“Did you get the stuff for UCLA?”
“What?”
“The stuff for UCLA.”
“It’s upstairs in the lab.”
“Dude. Go get it.”
Morris concentrated and clicked.
“C’mon, Morris.”
Morris shot Bob a disgusted look and turned off the game. He stood up, picking up his Starbucks cup.
“Why you got to give me all the agro, man? All the time, boss, boss, boss.”
Morris grabbed a cooler and started to stomp out of the room. Bob felt bad. “I’m sorry. Maura and I broke up this morning.”
Morris stopped.
“Wow. Man, sorry to hear that. She’s hot.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to talk or something?”
Bob didn’t want to talk.
“Tell you what. I want to get out for a while. You get the stuff ready and I’ll make the run. You can stay here and play Tetris all afternoon.”
Morris broke into a huge grin.
“You rule, man.”
. . .
Norberto sat in the back of Esteban’s car. He’d put on one of Martin’s black gabardine suits, with a vintage fuchsia tuxedo shirt underneath, and was feeling better. Much better now that it was apparent that Esteban wasn’t going to kill him after all. In fact, his future was looking good. Esteban had told Norberto that he was a valuable member of the team. With Amado in trouble, Norberto would need to take more responsibility. More responsibility meant more money, more respect. Norberto was pleased. He smiled when he thought of last night. Perhaps enduring the brutality and the strange drug had proven his strength. He wasn’t sure. But, quizás, man, todo es possible. All he was sure about was that they were on their way to help Amado.
He watched as Esteban and that weird gringo dude sat up front talking about something. Norberto wished that he’d finished his ESL classes. But the teacher at City College was such a pendejo that he just couldn’t stand it. He had to quit. Well, actually, he had to quit after he jumped the hippie gringo teacher in the parking lot after class and kicked the crap out of him. The gringo didn’t understand that members of el grupo de Juarez were due a certain amount of respect. You couldn’t make fun of them in class. Thinking back on it, Norberto wasn’t sure the gringo had meant to make fun of him, but either way, it just wasn’t cool. You had to stand up for yourself. Draw the line. Punish those who crossed it. Besides, the gringos always thought they were better than him. It felt good to send one of them to the emergency room.
It may have been satisfying to go all barbaric on the ESL teacher, but it also made Norberto feel stupid, like he was subhuman or something. Martin had that same effect on him. With all his talk about money and investments and shelters and such, he made Norberto feel stupid. Stupid for sending his money Western Union back to his padres in the South. Stupid for keeping cash in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Like some dumb-shit wetback who didn’t know how the world worked. But Norberto knew how the world worked, a little bit, anyway. He knew he should go legit, open a bank account, and invest in a real business, a taco stand or something, just to launder the money so he could buy the kinds of things he wanted. Like a Porsche. But he just hated the idea of paying taxes to a country that would turn around and spend the money on law enforcement and immigration authorities that wanted to catch him and ship him back to Mexico. Fuck that, he thought, I’m an outlaw.
. . .
Bob took Amado’s arm out of the cooler. He carefully pulled back the plastic wrap to reveal the tattoo of the woman. Bob’s heart pounded as he looked at her. She was beautiful, even more lusty and erotic on the graying arm than in the Polaroid. Had Bob ever made a woman feel that way? He wasn’t sure, but he had tried. Bob was willing to throw himself into any erotic activity. He’d gone down on lots of women but couldn’t remember one of them who just threw her head back and let the sensation rock her world. A couple of women had come close, but they’d been drunk.
Was he attracted to uptight women? He wondered. How could a guy like him meet a woman like this? What if a woman like this didn’t exist? What if she was like a comic book character? Could he go down on Wonder Woman? Wasn’t she gay?
Bob felt a pang of self-pity shoot through him. Maybe he was too harsh on Maura. What if she was just going through something? Maybe they should go to a therapist, work things out.
Bob looked at the tattoo again. Even if she didn’t exist, there must be someone like her. It wouldn’t hurt to look. Fuck that, he had to look. If he didn’t, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
Bob wrapped the plastic back around the arm.
