Sugarman

by Vincent Vargas

  “She’s dead Ethan!” His words have hurt me. “She’s dead, brother, and you’re gonna just be a fucking coward? You’re gonna take the coward’s way out, knowing those people that did this to her are still living? Still breathing? And you’re okay with that, you fucking coward?”

  My chest heaves. My fists clench. I want to hit my brother. I want to hit him, and hold him, because I am fucking terrified. I don’t want to live in this world without him, and he knows it…

  “How you’re feeling right now, brother…” He says, “that’s how I felt about her, but a million-fold. You and me, we’re brothers. Her and I, we’re soulmates. Can you understand me now, Dom? As a brother.”

  My chin drops to my chest. I want to feel anger.

  But I can’t.

  “I understand, you motherfucker.”

  I stand in silence then. I know what’s coming, for him and me. I just need to ask the question: “What do you want to do, brother?”

  My words come out as a croak, but their intent is as loud as the crack of a rifle. Ethan’s hands come away and his head lifts up. His eyes are red holes in a face pulled tight with pain. I’ve never seen him like this.

  It terrifies me.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask again, but I already know the answer.

  “Kill them.” My brother speaks. “Kill them all.”

  Chapter Five

  Ethan had given me what I wanted - permission to go after the people who had taken Lucia. We both knew this would be the last time that we ever saw each other, at least in this life.

  I’d opened my mouth to try and talk him out of it, but my dry lips shut quickly. One look into his eyes was enough. He’d already checked out of this world, and willingly. We were standing on Texan soil. A state had a right to make its own decisions, and so did a man. What happened to Lucia had left him as powerless as a child, but he could still make this call, and it was his to make. I knew the love of brotherhood, but I had never felt anything as strong from my parents, or from a woman. I kept that side of my past in a locker that I didn’t ever open, but I knew well enough that I had never experienced the true, beautiful love like the one which had grown between Ethan and Lucia. Like he said, they were soulmates. It was spiritual. Religious. In my own relationships, we’d been more like animals than angels.

  My brother had asked me to kill them all and I would carry out his wish, and I’d do it for the same reason as he was about to take his final action on earth - I couldn’t face any other reality. To pretend like this had never happened was no option for me. It would kill me. Drive me to…

  “Goodbye, brother.”

  Time for me to leave. Time for me to step out of one life, and into the next. I’d never been in one place too long. Never had ‘family’ that lasted more than a few years. God had a plan, and his plan for me was that I lived hard, and lonely. So be it.

  “Goodbye, Dominic.” He says.

  I’m turning my sight away from my brother, but not my back. He knows that this is the greatest love I can show for him. The greatest respect.

  I don’t look back as I walk down the steps and beneath the flags hanging limp against their poles. I don’t look back as I turn on the truck’s engine, and pull out onto the dirt.

  I never hear the shot, but when my heart begins to thump in my chest, I know that Lucia is no longer alone.

  Chapter Six

  Have you met a soldier at war?

  I don’t cry for my brother. I don’t feel sick. He was there, he was here, and now he’s gone. There will come a time - the most horrible moment - where the realization of this will wash through me like acid, but not now. Now I’m at war. I saw him go down, but I have to push on. If I don’t, his death will count for nothing. I owe it to him to cut out all emotion. I owe it to him to act like he didn’t matter to me. When the work is done, and the war is won, then I can be flesh and blood again. Until then, I’m a soldier.

  And a soldier needs intel. That’s why I’ve come into work at the border patrol station. It’s not my shift, but this isn’t new. There’s a lot of guys like me. We don’t like time to think, and so we run our engines until we’re gassed out. We pick up extra work, patrol extra miles, and shake down whoever we need to so that we don’t shake down ourselves. A shark has to keep swimming. We’re no different. To stop is to die.

