The Night I Almost Ruined My Friends’ Lives
By: Nicholas Gomez
Tags: Short Story, Nonfiction, Humor, Life, This Happened To Me

The Night I Almost Ruined My Friends’ Lives

A story of corruption in the Caribbean.

Photo credit: Nicholas Gomez

This is an English translation of a story that took place in Cancun, Mexico in the summer of 2015. I was with four of my closest friends that night. All of their names and identifying details were changed to protect their privacy. Everything else remains as it actually happened.

“Come on, dude! Hurry the fuck up!”

“Relax, goddamn! Don’t you know this shit’s its own art form? Make yourself useful and tell Jose to turn the air on.”

“Car’s almost out of gas. I’m giving it a break.”

“While you two finish jerking each other off, I’m gonna go piss.”

I try to be as quiet as possible when I exit the car. Despite the fact that the lot we’re parked in belongs to my dad, it wasn’t long ago that the cops handcuffed me and tried to take me to holding just a few blocks from where we are now. Of course, back then I was completely innocent — which is why I wasn’t taken — but tonight there are five of us all anxious to smoke weed in Jose’s car, so I’d rather not take any risks.

Across the street from us is the house I grew up in. I clock us at around eight p.m. but I still see gardeners watering plants in what is now an old folk’s home. I stand with my back against the car and let my cock enjoy self-expression in its rawest form.

“What the fuck? You’re still not done?” I ask as I get back in. I close the door and notice that Jose has the air running again.

“I am, I am,” says Alex. “Fran’s got it. This is the second one.”

I turn to Fran and ask him to hurry up.

“It’ll get to you. We’re going clockwise.”

After he says this he hands it to Jorge, the most inexperienced one in the group.

Not even a minute after I return, Jose turns off the air again. “This has to be the worst hotbox I’ve ever done in my life,” I tell them all.

“Here you go,” Jorge says as he hands the joint to Jose.

Jose takes two long hits and passes it to me — finally! I take my time with it as I hit it once and don’t feel a thing ’cause I’m so damn used to that Cali weed. The second time I let drag and start to cough like a newcomer.

“Do you want to hit it Alex?” I say between coughs. “Or should we skip you so you can finish rolling?”

“No, no, give it here daddy.”

I turn to give him the joint and that’s when I see them. Two white lights flashing against the back windshield of the car, one of them headed for my passenger window.

“Holy shit!” I say. “Cops!”

Jose curses at no one in particular. “No fucking way!” he says. “No FUCKING way!”

“I don’t think those are cops,” Fran says. And for a second I think, what could be worse than cops?

I turn my head to the window where one of the lights flashes up and down to get my attention. There is no doubt these are cops.

“Oh they’re cops,” I say. “You try to hide the weed and I’ll talk to them.”

I lower my window and hope for a miracle, but as soon as fresh air enters the car, the clouds of weed smoke get sucked out and hit the fatter of the cops in the face.

“Well, well,” FatterCop says. “These kids are smoking reefer, Bob.” Then to us: “Out of the car. All of you. And don’t even try to dispose of it or I’ll take you straight to holding.”

I realize then that there is only one way out of this. But what worries me is that my friends haven’t caught up to the same realization.

We all get out of the car and let the cops search every inch of it. I hear Jose in a frantic state of mind because it’s his car and that means he’s the most liable of us all. Alex wasn’t able to hide the weed so I’m sure he’s got piss dripping slowly from his cock, too. Come to think of it, we’re all scared of what comes next.

FatterCop finds the weed and says to his partner, “Look at how much these kids are carrying. Federal crime if I’m not mistaken, isn’t it?”

Both cops approach me like I’m guiltiest. “Weren’t you the one driving?” OtherCop asks.

Unsure of whether this is a scare tactic or him experiencing short term memory loss, and also not wanting to rat on Jose, I just nod my head no.

“It was me,” Jose says. “The car’s mine.”

Relief washes over me.

“Great. Well then let’s get you all on the back of the truck and head to holding.”

I’m taken by surprise when I hear them say that. But still, blind confidence tells me that tonight’s not going to end with us in holding. “Just like that, huh? You guys can’t think of any other way to fix this?” It’s the first time in my life that I’m insinuating bribery to a cop.

