by L. J. Martin
"Don’t come any farther you fat ugly fuck"—Pax has never been known for his tact— "I want to talk to Zamudio."
"You ain’t giving orders here, and this is muscle, not fat," he yells back, but stops in his tracks, the automatic pistol resting comfortably in hand, muzzle downward. Al Zamudio appears behind him, using the bodyguard for cover, a bodyguard although who is Volkswagen big is not as wide as Zamudio, but obviously more brave, as he’s in the lead. Of course, he’s paid to be.
Al Zamudio yells over the man’s shoulder. "Hey, we didn’t call this meeting to start a war. Holster your weapons and our guys are putting away theirs. By the way, we got another dozen boys with cuantas...all shooters...hanging out here."
Pax and I both glance over our shoulders, but see no one else.
Zamudio continues. "I told them to stay cool."
Pax looks at me and shrugs, then replies. "We’re not giving up our weapons. Then again, we’d be damn fools to start a war on your turf, with a dozen assholes with guns hanging around...even though we’d kill at least half of them, and maybe you, before they got to us." He’s also never been known for his humility.
"Put ‘em up. Let’s have a drink," big Al says, his voice calm, then he adds, "Those boys who met you...they need a doc?"
This time it’s my turn to talk. "They need some manners. They just learned some humility. One may have a broke leg and Pedro is gonna need a dentist."
"Come on over and we’ll go upstairs. I’ll have somebody come take care of them."
Again Pax and I glance at each other and shrug shoulders. Then we holster weapons and head over. Pax eyes the big bodyguard as he passes, Mac 10 hanging in hand at the man’s side, "Don’t raise that unless you want to eat it."
"Eat me," the big boy mumbles, but doesn’t move the automatic a half-inch.
Al Zamudio turns and clomps up the stairs, damn near filling the three foot wide opening. He could kill us both if he merely stumbles and steamrolls backwards. Pax follows him, and I move behind, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the muzzle following stays pointed at the floor.
We exit the stairway onto a patio with a pool large enough to accommodate a small yacht, surrounded by four girls who look as if they could be dancers in one of the major venues. Blonde, brunette, redheads; tan, long-legged, and jaw-dropping topless, they wave.
"Not bad, eh?" Al says as he heads for the sliding glass door among four ten-foot-wide ones in a row. We follow, and he turns to the bodyguard. "Wait outside."
And he does.
Al yells at one of the girls, "Roxie, we need a bartender." She rises from a chaise lounge and as she walks to the slider, to my great dismay, ties a skimpy top over a set of magnificent boobs that must have set some boob, probably Al, back ten grand. But that’s toy money for him, and these are great toys.
Brother Rico is bent over a pool table. He looks up, "You guys use a stick?"
"Sure, why not," I offer and go to a rack and pick out a cue. Pax is right behind and does the same. Al walks to another rack and picks up one with his name inlaid in mother of pearl on a black lacquer paint job. I notice Rico has a matching cue. Both of them chalk them up.
Rico is re-racking the balls and glances up. "A grand a game, one and fifteen in the side pocket, scratch and you pull a ball including the one you sunk, if you did, scratch the eight ball and of course your done. Lag for break."
"All good," I counter, "except you're not playing Howard Hughes, Rico. How about a hundred a game?"
He shrugs. "You need to work more so you can play harder."
I give him a tight grin. "We get to play all we need, and like to work...and hard is my middle name."
He merely grunts at that.
We lag, and Pax lays one up against the rail, so he breaks. Al follows, then me, then Rico. Pax sinks the fourteen, so we’re the stripes. Al yells at the blonde, who’s taken a position behind the bar. "Get these guys a drink. What you guys want?"
"Scotch, neat," I say, and Pax nods in agreement.
"The good stuff," he instructs her, "then beat a trail back outside."
The blonde pours us three fingers from a bottle that has a gold embossed twenty-four on the label, and I take a sip and admire her well-tuned ass as she heads for the glass door.
