From the smell of the smoke, the V-man guessed it was shit his pandilleros had sold her. Fine Mexican weed laced with cocaine. Yes, the woman was inhaling deeply, smoking what the homeboys called a banano, so no wonder she was so jazzed.
The V-man kept talking, saying, “I start her out by selling her virginity five or six times to some of my best clients. Top dollar. Dudes down here from New York, Chicago, real-money players who the V-man deals with only personally. Then put the chula to work, doing private parties. Buy her some clothes, show the bitch how to use lipstick and protective condoms ’cause pregnant chulas, they very hard to market. Maybe next year, on the street. Or six months, depending on how she holds up. Unless one of my clients wants to rent her full-time as a maid or a cook-I’m still making money on that.”
The woman stood and looked at Victorino for a moment as if an idea had just come into her mind. “Do you know who that dead hand belonged to?”
“The one in the alligator?” Victorino said. “It was one of my chulas. Had to be.”
Frankie asked him, “What makes you so sure?”
“Three of my ladies went off, left their shit, their money,” Victorino said. “Hell, they even left their shoes and never came back. Not all at once, of course, but I ain’t dumb. Went off and left their fuckin’ shoes, I’m saying. Even a crazy woman wouldn’t go off and leave her shoes. Why you think I come straight here when I finally got me some proof? You two been fuckin’ around with my chulas, everyone knows that. But I figured you was selling them on the street-”
“Harris killed them,” the woman interrupted.
Victorino stopped talking and tried to read the woman’s face. Was she telling the truth?
“You got my attention,” he said slowly.
“I just told you, Harris murdered all three. Maybe more-I was never around when he did it. He’d get screwed up on blow or triple his testosterone dosage by accident-he’s always forgetting his needle days-and that just makes him even crazier. Or he’ll drop a handful of D-bombs, which makes him even worse.”
The woman continued, “You want to cut someone’s balls off for disrespecting you? Harris Squires is the guy you’re looking for-if you can find his balls. Because of all the juice he shoots, he’s got a dick the size of a Vienna sausage.”
Victorino enjoyed that so much, he had to smile. He found it encouraging, just the two of them alone, suddenly sharing secrets, in this brand-new double-wide that smelled pretty good, like carpet, marijuana smoke and fresh vinyl.
He said to the woman, “All three, huh? You sure of this?”
“I just said it. Pay attention, I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.”
“He fed ’em all to that bigass alligator?”
The woman said, “Harris and some buddies loaded that stinking animal into a truck, drunk as hell, playing Crocodile Hunter one night, and brought the gator here to scare your wetbacks. We planned to sell this place to developers once his asshole mother dies-if she ever does. All the legal bullshit from pissed-off renters would have slowed things up. To Harris, the boy genius, it seemed like a smart thing to do.”
Victorino was giving it some thought as he said, “That pendejo snuffed out three of my ladies, huh?” not loud, letting the woman know that he was angry but cool about it, a professional boss man who knew how to deal with situations such as this. “How’d he do it? Use a gun? He don’t have the balls to take his time and make it enjoyable.”
The woman said, “He’s got a thing for rough sex. It’s the only way he can get off. He’d load their drinks with Ecstasy, then choke them while he was banging them. Or maybe they just OD’d on their own. How would I know?”
That’s exactly what Victorino was thinking: How could the woman know these details unless she was involved?
It also crossed his mind that a woman her size, with all those muscles, she might even be talking about herself, not about her boyfriend. He had heard the rumors that Frankie liked doing women even better than men. It was because of all that steroid shit she shot into her body.
Victorino motioned to the kitchen. “That shit you cook up, it makes a dude’s thingee shrink?” Because the woman ignored him, he decided to add, “Think it would bother you watching me cut Harris’s little thingee off?”
That got the gringa ’s attention. Frankie Manchon gave the man a weird look like she’d love to watch him cut Squires’s nuts off.
