The Martini Shot (10 page)

“She took a walk,” Guzman said. “Is it over?”

“Yes,” Gil said. “It is done.”

“All this killing,” Guzman said softly.

“You killed a man yourself. The one who took your place on the boat.”

“I had him killed. He was just a rummy from the boatyard.”

“It's all the same,” Gil said. “But maybe you have told yourself that it is not.”

Guzman took his scotch and walked to the open glass doors near the balcony, where it was cooler and there was not the smell that was coming off Gil.

“You broke his neck, I take it. Like the other one.”

“He has no neck,” Gil said. “We cut his head off and threw it in the garbage. The rest of him we cut to pieces.”

Guzman closed his eyes. “But they'll come now. Two of their people have disappeared.”

“Yes,” Gil said. “They'll come. You have maybe a week. Argentina would be good for you, I think. I could get you a new passport, make the arrangements—”

“For a price.”

“Of course.”

Guzman turned and stared at the lanky young man. Then he said, “I'll get your money.”

“You split the two million with your wife, and there have been many others to pay.” Gil shrugged. “It costs a lot to become a new man, you know? Anyway, I'll see you later.”

Gil headed for the door, and Guzman stopped him.

“I'm curious,” Guzman said. “Why did this Moreno die, instead of me?”

“He bid very low,” Gil said. “Goodnight, Boss.”

Gil walked from the room.

Down on the Avenida Boa Viagem, Gil walked to his Chevrolet Monza and got behind the wheel. Guzman's woman, who was called Elena, was in the passenger's seat, waiting for Gil to arrive. She leaned across the center console and kissed Gil on the lips, holding the kiss for a very long while. It was Gil who finally broke away.

“Did you get the money?” Elena said.

“Yes,” Gil said. “I got it.” He spoke without emotion. He looked up through the windshield to the yellow light spilling onto Guzman's balcony.

“We are rich,” Elena said, forcing herself to smile and pinching Gil's arm.

“There's more up there,” Gil said. “You know?”

Elena said, “You scare me a little bit, Gil.”

She went into her purse, found a cigarette, and fired the cigarette off the lighter from the dash. After a couple of drags, she passed the cigarette to Gil.

“What was it like?” Elena said.

“What's that?”

“When you killed this one,” she said. “When his neck was broken, did it make a sound?”

Gil dragged on the cigarette, squinted against the smoke that rose off the ash.

“You know how it is when you eat a chicken,” he said. “You have to break many bones if you want to get the meat. But you don't hear the sound, you know?

“You don't hear it,” Gil said, looking up at Guzman's balcony, “when you're hungry.”

I was always
cool with Mrs. Sullivan. I been knowing her son, Pat, since we were in the same kindergarten class. His mom had one of those houses that were open to the kids in the neighborhood, and me, Pat, and some of the other fellas around our way hung out there often. Playing Xbox, going on Facebook to check out the females, shit like that. I spent the night a few times, and when I'd wake up in the morning, a blanket had been put on top of me by Pat's mom. She always asked after my mother, and when she talked about my younger brother, she knew what grade he was in. She was thoughtful like that.

I called her Miss Mary, which is how we do around here to adults when we want to show respect. My name is Tim, but she called me Sleepy, the street name I got on account of my half-mast eyes. I guess I thought of Miss Mary like family. I mean that in a good way, not in the way that I think of family when I think of my own situation at home.

We had free rein in the Sullivan house. I mean, we knew our boundaries, but still. Miss Mary trusted us boys so much that she left her open purse and wallet on the kitchen counter when she visited a neighbor or went for a walk. I know for a fact that none of us ever took a dollar. A couple of times we snagged a little liquor from that rolling cart she had and swiped beers out the refrigerator, but there was certain lines we wouldn't cross. Another one was, none of Pat's friends would ever go in her bedroom.

I remember it, though. From the hall, up on the second floor, I sometimes looked through her open door.

It was small bedroom. It had a double bed, which seemed to take up most of the space. I don't recall seeing no dresser. The wallpaper was busy with some old-timey pattern, looked like those ink tests the shrink gave me that time I set a trash can on fire in our middle school. What I remember most, beside the bed, was a fireplace mantel with no fireplace underneath it. It was just sort of mounted on the wall, framing the wallpaper. On top of the mantel was some kind of candle holder thing, a snow globe, and what looked like a painted rock. Above the candle holder was a crucifix that had been mounted on the wall. Also on the wall, two icons: Madonna and the baby Jesus, and Jesus grown up.

Miss Mary was straight Catholic. One time, from in the hall, I saw her praying the Rosary, holding those beads she had, looking up at the bearded Jesus picture on the wall. I had to look away. Didn't seem right somehow to be looking at her while she was doing that private thing.

This wasn't long after Pat's dad had died of a cancer. I don't even remember him much 'cause I was too young. Around that time, me and Pat were in a talent show together at our elementary. Up on stage, doing that “Jump” joint. Two tiny white boys in bow ties, lip-synching to Kris Kross. The crowd, kids and parents, went off. My mother was there, and one of her meth-tweak boyfriends, too. Man with a ponytail and a skinny behind.

