No alcohol is allowed on the beach, but the cops and lifeguards recognize Malone as a local, another sunstruck idler who’s dead-ended in this last-stop surf town, so they ignore the Tecate in his hand. He hides the can anyway, leaving it wrapped in the paper bag the clerk at the liquor store slid it into when he bought it. He has a thing about keeping up appearances, a conceit his parents beat into him, and one that he likes to think sets him apart from other drunks. Deep down he knows it’s a ridiculous distinction, but so what, a man needs his signifiers.
Not many people are out on this warm Thursday afternoon. A family of what might be Germans, pale going quickly to pink; a couple of Mexican kids giggling under a blanket; two jarheads tossing a football. Malone finishes his beer and could use another. It’s been an exciting day, with the crossing and the drop-off, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and his nerves have taken a pounding. He stands and brushes the sand off his ass, wonders if Pablo Honey is drinking.
The pier is a rickety mess of planks and pilings. Malone can see the ocean below, through the gaps between the boards, and feel the entire structure rise and settle with the swell as he walks out on it. To the north, the view is all the way up the coast to downtown San Diego, to the south, Tijuana, the bullring rising like Rome’s Colosseum out of the clutter.
A few surfers are riding the breaks at Boca Rio and the Sloughs, where the Tijuana River empties into the sea. It’s one of the most polluted stretches of beach in California, but this doesn’t scare the hard-cores. Raw sewage, floating garbage, and the occasional dismembered narco do nothing to discourage them from paddling out to catch the world-class waves. The county has given up trying to stop them, offering free hepatitis vaccines instead.
Pablo Honey is fishing in his usual spot halfway down the pier, his line just back of where the waves are breaking twenty feet below. Elbows on the rail, he reels in some slack: CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. He’s using a live anchovy on a number four hook, hopes for halibut. Nothing in his bucket yet. Malone doesn’t mean to startle him, but his “What’s up?” sends the kid tripping over his shoelaces.
“Easy, dude,” Malone says. “It’s just me.”
Pablo laughs and nods and fiddles with his Padres cap for a while, pulling himself together. “Got a new girlfriend,” he barks when he finally calms down. Words tend to explode out of him, everything an exclamation.
“Another one?” Malone replies.
“White chick, big ol’ titties.”
“Come on.”
“No shit. We’re getting married.”
“So let’s celebrate. You got a bottle on you?”
It’s a crapshoot. Some days Pablo likes a nip while he fishes, other days he feels the Lord all around him and packs a New Testament instead. Malone gets lucky: The kid reaches into the pocket of his camo cargo shorts, pulls out a pint of Popov, and hands it over.
Pablo Honey is half Chinese, half Mexican, and his real last name is Estrada. He and Malone lived in the same building in L.A. a few years back, a hundred-buck-a-week flophouse in Hollywood, Little Armenia. Pablo washed dishes to pay his rent while Malone pissed away a nice chunk of change his grandfather had left him.
Malone was generous with his money, treating his down-and-out pals to drinks and steak dinners at Sizzler, and Pablo was the only guy who tried to pay him back. He was also the only guy who never asked what the hell someone like him was doing in a dump like that. Malone appreciated the kid’s uncomplicated acceptance of his and others’ circumstances, found wisdom in it even, and the two of them helped each other along as best they could, like friends Malone had only read about in books.
He was heartbroken when Pablo announced one day that he’d inherited a little house in Imperial Beach from an aunt and would soon be moving down there.
“Good for you,” he said. “But I’ll be awful lonely.”
“Huh?” Pablo said.
“I’m going to miss you, man. You’re my bud.”
Pablo frowned, deep in thought for a few seconds, then smiled and said, “So come with me, then.”
