She smiled at him and leaned over to whisper something in his ear. Miro felt her warm breath on his neck, the sunshine in her accent.
“Do you want to get high and go to bed?”
Miro laughed.
“I’m already high.”
…
They started kissing in the cab. Her moist tongue darting into Miro’s mouth and exciting him, making him hard. She was soft and warm and smelled like lavender. As they kissed Miro snaked his hand into her velvet coat, under a woolen sweater, past a hanging garden of necklaces, between a gap in her silk blouse, and reached beneath her T-shirt to find a small firm breast waiting for him.
Miro didn’t remember much about how they got back to the hotel, into the room, and under the covers, yet somehow that’s where they ended up. He couldn’t tell you how their clothes fell from their bodies and ended up mingled in a heap on the floor. All he could recall was their naked bodies coming together, somehow fitting perfectly in a soft and slow coupling, surprising him, as if it were the first time.
After the Bullet
13
ELDER DANIEL LAMB prayed like a motherfucker. Not that he’d ever use that particular word in a conversation with God. He wouldn’t use that particular word in a conversation with anyone. But here he was, standing on the street, praying harder than he’d ever prayed before. Pleading with God so intensely that he was sweating, his fists clenched together into a white-knuckled mouthpiece, his body trembling with the power of his transmission, pleading with God to spare the life of the poor man lying on the grass.
The field strength of his prayers took him by surprise, making him feel as if he’d become some electro-humming altar-boy antenna broadcasting directly to the cosmos.
God is goodness and love. Surely He would hear him and spare this man’s life. He wouldn’t let someone die senselessly. Unless, of course, God had other plans.
Daniel looked up from his prayers and watched as the paramedics intubated the blood-spattered body on the ground.
Collison grabbed his arm.
“I think I’m gonna be sick. I never saw a dead person before.”
Daniel turned and looked at his partner. Collison did look like he might vomit. His face was sweaty and red, a roll of neck fat bulging out, leaping over the buttoned-up collar of his white shirt.
“Really. I’m gonna hurl.”
“Take some deep breaths. Loosen your tie.”
“I gotta sit down.”
Collison crumpled to the sidewalk and let out a groan.
Daniel looked up, away from his fallen colleague, to see the paramedics sliding the man into the back of the ambulance. For a brief, tiny second, Daniel made eye contact with the victim.
“He’s alive. His eyes are open.”
“People die with their eyes open. I had a cat once and that’s what it looked like. She had her eyes open.”
Collison followed this statement with a gut-churning moan and a loud kacking gag, then vomited onto his lap. Daniel stepped back, away from the sludge, as Collison convulsed and urped again, coating his pants.
“You okay?”
“I don’t think so.” Collison groaned again and then flopped over and curled up fetal in his own vomit.
Daniel looked up, needing help. He saw a mangy-looking dog lapping blood off the grass where the victim had been. The dog’s dirty white fur was turning brown, stained with gore. There were a couple of cops around, detective-looking guys.
Daniel waved to them.
“Hey! Help!”
A big Asian detective with a shaved head turned and started jogging over to see what was wrong.
Daniel turned to reassure his partner and noticed that tears were streaming down Collison’s face. The detective looked at Collison, then turned to Daniel.
“What’s wrong?”
Collison, his tears carving little gullies in the vomit on his face, looked up at Daniel.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
And that’s when Elder Collison had a nervous breakdown.
14
SHAMUS ROLLED the window down to try and get a better view of what was happening at the other end of the street.
“Slow the fuck down.”
He craned his neck, trying to see what was going on.
“What’re we doin’ man?”
“I wanna see if he’s dead.”
Damon slowed down but he didn’t look happy about it. He slouched, like he was afraid someone was watching him. He pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and mopped the sweat on his forehead.
“C’mon man. You got him. I saw him drop.”
Shamus turned and glared.
“I want the kill.”