. . .
Esteban pulled his Mercedes to the curb. He cut the engine. Well aware of his antitheft deterrent under the seat, he was careful not to set the alarm. Martin looked across the street. A drab modern-looking building next to a drab modern-looking building next to a crazy Moroccan stucco strip mall.
“This it?”
Esteban looked over at Martin.
“Yeah. United Pathology.”
Norberto squirmed in the backseat, ready for some action.
“¿Vamos?”
Esteban lit a cigarette.
“Patience, cabrón.”
. . .
Maura stood naked in the bathroom brushing her hair. She thought about what Bob had said. She wasn’t angry or hurt. How could she blame him? She was the one who wanted a change. By forcing Bob to be decisive she got what she wanted but was afraid to ask for. Or maybe she got what she thought she wanted but was afraid to ask for. What if she was making a mistake?
Maura watched her voluptuous breasts bounce and heave in the mirror in rhythm with the movement of the brush through her hair. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe she was just bored. Maybe sex was boring. She thought about all the men she’d had sex with, remembering them. It all blurred for her. In the end it’s always the same. In, out, in, out, faster . . . until she came or they came or it was over. What’s the fun of that?
Nine
BOB GENTLY PLACED the arm in the cooler and closed the lid. Just then Morris came back from the lab with several pouches of viscera. Morris looked at the cooler.
“That the arm?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna miss that arm, man.”
Bob looked at Morris.
“Why?”
Morris shrugged.
“It has personality.”
Morris held up the pouches of tissue samples.
“These are ready to go, man.”
Bob took the bits in bags and plopped them into the other cooler.
“What do you want for lunch?”
Morris thought about it.
“Burritos.”
“We had burritos the other day.”
“Burgers.”
Bob nodded. It wasn’t his idea of a healthy lunch but at least it was different. They almost always had burritos.
“See you later.”
Bob took the portable coolers and walked out of the room. Morris smiled. He went immediately to the computer. His thumb stomped down on the space bar, waking the computer from its digital dreams. Morris stretched, cracked his knuckles, and focused. It would take all of his concentration to master the seventh level of Tetris.
. . .
Martin continued to talk Esteban’s ear off. Something about building a hotel near Mazatlán. Something about a swimming pool that had no edge so you thought you were in the ocean. Esteban didn’t know what an edgeless swimming pool was and he didn’t really care. His mind kept returning to the blow job administered by Lupe last night. God, could that girl suck. Martin talked about Mazatlán making a comeback. The largest shrimp port in North America was being rediscovered as a tourist mecca by thousands of drunk, topless college kids. Esteban was getting annoyed; he hadn’t come this far to go to Mazatlán and open a fucking resort. Try building something in Mexico? The corruption alone would kill you. Yet Martin yammered on about keeping liquidity oversea
s, numbered offshore accounts in Barbados, and the relative value of real estate in Costa Rica. It was all about leaving the country. Esteban had killed, literally, to come here, so why the fuck would he want to leave?
He perked up when he saw Bob loading the coolers in the back of the black VW Golf with the United Pathology logo on the side. Esteban noticed another sign, one that said Human Blood in the window of the little car. Also, Driver Carries No Cash on the door. Human blood? What the fuck did they do with that? Martin realized that something was happening.
“That our guy?”
Esteban nodded and started the engine. He watched as Bob climbed into the car and started it up. When Bob turned out of the driveway and drove off down the street, Esteban followed. It was like the old days.
He still knew how to do it. It was easy enough. Esteban remembered when he was first starting out, they’d rear-end a tasty-looking car, usually with a single female inside, then they’d jump out acting all concerned and before anyone knew what hit them, both cars would be gone. A little body work on the stolen car’s bumper, a fresh coat of paint, you’d have a new car. Let the cops scour the countryside for that red BMW with a dent. He had a black Beemer without a scratch for sale. Those stolen cars turned out to be seed money for all kinds of things: marijuana, heroin, prostitutes, cheap weapons from Brazil and Italy. Esteban had built an empire off those early carjackings. And, being a smart businessman, he kept on dealing in stolen cars. Only now they chopped them up for parts, the parts being more valuable than the whole car. It was a good business. His “core profit center” or something. That’s what Martin called it.
