Big Maria (8 page)

He hit the Horseshoe to think. It was after six, so he allowed himself some celebratory drinks. After a rack of beers and shots, he knew who he had to talk to.

First, Frank. Top of the list. He was an old man, sure. But he was tough as nails and Harry liked him. He liked Frank’s grit and no-bull attitude. He would always know where he stood with Frank, and there was something lucky about having an Indian
sidekick. Besides, Frank was the one who told him about the gold. He deserved a finder’s fee. Ten percent, maybe.

He went back and forth on that big kid, Ricky. He had introduced Harry to Frank. But since that bus accident, the kid had taken a dive into a bucket of awful. Just the other day, he had watched from a distance as the kid’s girlfriend and kid drove off.

Harry had seen him a couple of times since the hospital. The kid’s arm had healed squirrelly, making him physically lopsided and awkward. He could tell Ricky was drinking every day, the lumpy softening of alcoholism visible in his physique. He looked like a bodybuilder gone doughy.

For the longest time, process servers and guys in suits swarmed Desert Vista. They wandered around the trailer park, always ending up at Ricky’s door. A couple of them had gotten rolled and robbed, but that’s the risk you take for doing an evil job. The cops were still giving the kid hassle, too.

Even with all that, Harry wanted Ricky to be in on this score.

He had never believed in signs or horoscopes or any of that New Age garbage. But the more he drank and thought on it, the more he knew that the three of them were meant to be together on this. Circumstances hadn’t thrown them together in that hospital room on accident. It was destiny.

He’d figure out the next steps when he met Frank. Old men were supposed to be wise, so maybe he’d know the best way to proceed. It was like any big job. It broke down to a bunch of smaller tasks. Every day, every step in the plan, and every task crossed off the list would bring Harry closer to his gold.

S
peak of the devil, Harry thought, spotting Ricky in the wine aisle at Blythe Liquor & Bait. Buzzed but not drunk, Harry wanted to pick up a twelve-pack to help him sleep. The world felt out of whack without beer in the fridge.

The kid looked worse than the last time Harry had seen him. Ricky wore a tank top that accentuated his shrunken, burn-scarred
left arm. The mottled skin at his shoulder was mostly shiny red tissue and yellow scars. The flesh reminded Harry of the night crawlers in Styrofoam cups on the counter.

Harry wasn’t what anyone would describe as a caring person. But looking at Ricky, he felt bad for the way things had rolled for the kid. Only a couple months before, he had sat next to him on the computer, and now he looked broken. Not just the injuries. People got hurt all the time. It was the look in his eyes. The same look he had seen on the faces of prisoners serving long sentences. Like they knew their lives had no purpose.

“Hey, Ricky,” Harry said, sidling next to him.

Ricky jumped a little when he turned, almost losing his balance. Ricky had trouble focusing on Harry’s face. The kid was drunker than Harry and considerably less experienced at it.

Harry noticed a small swatch of cloth clutched in Ricky’s dead, crippled hand. Ricky caught his eyes and moved the hand behind his back.

“What do you want?” Ricky said, returning his attention to the selection of cheap fortified wine.

“Saw you in here, said hello. You doing okay?”

“I look okay, Shitburger?”

Nobody had called him that for weeks. Even more than that, he didn’t feel like a Shitburger anymore. Ricky using the nickname bothered him. It wasn’t just the word, it was the way he had said it. Like it was supposed to have some hurt on it.

“Heard your lady and kid left. Sorry, man.”

Ricky turned to him. “Don’t you talk about them.”

Harry took a couple of steps back. “I’m not going to lecture you, kid. I like a drink now and again myself. Hell, I’m a little toasted right now. But that’s me. It ain’t you.”

Ricky shook his head and laughed. His laugh was the most humorless thing Harry had ever heard.

Harry continued. “I’m going to see Frank tomorrow. You know, the old Indian. You want to come with me?”

“What do you want?”

“Don’t want nothing. I don’t know. We’re almost friends, kind of, I thought.”

“Fuck you, Shitburger.”

Harry gave Ricky a hard stare and then a shrug. He walked to the coolers in the back to get his beer. Turning back down the aisle, he saw Ricky stuff a bottle of Cisco Red down his pants. If it hadn’t been so pathetic, it would have been funny. The bottle-shaped bulge in his crotch telegraphed “shoplifter.”

