Nacho Unleashed

by Laurence Shames

  Meanwhile, scrabbling through the ductwork, her fingertips raw and her toes cramping from the effort of her slinking crawl, Rita felt more than heard the percussion. It came through the ducts not as a single impact but as a wave, the kind of seismic folding that toppled villages and buried people. Terror overcame exhaustion and she slithered on like an injured snake.

  In Key West, five men and a chihuahua were squeezed into a car that spat gravel from the compound driveway as it peeled out and sped toward the distillery.

  

  Max delivered a second epic blow and then another and another. The steel door mocked his exertions and shot the impacts back at him. His hands buzzed, his elbows ached, and his calm gradually gave way to a frustrated fury, a battle of wills against a slab of metal. He pummeled away and celebrated every dent.

  Shintar covered his ears against the infernal din but the maddening sounds cut right through his palms. Desperate for relief, he stood up on shaky legs and took another small hit of his drug. As the elixir oozed into his blood, the racket kept its volume but seemed to lose its hard, acidic edge, as if the noise now came from underwater.

  It didn’t seem that way to Rita. To her, each new clang was like a gust of dirty wind, stinging her face, punishing her progress. She clenched her teeth and grunted her defiance. Ahead, a mere few feet and impossibly far away, light was coming through a vent. She labored toward it, yearning, as toward a saving trench in warfare.

  The packed car roared across the Cow Key Bridge, putting Key West in the rearview mirror and the neon blot of Stock Island straight ahead, its ragged palm trees silhouetted against an orange-tinted sky.

  

  Max was in a full sweat by the time he’d battered the door just enough to be able to wiggle the blade of a small crowbar into the slot between the lock and jamb. After all the frantic hammering, there was a slow and almost lubricious satisfaction, a vindication, in the quiet act of fitting the blade into its groove. The outcome of the battle was assured now. The door would lose. Lightly at first, almost teasingly, tauntingly, Max began to pry with the crowbar. The first small splinters of doorframe sheared off and fluttered to the floor.

  Rita’s fingernails were bleeding as she struggled for leverage to press down on the ventilation grate. For a moment she imagined that the flimsy metal was yielding but then realized it was her tingling arms that were giving out. Struggling forward one more agonizing squirm, she twisted as far as she could and leaned down with a shoulder.

  Max traded up for a crowbar almost as long as he was tall. He gripped it like a mighty oar, braced a foot against the wall, and pulled back with all his strength. The doorframe sundered. The lock was still locked but it was suddenly attached to nothing. One good shove made the door swing open on its sagging hinges. Max dropped the crowbar and bulled into the lab…

  …Just as the ventilation grate was clattering to the tile floor with Rita somersaulting right behind it. She almost stuck the landing but not quite, breaking her fall with a rather graceful drop-and-roll that brought her to rest nearly on top of Mikel Shintar’s feet. She looked up. He seemed very tall and bulky from that angle. He was grossly naked underneath his lab coat, and he was pointing a gun almost straight down, directly at her head.

  He gave her a light kick with the toe of a flip-flop and told her to stand up. Then he pivoted toward Max, raised his pistol shoulder high, and ordered him to freeze. The man with the pitted face was caught in a posture like a linebacker in a high school yearbook. Shintar, his eyes wild, synapses crackling, panned the gun from one to the other of the would-be heroes and his lips curled into a condescending little smile.

  35

  S o this guy with the squashed nose is driving like a maniac, running red lights, cutting off RVs, taking curves so fast that the rest of us are leaning first one way then the other like laundry on a clothesline on a really windy day. Master has ended up in the middle seat in back. I’m on his lap, feeling his bony legs trying to brace against the curves so we don’t end up all piled against one door or the other. Albin still seems to be in shock about having reproduced. Anthony is tensely hunched behind the passenger seat where Costanza is sitting with a shoe propped on the glove compartment. The car is teeming with questions that need to be asked and things that need explaining, but mostly we’re all just hoping to reach Stock Island in one piece and there isn’t time for chitchat.