  You might think from TV that the agency has walls of LED screens and armies of agents. Nah. This isn’t Tom Cruise shit. There’s maps on the walls, post-it notes, and stacks of paper-work that will kill more agents through stress and sedentary illnesses than the cartels ever will. There’s not many of us. It’s not the most attractive job in the world - one bullseye on your head from bad guys, and one on your back from some of your own countrymen - and a tight department budget means tighter wallets. You can live cheap on the border, but even so, the only people in this office are here because they want to be. We each got our own reasons for that - bleeding hearts, to god complexes - but it’s as close as a thing I’ve found to the Rangers since I un-laced my boots for the last time.

  I see a group of five or six guys pouring coffee and heading into a briefing room. I take a dirty cup and follow on. The last thing I need is help staying awake, but I’m an intimidating looking fuck - I never once got picked up for a hitch hike - and I worked out years ago that holding some novelty mug with a joke written on it seems to calm people down around me.

  The others are taking seats and feel my presence. Some of them were at the river earlier. One of the bros guesses right that I’m here because of that, but not why; “Your girlfriend’s tagged, dude. She was cut up pretty bad but damn, nice ass. How long did you wait to call that one in?”

  The words mean nothing to me. He doesn’t know. He’s just sick of death. Scared of it, and trying to hide it. His name is Martin. He’s a vet, but he missed out on the shooting wars. I twitch the corner of my mouth enough to soothe his ego.

  “What’s this?” I ask, using the Hello Kitty mug to point towards a projection screen on the wall.

  “Think we got a tunnel.” Martin tells me, getting to his feet and handing me a photograph taken from a drone - not the killing kind you see on the news, but one that we picked up at Walmart out of our own pockets. I look it over, but there’s not much to see; just an old outbuilding, and a lot of vehicle tracks in the dust.

  Martin hands me a second photo. A truck, pulled up outside.

  “Got shots of the driver?”

  He shakes his head. “We pulled back the drone before they killed the engine. Didn’t want to spook them.”

  One of the lifers from the front of the small room speaks up. Ortega’s next up in the chain on command. He’s got thirty years on the border, and he wears them heavy. “We’re gonna put some surveillance on the ground, Dom. You want the job?”

  Ortega knows me, so when I shake my head, it throws him a little. “Jesus,” he jokes, “who is she?”

  The other agents laugh, but none too loud. I’ve never been a problem to any of them, but too much happened when I first came here for me to let my guard down. By the time that I was ready for friends, the walls had been built, and so had my reputation - “Dom’s a good guy. Solid guy. He’s just… he’s just a bit of a loner, that’s all.”

  “Where is this?” I ask Ortega.

  “I didn’t think you wanted it?”

  I shrug. “I don’t. I just like the puzzle pieces.” And that’s true. Every little bit of intel counts. You don’t go out and find the Mona Lisa. You scratch out thousands of tiles that make a mosaic.

  Ortega looks down at a sheet of paper and reads off the location. I pretend to sip my coffee. Pretend to listen to the brief for a few minutes before I quietly make an excuse - “gotta piss” - and slip out of the room.

  I don’t know what part the tunnel will play in my plans, because I still don’t have one. There’s something that’s been loud in my mind, drowning out even the need for revenge. It comes from being shit on as a kid. Being the runt
without a family.

  Lucia’s son, Diego.

  I need to find him.

  Chapter Seven

  I don’t know much about kids, except that when I was one it wasn’t fun, and when I tried to have my own, things got worse.

  Diego wasn’t like that. He took after his mom, and saw fun in everything. I didn’t know much about his dad, but I saw the way he gravitated to Ethan, and I recognized a boy looking for a father figure when I saw one. That’s why I need to find him. I’m not slipping into Ethan’s shoes, but I want to know that Diego’s father will.

  I know what actions I need to take, but I don’t want to think about the reasons behind it. Thinking has never worked out for me. I need movement. Action.

  But the border is a fucking parking lot.

  It’s worse coming the other way, but still I’ve got to crawl. I’ve got time to think, but about what?; Lucia in the river? Ethan saying goodbye?

