Moist (27 page)

“Marijuana possession. Heroin possession with intent. Possession of an unlicensed firearm.”

The sheriff gave him a sincere look.

“You want to tell me what you were doing out there?”

What Martin really wanted was time to think. He wanted to put his feet up, fire up a jumbo, and consider the various possibilities, scenarios, etc.

“You're looking at five to fifteen in Soledad.”

He'd be what? fifty when he got out. What would his parents say?

“I want to make a deal.”

It came out so quickly and so easily.

The sheriff smiled.

“You want to tell me who you bought this crap from?”

Martin blinked.

“I want to talk to someone from the FBI.”

“Oh, you're a bigshot.”

The sheriff sat back down on the bed, only this time he wasn't careful, and the catheter in Martin's penis shifted. Martin winced.

“Looks to me like you bought your drugs in California, you were trying to sell your drugs in California, and you are in California. That ain't what we call a federal problem. That's a state problem.”

Why was he being so difficult?

“I want to make a deal.”

“I heard that.”

“I work for the Mexican mafia.”

The sheriff stood up.

“That's a good one.”

He started for the door. Martin didn't want him to leave. He didn't want to be left alone. The image of the Ramirez brothers in their car flashed back to him. He was suddenly scared. Very scared.

“You've got to protect me. They'll find me and kill me. You've got to protect me.”

The sheriff stood in the doorway.

“I'm gonna get a cup of coffee, and when I come back, you're gonna tell me the truth.”

. . .

Esteban hated going into places like this. A dark bar in East LA. If he was looking for trouble, he could find it here. He had asked Amado to come with him. But Amado said he was
busy working on his
telenovela
script. Esteban was tired. He didn't want to argue. He knew that if he'd told Amado who he was going to see and where, he'd have come. But sometimes El Jefe's got to show his
huevos.
So Esteban stuck a fully loaded, semiautomatic, nine-millimeter handgun in his sports coat and went alone.

Theoretically he shouldn't have been nervous. The Ramirez brothers were his employees. They should be loyal, protective. But things were getting weird. Esteban didn't feel the bluster and confidence he normally carried with him. He was starting to look over his shoulder.

The Ramirez brothers, Tomás and Chino, were sitting in a back booth. They had a couple of long-neck Pacificas in front of them, a little bowl of lime slices, and several thin white lines of crystal meth. They hung their heads when Esteban entered the bar.

“¿Qué pasa, amigos?”

Esteban sat with them. He nodded toward the bartender, a man who'd spent the last twelve years in prison on a trumped-up manslaughter charge, for another round.

“Lo siento, jefe.”

Tomás then went into a long meandering story recounting their drive out to the desert and attempt to find Martin. Esteban wanted him to get to the point, but the crystal meth in Tomás's brain kept his story running through a mouse maze of incidental detail and collateral anecdotes.

Finally the story came to the end. They had seen Martin in the custody of a park ranger.

Esteban looked at them for a long time. Chino squirmed in the vinyl booth.

“Sorry, man.”

Finally Esteban spoke.

“Where did they take him?”

Tomás and Chino exchanged a look.

“We don't know.”

They started to say more, but Esteban silenced them with a look and pulled out a cell phone. He dialed a number, spoke rapidly into the phone, and then hung up. He turned and looked at the Ramirez brothers. Chino hesitated, then took a rolled dollar bill and snorted a line of speed.

The beers arrived.

Esteban squeezed some lime into his and sipped it. Tomás did a line of speed. He offered the rolled bill to Esteban.

“No.
Gracias
.”

The three men sat there, no one saying a word. Esteban was calm,
curado como un pepino,
while the two brothers were grinding their teeth, trying hard not to talk. Drinking their beers too quickly.

Esteban's cell phone rang.

“Bueno.”

He listened for a beat and then folded it shut.

“He is in the hospital. In Palm Springs.”

Tomás and Chino exchanged looks. Finally, Chino spoke.

“You want us to go out there?”

