Speed Metal Blues: A Dan Reno Novel (16 page)

Loohan hadn’t said much during their time together, answering questions in monosyllables, rarely raising his eyes. In fact, the only time he’d shown the slightest animation was when a pretty Latina in a frilly green cocktail waitress getup walked through the common.

“Who is that?” he’d said, drawing his hair from his face.

“I don’t know. Some beaner bimbo.”

Loohan watched her until she disappeared into her apartment, an undisguised lust radiating from his black eyes. Norton looked at him, slightly disconcerted with the intensity of Loohan’s stare. Almost like a cat stalking its prey.

“Like that stuff, huh?” Norton said.

An hour later Norton dropped off Loohan behind a gas station. Loohan was probably not someone he’d want to hang out with. Some dark, weird shit smoldering in the dude. But he was definitely a guy who knew how to keep his mouth shut. Maybe the perfect guy for the job. And Norton had no better alternatives.

• • •

Norton rubbed his temples, trying to ease the pressure that had been growing during the long hours on the road. Then he craned his neck to the rear seat where Loohan sat.

Loohan gestured with his head, his black hair covering his eyes. “Those lights down there? About half a mile. Probably border patrol.”

“Which way they headed?”

“Away.”

Next to Norton, Tuma fidgeted, his shoes scraping against the gray lunch box tucked behind his heels. The box was stuffed with cash, the bills bundled and neatly arranged.

Tuma punched a text message on his cell phone as Norton turned down a street that dead-ended at a wood-sided building that looked like it had once been a warehouse.

“You ever put that thing down?”

“What’s it to you?” Tuma said. “Severino wants me to stay in touch. Hey, when we get back to civilization, I’m gonna buy you guys a real Italian dinner.” Tuma snorted a quick laugh. “Pasta, veal, red wine, the works. That ought to cheer you up.”

His fists griping the steering wheel, Norton rolled to a stop and shut off the motor.

“You know what a Mexican stand-off is?” Loohan asked.

“What, you eat a bunch of beans and see who can fart the loudest?” Tuma laughed again, loud as a bark in the close confines of the vehicle.

“Not quite.”

“What then?”

A pickup truck was parked down the street, a hundred feet away. Its headlights flashed on and off, bright in the dwindling twilight.

“You’re about to find out.”

Norton glanced at Tuma. “You get to be the taster,” he said, then shifted his eyes back to the pickup.

“Not a problem. Bring the blow back here and I’ll be glad to take a rip.”

“Doesn’t work that way, my friend,” Loohan said, leaning forward, his hand on Tuma’s shoulder. “I need you with me.”

“Hey, Severino said I should wait in the car. You guys would handle it.”

“That .38 you keep in your coat pocket?” Loohan said.

“Yeah?”

“You know how to shoot it?”

Tuma looked at Norton, his eyebrows lifted, a frown forming on his mouth.

“What the fuck I do to deserve this disrespect?”

“You don’t
get
respect,” Loohan said, his voice flat. “You earn it,”

“You heard him,” Norton said, reaching under the seat and sliding free a pistol grip shotgun.

“Hold on, now—”

“You ain’t got the balls for this shit, is that it?” Loohan’s face up close, his breath hot against Tuma’s ear. “What would your fellow mobsters think?”

The doors to the pickup opened and three men stepped out onto the hardpan street. The darkening skies made it difficult to see them in much detail. Vinnie Tuma swallowed, his hand in his pocket holding his gun, his palm slick with sweat.

Norton and Loohan climbed out on the driver’s side, leaving Tuma standing near the passenger side fender. They began walking toward the three figures, who waited like dark statues. Norton and Loohan stopped after a few paces.

“I have the money,” Norton yelled. “We inspect the goods, and if we like it, we make the exchange.” He pointed with his arm. “Here, in the middle of the street.”

“Okay,” came the reply. “We have the goods.”

Norton retreated to the SUV, while Loohan walked toward the pickup. Tuma froze where he stood. “Come on,” Loohan said.

“What about Norton?”

Loohan stopped. “We got nothing to worry about as long as he’s back here holding the money, so quit sniveling.”

When they neared the truck, two of the men spread to the sides, leaving a tall man with lank blond hair leaning against the cab. He wore a black overcoat, his arms crossed, the cavalier expression on his face betrayed by deep creases at the sides of his mouth and a quarter-moon shaped scar on his nose.