Man, this was one scary lady. But kind of sexy, too. It was the way her blue eyes got a real shiny, eager glow…
Sexy, yeah, the V-man decided, in a real dirty way, which might be fun. Victorino was thinking maybe he should take a few seconds and lock that outside door so the two of them could enjoy their privacy.
That’s exactly what he did.
But then she spoiled it.
“Take off those fucking rubber gloves,” she told him. “They make you look like a janitor.”
That did it. This woman needed to learn some respect.
He said, “You say your jelly boyfriend drugged three of my ladies and killed them? You think that’s a big deal? Like he’s a badass or something?”
Frankie tried to interrupt him, probably with some smart-ass remark, but Victorino kept talking, saying, “I’m a fucking Aztec, chinga. You understand what that shit means? One time, I cut a dude’s heart out, the thing still beating in my hand. That’s the last thing this dude saw-his eyes wide open, staring at his fucking heart. That was before I cut the dude’s neck open. Cutting his neck was my way of being kind to the dude, understand? Because he had been my loyal brother up until an unfortunate thing he did. But I got no personal relationship with you and your redneck boyfriend. You hear what I’m telling you?”
The woman was listening now, looking at him with her shiny blue eyes, but not showing much.
“But when some woman disrespects me, what I do is I start cutting pieces off her body until she begs me to stop. Then I feed those pieces to the damn dogs and make her watch them eat her ears, her fingers, maybe a chunk of her tongue if the fool has a big mouth like you.
“Rednecks use alligators? My boys and me, we prefer dogs. Pit bulls we keep for the fighting ring. And it’s been a while since any of them got some white meat. Do you know what I’m saying?”
The woman took a moment before she replied, “Yeah, you’re a hardass and you like talking about it. You made your point.”
Victorino wasn’t so sure, so he pulled up his left sleeve to show the woman his Diablo tattoo, eight teardrops beneath it, six blue, two red. “Know what these are? These are my stripes. In the Kings, you don’t wear this paint, chinga, unless you earned it. Take a look for yourself.”
For some reason, that impressed the woman, and Victorino realized that she wanted to prolong this talk of killing. It made her breasts stick out, her breath coming harder, as she took a step to get a better look at his arm.
“Why the different colors?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen sloppier tats in my life. You want some good work, I’ve got a man in Key West who’s an artist.”
Frankie touched Victorino’s arm, her black stiletto fingernails with glitter on them denting his skin. “These tattoos, they look like your guy used a sewing needle and Easter-egg dye.”
The V-man jerked his arm away, saying, “That’s ’cause I did ’em myself! The blue is for six dudes I wasted, two in Chicago. Both of them Crips-but here I am.”
He tapped at the red teardrops. “These the ones you need to pay attention to. One of my girls doesn’t obey me, I give her one warning only.” And he took out the box cutter.
Yeah. Frankie was impressed now, her chest moving faster, her blue eyes bright. She came closer, her arm lifting toward him, and then- Whap! The slap caused Victorino to drop the razor, he was so surprised, and the next thing he knew the woman was on him, trying to claw his eyes out with her fingernails. Yelling at him, too, saying, “You think you’re man enough to get my panties off? Do you? Huh? Do you, you skinny little shit? It
took three of my cousins my first time-and they were Vermont studs, not wetbacks.”
She kept repeating it as she flailed at him, her voice low and hoarse, breathing fast, as Victorino got behind her, then spun her down on the bed.
And for a while, that was all Victorino remembered.
An hour later, 6:30 p.m., the V-man was in his pickup truck, following the woman’s Cadillac convertible to Harris Squires’s hunting camp, where she’d promised they would find the redneck, the money and the pretty little girl who’d been pretending to be a boy.
Before leaving, Frankie had unpacked a bottle of Crown Royal and a baggie of grass that one of Victorino’s soldiers had sold her. In their vehicles, they each had a plastic cup and a joint-sweet-smelling bananos, fine weed laced with coke. By now, they were both feeling good.
Victorino certainly was. The woman was a goddamn animal in bed. He’d never experienced anything like it in his life. No other woman had come close to doing what Frankie had done to him. And, man, Victorino had, by God, gotten off on it, feeling crazy wild afterward.
