Dirty Money (12 page)

“When you were pounding Niño, it was like you weren’t even in there, homie. Like you were possessed or something. And your eyes got brighter, like glowing or some shit.”

“Trick of the light.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I was barely there. It was only a blur. All I really remembered was waiting every time I drew my hand back for Ryan to grab me. Each hit, I hesitated to give Ryan time to pull me back into myself and away from the mindless beating.

Frank returned, which saved me from further responses.

“Anything else?” He set down a bowl of water with a strip of cloth in it.

“That’s good for now.” Marco squeezed the cloth so it wasn’t dripping. “This’ll hurt,” he told me.

I swallowed the pills melting in my hand then nodded.

He was right. It stung like hell. Maybe ’cause the water was so hot. Once again, I felt the trickle of liquid gather in my eyebrow and run down my face. Warm droplets that shimmered red caught in my eyelashes. I moved to wipe them away, but Marco stopped me.

“Your hand is dirty. Don’t touch your face.” Who was he? My mother?

“And yours are clean?” I was going for angry, but it didn’t work.

“I did my weekly scrub this morning.” He showed those pearly whites.

“Swell.”

“Hey, that was almost sarcastic.” He wiped at the cut on my forehead again. “Does that mean the princess is waking up?”

“Fuck off.”

“This cut is all fucked up and jagged,” Marco said as he continued bathing it in hot water. “Is it from Niño’s ring?”

“Yep.”

“Could I get some longer responses? Like maybe full sentences or words with more syllables?” He dabbed around the cut with a dry cloth then he rubbed some gel shit on it that stung like a bitch.

“How’s Niño?”

“That’s not exactly what I was thinking.” Marco placed a couple butterfly dressings on my head. “He’ll be fine. His ribs are fractured. I taped him up. And his nose is broken, but nothing else. We reset it. Oh, and you knocked out a tooth. I thought that only happened in cartoons.” He smiled like it was funny. “Give him a couple days and he even might be able to open his eyes and chew food without weeping.”

Well, now I felt better.

“The guys all think you’re God or something now.” He pulled the ice pack off my hand. “You know there’s no way to tell if the bone is displaced.” Slowly, excruciatingly, he prodded the bone below my pinkie where all the swelling was. “I’m just gonna splint it and suggest you not hit anyone for a while. Maybe I’ll tape these together too,” he mused while extending my ring and pinkie finger. It felt not good.

“Maybe you could skip the narrative and just fucking do it.”

“And maybe you could skip the tantrum and shut the fuck up, honey.”

I listened.

Marco had been gone five days. He’d left with the first shipment of weed to make sure none of it fell off the truck before or after curing. I’d offered to go, but my lack of ability to speak Spanish had me benched. Again.

Frank had been following me for a week, since the morning Marco had patched me up at camp. It was like I’d gotten a new puppy. Anyone who wanted to talk to me had to go through Frank. If I wanted food, he prepared my plate. He played guard so I could bathe. He even cleaned my gun.

It was annoying the hell out of me.

Jackson and I were stacking and counting sacks of weed to check the numbers when Frank ran up with one of the pickers.

“Boss, we got a problem on the east field.” Great, that one was the farthest away.

“What kind of problem?” I kept stacking bags.

“Two guys, maybe three.” Frank was all out of breath. “Cesar saw them and they shot at him.” He clapped a hand over Cesar’s shoulder.

“Fuck.” I tossed the bag I was holding to Jackson. “Jackson, see if you can get a hold of Marco. We might need a truck outta here if anyone’s been shot.”

“Truck’ll be here tomorrow anyway.” He shrugged.

That boy didn’t care about anything but his product.

“Just fucking do it. And prep whatever medical supplies we have.” The look I gave him must have worked because he started nodding and took off in the opposite direction.

“Let’s go.”

“You got ammo?” Frank asked as we ran.

“I think so.” I checked the pockets of my cargos. There was a magazine in each pocket for my H&K. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Frank had two AKs strapped over his shoulder. It didn’t bode well. I picked up the pace.

We stayed on the path until we could hear gunfire, then we veered into the half picked rows.

“Rico,” I called when we were close enough to see our guys.

“Get down,” he called back before firing off another round.

Frank tackled me before I could even comprehend what was said. Good timing too, because the plant I was behind was cut in half by a spray of bullets. We crawled the rest of the way toward Big and Rico.

