Pirata

  “That, and your shoes,” I said.

  This guy was either a Jehovah’s Witness or a cop.

  “Are you open?” he asked.

  “I could sell you a beer if you want,” I said.

  “Sounds good,” he said. “And a shot if you’ve got one.”

  Okay—so he wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness.

  The man stepped up to the bar. There was a directness about him that was a little disconcerting. He was maybe thirty-five years old and pale in an office cubicle sort of way. But he also had the low-fat face of a gym rat.

  “Sorry, I don’t have any lime,” I said, handing him a Pacífico. I also poured him three fingers of tequila, which he slammed in one gulp.

  “Gracias,” he said.

  I could see him ogling the big-wave gun Winsor had left hanging up on the wall.

  “How do you like Sabanita?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. Too much rain. Too many Mexicans.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or just being ugly in that American sort of way.

  “That’s why we call it off-season,” I said.

  “Tormenta,” he said. “Mexico doesn’t have a word for monsoon.”

  He had obviously read the handy tourist guide.

  “Well, at least the flights to get down here are cheap,” I said.

  “That doesn’t matter. The US taxpayers pick up my tab.”

  “Must be nice.” I swallowed. This guy was a cop. Likely a Fed.

  “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “Maybe you can help me out.”

  “Maybe. Depends who you are, I guess.”

  “Lloyd Jeffries, FBI.”

  He actually took out his wallet and flashed me his ID. I pretended that it was the kind of thing that happened to me every day. I nearly yawned.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” I read, a little sleepily.

  “Ever hear of us?”

  “I think so.” I laughed—but it was a nervous laugh. All I could think of was Jade telling me about the Find My iPhone app and throwing Winsor’s old one out the Suburban’s window. Holy shit—it looked like somebody had found it.

  “I’m looking for a man named Nick Lutz,” he said.

  I gave Agent Jeffries my very best car-salesman smile. “I’m Nick Lutz.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or if he already knew. The guy had a killer poker face.

  “That was easy, huh?” he said.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” I said, like a married guy trying to explain the condom in his wallet to his wife.

  “Any idea what brought me here?” Jeffries asked. “Why I’d come all the way down to Mexico during the hot and shitty season?”

  “Not really.”

  He had this weirdly triumphant look on his face—as if he was having a little fun with this. My heart was pounding through my chest. I was sure he could see my T-shirt pulsating.

  He finished his beer and motioned for another one. I handed him his second Pacífico.

  “Go ahead. Take a free kick,” he said. “No penalty.”

  It was obvious to me why Agent Jeffries was here. The Mexican cops had somehow identified Winsor’s body and notified the US.

  “You probably came down here to talk about the owner of this place,” I said, heavy and slow.

  “So you’re not the owner?”

  The guy could play dumb like a genius. I was being Columbo’d.

  “I’m just running it for him,” I said, soaking through my shirt.

  “But you’re Pirata, the gringo with one eye, right?” Agent Jeffries smiled, feigning confusion.

  “Not anymore,” I said, pointing to my glass eye. “I’m a miracle of modern technology.”

  “Then why the new sign? Why change the name?” He took a tiny sip of his Pacífico.

  This guy was slick. I forced myself to smile.

  “I think you’re looking for Winsor Baumgarten, actually,” I said, ignoring his last two questions completely. “But no one knows where he is. I don’t. No idea. None.”

  I think it was the first time I had ever said Winsor’s whole name out loud. I fully expected Agent Jeffries to arrest me for murder, and I felt as if I was going to pass out. I nearly held out my hands to be cuffed—and I immediately began thinking about what kind of plea deal I should try to make with the FBI before Chuy and José teamed up to send me to the gas chamber.

  “Who?” Agent Jeffries asked.

  “Winsor Baumgarten. That’s who owns this place.”

  Fuck.

  “I’m just running it for him until he gets back,” I said.

  “From where?”