Esteban nodded.

“Sí.”

Tomás blinked.

“Now?”

“Sí, ahora.”

Chino quickly attempted to scrape the leftover meth into a pile, but he got some lime juice mixed up in it and it turned
into a gluey lump. Tomás shrugged, and with some sheepish speedy grins, the two brothers left the bar.

Esteban sighed and took a long pull on his beer. It was good that Martin was in the hospital and so far away. It would give him time to make arrangements.

. . .

Amado was enjoying himself. Somehow, writing the script was like watching the show. Only this time Amado could have the characters do what he wanted them to do. What he thought they should really do. Like having Fernando kick the padre's ass for fucking Gloria. In Amado's version of the
telenovela,
the passions weren't hidden, they were worn on the sleeves. The characters shouted. They lived. They loved. They fought like maniacs.

If only the
chingado teléfono
would stop ringing and he could finish this sentence.

Amado had to admit he was curious. He wondered what the hell was going on. But he knew that Esteban could take care of himself. He just needed to remember how. Amado smiled to himself. Now maybe El Jefe would understand how much Amado had done for him. His efforts would be appreciated in hindsight. While Esteban had lounged around the pool or cruised the streets with his gringo, Amado had been working. Esteban had grown soft, while Amado had stayed hard and hungry. It would be good for El Jefe.

Amado struggled as he wrote, his one hand not able to type as fast as his brain thought or his characters spoke. But he stayed concentrated and, as the day wore on, the page count mounted.

He was interrupted by a knock at the door.

If it was Esteban he'd smack him. Tell him to look down and see if he had any
cojones
left. But it wasn't Esteban. It was Cindy, her pink pigtails mounted on top of her head like antennae.

B
OB PULLED UP
the gated drive to Esteban's house. He couldn't believe how nice it was. Palm trees and flowers, a manicured lawn. The house itself was an ornate Spanish colonial structure painted hacienda red with stark white trim. It was a big house. Impressive. A gardener was clipping the hedge while another swept up grass cuttings. They didn't use the gas-powered leaf blowers that swarmed around Los Angeles like a hive of angry wasps. People with money could afford to have their gardeners use a push broom.

It was peaceful. The sun glinted through the palm trees, a mosaic fountain gurgled by the front steps, birds chirped in the trees, and the soft and steady sound of a broom on asphalt took him to another time, another place.

Lupe opened the carved wooden doors to let Bob in. The interior was furnished in a kind of Mexican moderne style. Simple, light. The walls painted deep rich colors.

Bob was impressed.

Lupe turned to him.

“He'll be down in a minute. Would you like a drink?”

“A beer would be great.”

“
Claro.
Just have a seat.”

Lupe went off.

Bob stood and looked out the large windows at the Jacuzzi and the pool beyond it. The garden in the backyard was even more extensive than what he'd seen in the front. There were several jacaranda trees, a rose bed, and wild-looking clumps of Mexican sage and rosemary growing down the side of a hill.

Esteban entered the room and cleared his throat. Bob turned toward him.

“Roberto.”

“Hi.”

Esteban came up and gave Bob a big hug.

“I am glad to see you are alive.”

“Me too.”

Esteban was wearing an elegant tan-colored suit, with a white shirt and a purple floral tie. Bob thought he was dressed like some kind of Latin American factory owner. The clothes looked good on him. Bob felt a little awkward in his jeans and T-shirt, with a funky bowling shirt on the outside. Esteban looked at Bob with a serious expression.

“Roberto, the next time someone tries to kill you like that, you cannot let them live.
¿Entiendes?
”

Bob nodded.

Lupe entered, carrying a couple of beers on a tray. Esteban kissed her tenderly on the cheek.

“Gracias, corazón.”

Lupe smiled at Bob and left.

“I think I'm going to marry that woman.”

Bob grinned.

“I've been thinking that about Felicia.”

Esteban handed Bob a beer and smiled.

“Qué bueno. ¡A su boda!”

