Moist (6 page)

Esteban shook his head.

“They had a lab treat it or preserve it or prepare it or something. Whatever they do with arms. What do I know about it?”

Martin's appetite returned. The coffee settling in and warming his guts like a hot water bottle. He ate his eggs. Maybe they wouldn't have to flee the country after all.

“You know where it is?”

Esteban nodded.

“So . . . we're cool.”

Esteban scowled.

Martin realized he'd said the wrong thing when he saw the expression on Esteban's face. He felt his bowels spasm and his testicles retract.

Esteban finally growled.

“It's never that easy.”

. . .

Don stood in the shower. He let the hot water scald his pink body. He'd had a good workout. Free weights. Machines. A half hour on the StairMaster. Derrick, the muscle-freak patrolman who was like a personal trainer in the police gym, had spotted Don on the bench press and pushed him to lift more weight more times than he ever had before. Heavy iron thrust upward until his arms shook, his back warped, his legs kicked and then . . . then Derrick had him do it again and again until “failure.”

He felt his muscles. They were tight, pumped full of blood and more articulated than Don had ever noticed before. The overall effect made him feel powerful, indestructible. Don was ready to kick some ass. In fact, he was champing at the bit. He gave himself an affirmation. Told himself that today would mark the beginning of the end for the Mexican mob from Juarez. They had finally fucked up. He could feel it. He didn't know whose arm it was, or why it was left there, but it just screamed of fuckup. And that's all Don needed. A chink in the armor. A crack in the wall. Two years of watching and waiting, sitting in crappy vans in crappy neighborhoods gathering “intelligence”; spending hours in small smelly rooms interviewing punks, losers, and scumbags, as boxes of evidence and information stacked up around his cubicle. For two solid years he'd tracked down one bad lead after another. Every alibi Esteban had was sphincter-pinching tight. But now the day had come. Something had happened. All Don needed was to figure out what, and it was adios, scumbag,
vaya con Dios.

Tonight,
Don decided,
after I break this case wide open, I'm going to splurge and get a bottle of Opus One. Drink it all by myself. A fat steak and a fat cabernet
. Don smiled at the thought.

. . .

Norberto felt a little bit better. His ribs hurt from where he'd been kicked, and the blood from his split lip was caked and dried around his cheek, but all in all he felt better. He assumed that whatever poison they'd injected into him had finally worn off. Norberto shifted a little on the floor, trying to find some tiny degree of comfort. He realized that his pants were soaked with piss. His nice purple sharkskin pants.

The door opened and Esteban came in.

“How're you feeling?”

Norberto was confused. There was a friendly tone in Esteban's voice. What did it mean?

“Esta bien, gracias.”

Esteban knelt down and unlocked the handcuffs.

“Take a shower. I'll have clean clothes waiting for you.”

“¿Qué pasa, Esteban?”

“Mucho trabajo, cabrón.”

. . .

When Bob got to the office, Morris was already there, playing Tetris on Bob's computer. Several coolers were lined up on the desk, packed with dry ice and ready for the day's deliveries. Morris shoved a coffee from Starbucks toward Bob.

“Dude, I got you that vanilla thing.”

“Thanks.”

“I don't know how you can drink that sweet stuff in the morning, man.”

“Normally I don't.”

Morris looked stricken.

“Did I fuck up?”

Bob shook his head.

“What's on for today?”

Morris turned back to the game with renewed intensity.

“Usual.”

His clicking turned frenetic for a moment and then the cloying little jingle sounded.

“Fuck.”

“How'd you do?”

“I'll never get past the seventh level. It's like rigged or something.”

“It just takes practice.”

Morris nodded and started the game again. Bob picked a clipboard off the desk and checked it to see the day's work. He noticed that a large order of organs and tissue was going to the UCLA Medical School.

“Did you get the stuff for UCLA?”

“What?”

“The stuff for UCLA.”

“It's upstairs in the lab.”

“Dude. Go get it.”

Morris concentrated and clicked.

“C'mon, Morris.”

