Марк Смит - Moist

“You’re the only guy I know who’s gone out with a Mexican, man.”

Bob turned away from the computer and looked at Morris.

“Would you mind going to Starbucks?”

Martin drove down Sunset toward downtown. He was on his way to Norberto’s house to borrow a gun and tell him that the plan was unfolding, they needed to watch each other’s backs now. But Martin had a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. The conversation he’d had with Esteban on the phone this morning kept rewinding in his brain. Esteban had seemed so… calm. Martin had listed the reasons, the logic, behind destroying Amado’s arm. Esteban had agreed, promising he’d talk to Amado so that there’d be no hard feelings. He went so far as to congratulate Martin for a job well done, then telling him to come over for lunch, they had a lot of work to do.

Esteban told him that his new tunnel operation was working more efficiently than he’d ever imagined. He had dug a tunnel, three kilometers long, between a house in Zaragosa, a pueblo just outside of Juárez, and a deserted cattle ranch in Texas. Esteban had purchased the ranch by setting up a corporation in Delaware as his front. He now found himself with too much cash, and was seriously considering the Mazatlán investment.

Martin was surprised. He’d never been very enthusiastic about the tunnel. It just seemed too big. Too showy. Someone would rat them out. He had tried to dissuade Esteban from building it. But Esteban had, seemingly, forgiven the bad advice, and was ready to actually do something Martin wanted to do.

But it was uncharacteristic. Usually when Martin fucked up, Esteban was the first to point it out. The first to remind him that an MBA might get you a job on Wall Street but it doesn’t amount to a pile of shit on the street.

Although Martin was tempted to make some excuse, phone in sick, whatever, he was intrigued by the idea of all that cash. Where was it? If he could find out where it was, then he could snatch it while the feds were taking Esteban into custody. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to take over the crew. Maybe with enough money, say three or four million, he could just disappear. Vanish and let Norberto take the heat.

He pulled up in front of Norberto’s apartment building and got out of the car. He’d have to figure out something to say to Norberto. Maybe tell him that he should be the leader of the crew. The family wouldn’t accept a gringo, but they’d take him with open arms. Martin knew Norberto was gullible enough to fall for that.

He rang the doorbell. He knocked. A couple of punkedout Latino kids on skateboards cruised by. He knocked harder.

Norberto was probably out getting laid.

Martin walked around to the back; he knew where Norberto kept a key hidden. He found it, under the planter of a spiky barrel cactus, and let himself in.

“Norberto?”

Martin closed the door behind him. He was hit by the strong smell of cleaning fluids. Maybe the housekeeper, a sexy woman from Guatemala, had been there earlier. He walked through the living room to Norberto’s bedroom.

Martin peeked in the bathroom and saw the glaringly white bathtub. Yeah. The housekeeper had been there.

Martin opened the door to the bedroom closet and pulled out a suitcase. He plopped the suitcase on the bed and took a quick inventory. Several handguns, all of them Glocks, boxes of ammunition, a couple ounces of weed, three vials of various pills, a half kilo of coke, and a couple of small cellophane packets held together by a rubber band.

Martin picked up a Glock, checked to make sure it was loaded. He then took the cellophane packets. He’d put these in Bob’s pockets. Make it look like he was a heroin dealer. Another red herring for the police.

Martin left a quick note for Norberto. He simply wrote “ Viva la Revolución .” He was careful to lock the door behind him. Now came the hard part.

Amado sat at the little coffee shop and looked through the LA Weekly magazine. Carajo, there were a lot of screenwriting classes and workshops to choose from, and each one seemed like some kind of scam. Write a script in thirty days? Sell your script in a week? Learn the secret to getting your script through the Hollywood maze? The secret of the pitch? How to meet an agent? They were like diet ads. Fast formulas for surefire hits. Lose weight now! Ask me how!

All of the classes were taught by people who put their names on them like they were somehow important or famous. Amado had never heard of any of them.

He was looking for one in español , because the telenovelas were in español . But there didn’t seem to be one. Still, all he wanted was to learn how to write; he could translate on his own.

Eventually he found one. It was the most expensive one, and, in Amado’s experience, you got what you paid for. It had the added attraction of being only two days long. Surely he could learn how to write a script in two days.

Amado tore the ad out of the magazine.

Don got there as quick as he could. Flores had taken the message and hadn’t mentioned anything to Don for about an hour. Then he took his feet off his desk, looked over from behind the sports page, and blandly told him that some mailman, actually a very butch lesbian mailman, had found an arm in a postbox. An arm that matched the description of the arm found on Carlos Vila’s garage floor.

So Don jumped in his car and raced over to the West Hollywood PD.

The arm looked exactly like Larga’s arm. Except this arm was wrapped in plastic and had several french fries clutched in its hand. It was so similar that Don double-checked with the evidence room at Parker Center. He called and found that the other arm, Larga’s arm, was resting comfortably in its cooler.

Don told the West Hollywood detective, a nice-enough man named Lowenstein, that the arm was evidence in an organized crime case he was working, and he needed it. Lowenstein blandly informed Don that it was a West Hollywood case now. They’d send him information as it became available.

Don knew better than to argue. He’d talk to his boss about it later. Right now, things were getting complicated.

The computer was boring. It took what seemed like an hour for the stupid Web pages to load. And then half the time they would jam or the URL would be missing or changed or something. Besides, what was Bob looking for? Even he didn’t know. He was just killing time.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing, he thought. I’ve been living my life, killing time, waiting for my Web page to load.

Bob heard the door open.

“I hope you got plain. I don’t like vanilla in the morning.”

“Hello, Bob.”

Bob looked up. Martin stood there.

“Hey, man, what’s going on?”

“I need your help. Can you spare some time?”

Bob nodded. Thank God, he was so bored.

“Yeah. No problem.”

Bob quickly scribbled a note. Martin looked around suspiciously, then leaned in close.

“I’ll tell you about it in the car.”

Amado was lucky. He’d called the screenwriting workshop and they had room for him. Not only did they have room, but the class was starting that afternoon. Amado went out and bought a college-ruled notebook and several mechanical pencils. He was ready.

He now found himself sitting in a small lecture hall at Occidental College in Eagle Rock with two dozen aspiring screenwriters. Amado looked around the classroom. Most of the other students were younger than him. Several had laptop computers glowing in front of them. There was the cute Korean girl with pink pigtails and a strapless sundress that revealed some artistic tattoos. There were several young men with thick eyeglasses and scruffy haircuts. These men, boys really, lounged around in a kind of superior slouch. Like they’d already written successful screenplays and were just at the class as a kind of goof. There were a couple of middle-aged women, dressed in black and looking intelligent with stylish eyeglasses and asymmetrical haircuts.