"You want some of that?" Al asks. "All you got to do is ask."
"I can manage to get my own tail," I reply. "But you do have good taste."
Rico leans both hands on the table and glances from me to Pax then back. "Okay, wise guys, we hear you get things done. One guy does the brain, one the brawn...that about right?"
Pax laughs. "Yeah, Mike here’s the brain, I handle his light work."
"I ain’t fucking with you. Is that about right?"
It’s my turn to smile. "We both do whatever needs doing, but Pax here is an honest businessman, who runs a straight up company. I hire him once in a while if I need some computer stuff."
"And you...I hear you been in some bad shit from time to time and don’t give a flying fuck about the law or who gets hurt, just so long as the job gets done?"
"That’s a little bit true. I do give a rat's ass and I don’t break the law, at least the good laws, I just don’t think the law is always right. Some time they’ve got constraints I don’t have."
"So," Rico says to me, "how about that hundred grand you were offered?"
"How about it. You were serious?"
"As a heart attack, and at my weight, that’s serious."
"So, you want your granddaughter. How about your son?"
"Raoul has got his own set of problems, and he’s brought them down on us. I want my granddaughter to be safe. She’s just a kid."
"How so...he brought them down on you?"
Al slams a ball into a side pocket, and before his brother can speak, jumps in, "You don’t think that fire at the club was a faulty light switch do you? He fucked the cartels, he's on the hard stuff and is no father for my granddaughter, and now we’re all gonna get fucked." He misses the next shot, so I’m up.
I shrug. "So, who’s got the kid?"
"Raoul, but we think the feds have Raoul, so the feds have the kid. The kid’s got family way down in Mexico, and I want her to go there and away from all this shit. Her uncle’s a priest—
"A priest?" I ask, a little astounded.
"And her aunt, his sister, works for the church in a nice little town overlooking the ocean, with a good school she can attend. But now the feds got her in custody."
"Arrested? Feds don’t arrest five year olds."
"Witness protection. We got lots of contacts, some even inside the fed system, and we can’t get shit on Raoul. We got contacts inside the cartel, and they are looking for him as hard as Rico is. And they’ll find Raoul and I don’t want the kid hurt in the overflow. It’ll be a bomb or some bad shit that can get my granddaughter as collateral damage. And she can’t stay with us. We expect a federal indictment to fall anytime, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. And the cartel would love to get their hands on her as they know they’ll get anything they want of us...including our heads...if they got the little girl." He moves over and plants a corncob size finger in the center of my chest, to stress his point. "You mouth this around, and you’re a target of all of us, you got it?"
"I got it, and I don’t shiv-a-get one way or the other. I got no iron in this fire, except for your daughter in law, and I plan to see whoever took her head gives up his. And I’m gonna piss down his neck hole after I take it."
Al laughs at that. "Shoot," he says, as it’s my turn, then continues when my bank shot misses by a half inch. "You have something going with Rico’s daughter-in-law?"
"Yeah, a business deal, and I don’t like my deals dicked with. It’s a matter of personal pride not to have my clients lose their heads."
"You might as well forget that. The cartels were sending Raoul and us a message. Looks like they didn’t know he’d shit-canned her. As for her head, I’m sure it will show up on our doorstep...that’s
how those animals below the border do their biz. If the cartels don’t get us, the feds will, so we’re gonna find a spot with sun and palm trees where we won’t be found."
"So, who is the cartel here in Vegas?" I ask.
"I’ll give you what we know. They move around, they bring people in and take people out. I figure we got about two more days to live, or split. You won’t hear from us after that...or at least you won’t be able to find us. We’re gone. We need to know how to find you. I presume it’s through Weatherwax here?"
"That’s how."
"We’ll check with him from time to time. You get the granddaughter back, you get paid."
"You say you got lots of contacts, so I’m not the only one to get this offer?"
"You and a half-dozen others. It’s pot luck...first one with the goods, all healthy and happy...gets paid."
"I don’t like to butt heads when I’m working on a job."
