Daniel
Cubias has been a professional writer/editor for more than a decade,
specializing in Hispanic culture. His articles for the Huffington Post and Being
Latino magazine have provoked thousands of reader comments over the years.
Furthermore, he is the creator of the website the Hispanic Fanatic. His fiction has been published in numerous
literary journals and won several awards. In addition, he has ghostwritten a
book for a Hollywood costume designer, worked on the desk of the Hollywood
Reporter, and edited over 100 books.
His first novel, Barrio Imbroglio, is autobiographical in the sense that the lead
character, Abraxas Hernandez, is a Latino who grew up
in the Midwest and labors in the white-collar world. It is not autobiographical
in the sense that Abraxas pursues killers in his spare time and gets shot at a
lot.
(Read an excerpt below)
His new novel, Zombie President, is being serialized
online. It is about a defeated presidential candidate who comes back from the
dead to take the White House by force and to win the country’s heart in the process.
The book is a horror/black comedy about getting the kind of leaders we deserve.
Links for Daniel are listed below.
Barrio Imbroglio (excerpt)
Copyright is held by the author. Used with permission
Chapter
1
I felt bushwhacked and bitch-slapped.
Up until that point in the
evening, I had been perfect. My eye contact was steady but not creepy. I exuded
confidence without any bitter overtones of arrogance. And I even got her to
smile once or twice.
Then my damn phone went
off. She looked at me, confused, and I ignored it. The thing rang again a
moment later, and I fumbled to silence it. That failed miserably, because a
stream of trills indicated that text messages were flowing quickly toward me.
And then it rang eighty-eight times in five minutes.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Someone’s fucking with me.”
I answered my phone and
didn’t get the first syllable of “Hello” out before the familiar,
wince-inducing voice of that ditz rammed into my ear. I hung up on her when she
wouldn’t stop caterwauling, and I sighed.
It was the Moment. By that,
I mean the instant that changes your life. For most people, it’s meeting your
future spouse, or seeing your first kid get born, or getting that acceptance
letter from college, or stepping off the plane into your new country. It’s
supposed to be something majestic like that.
For me, however, it was the
high-pitched shriek of a lunatic redhead whom I hated, screaming at me over the
phone that he was dead, he was dead, he was dead.
I put the phone back into
my pocket and turned to the woman seated across from me. Sasha was stunning, a
blind date gone right for once.
Like a lot of Hispanic men, I went for the fair-skinned beauties. Specifically,
blondes in black jeans — like Sasha — had always been a serious problem for me.
Then again, I wasn’t exactly looking for a solution.
My phone rang again, and I said, “I have to leave.”
“But we just ordered
dinner,” Sasha said. “Expensive shit too.”
“Yeah, but apparently,
someone has just been murdered, and I need to drive across town to check it
out.”
“You’re a detective?” my
date said, a flash of excitement crossing her face.
“What? No, I’m in
computers. I told you that over the appetizers.”
“Oh, yeah. An IT guy,” she
said, her enthusiasm morphing into disappointment. “I really wasn’t paying
attention when you said that.”
“Good to know. I’ll pick up
the bill.”
A moment later, I walked
out the door while mumbling vague apologies to Sasha. She ignored me and dialed
her phone, making impromptu plans with an ex-boyfriend named Jimmy or Johnny.
“This asshole just called
off our date,” she said into her cell. “I’ve got nothing better to do, so I
might as well come over and jump into that sex swing in your living room. You
know, for old times’ sake.”
I said goodnight to Sasha,
but she was already deep into dirty talk with Jimmy or Johnny. So I turned and
hurried toward the parking garage.
Delta’s phone call had
unnerved me, of course. And my distracted state, combined with my haste to get
to Hugo’s place, meant my perception was not as sharp as it should have been.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t immediately register what had happened to my car.
Or maybe I was busy visualizing my date clambering into Jimmy or Johnny’s sex
swing.
Regardless, it was only
after I opened the driver’s door that I paused, stepped back, and looked at my
car. That’s when I saw it.
Someone had spray-painted
the words “Fuck Police” on the vehicle’s side.
“Hijo de puta,” I muttered.