Me and Pat was tight all through elementary, middle school, and high school, until I moved over to the tech high to learn the electrician's trade. We played rec league football and basketball as youngsters, but once we got to high school, neither of us had the grades to qualify for athletics, so we stopped. The way it is where we live, there are smart kids and tough kids, and they get separated early on. The smart kids, they get recognized as such in elementary. They're put in special classes and are protected all the way in magnet and AP programs on their paths to college and beyond. Dudes like me and Pat got identified way back as unmotivated students with behavior problems, and all the kids like us got thrown together in another group. We were put on what they call a different “track” than those nerd kids. Our track was the one that leads to nothing much. Those people at the schools wished it on us, in a way, and it became so.

Our neighborhood could be tough. A mix of colors, immigrant cabbies, on-and-off laborers, fathers who worked with their hands and backs if they were still around. Wasn't like us kids were gonna prove ourselves on the debate team, so what it came down to was, be willing to steal someone in the face or get stole, or be a punk and walk away. We did get tested and sometimes we were outnumbered. Pat had my back most times, and it wasn't easy for him to step up and fight. He did it, but he was on the soft side. That happened to some who didn't have a man around the house. Though, I got to say, it didn't happen to me.

Me and Pat started smoking weed when we were fourteen years old. This boy named Rollo, a dealer with a genuine rep who lived down in the apartments, turned us on to it. Rollo was twenty at the time. I guess I was ready to try marijuana. Ready or no, I wouldn't have turned down Rollo's offer. I didn't want to look like a faggot in his eyes.

As we got older, Rollo began to front us pounds of weed that we would split into ounces and sell off to our friends. In that way, Rollo expanded his business in our neighborhood, and me and Pat got free weed to smoke. It was a good deal for all of us.

Pat really loved being high. He'd get real quiet and happy after firing up. He was a big boy with black hair he kept shaved to the scalp. He had braces on his teeth, but he wasn't pressed by it. Matter of fact, he smiled a lot. Like his mother, Miss Mary, he had green eyes.

The deal between us was, I kept our scale and Baggies at my house, in my bedroom. My mother hardly ever went in my room, and if she had found anything, I don't believe she would have cared. Pat made the calls to kids we knew who were potheads, and both of us did what we called the transactions. Any conversations we had on our cell phones, we used codes. Money was Kermit, meaning green; an ounce was an osmosis; marijuana was M.J., for Michael Jordan. We weren't stupid.

We never moved product through the Sullivan house. Pat's place was for relaxing and being up. Miss Mary must have known me and her son was blazed most of the time, because we were always eating stuff from out the pantry and watching TV and laughing at it even when the shit was not funny, and the shows we were watching were like, UFO shows and shit. I think she was all right with it because her son was safe in the house. Having lost her husband and all, I believe she feared losing Pat to the street. So she knew we were smoking weed. What she didn't know was that we were dealing it, and all the complications that come with that.

The police in this county here are all about catching kids in the act of smoking, like it's some kind of high crime. They even got plainclothes Spanish guys, young dudes who look like they could be in high school, busting Latino kids who smoke in the woods. Young black and white police who do the same to their own kind. Meantime, if you are one of those nerd boys, you are pretty much safe, even if you partake in the sacrament yourself. The smart kids, the ones who been protected their whole lives, can go off to college and smoke all the weed they want in their dorm rooms. Shit is damn near legal for them. Just like it was for their parents.

Turns out, the police had been watching Rollo for some time. He had two possession charges on him. The first had been dismissed, but he had a court date coming up on the second and an expensive lawyer to represent him. We found out later from this same lawyer, he had been under suspicion as a known drug dealer by one of them county task forces they had. I'm thinking that some kid who got busted for possession identified Rollo as his dealer once the police got that kid under the hot lights.

The night the bad thing went down, we were driving around in Rollo's car, an old Mercury Marquis which has the same platform as a Ford Crown Victoria and a Lincoln Continental. What they call the sister car. I didn't mention that Rollo is black. Means nothing to me, but it's part of the story. Police see a black dude and a couple of white dudes rolling around in a Crown Vic look-alike, they see, what do you call that,
misadventure,
and they are going to pull you over to the side of the road. That came later.

We had gone down to the Summit apartments, which people around our way called Slum It. Blacks and Spanish lived there, many females with their single mothers. There was this one chick I liked to bang whose name was Lucia, and we stopped by her spot. Lucia had told me her mom was out with her boyfriend for the night, so it was a perfect setup. We all sat around in her living room and got smoked up, listening to go-go and some Latin stuff to make Lucia happy, and then me and Lucia went to her bedroom and Rollo and Pat stayed where they was at. Back in the bedroom, Lucia said she was on her period, so I told her to suck it. After I busted a nut, me and her went back out to the living room, and I told my boys that it was time to go. I put a little weed on the coffee table for Lucia, and we left out of there.