Malone had moved up to L.A. and settled into the flop when his life in Orange County ended, and he figured he’d be there until he drank himself into an early grave. But Pablo’s offer got him thinking. After five years of slipping in vomit on the way to the liquor store and passing out at night to the sound of men in other rooms wrestling with their nightmares, he hated the constant madness of Hollywood. Whatever misery he’d been seeking, he’d experienced; whatever point he’d been trying to make to himself, he’d made it. So, after throwing one last party for all of his Tinseltown cronies, he packed his stuff in the Louis Vuitton bag he’d ended up with after the divorce and followed Pablo to the beach, crashing on the kid’s couch until he found his own place. It’s been two years now, and he’s still here and still alive—quite an achievement, he’s decided, for someone who so often wants to die.
He guzzles some vodka and passes the bottle back to Pablo, who reams the neck with a T-shirted finger and has a drink himself. A gull touches down on the railing, looking for something to steal. Finding nothing, it takes off again and glides toward the beach on stiffly arched wings.
“What’s your girl’s name?” Malone asks Pablo.
“What?” he replies.
“Your new girlfriend.”
“I met her on the Internet,” Pablo says. “She lives in Dallas. Come over tonight, and I’ll show you naked pictures.”
They stand silently then, the sun warming their backs, the breeze ruffling their hair. They often go an hour or more without speaking, and Malone is always grateful for the quiet. He’s had talk enough to last him a lifetime.
He heads for home a while later, to kill the rest of the afternoon there. His place is a couple of blocks inland, a guesthouse in the backyard of a slightly larger house. The guesthouse was a toolshed until someone drywalled and added a bathroom, and there’s barely enough space in it for a futon and a television, but Malone is okay with that. The beach is there when he wants to stretch out.
The yard of the house is an overgrown jungle prowled by feral cats as wild as tigers. On his way back to the shed, Malone rousts the big gray one he calls Smoke, interrupting the cat’s snooze in a patch of sunlight. The cat crouches and hisses at him before diving into the bushes.
Inside his room, Malone kicks off his flip-flops and snags a beer from the mini-fridge. That and a microwave are the extent of the kitchen facilities. After opening the windows to get the air moving, he stretches out on the futon and turns on the TV. He runs through the channels until he happens upon Jaws, a film he knows by heart but still watches whenever he comes across it.
Quint is in the middle of his story about the USS Indianapolis when Gail calls Malone’s name. She presses her face to the screen of his side window in order to peer inside.
“You decent?” she says.
“No,” he says. “But come on in.”
Gail rents the front house with her teenage son Seth. She’s forty, a skinny blonde who’s starting to wrinkle from too much sun but still has a nice smile and kind blue eyes. She’s been divorced for years but isn’t bitter, doesn’t blame all men for her troubles with one of them. She opens the door and pokes her head inside.
“You gonna be around later?” she says.
“Could be,” Malone says.
“Seth’s going to his dad’s.”
“Yeah?”
“So…?”
“I’ll be around.”
Once or twice a month she sneaks back to Malone’s place with a joint and a bottle of wine, and they make each other feel good for a night. It’s straight-up sex, and both of them know that’s all it’ll ever be. She wants someone more stable than him, and he doesn’t want anyone at all. He gave everything he had the first time around, emptied himself out.
“Care for a beer?” he says.
“Come on,” she says. “How are we ever gonna get to Maui if you keep spending all your money on booze?”
It’s their
running joke—sad in a way—sneaking off together to Hawaii, starting over.
“I’m gonna hit the Mega Millions this week,” he says. “Jackpot’s up to what?”
“One hundred seven million.”
“The numbers came to me in a dream. You watch.”
“You’re fucking nuts,” Gail says. “You hear about Jordan and Nikki?”
“No.”
“They finally split for Alaska last night.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, and then Nikki called me this morning and said the apartment was unlocked and whatever they’d left behind was up for grabs. I went over a couple hours ago, and it looked like everything they owned was still there. Furniture, clothes, everything. I scored a blender and a set of knives. You should go see what’s left.”