Ricky walked quickly toward the door. As he passed the cashier, the guy shouted, “Hey!”

But Ricky was already out the door and down the street.

The cashier reached under the counter and pulled out a baseball bat. He skidded around the counter and headed for the door.

“I’ll pay for it.”

The cashier stopped and turned toward Harry. He was breathing hard, mentally prepared to give a beat-down. “Motherfucker stole from my store.”

“If I pay, it ain’t stealing. His wife and kid left him. He’s having a bad time of it.”

The cashier stared out the open door. His breathing slowed, his anger flattened.

“It was a bottle of Cisco,” Harry said.

“Dollar ninety-nine plus tax.”

“You were going to take a bat to a guy for two bucks and change?”

“Motherfucker stole.”

Harry paid for his beer and Ricky’s wine.

The kid had sunk so low that not only was he stealing his drunk, but he was stealing the cheapest booze known to man. If he was going to steal, why hadn’t he stolen some of the top shelf, instead of headache in a bottle? Harry remembered the one and only time he drank Cisco. It tasted like a Tootsie Pop dipped in antifreeze. It killed the necessary brain cells but made his fingers go numb.

“Poor kid,” Harry said to himself as he walked his beer home.

T
hey had given Frank a fishing magazine. Probably thought all Indians liked fishing. The last fish Frank had caught was in the frozen section at Albertsons.

He couldn’t get past the first sentence. Some article titled “The One That Didn’t Get Away.” He read the sentence a dozen times. His eyes saw the words, but their meaning never stuck, sliding along the surface of his comprehension. Like he was trying to translate a language he didn’t know.

Whether you prefer a baited hook or dry fly, the Desert Southwest offers plenty of wonderful opportunities for catching a boatload of tilapia, also known as “St. Peter’s Fish.”

Frank read to relax while he received his chemo treatment, but relaxation was near impossible. The thin fabric of the once-plush Barcalounger chafed where his shirt had lifted up. The cold bags on his hands and feet made him shiver uncontrollably. They said they’d keep his nails from falling out, but that didn’t make it more pleasant. On top of all that, the treatment gave him the shits, so he was forced to clench his ass muscles for the length of the therapy.

Whether you prefer a baited hook or dry fly, the Desert Southwest offers plenty of wonderful opportunities for catching a boatload of tilapia, also known as “St. Peter’s Fish.”

He wasn’t completely convinced that the old woman in the chair across from him was alive until she threw up on herself.

Whether you prefer a baited hook or dry fly, the Desert Southwest offers plenty of wonderful opportunities for catching a boatload of tilapia, also known as “St. Peter’s Fish.”

The nurses were pleasant but impersonal. It reminded Frank of when he had worked at the dairy, the same indifferent attitude as putting the milking machines onto the cows. You didn’t hate the cows, but you didn’t really care about them either.

Whether you prefer a baited hook or dry fly, the Desert Southwest offers plenty of wonderful opportunities for catching a boatload of tilapia, also known as “St. Peter’s Fish.”

He strained his eyes and brain in an attempt to focus, but that second sentence was as far away as his youth.

Whether you prefer a baited hook or a dry fly…

“Isn’t there a cigar store you should be standing in front of?”

Frank looked up to see Harry standing over him. He closed the fishing magazine, its spell broken.

“Find a seat,” Frank said, nodding toward a few folding chairs against the wall. After Harry pulled the chair next to him, he handed Frank a brown paper bag.

“Didn’t know what to get you, but thought it was right ’cause you’re sick, you know, to get a present.”

“What is it?” Frank asked, feeling the bag’s weight.

“Couple of
Playboys
, a joke book, a flask of mezcal. And a box of Swishers.”

Frank glanced inside the bag. “My daughter finds me with any of this, except maybe the joke book, I’m going to catch hell.”

“What’re you, a teenager? You’re scared of your own daughter?”

“Damn right. Built like an angry bowling pin.”

“You’re old. That gives you—what do they call it—‘cart blanch’? You can walk down the street with your johnson in your hands whizzing all over the place. Cops catch you, they’ll drive you home. Me, I ain’t old enough yet. I’d get arrested after they gave me a blanket party.”

“Maybe I’ll try that.” Frank laughed. “Thanks for the stuff. It’s the thought, yeah?”

