Devilcountry by Craig Spivek Read Free Book Online

ten years
ago almost to the day.  He rode on top of a train as a stowaway for nearly
thirty-eight hours all the way from Southern Mexico, to El Paso, where he had a
cousin who could put him up.  To this day he still experiences back pain
in his lower lumbar, which acts as a reminder of the hardship he endured to
pursue a better life.    It also makes him squirm in his seat
whenever he drives.  He couldn’t imagine how those drivers managed to do
it.  When he first got to Los Angeles he had been a line cook at Mariano’s.
 He’d see the Russians walk in and out with pizzas, jumping into shitty
cars and pulling away.  None of them had a green card, just like him.
 What if you got pulled over? Shit, that was nuts. Better to hide behind
the ovens.  Run out the back fast if INS does a raid.  Those Russians
had balls, thought Geraldo.  He had heard about one of the driver’s outing
the owner as being gay.  He and the cooks had a laugh over that one.
 
    Between back pain and having a natural instinct
to run from the cops, Geraldo liked being  on his
feet, to be in motion.  Even after he got resident alien status, thanks to
Carin who sponsored him.  Still, he hated driving.  But he was doing
it now, for Carin, his queen.
    Carin had to sign some paperwork that would
settle some financial crap between she and her now ex-husband Dickie.
 Dickie had refused to courier it himself out of sheer asshole-ness, so it
fell to Geraldo.  But that wasn’t the only reason he volunteered for the
errand.  Geraldo knew he had to do what he had to do now, while Carin was
more sober as opposed to more drunk, otherwise it would never happen.
    Geraldo had become the manager after Dickie
opened up his Anaheim stores and had fleeced all three of the Beverly Hills
stores of cooks, dishwashers, cashiers, drivers, and a hundred-grand in
untraceable, untaxable cash.  That was the reason Geraldo was driving over
to Carin’s, he’d had enough.  He’d seen too much of this bullshit back
home to put up with it here.  And the stakes were always higher back across
the border.  One time he saw a Federale take a knife to a waiter’s
throat because the waiter attempted to charge him for a cerveza .
    But here, in ‘Loco Town’ or ‘La
Pais de Diablo’ as he had heard it vocalized by Craig, things were a
different kind of crazy.  Every night a crisp one
hundred-dollar bill would be rolled up into a slip of green paper and tacked to
the board near the schedule, with the word “Dickie” written on it.
 Everyone knew what it was. Everyone except Carin.  She had no clue.  And had not agreed to it in the terms of the
divorce.  It took the shape of a small green Bic lighter when it was
tacked, and it was pure money.  Pure theft.   Plain
and simple.  
    Now you may say to yourself, “But it’s his
store, he’s the owner, he can do whatever he wishes.”  This is true.
 But three things to that:
    1.   Dickie
is forcing his employees to be accessories to embezzlement at the rate of three-hundred dollars per day, seven days a week,
three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. (There are three stores in which
Dickie has a stake, the resulting sum per year being $109,500).  This is
known as a “skim”.

 
    2.   If
Carin found out about it she would have his balls.  Dickie had already
taken her for roughly half of everything before the skim.  This was just him being greedy.

 
    3.   If
Dickie keeps up the skim, The Big Pizza will be out of business within one
calendar year.  Dickie’s Anaheim endeavor will be all that is left, and
Geraldo would have to work in Anaheim.  Geraldo hates Anaheim, and would
have to quit and possibly go back to Mexico. This would not do.  

 
    Dickie was feeling the pinch of late.  New
stores, a new, high-profile girlfriend who was a C-list, Cougar actress who got
her head cut off on the season finale of the short-lived, yet highly profitable Slut Cakes Of Encino.  It was huge on cable for