by Mark Pryor
I nursed my drink, staring at the sliver of ice on top of the piss-colored liquid, and I thought about what I'd do to the lunatic who'd accused me. I hadn't committed an intentional act of violence since I was a teenager, and I'd fought every urge to do so since. Like a snake sheds his skin, I had to shed parts of me if I wanted to function well in society, and violence was one of the first impulses that needed sloughing.
Make no mistake, I arrange my life so that I come out on top. Sometimes innocents get trampled, but I, for one, don't go out of my way to undermine the lives of most empaths. (Criminal defendants, yes, but research shows about a quarter of them are psychopaths, and the rest aren't exactly innocents, are they?) But our disguise is a thin one indeed when it comes to revenge because righting a wrong committed against us is the only real sense of justice we have. And when the rage is triggered, it burns white-hot until the proper balance of things has been restored. It didn't much matter who'd pitted themselves against me, it only mattered that they had, and that I'd win.
“You okay?” Gus asked.
“Yep, fine,” I said. “It'll be cool, he'll phone tomorrow and apologize.”
“Yeah, for sure.”
In a way, I was fine. For the first time in a while I was going to let myself off the leash and use the disability of having no conscience to get my world back on track. It didn't matter what Marley said on the phone tomorrow. Whoever had called me a thief was finished in Austin. How I would finish him, well, figuring that out was part of the game.
I felt a kick from Gus under the table, and I looked up to see the only good thing that had happened to me that day. I hadn't seen a bus or a car drop her off, but there she was, a vision in green, gliding across the cracked pavement toward the patio. Gus's foot had let me know she was there, and he seemed to be entranced, a rarity in itself. She sat with a nod to him, and then turned to smile at me.
“Told you I'd come.”
I smiled back, knowing I'd have to explain why I wasn't playing tonight. But that's another advantage of my condition: the lie comes as easily to the tongue as the truth, and in this case, it came much, much more easily.
“Double-booked?” she asked when I'd finished explaining.
“It happens,” I said. “Too many musicians in Austin. If you don't confirm straight away, it takes them about nine seconds to get someone else.”
“You too?” she said to Gus.
He shrugged. “That's how it goes.”
“Are you a full-time musician?” she asked him. “I saw you play at the Lakeside Club a few months ago. My girlfriend has a crush on you.”
“And you don't?” Gus asked.
“I'm a lesbian,” she said, throwing me a look that meant one of two things: I'm a lesbian, aren't you an idiot? or I'm not a lesbian, and you're in luck. I'm pretty good at faces and knew which one I would go with.
“Huh,” was all Gus could muster, adding, “No, I'm not a full-time musician. An immigration lawyer.”
“You make much money doing that?” she cocked her head. “I figure, either you do and you exploit immigrants, or you don't and you help them.”
Gus looked at her for a second, and I could see she confused him like she confused me. Difference was, I wanted to possess her and wasn't flustered by her. “I do okay. Not great, but…you know.”
I knew. He didn't do great. He and his wife, Michelle, joked about packing it all in and buying a shack on a beach in Costa Rica, where he was born. Instead, they'd bought the kind of house a lawyer was supposed to live in and the kind of car a lawyer was supposed to drive. Every month, he squeezed the last penny from his bank account to stay afloat, money pulled from the dust-lined pockets of day laborers and from envelopes handed over by Central American grandparents hoping their kids and grand-kids would find a better life north of the border. Bottom line: he made a living, but they used up pretty much every penny that came in.
“Are they all poor, your clients?” It seemed to me that she was picking at a scab, trying to provoke a reaction, just the way I like to. I wondered for the first time whether I'd bumped into one of my kind. A kindred soul.
Without the soul, of course.
“Mostly.” He swirled his drink. “Except a couple of them.”
“Tell me,” she pushed.
