Soul Mates (21 page)

Well, Tyler did not mind as much as his now-wife did. Tyler chalked it up to his parents being parents, but Lilith viewed it as meddling, and it has been said that Lilith does not take kindly to meddling. 

Through her power of suggestion, which was stronger than most other people’s, Tyler began to see things her way. Lilith was the wedge between Tyler and his parents, and she was not going anywhere.

Tyler Swanson: The Adult and The Super Chasm

Chapter 1

It was a sun-drunk July day in Las Vegas, Nevada; hot, but not too hot…not at all, actually. As a matter of fact, it was unseasonably mild. Still hot though, by east coast standards.

“It’s a dry heat,” they say, but so is sticking your head in the oven. That is the emblematic retort to someone who downplays the desert heat; 108 degrees is 108 degrees, dry or exhaustingly, tediously, and life-suckingly humid. Not on that particular day, however. On that day, it was 89 degrees in the desert city of Las Vegas; a day where you may actually see some locals throw on a light jacket when they go out to run their daily errands!

That is exactly what Carlos “El Corazon” Ortega had planned…an errand. Maybe not the type of errand that 
you
 may be used to, but technically, an errand nonetheless.

Carlos was on his way to finalize a deal that would make him over 300,000 dollars. Not a bad day’s work by any standards, but stocks were not his game, nor was gambling-well, in the classical sense of the word, anyway. No, his game was what was in the trunk of his military-gray 2019 low-riding Chevy Silverado (his 
vatos
 called it his 
cholo-
car) not sixteen hours earlier: seven kilos of uncut Afghani heroin. He was meeting with his buyer in less than an hour.

This was a one-on-one deal. It’s just safer that way…for everyone. It’s not like in the movies where there are two teams of gangsters, the buyers and the sellers, and they all stand around ominously, hands close to their concealed pistols, just waiting for someone on the opposite side to make the wrong move. Things are more “civilized” in the real world of drug-dealing. At least in Las Vegas and at least when 
El Corazon 
is involved in the transaction. 

He was famous in the underground world of criminal activity for his arrangements running…well, famously! This made him the most successful drug-dealer in the entire state of Nevada. The only reason others took their business elsewhere was because regardless of 
El Corazon’s
 legendarily intact reputation, they just were not comfortable with keeping their dealings on a one-on-one basis…which makes sense on some level; look at how gangsters fight. You’d be hard-pressed to find a fair one-on-one fight take place. Instead, it’s four on one, six on one, etc.

So, on he went, hazardously perched on the ravine of ruin or death, every single day of his life, but he soldiered on. After all, with great risk comes great reward…sometimes.

El Corazon
 made sure that he stayed within the legal speed limit. Yes, he was careful. Aside from a copious amount of product cloaked in the bowels of his car, he was armed, and his pistol permit must have gotten lost in the mail. Not a slap on the wrist in 
any
 jurisdiction, and especially not when the person in question has a rap-sheet that could just about span the Great Wall of China…and there is a myth that claims that you can see that landmark from space.

While each of the actual locations of his business meetings were prudently different from the previous locations, the vicinity in which they were conducted, the open desert, was the same. Since there were obviously no street signs in undeveloped desert land, GPS coordinates were used to pinpoint exact meeting locations. These particular coordinates, which were in use on the day in this point of the story, were nestled about eight miles off the beaten path into the barren wastelands of the Nevadian desert, at the cusp of a large, deep crevice to the south and a large rock formation which, to the creative eye, looks a bit like a middle-finger pointing to an erect penis to the north. To the east, there was
a
–

“Shit! Fuck! FUUUUCKKKK!”

El Corazon
 was so distressed he had to look not once, not twice, but three times, first through his rear-view mirror and then craning his neck until he could feel his tendons screaming in his neck. Unfortunately for him, they were screaming just what he did NOT want to hear: “You aren’t seeing things; the police are here for you!”

He could see the unmistakable illuminated bar lights flashing on the roof of a rapidly approaching dark blue Dodge Charger.

Nevada State Police…“FUCK! MOTHERFUCKER!! 
CONYO
!!!” he screamed as he punched his custom steering wheel multiple times.

As 
El Corazon
 debated whether he should make a run for it in his cholo-car, which 
did
 have some balls, or pull over and possibly have to put a bullet in between the cop’s eyes when he came to the window, the police cruiser crossed into the opposite lane and blew past 
El Corazon
.

“Santa Maria, madre de Dios!” he exhaled shakily, crossing himself twice in the process. Even if you do not speak Spanish, I think you get the picture.

