One More Body

by Josh Stallings

  “I do too, baby, but you know Zero would kill me.”

  “Only if he caught you,” she said playfully.

  “You are crazy.”

  “Just a bit.”

  LeJohn had stopped fucking her once he found he had feelings for the girl. He said he would wait until she wanted to, no pressure. Not the others.

  FREEDOM DREAMT OF Mad Hatters and rabbits and killing Zero and his crew, slowly. Even LeJohn wasn’t spared in her dream world. She would replay the dreams or fantasize about killing them in the day. One day I will flood this house with their blood, Freedom thought.

  “You my man,” is what Lil’ Diamond said.

  CHAPTER 26

  You have to be a real asshole to get searched crossing into Mexico.

  Or a six-foot plus tall Viking with too many tats and not enough cash to be a rock star. They had the Tempest’s rear seat out and were getting a cutting torch to attack the fenders when an RV full of drunks in hunting camo caught their attention. Like fucking locusts they moved on, leaving the Tempest in pieces.

  Americans pride themselves on their ingenuity and work ethic—best in the world. Nope. Mexicans. They see a hole in the market, they fill that bitch. Three skinny kids in grease-stained coveralls appeared out of the shadows.

  “Man, they fucked your ride up.”

  “No respect for the classics, right? Damn.” The oldest was maybe twenty. He looked over the parts and my belongings, shook his head. “You ain’t got no tools . . . you are fucked.”

  “You have tools?”

  “Sure, what kinda mechanic don’t have tools?”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred, cash.”

  “Eighty.” I gave him a hard guy face, but my heart wasn’t in it. The fucker had to make his bills just like the rest of us wage monkeys.

  “Ok, I like you,” he lied. “One hundred and you get us a six-pack of cold cervezas.”

  “Done.” We shook hands like it still meant something. It did to me. A fucked up sense of honor, doing what I say I will, hand shakes sealing a deal, . . . all that Old World bullshit would one day get me killed. There is a line in The Wild Bunch, one of the few movies I could ever sit through: “It matters who you give your word to.” Or something like that. But that’s bullshit. Morals don’t shift to fit a situation. I have very few morals, so the ones I got I need to keep strong.

  A six-pack and twenty minutes later the Tempest was good as new. They even washed her at no charge. Leaning in the shade with the boss mechanic, finishing our beer, he smiled and pointed at the rear body panel, the one made of carbon fiber that hid a thin compartment with my guns, cash and alternate IDs. “Your guy, he did good work. Here or Norte?”

  “Norte.”

  “Solid. Those border boys never would find it.”

  “This a shakedown?” I was ready to drag his skinny ass into the shadows if he answered wrong.

  “Chill, die young worrying like that. I was just admiring the workmanship.” The calm camaraderie was gone. I drained my beer and hit the road.

  AT THE TECATE cut off I parked behind a Pemex station and recovered the Ruger. It was raining lightly but still too warm for the vest, so I left it and the scattergun hidden. Rolling into Ensenada, I knew of two ways to get to Señor Sanchez: find his mansion some place up on gringo hill, or fuck with his cash stream and wait for him to show up. I went with door number two.

  Wet Pussy, the neon sign said. It had a Fritz the Cat painting of a wet, big-titted kitty working a pole next to the entrance. Got to love a strip club that has no pretensions. Glendale, CA has The Gentleman’s Club. Gives the impression of an empire-era smoking library, with high-backed faux leather club chairs. In fact, it was a shitty warehouse of a joint where men sat in booths while Eastern European girls rubbed their asses on guys’ crotches until they busted a nut in their Jockeys. Wet Pussy is just what it sounds like—a stage with a pole, tables to drink at while making the deal, and seven red-doored rooms behind the dance floor.

  A teenager with tiny breasts, pigtails and shaved pubic hair was dancing at the edge of the stage for a sweaty, middle-aged gringo. He was dropping dollars on the stage one at a time, slow, like it was big green. His full focus was on her childlike body.

  I didn’t hold back.