Already, the V-man was ready for more. He had heard old women were best in the sack ’cause they were so damn appreciative, but it was more than that with Frankie. The woman had a monster in her. Something black and glossy with claws that lived inside her head, looking out through those blue eyes of hers.
“I want to watch when you use that razor blade on Harris,” Frankie had said to him, her voice still flushed.
“Sure,” Victorino had replied, meaning it. It would be a chance for him to show off a little and also prove to his pandilleros he was still a hardass. He had decided to invite some of his brothers along and maybe video the whole thing.
Not sure all this was going to take place, though, he then had to ask Frankie, “But what you got planned to do with your boyfriend’s body once we done? That can be a problem. That big lizard of yours, she’s dead now.”
The woman noticed Victorino looking at the row of propane tanks in the kitchen as she replied, “You just stick to your business and let me do the thinking.” Then added, being even more serious, “But the little girl-you can’t touch that girl. I want you to promise me that.”
Giving a Latin King captain orders again, but it was okay. It was pretty clear to Victorino what Frankie wanted. She wanted that little girl-boy virgin for herself.
But that was okay, too. The gringa woman, being the way she was, she’d probably get off a couple of times on her own and then invite the V-man to join the party.
ELEVEN
Emily Marston and I were taking a break, curled up naked, spooning on my narrow bed, when I heard Tomlinson trotting up the boardwalk, the distinctive slap of his feet telling me he had something important going on. Why else would he be in such a hurry?
As Emily stretched and yawned, I turned my wrist to see the glowing numerals of my Chronofighter watch. It was still early, only 9:30 p.m.
“The house is shaking again,” she joked. “My imagination?”
I leaned to kiss the woman’s cheek, then behind her ear, feeling a welling sensation within my chest that was not unknown to me but so rare and long ago that I was startled. I was also dubious, instantly on alert.
That same thoracic response is probably why sappy poets associate the heart with love. I had just met this woman, knew very little about her. To feel what I was feeling, after only a few hours together, was irrational. Not that love is ever rational.
“It’s Tomlinson,” I said. “Something must be wrong.”
There was.
“Tula sent me a text,” Tomlinson told me as I pushed aside the bedroom curtain, shirtless, buckling my belt.
I noticed that his hand was shaking as he combed fingers through his John Lennon hair. “He’s got her, Doc. Harris Squires, I was right. And the goddamn cops told me they’re already doing everything they could. Those assholes!”
Adjusting my glasses, I took his cell phone, saying, “Maybe if you lived in a country where there were no cops, you might have a little more respect.”
Tomlinson began to pace, his ribs showing, now shirtless, wearing red surfer baggies. “If you called downtown, it might be different,” he said. “You know a lot of guys on the force. We’ve got to do something, Doc!”
The text was in English. I sat next to my shortwave radio, turned on the lamp and read, “Safe, in his truck. In God’s hands. 22 miles from Im.”
I said, “I don’t doubt it’s from her, but are you sure? Where did a Guatemalan kid learn how to use a cell phone?”
“It’s the first thing they learn when they get here,” Tomlinson replied, sounding impatient. “That, plus the best food is always at Taco Bell.”
I said, “She didn’t finish the message, so okay… yeah, of course it’s from Tula. I remember you saying she had your number in case of emergencies.”
“She sent it from Squires’s phone,” he said, chewing at a strand of hair. “I called and recognized his voice. I didn’t say anything. Do you think I should have? He wouldn’t have let her send me a text, and I was afraid I’d set him off, make him suspicious. So I just hung up. You know, like a wrong number.”
“Did he call back?”
“No… Jesus! If he sees that text she sent, I’d hate to even think what a guy like that would do to Tula.”
On a pad of paper, I copied Squires’s number, then spun the swivel chair to face Tomlinson, who was now leaning into the refrigerator, moving stuff, then saying, “Jesus Christ, Doc, don’t you ever go to the store? We’re out of beer again. What a night to be out of beer!”
