Марк Смит - Moist

“You should get another job. I don’t want to make love to a killer.”

Bob laughed.

“I’m not a killer.”

Felicia wasn’t convinced.

“Isn’t that what you do for Esteban?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I haven’t killed anyone. I mean, I hit a guy on the head with a shovel, but I kinda had to and it didn’t kill him.”

“Really? You’re telling me the truth?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Do I look like a killer?”

Felicia laughed.

“Honestly, no. But that’s what I thought made you a good killer, because you didn’t look like one.”

“I’m not a killer.”

Bob could see the smile return to Felicia’s face. But just as her grin was starting to light up the room, it shorted out.

“Then what do you do for Esteban?”

“Well. I don’t know. I’m kinda new. Right now he just wants me to look after his money, keep the business running. I guess I’m an executive or something.”

“An executive?”

“I guess that’s what you’d call it.”

Felicia bit her lip.

“Do you know how to manage?”

Bob grinned.

“I’m learning.”

Amado sat in bed, just wearing an old cotton robe. He had his laptop on his lap, and he balanced a cold beer on a fat Spanish dictionary that lay in the middle of the bed. Cindy’s beer was next to his. She sat on the other side of the bed wearing a tattered Fugazi T-shirt. She had her laptop open too.

Amado looked up from his work. He looked at Cindy and realized that for the first time in his life he felt content. He wasn’t working in the fields, he wasn’t stealing a car or hijacking a truck. He wasn’t carting narcotics from a van to a storage unit somewhere. He didn’t have to go hunt someone down and kill them. He didn’t have to clean up any bone chips and guts. And best of all, nobody was going to try to kill him for sitting in bed wearing his robe and writing. He was safe. He was content.

Cindy didn’t look up from her work. She was concentrating. Amado smiled to himself and got back to work.

The only sound was the clicker-clacking of laptop keys and the occasional soft belch.

They both had a lot to write about.

DON HAD TO think of something. He couldn’t very well tell the sheriff that he had brought his girlfriend along for the ride. So he told him that Maura was an assistant district attorney. The sheriff bought that without blinking, perhaps because he was admiring Maura’s cleavage, and proceeded to tell Don and Maura about his day.

He took them down to the morgue to identify Tomás Ramirez’s body. Don didn’t want Maura to see something so gruesome, but there she was, standing right next to him as the sheriff pulled the sheet back and showed how he’d hit Ramirez in the torso nine times. Each bullet hole was neatly circled with a red marking pen, not that you’d miss them; they were black, nasty-looking wounds. The sheriff was proud of his work; his only regret was that he hadn’t dropped the second one, but that guy hightailed it out of there like a scared jackrabbit.

Don felt like asking about the twenty-four shell casings found on the hospital room floor. If nine bullets went into Ramirez, where’d the other fifteen end up? Ramirez’s gun had been fired once, a shot which had managed to hit the sheriff in the arm, and that shell had been found in the hallway.

Don watched as Maura asked the sheriff lots of questions about the kind of guns he used, how he liked them, and which gun had landed the most shots on target. For a vegetarian, she sure liked guns.

Don interrupted the impromptu gun seminar and asked the sheriff if he could see the suspect. He wanted to get his statement as soon as possible.

Esteban drove. Every now and then he’d look over and see Bob fidgeting, looking out the window. It reminded Esteban of himself when he was young. All the excitement, the nervous energy. The great people he’d met. Like everything in life there were some bad moments, some close calls. But, all in all, it had been a fun ride. They’d worked hard and played hard. Now, after twenty-some years of it, Esteban realized that he was tired. Tired of maintaining the tough-guy facade that used to come so naturally for him. Perhaps the money, the cars, the women, the lifestyle had softened him. Amado had warned him. Amado, despite all the money he’d socked away over the years, continued to live in a modest apartment in the barrio. He drove a dirty Ford Taurus. He ate at taco stands and drank in local bars. Amado had never gone far from his trabajadores roots. He was a tipo . A normal guy.

But then that enhanced Amado’s onda . He was misterioso . A samurai. It gave him an edge. People thought of Amado as dangerous. They thought of Esteban as dangerous, too. But in a different way. Esteban was a shogun, a warlord, a businessman. It was not about who he was on the inside.

When he thought about it too much, he had to laugh. Being a gangster is such a superficial thing.

Bob rolled down the window and sucked in a big gulp of air.

“You okay, Roberto?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Bob didn’t say anything for a minute.

“Esteban? Can I ask you something?”

“Claro.”

“I wouldn’t normally bring this up, but how much are you paying me?”

“You want to know what you are worth to me?”

Bob nodded.

“Sí. Exacto.”

Esteban smiled.

“Muy bien , Roberto. Tu hablas español.”

“I’m learning.”

“Qué bueno.”

Esteban had to grin.

“How much do you think you should make?”

Esteban watched as Bob thought about it.

“I’ll be honest with you, Esteban, I don’t know what the going rate is for… you know, whatever it is I do.”

“You will make a lot of money, Roberto. But I will give you some advice. If you take the money and spend it, the tax people will find you, the police will find you, the federales will find you. You can’t go spend the money.”

“So what do you do with the money?”

“You put it away. In a box in a bank, or in a business somewhere.”

Bob nodded.

“That’s why you own all those businesses.”

Esteban nodded.

“Exacto.”

They rode in silence for a minute.

“So, like, how much will I make?”

Esteban suddenly pulled the car off the main road and turned down a dirt side road that went out straight into the middle of nowhere.

Martin rolled his head over to see what was going on. Man, did his head feel heavy; he might not be able to roll it back. He saw the fat sheriff lead a guy and some woman into the room. The guy was obviously some kind of detective. He had that air of importance, an earnestness that those fuckers always had. It went along with his fried-food-damaged tough-guy looks. In fact, the detective looked kind of like an actor from a TV show. The sports coat, the striped tie, the let’sget-down-to-business voice. He was saying something about how the woman was a district attorney or something. Wow. She had big tits for a lawyer.

Martin said something.

The woman with the big tits nodded. The detective put a small tape recorder on the bed and flicked it on.

Martin concentrated. I need to tell them something .

“Immunity. I want immunity from prosecution.”

That came out well.

The woman nodded, her boobs heaving as she spoke. They looked real, too. Man, you could just get lost in them.

The detective turned off the tape recorder, or maybe he turned it on. It was hard to tell. He then turned to Martin and started asking questions.