The Goodbye Man (31 page)

Starting over isn’t easy.
Everything may be set up and ready but filling these new beds isn’t going to easy. I am not Caesar. I cannot charm them into giving up their lives, there is no shortage of whores and worthless souls in this city, but getting them to come to me won’t be easy. Hugo has the doctors, staff and building set up and ready to begin work almost immediately. I have a meeting with a local clinic where we can perform operations under the radar for a fee. I lie next to Lettie, staring up at a new ceiling and contemplating how I am going to do this all without Caesar. She feels so perfect with her head resting on my chest, but here she will have to be with me at all times. Here she isn’t safe at all. I am going to have to make her understand that she will have to work with me because I am going to need her. I don’t want to kiss other girls to steal their lives away. I only want to kiss Lettie. We need to get up and go meet Hugo at the new factory. I know that when I do switch my phone on it will be filled with missed calls and messages from him. I should have been there hours ago, but hours ago I needed something else. “Wake up, Lettie. We have to go to work.” I shake her gently out of her deep sleep.

“You go. Let me sleep, Mateo,” she mumbles, half asleep still.

“No, Lettie. Here you stay with me. Always. This city is not like Hunts Point. No one is safe here.” She sits up slowly, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She looks so young, yet her eyes tell a story that ages her beyond her years. “Let’s go shower quickly, then we can go.” I push her with me as a slide to the end of the bed to get up.

An hour later, the two of us walk through the door of my new office, Hugo following us in and we start to work on a new plan. The giant of a man sits opposite me and Lettie sits next to me on the floor, as has become habit. One I like a little too much. Hugo’s eyes dart between us and he shakes his head a little but remains silent.

“I am in talks with local kidnappers about bringing in some bodies. We won’t be able to pre-test so they’ll be random, but we will have some parts to go out quickly,” he tells me, getting straight to the point. We need to get things going. It has now been a week since we shut down and people are getting upset, the wrong sort of people.

“Are we ready to go otherwise? With the clinic and the facility here?” We should be, but I need to know for sure.

“Yes, the clinic is going to cost us a heap though, so we need to find another or set up our own again and fast.” He is right and I know it.

“Start making it happen. We are not short of funds, so let’s donate a new facility to community.” He stands up to leave the office, not a man for small talk.

“Any news from home?” I ask as he is about to leave.

“Interpol and local police are on a manhunt for Caesar. The facility was searched and stripped bare. They went to the apartment but there was nothing to be found, Mateo. We are safe here for now, but I suggest a new plan B get set up within the month to be safe.” Always have an escape plan. Caesar taught me that from the very beginning. Always.

“You think they know we are here?”

“Not yet, but this city is not quite as silent as the one where we were.” He is right, I need to get in with the local rot to be secure here. We will have to pay for the bodies until we work out a way to get them ourselves here. My sixth sense tells me we are still in a whole heap of shit and that this is just a temporary stop.

“Set it up to meet with some suppliers then, I want to get the ball rolling as we have already taken too long.” He nods before closing the door on Lettie and me. My mindset has to change from follower to leader, I need to make the hard decisions myself now. Paying the local kidnappers makes sense since they are already established in the art of making people disappear here.

“Come, Lettie Doll. I want to go look around,” I say, as I push my chair backwards to stand. I need to be familiar with the layout of the building so that I can make sure things run smoothly without us losing too many organs. We walk through the strange building. The layout is so different and it feels all wrong. The new waiting area is laid out in four rows not two, the empty white beds taunting me with memories of lovers with one foot in the grave. The silent void should be beeping with the almost end of their lives. Instead, it is so quiet, as our footsteps are the only noise in the cavernous room. Lettie’s hand squeezes mine as we keep walking. The new harvesting theater is set up and ready to go. I stand in front of the electronic doors looking into our future and the empty beds surrounding me are an agonizing reminder of my past.

I want them filled with new bodies, but I fear I won’t be able to stop myself from loving them and betraying her.
You are a sick man, Mateo. She wants you despite all your faults and you are already planning to hurt her.

Detective Arturo Fuente:

There isn’t such a thing as purity or goodness.

