Baked

by Mark Haskell Smith

  …

  Miro didn’t need to use the key, the door was already open. He could see wood splinters jutting up from the frame where the dead bolt had been jimmied. He walked in, trying not to make a sound in case someone was still inside, and looked around. What little he and Daniel had was piled in the middle of the floor along with the mattress stuffing, the pillow guts, and some broken wood that might have been the dresser or part of the closet. Loose tufts of kapok was mixed with the shattered glass on the kitchen floor.

  Miro turned and looked at Guus and Marianna. They were standing in the doorway, their jaws dropped in disbelief, as if they’d just realized that the new world they’d heard so much about—the sun always shining, the air scented by orange blossoms, the champagne flowing poolside—was really just a ransacked, roach-infested dump.

  Guus cleared his throat.

  “So this is... what? Where you live?”

  “This was my hideout.”

  “Your hideout has been found out.”

  Marianna appeared confused.

  “Why are you hiding?”

  Guus cleared his throat again and turned to Marianna.

  “Someone shot him and stole his plants and seeds.”

  Marianna looked at Miro, a spark of fear flashing in her eyes.

  “Serío?”

  Miro shrugged.

  “I’m okay now.”

  “But you have to hide?”

  “Until I find out who did it. And who did this.”

  “So this clothing you’re wearing is a disguise?”

  “Yes.”

  Marianna heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Thank God. I was really worried that the father of my baby was in some kind of cult.”

  Miro was about to say something but stopped midsyllable. He looked at Guus, who nodded.

  “That’s why I brought her. So she could tell you in person.”

  Marianna shrugged.

  “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

  He had never really considered being a father. It just hadn’t occurred to him. Not once. Not when he was in bed with any of his previous girlfriends and not when he visited friends and saw their little tykes romping around the room, pulling books off shelves, banging on pots and pans, and generally busying themselves creating cute kiddy chaos. It never crossed his mind that he might, one day, be the proud progenitor of some kind of miniature person. He was surprised by the intensity of the emotion he felt. Maybe it was because of his feelings for her. Maybe it was the near-death experience of being shot. Perhaps it was the fact that some kind of gangbanger death squad was tracking him.

  It was all too much, too fast for Miro. His brain switched off for a moment like a computer freezing up from too much input: the ransacking of his hideout, the information from Marianna, and the sudden jolting realization that whoever had done this might be watching and that they might be in real and immediate danger.

  His brain rebooted.

  “We’ve got to go. They might come back.”

  Guus nodded.

  “Let’s go to a hotel and figure things out.”

  37

  SHAMUS WORKED up a nice rich lather in the shower. He let the hot water relax his shoulders as it washed the funk and filth off his body. He was starting to feel better. He’d have to move the idiot intruder who was bound and gagged on the living room floor to the grow house —he couldn’t risk leaving him unsupervised—and stick him in the room with the two Mormons, but otherwise things were looking up; they were closing in on problem numero uno, the Miro guy. Now that they knew that Miro was bicycling around dressed like a goof, it was only a matter of time before they’d find him and he could finish the job. Shamus reminded himself to go to the range and get in some practice. Normally when he shot somebody they went down and stayed down.

  Shamus had just squirted a dollop of shaving cream into his hand—he liked to shave his head in the shower—when he heard his cell phone ringing in the bedroom.

  Shamus stood, dripping wet with the phone at his ear, listening to Guillermo tell him that Miro and two other people, a couple, were in the apartment.

  Guillermo wanted to know what to do, he couldn’t follow them if they left because he didn’t have a car. Should he go kill them?

  Shamus didn’t want him to kill them, that was his job, and the fact that a couple was there complicated matters. The hit would become mass murder.

  If Shamus hadn’t been distracted by the bound and gagged idiot inchworming his way out the front door, he might’ve told Guillermo to run over and hold the trio at gunpoint until he got there but as it was he threw the phone on the bed, ran out of the house naked, grabbed the guy by the feet, and dragged him back inside. Shamus didn’t know how the guy had managed to get the door open but he wasn’t going to give him the chance to do it again. He put one knee on the guy’s chest to hold him down and proceeded to beat the living shit out of him.