  “From here, behind the bar.” I was talking way too much and making very little sense.

  “Never heard of him,” Agent Jeffries said. “And I’d remember a name like that.”

  Jeffries took another tiny sip of his beer and then nodded his head almost imperceptibly. For some reason, I started nodding along with him—or maybe I was shaking. I gritted my teeth. This guy was definitely up to something. I couldn’t tell if he was good cop, bad cop–ing me—or if maybe José and Chuy had already confessed and they had blamed killing Winsor on me. I was nearly hallucinating with stress.

  “We found the guy who shot you, Mr. Lutz. He’s being extradited from Florida this week.” Agent Jeffries had that triumphant look on his face again.

  “What?” I wasn’t too sure what he had just said. I was trying not to hyperventilate, and I gripped the bar with both hands.

  “The guy who shot you.” Jeffries pointed to my glass eye. “Remember?”

  “The carjacker?”

  I felt like I had just been pardoned from death row. I had to fight off an urge to kiss him as he took another drink of his Pacífico. I had thought for sure I was about to be arrested for Winsor’s murder. I tried not to smile too much.

  “But he wasn’t a carjacker,” Agent Jeffries said.

  “He was so. The guy jacked an Impala. It was fully loaded.”

  “He was a hired hit man,” he said.

  “No way,” I said, even though I was very relieved he wasn’t here to pop me for Winsor.

  “Yup, he was. A pro,” he said. “He admitted to being hired to kill you because he was trying to plead down another murder-for-hire beef down in Miami. He passed the lie detector and everything.”

  “That sounds a little ridiculous,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter how it sounds,” he said. “That’s the reality of it.”

  “I was a car salesman. Nobody puts a hit on a car salesman. I mean, who would do that?”

  “Well, apparently a wife would,” Agent Jeffries said. “At least, she would if she was banging the assistant manager, and the husband had a two-million-dollar life insurance policy.”

  He took another long drink of his Pacífico. I stepped out from behind the bar and slumped down into a chair.

  “My wife?” I asked softly.

  50

  From the way Agent Jeffries was looking at me, I thought that maybe I’d just had an absence seizure. Somehow I was drinking a glass of water. I had no idea how much time had passed, but Agent Jeffries’s beer was still half-full—so it wasn’t like I had blacked out and confessed.

  “She hired someone to kill me?” I said.

  “With an accomplice,” Jeffries said, as if that might ease the blow. “Her boyfriend, apparently. Who was your assistant new-car manager at the time.”

  “Steve Levine?” Holy shit. “He was a buddy of mine.”

  “You didn’t know that they got married?”

  “They got married? I didn’t even know Julie and I were divorced.”

  My brain felt like it was being caned.

  “Hey, you abandoned her, right?”

  “I didn’t abandon anybody. Living with a hole in your head is an incredible bummer. I was miserable. So was Julie. So I took off. It was what was best for everybody.”

  Jeffries started with the
tiny nodding again.

  “But that hole in your head is because Julie and Steve hired a guy and had you shot. Your buddy ended up with your old job. Your new house. And your ex-wife.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  It was starting to sink in.

  “Motive is a big part of how these things get figured out,” he said.

  It was impossible to comprehend anyone hating me that much. Julie and I had a crap marriage, and I won’t deny playing around when an opportunity got teed up. But she wasn’t exactly the heartbroken housewife, either. After I’d gotten shot, it got even worse.

  But I never wanted her dead.

  We had talked about divorce—in fact, it was the only thing we talked about. We just couldn’t figure out how to King Solomon our kid, who was the only person in the family who mattered to both of us.

  Then I ran into a tree, and that pretty much decided who got to look after our son.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” I asked.

  Jeffries shrugged. It was obvious.

  “Jail?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Oh, yeah. Attempted first-degree murder and solicitation. Grievous injury. The new hubby’s already agreed to testify. It’ll be hard for her to PMS out of this one.”

