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

– OK, OK, chill, chill!

He put the gun back on the dash.

– There, it's down. Chill.

I chilled. Or I tried to chill. My ability to chill being seriously hampered. My sense of proportion, already in sorry shape before I first walked into a cockroach-filled apartment and started hauling little plastic bags of shit out of it, was fucked beyond recognition.

And I was having some very creepy thoughts.

Like…

What if none of this is real? I mean, does it seem real to you, Web? Have you ever had experiences like this? Has anyone you know had experiences like this? Does this not seem rather more like a bad screenplay L.L. might have brushed up in the ‘80s than like real life? Are you, perhaps, going a little more loony than you first suspected? Or, wait, how about this? Maybe you're not going crazy, maybe, wait for it, maybe you're dead? Get it? Like, you got hit by one of the bullets on the busi Like you died on the bus and all of this is like after-death experience, like your journey into the afterlife? Or maybe you're still alive, still on the bus? Like it all just happened, is happening, right now? What about that shit?

I shook my head.

– No. No way. Too weird.

Jaime shot me an eye.

– Say what?

– Nothing. I'm cool. I'm here. This is happening. I know this is happening. I'm here. This is here and now. I'm here.

– Dude, are you?

– I'm fine. I'm cool. So. You were saying, ten percent?

He tilted his head.

– OKaaaaaay. So, Mr. Scary Asshole, what I'm saying is, I want it understood that if we bring them their can, with the almonds, I'm not sacrificing my ten percent. They're the ones pulling out of the deal. I took the time and expense of arranging a buyer for their property and all that shit. I'm not just walking away with nothing.

I finished taking the deep breaths that seemed to be doing very little to help calm me.

– Yes, but you will not be getting nothing. You will, in fact, be getting your sister.

– That wasn't the deal! I want my ten percent! And the real ten percent. Whatever you said that was.

– OK, fine. So how do we?

He picked up the gun.

– With this. Motherfuckers try to duck out without paying my due, I'm taking action. So you know how I roll. That's what I'm saying. Respect, gotta have it.

That bit of dialogue coming straight from Boyz N the Hood if I'm not mistaken.

I stared at the gun in his hand. I thought about how my brain might react to a sudden outbreak of gunfire. Another sudden outbreak of gunfire, I mean. I thought about how my body might react to a sudden outbreak of bullets hitting it. I thought about cops, and who would be screwed if I called them, and found I couldn't keep track of all the details. I thought about thinking about what I said next, but knew if I did I wouldn't be able to say what I said. If that makes sense. Which, of course, it does not.

– I'll cover it.

– Huh?

– The ten percent, I'll cover it.

– What? How?

– I can cover that. If they don't come through, and I kind of think we shouldn't even bring it up, I'll pay it.

He weighed the gun on his hand.

– Bullshit. You clean up after dead people. Where you gonna get twenty-two Gs?

I waited.

He shook his head.

– Twenty-six four! I mean twenty-six four! We're talking twenty-six four here.

– I can get it. I have savings and shit. I can cover it. I'll cover it. If they won't pay you, I will.

He looked me over, licked his lips.

– Know if you're fucking around what will happen, right?

– You'll cut me bad, is what I'm thinking.

– At the least.

– Yeah, at the least.

He nodded.

– OK. OK. Deal. We give them the can no matter what.

– After they give us Soledad.

– Yeah, right, whatever.

I pointed at the gun.

– And you leave that behind when we meet them.

– Fuck that.

– Fine, fuck it. Forget the deal then. Go shoot it out. Get all the respect you want. Shit wears well in the grave.

– Maaan.

He set the gun on the dash.

– Shit. Fucking sister. Fucking Soledad.

I thought about Soledad.

Man, I liked that girl. A lot. And man it sucked that I was right and she'd dragged me into this deal knowing there was a deal to be dragged into.

Shit. I'd really thought… I don't even know what. But hey, she could have all kinds of reasons for being involved deeper than she'd let on. She could just be trying to clean up a mess her dad left behind. Not like she was thinking clearly or anything. Girl's dad commits suicide, she's all screwed up and… oh. Oh shit.

Suicide.

Criminal enterprise.

Violent suicide.

Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney

You see how long it takes me to put these things together? That's because I'm not as smart as I think I am. But you probably gathered that. Because you're probably not as stupid as I am. I know that because no one is as stupid as I am.

No one except maybe Jaime.

– What kind of gun is that?

He looked at it.

– Nine.

– Again?

– It's a nine-millimeter. Gun of choice for all.

– Where'd it come from? You get it off a set like the knife?

He raised an eyebrow.

– I got it from Soledad.

– What are you staring at, asshole?

– Nothing.

That's what I said. What I was in fact staring at was the gun. The gun he'd gotten from Soledad. The nine-millimeter he'd gotten from Soledad.

I looked at him.

– I'm not staring at anything.

I started the Apache and turned us around.

– What now?

He took the papers he'd gotten from Homero and slipped them inside the envelope.

– Now we cruise over to Terminal F and check out the can.

I pulled to a stop at Ferry.

– Really?

He bapped my forehead with the documents.

– No, asshole, I'm jerking your chain because I want to spent more time in your company. Yes, really.

He held up the papers.

– That was what Homero was doing, getting the export order changed so we can get that can back.

– What about the buyer?

– What? Fuck him. Some Chink? Fuck does he know? Not like he's paid yet. Verbal agreement means shit. Hell, in my line, a contract barely means shit. Nothing is nothing till the cash is in your hand.

He fingered the papers.

– Think of it, maybe I should get him to front some of the money for the almonds.

I shook my head.

– No way, man. No more complications. I'm gonna pay you off. But that's it. No double dipping. No shenanigans.

– Shenanigans? -Yeah, it means.

– I know what the fuck it means, I'm just trying to figure how someone born this side of a Lucky Charms commercial thinks it's OK to talk like that.

I pointed up and down the street.

– Just tell me which way to the can.

He pointed toward a smaller terminal, beyond a series of huge blue sheds connected by an enclosed conveyer belt through which petroleum coke was being moved to a container vessel.

– Over yonder, at the foot of that there rainbow we'll find me pot-o-gold.

I put the truck in gear. More than slightly delighted at the prospect that getting the truck was going to be considerably less trouble than I'd been afraid of.

Of such delights are dreams made.

Parked just under the 710, we watched the uniformed officers of Customs and Border Protection, plainclothes detectives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement a well-armed Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team, and members of the Long Beach Harbor Patrol as they systematically and, I must say, quite efficiently impounded every last bit of cargo on Terminal F that had any association with Westline Freight Forwarding.