Gus sighed. “One guy. Ambrosio Silva. He's of Portuguese descent but is from Mexico, came over about eight years ago. Tall, good-looking dude, used to be a pro soccer player, or that's what he told me. He bought a trailer, mobile home, a used one. He's real good with his hands, so he fixed it up and rented it out while he stayed with friends. Two months later, he used the cash from that trailer to buy two more. He rented those as well. First year, he had seven trailers. Second year, he bought about eleven more. By year five, he had over a hundred. Now he has between one fifty and two hundred.”
“Who rents them?” she asked. She seemed genuinely curious, but what I noticed was the sheen of sweat worn by me and Gus, where her pale skin looked crisp and cool.
“Illegals, mostly. Some people fresh out of prison who can't get apartments elsewhere. Sex offenders. It's a good deal for both sides of the equation. They get low rent and an even lower profile; he gets to declare however much money he wants to the IRS. When he pays me, it's in cash that I count wearing surgical gloves.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.
“It's the story of the illegal immigrant,” Gus said. “Blood, cocaine, and honest sweat.” He allowed himself a small smile. “None of which I need to be touching.”
Sometimes a man in the desert sees an oasis that isn't there. Sometimes, it's there and he's not sure. But mirage or reality, the thrill is the same, the hope and relief he feels are very real. His feet pick up, his spirit soars, and his focus narrows. He sees a possibility and it becomes all he sees, whether that's reasonable, real, imaginary, or ridiculous. And when he's spent the day being stung by scorpions, hissed at by snakes, and scorched by the sun, a streak of self-preservation narrows it even further.
“How does he collect his rent?” I asked.
Gus was drinking and swallowed loudly. “That's what I was getting to. It's funny how he comes from this dangerous place yet conducts his cash business like Austin's trailer parks are the safest place in the world.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, he drives around on the last day of every month in his Ford Transit van. He spends eighteen hours knocking on doors, collecting envelopes of cash.” Gus spread his hands. “I told him it's insane, but compared to where he used to live, it really is relatively safe. Plus he's under the impression that everyone out there knows him, owes him, and has nothing to gain by boosting him.” He took another sip. “Which is true. I mean think about it, if he starts insisting on cashier's checks or having armed guards escort him, then the rent goes up and a lot of people lose their homes. His tenants probably don't love him, but they do have an incentive to look out for him, or at least maintain the status quo.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I couldn't vouch for the others, but my mind was on a crappy van full of cash, and I had more questions.
“Does the guy have tinted windows or something?” I asked. “Seems like wads of cash rolling around in the back of his van would eventually attract attention.”
Gus wagged a finger admonishingly. “Funny you should say that. He did the first year, but got a ticket for too much tint. That's where we met. One of the things I've helped him do is understand all the traffic laws so he doesn't get pulled over. That and get his relatives into the country on visas.”
“So if no tint, then what?” I asked.
Gus shrugged again. “He bought a couple camouflage bags from a hunting store. Cabela's, I think. He thought it was funny, using camo bags to hide his money, and he loved it when I told him they were tax deductible.”
“How much do those trailers rent for?” I asked.
“No clue,” Gus said.
“No, I mean like two hundred a month or a grand a month. Bal
lpark me.”
“Look at you with the baseball references,” Gus said.
“You don't like baseball?” she asked. It seemed to amuse her.
“He hates it.” Gus perked up because he, on the other hand, loved baseball and found my distaste for the sport inexplicable and ripe ground for provoking me.
“Why do you hate baseball?” Those wide eyes looked at me intently, and I felt a flash of anger that she might side with Gus against me, even on something stupid like a sport. I explained it, calmly, careful to keep some light alive in my eyes.
“It's not a sport if its most famous player, its best-ever player, was fatter than a walrus. It's not a sport when it takes five hours to complete a game and both teams spend most of that time sitting on their arses. It's not a sport when players can consume tobacco products while playing. And it's not much of a sport when every play is called from the sidelines, by some old man with yellow teeth and an anger problem.”
