Gun Work

by David J. Schow

  When his compatriots pulled Sucio off Barney, Barney recognized another important watershed: They did not want to kill him yet, either right away or accidentally.

  Between meals and punching-bag sessions, Barney gathered other useful intelligence.

  One of the guys — Zefir — made reference to other rooms with other prisoners, some of which did have television sets. Which made the building an operative concern as a hostage hotel, thereby helping Barney define where he was. Some of the legitimate or high-ticket captives apparently interested Zefir, a porcine man fond of making fornicatory gestures with his hands. ¿Chicas, retozonas, panochas, papayas muy bonitas, eh?

  Another had said something about a courtyard inside the building, which implied that while fortressed from the street, an area within the structure was open to sky like an atrium.

  A further slip of Condorito’s tongue had clarified other “guests” as actual hostages (rehéns).

  Sucio had appropriated Barney’s Army .45 and had waved it in his face on several occasions. Since he kept it shoved into his waistband, the bore smelled like his crotch, which was no treat at all.

  Several days passed and while the casual beatings continued, they came with no actual threat or grisly detail of what Barney’s eventual fate might be. No ransom, no payoff, nothing. Also no change of clothing, no bath, and no room service. Barney began to feel like a moldering corpse that lacked the sense to know it was dead.

  It was important for him to remember the name Felix Rainer, although most days, Barney could not recover enough short-term memory to know why. He repeated the name to himself while bunched into a corner on his filthy sleeping pad, rocking back and forth. Felix Rainer. Carl Ledbetter. And Carl’s wife, Erica. Every body-blow was another entry on a past-due bill that was slowly, excruciatingly becoming more expensive.

  It was generally a bad sign when one of Barney’s jailors showed up alone. Today it was Mojica.

  Usually, a solo entrance was the cue for some off-the-books sadism, or at the very least, a harsh kick in the balls laced with tons of spittled obscenities about Barney’s madre.

  “Hey, you. Guy. You awake?”

  Barney did not know Mojica could speak, let alone speak passable English. He rolled up from his fetal curl on the floor. Something about his attitude threw out defense warnings on a subdermal level; he could not help that, or prevent or disguise it. It did nothing to dispel the flies intent on eating every drop of his sweat, or the gnats (what he’d heard called “see-nots” in the American South) they kept trying to set up housekeeping in his eyes. He didn’t even want to think about what was living in his hair by now. Or infesting his groin, or tape-worming up his anus while he tried to sleep.

  “Listen, man, I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Oh, great, I feel so much more cuddly now.

  “Seriously.” Mojica chanced a couple of steps nearer. Not quite within grabbing distance, given the chain on Barney’s leg.

  “Listen. You don’t gotta say nothing if you don’t want to.”

  If Barney was sketching an insulting caricature, he would have written that dialogue down as joo don’ godda say notheeng if jew dun wanna. But that shit had never worked in books, never worked in movies, and rarely worked when you were trying to dehumanize your opponent in order to justify killing him without compunction. Barney decided to respond, to indicate that he still had two dendrites of intelligence not rolling around loose on the floor.

  “What do you want, Mojica?”

  Mojica smiled as though finding out an injured pet was still alive. “Oh, you awake, eh?”

  “Let’s get this over with. Your primo was an accident. I was going to let him go.”

  “Nah, it ain’t that.” He came closer, confidentially. “El Chingon is keeping you here; I don’t know why ‘cos you’re not a hostage, man, you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Entiendo,” said Barney. “Claro. Who’s El Chingon?” It was a slang term for the bossman, El Mero-Mero, big dealski — literally, as in el gran chingon: the head fucker. That would be Mr. Lazy-Eye-Doesn’t-Talk-Like-A-Mexican, but his drones probably called him el jefe, at least to his face.

  “Don’t ask me shit I can’t tell you.”

  “Fair enough. So what do you want?”

  “I want to show you something.” Mojica moved forward with his body, cautiously, looking for a sign that Barney would not attack.

