All Due Respect Issue #2 (13 page)

“I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get all of your product in one piece,” I warned them, “but the alternative would get you far less.”

I give Ned two Mentos. “Chew them up in your mouth, Ned. Then one gulp, swallow it all.”

I back up. “Y’all may want to back up.” Ned’s face goes bleach white and he contorts in a God-awful way. The Mexicans back up, their eyes wide like Ned is about to go thermonuclear. In a way, he is.

A blast of foam shoots out of his mouth like super-rabies and the back of his pants bulge out and turn dark. He collapses on the floor, gagging and convulsing. I know two things are happening: He’s choking on baggies, and one of them broke inside. Ned is dead, just waiting for the clock’s hand to strike the second. I hop down and pry his mouth open and stick my fingers in as far as I can until I feel slimy plastic. I pull at it slowly, break Ned’s jaw open with a wrench on the floor. Like I said, he’s dead anyway. The coke is gonna’ kill him. Treating him like he’s salvageable is gonna kill
me.

I start pulling up the string of baggies. After the first one, the rest come easy. Shit, there’s a ton of ’em. Hopefully a kilo.

“How much was in him, a kilo?” I ask over the bar as the Mexicans look on.

“Why you need to know?” the kid says.

I had a pile of baggies in my hand. “So I know how much is still in him.”

“One kilo, yes,” the professional says. I pull the last baggie I can out—the one that burst. I tip my hand up and lower it quick, letting the full weight of the baggies hit my palm.

“There’s probably still a quarter in him. Let me turn him over.” I undo Ned’s buttons and yank his corduroys down. Then I spin him, pull down his shitty boxers, and pretend the stench doesn’t make me want to have an eruption of my own. I grab the surrender apron and give Ned an ass-wipe. A string knot is embedded in his corn-hole and I pull it. All told, four more baggies from the back-door. I take them over to the sink and set all of them in a pan of water. I think twice and squirt some dish-soap in there.

Then I grab a cigarette from my pocket, light it with a wooden matchstick from the bar, my own votive candle. Can’t figure if it’s for my immortal soul or my very mortal skin.

“Do you know who I am?” the professional says.

“A reasonable man, I hope.”

He dusts off a seat before he sits down.

“I don’t take a piss for one kilo, Mr. Blake.”

Mr. Blake? What?

“Come, sit,” he says. I’m not one to argue. I hop over the bar and don’t bother dusting off. There are worse things on my clothes.

“Do you think me a fool, Mr. Blake?”

“I don’t know you well enough to think anything.”

“Which is good, good. But I’m no fool. I would not send the likes of your friend over the border to do my business, nor the fool who recruited him. This, Shawn, was asked to recruit your friend.”

I listen. What the hell else do I have to do?

“And I know how to properly bring things through the border. You were right, you do not tie them together, it’s…messy. But I instructed this for that reason.”

“So he’d die?”

“So he’d come to you when he couldn’t pass them. I needed to see you in action.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You will.” The man calls out to the other two. “Empty your clips into the mule,” he says. They walk over to the bar. The man eyes me hard, pulls a Beretta out of his coat and hands it to me. “You fire three times. He was your friend.” He points to the other two who are aiming down, prepared to air out dead Ned. I get up to shoot a corpse in good faith, but the man tugs at my shirtsleeve. I lean down.

“Only two men will leave this bar tonight.” His black eyes burn. “Choose wisely.”

I could shoot all three of them. Way I figure, I have three bullets, if the man at the table isn’t full of shit. One for Ned, one each for his triggers. I look back, and he just sits there, staring out the window, like he knows he’s walking out, suit unsoiled. He’s got an ace. A man who doesn’t piss for a kilo of coke doesn’t walk around without aces. So I walk up to the bar and shake the gun like Ned’s something more than cooling meat on the barroom floor as the triggers empty full clips. Glancing over at me like I’m a pussy, soon to be vic’ two. I fire finally, mush out Ned’s eye and I hear the toy-sounding clicks of their empty pieces. I push the wiry one with the jailhouse ink into the fat fuck and give them both their last rites.