Probably nothing but junk, but you never know. When the next commercial comes on, Malone hauls himself up off the futon, grabs another beer, and strolls over to the gray stucco apartment building across the street. Jordan and Nikki’s place is on the second floor. Two guys he’s never seen before are struggling to carry a sofa out of the apartment, and after a few rounds of “You lift your end,” “No, you lift yours,” they finally manage to slide it through the front door.
Malone steps inside. The place has been pretty well picked over by now. A couple of surf rats are looking through the kitchen cupboards, and a homeless woman Malone knows as Daisy has piled a bunch of blankets and sheets on the bedroom floor. The only furniture left is a homemade bookcase and an ugly nightstand.
Mike the Hippie comes out of the bathroom carrying five rolls of toilet paper.
“Dude,” he says. “What a trip, huh?”
Malone kneels next to a stack of magazines and flips through them to see if there’s anything worth taking. It’s mostly old Peoples and Enquirers. They were a nice couple, Jordan and Nikki. She was a waitress somewhere, and he was always talking about applying at the post office, had it in his head that delivering mail would be the perfect job for him. “You get to wear shorts” was his reason.
“Check it out,” one of the surfers says. He draws back his fist and punches a hole in the living room wall.
“Aww shit, it’s on!” his buddy yells, then jumps into the air and puts both feet through the wall before falling to the floor.
A bewildered Jordan walks into the apartment.
“What the hell’s going on?” he says.
Everyone is silent until Mike the Hippie says, “We thought you moved out.”
“What?”
“Nikki called Gail and said—”
“That fucking bitch!”
Mike drops the toilet paper and slips out the front door. Malone follows him. He hears Jordan screaming at everyone else to get the fuck out as he and Mike hurry down the stairs.
“What a trip,” Mike says again.
Malone is walking back across the street when his phone rings. It’s Freddy.
“I got something for you tonight,” he says.
“Tonight?” Malone says. “I just got back.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Freddy says. “But this is something special.”
“So special that I’m gonna want to come all the way down there again?”
“And you’ll have to use your own car, too. I can’t get another one so soon.”
“No way, man, no way.”
“Hold on now,” Freddy says. “I’m talking big money.”
“Big money,” Malone says. “What’s that in dollars?”
“How’s ten grand sound?” Freddy says.
It sounds pretty damn good to Malone. It sounds like he’d be able to hang up on Freddy the next couple of times he calls, take a little break.
“What are you trying to pull?” he says as he watches the evening fog creep in, the sun a dead red dot behind it. “If you’re giving me ten, that means there’s a lot more in it for you.”
“See, that’s what I like about you,” Freddy says. “You don’t let me get away with nothing.”
5
A CRUISE SHIP IS DOCKED IN ENSENADA THIS MORNING, so the streets of the grimy port city are filled with tourists. The shopping district has sprung to sudden, noisy life, with mariachis playing, taxis honking, and smiling touts standing in front of every restaurant and souvenir store, running through their pitches in an effort to pull customers from the crowd.
“Real Cuban cigars, my friend.”
“Lunch special, two-for-one margaritas.”
“Mr. Whisker, Mr. Whisker, come look at my junk. Buy your girlfriend something.”
Rolando watches the hustles from the second floor of Fuego, the disco he owns here. He’s cleared enough space in a storeroom for a desk, a couch, and some chairs, hung a few posters of bikini-clad Tecate girls on the walls, and calls it his office. Music is playing downstairs, and the bass tickles the soles of his feet. Carlos opens the club during the day when a boat is in and has a couple of girls dance on the poles. Guys wander in looking for cheap tequila shots and end up springing for a quick blow job, and Carlos moves a bit of coke and weed, too, letting the purchasers get high in the bathroom.