“This is the shittiest cover ever,” I told them like they didn’t know.

“No shit.” Rico fired off another round. “Gabriel is down, and I’ve been trying to get to him.”

I glanced up to see one of our pickers on the ground ten feet in front of us in a pool of blood. The guys firing on us were twenty feet past him. Not great.

“Fuck this. Who else is here?”

“Aldo is in the trees to the north. He didn’t wanna go in yet ’cause these fuckers might run.”

“All right. Me and Frank will cut down. Big,” I addressed the decidedly small man past Rico, “Join Aldo. Give us three minutes then take those douche bags down.”

“Got it.” He turned to crawl away.

“Oh, and, Big.” He glanced back. “Don’t shoot us.” A hint of a grin crossed his face.

“Rico, get Gabriel the fuck outta here.”

“Got it.” Rico raised his head an inch and cut down a couple more plants. It was a shame. He was just burning money every time a plant went down.

Frank and I crawled a couple feet away then ran to the cover of the jungle below the field. We dodged between trees until we caught glimpses of two men firing into our field. I motioned for Frank to stay back then crept forward. When one of the men stepped back, I centered my gun and fired.

It clipped his arm. Not where I was aiming. Fuck. I ducked back behind a tree.

“That hand is useless.” Frank was right behind me.

“No fucking shit.” They opened fire on us. I holstered my H&K. “Give me one of those.” I pointed to the AKs. He handed one over.

Bullets sprayed the tree we were behind. I blindly let off a round toward them. The assault rifle jumped and jerked and nearly forced itself out of my grasp. AKs are not made for one-handed firing.

They kept shooting.

“Fuck it.” I pulled at the Velcro straps of the immobilizer on my hand with my teeth then flung it to the ground. “Cover me.”

With the AK braced against my left shoulder and the H&K in my right hand, I turned, knelt, and opened fire. Frank did the same in the opposite direction.

One of the guys went down immediately. Big and Aldo appeared from the north. And from the east, a third guy who wasn’t one of ours appeared. He hit Frank in the leg and turned toward me. Frank kept shooting and took the guy out, red blossoming across his chest as he twitched then died. The remaining guy got off two more shots before Big and Aldo cut him down.

He made the two shots count. One hit Frank. Again. The other grazed my ribs. I felt it. Fucking hot, stinging pain spread over my side eclipsing the throbbing in my too well used broken hand. I fell back and stared at the glimpse of sky through the trees.

“Shit. Fuck.” I could hear Frank. “Boss, you hit?”

I turned my head. He was sitting back against the tree and trying to come toward me.

“I’m fine.” I tried to smile. “Don’t move.”

Aldo ran up, first to me, then Frank.

“Goddamn it.”

“Help me up.” I clapped my good hand over my side.

“No. Just stay still.” Gently, he pushed me back down and placed his hand over mine, adding to the pressure.

“It’s not bad,” I said. “Really. Just help me sit up.”

“Aldo,” Big yelled. “One’s alive.” I angled my head up. Big was crouched in the trees training his AK on a stationary figure sprawled on the ground.

“That’s it. Help me the fuck up.”

“Leave her,” Frank gasped. “She’s hurt.”

“So are you, douche bag. But I got a job to do.”

Aldo looked back and forth between us then slid his arm under me. He lifted until I was in a sitting position against the tree.

“Good. Now check Frank.”

“I’m fine. You need to get help first,” Frank said.

“Bullshit. You’re bleeding everywhere.” He was. “Check him, Aldo.”

Aldo crouched next to Frank and did a superficial check of his wounds.

“What’s he got?”

“The leg isn’t bad, but his arm is fucked.”

“Do what you can.”

Gallantly, Aldo stripped off his shirt, revealing a very sweat-stained wifebeater. He tore the shirt in half and looped it around Frank’s thigh.

“No homo.” He grinned at Frank. They laughed, then stopped awkwardly and looked at me.

“I don’t fucking care.”

“Sorry, boss,” Aldo said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Frank echoed.

They didn’t say anything else. Aldo took out a knife and cut open Frank’s sleeve. That shit was mangled. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but it was bloody. Aldo tied another piece of his shirt over the open wound.

“Go tighter,” Frank told him. When Aldo did as he said, Frank immediately leaned to the side and puked.

“That’s all I can do for now.”

