Gay Hendricks - The First Rule of Ten

Three men.

I moved closer, taking cover behind an ancient, gnarly almond tree. Tommy Jr. stood leaning against his car with his arms crossed as Barsotti talked and gestured and talked some more to his favorite multitasking employee, man number three: Jose Guttierez-washer of cars, stealer of weed, basher of friends, and who-knows-what-of-what this particular morning.

Barsotti clapped Jose on the back in a hearty, good-job kind of way. He dug out his wallet and gave Jose a bill. Then he climbed into the Maserati beside Tommy and drove away.

Jose loaded the back of his pickup with tools, and killed the drill and gas generator. The dawn air was suddenly, inconveniently silent.

I ran for my car.

Ten minutes later, Jose’s pickup bumped its way down the hill, through the lot, and onto the main road toward town. I followed, hanging back as far as I could without losing him.

Streaks of light brightened the sky like luminous ribbons. Jose turned into a strip mall and parked under a blinking neon sign shaped like a sombrero. “Los Caballeros,” it flashed, promising an all-night refuge for bad boys and insomniacs. I parked on the street and followed Jose inside.

It was a dismal place, a virtual monument to loneliness. A jowly man in a dirty shirt stood guard behind the bar. I counted three customers, including me. Jose was already staring down a draft beer. A blowsy middle-aged woman, raucous and bleached blond, swigged straight from a bottle at the other end of the bar. The jukebox was playing a sad country song about liquor and losers.

I sat near Blondie and ordered a draft. Normally beer wouldn’t be my top choice for a breakfast beverage, but I was looking to fit in with the crowd, and it might help soften the edge of desperation in here. I paid with one of my Ben Franklins. The bartender had to go out back for change.

“Hey, Big Bucks. I’ll bet you’re even bigger where it counts. Name’s Olivia.” Olivia slipped onto the stool next to me and scissored her arms together so her cleavage pushed up under her tonsils.

I signaled the bartender to give her a refill. He gave me a look I interpreted as “You have got to be kidding, dude” and grabbed a cold one out of the refrigerator.

I was treated to the full radiance of Olivia’s smile, marred slightly by a missing eyetooth.

“What’re you doing out and about this time of night?”

“Sightseeing,” I said.

Her cackle was backwashed in phlegm. “You stay in this hole awhile, you’re gonna see some real sights.”

“How about you, Olivia? What brings you here?”

“Oh, this and that. I met with a couple clients earlier, if you catch my drift, and I’ll probably meet with a couple more when the breakfast crowd comes in.”

All I could think to say was, “I didn’t know they served breakfast here.”

I saw some movement to my right. Jose had moved a few stools closer. Olivia stood and waved her arm, her bingo-wing jiggling like Jell-O.

“Git on over here, sweet cheeks,” she yelled.

Jose pulled up a stool on the other side of Olivia, and I got my first close look at the man. He had dull eyes and a built-in sneer. His upper lip was so short as to be nonexistent.

Olivia didn’t seem to mind. She told him he was “lookin’ fine.” Jose just stole my chick. Oh, well, they come and they go.

Jose was working on his third beer, which told me he was drinking for a purpose. This made me glad; drunk people will tell you damn near anything. The trick is to figure out how much of the “damn near anything” is true.

I said to him, “You look like you’ve had a long night.”

“ Si . Long.”

Olivia jumped in. “That’s why I quit Burger King. Why take home fifty bucks for an eight-hour shift from hell when I can make two hundred in the parking lot easy, four clients, in and out?”

I could think of several reasons why I’d pick Burger King over In-N-Out, but that’s just me.

Jose fished a bill out of his pocket and gave it a glum stare. “He is terrible, my boss. I am working my cojones off all night making him rich, and he give me a fifty. That’s just wrong, man, you know?”

Olivia eyed the bill and moved her stool a little closer to Jose’s.

Jose kept going. “That cheap hijo de puta , he be making millions.” He stuffed the money back in his pocket.

I shook my head in brotherly solidarity. “He’s making millions and giving you fifty? What a jerk!”

“ Verdaderamente ,” he said, draining his beer.

I called for another round, though my first draft sat untouched. “What’s your boss got going that’ll make him millions?”

Jose cast bleary eyes up at me, suspicion forming somewhere deep in his anesthetized brain.

“You a cop?” he asked.

I laughed. “No way. I’m a private investigator.” I reached into my wallet and counted out five $100 bills. Olivia let out a little moan. I fanned them across the bar like a deck of cards. “I buy information,” I said. I watched Jose carefully to see if he was going to bite.

He bit. “What you want to know?”

I was too tired to be bothered with a preamble.

“How’s Barsotti going to make his millions?”

The bartender set down two more drafts, and a bottle for Olivia. I gave him two twenties.

“Good-bye” I said.

He grunted and moved off.

Jose took a swig and licked the foam off his upper lip. “He ask me to drill his land, until I make the water flow again.”

“How’s that going to make him millions?”

“The water, she is no good.”

I pushed a hundred over to him. He blinked at it: Really? Free beer and a hundred bucks for that? The bill disappeared into his pocket.

Welcome to the Information Economy, Jose.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Why does he want to pump toxic water?”

“He suing the government. Por mucho dinero . For a lot of money.”

“Why would the government care?”

He went silent on me. Quick learner.

I slid two more bills over. “Holy Mother of God,” Olivia said. Jose’s pocket fattened.

“Why, Jose?”

“The government, they bury some kind of nuclear pipes in the land. Long time ago. Never told nobody about it. My boss, he think he can get a million an acre for they do this. He say the same thing happen in Utah.”

“How many acres does he own?”

“Maybe twenty, but he thinking he have more very soon. I hear my boss talking with his friends. They say they getting maybe five hundred acres.”

And five hundred million dollars .

My son is working on a real estate deal for me.

The stakes were finally high enough to justify Florio Sr.’s presence.

I had to think this through. But first things first.

“I want to talk to you in private, Jose. Can we go outside?”

He watched me pick up the remaining two hundreds.

“Por que no? ”

I walked him away from the flashing sombrero, into the shadowy corner of the parking lot. I kept my voice light.

“How much did you get paid for mugging the old guy at the bank?”

His eyes blinked rapidly at this new twist in the conversation. “Barsotti gave me a hundred bucks,” he mumbled.

“A hundred dollars, huh? That’s your price for hurting an old man who never hurt you or anyone else?”

He started backing away from me. “Guess what?” I said. “I’m going to do it to you for free.” I drove my right fist deep in his groin.

He doubled over and projectile-vomited five and a half beers across the asphalt. He stayed down, clutching his belly and moaning.

I said, “That old man is a friend of mine, and he had just gotten, guess what, a hundred dollars out of the ATM when you rolled him. So you got his hundred, plus a hundred-dollar tip. You need to make reparations.”