Rolando tried grinding tourists in Tijuana when he was a kid, got paid a few pesos for steering shoppers to a cousin’s leather store on Revolución. He never learned enough English to make people trust him, though, and couldn’t bear looking stupid in the eyes of the foreigners. The first man he ever stabbed was a marine who made fun of his accent. “Jew guys wan’ belt? Jew guys wan’ boots?” the jarhead said, mocking him, and Rolando flipped open his knife and stuck it in the boy’s thigh. The police caught up to him later and beat him black and blue but didn’t arrest him. The pendejo was only a tourist, after all, and who hadn’t wanted to let the air out of a tourist at one time or another?
Rolando turns away from the window to face the two cops sitting in his office now. Look how far he’s come. The men are here to pick up their monthly payoffs and want to know if there’s anything they can do to earn extra money. One is young and thin, the other fat and older. The fat one does the talking.
“Maybe you need some bodyguards?” he says. “Maybe you need our guns?”
Rolando gestures at Ozzy stationed by the door and Esteban lounging on the couch.
“I’ve got all the guards and guns I need for today,” he says. “But tomorrow, who knows? I’ll remember your offer when the devil comes to call.”
The cops chuckle and shake their heads.
“Seriously,” Rolando continues. He lowers himself into the chair behind his desk. “I’ve committed sins even he can’t abide.”
The men’s smiles disappear, and the young one dabs sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform. The police are always scared when they come to see El Príncipe. They know he’s connected to the cartel. They know about the beheadings, the dismemberments, the barrels of acid. They’ve mopped up the blood and hauled the mutilated corpses to the morgue. But still they sit across from him, desperation outweighing fear, and offer to violate their oaths and piss on their honor in exchange for an envelope stuffed with cash. Rolando understands that a man who’d do this can never be trusted, but he may be useful.
He reaches into his briefcase for their pay, tosses it onto the desk, and smiles inwardly as they reach for the packets.
“Keep your eyes open,” he says, “except when I tell you to close them.”
The men chuckle again, already standing, eager to be on their way. Ozzy opens the door for them and locks it when they go out, then makes a face and spits on the floor. He can’t stand a crooked cop either.
Rolando gets up and walks to the window again, looks down on the milling cruise ship passengers. Indian kids circulate among them with trays of string bracelets and chewing gum, dirty hands upraised, begging for pennies. The passengers ignore the children and wonder why the city doesn’t keep them out of the tourist areas.
Fucking Americans.
Esteban’s phone beeps. “Flaco’s here,” he says.
&
nbsp; A few seconds later there’s a knock at the door. Ozzy steps out into the hall to pat Flaco down, then escorts him in.
“Hola, Tío,” Flaco says to Rolando. They shake hands. Flaco is tall and skinny with bulging eyes and big ears that stick straight out from his head, a country boy from top to bottom, with his boots and hat, his jeans and silk western shirt, a cockfight embroidered on the back. He’s up from Michoacán, Apatzingán, where his family grows poppies and processes the resin from the plants into black tar heroin. With the permission of the Tijuana cartel, Rolando buys heroin from Flaco, smuggles it into the U.S., and distributes it all over California and Arizona. It’s a good business. Even after paying taxes to the cartel, Rolando makes much more money than he can spend.
“How’s your father?” he asks Flaco.
“Still busting everyone’s balls,” Flaco says.
“That’s good, huh?”
“The Lord has really blessed him.”
These farmers are religious, won’t drink or fuck a whore. All they care about is money. They’re Rolando’s mother’s people. She grew up down there, and Flaco is Rolando’s cousin or something, someone he can rely on.
They discuss the next shipment, one hundred pounds arriving on Saturday. The deal could easily have been set up by phone, so Rolando suspects there’s something else behind this visit. Sure enough, after a bit of hemming and hawing, Flaco finally gets around to the real reason he made the trip north.
“I want to buy some new trucks,” he says. “Three F-450s, one red, one black, one gold.” He blushes, embarrassed by the extravagance of his request. Rolando wishes everyone he dealt with was as humble as this boy.
“Three?” he says, playing with the kid.
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