Rollo said he needed to make a quick delivery in the building. We got in the elevator, which smelled like fried chicken and cigarettes, went up a few floors, and followed Rollo down a hallway where he knocked on a door. Behind it someone said, “Who is it?” and Rollo said, “UPS man,” which was the answer they had agreed on. The door opened, and we went inside.

It was just one person in there, a dude named David, who went by Day. He was on the small side, but cocky. Had braids, like most dudes do these days, trying to be Gucci Mane. He was wearing hundred-dollar jeans, Air Force Ones, and a Blac Label T-shirt. It's like a uniform around here.

He said to Rollo, “You got it?”

Rollo said, “You got the Kermit?”

Day said, “I'm good.”

And Rollo said, “Then I got it.”

We sat around a cable-spool table that had a bong on top of it, matches, an ashtray, and a shoe box top Day used to clean the seeds away from the buds. Day wanted to try the weed. Rollo handed him the Baggie, and Day kind of hefted it in his hand and said, “Feels light.”

“You think so?” said Rollo.

Day fired up a piece and poked it through the bowl with a thin rod. He sat back on the couch, holding his breath, and coughed out a stream of smoke. His eyes were already pink.

“Good funk,” said Day.

“I know it,” said Rollo.

“But light.”

“Now you gonna negotiate.”

“I could get my scale, you want me to.”

“You prolly don't need a scale. With your superpowers and shit, you can just, you know, weigh the bag in your hand.”

“I'm sayin.”

“It's an ounce. I scaled that shit my
own
self two hours ago.”

“I don't think so.”

“I'm lyin?”

“We got a difference of opinion, is all. Thinkin, we can meet each other halfway.”

“ 'Nother words, you want a discount.”

“This here ain't no O-Z, Rollo. I just want to pay you for what it is.”

“Okay,” said Rollo, standing from his seat. “I'm a let you set the price.”

“Ain't you want to discuss it?”

Rollo, his eyes empty, shook his head.

Day straightened his legs so he could get a hand inside the pocket of his jeans, then pulled out a roll of bills. He began to peel off notes, soundlessly counting with his lips. When he was satisfied, he held the bills that he had separated from the roll out to Rollo. That was when Rollo pulled a nine-millimeter Beretta from out of his dip.

Rollo swung the heater fast and hard. Its barrel connected high on Day's cheek. A worm of blood appeared immediately beneath his eye socket. Day touched the wound, split open wide, with his fingers. Rollo laughed.

“Take the money, Sleepy,” said Rollo, snicking back the hammer on the nine. “All a that shit.”

I went to Day and grabbed the money from each of his hands. I was excited, I got to admit. I had never robbed no one.

Pat had stood up and backed away. The color had drained out his face.

Rollo picked up the Baggie off the cable-spool table, resealed and rolled it, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“Now you gonna take that, too,” said Day, in a low voice. He was trying not to cry. He looked small on that couch. “You not gonna leave me anything?”

“Leave you with your life,” said Rollo. He eased the trigger down and holstered the Beretta behind his back. He pulled his shirttail out to cover it and said, “Let's go.”

We were out of that building quick.

On the way to the Marquis, Pat said, “Why'd you do that, Rollo?”

Rollo shrugged and said, “That little muthafucka just aggravate me, man.”

“Bad for business,” said Pat. He was still real nervous, you could tell. “I'm sayin, if it gets around.”

“Day ain't gonna say shit to anybody,” said Rollo. “Day's a bitch.”

When we got into the downtown area of where we lived, where they got the restaurants, pawn shops, and movie theaters and shit, we saw lights flashing behind us and heard the burst of a siren. We were being pulled over by the law.

Rollo cut the Mercury to the curb and killed the engine. He put the gun under the seat. He handed me the bag of weed, and I laid it up under the dash where he had a small space for it in a cradle of wires.

“They just gonna talk to us,” said Rollo. “It'll be all right.”

But the police officers in the patrol vehicle didn't get out and approach our car. They sat where they were and waited, and soon many other squad cars, their light bars afire, began to appear from different directions. Several uniformed officers came upon us then, their weapons drawn. They screamed at us and ordered us out of the car, telling us to keep our hands raised, and then we were pushed down on the ground and cuffed with plastic bands.

Day had called 911 on us. I couldn't believe it. You always left the police out your business. I mean, that shit was just not done.

The officers found the weed. They found the gun.

Lying facedown on the street beside me, I heard Pat say, “Mom.”

All of us were arrested and spent the night in the county lockup. We were charged with drug possession, unlawful possession of a firearm, and using a firearm in the commission of felony robbery. Me and Pat were eighteen, so we were charged as adults. The felony gun charge carried a five-year mandatory sentence if we were convicted of it. Because of the gun thing, the commissioner set our bails high. Rollo stayed in jail several days until his supplier bailed him out with drug money. My mother got a bond somehow. Pat's mom, Miss Mary, had to put her house up for collateral to get him released.