  Just beyond the bridge, we veer off the main road, race along another one that looks like no one lives there if they have a choice, and finally come to a screeching stop in the parking lot of a square brick building. Oily dust rises up and swirls in our headlights; it’s a murky dust that doesn’t sparkle. The flat-nosed guy turns off the engine, and when our eyes adjust I see a crummy bicycle chained to a tree. I know that bike. It’s Rita’s. There’s one other car in the lot, nothing special.

  Costanza points to it and says, “Hey, isn’t that the piece a shit you and Max been driving?”

  The big man blinks toward it, flinches, winces, and then screams out, “Holy shit, it is.” Suddenly he’s ten times more amped up and he leads the charge out of the car. Much later, when I finally figure out what the deal is between him and Max, I understand his desperate fierceness better. He isn’t just on an errand for his boss. He’s trying to rescue his true love. Just like Anthony is trying to rescue his, even though I’m not sure he really knows it yet.

  Anyway, we all jump out of the car. Well, okay, Master doesn’t exactly jump. But he tries his best to keep up. Me, I’m torn. Part of me wants to be where the action is, at the head of the pack. Another part knows that my responsibility is to stick close to Master. So I try to have it both ways. I race forward, I trot back; I race forward, I trot back. It’s a lot of extra mileage, but what the hell. I’m caught up in the excitement of the moment and I’ve got energy to burn.

  We file into the distillery through a door that isn’t even locked. In the main part of the building, everything seems fine. The air smells of sugar cane and alcohol. The stills are softly hissing and gurgling; a cheery little whistle is coming from a valve. The only slightly spooky thing is that there’s no one there to keep an eye on the machinery. None of us notices the missing vent grate; who would think to look that high?

  So Rocco and Anthony go sprinting down a long and echoing hallway and skid around a corner, the rest of us stringing out behind. We all stop cold in front of a sagging, half-open metal door that looks like it’s been through an artillery attack. It’s got crescent dings all over it; the bolt of its useless lock sticks out like a defiant tongue. On the floor next to it is a scattering of giant tools that only a big, strong guy could wield.

  Everyone takes a deep breath. Everyone glances at everybody else. Nobody steps through the doorway just yet. Costanza yells out, “Shintar!”

  “Yes?” comes a voice from inside the lab. The voice sounds almost normal, and that’s what’s really chilling about it. If it sounded more obviously screwy it wouldn’t have struck me as so utterly deranged. “Come in, come in,” the voice goes on. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  So everyone does another gut check. Albin, taking to fatherhood, pats Anthony on the shoulder and then we cross the threshold. Of course we’re expecting to find Rita and Max or at least some sign of them, so we’re befuddled as hell when we step into the lab and there’s no one there but Shintar, filthy, greasy, and unshaved. He’s standing next to a metal table with a beaker of amber liquid on it. Behind him is some kind of closet with rubber gaskets sealing off a sliding door. His eyes are doing pinwheels, he has lines of dried spit at the corners of his mouth, and he happens to be wagging a pistol at us.

  Anthony seems unfazed by the gun. Maybe he’s so focused on finding his almost-girlfriend that he doesn’t even notice it. “Where’s Rita?” he demands.

  “Who?” says Shintar innocently. He’s smiling, if you can call that twisted lip a smile. “I don’t know a Rita. Never heard of her.”

  Well, it so
happens that I already know damn well that Rita’s been there. I’ve picked up her scent—the lavender shampoo, the eucalyptus soap, the freshness of her skin, the bready richness of her lap—and it’s making me crazy with frustration that I don’t have spoken words to tell what I know.

  “And where’s Max?” says Rocco.

  “That goon? I have no idea.” He wiggles the gun at all of us. We try to hold our ground.

  Costanza says, “Come on, Mikel, give it up. We don’t want anything from you. Keep your secrets, keep your formulas. Just tell us where our friends are.”

  “Your friends. Your flunkies, you mean. The flunkies you sent to steal what’s mine.”

  “I didn’t send anybody,” Costanza says.

  “You sent ‘em. You sent ‘em with a wrecking crew. You sent ‘em dropping from the ceiling.”

  “What?” Costanza’s eyes flick toward the beaker of amber fluid. “You’re hallucinating, man. Fuck kind of stuff you on?”

  “What kind of stuff? Best stuff there is, Carlo. I did it. I made the drug. You were a small-time idiot to doubt me. Now I have it and you send your nobodies to steal it from me.”