Shamus liked to keep track of the people he killed, not necessarily their names or what they did or if they had a family or anything, just the cold stats. It was like how they keep track of baseball players with runs batted in and slugging percentage. Shamus had his own stats. Heads bashed in and plugging percentage. It had been almost a month since he had plugged the painter in the LA river and he had been feeling the itch to shoot somebody. Either that or beat some asshole senseless. Lucky for him, this errand had come along at the right time.
Shamus turned back to the street. He wished he had binoculars so he could see if the motherfucker was dead or not. He watched the cops run around like they actually knew what they were doing. He saw the locals, the little old ladies from Hermosillo and Manila, gathering and gawking. This was way better than their Pinoy soap operas and telenovelas on Telemundo. A smattering of hipsters—Shamus assumed they were all unemployed screenwriters—stood off to the side, whispering to each other. They would probably use this scene in their next big project.
“They’ll see us.”
“So?”
“So, like they’re not supposed to.”
Shamus shook his head, disgusted, as he watched the paramedics do their thing, wasting taxpayer money trying to save a dead man.
And then there were the two squirrelly-looking Mormon dickheads standing there praying for the asshole with the bullet in his chest.
“Look at those fuckers.”
“The cops?”
“Those fucking Mormons.”
Damon mopped his face and looked down the street.
“They came to my house once.”
Shamus looked at Damon.
“You fuck ’em?”
Damon didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Can we go now? This isn’t cool.”
Shamus nodded.
“Drive on, bitch.”
15
THERE WAS NO pure white light at the end of a tunnel, no warm and fuzzy greetings from his long-dead ancestors, and no ghostly hovering above the doctors as they worked frantically to repair his damaged body. As far as near-death experiences go, Miro’s was anticlimactic.
Not that it was some kind of cakewalk. They almost lost him: his blood pressure dropped at one point, and the doctors had to shout excitedly—a stream of coded references to solutions, drugs, and other medical wonders followed by the word “stat.” They had to zap his heart with defibrillators. The young doctors liked to think they were on a television show. They rubbed the paddles together and shouted “clear!” It made them feel like superheroes.
…
Daniel stood in the waiting area of the emergency room and did what people do in waiting rooms. He waited.
He had sat in the back of the ambulance and watched as his mission partner was strapped to a gurney and given a strong sedative to put a halt to what had become a never-ending stream of tears and nonsensical babbling. They’d slid Collison right next to the gunshot victim and they had all piled into the ambulance.
At first Daniel thought Collison was speaking in tongues. But how can you tell? He’d never heard someone speak in tongues and wasn’t sure that incomprehensible yammering was proof that Collison was filled with the Holy Spirit. Was this the miracle of Pentecost? Maybe Collison’s gibberish was t
ouched by the divine, but mostly it sounded like baby talk, babble and grunts and flying spittle.
Every now and then a profanity would spark from Collison’s mouth like he was some kind of short-circuiting Tour-ette’s patient. Collison called for his mommy. He wanted to fuck her.
Daniel was scared for him; he’d never seen a mental breakdown before, and was relieved when the paramedic had, mercifully, restrained Collison’s hands and doubled up on the dosage.
…
Daniel looked at the other people in the waiting room: a little girl with measles, a guy freshly detached from his thumb, an incredibly fat man wrapped in a foul-smelling bedspread. Daniel didn’t feel like preaching to them. They didn’t need to hear about the Book of Mormon or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They didn’t need him to comfort them, they needed real help.
Daniel walked over to the water fountain and took a long, lukewarm drink. He wondered if he was somehow to blame for Collison’s condition. Would the church elders hold him responsible? Partners were supposed to look out for each other. What would he tell them? That the mission had been difficult? Weren’t the missions supposed to be difficult? Isn’t that the point?
Daniel saw the detectives from the crime scene talking to a couple of EMT paramedics. He went up to them.
“Hey. Did that guy make it? The guy who got shot?”
The detective, the big one with the shaved head, turned and looked at him.
“He’ll live.”
