Moist: A Novel

by Mark Haskell Smith

“What? I’m not hiding nothing, nada.”

  Martin closed the lid on the toilet and sat down. He opened a small black leather pouch he was carrying in his jacket pocket. It looked like a cigar holder.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Martin took a syringe and a vial of clear liquid out of the pouch. Norberto looked at Esteban.

  “What the fuck is that, man?”

  Esteban just grinned.

  “Don’t you wanna ask me something? I got nothing to hide, man. You don’t have to do this, man.”

  Norberto was beginning to freak. Martin held the vial upside down and, just like he’d seen on television, filled the syringe with the clear fluid. He put the vial back in the bag and tapped the air bubble to the top of the syringe.

  “What is that shit, man?”

  Esteban looked at Norberto. He liked this. This was fun. Watching Norberto shit his pants, beg for his life. This was gonna be good.

  “Where’s Amado?”

  Norberto told the truth.

  “He was here, man. I went out to get something and when I came back he was gone.”

  “What’s with the tub?”

  Norberto looked at the bloodstain, the Comet, and the scrubby sponge he still clutched tightly in his fist.

  “Blood, man. It’s just blood.”

  “Whose blood is it?”

  “Amado’s.”

  “Did you kill Amado?”

  “No, man.”

  Esteban laughed.

  “He cut himself shaving?”

  Norberto looked at Esteban. Then he looked over at Martin. Martin gave the syringe a little squirt. That shit looked evil.

  “Look, Esteban, I didn’t have nothing to do with this, man.”

  “Dígame.”

  “Amado hurt his arm.”

  “He go to the hospital?”

  “No, man, it’s more fucked up than that.”

  Esteban hated to lose his temper. All his heroes, the bad guys in the movies, Marlon Brando as the Godfather or anything with Christopher Walken in it, those guys never lost their temper until they were pushed too far. Esteban admired that. He wanted to be cool like that. But Brando didn’t have to put up with wetback fuckups like he did. Esteban slapped Norberto across the face. Slapped him hard. Norberto reeled, hitting his head against the side of the tub, breaking open a nasty gash. Norberto’s blood oozed down into the Comet.

  “What happened? What happened to Amado’s arm?”

  Not wanting to get hit again, Norberto blurted it out.

  “It got cut off, man.”

  The look that crossed Esteban’s face was unusual. A mixture of mirth, disgust, and genuine shock.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Es a verdad.”

  Esteban smacked Norberto again.

  “Amado killed Carlos Vila, but somehow he got his arm cut off.”

  Esteban was surprised by this.

  “He killed Carlos? ¿Por qué?”

  “I don’t know nothing about it, man. But they had some kind of deal and Carlos was cheating Amado. So, you know Amado, he whacked him.”

  Martin and Esteban exchanged a look. Martin spoke first.

  “They can reattach that arm.”

  Norberto shook his head.

  “No, they can’t, man.”

  “With advancements in microsurgery all kinds of things are possible. He may not have full range of motion again, but—”

  Norberto interrupted Martin.

  “He left his fucking arm there, man. He don’t got it.”

  Esteban leaned in close to Norberto. Norberto squirmed, squinted, and waited for the violence.

  “What?”

  “He left his arm with Carlos, man.”

  Esteban stared at Norberto.

  “Give him the shot.”

  . . .

  Amado woke up. His arm, or more precisely the spot where his arm used to be, was throbbing. His eyes focused on the ceiling. Cottage cheese with specks of glittering gold. A lamp on the bedside table cast a muted yellow glow around the room. Amado twisted his neck and saw that the chest of drawers had been draped with a sheet and was lined with stainless steel doctor tools. Amado noticed that an IV drip had been attached to his arm. He heard something in the next room and croaked a sound out of his mouth.

  The door swung open and a young black man entered.

  “You’re up? How ya feeling?”

  Amado tried to say something. He croaked again.

  “Hang on. I know what you need.”

  The young man brought a cup with a flexi-straw up to Amado’s mouth.