  Shamus finally stopped when he heard his phone ringing again.

  …

  Megamillionaire pop-rock chanteuse Aimée LeClerq had studied Kinbaku-bi with Natto Murasaki, the high priestess of Japanese rope bondage, at the latter’s sex dojo in Osaka. The techniques combined fashion and kinky sex, two of Aimée’s passions, and with practice she’d become a nawashi, a rope master. Aimée had even gone to the expense of building an entire boudoir in her home just for the practice of tsuri or “rope suspension.”

  She was using an Ebi Shibari tie on Daniel. His body restrained by coils of soft cotton rope and a series of tricky knots pulling and confining his limbs into a shape that left him effectively hog-tied on the bed.

  Aimée then coiled more of the soft rope around his waist like a boa constrictor, wrapping between his thighs and, somehow, delicately separating his scrotum from his erect penis with an exquisite series of knots that looked like butterflies.

  Aimée had bound him carefully, as if she was invoking some kind of ritual, turning sex into a spiritual practice. The cool rope stroked his skin, caressing him in areas that no one, not even a doctor, had ever touched before. His skin erupted in goose pimples, his body quivering under her fingers as she teased and tickled until he couldn’t take it. Daniel spontaneously ejaculated into the air.

  A delighted laugh bubbled up out of Aimée as she reached for a box of tissues.

  Daniel blushed, slightly ashamed that he couldn’t control his rising sap.

  “Sorry.”

  Aimée smiled at him.

  “I hope there’s more where that came from, ’cos I’m just getting started.”

  Aimée then dropped to her knees in front of him, gently placed her hand on his penis as he trembled. She looked up at him.

  “Is it true that Mormons consider oral sex unnatural?”

  Daniel hesitated.

  “I, I think so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Well, Alma 5:57 says ‘Touch not their unclean things.’”

  She smiled at him.

  “Is your cock unclean?”

  As she asked this she gently wrapped her fingers around his penis and began to softly stroke it. Daniel looked down, his eyes meeting hers. He noticed that her fingernails were manicured and painted a bright, glossy red.

  “I took a shower this morning.”

  “So do you think it would be okay with God if I put it in my mouth?”

  Daniel thought he was about to have another orgasm. He tried to relax.

  “I, I, I don’t see why God would mind. Honestly.”

  Aimée stuck out her tongue and slowly licked from the base of his cock to the tip, like she was trying to keep a popsicle from dripping. Daniel shuddered.

  “Wow.”

  Aimée put the tip of his penis in her mouth and gave it a good, hard suck. She pulled it out with a loud pop.

  “I want to sanctify the area with a little washing and anointing, so there’s no doubt that what we’re doing is in accordance with the teachings of your faith.”

  Da
niel, who’d had to close his eyes with all the sensations, looked at her.

  “What?”

  Aimée smiled and let the tip of her tongue tickle the edge of his glans.

  “Do you trust me?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Absolutely.”

  Aimée carefully spread a healthy dollop of shaving cream on Daniel’s scrotum and began to shave his balls.

  Daniel squirmed, but not too much, he didn’t want her to cut him. And it wasn’t as if he wanted her to stop. Having spent the first seventeen years of his life being taught that it was wrong to touch his genitals, that they were there for excretions and, later when he was married, procreation, the fact that a gorgeous woman was now caressing, cleaning, and shaving that part of his body was blowing his mind. Who knew so many sensations could be generated from the nerve endings between his legs? How come no one ever told him that being bound and shaved could cause him to lose himself in pure bliss? Why hadn’t the bishop told him that surrendering his body to someone he trusted felt better than anything in the world?

  Aimée took a porcelain basin, one that she’d purchased from an antique dealer in Paris, and washed his balls, his cock, and the surrounding area with a warm wet rag. She patted him dry with a soft cotton towel.