“Isn't that like cricket?” she asked, with that head tilt again. “Except doesn't that take days to finish?”
“No and sometimes.” I turned back to Gus. “Anyway, the trailers. How much?”
“About five hundred,” the girl said. “I used to be an addict, and I bought from people who lived in them.” She said it so matter-of-factly. I used to be an addict.
“Five hundred then.”
I suspect we were each doing the math because we all fell silent. I got there quickly because, well, I'm me, and that day of all days I had an incentive.
So yes, the math came easy: by the end of the eighteen hours, Señor Ambrosio Silva would be driving around East Austin, carrying between seventy-five and a hundred grand, all in cash. Maybe more.
“He does carry a gun, of course,” said Gus.
“Of course,” I said. Ah, Texas.
“Fords and Hondas are the easiest to steal,” she said, eventually breaking the silence. “Late nineties models in particular, and my little brother tells me that kids these days seem to prefer Accords to the other models.”
She was right. About a year ago, our office worked with Austin PD to bust a group of teenagers and young adults who couldn't keep their hands off other people's cars. Patrol officers were told to stop every late ’90s or early 2000s model Honda or Ford in East Austin if the person behind the wheel looked to be under twenty. The kids liked those cars because there were so many of them, and a screwdriver jammed into the ignition was as good as a key. The little punks didn't even have to figure out how to hot-wire them.
“You know what'd be fun?” she said, holding my eye.
“What's that?” asked Gus, looking back and forth between us.
She shrugged, a delicate movement. “He's nuts to drive around with all that money.” She looked at me. “And you're a prosecutor, right?”
“Right. So?”
“So you need to make him understand that it's not safe, what he's doing. It's not just unsafe, it's crazy.”
“And?” I knew where she was going, but I wanted her to hold my hand all the way there.
“You should teach him a lesson.”
“By stealing his money?” I smiled because I'd thought of it, of course, several sentences into Gus's story.
“No, silly, by hiding his car. You'd be doing a public service. Doing him a service, at least. One day someone's going to hit him over the head, or maybe even shoot him, for all that money.”
“Seems like they wouldn't need to,” I said. “Just steal his car when he's collecting his last payment.”
“That's my point. You should steal his car and hide it for an hour. For ten minutes. Then he'll realize what he's doing isn't smart.”
“Or I could just tell him,” I said.
Gus snorted. “You could, but you won't. First of all, if you do, he'll know I told you about it. Second of all, as I said, I already told him. Several times. He's the only client I have who pays in full and on time—trust me when I say I've tried to persuade him.”
She shouldn't have suggested it. Not then, anyway, not even as a joke. It was like a perfect storm for me. I was looking at a pay cut, my musical career was on the line, and the eight-year-old in me had been dared to do something impulsive and exciting. By a beautiful girl. I felt like a drug addict trying to resist the needle, a thirsty drunk saying no to a glass of cold beer.
But I did resist. I had to. It's one thing being unable to get off the slide once you begin; it's quite another to step onto that slippery slope with your eyes wide open. I'd trained myself that being a functional human being meant, for me, recognizing dangerous situations and steering around them. Not resisting the temptations, but avoiding them in the first place. I was the serial adulterer hiring an ugly secretary, or the booze-hound driving the long way home to avoid his local liquor store.
“Prosecutors don't steal cars,” I said. “Not this one, anyway.”
“It's not stealing,” she said, “if you give it back. It's not even borrowing. It's teaching him a lesson.”
“Technically, it's the offense of unlawful use of a motor vehicle, which is a felony in this state, and one that would have me out of a job, if not behind bars.” I raised my drink and held her eye. “So no thanks.”
Gus laughed. “I don't think she was seriously considering doing it, Dom. She doesn't strike me as the car-thieving type.”
She put a hand on his arm, and cold fingers clutched at my chest, the childish jealousy I'd not felt in a while, the one that made my jaw tighten and my blood seethe. But she smiled at me as she replied.