  “The anesthetic can really dry you out. Go ahead. Drink it.”

  Amado sucked on the straw. He was disappointed when cool water entered his mouth and trickled down his dried-out throat. The young man looked hopeful.

  “Now how are you feeling?”

  Amado nodded. He tried to speak.

  “Malo.”

  The young man nodded.

  “I’ll give you something for the pain. But you’re going to have to rest for a few days. You move around too much that arm’s gonna open up. Trust me, that won’t be good.”

  Amado nodded as the young man loaded something into some kind of needle and shot it into the IV drip.

  “¿Dónde?”

  The young man smiled at him.

  “My Spanish is really bad. You’ll feel better soon.”

  And before he could respond, Amado was out.

  Seven

  DON DIDN’T LIKE beer. He liked wine. Good wine. He couldn’t stand the stuff that passed for chardonnay at The Roost. That’s where his partner and the other LAPD detectives liked to go to drink beer and watch sports on TV. Don wanted to go. He enjoyed spending time with his friends and colleagues. He even liked the dim little bar with gnawed booths and sawdust on the floor. But that cheap shit they called wine gave him a headache. One glass and a little pinprick of pain would materialize right behind his left eye. Two glasses and the pinprick would grow to a dull throb and he’d feel slightly nauseous. Three glasses would guarantee a hangover so toxic that Don would consider taking his gun and blowing his brains out. So Don went to the fancy wine bar nestled among the skyscrapers in the financial district downtown.

  He liked the bartender, a fresh-faced kid just out of college with a degree in enology. The kid referred to the bar as an enoteca—a wine library. Maybe he was pretentious or just overeducated, but the kid knew his grape juice. Don liked that. It made getting lit seem like an intellectual pursuit. What he didn’t like was the clientele. The wine bar was crammed to the rafters after work. Young men and women, lawyers and businesspeople, all smartly dressed in their Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor suits, schmoozing each other. Talking about cell phones and BMWs, personal trainers and the stock market.

  Don didn’t fit in with this crowd, but he didn’t stand out either. His face had taken a few punches in its youth, but the misshapen nose added a blast of rogue beauty to his handsome, angular features. He was solidly built with a stocky, muscular body underneath his off-the-rack brown suits and his Fantastic Sam haircut. In fact, without the gun tucked into the back of his pants, Don could easily be mistaken for a salesman or a community college math teacher.

  Don watched as the young and well-heeled passed out business cards and tried to make deals. He glanced over at the bartender.

  “When I was their age I was trying to get laid. Now all they want is cash.”

  The bartender nodded.

  “Money is the new god.”

  Don raised his glass.

  “I prefer the old ones. Here’s to Bacchus.”

  Don drank.

  “You want to try the same wine, another year?”

  “Is it a better year?”

  The bartender smiled.

  “You tell me.”

  He poured a taste into a fresh glass. Don swirled the wine and gave it an expert sip, lightly sucking air across his tongue as the wine rolled around inside his mouth. Finally he swa
llowed.

  “Currants. Currants and figs.”

  The bartender smiled.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  He filled Don’s glass, then went off to take more orders, leaving Don to contemplate his drink. Don was a compulsive people watcher, an eavesdropper more out of professional habit than anything else. On a normal night he would listen to the chatter, easily discerning the give-and-take of games commencing and ending, men and women dancing the mating dance, human nature falling into predictable patterns. But tonight he tuned them out. Tonight he was preoccupied. He’d had quite a day.

  It started out normal. Shower, shave, shit. Head to Betty’s for two eggs, toast, and coffee. Read the sports page. The Dodgers were in spring training, they still needed left-handed hitting. Life as we know it. Then it went straight to the crapper. Detective Lee, the fat Chinese guy from Homicide, called him and told him to get his ass over to a crime scene.