  She smiled at him.

  “Now I can suck your cock and God won’t think it’s unclean.”

  …

  Detective Cho sat in his car and tried to relax. It had been a long, hard day filled with running around looking for people who didn’t want to be found and then explaining to his superiors why he hadn’t found them. He could tell them that Los Angeles was a giant city and if you really didn’t want someone to find you, well, you’d be hard to find. But that wasn’t what the captain, the commissioner, or the mayor wanted to hear. They wanted him to find the shooter. His scheduled vacation would just have to wait.

  Detective Cho didn’t know what was worse. Between his wife’s fury, the barely concealed derision he got from the captain, and the chief’s loosely veiled threat to knock him back to the night shift if he didn’t make an arrest, Cho was starting to feel a tightness in his chest that he’d never noticed before. He felt lumps in his body that weren’t there a week ago and his memory seemed to be playing tricks on him. Like he was about to stroke out, seize up, or contract some aggressive form of cancer. The funny thing was, the idea of dropping dead, of keeling over, seemed okay, pleasant even. Like maybe what he really needed was a nice long dirt nap. Cho recognized that this feeling wasn’t healthy, and realized that he should probably take up yoga like his wife, or maybe even Buddhist meditation or something that would reduce his stress. Maybe drinking buckets of beer with the occasional tequila for extra fortification wasn’t the best stress reducer after all. He’d look into this healthy lifestyle thing, maybe use the department’s nutrition counselor and learn how to eat better. His wife would like that, too. They would be all yoga-and-brown-rice relaxed together. Oddly enough, that sounded kind of good to him.

  But he didn’t have the time or energy to worry about lifestyle changes right now. He called his wife and promised her a romantic, stress-reducing trip to Oaxaca. Maybe he’d take a yoga class down there.

  38

  MIRO HAD BEEN dreaming. In the dream he was pursued by a black town car, the windows tinted obsidian, dead and unseeing like shark eyes. Miro was trying to get away, making evasive maneuvers in a pocket-sized sedan like a cross between one of those tiny Fiats you see in Italian movies and a Smart car. For some reason he was in San Francisco and trying to find a place he knew, a place where they made pinot-noir flavored gelato. As if a tasty Italian ice cream could be his salvation.

  He woke with a start, having heard a sound, the crash of breaking glass or the rip-shatter of splintering wood or maybe it was just his imagination. Miro wasn’t sure if the noise was from his dream or from inside the hotel room but he wasn’t about to take chances. He reached for his messenger bag at the end of the bed and pulled out the handgun that Amin had given him.

  A shaft of bright morning sunlight cut through a gap between the curtains and illuminated swirls of dust drifting in the air. Miro carefully walked toward the drapes and peeked out the window. The parking lot looked normal enough. No armed men approaching with guns in their hands. No one planting a bomb underneath his car.

  He wished he could say he was just being paranoid but the fact was, somebody was out to get him. He couldn’t believe that the ransacking of the apartment was a coincidence: it must mean that his gambit had worked. But the realization that he hadn’t quite thought through the consequences of his ploy made him feel less than smart. He’d unleashed forces that he wasn’t equipped to deal with. Still, a part of him felt success. He’d gotten to them. They wanted him dead, so he must be a threat; they must be afraid of him on some level. He’d have to warn Daniel—he couldn’t have him get caught in the crossfire—and he’d have to do something to keep Marianna and Guus safe.

  He turned back into the room and, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, saw Marianna sitting up in bed looking at him. He realized he was holding the gun and suddenly felt strangely self-conscious.

  “I don’t normally...”

  He put the gun on the dresser next to the bolted-down television set.

  “It isn’t even mine.”

  Marianna pulled the sheets up over her breasts.

  “I think I should go.”

  Miro didn’t want her to leave but he didn’t disagree.

  “It’s not usually like this.”

  “This is because of the Cannabis Cup?”

  He nodded and sat next to her on the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “this is not how I want it to be.”