  “Mojica, I’m too fucking tired to get into it with you...”

  “Here.” Mojica popped a can of America’s second most popular soft drink and handed it over. “You like this, right?”

  Barney regarded the chilled can in his grasp with befuddlement and briefly wondered if it was drugged, then decided it did not matter. The first swig burned all the way down, fizzy and caffeinated and shot through with sugar, beautiful carbonated nirvana. In times like these, simple, small things could freight tons of meaning. If you had asked Barney what he wanted most of all the things in the world, in that moment, he might have answered that he already held in his hand all good things, and could die happy.

  “Look at this,” said Mojica, removing his ever-present mirrorshades. He pointed at a small skidmark of scar tissue on his right temple. “See this?” When he pressed the scar, it went concave, then boinked back as though made of rubber. He turned his head to show the lower portion of his right occipital. A similar scar, similarly gelid.

  “I got shot in the head once,” he said. “Brains came out, so maybe I’m not the smartest vato in the world. But I tell you this — they killed my ass. I was dead once. And I’m still here.”

  Barney’s hand loved that soft drink can; would not give it up. Nor use it to hit Mojica in the side of the skull so hard that what was left of his brains would come flying out his ear. Not until he finished the drink, anyway, because it was too good. Mojica had bought himself an audience for whatever confessional he cared to stage.

  “This ain’t right, them keeping you,” Mojica said. “We grab people, we got all this set-up, we don’t torture hostages, and anyway you ain’t a hostage.”

  “You kicked my ass with the others.”

  “Because I ain’t stupid, man. But keeping you here... I mean, for what? So Sucio can whale on you until you’re a retard? There ain’t no ransom on you. No pickups, no negotiation, nada por nadie. So... so...”

  “So what did I do?” said Barney.

  “Yeah, that’s it. What the hell did you do, man?”

  “I tried to help a man I thought was my friend.”

  “Some friend.” The incredulous expression on Mojica’s face almost made Barney laugh, but he could not actually laugh, not in this place.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up,” said Barney. He reasoned that Mojica was not here to help him. Draw him out, maybe; play good cop and get him to say something that would rationalize a quick kill.

  “Nobody who’s a friend would leave you in this kinda mess. It’s bad, it’s like...” Mojica’s hand sought a small metal crucifix around his neck. “You know?”

  “Like, spiritually bad.”

  “Yeah. And bad for business. Not profesional. Not the way El Chingon does it. You see?”

  Barney nodded.

  “What do you think is gonna happen to you?”

  “Honestly, de veras, I think I’ve been abandoned and I get to stay in this charming place until I die.”

  Mojica frowned as he puzzled the word “abandoned.”

  “Abandonado,” said Barney.

  “Ah, sí. You are... you are...” Mojica fought for the phrase. “You are el hombre de las armas — you know what that means?”

  “Gunman.”

  “Sí, exactamente. You know the weapons. You hit Jesús twice in the dark while he was running. Like, expert. El Chingon could use him an expert like you.”

  “You bring me a job application?”

  “Es imposible. No chance, Vance. Not while Sucio is around.”

  “Then, what?”

  Moji
ca spot-checked the door several times, wrestling whether to divulge more. “Then-what, I don’t know. But maybe... maybe I can find a way to get you out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  Mojica shrugged. “I don’t know that yet, neither. I think of something, I let you know.”

  “What about Jesús?”

  Mojica performed the internationally understood comme ci, comme ca gesture. “Comes with the job, eh? Dame.” He indicated that Barney should return the empty can.

  Barney handed it back with live-grenade gentleness.

  “Thanks,” said Barney.

  “De nada.”

  Exit Mojica.

  If this was a game, it was more sophisticated than the schoolyard crap that had so far constituted Barney’s incarceration. It could be one of those despair-of-hope things; something to make his torment cut more deeply, bleed more fulsomely, when the time came for killing.

  The drink sure had been heaven on earth, though.

  Flush-rinse-repeat.