“Help me up then.” I held out my uninjured left arm. “I got shit to do.”

“Damn it, leave her,” Frank barked.

Again, Aldo vacillated. Then he grasped my arm and helped me stand. I leaned against a tree and concentrated on breathing and looking like I could handle more physical pain than I’d ever felt. Hey, it wasn’t as bad as Reese. Suddenly, I wanted to puke too. So I did.

“Shit.” Aldo was back at my side. “Maybe you should lay back down.”

“I’m good.”

“Help me up too,” Frank told him.

“Shut the fuck up, Frank. You’re worse off than me,” I said.

“Yeah, well I got a job too.” He rolled to the side and started to push himself up.

“Shit.” Aldo grabbed him and helped him stand. Frank threw his good arm over Aldo’s shoulders.

“Let’s go.”

I debated ordering him to stay still, but then Cesar and another picker showed up and helped Aldo balance Frank. They broke into a rapid Spanish exchange with Aldo.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

“Jackson sent them down. He’s with Rico trying to keep Gabriel alive. Thought we might need help.”

Guess we were making this a party. Slowly, we made our way to Big.

“Hey, boss,” he greeted me like we hadn’t seen each other in days. “Want me to kill this guy?” Very conversational.

“Not yet. Check his pulse.”

“Sure. Hold this.” He handed his AK to Cesar. “Pulse is strong. He might even wake up soon.”

“Good. I wanna know who the fuck they are and why the fuck they’re here.”

“Don’t need him for that,” Big said.

“Why not?”

He moved to the other body on the ground and lifted the sleeve of the guy’s T-shirt. He had a tattoo with a name.

“Who’s Ramirez?” I asked.

Simultaneously, all five men spit on the ground and said, “Ramirez” and “fucking Ramirez.”

“Could I get some kind of list of our enemies?” I asked the group. “Or maybe a pie chart to graph how much we hate them in ranking order?”

Frank laughed. Everyone else stared.

“The Ramirez family runs most of the growing around here,” Aldo finally answered. “They’ve been moving in on our territory for a while. These guys must be scouts.”

“Awesome.” I stepped over the guy who was alive, grabbed Big’s shoulder, and carefully got on my knees. “Aldo, give me your knife.”

He looked at me like I was crazy, but did it anyway.

Who knows what the fuck I was thinking? I sure as hell didn’t. I traced a circle around the tattoo and teased the skin up until I could peel it off. Frank looked like he was gonna heave again, but he held it in check. Cesar did puke. Who knew skinning someone made a noise like that?

“Does anyone have a handkerchief?” Again, the look, but Big handed me a dirty bandana. I wrapped the skin in it and handed it back to Big. “Keep the other one alive. See if the last guy has a tat. I’m gonna want that one too.”

Big nodded and just kept nodding as I slowly got to my feet.

“You two stay with Frank.” I pointed to Aldo and Cesar. “You come with me,” I told the other picker. “We’ll send down a stretcher or something. Don’t let Frank walk.”

Frank looked like he was gonna argue, but I walked away. He didn’t need to know that I pretty much collapsed on the guy walking with me as soon as we were out of sight.

*

When I woke up, the warm air smelled like fresh cut grass, but muskier, and a little sweet. Under that was the skunk-like tinge of weed. Too bad I couldn’t get high off that shit.

Frank was passed out on the cot next to me. Gabriel wasn’t there though. He’d been in real bad shape.

I didn’t remember coming here.

Slowly, I sat up. The skin at my side pulled a little. I pulled up my shirt and inspected the neat line of stitches. My whole side was bruised and everything was swollen. As I stood, the shirt fell back down. I made my way in the dim light to the door.

Out in the warehouse, the smell of curing pot increased tenfold. The place was nearly empty save for a few guys. I climbed a staircase opposite me to what looked like an office.

“You’re awake.” Marco turned from the table of guys to look me up and down. “You look like shit, homie.”

“Thanks.”

He turned back and introduced me in Spanish to the group of men. I sketched a wave.

“You the crazy one?” a meaty dude to Marco’s right asked.

“I guess so.”

“We sent your message back to Ramirez.” The men began to nod and laugh.

“Everyone appreciated your sentiment.” Marco grinned with them, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

I imagined what Marco would have said when Big handed him a scout and the tattoos off two dead guys. He wouldn’t have been happy.