They clinked the bottles together.

Bob took a swig of the icy
cerveza
.

“What are we going to do about Martin?”

“It's taken care of.”

Esteban sat down on the sofa; Bob followed his lead and took a seat opposite him.

“Why did he want to kill me?”

“Perhaps because you are loyal.”

Bob thought about that. Martin didn't seem the type, but then what did Bob know about corporate politics? He'd always stayed under the radar, able to steal paper clips or goof around with impunity.

“He's trying to take over.”

Bob was surprised.

“Really?”

“He gave Amado's arm to the police. He killed Norberto. He tried to kill you.”

Bob was stunned.

“Norberto's dead?”

Esteban nodded.

“Listen, Roberto, there are many people who would like to see me dead as well. People who would like to take over my business. I think Martin was working with some of them. I am going to need your help.”

“What can I do?”

Bob was afraid that Esteban would ask him to go kill a bunch of people. Bob knew that he could've killed Martin, that he should've killed Martin, but that was different. Self-defense. Bob was not so sure that he could go around whacking Esteban's
enemies. It was too cold-blooded. Too calculated. It wasn't what Bob wanted to do. He could never be like Amado.

“I'm not a hit man.”

Esteban laughed.

“I know, Roberto. I don't need a hit man,
sabes
? I need someone I can trust.”

Esteban looked him in the eye.

“Can I trust you?”

Bob nodded.

“Absolutely.”

Esteban slapped his knees and stood.

“
Vale.
We've got work to do, and we don't have much time.”

. . .

Martin lay in the hospital bed. He was feeling good. Very good now that he'd found the little plastic dial thing that controlled the Demerol dripping into his veins. He loved how the Demerol rolled into his brain like waves. Whoosh. It hit with a mild rush and then kind of receded until . . . whoosh. One after the other, taking him deeper and deeper into a dreamy kind of trance.

He wondered if he could overdose on it.

The fat sheriff sat on the bed eating a double cheese-burger and supersized fries from some fast-food joint. Martin had watched, curious and horrified, as the sheriff had dumped the fries into the bag, then sprinkled in two packets of salt before rolling the bag closed and vigorously shaking it like a giant oily maraca. The sound was not soothing. Martin hit the dial.

Big grease spots pocked the sides of the brightly colored bag, as the sheriff dipped his hands in and pulled out clumps of glistening fries. The sheriff was saying something, Martin wasn't sure what, but the sheriff's voice was irritating. Not the sound of it, but that kind of condescending cadence that authority figures liked to use when they were talking to you. The more he blabbed, the more Martin flicked the dial on the drip.

He wished he'd had this IV drip all the time. Someone annoys you, flick the dial. Traffic's backed up and there's only commercials on the fucking radio, dial this in. Yeah. A Demerol drip could greatly improve your quality of life.

. . .

Amado sat in bed, the covers tangled around him, and watched as Cindy read his script. He had to admit he was nervous. Giddy because he'd finished his first draft, and proud because he felt that he'd actually accomplished something. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he'd had an idea, sat down, and just done it. From start to finish. Sure, he'd been given orders and carried them out. Start by finding someone, finish by burying them in some field. But that was different. It didn't take a lot of brains to do something like that. It wasn't personal. He'd never gotten emotionally invested in the day-to-day business of organized crime. He'd been going along with it because it was easy and the money was good.

But it was an empty experience.

Amado found that having characters live and breathe through his imagination, putting raw emotions on blank
paper, inventing a story that was compelling, a story that just had to be told, these things were fulfilling. He felt good about himself. It wasn't easy, but he loved writing.

He was also strangely nervous and giddy about Cindy. She was different from the women he was used to. For one, she was petite, small and slender, not the usual voluptuous Latina with a great heaving rack. He could easily cup Cindy's small breasts in the palm of his hand. She had just the faintest wisp of pubic hair. Her hips and ass were slightly flat, almost like a boy's. But Amado was crazy about her.