“I don’t know,” FatterCop says. “You tell us how we can fix it.”

I wait for one of my buddies to chime in but am met with absolute quiet.

“I don’t know. Whatever it takes?”

As I finish my sentence Jose sticks out his tongue and gets down on one knee so he can lick the cops balls. He says, “Can’t you just let us off with a warning or something? We promise it won’t happen again. Promise!”

The cops look at each other, pause, and then laugh like high schoolers.

“Yes, please,” Alex adds. “It was a mistake. But we learned our lesson. It won’t happen again.”

“Kids, with this amount of weed we could be looking at years of jail time.”

“OK then, how else? How much?” I ask.

“Uh…let’s see,” OtherCop says.

FatterCop puts his hand on OtherCop’s chest and says to us, “How much are you carrying?”

The words hit us like sobriety hits an abusive husband when his wife offers him a fifteenth and final chance. We reach in our pockets and bring out all the cash we have on hand. We even start to count it like we’re raising money for the Red Cross. I empty my wallet of two-hundred pesos.

I’m handed the money when we finish the count like I’m the responsible one in the group. As if it wasn’t me who convinced everyone to leave the party we were at and come to my dad’s empty lot to smoke weed.

“It looks like all in all we have about…nine hundred and fifty.”

“What do you think, partner? I hear the fine for this is over one hundred a pop.”

“Nah, partner, if they’re not even at a thousand we’re not on the same page. Empty your pockets and show us what you’ve got that’s worth something.”

Fuck that. I’m not sure what my friends are holding, but I’ve got my brother’s car keys, my wallet with two debit cards full of cash, and my iPod, which for some reason is what I care about most.

“And if we catch you hiding anything we’re taking you straight to holding. We’re going to check each of you individually, so don’t play us, you hear?”

I keep the car keys because it’s not like they’re going steal it from me. My wallet’s empty of cash and I doubt they want to drive me to the ATM to empty my bank accounts. I don’t think they’re looking to complicate their night like that.

What about my iPod?

Maybe it was worth a lot five years ago, but after swimming in my pool with it so many times, the god honest truth was that it was going to stop working soon anyway.

“I don’t have anything on me,” I lie.

“Yeah, me either,” Fran says. “We just left the beach. You really caught us at a bad time.”

“Alright blondie,” FatterCop asks me. “Where do you live?”

“I’m not from here,” I lie. “I’m visiting from Merida. Came to visit my friends and…well, that’s why we were smoking when you found us. We hadn’t seen each other in — ”

“What about you?” FatterCop asks Fran.

A beat.

Fran says, “Who? Me? I live here in Cancun.”

I can tell the cops are unaware of it, but I know Fran so well that his condescension is obvious to me. He doesn’t like these cops. Like me, he’s someone that doesn’t do well with authority. The only reason I’m not talking back to them is because of how high I am. Not like, stoned senseless. More of a calm high. And it stops the gravity of the situation we’re in from really sinking in.

FatterCop continues to ask us where we’re from. By the end of his interrogation, I realize I’m the only idiot that lied. But whatever our answers, we end up back at square one.

OtherCop says, “Well, you either get more money or you get in the back of our truck. No other way around this.”

“Excuse me, but…technically we’re on my property,” I say, as if the law is going to be upheld by these corrupt motherfuckers.

They look at each other in shock. “Well goddamn! And you said you don’t come from money!”

Oops.

“See the thing is,” FatterCop adds. “Technically you’re standing outside of the property. If you’d pulled into it, odds are nobody would care to report you. But when people see a strange car parked across the street from their house, they’re going to report it.” He spits. “We received a call about a strange vehicle. We even drove around for a while and couldn’t find you. But when someone makes a call like that, it’s our responsibility to make sure we fill in a report at the station.”

“Alright! Alright!” Jose says, more out of desperation than anything else. “What if I drive to the ATM and withdraw two thousand? Will you let us go then?”

They look unsatisfied.

“Where are you gonna get the money? And how do we know we can trust you?”

“We’ll hit the corner store a mile down the road. We’ll hurry up and I promise we’ll be back. It’s just a mile down this road.”