Daniel felt a rush of adrenaline. His body felt light, energized; his prayers had been answered and now the power and the glory of God was flowing inside him.
“It’s a miracle.”
The detective made a sour face.
“It’s dumb fucking luck.”
16
THEY WORE dark blue uniforms with the letters LAFD emblazoned across the front and little patches that indicated they were emergency medical technicians: paramedics, first responders. They saw a lot of blood and guts and shit; sometimes they saved lives but mostly they dealt with heart attacks, car accidents—those were always gross—and gunshot wounds, in that order. It was Los Angeles. Lots of people, lots of cars, lots of guns. Shit was bound to happen.
Ted was waiting to hit the trifecta—guy has a heart attack while driving, rear ends some hothead suffering from road rage who jumps out of his car and shoots him—he figured it was only a matter of time.
While Fran worked in the back of the ambulance to secure the gurney and catalog what meds they’d used to subdue the hysterical Mormon boy, Ted sat in the front with a clipboard, finishing off the paperwork.
Fran turned and looked at Ted.
“I thought they wore special underwear.”
Ted looked up from his papers.
“What?”
“You know, like magic underwear.”
“Who?”
“The Mormons. They’re supposed to wear underwear that protects them from evil. Looked like Fruit o’ the Loom to me.”
Ted shrugged. “I’m not very religious.”
Fran locked down the last of the drawers and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Rambo Taco?”
Ted winced at the mention of the roach coach with its spray-painted mural of a muscle-bound warrior wearing camouflage and holding an assault rifle displayed on its side. It was supposed to look like Sylvester Stallone in the movie Rambo, and it did, kind of. But Ted wasn’t sure what Rambo had to do with tacos. He didn’t remember the movie that well but wasn’t Rambo a post-traumatic-stress-disorder sufferer? A Vietnam vet on a one-man vendetta against a corrupt sheriff in Oregon? What did that have to do with quesadillas?
“We had Rambo Taco yesterday.”
“Yeah, and you said they were good.”
Ted remembered he’d been up all night dealing with repeater burps that tasted like hot grease and chilies.
“I can’t do it today. What about the place Escalante told us about?”
“The car wash?”
“The little café by the college.”
Fran considered it. Ted knew that mentioning Escalante —a rotund and affable fireman known not only for his fine firehouse cooking but for his culinary judgement in general—was a plus. But Fran didn’t seem swayed by this.
“I really want a taco.”
“He said they had meat-loaf sandwiches.”
The mention of meat loaf seemed to change Fran’s outlook.
“And cupcakes.”
Fran started the ambulance.
…
Ted watched as Fran polished off a coconut cupcake, washing it down with a bottle of Coke.
“How can you eat all that sugar?”
Fran looked at him.
“Because it’s real sugar. This is a Mexican Coke. Not that corn syrup crap. Real sugar’s good for you.”
Ted wondered why he was partnered with Fran. You would think the LAFD would find people who were, at the very least, gastronomically compatible. Fran wouldn’t know how to spell gastronomic. She was a community college dropout from the Valley who’d ricocheted through a series of mindless minimum-wage jobs before running off to join the army. She’d been trained as a medic, gone through tours of Afghanistan and Iraq and, if you believed her, she’d seen more than her share of action.
Ted had been a comparative literature major at UC Santa Barbara. He’d written articles for the student paper: mostly reviews of reggae concerts, a front-page story about the annual joint-rolling contest, and a hard-hitting series exposing corruption in the Ultimate Frisbee world championships.
Joining the Los Angeles Fire Department as a paramedic was a logical choice for Fran, part of her natural trajectory, but Ted still didn’t know why he was doing it. It was almost like a joke that had gotten out of hand. His parents wanted him to be a doctor but he wasn’t good at math so he had applied to train as an EMT, got accepted and now, well, here he was. Not that he minded. It was the most interesting job he could think of.