Corruptibility was like a slave to the city he was tired of saving, until he was given a reason once again.

He could bury the demon from his past once and for all.

The stench of this city isn’t something I can ever get used to. I walk around with a permanent smug look on my face with no real reason to continue working with a badge hidden in my pocket. Being a cop in the god-forsaken shit country is like having a target on your back if you haven’t made a deal with the devils. You must choose wisely, how bad you want to burn.

I see things, many things that I turn a blind eye to. You have to learn to survive when you are surrounded by hell. You get used to the fire. After so long, you feel useless without it. I have seen women get raped by drug-addicted fucks, but since they belong to certain cartels that pay enough for me to be oblivious to their ways, I do. I am not good. There is no such thing. People may try to pretend that there is, but it doesn’t exist. There is nothing in this world that is made up of perfection. Everything is flawed. Imperfect and fucking ugly.

I just have more ugly in me than others. I embrace it. It fuels my ability to survive in this hellacious place that I am paid to watch over. For five years, I have worked under Mexico’s Interpol office, specifically looking into the Red Market organ trade. Most people think that it doesn’t exist, but I know all too well it does. At least when a whore from the street is raped, she is fucked enough on crack not to feel it when she is torn apart. She’s thrown back onto the streets to lick her dirty wounds.

The people that I try to save are scattered about in dirty coolers. Their pieces will never be whole again. They are sucked from this disgusting world and I know a man that takes them. A Spanish fuck that I have dreamt of strangling since I heard of his purchasing of the warehouse in Izapalata three years before. He has become, an obsession, if you will. Caesar fucking Salguero. Slime. He took something of mine that I will never be able to get back.

Fuck the Interpol laws. Stupid Mexican government thought I lost my mind when I tried to tell them that Caesar was running a Red Market operation from his cozy New York City warehouse after Fatima went missing. They blamed her drugs, or lack of interest, along with my obsession and threw it on a shelf. I continued to do my homework. Lots of it, but every single time I went to my superiors with it, they dismissed me. Now the goddamned joke is on them. His perfect little paradise has been ransacked and his secrets are set free. Now, I sit outside of his watcher’s shithole apartment until he comes out. I will press him for details until he has no choice but to crack.

The thing about people here is, no one remains loyal. Give an honest man enough money or leverage to betray their glorious master, they won’t think twice about doing it. Threaten the health of their family, you will have them by the balls.

There isn’t such a thing as good people. I may try, for the pieces of those that are in others, those that were never given a choice, but I am not a good one. I simply survive.

I pop open the glove box and retrieve a fifth of tequila, twisting the lid and bringing the glass to my chapped lips. My black and grey moustache is growing over my lips and my sweaty smell is overpowering the car. I can’t remember the last time I showered. The thought of nailing this piece of shit is all that I have been able to think about the past three days since I got the call from my boss. Sleep means nothing when you have the chance of catching the devil. Years of destruction in the making will soon come crumbling down and I will be the man that gets to watch.

The burning alcohol sears my dry throat and I cough, bringing my cigarette up to my lips and taking a long drag as my tired eyes remain on the poverty stricken streets of this depraved borough.

My hazy vision remains on the littered streets as that Esteban fuck emerges from his apartment. I want to charge from my car and shake him by the shoulders, yelling and demanding to know every detail, but I have to play my cards right. I can’t let him know where I got his name from. It’s all about games here in this city. Who knows who and when you play what cards. Life is a gamble. Some play to win. Others play to die.

Esteban spots me from across the street and I toss my cigarette out the window. He knows me from our conversations and pressings before. But there was never any story prior. There was never any sort of airing of dirty laundry. Now that the cat is out of the bag, shit has gotten real. He stops dead in his tracks, knowing that he has no choice but to concede and let me know everything that he knows.

I smile, letting my silver tooth shine in the thick, Mexican sunlight. Finally, I will get the answers that I have wished for.

“Esteban ya dejate de chingaderas. ¿Donde eata Caesar?”

I have pushed him into a corner. One question. One answer is all that I need. Where is Caesar?

“Caesar no esta aqui Arturo ¡te lo prometo.”