  And so I think about Diego. I think about the smiling kid who’d come out to my ranch so that Ethan could teach him to shoot, like his own dad had done. I enjoyed those days. I took pride in my martial arts, and I took pride in my brother. Seeing him with Diego and Lucia, I was seeing a man move toward his potential.

  My own try at being a dad hadn’t worked out so well.

  Why would it have? I was twenty-one when I met Rebecca at a bar off base. I was still twenty-one when she told me she was expecting. What else does a young soldier do at that point? He marries the girl he’d met a half dozen times. They get base housing together. Only then, living under the same roof and expecting to bring a human life into the world, do they start to realize how fucked up the other person is; her life hadn’t been any better than my own. If she’d have let me see my daughter Mary, when things finally boiled over, I could have forgiven her everything. We’d both been dealt shit hands, but she’d taken her cards, and shoved them down my throat. According to a birth certificate I was a parent. According to my heart I was a father. According to Rebecca I was a danger, and so according to the court I was not a part of Mary’s life. I hadn’t seen her in 6 years. Didn’t know what she looked like, how she thought, what she felt, and what she dreamed of. I assumed, being with her mom that hated me, that she’d feel the same, and I’d had enough shit in my life that I didn’t want to drag my dirty feet into hers.

  And so I let her be. I kept moving. Patrolled the border. Kept my dick in my pants and my pain in a locker. What was done was done, but there was something I could do for Diego. Make sure he was set. Make sure he had someone in his life who gave a shit. I’d check on his father. Maybe call in now and then. Offer to help with money. Shit, I’d figure it out, but before I did what I’d promised Ethan, I’d carry out this promise to myself. First though, I’d have to find the kid.

  All I had to go on was a phone number. It had been in Lucia’s belongings, and the paper was old enough that I knew it was someone who mattered to her life, even if they didn’t matter to her. I used it to find an address, and I knew enough about Juarez to know that the outlook for this guy wasn’t great; I wasn’t about to find Diego set up in a Villa, with his schooling covered for life.

  If the number and address still held up, Juan Delgardo lived in the SUCH AND SUCH (Vinny?) part of the town. It was a front line in the war between the cartels, and clear of the border. I was driving toward it with a familiar lump in my stomach, just like I’d felt when we’d push out on raids in Sadr City. Your brain and body know what’s up. Subconsciously, you pick up on threats. You feel the eyes. The look of predators as they assess you, your worth, and the price they’d risk to take it.

  I looked at my GPS. I was a couple of minutes from the address, but any hopes I had of Diego’s dad being squared away and wealthy were out the window. This barrio was a slum, no other way to describe it. I was passing kids with bare feet, and adults with bare souls, their faces empty as I rolled through the potholes in their streets. I was a stranger, and I had no doubt someone was already putting in calls to let the local jefe and sicarios know that there was an American on their turf. I should have rented a car instead of using my own truck. Some would say that I can’t be too hard on myself for not thinking straight, when the few people that I love in my life have been dropping like flies. But that’s exactly my point; if I don’t keep my shit together, who’s going to stand for them? I just have to hope the local fuckheads are so smashed that they don’t think to take pictures of my plates, and that they don’t have the connections to run them; yeah, right. The Mexican authorities are riddled with corruption, and in the States, we got a few rotten apples in the basket, too.

  “You have arrived at your destination.” My phone tells me.

  I remember hearing people say that home is where the heart is. My thinking as a kid was ‘home is anywhere but here’, and I can feel that sense creeping up on me now. I feel dirty being here, like I’m witness to a crime. The crime of giving up, and surrendering to circumstances.

  I step out of my truck onto the street. I’m not armed with anything more than a switchblade, since rolling across the border with a firearm was not an option. I feel eyes on me, but I don’t see them. I start to step over trash, then give up. The house is decaying, and the yard is a landfill.

  I stop at the door. I speak up. “Diego? It’s Dom, Ethan’s friend.”