  I stood up. I was light-headed, and I reeled a bit. I leaned against the back of a chair and then reached out to shake Agent Jeffries’s hand.

  “Thank you for telling me all this.”

  “Sit down,” he said. “I’m not done.”

  I sat back down.

  Agent Jeffries removed a small photograph from his pocket and handed it to me. It was a color snapshot of a boy wearing a San Diego Chargers jersey and holding a skateboard tied with a blue ribbon. The boy looked about twelve. And then I had this horrible flash that maybe this was about Winsor, after all.

  “Do you recognize that kid?” Agent Jeffries asked.

  I was hesitant and very frightened. “He looks familiar.”

  “He should. That was taken at his last birthday.”

  And then it crashed down on me that I was staring at a photograph of my son, Marshall. I hadn’t seen him in six years. I was startled to see how grown-up he was.

  “When the Marshman turned twelve years old,” I said softly.

  It felt as if the volume had been turned down on the whole world. I could barely hear.

  “What do you want to do about him?” Agent Jeffries said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What?”

  “Where do you want them to put your son?”

  “How is that up to me?”

  “His mom’s in jail—probably going to stay there. Your in-laws are passing on the boy. They don’t want him. If you don’t, he goes to Child Protective Services and then probably some kind of foster care.”

  All I could say was, “No.”

  “Well, it was a big thing to ask, I know. But that’s why I came all the way down here. I figured your kid deserved the effort.”

  “I meant, no foster care.” I looked at the photograph. My hand trembled.

  Jeffries smiled and nodded. “I’ll bet he’ll be happy to hear that,” he said, and gave me his card. My in-laws’ address was scribbled on the back. “There’s a Ward of the State petition in progress, which is a bitch to get out of, so you don’t have a lot of time—but for now he’s staying there.” He nodded at the address on the back of the card.

  “How long do I have?”

  “Depends how screwed up CPS is,” he said. “But his grandmother wants him out of the house.”

  “I’ll leave tonight.”

  “Okay.” He smiled. “This was worth the trip, then.”

  I stood up, and Jeffries shook my hand.

  “Take care of him.”

  “I will do my best,” I said.

  Agent Jeffries finished the last inch of foam in his beer and then walked out the door. I looked back down at the photograph of Marshall. I had forgotten how beautiful he was.

  It was hard to breathe.

  51

  For the last six years, I’d pushed back against the nightmares and negotiated down my responsibility for the fits and the accident—trying to disown the memory of regaining consciousness just in time to watch my seven-year-old being loaded into an ambulance.

  We had been coming back from a victory dinner at In-N-Out Burger. Marshall’s Little League team had just crushed the Mini Padres. The Marshman had hit a triple with two RBI, so I was letting him ride up in the big-boy seat next to me—even though California law is very clear about car seats in the back seat for kids under eight.

  “Just put that seat belt on and you’ll be fine,” I told him.

  Marshall was always more worried about breaking the rules than I was. But tonight we were pretty full of ourselves, and I was getting a kick out of treating him like a superstar.

  The arresting officer had told me that Marshall had been jettisoned from under the big-boy seat belt on impact, and when the airbag deployed, it had broken his neck.

  I had been warned about driving with a TBI while off my meds, so I couldn’t really blame Julie for trying to kill me—even if I’ve been too chickenshit to finish the job ever since.

  This was the crazy loop that kept circling in my head. But I had it backward—something I would just be able to grasp and then instantly lose sight of.

  The reason I even had a hole in my head and all these fits and seizures was that I’d been shot. Agent Jeffries told me that my ex-wife and her boyfriend had hired someone to kill me. Julie and my old pal Steve “The Machine” Levine—they were responsible for the hole in my head. Marshall’s mom didn’t put a hit on me because I’d nearly killed him in a car accident. She bought the bullet that caused my TBI in the first place.