The dirty perra puts his hands up like he is begging for his life. Fucking flea knows who holds the cards of life now. I bare my teeth, the frustration and hatred that I hold is too much for me to handle. My sweaty hand wraps itself around his stubbled neck and I squeeze, just enough for him to realize how serious I am.

“No estoy jugando Esteban. Si no me dices donde está ese cabron yo encontrare a tu esposa y la despellejare en vida!”

I briefly imagine what it would look like if I acted out my threats, taking Esteban’s wife from him and peeling her brown skin away from her body until she bleeds to death all because he wouldn’t listen and be a good boy.

Esteban tears up. I can’t be sure if it’s from the pressure I am applying to his neck or the fear that he has for his wife. Humans are selfish creatures. They live and die for themselves. No one else. His face reddens under my grasp and I release. He coughs loudly, making my head pound. It’s taking everything in me not to take his head to the concrete curb until there are brain chunks all over the place, but I want to follow this through till the end. I want to see his face and the look he has when he knows his demise.

“¡lo juro! ¡Mateo! Su sobrino andaba con la muchacha.”

A nephew named Mateo with a girl? She must only have hours to live, if that. She will be another forgotten one. A skeleton that lives on in pieces of others. I must find her and stop this before it goes further. Then everyone can see a side of me that I rarely let go.

Goodness.

The warehouse is just
the same as what it was three years ago when Fatima never came back out. My Fatima. My little girl who fell into the darkness of drugs. She fell and kept falling and would do whatever she could to keep feeling that. She resorted to prostitution to feed her habits, and no matter how many times I tried to help her, she didn’t want it. She belonged to someone else by then. The pimps belong to someone else, the cartels. I belong to someone else, the cartels. The cycle continues.

I should have fought for her. I was her dark angel. I would watch from the shadows at night to make sure she was safe even though I knew the life I wanted for her was one that she couldn’t have anymore. She would always be my little black haired sweetheart that made life decent. She made things not hurt. I can’t remember exactly when life changed. I just know that it is inevitable in a place like this. I still remember the night she was with that Spanish fuck. I can’t bring myself to think his name because he doesn’t deserve it. I saw how he looked at her. Manipulating her with his stare alone. I watched from my car while he puffed on his cigarette. I thought he would be like the rest, paying her for what he wanted then setting her free. But setting her free wasn’t the same kind of version that I hoped for.

I waited for hours and hours. It’s ironic how certain memories can take you back years. My gut feels sick as I see Caesar bringing her close to his body and kissing her differently. Men don’t kiss whores like that. Not unless it means something. They get what they want and leave. They pay to fuck and send them on their way.

Instead, she went into the same warehouse that I am staring at now and never came back out. She was a trial run for him. His back-up plan for his empire in his concrete prison of lies and hatred where dreams are made. He kissed her, held her hand, and brought her into that building. He came back out hours later alone. I waited and waited, only to be greeted by nothing more than Mexican mules with coolers. What the fuck, the thought is making me ill.

I became obsessed, unable to rid myself from thoughts of my daughter, despite where life had led her. I gathered everything about Caesar that I could, from his hometown of Malaga, Spain. He is the eldest with three sisters and he moved to the states when he was eight-years-old. Now forty-four, he makes his money off destroying dirty medical waste from the outside, but I am smart enough to know he is a red market king.

If he had children, I would want to find them and kill them. That goes to show you that I am bad too. Goodness only lasts for so long. I have to save the girl from being like my Fatima before it’s too late.

My breathing stops as two people emerge from a car and into the warehouse I have been stalking. Sure enough, it isn’t Caesar, but the resemblance is uncanny. The girl loops her hand in his and I have to calm myself as the vomit rises slowly in my throat. Images from Fatima’s last day alive flash before my mind with vigor. I see the way that the girl looks at the man, with longing and craving for acceptance. His look is hard and unchanged. She will never be enough for him.

My heart is beating out of control. I have been waiting for this moment for years. Now that it stares me in the face, I can’t promise I will play by the rules either. Irrationality consumes me as my hand meets the door handle and my vision goes black.