I said, “Tula was in the middle of writing ‘Immokalee.’ I-M-what else could it be? Twenty-two miles from Immokalee, but she was interrupted.”
Tomlinson used his hip to bang the refrigerator door closed as I added, “Which means she saw a road sign-the distance is precise. Unless Squires told her, which seems unlikely. Why would he tell the girl where she is? She’s only been in Florida for a week, so she couldn’t have guessed the distance from landmarks. But why would he take her to Immokalee?”
Tomlinson replied, “Everyone in Guatemala has a relative living in Immokalee. Or Indiantown. Or maybe the guy has a place down there, who knows? Rednecks have hunting camps sometimes.”
I was trying to project a reason why Squires would drive Tula Choimha to a Guatemalan stronghold. I said, “He could be taking her there to look for her mother, but that makes no sense. I don’t associate acts of family kindness with Harris Squires.”
“The girl’s a thought-shaper,” Tomlinson reminded me. “She can get people to do things they normally wouldn’t. Tula can project ideas in a way that makes people think they came up with it on their own.”
I ignored him, saying, “He might do it if money was somehow involved. Or sex and money-the world’s two most powerful motivators. A thirteen-year-old girl and her mother. There’s no money in that combination. Which leaves-”
I left the sentence unfinished as I returned my attention to the girl’s text to see if there was more to learn from the few words she had written.
Listening, Tomlinson used his heel to shut the fridge. He was carrying a tumbler filled with ice toward a bottle of Patron tequila on the counter as I continued, “They’ve done some traveling, that’s obvious. Maybe he stopped at a 7-Eleven or something and left his phone in the vehicle. That gave her an opening to use the phone, but Squires interrupted Tula before she could finish the text. And her hands aren’t tied-they’re not taped, anyway. That’s a positive. But why not call you instead of type a message?”
Tomlinson had already figured it out. “Because she couldn’t risk holding the phone to her ear. You’re right, probably a 7-Eleven. Someplace he could keep an eye on her through a window. So she hid the phone in her lap and texted. That would have been safer. And there’s less chance of him checking for texts, then checking recent calls. Tula’s very smart, I already told you.”
“Do you know what kind of truck he drives?” I was leafing thro
ugh my private phone book, many of the names written in my own form of code. As I picked up the phone to dial a police detective friend of mine, Emily appeared from behind the curtain, combing her auburn hair with a brush, wearing one of my baseball jerseys buttoned down to her thighs.
“We meet again,” she smiled, looking at Tomlinson. “I was just getting acquainted with your best friend. Your timing could be better, you know. But… it also could have been a lot worse.”
Tomlinson stopped chewing at his hair long enough to say, “It looks to me like someone just finished touching all the bases.”
The woman had a nice smile, ironic and tolerant. “A baseball metaphor,” she laughed, tugging at my jersey. “It works, but not entirely accurate. I was counting on extra innings.”
As Emily said it, she moved past me, trailing an index finger along my shoulder. I saw the way Tomlinson’s eyes followed her, focusing first on the abrupt angle between breasts and abdomen created by the baggy baseball jersey, then on her long hiker’s legs, calf muscles flexing.
Clearing my throat, I burned my pal with a look that read Don’t even think about it.
Emily noticed, which caused her to grin, charmed apparently by our adolescent sparring. Then she rewarded me with a look that read You’ve got nothing to worry about.
That thoracic glow again. It was in my chest.
On the telephone, a detective acquaintance, Leroy Melinski, was telling me, “I’ve got the report up on the screen right now. Thirteen-year-old Tulo Choimha, an undocumented Guatemalan national. He, uh… he was reported missing last night, but it didn’t get official until a couple of hours ago when a full AMBER Alert went out. So maybe your beach-bum pal’s pestering did some good. Is he still the strung-out cop hater I remember?”
Looking at Tomlinson as he came through the door with two quart bottles of beer-I’d remembered there was beer stowed on my flats skiff-I said to Melinski, “If anything, he’s worse. I think the man’s personality evaporates as he ages. It’s causing his weirdness to condense right before my very eyes.”
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