some days you hit five without thinking.
    The 5 train is another South Bronx rhythm, cutting across the middle of the borough. Goes