  Costanza denies it again. It gets us nowhere, so Master takes a half-step forward, like a singer stepping out of a chorus to do a solo. In his gruff but tactful way, he says, “Look, maybe a neutral observer or let’s say a kinda mediator wit’ no ax to grind might help defuse this difficult and potentially tragic situation which is, at bottom and at the enda the day, nothin’ more than a misunderstanding wit’ perhaps a modicum of bein’ sick and tired of each other as business partners. Happens alla time. Hurt feelings. Fraught nerves. Feelings a bein’ taken advantage of or even out and out ripped off. So let’s clear a few things up. No one sent anyone. No one’s stealin’ anything. And no one needs to get hurt here.”

  Shintar apparently is not impressed with this attempt at diplomacy. “I’ll decide who needs to get hurt,” he says. “And who the hell are you anyway, you fossil? You a ghost? A mummy? A fucking corpse?”

  “That’s a disgusting way to talk to an old man,” says Albin.

  Shintar just zeroes in on Albin’s stud earring. “Oh, sorry. And how should I talk to a queer?”

  “Watch it, Mikel,” says Anthony. “That’s my father.”

  “You poor bastard.”

  Well, while Shintar is insulting the whole room, I’m practically jumping out of my skin because I’m pretty sure I know where Rita is and I can’t stand it anymore that I’m not helping. So I put my nose on the floor and start sniffing my way toward the door with the rubber gaskets. I’m on her trail, I know it, zig-zagging along, but I keep getting closer and closer to Shintar’s feet, and when I’m almost there, he kicks me. Thank God he’s wearing flip-flops and not some hard and pointy shoes, but still, it hurts plenty when he catches me right between my front legs, right on the old ribcage, and I go flying, pulling off an airborne three-sixty before landing on paws that skid and scrape against the tile floor.

  I guess my maneuver is a pretty good distraction, because that’s when Rocco makes his move toward the crazy chemist. He grunts, he lunges, he springs like he’s about to make a flying tackle, but he isn’t quite quick enough and Shintar shoots him. Just like that. Squeezes the trigger and shoots him. The sound of the gun going off is sharp and high-pitched and dry, less like an explosion than like a whip being snapped right against your ear.

  Rocco staggers but doesn’t quite fall. He’s holding his left shoulder and blood is seeping out between his fingers. He’s breathing hard but Shintar is breathing even harder, seeming totally shocked that he actually shot somebody. I can’t tell if he’s giddy with power or giddy with shame, but he’s definitely giddy. His hand is shaking, there’s sweat on his upper lip, and he starts to ramble.

  “So, you came to find your friends. Fine. Nice. Nice to have friends. Even burglars. They should just about be ready by now. Ready as in cooked, I mean.”

  He orders us to move a couple steps away and he bunches us together by gestures with the gun. We’re watching Rocco bleed and we obey.

  Keeping his eyes on us, the pistol twitchy in his hand, he backs toward the door with the rubber gaskets and starts to slide it open with his foot. As soon as it’s open just a crack, I get a whole new flood of smells. The main one is like nail polish. But there’s also one like cake. And molasses. And marshmallow. And Rita.

  “They came to steal from me,” the madman rambles on. “Foolish. Very foolish. They didn’t think I’d protect what’s mine? Didn’t think I’d have a gun? I held it on them. I made the big goon tie her up. He hated doing it. Not me. I enjoyed watching. It excited me. And I liked tying him. On the floor with my foot on his spine. Big dumb ox, he couldn’t do a thing.”

  He slides the door a little wider open. I see metal pipes snaking down from the ceiling. I see the curved edge of a copper vat.

  “What to do with them?” the maniac goes on. “That became the question. All trussed up, duct tape on their mouths. What to do? Well, I’m a scientist. I do experiments. Here we are in a distillery. Why not distill them? Why not see what they add to the blend?”

  He kicks the door farther open and I see the copper tank softly gleaming like a cannibal’s kettle. Next to it, two pairs of shoes. One man’s, one woman’s. No other sign of Rita or Max, and it’s suddenly the clearest thing in the world to me that I can’t let this go on one more second. I have to make my move. If the lunatic shoots me, he shoots me. I’m a small target, I like my odds, but the truth is that in that moment I’m not thinking odds, all I’m thinking is that I can’t just sit there while Rita’s stewing.