Morris shot Bob a disgusted look and turned off the game. He stood up, picking up his Starbucks cup.

“Why you got to give me all the agro, man? All the time, boss, boss, boss.”

Morris grabbed a cooler and started to stomp out of the room. Bob felt bad. “I'm sorry. Maura and I broke up this morning.”

Morris stopped.

“Wow. Man, sorry to hear that. She's hot.”

“Thanks.”

“You want to talk or something?”

Bob didn't want to talk.

“Tell you what. I want to get out for a while. You get the stuff ready and I'll make the run. You can stay here and play Tetris all afternoon.”

Morris broke into a huge grin.

“You rule, man.”

. . .

Norberto sat in the back of Esteban's car. He'd put on one of Martin's black gabardine suits, with a vintage fuchsia tuxedo shirt underneath, and was feeling better. Much better now that it was apparent that Esteban wasn't going to kill him after all. In fact, his future was looking good. Esteban had told Norberto that he was a valuable member of the team. With Amado in trouble, Norberto would need to take more responsibility. More responsibility meant more money, more respect. Norberto was pleased. He smiled when he thought of last night. Perhaps enduring the brutality and the strange drug had proven his strength. He wasn't sure. But,
quizás
, man,
todo es possible
. All he was sure about was that they were on their way to help Amado.

He watched as Esteban and that weird gringo dude sat up front talking about something. Norberto wished that he'd finished his ESL classes. But the teacher at City College was such a
pendejo
that he just couldn't stand it. He had to quit. Well, actually, he had to quit after he jumped the hippie gringo teacher in the parking lot after class and kicked the crap out of him. The gringo didn't understand that members of
el grupo de Juarez
were due a certain amount of respect. You couldn't make fun of them in class. Thinking back on it, Norberto wasn't sure the gringo had meant to make fun of him, but either way, it just wasn't cool. You had to stand up for yourself. Draw the line. Punish those who crossed it. Besides, the gringos always thought they were better than him. It felt good to send one of them to the emergency room.

It may have been satisfying to go all barbaric on the ESL teacher, but it also made Norberto feel stupid, like he was subhuman or something. Martin had that same effect on him.
With all his talk about money and investments and shelters and such, he made Norberto feel stupid. Stupid for sending his money Western Union back to his
padres
in the South. Stupid for keeping cash in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Like some dumb-shit wetback who didn't know how the world worked. But Norberto knew how the world worked, a little bit, anyway. He knew he should go legit, open a bank account, and invest in a real business, a taco stand or something, just to launder the money so he could buy the kinds of things he wanted. Like a Porsche. But he just hated the idea of paying taxes to a country that would turn around and spend the money on law enforcement and immigration authorities that wanted to catch him and ship him back to Mexico.
Fuck that,
he thought,
I'm an outlaw.

. . .

Bob took Amado's arm out of the cooler. He carefully pulled back the plastic wrap to reveal the tattoo of the woman. Bob's heart pounded as he looked at her. She was beautiful, even more lusty and erotic on the graying arm than in the Polaroid. Had Bob ever made a woman feel that way? He wasn't sure, but he had tried. Bob was willing to throw himself into any erotic activity. He'd gone down on lots of women but couldn't remember one of them who just threw her head back and let the sensation rock her world. A couple of women had come close, but they'd been drunk.

Was he attracted to uptight women? He wondered. How could a guy like him meet a woman like this? What if a woman like this didn't exist? What if she was like a comic book character? Could he go down on Wonder Woman? Wasn't she gay?

Bob felt a pang of self-pity shoot through him. Maybe he was too harsh on Maura. What if she was just going through something? Maybe they should go to a therapist, work things out.

Bob looked at the tattoo again. Even if she didn't exist, there must be someone like her. It wouldn't hurt to look. Fuck that, he had to look. If he didn't, he'd regret it for the rest of his life.

Bob wrapped the plastic back around the arm.

. . .

Esteban pulled his Mercedes to the curb. He cut the engine. Well aware of his antitheft deterrent under the seat, he was careful not to set the alarm. Martin looked across the street. A drab modern-looking building next to a drab modern-looking building next to a crazy Moroccan stucco strip mall.