In all my time knowing the guy, I’ve never seen Jose so simultaneously frustrated, sad, and nervous. I even start to feel bad for the guy. But I’m so relieved that we didn’t drive my car that it’s all I can really think about.

“Let’s do it,” FatterCop says. He points his finger at me and adds, “He stays with us, though.”

Alex and Jorge, still quiet as can be, don’t seem to mind the idea — fucking traitors. But Fran does. “You three go. I’ll stay with Niko,” he says. “That way it’s a little more even.”

More even? I think. In case what? A fistfight breaks out between us and the cops? Does Fran really think I’d be of any use to him if that happened? The closest I’ve been to being in a fight was in ninth grade when I got tackled by the class bully.

Luckily, the cops overlook Fran’s comment and agree to let him stay. Then Alex, Jose, and Jorge get in the car and drive off. Fran and I sit on the pavement.

“Boys, boys,” FatterCop says. “You know they’d tear you a new asshole if we took you back to holding, don’t you?” OtherCop walks back to the truck and picks up the radio. “TEAR you a new asshole.”

I nod and so does Fran. I think both of us know that all he wants is to scare us.

“If you’d smoked on the other side of that fence we wouldn’t be standing here. But I swear, people in these neighborhoods don’t take well to unknown vehicles. They start to wonder what the hell they’re doing parked like that so close to midnight.”

“Yeah, I mean, what can we say, right?” I laugh. “You probably get a lot of these calls don’t you?”

“We took down that entire seafood restaurant last month, actually. That lobster joint down the street. But nah, very few people report things like this.”

As I think of another question to fill the time, FatterCop beats me to it.

“Did you say this property belongs to you?”

“Uh…it belongs to my dad.”

“And where does he live?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in over five years. This place is one of the few memories of him that I still carry with me.” I’m surprised by how quick the lies come to me. And as I write this I’m also grateful that they did, because had they not, the stakes would’ve been much higher. “That’s why I told my friends we could smoke here.”

OtherCop jogs back to us and tells FatterCop, “I just got word that TheGeneral’s truck is in the neighborhood. What do we do if he drives by?”

Fran says, “We can hide until after they do.”

Reasonable enough, one would think. Not these two. They spend the next two minutes arguing and ignoring us. And then, to make matters worse, that truck they mentioned drives by and quiets us all down. It drives by at under twenty miles an hour, surveying the scene from the road, and stops by the dead grass, next to FatterCop and OtherCop’s truck. OtherCop walks toward it.

“Goddamn it,” I whisper to Fran. “If this turns into a whole ordeal I swear to you I’m gonna flip out. I thought we were through with them.”

OtherCop walks back. FatterCop asks him what he said. “What do you think I said? That we’re babysitting two grown boys in the middle of the night? I told them we had a situation, but I didn’t tell them how much it was for.”

Fran and I whisper to each other about our futures and watch as TheGeneral’s truck takes off in a hurry. Seconds later, just as it escapes our line of sight, we hear it come to a screeching halt. Then we see it come back in reverse and stop. Three cops with machine guns hop out of the back and run toward us. TheGeneral parks it and exits the car, follows behind the armed men.

“We’re fucked,” Fran says.

“Yep. Fucked is right.”

TheGeneral approaches the armed men and tells them to head back to the truck. “What are you boys doing here?” he asks. “Come on. Stand up. We’re taking you to holding.”

I look at FatterCop and OtherCop and they look back at me, all three of us share the same facial expression. One that says, “I guess we tried, but TheGeneral’s here and he decides.”

“But…” I say, and don’t finish my sentence.

Fran says nothing.

“But what?” TheGeneral asks.

So far I know three things for certain: OtherCop told them about a situation, so TheGeneral knows something is going on; Alex, Jose, and Jorge are due back any minute now, and if I don’t straighten things out with TheGeneral before that happens, things are only going to get worse; lastly, there’s no way our deal is going to hold up now. The question is: how do I tell TheGeneral about the bribe without telling him about the bribe. So what I say is, “Didn’t these two tell you where our friends went?”

“They didn’t tell me a thing. Where’d they go?”

Fuck it, I think. One of us has to stop playing dumb.

“They’re withdrawing money at an ATM.”