"Shit happens. You look hard for the little girl you’ll get no shit from us. First guy with the goods gets the scratch."
"So, who’s my competition?"
"Not your business."
"You want me to steal a subject out of witness protection which I’m sure will be tantamount to kidnapping, compete with God knows who, and dodge the cartels while doing so, for a lousy hundred grand."
This time it’s Rico’s turn to laugh. As he chalks his cue, he says, "Look, we’ll make you the same offer we made others...you’ll hear about it anyway...it’s a quarter mil you bring the girl back without a scratch on her. That enough to get your interest?"
I take a long draw on the scotch and study them both over the rim of the glass before speaking, then offer, "Get me what you’ve got on the cartel and I’ll find your granddaughter and, God willing, bring her to safety without a scratch, and without the feds knowing what happened to them. ...Then I’ll take my revenge on the bad boys."
Rico sticks a ham-size hand out and shakes. He gives me a look like a cat at a canary, and then chuckles. "I heared you had more balls than brains. I hope you live to collect the dough."
"We didn’t do bad against your boys downstairs," I say, maybe a little too much cockiness in my tone.
"My guys are choir boys compared to those hyped up chingasos who are all chiveros, on the needle, and they’d do their madres for a fucking quarter or another hit on the stick. I wish you luck, compadre."
"Stick?" I ask.
"Needle," he replies.
It’s the first time I’ve heard either of them betray their backgrounds, probably from the streets of South Central in L.A.
"We’re up two balls," I say, "so we’re letting you off the hook. I want to get to work. Give me what you got on the cartel and I’m out of here."
Rico shrugs and walks over behind the bar. He returns with a manila envelope. "You say where you got this and it’s your head on the platter."
"I don’t talk about my clients, and you just became one...unless I find you had anything—and I mean anything—to do with Carol Janson’s killing. Then all bets are off." I turn to Pax, who’s making one last shot. "Let’s beat a trail."
"We could have made an easy hun here, Mike. These guys got no game."
"Let’s hit it," and we head for the stairway.
Rico calls after us, and we stop. "You should know," he says, "the little girl gets hurt while you’re trying to pocket this quarter mil, and you’re going down hard. I mean she ain’t to have so much as a broken fingernail."
"You plays the game, you takes your chances," I say, and give him my back. We take the stairs three at a time.
There’re six guys in the garage, shooting the shit as we pass. They look like rhinos, hippos and elephants around a Zimbabwe watering hole. The one who looks like the hornless rhino—I don’t think I’ve ever seen another guy with not only cauliflower ears but nose as well—has the Mac 10 shoved in his belt, and yells after us as we pass. "Hope to see you girls again soon. Pedro says he’ll be looking forward to it."
"Yeah," I say, giving him a finger over my shoulder without bothering to turn, "soon as the fat fuck heals up, I’ll worry about that."
"You fuckin’ well better," he says.
The gate guard has the gates open as we roar through.
12
There’s something about having yourself in the jaws of a couple of Orcas that makes you relish being alive; I can’t get my mind off the beautiful blonde who, I hope, is waiting patiently for my return.
As we head back toward town, the hot desert wind in our faces, Pax reaches over and turns the radio off.
"Hey, that was Jim Croce," I snap.
"Yeah, an old dead guy, and you may be right along with him you take on this gig."
"I got an envelope full of information I didn’t have before. That’s the first piece of business."
"You never cease to amaze me," he says, shaking his head. "Why do you give a damn? You said you had twenty minutes with this Carol woman."
"Twenty-five, not counting the time I had with just pieces and parts of her. She was a nice lady, frightened, a little confused and hurt maybe, but she didn’t deserve some fat fuck carving her head off in the privacy of her bedroom." I shrug. "That just doesn’t stand with me, and if the cops catch up with them, and the chances are slim and none, what will the assholes get? Twenty-five to life, out in eight. Or even if they get sentenced to the so-called lethal injection, it’s, at a minimum, twenty more years of prime time TV with three hots and a cot and the best exercise equipment money can buy. Not that they’ll ever actually get the needle. And some cute little fuzzy faced twenty-two-year-old cell mate so they can get their tube in the chocolate every night, while Carol Janson Zamudio is hosting a worm banquet."
