Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

I kicked some bottles aside and picked up something from the floor and held between my thumb and forefinger and showed it to him.

– What about this?

He looked at it, looked hard.

– Fuckin’ almond.

– Right the first time. What can you tell me about it?

He grinned, winked.

– 'Sa nut.

I nodded.

– Yeah. Dead on. But a little outside the point. What I'm getting at here, Jaime, is why would someone kidnap your sister and, just out of pique as far as I can gather, kill Talbot over some nuts?

– I didn't kill Talbot. Jus’ cut his ass up.

– Sure, cut him bad. Cut him like he was a Turkish prisoner in Midnight Express. But his buddy or boss or whatever, the guy who looks like Sam Elliot without the moustache, he killed him.

His eyes flicked back and forth a couple times, looking for connections between things that seemed impossible to unite.

– Killed him? Harris killed Talbot?

– Is Harris a tall cowboy with a big gun?

– Yeah.

– Then I'm going to go out on a limb and say that yes, he is the one who killed Talbot.

He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

– Damn. That's. Damn. That's fucked up.

– Yeah. Especially when you take into account that he beat him to death with my telephone.

His face scrunched, he opened and closed his mouth a few times, he stuck out his tongue.

I recognized certain signs I'd seen many times in college, and took a big step back as he bent over the side of the chair and heaved a half gallon of Malibu rum onto the floor.

I edged from the puddle.

– Think it's bad to think about, you should have seen it.

He shook his head.

– No, no, man, ain't that bothers me. Just.

He spat.

– It's just that Harris is Talbot's uncle that's so fucked up.

He flopped back in the chair, wiped pinkish vomit from his chin, and threw up in his lap.

I went for towels, assuming we'd have to shoot this again.

– Almonds, Jaime.

He swallowed the last of the water from the glass I'd gotten for him, and held out the empty.

– They stole ‘em.

I took the glass and passed him a damp towel. The only towel left in the room that wasn't draped over the huge pool of rum puke.

– Stole what?

– Almonds, asshole. That's what you're asking, right?

I sat back on the bed, at as safe a distance from the stink of his vomit as I could manage. I'd contemplated cleaning it up, but decided I'd reached my limits on cleaning other people's messes for the day. In theory, after all, I was here to clean my own mess. Or exert some kind of influence over my own life. Or some shit like that. I thought it best to keep that in mind.

So, by focusing relentlessly on the idea that I may have been responsible for the grinding inertia that was carrying me away from anyone and anything I'd ever cared about, I was able to reverse my usual view of things, which made it appear as though I were standing still, resolutely my own man, unchangeable, inured and immune to the blows of life, while the rest of the world went on without me, unable to support the idea that it could not live up to my standards.

But it wasn't easy to maintain that focus, especially when I was having to fight off a series of fantasies wherein I was capable in matters of fisticuffs and gave Jaime the proper thrashing he so clearly deserved.

I coughed into my hand.

– Yes, allowing that I am indeed an asshole, it is what I was asking. I'm sure, now that you've had a moment to clear your head, and, you know, upchuck on yourself, that you'll understand how I might be confused about the notion of almond thieves.

He rubbed the towel over his bared teeth, scrubbing away a film of bile.

– Asshole, they stole like a can of them.

– Sure, I got that part. See, Harris, before he murdered his nephew, was very clear that he wanted his can back. So I'd managed to put together can and almonds and come up with can full of almonds, but I'm still not connecting that to kidnapping and killing. I'm dim on matters of criminal enterprise. You seem to have this kind of behavior all locked up. Care to enlighten me as to how a can of almonds is worth all the bother?

He stared.

– You are such a huge asshole. You always talk like that?

– Mostly it's only when I'm stressed. Or when I'm not so subtly making fun of someone I think is an idiot. In this case, I'm engaged in both endeavors.

– Asshole.

– Yeah, takes one to know one.

– See, that I get.

– Almonds. Can. I mean, are there diamonds hidden below the almonds or something?

He threw the towel on the floor, got up and pulled off his pukey shirt.

– Asshole, a can is a cargo container.

– You buy any almonds lately?

– No.

– Well you should. They're like full of good cholesterol.

I watched as he dug clean socks from his backpack.

– Did I mention they kidnapped your sister?

He sat on the bed and pulled the socks on.

– See, because they're so high in HDL, people are crazy for almonds right now. Put them out on the crafts table and the talent eats them by the handful. Can of almonds is like eight bucks. Like a regular size can, I mean.

He rose and tucked the tails of his clean Ed Hardy shirt into his equally clean Ed Hardy jeans, both garments covered in commodified Ed Hardy tattoo tigers.

– Cali produces so many fucking almonds, like a billion fucking pounds a year or something, business is booming. It's like we export nothing but airplanes and produce. And movies, man.

He ran his fingers through his hair, still damp from the shower he'd taken.

– All these places, China, Spain, Portugal, India, they love fucking almonds. Buy like seventy million pounds of California almonds a year. But with increased U.S. demand, they have to pay a higher premium.

He took a bottle of some kind of hair product from his bag, sprayed into his hand, and began shaping his hair into a wedge.

– Know what almonds wholesale for on the open market? Fucking guess.

I shrugged.

– No idea.

He looked in the mirror, tweaked the angle of the fauxhawk.

– Right, you have no idea. Who's the fucking genius now, asshole?

– You, you, you're the fucking supergenius.

– Right, I am. Deal with numbers, that's what I do.

He turned from the mirror.

– Six dollars a pound, man. Know how many pounds of almonds load into a shipping container? A marine container, I mean, a forty-footer.

– No clue.

– Fucking right no clue. So let me clue you in, asshole. Forty-four fucking thousand pounds. Want some help with the math?

I didn't need help with the math. I could do the math. And suddenly, it became very clear why Harris was willing to kidnap Soledad. Less clear about why he'd be so willing to kill his own nephew. But I figured that was a family matter more than anything else, and you just never knew what kind of history was involved there.

Jaime was nodding and smiling.

– Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, asshole. That's how much that truck full of almonds is worth. And as expediter on this deal, I'm in for ten percent. Twenty-two thousand.

I rubbed my nose.

– That what they offered?

– Huh?

– Ten percent, that what they offered?

– Huh? No. They. Wait. They offered the twenty-two. Said that was ten percent of the total haul.

– But. Never mind.

He came toward me.

– Never mind what, asshole?

I stood up.

– It's just that six times forty-four thousand is two hundred sixty-four thousand.

He stood there.

I filled in the gap in his misunderstanding.

– Ten percent of that is twenty-six thousand and four hundred American greenbacks. But you go ahead and crunch the numbers and see what you come up with.