The Water Museum by Luis Alberto Urrea Read Free Book Online

“Tha’s right, you know it,” he said.
    He’d shown Junior the article. It was by Charles Bowden, and did, indeed, confess to uninvited recon sorties into the creepy abandoned homes. One found these places by looking for overgrown yellow lawns and a sepulchral silence.
    They pulled around the old block where everybody used to drink at the Elbow Room, except for Junior, who was too young to get in. They rattled around into a dirt alley and Chango directed him to stop at the double doors of a garage. They could hear Thee Midniters blasting out.
    “That’s some real music, boy,” Chango said, and creaked out of his seat, though he managed to sway pretty good once he got erect, swaggering like an arthritic pimp.
    Inside, a Mongol associate of Chango’s had dolled up a stolen U-Haul panel truck. He wore his vest and scared Junior to death, though lots of vatos liked the Mongols because they were the only Chicano bikers around.
    “Sup?” the Mongol said.
    “Sup?” Junior nodded.
    “Sup?” said Chango.
    “Hangin’,” said the Mongol.
    There was a time when Junior would have written a poem about this interaction and turned it in for an easy A in his writing workshop. Oh, Junior, you’re so street, as it were.
    The van was sweet, he had to admit. It was painted white. It had a passable American eagle on each side, clutching a sheaf of arrows and a bundle of dollars in its claws. Above it: BOWDEN FEDERAL and some meaningless numbers in smaller script. Below it: Reclamation and Reparation/Morgage Default Division.
    Junior was all caught up in dreams of a little house and a lot of books. Junior wasn’t all that interesting. He wanted a garden. He was tired of the game. All he needed was some real money.
    He stared at the truck.
    “You misspelled ‘mortgage,’” Junior said, shaking his head.
    They gawked.
    “So what?” Chango said. “Cops can’t spell.”
    “The plates are from Detroit,” the Mongol pointed out. “An associate UPS’d ’em to me yesterday.” He turned to Chango. “Your sedan is out back.”
    Chango bumped fists with him.
    “Remember, I want a fifty-inch flat screen.”
    “Gotcha.”
    “And any fancy jewelry and coats for my old lady.”
    “Gotcha, gotcha.”
    “And any stash you find.”
    “You get the chiba, I got it. But I’m drinkin’ all the tequila I find.”
    Chango, in his element.
    *  *  *
    Junior had to admit, it was so stupid it was brilliant. It was just like acting. He had learned this in his drama workshop. You sold it by having complete belief. You inhabited the role and the viewers were destined to believe it, because who would be crazy enough to make up such elaborate lies?
    He followed the truck up I-15 in a sweet Buick with stolen Orange County plates. Black, of course. He wore a Sears suit and a striped tie. His name tag read MR. PETRUCCI.
    “Here’s the play. We move shit—we’re Beaners,” Chango explained. “Ain’t nobody gonna even look at us. You’re the boss. You’re Italian. As long as you got a suit and talk white, ain’t nobody lookin’ at you, neither.”
    To compound the play—to sell the illusion, his college self whispered—he had a clipboard with bogus paperwork clipped to it, state tax forms they had picked up at the post office.
    Three guys in white jumpsuits bobbed along in the cab of the truck—Chango, a homeboy named Hugo, and the driver, Juan Llaves. Hugo was a furniture deliveryman, so he knew how to get heavy things into a truck. They banged north, dropping out of San Diego’s brown cloud of exhaust and into some nasty desert burnscape. They took an exit more or less at random and pulled down several mid-Tuesday-morning suburban streets—all sparsely planted with a palm here, an oleander there. Plastic jungle gyms in yellow yards, hysterical dogs appalled by the truck, abandoned bikes beside flat cement front porches. Juan Llaves pulled into the driveway of a fat faux Georgian half-obscured by weeds and dry grass and