  I hit him full force on the side of his head with the Ruger. It’s a heavy piece, weighing close to three pounds fully loaded. It connected with his lust-flushed cheek with a meaty thud. He flew sideways, blood spraying from his torn ear. The baby dancer screamed. I put the boots to the guy’s ribs and he puked tacos and blood. The bouncer was almost on me when I spun. Broke his nose with the revolver’s barrel. He was a big man, but not built, fat. He didn’t go down, so I cocked the Ruger. That massive hole stared death at him. He dropped to his knees and fought back tears.

  One of the red doors opened. A drunken sailor stepped out with a young girl under each arm. When he saw the mayhem at my feet he released the girls and charged. He was military fit. Young. Wild. He almost made it to me before the stool I hurled busted across his chest. Give him props, he kept coming. I clubbed him with the Ruger and drove my knee up into his nuts. He gasped. I kicked his nuts again as he went down. I ran to the red doors, kicking them open. They were empty. It was early. They stank of sex sweat and pine-scented disinfectant.

  With the pistol, I motioned the freaked-out whores to sit at the bar.

  “What the fuck, dude? They liked—”

  I kicked the sailor in the head. That shut him the fuck up. I zip-tied his wrists.

  “I have a family, don’t kill me, I can pay.” Sweaty man was at the bargaining stage.

  “You have a daughter?” I whispered in his ear.

  “Yes, two.”

  I kicked him hard enough to hear a rib snap.

  With the three men in ghetto cuffs, I pushed a table against the front door. The woman behind the bar looked near sixty. She’d seen all sorts of bad craziness, took this in stride. She poured me a tall tequila without needing to be asked. I drank it in one long pull.

  “Call Señor Sanchez. Tell him Moses McGuire is here.” She didn’t play games, didn’t act like she didn’t know the man she worked for. She spoke rapid Spanish into a cell then handed it to me.

  “Hello, this is Roberto Sanchez. My father is otherwise engaged. How may I help you?”

  “Stanford?”

  “Berkley, how did you know?”

  “You don’t sound like a big enough prick to be East Coast. Tell daddy he has ten minutes to get to the Wet Pussy before I start taking apart some tourists.” I dropped the phone and crushed it under my heel.

  “Uno mas?” the bartender asked.

  “Why not.” I made a circular motion including the naked and near-naked girls. The girls sat at the bar chirping away in Spanish. The oldest was maybe sixteen, wearing a paisley robe open, showing her naked body. Her hair was cropped short and brilliant blonde. Every once in a while she’d flash her big brown eyes my way—just enough flirt to see if that was what I wanted—uncross her arms and give me a full look at her breasts. If I was a pedophile, this would be a real playground.

  “Bro, my hands are numb, what you say?”

  Sailor boy started to cry when I stomped on his ankle. Heard a bone crack. Wanted to crush his head. The front door opening took my attention. The table I’d pushed against it gave me enough time to roll over the bar. Two men in black tact gear and ski masks came in low and ready. They swept the club with their MP5s.

  I watched them in the mirror.

  I put in my earplugs.

  Waited.

  They turned away from the bar.

  I popped up.

  Shot one took out a black clad knee. Shot two nailed his partner, who was spinning to shoot me. Took him in the left leg, just below the body armor. Boom, boom, and the room went quiet. I dropped down. Opened the Ruger’s cylinder and replaced the two spent shells.

  “That was my security team, I suspect,” Sanchez said through
the open door.

  “Was. They’re down but still armed. You might wanna tell them to take their fingers off the triggers.”

  “La guerra acabó,” he shouted, and just that quick they slid the machine guns out of reach. “I’m coming in. Shoot me, the men out here will burn the place to the ground.” It wasn’t a threat, not his style, he was just laying out cause and effect. He looked slick as ever. Not a hair out of place. Sharp suit, carrying an alligator briefcase.

  “Come, let the paramédicos do their work.” I followed him across the club. He looked at the broken customers and shook his head but said nothing.

  THE OFFICE WAS rich, class. Modern, leather chairs and a glass and steel desk that cost more than my car. The door closed like a vault. Silence. There was a subtle hiss, calming, like distance surf. It cancelled what little sound escaped through the wall.