Corazon 
had to pull over for a second and calm himself down. He went from a steady and serene state of mind to red-lining with his chest on fire in a few seconds. Was he sweating? Yes, he was. Bad-asses like him always boast how they “don’t give a shit about jail,” or “ain’t afraid of dying.” When it came down to it, most of them proved otherwise, and while 
Corazon
 was truly a legitimate bad-ass (in the parlance of our youth), he cared deeply about both.

Of course he had stints in prison before, but nothing like the stint that would lie ahead for a man like him possessing an illegal firearm. The longest stint in prison he had done to that point in his life was a year and change. 

The notorious 
El Corazon
, the man who blowtorched a candle from both ends, sat on the side of Interstate 15 in his idling low-riding truck and got a handle on his breathing, which was extraordinarily hastened. Sitting and slowing his respirations gave him time to think. Time to contemplate. Time to second-guess what had been working so well for him thus far.

Should he still go through with this deal? Maybe this whole police scare was an omen; not to get out of the game, no, he was too far gone for that, but maybe, just for today. Could he put off finalizing the deal just for today and simply be an actual regular Nevadian citizen for 24 hours?

In the end, he decided he could not. His 
machismo
, his male pride, and more importantly, his reputation was at stake, and for a man like him, and the line of “work” he had chosen for himself, that was everything.

He weighed the options regardless. If he postponed, his buyer could drop out, and that was a lot of money to be losing out on. Not to mention the fact that even
Corazon
 had superiors to answer to. Another scenario was that his buyer could start second guessing himself, or even worse, could get suspicious that 
El Corazon
, the legendarily reliable but ruthless
vato
, might not be rolling straight dice, and that could be hazardous not only to his business, but to his health.

Corazon
 though that his buyer had looked harmless enough, though. A white guy, typical for a heroin purchase, with a regular build, and as white-trash looking as hell. What was there to sweat? If he was ever jumped, he thought that he could fuck his buyer up something nasty if it came down to it, but he was also packing his insurance plan, in case his buyer brought along friends who were also feeling froggy and decided to hop.

“Gotta be careful with those white trash-looking motherfuckers homes,” he said to himself. “Those white-trash motherfuckers are the same guys that have people locked up in a basement before they eat ‘em.” He shook his head briefly, slammed his truck into first gear and gunned it down the road until it was time to pull off the main road and follow the barely visible tire tracks in the dirt, left buy his punctual buyer. 

*   *   *

Corazon
pulled up to the only human sign of life that he could see for miles at coordinates 36°10′30″N 115°08′11″W, thanks to his GPS unit. Technology was amazing when it worked.

His presumed buyer was humorously staring at the rock formations to the north while
Corazon
pulled up to the meeting point. As he parked his
cholo
-car, he saw the presumed buyer give a body shaking laugh at the rock formation and then turn around to meet his seller.

The buyer was wearing an open Hawaiian shirt with a filthy white wife-beater on beneath it and a pair of jeans with tears everywhere, even precariously close to the crotch area.

“What a real piece of shit,” he thought. Which “he” in this scenario, dead-beat buyer or scumbag criminal seller, thought this? It did not really matter which one, did it? Neither of these two were winning citizenship awards.

“Ahh!
Corazon, mi Corazon!
” the buyer called out, easily heard over the purr of
Corazon’s
well maintained low-riding machine.

El Corazon
exited his truck and approached the boondocks-dwelling client, never taking his eyes off of him while he killed the ignition, open the door, stepped out, and closed the door again with a look of masked contempt for his smack-head client.

“
Corazon, mi Corazon!
” the buyer sang another time, wanting some accolades for his spirited attempt at humor, perhaps to bring some merriment to an otherwise grim situation.

“I hate that fuckin’ song, homes. We best get down to some business before my mood changes and something happens.”

“What could happen?” the buyer inquired, a bit carefree, if you asked anyone. “It’s a beautiful day out!” The buyer did not sound like he rolled out from some hay-bales after perhaps, taking some liberties with a relative, but his clothes and overall appearance told a completely different story.

“Whatever, man!”
Corazon
snipped.

The buyer was a white ma
n–
a typical consumer of
Corazon’s
product in these part
s–
that would be easy on the eyes if only he would lose the Hawaiian shirt, the grimy wife-beater, and find a gas station bathroom to wash his face in…but no hick-accent. Everyone has an accent, technically, but hickish could not be used to describe it, no matter who you asked. So, he looked like a duck and swam like a duck, it was just that the quack, as it were, did not fit the bill.

“Let’s go, eh? I got shit to do,”
Corazon
urged.

The buyer shrugged his shoulders and began to walk back to his car, which was a real dilapidated silver 2003 Honda Civic.

“Wait a second, homes,”
Corazon
called to his buyer.

The buyer turned around, puzzled. “Hmm?”