I walk back over to the table and hand the man his gun back. No point holding on to it.

“You didn’t point the gun at me. Curious,” the man said. “Why not?”

“It’s empty.”

“And you know this how? The weight?” The man’s eyes lit up, a kid, curious.

“You said you don’t piss for a kilo.” I tapped the Beretta. “Bet you don’t load four bullets for a three-bullet job either.”

The man laughed. He took off his fedora and held it in his hands.

“I am Javier.” He says. “Do you need to clean anything up before we leave for Juarez?”

“Juarez?”

“I have killers, Mr. Blake,” he says. “I have many killers. I need thinkers. I have to say that the soda and candy thing was impressive. I’m sure I can find you excellent accommodations and steady employment.”

“I don’t really have a choice here, do I?”

“You always have a choice. You can believe that if it helps.”

I look around at a bar made into a war zone by three men in two hours, in a land where the Law is no friend and my friends become ghosts and holy-rollers preach Judgment Day to the hungover bastards whose wives go to churches
Open for prayer,
and I realize that I don’t really have a choice, or a prayer.

I clean up the Diet Coke and Mentos and my gun, the only things linking me to the carnage at the bar. I join Javier in his inky black Escalade, and this one weird thought comes to mind:

Use a bar for a church, and God might be hammered when he answers your prayers.

Liam Sweeny
is an author and a web artist. In his free time, he is a disaster responder for the American Red Cross, specializing in information and planning.

The Gulf

By Scott Adlerberg

F
RANK AND VERA LEFT THE
restaurant. The smell of conch and broiled butter drifted out to the warm street. It had rained that evening, and the shallow pools on the asphalt glistened. With the shops closed the town looked deserted, but they heard voices coming from the bars. Frank said he wanted a drink.

“A rum and Coke. That would be nice.”

“After I work off this meal,” Vera said.

They walked by their hotel, and a dark figure crouched in the entrance hailed them. When the person straightened up, they recognized the chubby man who’d come to them last night, offering passage across the gulf.

“You people,” he said. “Still going to Guatemala?”

“Yes,” said Frank.

“I can take you. Whenever you want.”

“We didn’t forget. Don’t worry.”

He and Vera continued on, leaving the center of town behind. The moon, a plump orange, lit the way, and the road skirted a stone wall built above a cliff. Past the wall was the sea; stars shone in the black water.

“I love this spot,” Vera said, and she paused to enjoy the view.

Frank reached out and grasped her hand.

As they resumed their stroll, a pickup truck roared by. A few British soldiers stood in it wearing fatigues. None carried arms. They grinned when they saw Vera, and some of them called out to her.

“Hop on. Room over here. Want to get married?”

She didn’t acknowledge the men but spoke in a muted voice to Frank.

“Goddamn pigs. Get out of the country.”

“Don’t start,” Frank said.

“Belize is supposed to be independent.”

“It is.”

“Guatemala isn’t going to attack.”

“You don’t know that. With territorial disputes, anything’s possible.”

“I just don’t see it happening.”

“I’m sure that makes the Belizeans feel good.”

Vera pouted and removed her hand from his grip. She walked quickly, glaring into the distance. Her sudden aloofness irritated Frank, but he checked himself from saying anything more. He didn’t want another political discussion. They’d been together for nearly three months and kept having these kinds of arguments.

A wind was blowing. Its gentle current skimmed his face, and the sound of the waves lapping at the cliff soothed him. Head angled, he glanced at Vera. She did have a ripe, attractive body. And in this moonlight, when her sun-baked skin was copper-colored and her short-banged hair golden, how could he not be glad they’d met? His friends back home would rag him for having a white girlfriend, but none of them knew how depressing solitary travel could be. In northern Mexico, during the early part of the summer, he’d ridden the buses and trains alone, eaten meal after meal by himself. The journey had begun as a journey into loneliness.