. . .
Bob turned up the radio. Normally he listened to an alternative-rock station, but today he was feeling a little out of sorts. He switched over to an R&B oldies station and let the Reverend Al Green speak to him. Smooth, soulful, reassuring. Life has its ups and downs. That’s life. Love is sweet and bitter, pain and pleasure in equal parts. That is just the way it is, and at the end of the day, it’s all good. Bob understood the truth that Reverend Green was speaking. Intellectually he could grasp it, deal with it. But his guts were churning. Not with anger or hatred or that nauseating feeling you get when you’ve been betrayed. It was something else. Disappointment.
He was disappointed in Maura. Bob had hoped that she was, for want of a better word, the one. The girl that he would marry and have kids with. He knew it was old-fashioned, but Bob really wanted the domestic life that had eluded him since he was nine years old and his parents bickered, and argued, and fought, and finally divorced. He wanted the picket fence, the two kids, the station wagon, and the dog.
Marvin Gaye came on the radio and did his best to infuse Bob with a little optimism. His spirits lifted. “Sexual healing.” There was an idea. A prescription. A course of therapy that Bob could get behind. Because, despite his disappointment, and despite the utter drag of having to split up possessions and move, this was starting to feel like a step in the right direction. An opportunity. A good thing.
A woman in the street caught Bob’s eye. She had blond hair stuck up in a ponytail, green capri pants, a white shirt, and black sandals with orangey red toenails. She was slim but not skinny, not a creepy stick; she was nicely proportioned. Would Bob miss those huge heaving tits of Maura’s? Yeah. But, hey, man, life goes on. You can’t spend your time pining for someone who doesn’t want you. The woman in the green capri pants was looking pretty fucking sweet. Sweet enough to distract him momentarily from his quest for a voluptuous Latina.
Bob was still musing about the blonde when his car suddenly lurched violently. He’d been hit.
“Fuck!”
Bob looked in the rearview mirror and saw two big Mexican-looking dudes climb out of a new Mercedes sedan.
Bob turned on his hazard blinker thing and got out. One of the Mexicans, a big one with dark eyes and what looked like a toupee, came up to him, concerned.
“Señor? Are you okay?”
. . .
Martin didn’t like driving Esteban’s Mercedes. The thought that the touch of a switch, or in the case of an attempted car theft, the nontouch of a switch, could send a sharpened stainless steel shaft right up his ass was just too much. It gave Martin the creeps. It wasn’t just unnerving, it was barbaric and unnecessary. Still, when Esteban told him to get behind the wheel and keep the engine running, Martin didn’t argue. He did what he was told.
Martin watched as Norberto and Esteban approached the poor fucker in the delivery car. The two men feigned concern for about a heatbeat, then . . . Norberto clobbered the guy. Whacked him upside the head with something hard. The guy hit the ground like a big bag of shit. Esteban and Norberto scooped him up and threw him in the trunk of the delivery car. Norberto hopped in the car, Esteban came quickly around to the passenger side of the Benz, and away they went. The whole thing took about fifteen seconds.
Bob regained consciousness in the trunk of a car. A lump about the size of a Ping-Pong ball was swollen and throbbing just behind his ear. What the fuck had happened? One minute he’s talking to these guys and then . . . Bob remembered he’d been rear-ended. He’d obviously been hurt; maybe they were taking him to the hospital. Bob considered that, but it seemed far-fetched, weird even. You wouldn’t throw a hurt guy in the trunk. You’d call an ambulance or put him in the backseat or something. No, he probably wasn’t on his way to the hospital.
. . .
