Less Than One Percent by Joshua Swainston

Mikey called us the Subaru Mafia on account that I drove an Accent, and he had his
Forester. Nichole, Mikey’s wife, thought that Subaru Mafia sounded like we were lesbians. Alex had
a Nissan. The name didn’t even make sense anyway. We were couriers for drugs, gold, watches,
cash, whatever, for the less legal side of the city. Like Door Dash, kind of. Nicole explained, “In Los
Angeles, white men driving family SUVs during the daytime make up less than one percent of all
traffic stops.” That was the business model. Who knows if that’s true or not? I only got pulled over
once. I was out on a job early to catch the school drop-off rush, blend in, that sort of thing. I’d
picked up already. I don’t ever remember what it was. I hit a speed bump harder than I wanted and
spilled a Kombucha on my lap. Swerved. I didn’t even see the cop until his lights were on. No ticket,
though. Just a “be safe out there.” That’s the point, though, right? Appear without reproach. The car
still smells like Kombucha.

It started a few summers back, when we moved from Irvine. Mary got a better job in
Northridge as an associate professor at the University, doing lab classes. I work in MarTech. It was
all remote since COVID, so it didn’t matter to me. Our daughter, Olivia, protested. She was fifteen
at the time. We weren’t really in Irvine anyway. The whole Orange County thing wasn’t us. It’s
California, sure: weed, Hollywood, sex and drugs, and whatever. But remember, Orange County
spawned Richard Nixon. During Trump’s first run, the place devolved into a MAGA outpost in
heathen Los Angeles. The swath of empowered douche bags spouting the most ridiculous shit. I’d
get stares for bumping Nate Dogg going down the street. I mean, what’s that? He’s a fucking legend.
He should be revered. Maybe it was me. So we got out. Moved to Reseda, which felt more like living
in the SoCal you see on TV.

Alex’s daughter, Missy, and Olivia became friends at school. They invited us over for dinner.
Alex and I hit it off. He had this TV room in his basement that wasn’t a man-cave, as the kids used
it a lot, but it had his PlayStation set up, the turntables, a bunch of Wu-Tang posters. Mikey, Alex’s
neighbor, would be there most of the time.

Mary would tell me things at breakfast like, “You know how much this coffee was in two
thousand and ten? Three-twenty-five a pound. Do you know how much it cost us when I went to
the market this week?” She answered her question before I ventured a guess. “Seven-fifty.” It was
like everywhere else. Paychecks stay the same while everything costs more. She never expressly said
that it was my job to fix the problem, only stating that it existed. But, ya know, it kind of hurt. Like
we’re both doing well in good-paying jobs, or so we thought, and now we’re concerned with the
price of coffee? I get that I have had a privileged life: suburban upbringing; Disneyland on special
occasions. This wasn’t the cost of a latte at Starbucks either; no, this was ground coffee in the
grocery store. It wasn’t something we’d needed to consider before. Then we did.

I was fucked up over it later—coffee or eggs, I don’t know. It was on the news. Alex
ordered a pizza and asked me to pay, and I made a thing of it. It was stupid. Mikey asked a few
questions about my finances. What could I say? It’s not awful, but it’s not fun either. He told me
about the arrangement he and Alex were already doing. Ya know, the courier thing. I talked it over
with Mary. It sounds corny, but I don’t make financial decisions without my wife, especially when
it’s less legal. If it got weird, I’d stop. She didn’t necessarily give me a thumbs up or down, but she
did tell me how much Pop-Tarts have increased over the last 15 years. The next day, I told Mikey I
was in. He set up the rest.

If T would have shown up at my doorstep on any other random Tuesday, I would have shit
my pants. Dark skinned Latin dude. Big. Wore leather in ninety-degree heat. He wasn’t necessarily
scary, but ... imposing. Nicole knew T through her sister, who I think dated him. As I understand it,
T either devised the plan or administered it for someone else. He was the contact with the gangs. I
don’t know how it works. I don’t want to. He called me Alex a few times, then he gives me some
shit about “How can I be trusted with knowing any of this?” He said, “You can’t ever trust white
guys, like you, they always look out for themselves.” I said, “Why do it?” His reply, very reasonably,
was, “You can’t change the world.” He fixed a tracking device in my car. I started driving the next
day.