But still. You know it was a mistake. To do it without protection was risky enough, and you can’t say you don’t deserve this mess. Imagine if she wanted to keep the baby, though. That would be the worst.

The road split into two branches, and instead of clinging to the coast, as they had the previous night, they turned inland. Past a bend, in a plot of weeds, a house on fat stilts appeared. It had a red tiled roof and gray shingled walls, and a man was nestled in the hammock on the porch.

“Wait! I want to talk to you.”

The man swung into furious motion and sprinted down the steps to the yard.

“Wait!”

Both Frank and Vera burst out laughing. Brusque salutations typified Belize’s informality and came as a welcome change of pace after the
usteds
and
comprimisos
of Mexico.

“What’s up?” Frank said.

The man was as thin and solid as a flagstaff. He had wooly hair, a dusky complexion, and pockmarked cheeks. As he loped through the grass he displayed a long stick, and Frank felt his lips curling inward, his smile fading. Vera had already gone rigid with tension.

“Where you from?” the man asked.

“The States,” Frank said.

“But where, boy, where?”

“New York City. The Bronx.”

“Oh, the jungle.”

“Jungle’s the word,” Vera said, shouting her agreement.

“You from there, too?”

“Thank God, no. I’m from Vermont.”

“She’s the nature girl from Vermont,” Frank said, and Vera smirked at him. Well, why had she disparaged New York?

Without drama, without a hint of aggression, the man raised his stick. He put one end of it into his mouth. His hands slipped up and down the wood as if he were playing a saxophone, and in his growing exuberance, he imitated a musician’s body language. His shoulders dipped; one sneakered foot tapped in a puddle; he rocked on his left heel while humming a song. Neither Frank nor Vera could identify the song—his humming was raspy and unmelodious—but when he completed his performance, he winked, proud of himself.

“Wasn’t that something?” he said. “Like my music?”

Vera nudged Frank’s arm and said. “Let’s go. I’m getting tired.”

“I’m wide awake,” Frank said.

“It’s jazz,” the man said, snapping his fingers. “I like your American music.” He swayed to the rhythm of a new composition, and Frank saw he was becoming less steady on his feet. “Jazz,” he said. “Jazz.” And each time he opened his mouth, he exhaled the scent of rum. Frank was afraid he’d get overwrought, and sure enough he did, losing his balance, staggering forward into Vera. She drew back in gaping, pale-faced disgust. The front of her blouse, the white material, had been marked with a circular pattern of the man’s sweat.

“I wanted to wear this tomorrow,” she said. “Now I have nothing even halfway clean.”

The man shrugged, indifferent to her distress. He said, “Tonight’s important. Know what’s happening?”

“Tell me,” Frank said, his attention on Vera.

“We killing an English soldier tonight.”

“What?”

“We killing one very soon. Come on.”

He danced about and waved his arm. “You’re invited,” he said. “You can watch.” And as he moved down the road, Frank trailed after him. Frank wanted to see where this adventure would end.

“A couple of comedians,” said Vera. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll be pleased,” Frank said. “They’re knocking off one of those jerks.”

“You’re the jerk. How could you follow him? He’ll bring you somewhere and bump
you
off.”

“I listening,” said the man, who had stopped. “I hearing you.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Frank said.

“Are you English, girl?”

“I’m going,” Vera said.

The man rushed over to Vera and poked her chest with the stick.

“You bastard,” she said. “You think I like those soldiers? I can’t stand army people of any nationality.”

“English, English, English,” he said, and he spat to the side, exhibiting contempt. He threw down the stick and grabbed Vera, and she had to wrestle with him. While she did, Frank watched, and an electric sensation hot as fire convulsed his loins. The feeling surprised him as much as it would have shocked her had he mentioned it, and finally he intervened, pushing the man from behind. The man crashed against the pavement. He cursed, rolled onto his back, lay still. He had a cut high on his temple, and the line of blood extended to his chin.