  So I charge. My paws take an extra heartbeat to gain purchase on the tile floor, but I pump my legs as hard as I can and I head straight for him. I’m at full speed by the time he sees me moving, and by reflex he swivels hard in the direction of the motion. Big mistake. The panels of his lab coat separate and I see my target as clearly as if it had a big red bulls-eye on it. I zero in. He points the gun in my direction. I see him tighten down to pull the trigger. God knows where the bullet ends up, but the shot stings my ears and the phosphorous in the powder burns my nose as I launch myself right at his balls.

  My jaws are open as I leap and in that moment of sheer, pure instinct I am no longer a four-pound chihuahua but a great white shark, a grizzly bear, Tyrannosaurus rex. Zero fear. All will. Unleashed! Unleashed at last! Unleashed, and with a noble purpose! My teeth find the madman’s scrotum and I chomp down through sparse fuzz and loose skin on a testicle. It yields to my bite like an overripe apricot and I hear an unearthly scream. The gun goes off again. Let it! A fist comes down on the top of my head. I barely feel it. I’m unstoppable. I’m primal. He wiggles and whirls, trying to shake me off. My tail and hind legs fly out behind me as he spins, my neck stretches like a goose, but my ferocious jaws don’t fail. I bite harder and taste blood.

  Suddenly I feel more bodies clustering around me. Anthony and Rocco join the battle. Rocco with his one good arm slams Shintar on the wrist and the gun goes clattering to the floor. Anthony gets him in a hammerlock. The madman grunts and writhes and kicks and snarls, but gradually the fight goes out of him. When I feel his legs go slack, I release my grip and drop to the floor. I’m panting and growling up at him. He’s dark red in the face, his lips are purple, his eyeballs are the color of egg yolk. His crotch—don’t even ask. Struggling for breath, he mutters, “You thieving bastards. You thieving, jealous, envious, ordinary bastards.”

  “Shut up,” Costanza says. He’s picked up the gun and is holding it on his former partner.

  Anthony and Rocco dash through the sliding door and toward the copper tank. Shintar jerks his gaze toward them and says, “You’re too late, losers. They’re poached. They’re pickled.”

  Anthony frantically twists some valves and throws some switches.

  The chemist’s yellow eyes shift away from the gun and toward the beaker half-full of amber liquid. “Let me have my drug, Carlo. It’s mine a
nd I’m in pain and I want it.”

  “It’s poison, Mikel. It’s death.”

  “I know it is. Who knows that better than me? Let me have it.”

  Rocco jumps onto a low platform and wrestles with the clamps on top of the vat.

  Shintar’s voice turns wheedling. “Come on, Carlo. We used to be friends. Please. I need it.”

  Together, Anthony and Rocco raise the copper lid.

  “Need it, Mikel? Need it? You addicted?”

  “No.”

  Master and Albin move forward to help free the bodies from the tank. I’m left sitting there, looking up at the wreck of the brilliant scientist.

  “Smart, strong you?” Costanza says. “You a fucking junkie now?”

  “No! No…Yes. Yes, okay, I am. Happy now? Happy, Carlo? Please, just let me have my drug.”

  Master’s holding Rocco by the ankles as the big man reaches into the still with his one good arm. Albin lovingly holds his son around the knees as he bends down from the opposite side.

  “Carlo, we were friends once. Don’t make me beg. Let me do this my way.”

  Costanza bites his lower lip and looks sadly at his sometime partner. He says nothing, but after a moment he lowers the gun.

  The genius chemist half stumbles, half sleepwalks forward and grabs the beaker of amber juice with both hands. For just an instant, he holds it up to the light, maybe admiring its color, maybe just teasing himself with this last delay, then he guzzles it down in one long gulp and carefully places the empty vessel back on the counter. He does a slow pirouette and looks all around his lab, though it doesn’t seem like he’s seeing anything. Then he snaps to attention like a toy soldier, his arms and legs twitching stiffly as if he had no knees or elbows. His bloated face tightens one last time before finally losing its scowl. His nasty little smile comes uncurled and softens into something almost like contentment as he hits the floor.

  Epilogue