  On the days no one visited to hit him until he blacked out, Barney did not exist. Therefore, he was no one those days. Alternate days were defined by the ebb and flow of assorted pains, the occasional meal (Barney had learned to distrust feeding times as a significator of a day’s passage), or a thin mock of sleep quickly ruined by the pounding heat and inadequate ventilation.

  Some of those prisoners who had television sets also had air conditioning, apparently. The A-list kidnap victims. The ones with some value.

  Barney had become worse off than the Old Assassin — he had ceased to exist even though he had a mission: escape before his captors tired of him and flushed him permanently, no rinse, no repeat. He had to withdraw, cocoon and marshal his remaining energies before he wasted away to his own shadow.

  He would not be missed in a world full of non-people, of unlife, of zombie rote and casual strife.

  Flush-rinse-repeat.

  She was abducted, Carl had told him. Lie Number One.

  There’s nobody else I can trust in a shitstorm like this, Carl had told him. Sucker play.

  Carl had done an excellent job of appearing weak and lacking in practical resources; another brilliant performance. Barney should have tipped when he noticed Carl was more conversant in Spanish than he ought to have been, particularly when he was yelling at Jesús.

  Carl was deliberately vague about this so-called “Felix Rainer” guy — probably a pseudo — because he knew Barney would automatically accept the clandestine. Carl had counted on Barney underestimating him. Further, he had depended upon Barney overestimating his own cleanup capabilities in the daddy role.

  Carl had played the Erica ace, showing a photo and relying upon Barney’s perception of her to further make Carl appear to be the vulnerable gringo, at which point Barney had thought nobody would ever fox him like that.

  Carl had been far too casual with the amputated finger that was presented as Erica’s. He had whipped it out for dramatic effect like a bauble from a vending machine, choking up and artfully misdirecting Barney’s scrutiny.

  Carl had provided an armored limousine, acting like it was no biggie. The wildness of Mexico had neatly masked that magic trick.

  Carl and Estrella were a conduit of intel back to El Chingon and his crew. They weren’t having sex in their cheap hotel; they were comparing notes on Barney, and Estrella had reported their conclusions via cellphone like a good little spy. Some random factor or unscheduled mishap had altered Estrella’s profile so that she could be sacrificed. It was what she was for. So the woman actually named Salvación had been lied to as well. Big surprise, there.

  Carl should have been a lot more shocked to find his bar-bunny gutted and bled out. Instead, he let Barney direct the immediate action.

  When they went to make the money drop, Carl had asked do you really need to have that gun? Uh-huh.

  Despite his training in Basic, despite target practice in Iraq, Carl had handled Barney’s .45 like an amateur to reinforce Barney’s view of him as someone who needed saving.

  And Barney, fool to the end, had asked to see the picture of Erica.

  You remember how I used to be, Carl had told him. I was a world-class fuckup. Still am. But he was good enough at play-acting to win Barney a stay-over in the hole, so who was the real fuckup, here?

  At least... wing ‘em or something. By god, Carl had actually instructed Barney to shoot — and Barney had.

  Carl’s check was growing bigger, line by line.

  The speech about how marrying Erica was the only good thing Carl had ever done — all made up.

  The instructions on the phone — not coaching. Erica talking. Her script all along.

  Flush-rinse-repeat.

  Barney’s status as a non-person was confirmed when the man Mojica had called El Chingon, the boss, showed up in person to describe the ways in which Barney had become a null quantity in the universe.

  He entered Barney’s room with Sucio poised behind him at respectful, subordinate distance like a giant sumo attack dog.

  “That big sonofabitch comes near me again,” said Barney, “and you bet I’ll bite his goddamned nose off this time.”

  “Sucio is understandably upset at the pointless death of his brother — not his cousin, as erroneously reported. Family means a lot to him. To us all.”

  “Spare me the platitudes. You’re sitting on hostages for money and calling it business. At least Sucio is honestly criminal.”

  Sucio smiled with misplaced pride. It was not a pleasant sight. He lacked the equipment to appreciate oxymorons.