Ted watched as Fran strutted up to the counter to get a second cupcake. He had to admit that she was attractive, with a handsome face and short brown hair that could look boyish or pixyish depending on her mood. Her body was tight, strong from pumping iron at the firehouse gym, and she moved with the rigid posture of a prison guard. She had nice breasts and an ass that could’ve been used in the Buns of Steel infomercials. Ted had never really paid much attention to her looks until they were at a bar with some firefighters and Fran had drunkenly risen to the challenge of a wet T-shirt contest, pitting herself against a hot blonde from the LAPD. As her tight jeans clung to her ideal ass and her T-shirt became transparent, Ted became the envy of his colleagues.
But Ted wasn’t involved with her and he wasn’t interested in getting involved with her. Even if he found her physically attractive, their differences kept him from making a move. Fran’s tour of duty in the army had turned her into a discipline freak, a belligerent throwback to the days before mandatory sensitivity training. Ted was, by nature of his upbringing, already sensitive.
Fran sat back down with her second cupcake. She took a bite, the frosting sticking to her nose. She looked at Ted.
“Next Mormon we get, let’s strip ’em and see if they got the magic underwear.”
17
“THIS IS BULLSHIT, man.”
As Damon struggled to lift a ten-gallon container holding a lush and leafy cannabis plant, guano-rich dirt spilled out onto his bright white sneakers.
“Fuck this. We should’ve hired some fucking Mexicans to do this.”
Shamus watched as Damon frantically tried to brush dirt off his fancy new shoes.
“What the fuck’re you doin’, man?”
“You know how much these cost? I can’t let my kicks get dirty.”
Shamus picked up a cardboard box filled with glass jars. The jars were labeled in some kind of scientist code and contained a variety of buds and seeds. Shamus looked at Damon and shook his head in disgust.
“Stop b
eing such a little bitch and get this shit in the van.”
Guillermo came into the room carrying a mature plant, one that looked close to blooming, with large blossom-studded colas at the ends of the stalks.
“Look at these beauties. There’s a bunch more, too. Dude’s got almost a hundred plants.”
Damon set his container down and brushed dirt off his track pants, carefully inspecting them to see if they were smudged. He looked at Shamus.
“There’s a bunch of baby clones in the other room. I’ll get them.”
Damon walked off. Shamus and Guillermo exchanged a look. Guillermo had to laugh.
“Long as I can smoke some of this shit, I’ll carry whatever.”
Shamus grunted and walked out the back door carrying the box of glass jars. He slid it into the back of the truck and looked around, scanning the area for witnesses. Shamus didn’t like people testifying against him; they should mind their own fucking business. But he couldn’t have picked a more perfect night for a robbery. It was dark, there were no lights on in the house next door, no streetlight, and only a half-moon in the sky—not enough to give someone a look at what they were doing. For all anyone knew, someone was moving out.
Damon carried a flat of small plants and plopped it into the back of the van with a loud thud. Then he began to brush the dirt off his tracksuit.
“I should’ve worn some motherfuckin’ overalls. Who knew this asshole was the farmer in the dell?”
Shamus looked at him.
“This weed won the Cannabis Cup. That makes it the best weed in the world. You should show some respect.”
Damon looked at the plants, considering what Shamus was saying.
“I’m still takin’ his CDs.”
…
While Damon and Guillermo loaded the rest of the plants into the van, Shamus took a look around the house.
Two bedrooms had been turned into organic farms with grow lights suspended from the ceilings and big CO2 tanks circulating air; one room was some sort of laboratory area with microscopes and some sorts of miniature gardening tools lined up on a table; the rest of the house looked like it was decorated by a professional. That or the guy was gay. There were lamps and sofas and a coffee table that looked like that modern shit, like stuff you’d see on TV. Shamus had to admit that it looked pretty sharp. Not comfy—you couldn’t veg out on that couch and watch the Dodgers or anything, you’d probably kill your back—but it looked nice. Even better was a large framed poster, some kind of crazy picture of a squirrel putting nuts into a tree. The squirrel was saying “Nuts to Winter” in a big cartoon voice bubble.
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