  I hear shuffling inside, but no voices.

  “Diego?”

  More shuffling, then a groan, like a wounded animal is dragging itself through the underbrush. The eyes that I can feel on me are beginning to feel more like crosshairs. No time for niceties. I put my shoulder to the door.

  It’s time to find this kid.

  Chapter Eight

  There’s a few things that can get you killed when you enter a room, but the biggest reason is to stay standing like a nice silhouette in that picture frame you just created, and so I move fast and to the right. The only light coming into the building is from behind me, and it’s enough for me to catch the source of the shuffling sound, trying to get to his feet.

  I grab the zombie by the shoulder and shove it to the ground. I feel another trying to rise from a piss-stinking sofa on the other side of the room. “Stay on your fucking back.” I snap in Spanish, and the undead stops struggling.

  I don’t need to look closely at the man I’m holding to know what I’ll see; dried out cheeks. Tight skin. Slack mouth. Vacant eyes. Junkies are the same the world over, and I know that a lot of them got that way because they had lives like mine. That’s enough for me to cut them some slack, but not today. I came here for a reason, and I didn’t bring my manners. I hit the guy across the face with an open palm; just enough to make his brain open for business.

  “Are you Juan Delgardo?” I ask him three times, each with a bit more force in the words, and my squeeze on his shoulder.

  The zombie finally speaks. “Si.”

  I stand up and haul him up with me. There’s just bones to him, as light as an empty tracksuit.

  “Where’s Diego?” I pull my flashlight and shine it in his red eyes. “Where’s you son?”

  I see a memory pass over his pass. “Diego?”

  “Diego. Your fucking son. Where is he?”

  The zombie looks confused. Panicked, even. “I haven’t… I haven’t seen Diego for months. Not for months.”

  I shake him. I can hear his fucking bones rattle. I tell him I’ll break them one by one to find the truth.

  “It is the truth, I promise!”

  I don’t believe his words, but I believe his eyes. He’s gone past the point in life where anything matters except the score. He’d remember seeing Diego because the kid would have helped him get it, or hurt him getting it. Junkies hold grudges, and none more so than against a needy kid.

  “If you’re lying to me I’ll kill you.” I growl as I let him go, but Juan Delgardo is already dead, a couple months left in him at most. Then, Diego will be an orphan.

  I shake my head. Look around at the zombie’s life. Who am I
kidding? Diego’s already on his own.

  I open my mouth to tell him where to contact me if Diego shows up, but I hear noise outside, in the streets; it’s breaking glass.

  Someone is smashing my truck.

  Chapter Nine

  The kids are gone by the time I get outside, but the damage is done. Holes in every window, but the glass was tough, and they didn’t get in. I look quickly around the tires, but don’t see any flats. At this point it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s time for me to get the fuck out. I know how these things go. Just like gorillas, humans start with beating chests, and building confidence. First the stones fly, then the bullets.

  I get into the truck, feeling chunks of glass pushing into my jeans. I put her into gear and pull forward, trying to push my upper body and head as far back into the cab as I can. I know I’m not out of this yet, and to prove the point, out the corner of my eye I see a brick come sailing in and bounce off my hood. If I hear a shot, I’ll stomp the gas and plough through anything in front of me; my biggest worry now is to find something parked or pulled in front of the narrow streets of the barrio that might block my escape.

  “You fucking idiot!” I shout at myself. I was stupid coming here. What did I expect? To track down a kid in a fucking warzone? That’s some Hollywood shit. I’ve seen enough bodies to know that there are no happy endings, only endings, and I might have just brought mine forward so I could play Brad and Angelina.

  “Fucking idiot!”

  I see a car pulling out of a side street. I step on the gas. If he’s trying to block me in I’ll T-bone that fucker and drag him back to the border with me. But then I see the shocked look on the man’s face, just a guy trying to leave his home, and I shoot by him with a half yard to spare.