  “Indeed, that is the crux of your situation, sir. Whatever your real name is. You have no familia. No connections of any kind. No traceable history. I have checked; wasted my time. I was misled by your good friend Carl to believe you might have some value to your government as a covert agent, some sort of subterranean asset better kept secret. It turns out you have no such worth. No one I have contacted has ever heard of you, even under the list of alleged aliases I had compiled. It is a situation I don’t find myself in very often: You have no value to us.”

  It was impossible and pointless to explain to this man with the lazy eye that Barney’s assumed reputation was more a matter of attitude, of a persona he preferred to project in order to insulate himself from the mundane. It was an air others imposed upon him, and rather than actively cultivate it, he merely did little to countermand it. His current status was backhanded proof that he wasn’t such a badass after all, right?

  “Great,” he said, sullenly. There was no hope to be found here. “Then let’s just wrap this up; I’ll grab my bindle and hit the road.” Again, Barney suffered the problem of which of El Chingon’s eyes to track when actually looking at him.

  “Not possible. Unlike most of our clients and guests, it is not wise to release you, and doing so would gain us nothing. Keeping you gains us nothing, except in the modest sense of payback where Sucio’s late brother is concerned.”

  “Then end this,” Barney said. “You know you’re going to, anyway.”

  El Chingon shook his head. He was already perspiring from the humid closeness of the room. “That’s just it. For someone to be as resilient to the tactics of interrogation as you indicates that perhaps we do not know the entire story yet. Maybe there are other options.”

  “I thought you were a smart businessman,” said Barney. “You aren’t offering me anything one way or the other, except maybe a quick death versus more of this bullshit.”

  “And you appear to have nothing to offer either. That’s tragic. Under different circumstances I might have been able to make use of your abilities. But you no doubt see my dilemma, there. I have to be able to trust my functionaries or the system breaks down.”

  “Oh, I completely sympathize,” said Barney, rolling his eyes, signaling you can go any time, now.

  The Boss made an invisible decision and departed the room with no soci
al amenities. He was an executive in stalemate, a condition to which executives are particularly allergic. He’d be stuck there... unless things changed, or got worse.

  Flush-rinse-repeat.

  Things got worse.

  The next time Sucio showed up in Barney’s quarters, he was alone, he was drunk, and he had brought along a pair of duck-billed tin snips.

  All of Barney’s fingers and toes went on high alert. His penis tried to retreat up into his chest cavity.

  The tin snips were rusty, and had dried blood on them.

  Sucio’s alcohol-glazed eyes were dilated with some more potent form of chemical pick-me-up.

  Once the door was closed and locked, Sucio began muttering chinga tu puta madre hijo de puta mierda capullo gilipollas imbecil cacho cabron... and so on, unending. He was steam-pressurizing toward critical mass.

  Barney backed into his corner. If he could stand on his head, he might have a chance of looping the chain around the thick folds of Sucio’s pack-of-franks neck. Or he could vapor-lock like a trapped cat awaiting an inevitable and unavoidable beating. Maybe he could run his own forehead into the wall fast enough to kill himself before Sucio got to take his pleasure. But Sucio was a skilled torturer, knew the moves, and most crucially, knew how to play the anticipation of extreme pain and life-thieving damage.

  Sucio paused in his dress-down of Barney’s lineage, sexuality and potty habits to sample an amyl nitrate popper, which snapped his focus clear with cardiac paddle speed.

  Jesús was mentioned several times by name, alongside the word venganza. Alongside other words indicating rage, vendetta, payback time.

  Then he did something exceptionally surreal: He checked his watch, a Cartier tank chronograph inlaid with mother-of-pearl that no doubt came as a free prize from a previous victim.

  “Diez minutos, joto,” he said.

  Barney did not care whether he meant ten minutes to live, or that ten minutes of torture were coming. All of Barney’s attention was focused on making his own adrenals squirt.

  When Sucio came in like a bullet train Barney was able to stop him short by saying, “Hey, Sucio — that’s a woman’s watch, man.”