  It was a generic enough crime scene. How many times had he seen a body in a garage? Twenty? Thirty? If they weren’t in a Dumpster or the bushes they were almost certain to be in the garage. And this was a double homicide, or so it seemed. One identified body and one unidentified arm. Don was sure the rest of the body would turn up somewhere sooner or later. Look in the Dumpsters nearby, was what he told the unies standing around the scene. The Dumpsters and the bushes.

  But that was all pretty mundane. The thing that preoccupied Don was that the one identifiable victim was Carlos Vila. Don had spent the better part of the last two years working in the LAPD’s Criminal Intelligence Division trying to build a case against the Mexican mafia. His investigations had begun to focus on Esteban Sola, leader of a violent faction of mobsters out of Juarez. Carlos had been Don’s informant. Now Carlos was toast and Don had to tie Esteban Sola to Carlos’s murder or he was fucked. Two years of work and no conviction, that wouldn’t look too good on his record. Don made a mental note to talk to one of the local feds about making a RICO case against Esteban.

  The bartender came back.

  “Do you want another? Or would you like to try the Saint-Estephe?”

  “Take me to France.”

  Don knew that at eighteen dollars a glass he was running up a bill he couldn’t afford, but what the hell. The bartender popped the cork and poured a small taste for Don. He swirled the wine, watching the light glint through the deep red. He inhaled. The wine smelled of earth and flint and melons. Don let the wine hit his tongue. It made him smile.

  . . .

  Bob lay in bed. Maura came in from the shower and looked at him.

  “You’re still awake?”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  Maura threw the towel on a chair and stood in front of him, naked and defiant.

  “If you think I’m going to fuck you now—”

  Bob tried to interrupt her. He knew where this was going.

  “No. No. I—”

  She cut him off.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Try harder.”

  She climbed into bed, her back to him.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  Maura rolled over and looked at him.

  “Honestly?”

  This was maybe more than Bob had bargained for.

  “Sure.”

  “I love you, Bob. I really do.”

  “Then what is it? We haven’t made love in over a month.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Sure.”

  Maura suddenly thought better of what she was about to say, but it was too late to stop it.

  “I can’t stand the sight of your penis.”

  “My penis?”

  “Any penis.”

  “Why?”

  “They repulse me.”

  Bob put his head back on his pillow and considered the implications. Maura kissed him on the cheek.

  “Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe if I—”

  She didn’t want to hear it.

  “I gave at the office. Okay?”

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Bob was still game.

  “You don’t have to look at it or touch it or anything. Just let me put it inside you.”

  Maura looked at him.

  “Don’t be gross.”

  . . .

  Norberto woke up with a splitting headache. Like the worst mescal hangover imaginable. No. Like a hangover from sniffing propellant. Refeo. He tried to move his arms and quickly realized that he was handcuffed to a pole or pipe of some kind. He tugged against it hard, testing. The effort caused blood to rush to his head which, in turn, made him puke on himself. Then he passed out.

  . . .

  Sometimes Martin hated his job. Sure, it had its perks. There was action, travel, a new challenge every day. He got cash, women, and best of all, a constant supply of high-grade marijuana. But the hours, Christ, the hours sucked. It beat doing a nine-to-five on your butt in front of a computer trading stocks or sitting in some stuffy law library reading legal gobbledygook, the kinds of jobs his grad school classmates had fallen into. That wasn’t for him, that kind of life was for losers. People without imagination. Still, even if he was on call twenty-four/seven, he’d found time for pleasure. Little things. Scouring vintage clothing stores with Norberto or getting a manicure from the weird Cambodian ladies. Small pleasures that added to his quality of life. Small pleasures and plenty of pot.

  His parents didn’t understand, wouldn’t understand at all if they had any idea what he was really doing. Why couldn’t he take a position at a nice white-shoe law firm or, even better, score a cushy Wall Street job and become a millionaire like every other ambitious young American? They believed he was a “consultant” advising a wealthy Mexican investor. Which he was, in a sense. He told them that he liked the diversity: real estate, stocks, venture capital; he was really learning a lot. He neglected to tell them he was learning the money-laundering business, the strip-club business, the prostitution business, the narcotics-trafficking business, and the gun-running business. Martin didn’t know why he was attracted to crime, he just was.