  Miro smiled at her and took her hand.

  “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  Miro felt his heart beating, throbbing faster than usual, the thump-thump-thump pounding out a primitive four/four time.

  “I was thinking about you. All the time I was in the hospital. I kept thinking about you.”

  “You could’ve come back and found me.”

  “Believe me, once I delivered the seeds to Guus, I was going to find you.”

  Marianna smiled and looked down at his hand.

  “I think I will choose to believe you.”

  “But you don’t?”

  Marianna smiled up at him.

  “I told you I choose to. So I do.”

  Miro smiled at her and their eyes locked. She put her hand on his cheek and stroked his face.

  “Show me where you got shot.”

  Miro pulled off his T-shirt. When she saw the scar, she gasped.

  “Were you afraid?”

  “Of what?”

  “Dying.”

  Miro considered the question as Marianna ran her fingers gently along the scar tissue on his torso. She traced the line of the incision the surgeon had cut.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really have time to think about it.”

  She felt his body shiver, saw goose bumps spread across his ribs. She leaned forward and delicately kissed the scar where the bullet had entered.

  “We have a saying, Quem tem cu tem medo.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Anyone who has an asshole has fear.”

  “Everybody has fear?”

  Marianna smiled.

  “Everybody.”

  Her lips worked their way around to the other side of his chest, caressing the scar tissue that had grown over the exit wound.

  Miro’s skin was still tender, the nerves hypersensitive to temperature and touch. A soft moan escaped his lips.

  As she kissed his chest, right above his heart, he realized that she was crying. He felt her tears, warm and wet, falling on his chest. He put his arms around her.

  “Hey. It’s okay.”

  He reached up and touched her hair.

  “Everything is going to be all right.”

  “Just like Bob Marley says?”

  He nodded. />
  “Just like Bob Marley says.”

  …

  Ted’s tongue probed along the edge of his teeth, putting pressure on the upper and lower incisors, testing to see which ones were loose, and felt the swollen gums and dangling nerve endings of the two that were missing. His face felt like a hunk of boiled beef. More precisely, it felt like beef that had been put in a pressure cooker; his skin was puffy and hot, juicy and tenderized by the beating. The back of his head was throbbing and he could barely breathe out of his nose, it was so clotted with dried blood.

  He remembered seeing Fran’s painting, then trying to escape, then Shamus Noriega’s wet testicles dangling over his face as he got the living shit beat out of him.

  Ted blinked open an eye. It must be his left eye because his right eye wouldn’t open; it was swollen shut. He saw two young men in white short-sleeved shirts and ties sitting on a bed, staring at him.

  “He’s alive.”

  Ted closed his eye and reassessed. He couldn’t tell if any of his bones were broken but it didn’t feel like it. His hands were bound behind his back with what felt like a half a roll of duct tape. His ankles were bound, too.

  He opened his eye again. One of the boys leaned forward.

  “Hey, mister? Mister can you hear me?”

  Ted was too tired to talk but he could nod.

  “He heard me. He heard.”

  “Shut up. You want them to come in again?”

  “But he’s alive.”

  “So shut up.”

  Ted wondered if he was alive. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he was in some heavenly waiting room and these were two angels looking after him as he made the transition into the afterlife.

  One of his kidneys confirmed the fact that he was alive by sending a shooting pain through his body that managed to pop his other eye open.

  Ted looked at the two young men and noticed that they were wearing leopard-fur handcuffs. He moved his split and swollen lips.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  …

  Vincent hated coming to the east side. The traffic was brutal, it took him an hour to go from Santa Monica to Highland Park, and when he got there, well, then he was there. He hadn’t come all this way for fun, though; there are some conversations that you just can’t have on the phone. The Feds didn’t agree with the state regarding the legal status of medical marijuana and sometimes they raided dispensaries or growers, and put federal wiretaps on phones. Discussing a drug operation was one thing, becoming an accessory to murder, maybe that’s a conversation that should be had in private. So here he was. On the east side.