“What I would’ve wanted.”

“You put some thought into it. That means something. Could’ve just grabbed some shit at the gift shop.”

“There’s a gift shop?”

Frank laughed, sneaking a peek at one of the
Playboys
. The girl was completely shaved down there. He didn’t like that. Why would anyone want to see a woman’s cooch? Those things were scary. He needed a thatch to keep the lady stuff from scaring his willy.

“How’s it going?” Harry asked. “I mean all this cancer stuff. You dying or what?”

Frank slid the magazine back into the bag. “Still wake up in the morning. And until the day I don’t, I ain’t going to complain.”

“Need anything?”

Frank shook his head and then gave Harry’s face a long read. “You’re talking around something. What’s on your mind?”

“Straight to it. Okay. I have a question for you. An opportunity. A question and an opportunity.”

Frank smirked. “I don’t get many of those no more. Opportunities, that is. I get plenty of questions. Most of them from some nurse asking if the medical doohickey that’s up my ass is uncomfortable. I am yet to answer no.”

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll get to like it.” Harry smiled. “I’m getting a boat and I’m going to dive down into Picacho. I’m going to dig up that map, those papers your grandfather buried. I’m going to find the Big Maria Mine.”

Frank had never laughed harder in his life. Not even when he had been a kid and that mean nun had slipped in cowshit and landed ass-down on a cactus bed. Harder than the time Stink Gillies found out his date to the Harvest Dance had a lady chassis and male plumbing. Frank laughed so hard that he choked on his own spit, bringing a nurse over to him. He dug in the bag and held up the joke book, waving her away. Catching his breath, he looked back at Harry’s hurt face and erupted in laughter all over again.

“It’s not that funny,” Harry said.

After a couple false starts, Frank got it under control. He took a deep breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. He was pretty sure he had shit himself a little. Completely worth it. Harry started to talk, but Frank held out his hand.

“Give me a minute. A full minute. If not, first word you say, I’m going to get going again.”

Harry listened to the hospital sounds while Frank took a drink of water. Beeps and typing and gurgling and groans.

Frank spat on the floor. “Okay. Take it slow.”

Harry cleared his throat. “I’ve been researching. A ton of research. The mine exists. Your grandfather’s story is mostly true. From old maps, I know the location of the town and have narrowed down Abraham Constance’s house to a few possibilities. I can take those coordinates and enter them into a GPS unit. Recreational boats and diving are allowed on the reservoir, so it’s just a matter of renting a boat and stuff. It’s all legal. No undertow, no sharks, no danger. It either pans out or not, but it only takes a day, maybe two, to find out for sure what’s down there. As stupid as it sounds, it’s not crazy. We can look where no one ever thought of looking.”

Frank stared at him for a moment. “Hell, you say it that way, it’s not funny. Almost makes it sound possible. Like it’d work.”

“I’m dead serious, Frank. From the go, I ain’t treated this like nothing but a job. More serious than any job I’ve had. The moment I heard about the gold, I knew this was my shot.”

“So what do you need from me? Ain’t exactly in scuba shape. And I ain’t got money to invest, if that’s what you’re angling at.”

“Don’t need money. It was your grandfather. His story. You deserve to be in on it. This ain’t a one-man job, and I don’t know too many people I trust. Thought maybe you might. We could put some kind of team together.”

“I got two grandsons that are hard workers and know how to play dumb.”

“I haven’t figured out hard numbers. Way I see it, you get a percentage, but anyone else gets a flat rate.”

“What about Ricky?”

“Yeah, I thought about the kid. I don’t know. Arm’s all weird. But more, it’s his—I don’t know—spirit, I guess. Not sure he’s up for it.”

Frank gave his head a solid shake. “Don’t matter. He’s got to be in on this.”

“You wouldn’t recognize him, Frank. He’s a mess. His wife left, took their kid. He’s drinking more than me. Heard the cops are threatening jail time. Must be like twenty lawsuits against him.”

Frank clapped his hands together, giving Harry a start. “Then we help him. Gold is the kind of thing that gives hope. He was there at the beginning. He is part of the team. It’s got to be Ricky.”

“Q
uit slapping me.”

Frank slapped Ricky even harder. His hand burned red from the force of the blow. Ricky’s stubble pierced his skin like a saguaro.

“Stop it.”