“I’ll need to test the purity,” Loohan said. The blond shifted his eyes, first left to where a small Asian man stood, then right to his other cohort, a Hispanic with a Pancho Villa mustache. He looked back to Loohan and nodded.

“I’m going to reach in my pocket for a flashlight, a piece of tinfoil, a razor blade, and a lighter.” Loohan raised his head and drew his hair from his eyes with a middle finger. “Okay?”

The men to the sides took a step closer.

“Go ahead,” said the blond. “Do it slow, nice and easy.”

Loohan slipped his hand to the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a plastic baggie containing the instruments. The Asian man was now pointing a pistol at him, a semiautomatic of some make. Holding the bag up, Loohan looked to either side. “Cool?”

“Pull him out a key,” the blond said to the mustachioed man. Walking around the far side of the pickup, the mustache stepped over the sidewall into the bed, his cowboy boots clunking against the steel floor. He unlocked a toolbox bolted behind the cab and withdrew a brown, paper-wrapped package.

“How about one from the bottom of the pile?” Loohan said.

The blond frowned, his eyes flickering with impatience. “Get another one,” he said. When the mustache produced a second brick of cocaine, Loohan stepped to the rear of the truck.

“Open the tailgate and I can test it here.” The blond released the gate, and Loohan carefully unwrapped the bale. He held it in his hands and broke it in half with a dull thud.

All the while, Tuma had been standing as if paralyzed, but the sound seemed to snap him out of his stupor. He walked to where Loohan scraped a few flakes from the middle of the white mass onto the piece of tinfoil. Loohan chopped it into powder with the razor blade. Tuma and the blond stood waiting, the mustache back on the ground next to the Asian, whose gun was still trained on Loohan.

“Snort it,” Loohan said. Using a rolled dollar bill, Tuma inhaled the pile in a quick motion. He twitched his nose, swallowed, and sighed. “Tastes good.”

Loohan scraped a bit more onto the foil and handed the flashlight to Tuma. Then he held his lighter underneath the small pile and watched as it began to smolder, the smoke nearly colorless. After a minute he set it down and looked at Tuma, whose eyes were wide. “That’s got to be the best blow I’ve ever had, man. I’m freaking flying. Whew!”

Loohan put the flashlight and lighter back in the baggie. “Hey,” he said, to the man pointing the pistol. “You’re from Laos, right?”

The man’s eyes clicked. “What’s it to you?”

“I was born there, man.” Loohan spread the fingers on his left hand, showing the burn scars on the webs. “Survived three years at Kompong Thom.”

“You did?” he said, stepping forward, the gun lowering. “My brother is still—”

As the man spoke, Loohan replaced the baggie in his coat, and when his right hand reappeared, no one saw the small, black .25 he held. No one had a chance to. Three shots rang out in a quick cadence, Loohan’s arm a blur as he pulled the trigger. The report echoed thinly in the desert air, like a tack hammer hitting a nail. The Asian crumpled, a red dot the size of a dime on his forehead, dead before he hit the ground. The blond took a round in the ear, spinning in a circle as he dropped, the expression on his face perplexed for an instant before the light faded from his eyes. The mustache was last, shot in the heart. He flopped flat on his back, his heels dug into the dirt, his torso soaking in blood. They went down so fast they seemed to fall like dominoes.

Vinnie Tuma stared slack jawed at the bodies. It was quiet and nothing moved. He couldn’t quite process what had happened and stood there as if a spike had been driven into his mind’s gears. Loohan climbed onto the truck bed and began removing the ten kilos from the lock box. His fingers shaking, Tuma fumbled a cigarette into his mouth.

A few seconds later they watched Norton race up in the SUV and jump out, holding his sawed-off at port arms. “Goddamn,” he said.

“Put the drugs in the back of our ride,” Loohan said to Tuma.

Norton moved about the scene coiled in a crouch, his head low, his eyes darting, never looking away from Loohan for long. After inspecting each victim and moving around the perimeter, he finally sighed and straightened. He stared hard at Loohan, who stood in the pickup, overlooking the scene like a vulture waiting for the right moment to swoop down on a carcass.

“This wasn’t the plan, man,” Norton said.

“Sure it was.” Loohan hopped off the tailgate.

Tuma finished moving the bricks to the SUV and stood looking at them expectantly.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Norton said.

“Yeah, Jesus Christ, no shit,” Tuma said. He opened the passenger side door, but before he could get in, Loohan said, “Hold on. Need your help with one more thing.” He motioned with his arm and Tuma stepped away from the vehicle.