  I had been off my meds, and I will always own that—but I shouldn’t have ever been on them.

  I was finally able to assemble the bits and pieces of this nightmare in a way that made some sense—even if it would only hold together for a few seconds. But I was having moments when the impossibility of it all was at least manageable.

  I didn’t have a Mexican credit card and my SSDI installment didn’t come in until the first of the month, so I was going to need gas money to get up to SoCal. And who knew how long it would take me to get settled and find a job and a place for Marshall and me to live.

  I packed my one pair of long pants and six T-shirts. I needed a dog sitter and someone to watch my casa—and, I figured, about $1,000 in cash. Which was about 20,000 pesos, or two months’ income for a hardworking Sabanitan—an impossible sum to have saved up during the off-season.

  “Pirata,” Chuy said, “I’m giving you food if you are hungry and a bed for sleep, but I don’t have no big dollars like that.”

  “Yeah, and who lends money to a gringo who’s running away back home?” José asked.

  I could see José under the shadow of a mango tree at the edge of Chuy’s front yard. He was naked and covered in blood—masterfully butchering a cow with a machete and stacking up large slabs of bright-red meat.

  Chuy was barefoot and shirtless, with both his hands shrugged apologetically into the giant pockets of his cargo shorts. I was dressed for the road in my long pants and a Billabong hoodie. I was even wearing my leather flip-flops.

  “I’m coming back, amigo,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, now I’m your amigo.” José snorted.

  “Why do you need so much money, Pirata?” Chuy asked.

  I shrugged—I wasn’t ready to talk about my son. “You just have to trust me.”

  “But we know each other’s everything,” Chuy said. “We carry the same sins.”

  “Those sins didn’t even come up in the conversation,” I said.

  “That’s what you say,” José said. “No one knows what the fucking FBI said.”

  José hosed himself down and pulled on some pants. Then he walked over to me and mumblety-pegged the machete between my feet. I didn’t flinch, which disappointed him a little.


  “Don’t make me come find you—or that cow will look good compared to you,” he said, in that great way he had with the English language. “I’ll lend you the money.”

  “You will?” I tried to pull the machete from the dirt between my feet—but it was buried halfway to its hilt and wouldn’t budge.

  “And I don’t give a fuck why you need it,” he said, yanking the machete free with ease.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “But I live in your casa until you pay me back,” he said.

  I tried not to smile. No one messes with José. My casita would be safe while I was gone.

  “Only if you take care of my dog,” I said.

  José turned to Chuy. “Is this pendejo negotiating?” José asked, laughing.

  “Tilly’s a great dog,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “Maybe I meet her already.”

  José winked at me just to piss me off and then slipped the machete through a steel ring hanging from the rope slung over his shoulder.

  “Chuy and Yohana run the Wave of the Day. All the money they make when you’re gone, they keep,” he said. “No percentages.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said. I was smiling.

  “It doesn’t matter,” José said. “You need the money. And if you no come back, we keep everything.”

  “I get the Red Fin,” Chuy said.

  “Fuck,” I said. But I said it like a man getting laid.

  I couldn’t have hoped for a better deal, but I think José knew that. He could tell I needed help, and he was willing to help me—no questions asked. He just didn’t want it to look like the gringos were getting their way with the Mexicans again.

  52

  It took 2,000 pesos to fill up the Suburban at Sabanita’s Pemex. But at least it had a four-hundred-mile range. If my bladder held out, I could take Highway 200 all the way to Tepic and then México 15 up to Mazatlán without stopping. Then I’d head straight toward the border on the toll roads, with just one more pit stop before crossing over.

  Sabanita is about fifteen hundred miles due south of Nogales, Arizona. It’s a hot and hellish thirty-hour drive to the border. I was hoping to pull off an unassisted all-nighter and then grab a few hours of sleep on the side of the road in the safety of the States late tomorrow night. I planned on slogging the Tucson-to-San Diego leg the next morning.