Randy White - Night Vision

Frankie slapped Victorino’s hands away from the suitcase, saying, “A regular genius, that’s what you are. A regular Wall Street tycoon,” as she popped the locks with her black fingernails, then returned to her packing.

The V-man was thinking, Smart-ass white bitch, but pretended to be unruffled, not pausing as he continued, “Wall Street or Main Street, business is still business-when you get to be a man in my position. You say she’s, what? Twelve, maybe thirteen? That means I own her for four or five more very profitable years. It’s sort of like owning a fine racehorse, understand? Or a nice limo you rent out.”

Frankie said to the V-man, “You mind moving your ass?” then pushed by him to get to the closet. No… a table, where she found a lighter, then stood tall in front of the window and relighted a joint that the bitch didn’t bother to offer him.

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.