“This it?”

Esteban looked over at Martin.

“Yeah. United Pathology.”

Norberto squirmed in the backseat, ready for some action.

“¿Vamos?”

Esteban lit a cigarette.

“Patience,
cabrón.
”

. . .

Maura stood naked in the bathroom brushing her hair. She thought about what Bob had said. She wasn't angry or hurt. How could she blame him? She was the one who wanted a change. By forcing Bob to be decisive she got what she wanted
but was afraid to ask for. Or maybe she got what she thought she wanted but was afraid to ask for. What if she was making a mistake?

Maura watched her voluptuous breasts bounce and heave in the mirror in rhythm with the movement of the brush through her hair. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe she was just bored. Maybe sex was boring. She thought about all the men she'd had sex with, remembering them. It all blurred for her. In the end it's always the same. In, out, in, out, faster . . . until she came or they came or it was over. What's the fun of that?

B
OB GENTLY PLACED
the arm in the cooler and closed the lid. Just then Morris came back from the lab with several pouches of viscera. Morris looked at the cooler.

“That the arm?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm gonna miss that arm, man.”

Bob looked at Morris.

“Why?”

Morris shrugged.

“It has personality.”

Morris held up the pouches of tissue samples.

“These are ready to go, man.”

Bob took the bits in bags and plopped them into the other cooler.

“What do you want for lunch?”

Morris thought about it.

“Burritos.”

“We had burritos the other day.”

“Burgers.”

Bob nodded. It wasn't his idea of a healthy lunch but at least it was different. They almost always had burritos.

“See you later.”

Bob took the portable coolers and walked out of the room. Morris smiled. He went immediately to the computer. His thumb stomped down on the space bar, waking the computer from its digital dreams. Morris stretched, cracked his knuckles, and focused. It would take all of his concentration to master the seventh level of Tetris.

. . .

Martin continued to talk Esteban's ear off. Something about building a hotel near Mazatlán. Something about a swimming pool that had no edge so you thought you were in the ocean. Esteban didn't know what an edgeless swimming pool was and he didn't really care. His mind kept returning to the blow job administered by Lupe last night. God, could that girl suck. Martin talked about Mazatlán making a comeback. The largest shrimp port in North America was being rediscovered as a tourist mecca by thousands of drunk, topless college kids. Esteban was getting annoyed; he hadn't come this far to go to Mazatlán and open a fucking resort. Try building something in Mexico? The corruption alone would kill you. Yet Martin yammered on about keeping liquidity overseas, numbered offshore accounts in Barbados, and the relative value of real estate in Costa Rica. It was all about leaving the country. Esteban had killed, literally, to come here, so why the fuck would he want to leave?

He perked up when he saw Bob loading the coolers in the back of the black VW Golf with the United Pathology
logo on the side. Esteban noticed another sign, one that said Human Blood in the window of the little car. Also, Driver Carries No Cash on the door. Human blood? What the fuck did they do with that? Martin realized that something was happening.

“That our guy?”

Esteban nodded and started the engine. He watched as Bob climbed into the car and started it up. When Bob turned out of the driveway and drove off down the street, Esteban followed. It was like the old days.

He still knew how to do it. It was easy enough. Esteban remembered when he was first starting out, they'd rear-end a tasty-looking car, usually with a single female inside, then they'd jump out acting all concerned and before anyone knew what hit them, both cars would be gone. A little body work on the stolen car's bumper, a fresh coat of paint, you'd have a new car. Let the cops scour the countryside for that red BMW with a dent. He had a black Beemer without a scratch for sale. Those stolen cars turned out to be seed money for all kinds of things: marijuana, heroin, prostitutes, cheap weapons from Brazil and Italy. Esteban had built an empire off those early carjackings. And, being a smart businessman, he kept on dealing in stolen cars. Only now they chopped them up for parts, the parts being more valuable than the whole car. It was a good business. His “core profit center” or something. That's what Martin called it.