“Oh, Gus, you'd be surprised.”
We stayed for two hours, talking about other things. Music leaked out of the club to the patio, but I tuned in to the hum of the fans instead. I did more listening than talking, for a handful of reasons. First, girls like it when you're distant and mysterious. Second, I was half annoyed and half amused by Gus's fawning over the girl. I was already angry at Marley, and I didn't want to show either of them how I was feeling, so keeping my mouth shut seemed best. Third, when I meet new people, I have a tendency to talk about myself too much and, shall we say, exaggerate, which is fine until I'm hanging out with someone like Gus, who might catch me in a lie. He'd probably assume I was doing it to bed the lady in question and not mind, but needless lying is something I'd been trying to cut back on.
There's actually a list of things we do, one used by shrinks to figure out whether we're soulless monsters or just ordinary folks who can't behave. It's called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (aka Hare PCL-R). Twenty questions, two points for a “yes,” and if you score more than twenty-five out of a maximum forty (although the passing score is thirty in the United States, which tells you how scientific it is), then you're in the club. You're not supposed to be evaluated until you're eighteen years old because so many of the factors run consistent with the behaviors of regular juvenile delinquents, and even “normal” teenagers, who are selfish, willful, and judgment-free. I was evaluated at age sixteen, after the pheasant incident, thanks to a private shrink and my parents’ money. Lucky for me they had some then, before farming in England went to the dogs, and lucky for me I could be marked and graded as a sociopath—I passed the test with flying colors. One of the early questions deals with “Pathological Lying” and to no one's surprise I scored full marks on that one.
Even though I did lie, a lot, I never liked the word pathological because it implied some sort of disease and suggested a compulsivity that over the years I managed to tamp down. Still, lying was undoubtedly a trait of mine, usually a strength but occasionally a weakness. It irritated me to be caught out and have to invent a covering lie, especially with Gus around, who seemed oddly gifted when it came to remembering things about me.
My mysterious act at the club may have worked a little too well, prompting one from our companion. Or maybe she got sick of Gus leering at her. Either way, she disappeared on us. She drifted off to use the bathroom and never came back. Gus was worried, then outraged, then worried again
, but I assumed it was a game and I liked it. What I liked best of all, for some reason, was that she'd taken Gus's phone number and not mine, but had given neither of us hers. As we walked toward our cars, I decided on some minor revenge.
“Never seen you drool like that over a girl.”
“I wasn't drooling,” Gus said. “If I ever did, though, it'd be over her. But you were quiet.”
“No choice, you wouldn't keep your yap shut.”
“Yeah, well, I think she liked me, kept asking me questions.”
“You know who else likes you?”
“Who?”
“Your fucking wife.”
“I was just talking to the girl, dude. Michelle doesn't mind me talking to girls. You know I've never cheated on her.”
“You would have tonight though.”
“Bullshit. Flirting, that's all it was.”
“Right. Ever given your number to a girl before?”
“I didn't give her my number.” He stopped, a goofy grin on his face. “Oh, shit, I did.”
I patted him on the back and circled the front of my car. “When it rings, make sure you get to it first. I think she liked you, so who knows what she might say.”
I knew she didn't really like him. I knew it was me she was interested in and that she was using him as a foil. My evaluating psychiatrist, Evelyn, would have raised an eyebrow at such confidence and no doubt patted herself on the back that she'd scored me right on another PCL-R topic: “Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth,” two out of two points.
I would have pointed out to Evelyn, a stout lady with the kind of penetrating, beady eyes an empath isn't supposed to have, that judging me like that was unfair. After all, I'd also maxed out on the very reason I knew Gus was my runner-up for the evening, the first rating on the list that scored me full marks for “Glibness and Superficial Charm.” Evelyn joked that there should have been a “Hell Yes” response for that one. She was right, I think, and I knew that even if I didn't have her number, my new friend would be in contact soon enough.