Norton watched Loohan’s arm straighten, and Norton’s lips had already started forming the word
no
when the pistol bucked and a sudden geyser of blood and brains blew out the back of Tuma’s skull. Tuma fell as if his legs were kicked out from under him, and hit the ground flat on his back.

“Aagh!” Norton thrust up his hands, his face contorted and red. “What the motherfucking Christ are you doing?”

“Calm down.”

“Fuck calm down! Do you know who you just blew away?”

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I think you’re out of your goddamn mind!”

“You’re wrong.” Loohan opened the rear hatch of the SUV and pulled open the panel to the storage bay. He removed a large roll of clear plastic wrap, the type used by warehousemen to secure boxes on pallets, then handed Norton a pair of rubber gloves.

“The hell are these for?”

“We’re going to wrap Tuma and move him somewhere we can bury him. You don’t want any blood showing up in the car, do you?”

Norton’s hand twitched on his shotgun as he glared at Loohan. Killing the nephew of a high-ranking mob boss was an almost suicidal act. And now Norton was complicit, thanks to Loohan’s homicidal frenzy. Recruiting Loohan for the drug score seemed a good idea at first, but from the minute Vinnie Tuma got involved, Norton could feel it moving irrevocably toward disaster. Norton closed his eyes tightly and spat. Now his worst fears were confirmed—Loohan had turned out to be a complete lunatic.

For a second Norton considered raising his weapon and blasting Loohan into oblivion. Then he could tell Severino the deal went bad, and Norton was the only one to survive. Would Severino buy that? Maybe, maybe not. What was the alternative? There was a lunch pail packed with a hundred large, plus ten keys of high-grade blow in the SUV. That kind of weight could solve a lot of problems, but it would be tricky.

When he looked up again, if Loohan’s back had been turned, Norton might have killed him. But Loohan was watching, his goddamned oriental eyes calm and calculating. Did Loohan plan on shooting him? If so, Norton thought he’d already be dead.

Peeling the plastic sheathing from the roll, Norton began wrapping Tuma’s bloody face, first removing the still lit cigarette from his lips. Loohan reached in Tuma’s jacket pocket and found his cell phone, then raised Tuma’s shoulders, and soon the corpse was mummified, tightly bound and unrecognizable. They lifted the body and jammed it into the back of the SUV, shoving to make it fit. Ten minutes later they were on a dark two-lane road, heading north. Save for a thirty-minute stop in the Imperial Sand Dunes National Park, they drove thirteen straight hours back to Lake Tahoe, arriving just as the sun rose and cast a blinding swath of white over the deep waters.

W
hen the phone rang, Pedro jerked awake, his breath caught in his throat. His ribs were on fire, as if he’d been stabbed with a heated blade and every motion caused it to twist.

“This is Pedro,” he gasped.

“Have you heard from Rodrigo yet?”

“No.”

“Until he returns, you’ll be in charge.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be contacted by one of our men in a day or so. Until then, lie low.”

“I’ll keep Rodrigo’s phone with me.”

“You’ll be contacted in person.”

“By who?” Pedro asked, risking a question.

There was a long pause on the line. “The Angel is coming,” the voice said.

Pedro took the cellphone from his ear and stared at it, his eyes trancelike and unbelieving. He shook his head, hoping he could somehow reverse what he’d just heard. A bitter taste flooded his throat and he took several shallow breaths, fighting a bolt of nausea. Then he rolled off the bed, staggered to the bathroom, and puked his guts out, his viscera roiling, his ribs cracking with every heave.

“Hey, Pedro, you okay?” one of the younger gangbangers said, standing in the doorway.

Pedro finished spitting and turned his bloodshot eyes to the kid. “Bring the car around. I need to go visit Rodrigo.”

“It’s too soon, Pedro. He’s in bad shape, man. They got to wire his jaw. The nurse said not to come until tomorrow, maybe the day after.”

The tattoos on his fingers blurring in his vision, Pedro pushed himself up and shuffled back to his room. He lay on the bed, staring at the textured pattern on the ceiling. Back in Juarez, he could have been relaxing in the small cantina his mother ran, eating enchiladas and drinking a margarita. The sun would go down and his friends would join him to play cards and talk about girls. A stray Chihuahua that came around would be curled up in the corner of the restaurant, enjoying the warm odors and the sounds of friendly conversation. Every now and then Pedro would reach down, holding a tortilla chip for the dog to take from his hand.