  Sanchez led us to a small sitting area with matching leather couch and chair. The glass coffee table was a miniature of the desk. He popped the latches on the briefcase. I fought the need to draw down on him. He turned the case around. It was stuffed with packets of hundreds surrounding a bottle of 25-year-old Macallan. He placed two crystal tumblers between us, filling each.

  “Drink, then talk.” The single malt was pure peat smoke and sherry oak casks. Smooth. Warm. A liquid embrace from the prettiest girl in the room. “Good, no?”

  “It’s good. You have a plan that works out with you and me walking out alive?”

  “Oh, Moses, Moses. Life is never that dire. Question? Why the tourists? They were no threat. Why?”

  “Pissed me off. What’s the money for?”

  “I want to hire you. I should have from the start.”

  “You know Rollens is dead.”

  He pulled out his cell phone and clicked to a video. It was Rollens. She was screaming, contorted, almost inhuman. The machete was inside her. Sanchez turned it off. “I was sent that this morning. Message clear.”

  “She was working for you?”

  “They thought she was.”

  I gulped the sipping whiskey. Sacrilege. Filled the glass and gulped a second down as well. Took out the Ruger and pointed it between Sanchez’s eyes. He got very still. Good move. I breathed. I considered pulling the trigger.

  Mikayla’s voice whispered in my ear. Kill him. No hesitation.

  “Freedom. Was. She. Real?”

  “Who?” A bead of sweat rolled out of his perfect hairline.

  “Freedom, Rollens’s niece. Was she real?”

  “Yes, as far as I know. An ICE officer with common interests sent Rollens to me. She was looking for a missing girl. You were the natural choice.”

  My finger started to tighten on the trigger. A second bead ran from his hair. His face was peaceful, all except for the slightest twitch in the outer corner of his left eye.

  I let the moment hang.

  It wasn’t bullshit.

  I was deciding how to play this. Pull the trigger? Fight my way out? Die in Mexico? Never see Sunshine again?

  No happy ending, Mo, we die covered in our enemy’s gore.

  “Not this time,” I answered Mikayla. Sanchez was starting to break.

  “I . . . I chose you, Mr. McGuire. When my ICE contact told me about the cop and her missing niece, I put you up.”

  “Why?”

  “Can you lower the gun?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I send putas Norte, LA. Only they don’t make it to the customers. No one sees them. Desaparecer. I’m out a large sum of money. I have upset customers. Sex trade is drying up down here. Cartel bullshit scares people off I think. I can’t afford this interruption in my cash flow.”

  “So Rollens and me, you staked us out like lambs, hoping to flush out whoever’s snatching your whores? Only I fucked that up when I killed your stalkers.”

  “Yes, you killed two more of my good men. I don’t hold this against you.”

  “Rollens died ugly because you weren’t straight.”

  “It wasn’t personal.”

  “It is always personal.” I pulled the trigger. At four feet the flame caught his hair on fire. The slug dug a groove in his scalp, but didn’t enter his skull. Blood flowed freely.

  Pussy, Mikayla said.

  I didn’t answer her, she was right. But I was playing a long game.

  “One day I will have you killed for that.” With a silk handkerchief he cleaned the blood off his face. “No man disrespects me and lives.”

  “Bullshit. You tell your employees anything you need to, keep them in line. But you and I both know you got a good woman killed hard. When this is over, I will be coming.”

  “Bold talk. My men out there, I,” he snapped his fingers, “and you are a bad memory.”

  I smiled, a cold, mirthless grin. “Whatever you say. We done?”

  THERE WERE AT least ten guns pointed at the office door when we opened it. So I guess it wasn’t that soundproof. He came out first, waving his men off with a smile and a joke in Spanish I didn’t understand. Sanchez had mopped up the blood and a black Stetson covered the singed patch of hair. As we passed the bar, only the bartender remained, the chicas scattered to the wind. The johns were both being wheeled out on gurneys. I had no illusions that this afternoon’s adventures would change their view on fucking kids. It would take the grave to make that transformation.

  Sanchez worked the room, slipped each of the local cops a small wedge, ensuring that the police report would leave me and Sanchez out of it.