  It was cool.

  Martin put it all out of his mind as he fired up a big fat joint. He inhaled deeply, held it, and then exhaled with a long satisfied sigh. He felt his brain climb into a warm water bed and just . . . float. Martin looked in the mirror behind the polished granite bar. Why did chrome hurt his eyes? Why did the faucet and sink have to be so shiny anyway? Why did people with money want everything to be so fucking shiny? What was up with that?

  Martin reached for his sunglasses even though it was well past midnight. He took another long drag on the jumbo, put on his shades, and watched the smoke drift up to the ceiling.

  Esteban’s voice snapped him out of it.

  “Where’s my fucking drink?”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  Martin hurriedly chucked ice into four tumblers and filled them halfway up with Don Julio silver. He went around behind the bar and searched for the Cointreau and limes.

  “The girls are getting thirsty.”

  “One minute.”

  Martin was careful not to let an edge of annoyance creep into his voice. He had seen Esteban lose his temper and stick a man’s face in a deep-fat Fry-O-Lator. He’d seen him grind broken glass into someone’s rectum. It was best not to piss Esteban off, so Martin always tried to speak in a calm and well-modulated voice. It helped to be stoned.

  . . .

  Esteban sat in the Jacuzzi, letting the warm water bubble around him. He sank in lower, letting his eyes come to just above water level. That way he could get a good look at the two pairs of tits bobbing across the tub from him. He tried to decide. Which were better? One pair was obviously fake. Unnaturally big, unnaturally round, unnaturally perky. With hard plastic nubs on the ends like the doodads that made mannequins look like they had erect nipples. It was the best modern technology could offer, yet Esteban found
them unattractive. He could tell they would be hard, not soft. They would not be comforting or sexy. They would be firm and bouncy, like fucking a couple of basketballs. Impressive, but without soul. The other ones, the ones on the Latina, they looked real. Voluptuous and uneven with large terra-cotta areolas. They were breasts. They had soul.

  The girls giggled together and playfully splashed at him. Esteban was careful not to get his hair wet, so he stood up and yelled into the house.

  “Where’s my fuckin’ drink?”

  He heard some mumbly bullshit answer come from the house. That and a blast of mota smoke. Esteban turned to the girl with the fake tits. He pointed at them.

  “Those real?”

  “You like them?”

  Esteban had heard that question before. He knew that if he said yes, he’d be stuck fucking her later. If he said no, well, that would be rude. Esteban strove for a middle ground.

  “I’m curious.”

  She giggled.

  “I had them enhanced.”

  Esteban nodded. What was there to say? He turned his back on her and yelled into the house.

  “The girls are getting thirsty.”

  Esteban sank back into the water. He let out a sigh, pretending to relax. But how could he fucking relax? He had that punk, Norberto, hog-tied in the downstairs bathroom. He had Amado running around somewhere without his arm. How could someone lose their arm? The arm thing was going to be a problem. Esteban could feel it. Feel it all the way down in the deepest part of his huevos. Esteban wondered if he could get Amado a fake arm like the woman’s fake tits. They looked real enough.

  Martin finally arrived with the drinks. The women giggled and took theirs. One of them said something about a paper umbrella. Esteban slugged half his back in one gulp. It was strong. The sharpness of the lime, the blast of salt, the warmth of the liquor in his guts. He smiled as he felt the tequila spiders crawl up his spine and begin spinning their webs in his brain. The kid might be some kind of grad school pussy, but he made a good drink.

  . . .

  Martin dropped his robe and eased his body into the Jacuzzi. For a brief stoned moment he felt like shabu-shabu. Sliced meat dunked in boiling water. Esteban had his legs stretched out, he looked like a turkey drumstick. The women with their big round tits could be vegetables, maybe bok choy or mushrooms. The water bubbled.