“How much money?”

Fran takes the lead, “We have a thousand on us, plus another two grand our friends are getting. So three total.”

“Just three thousand pesos? You know the fine’s more than ten grand a pop, don’t you? Three grand’s not going to cut it!”

“They said three grand was enough.”

Just then our friends return. TheGeneral turns his back to me. Jose is first to exit the car. He doesn’t notice that there’s a third cop now.

“Here’s the two thousand — ”

“Jose,” I try to interrupt him but fail.

“Are we good to go?”

“Jose,” I try again. This time TheGeneral interrupts me.

“Blondie over here says you kids rounded up three thousand. Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Can we go now?”

“No one leaves here until I say so. Do you understand?”

FatterCop and OtherCop become mirror images of Alex and Jorge. All four of them forget how to speak. Fran and I look for a way to explain to Jose what has unfolded. But our subtlety is so strong we never open our mouths.

“But we agreed that three thousand was enough!” Jose raises his voice at TheGeneral.

“You better check yourself, son.”

Jose drops the attitude and says, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to disrespect you. I just want to reach an agreement so we can all go home.”

I understand his hand is forced, but this is a Jose I’ve yet to witness. He never stands down to authority figures.

“How much more can you get from the ATM?” TheGeneral asks.

“More?” Jose looks shocked. “It’ll take me a while to go there and come back, but I can do another two-thousand. I think that’s all I have left.”

“Do you know how lucky you are that we’re even considering letting you go?”

“I do, I do, but I’m being honest with you. If I had more I wouldn’t lie to you.”

TheGeneral turns to me and Fran. “How much did you say we were at?”

Fran and I look at each other and piece together a scrambled version of this sentence, “We started with a thousand, plus the two-thousand he just brought, that’s three thousand total. Unless you want to count the two he’s about to withdraw, in which case it’d be five.”

TheGeneral turns to Jose and says, “Go on then. Go get the money. And be quick boy.”

All three of our friends get in the car and drive off. TheGeneral pulls out his handgun and aims at the concrete, says, “You two sit your asses down.” Then he walks to his truck and the other two cops come and talk to us.

“I thought you said two grand was enough?” I ask them.

“It was for us,” FatterCop says. “But TheGeneral’s in charge now and he always wants his cut.”

I look at them like the pigs that they are. Silence fills the air. They walk to their truck and leave Fran and me alone.

“Dude,” I say. “What would you do if I got up and took off running?”

He laughs and says, “I don’t know. Eat shit, probably?”

“You wouldn’t run with me?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t see it coming. That’s why I would eat shit. But who knows, maybe I’d try.”

“OK, OK, what about,” I laugh. “What if I did the same thing, but this time all three of them pulled out their guns and shot me dead?”

We laugh like we were in the school rec yard. “In that case, I’d definitely cry. And that only means I’d eat more shit.”

Our friends return from the ATM.

“Well, well,” TheGeneral says. “It’s about time. How much did you get?”

“I emptied my card. Three-thousand. So, that’s six thousand we have altogether.”

“Give it to FatterCop so he can count it.”

I gather the money and give it to Jose so that he can give it to FatterCop. FatterCop counts the money and says, “It’s six grand.”

“Great. You know what to do then. I’ll wait in the truck.”

And that’s the last we see of TheGeneral.

FatterCop tells OtherCop to pull out his cellphone. “You!” he points at Alex. “You hold the bag. The rest of you stand next to him. Right here, next to the car. We’re going to take a picture.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

After seeing hundreds of pictures in the newspaper with six drug dealers standing next to kilos of cocaine and dozens of machine guns, I finally get to pose for my own. What’s funny, too, is that all Alex holds in his hand is a tiny fucking bag with a half-ounce of weed in it. People will find that funny if it ever reaches the newspapers.

As we get close for the picture, I think about throwing my arms over Fran and Jose and smiling bigger than any picture I ever smiled for. But when I see Alex and Jorge tremble from nerves, I throw on my baseball cap and lower the front of it just enough to cover my face.

OtherCop takes the picture and FatterCop says, “We have proof, in case any of you decide to open your mouth.”

I kept my mouth shut for a week. Then I wrote and published this story.