I wondered if the taggers
had meant “fuck the police” or “fuck da police” but were so time-pressed that
they dropped the article and ruined their gangsta homage. Or perhaps they meant
it as a literal statement, in which case they were most likely police officers
themselves and were advising citizens to take on a cop lover. Or maybe the
dripping words were the tag of a local gang, the fierce and dreaded Fuck
Police, and members were just marking their territory. Regardless of the origin
or significance of the spray-painted display, however, I could not figure out
why they had earmarked my piece-of-shit Hyundai with 180,000 miles on it to
make their bold statement.
And I couldn’t even get my
parking stub validated. So I left the parking garage and drove all over town
with the words “Fuck Police” in bold red paint staining the entire side of my
car. A few pedestrians read the manifesto while I waited at stoplights, their
eyes flitting to me for explanation, but I just shrugged at their baffled
looks. Nobody offered me an interpretation. It would remain a mystery.
In any case, it was a long
drive to Hugo’s restaurant, which was where Delta had originated her frazzled
phone call to me (at least I thought she had said that before I hung up on
her). As the blocks whipped by, the neighborhoods went from upscale
sophistication to strip-mall blandness to struggling bohemian enclave to abject
shithole. Then it started a fresh cycle. I had lived in this city, East
Phister, my entire life. I knew it was a vast amalgamation of freaks, nutjobs, and social
deviants — spiced up with the addition of the shrill, the hyper-religious, and
the criminally insane — all jammed into a hundred godforsaken square miles in
the American Midwest. But hey, it was home.
I turned onto Seconth Avenue, so
pronounced because the city had labeled the street signs “2th Ave,” either in a
fit of dyslexia or avant-garde civic boosterism (it was never determined
which). That wasn’t as bad as a few blocks over, which was labeled “5rd Ave.”
I drove past a psychic’s shop that Vic
had once dragged me into for kicks. We wound up not being amused at the
psychic’s earnest declaration that Vic and I were doomed to lives of unbearable
torment and raging inferiority. We didn’t tip her. I noticed that the place was
boarded up now, with a sign outside that read, “Psychic shop closed due to
unforeseen and unpredictable circumstances.”
Up the block, the fledgling restaurant
row kicked into gear. It was mostly Mexican establishments, with a few Central
and South American diners interspersed, and a couple of ancient Irish taverns
still hanging on. The city was proud of this oasis of multicultural
entrepreneurialism, and the mayor had christened the area El Barrio, possibly
the least imaginative appellation for a Latino neighborhood ever. Beyond the
press releases and self-congratulation, however, the fact remained that upscale
East Phisters were still terrified to come to this part of town. The stretch
included pawnshops, tattoo parlors, and a dilapidated gas station/convenience
store called the Pump N’ Munch. None of it screamed, “Date night for
suburbanites.”
When I got to Hugo’s place,
I double-parked, hoping that the city would be merciful and tow the damn car
out of my life. I rushed toward the swirl of police lights and the jabbering,
jostling crowd in front of the Ferrocarril restaurant.
Until that moment, I had
assumed that Delta was exaggerating in her endless quest for drama. Surely, no
one had been murdered. I had only hurried down here just in case something
mildly bad was transpiring to her or Hugo. But the police presence and the
excited throng of onlookers convinced me that some serious shit had indeed gone
down inside. It took a lot to get this many people worked up in El Barrio.
After all, this was a
neighborhood populated with immigrants from Latin American hellholes. They were
used to death and devastation smashing into their homes, taking a seat on the
couch, and never leaving.
And their kids — the
first-generation Americans — maintained badass demeanors despite the fact that
the neighborhood was no longer quite so thuggish. Hell, the place was getting
more and more gentrified every day. I couldn’t imagine even the most fearsome
cholo preserving his street cred when he walked into the newest neighborhood
addition (a Starbucks) to order a no-foam, half-caff double latte.
Still, my old neighborhood
instilled a certain detachment in its residents, as if they had seen it all and
would merely scoff if drug-runners from Guadalajara opened fire on the streets
with AK-47s. But urban cool was not on display tonight. This was a real-life,
genuine, first-degree crime scene, and its exoticness captivated the residents.
I couldn’t get in the front
door with all the cops milling about, so I stepped into the alley off 99th
Street. The backdoor was unlocked, as usual, and I walked into the kitchen.
Perhaps this wasn’t the
best move. Clearly, the panicky young guy who stood there waving a gun at me
didn’t think so.
No, he didn’t approve of my
arrival at all.
Barrio Imbroglio
Zombie President
Website
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