The routine came quickly. Nicole ran logistics for the three of us, sent texts with two
addresses, the pick-up, and drop-off. The best part of this gig was that it was mostly blind pick-ups
and drops. Storage sheds, abandoned freezers on the side of the road. Sometimes we’d get the
combination for a lock. Sometimes it would be a bag sitting on a doorstep. I worked a morning job
and an early afternoon/lunch job when I could fit it around my regular work schedule. It was great.
Got out of the house. Listened to music. Made money. On Friday, we’d cash out. Mary hadn’t said
anything about the price of groceries in months. Instead, she’d say, “We should go to Catalina,” or
“Let’s try that new restaurant.”

Some nights and most weekends, I’d end up at Alex’s or Mikey’s. Mary would come hang
out if Nicole were going to be there. They say it’s near impossible for men to make new friends
after the age of 30. I tried D&D but couldn’t handle sitting around for five hours rolling dice
without money changing hands. I tried to get into IPAs and be a beer guy. I gained twenty pounds.
With these guys, my crew, Alex and Mikey, it was easy, like it should be. We smoked a ton of weed
and bonded over music—three middle-aged white guys into 90s/early 2000s hip-hop and video
games. It felt natural. This was how I made friends in my teens and twenties, so why should this be
different now?

Last summer, Alex’s wife left him and went to live in Utah with her folks. Cliff, his son, was
going into his senior year. Missy was going to be a sophomore with Olivia. They wanted to stay in
California. I don’t blame them. Utah? Even though it was amiable between Alex and Jennifer, it still
took a toll on the guy. His kids didn’t need him. They were old enough. He drank more. Smoked
more. On the Fourth of July, Alex bought a thousand dollars of illegal fireworks. He got them from
Tijuana. We went up to this lake on the other side of Santa Clarita and let them off. We all went out
there: Mikey and Nicole with their son Flynn, who was home from college; Alex, Cliff, and Missy,
Mary and Olivia. I brought a grill. We ate burgers and brats. It was fun. Everyone was laughing and
fucking around.

I drove, and money rolled in. Mary took Olivia to The Grove for back-to-school shopping.
That’s a high-end outdoor mall. They spent four thousand—almost all I made driving in a month. I
wasn’t even mad. I was happy to see them happy. That’s why I was doing this, right? To provide my
family with the life they deserved. It got so good that I started donating to things. Fifty dollars to
state senate candidates. A hundred dollars to a high school acquaintance’s GoFundMe. I carried
small bills to give to homeless people at intersections. Maybe I should have been more frugal. Saved
more. I felt like a gangster with a big wad of cash. I walked taller. Listened to my music louder.
I should have seen sooner that cracks were forming in the courier scheme. It’s like in the old
Looney Tunes cartoons, when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff but keeps running on air until he looks
down. Hindsight, right? Don’t look down. I heard this from Mikey and never asked Alex directly, so
I’m only fifty percent sure this is true. Alex ate a divorcee meal of appetizers and margaritas at
Chili’s. From what Mikey said, he started flashing cash around, trying to pick up on some
occupational therapists having dinner before the cops were called. He tried to leave in his Nissan but
was stopped in the parking lot and detained for drunk driving. Mikey and Nicole went to the jail and
got him the next morning. They said he was real down on himself.

Alex didn’t call. He canceled plans or no-showed a lot. I knocked on his door, but he was
never home. We went from seeing each other three times a week to maybe once a month. I thought
it was because of the divorce. I know they talked about selling the house. When I asked Nicole
about it, she said he’d been acting weird after the jail thing. For a combination of reasons, Alex was
less present.