  A young man who could only be his son fronted me. He had long hair hanging loosely over his shoulders. An unconstructed suit, silk t-shirt. My bet was he spent a cool grand to look like he didn’t care. “Stephan Sanchez.” He stuck out his hand. I looked from it up to his eyes. “You are the famous McGuire.”

  “That’s right, kid, mostly for killing men like you.”

  “You think you could kill me?”

  “Sure. Killing’s easy. You just have to have less invested in living than the other guy. That’s the trick, care less. I give you that for free.”

  “Tough, got it. Huge balls, got it.” He leaned in, whispering in my ear. “When this bullshit ends, if the old man is dead? You and me, we have no beef.” He slapped my shoulder and was gone. Did he mean if I had to drop his pop he didn’t want me coming after him? Or did he mean if I dropped his pop he would owe me a favor? Fuck it. This was one of those moments when I was glad I never knew my old man, and far as I knew, I had no son out there plotting my demise.

  THE BOTTLE OF single malt was under my arm, the briefcase with two hundred grand in my hand. The Ruger was back in my belt holster. Sanchez and I’d struck a deal. I would find Freedom.

  If in doing so I found his missing women, I would tell him who had them.

  If I happened to kill the sons of bitches, he had another briefcase full of cash for me.

  I made it clear, when this was done one of us might have to kill the other.

  “Once it is done,” he said. We shook on the deal. Between us, that meant something.

  Or I hoped it did.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Big man, you need something I have.” The blonde teenager from the Wet Pussy was leaning on the Tempest. She had jeans and a Zapata t-shirt. She had inked Yankee go home across the front.

  “Love the shirt.”

  “Fuck Yankee bullshit.” She was hard. I liked her.

  “What do you have I need?” She stood looking up at me. If she was five foot in her Converse I’d be amazed.

  “You got cash?” She looked at the briefcase, making clear it wasn’t a real question. “Come on.” She climbed into the Tempest’s passenger seat. Sixteen and giving all the orders. She took me deep into one of the rougher barrios, up against the mountains, had me park behind a garage.

  “If you’re setting me up, you are about to lose a lot of friends.” The Ruger was back in my hand.

  “You no want to fuck me, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I no
want to fuck you.”

  “Claro. So what do you want?”

  “One hundred American.”

  “For?”

  “I know where the girls are going.” Her eyes shifted, looking to be sure we weren’t being watched. “You know MS-13?”

  “LA, Salvador, mean motherfuckers.”

  “They global, cabrón. Baja cartel? Bullshit. Mara Salvatrucha is global. You want your girl, you ask those sons of bitches.” Then she told me I hadn’t a chance in hell of surviving meeting them. Told me they caught her brother selling mota they hadn’t sanctioned. Chopped him up. Mailed his ears and eyes to her mother. Her face was angry, fierce as any warrior. And she was fucking strangers for twenty bucks a toss.

  I gave her a grand. I didn’t waste her time with a lecture on all the things she could do with her life. It would have been bullshit. World is stacked against her. Most I had done was give her a couple of months without sweating the rent.

  FROM THE FARMACÍA, I picked up a jar of Vicodin and one of Adderall, great speed they gave to kids with ADHD, perfect for what I had in mind. I packed the carbon fiber body panel full of cash and drugs and firearms. Crazy is what this was calling for. Only this time I was going to control the drugs, not the other way around. It was all about monitoring my intake.

  Mikayla laughed at me. You do what you need to do to get this shit done.

  I crunched two Vics and chased them with a beer to get her out of my head. I wanted to be mellow at the border crossing. Turned out I didn’t need to worry. I breezed through Customs like I had diplomatic plates. Border guard even called me sir when he handed me back my passport, told me to have a good day. Kenny said his paper was good. It was better than good, it was goddamn golden.

  THE WHISKEY, BEER and Vics went a long way toward taking the edge off the adrenaline Mexico left raging through my heart. For at least a moment, plowing up highway 5 with Shane MacGowan and The Pogues blaring, I didn’t feel like taking anyone’s head off. It wasn’t peaceful—I was way too far down this death trail for peaceful—but it was . . . something less than rage, and I was willing to call that an improvement.