Norberto drove the Golf. He let Esteban’s Mercedes whip past him and lead the way. A disco beat was softly pumping on the radio. Norberto turned it up. Although normalmente he preferred salsa, he thought the old-school disco was muy curado. Girls liked it and Norberto was savvy enough to appreciate whatever drove girls to get up off their butts and shake their bodies. Norberto liked the song that was playing. I will survive. That’s me, he thought. Not only will I survive, cabrón, but now that I’ve shown Esteban that I am loyal, I will prosper.
. . .
Esteban felt a dull pain in his lower back. Carajo. He used to be able to chuck a jodido pendejo like this gringo into the trunk without even breaking a sweat. Now he felt like he’d thrown out his back. And Martin. He wouldn’t shut up.
Esteban wondered how this happened. How did everything turn to gazpacho? Then he remembered, Amado. Fucking Amado fucking up. Well, he wouldn’t be fucking up for much longer, would he? He would miss him. Amado was a good gangster. A gangster’s gangster in some ways. But he’d fucked up. Left his arm at the scene of a crime and endangered the entire family. He had to be dealt with.
Esteban’s plan was simple: kill Bob, kill Amado, and burn the evidence. Hell, maybe burn everyone up in a car. Take it out to the desert or up Angeles Crest, light it up, and push it off a cliff. Let the forensic pathologists sift through the ashes for some evidence.
. . .
Martin was frustrated. Sometimes these fucking mobsters were so thick. There’s a problem, you kill everyone. What kind of logic was that? Were those corporate guidelines? Was that any way to run a business? Martin didn’t like the idea of murder. It seemed extreme to him. He really didn’t like the idea of being prosecuted as an accessory to murder if they were somehow busted.
He tried to calm himself as he rolled a jumbo. His hands were shaking, making the process more difficult. Why did everything have to be so hard? They didn’t need to waste the delivery guy just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Martin wanted to convince Esteban that they needed the guy in the trunk. They couldn’t just whack him and dump his body, then the cops would know that something was up. They’d know that the evidence had been tampered with and they’d start nosing around until they found something. Esteban’s point was that they wouldn’t have the evidence so . . . they could go fuck themselves.
Martin got the cigarette paper to stick, and fired up. He held a massive hit in his lungs until they burned and he could feel the air pressure behind his eyes begin to drop. He exhaled a plume of smoke and felt his muscles go lax. Then it cam
e to him.
Martin suddenly realized that what they needed to do was find another arm, switch it with Amado’s, and have the guy make the delivery like he normally would. It was crazy. But it was clean. Nothing would be suspect. They would get away with it. How they could convince the guy to do it was another story.
He pitched the idea to Esteban. Esteban told him he was full of shit. He didn’t trust the delivery guy, and why should he. They’d send the guy in to Parker Center and next thing they know, they’d be in a lineup. Besides, where would they get another arm? Esteban thought Martin’s plan was tonto, and he didn’t have time for that. Esteban always switched to Spanish when he was annoyed with Martin.
Martin considered it; perhaps Esteban was right. Kill the guy, burn the arm, end of story. But what if they could find an arm easily? Then they could figure something out. Maybe pay the fucking guy. Leverage him somehow. He made, what? Not that much. Slide him ten grand, he delivers the new arm, and call it even. Martin realized he was expending a lot of nervous energy trying to keep the delivery guy from getting whacked. He had his reasons. Bad karma being one.
. . .
Don came to work as he always did, walking into the Criminal Intelligence Division with his double cappuccino with nonfat soy milk extra foam, a copy of the Los Angeles Times tucked under his arm. Only today there was something different about Don. He always had a spring in his step, but today he had just a little more bounce than usual. He stopped at the little makeshift coffee bar and did something he never did. He took a Krispy Kreme doughnut out of a box. He bit into it and was surprised at how good it tasted. Sweet and yeasty. No wonder they were always lying around the station. Cops love doughnuts and Don loved being a cop.
Don sat down at his desk, licked the sugar glaze off his fingers, and shuffled some papers around. A middle-aged and thick man with dark brown skin and Central American features sat down at the next desk. A plaque indicated that he was Detective Sergeant Flores. Flores noticed the flakes of sugar on Don’s desk.
Moist: A Novel Page 5