His absence worked out for me because I picked up more work and brought in more money.
Mary enjoyed an elevated version of our suburban carefree lives. She hadn’t talked about money in
over a year at that point. I was killing it. In the blissful haze, I noticed this black utility van around
my house. The ones with no windows, like it could be the A-Team van, but without the red accent.
It stood out. I didn’t think it was a neighbor’s, but it wasn’t consistent with where it was parked.
Wouldn’t they park it near their house if it belonged to someone? But then I saw it behind me while
going down Adams Blvd. Maybe it was nothing, and I was making it up, but it scared me. I didn’t
tell Mary.

In the winter, I was on a job, dropping off in Corona. I just got to the location, and out of
fucking nowhere, my passenger side door opens, and T jumped in. It took a second to remember
him. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. I thought maybe today is the day I get jacked. He said,
“Where’s the money?” No context. “Are you following me?” I asked. “I have a tracker in your car,
stupid.” He explained, rather aggressively, that a pick-up that involved a large amount of cash
yesterday didn’t get to where it was going. I said, “I haven’t done any cash pick-ups for a week.” The
guy punched me in the nose and said, “I’m not playing, Alex.” Through the blood dripping from my
face to my polo, I tell him I’m not Alex. At first, he doesn’t believe me. He hit me again. I had to
show him my driver’s license before he stopped. Then they said, “You all look alike. How was I
supposed to know?” and exited the car. I finished the job, then drove myself to urgent care. My nose
was broken, and I had a swollen lip.

When I got home, Mary sorted through a dozen Amazon packages. The TV in the living
room spouted news about taxes or tariffs. Not sure what the difference is. When Mary saw me, she
yelled, “What the hell happened?” I lied, “I tripped and landed weird on the sidewalk.” I lied not
because I didn’t want her to know that I was punched. I lied because she was happy. She didn’t buy
it anyway. She didn’t say it, but I could tell.

Part of me was pissed that whatever Alex did caused me to have a broken nose. Part of me
was worried for the guy. We were friends, right? Where the hell did he go? What money? I called
and called, but his phone went to voicemail every time. I asked Missy, Alex’s daughter, if she’d seen
him. I could tell she was uneasy with the question, then she said: “He worked it out with my mom to
come back and live at the house with us while he took a vacation.” “Do you know where he went?
When will he come back?” I asked. She didn’t know.

The next day, no jobs came over text. The same was true the day after and the next. Nicole
said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I pass along the information. I don’t create the jobs.” I asked,
“Should we worry?” She answered my question with a question: “Is there anything to worry about?”
I don’t know what she knew or what kind of heat was being placed on them then. Maybe she was
being coy or trying to see what I knew. That Friday, I drove to Mikey’s house to cash out for a few
jobs I completed earlier in the week, before T showed up. They weren’t home.

When I got home, the black van was parked outside my house. Mary was on the lawn with
Olivia. They were fucking handcuffed. A man in a gray suit talked to them. For a second, and I’m
not proud of this, I considered not stopping. Maybe get out of the city and drive east, disappear into
Death Valley. I couldn’t do it. Perhaps if they weren’t handcuffed or if Olivia wasn’t there, but not
like this. I pulled into the driveway. An agent was on me before I could put the car in park. On the
ground, face down, hand cuffed. I kept looking at Mary. She was crying. An ATF agent pulled a box
out of the house and put it in the back of the van. It was all regular stuff, not associated with the
driving. My work computer. The crystal decanter we got as a wedding present twenty years ago.
Olivia’s shoes. Were they working from a list or taking anything they wanted? How much of that
ended up in the agent’s own home?

What did T say? “You can’t ever trust white guys, they always look out for themselves.” He
was right. I talked, but it wasn’t for me. I talked on the condition that the girls were out of this. I
didn’t want to talk. I was against my instincts, but what was I going to do? They had my wife and
daughter.

I heard Mikey and Nicole were picked up trying to cross the border into Mexico a few days
after I was raided. I never heard from Alex again. Olivia and Missy are still friends. Mary visited me
in jail regularly. She didn’t talk about money or things. She said, “I miss you,” and “We’ll be here
when you get out.”

That’s it. That’s the fall of the Subaru Mafia or whatever we were. It's not a spectacular
ending, but most crimes end with a guy sitting in a cell waiting. Why should this be different?