"Nice image," Pax says, again shaking his head.
So I continue. "No, Mr. Weatherwax, that won’t fly with me. So, yeah, I give a damn. Mostly about how fucked up this country has become."
He sighs deeply, manages a "point taken" and turns the radio back on.
I go through my options while I wheel the Vette through the Vegas traffic and Pax naps.
Pax can nap anywhere, anytime, even if he’s just napped.
My next course of action, after celebrating being alive with the beautiful blonde, Jennifer, is spending some quality time with Carol Janson’s sister, Crystal; with Wally the accountant and paramour of Carol’s former husband; and having Pax hit the world wide web and see what he can turn up on the cartel and their local connections. I presume we have a big jump on the latter, thanks to the manila envelope given us by the Zamudios.
I’ve got plenty on my plate, but finding the little girl is on top of my list...but not because of the quarter mil, although that’s a nice aside should it come to pass. Not that I’ll ever turn her over to the Zamudio brothers which in fact means the likelihood of making the quarter mil is slim and none, and Slim’s out of town. The sister, I hope, is the answer to that quandary. The fact is, a little girl deserves to start life somewhere besides under the tutelage of a bunch of feds, or her grandfather, a Mexican mafia don, if I figure right—even if her great uncle is a priest and her aunt an upstanding apostle of the church and proctor or teacher at a church school.
I don’t know for sure what her fate should be, but the aforementioned options aren’t worth considering.
As soon as I dump Pax I’ll try Beauty by Crystal again to see if Crystal herself has returned from Santa Barbara. If she’s not back, I’ll move to see what I can learn about Wally the accountant. All this while Pax has a chance to get the info on the cartel.
He wakes up as I pull into the parking area behind his office. I have no idea how he does that, but he had the same kind of inner clock when we were in the Corps.
"Finally," he says, stretching, "I can ditch your dumb ass which means I’ll have a chance of surviving another day."
"Wimp," I reply, and he gives me the finger as he heads for the back door.
"Hey," I yell after him, "you forgot the envelope." I pass the manila
out the window.
"So, my hopes of returning to actually making a living are once again dashed?"
"It won’t take you ten minutes to dig the dirt on the guys in that file and you know it, then you can go back to making enough dough to buy supper for the beautiful Jennifer and myself."
"Fat friggin’ chance," he says, heading back to the door, but this time with the manila envelope in hand. "You get my knuckles busted on a hard headed gorilla and you want me to buy? FFC."
I should know that one, but my mind must be elsewhere. "FFC?"
"Fat fucking chance."
"Call me when you hear from the ladies. I’ll buy, somewhere cheap."
He again gives me the finger, over his broad shoulder, and the door closes behind him without further fanfare.
Beauty by Crystal is open and full of ladies in various forms of beautifying—some with curlers in their hair or combs or brushes fluffing away, some under dryers, a whole bank of them with little Asian ladies polishing and lacquering nails, both fingers and toes, with more colors than the Home Depot paint department, and some zero color, white and clear. The smells assault my nostrils even with the roar of an exhaust fan interfering with the gaggle of three-dozen women spreading intimate knowledge of friends and enemies exercising that seemingly female prerogative, gossip.
The flaxen haired receptionist is in place behind the counter, only this time the green eye shadow is replaced with a golden sheen. She blinks her intense greens at me and eyes flash like a pair of shiny new double eagles. She is impressive.
I give her my most mesmerizing smile, which does not appear to mesmerize.
"You’re looking for Crystal again?" she asks. My smile is not returned.
"I am," I say, trying the smile again.
"She’s due in but I don’t know when, exactly."
"You’re particularly beautiful today," I say, and finally the smile is returned.