“Lift your shirt,”
Corazon
demanded. The look on the buyer’s face was one of bewilderment with a touch of affront. “Do it, eh?”

The buyer did not bother to contest the request, no, the
order
; he just did as he was told. The buyer lifted the shirt and did his dainty pirouette that he had seemingly done many times before to put his seller at ease.

Corazon
saw the hilt of a pistol sticking out of the back of the buyer’s jeans. When
Corazon
was satisfied that he was not being setup with a wire, he addressed the pistol.

“The fuck is that, homes?”
Corazon
spat.

“The fuck is
what
?” the buyer countered.

El Corazon
spun the buyer around by his shoulders like a top until the buyers back was to him, lifted his shirt and tapped on the handle of the pistol that was peeking over the waistline of his jeans.

“That!”

“Oh, come on, man; you know how this shit works! Are you telling me that you’re not packing heat, just in case? That’s bullshit, bro.”

Even drug dealers and killers have their moments of reasonability and rationality, few and far between as they may be.
El Corazon
decided, “
touché`,
” the man had a legitimate point, and decided that daylight was burning and it was time to get things moving. Besides, mouths of the wicked pour out evil things, and the less these two gentlemen said to each other, the better.

“Alright, alright! Are we doing this shit or what?”
Corazon
conceded.

“Yeah, man! I was going to get the buy-money out of my car before your little stop and frisk.”

“Just get the fuckin’ money, eh? I got shit to do.”

“So you’ve said. One second,” the buyer snapped.

The buyer walked the rest of the way to the car, popped the trunk open, and began dissecting the trunk lining and upholstery from his car out and tossing it onto the dusty hardpan. He continued digging in his trunk for a moment and came out with a cellophaned brick of stacked and rubber-banded bills of multiple denominations. It looked like it could very well have covered The Congo’s fiscal deficit.

El Corazon
went to his car and fetched the heroin, which was hidden in an elaborate system he had installed in his truck just for this purpose. This system required a correct sequence of actions be performed for a small door on the roof of the glove compartment to pop open. In the case of
Corazon’s
cholo-car, in order to open the compartment he had to first turn the air conditioner on (full blast), engage the high beams, and conclude the sequence by engaging his emergency blinkers with the rectangular button with the red triangle in it, located on the dashboard.

The buyer walked back to where his old footprints were still waiting for his return, and tossed the brick of cash onto the desert floor.

“Open it,”
Corazon
ordered his buyer while he collected the last of the heroin from the secret compartment in his glove compartment.

The buyer took his pen from the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, and clicked the pen so that the ballpoint shot out from the tip. “My pleasure,” he said, his eyes twinkling, his smirk confidentially making
Corazon
a touch uneasy. The buyer took a knee like a football player receiving the next play, and stabbed open the cellophane, which was tightly wrapped around the brick of cash.

“Bring it over to my truck,”
Corazon
demanded.

The buyer walked over to the flatbed of the truck. The rear door was flipped down in order to create a desk for these two businessmen to conduct some…well, to conduct some business.

“Let me see the money. You can look at the stuff.”
Corazon
inspected the cash, looking for ONE counterfeit bill, looking for ONE excuse to leave the buyer’s dead body in the ravine to the south, waiting for vultures to pick at his sunbaked carrion.
Corazon
did not care for this particular buyer at all. In fact he suspecte
d
–

“Hey,
Corazon
? The color seems a little off on this shit. You wouldn’t be trying to fuck over the harmless white-boy, would you?”

In a flash, with scary speed and guile,
Corazon
drew his gun and held it casually to the buyer’s temple.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to like that, fucking
punto
? This heroin’s legit, son. It’s high grade shit from Afghanistan, not that Scottish dogshit,
hijo de puta-pendejo-
motherfucker! You’re dealing with the best in the fucking game, homes, not some nigger on the strip!”

“Hey, hey! That’s what I thought. Good enough for me,” the buyer recanted.

“Yeah, what I thought you’d say,
cabron
,”
Corazon
japed malevolently. “Shit, and I was really hoping to use this, homes, I just got it,” he confessed as he stowed his pistol.

“How about you guys? Good enough for you too?” the buyer asked, seemingly no one at all.

At first,
Corazon,
puzzled
,
studied his business associate, wondering if the desert heat had finally gotten to him. It
was
unseasonably mild on that day, but given enough time in the deser
t
–

“Oh shit!”
El Corazon
almost thought. He had no time to think it.

Hollers and cries of “show us your hands!” and “get down on the ground” rang out in a mixed salad of audible demands which ricocheted off of the canyon walls of the crevice to the south as well as off of the giant middle-finger/penis rock formation (a geologist’s dream) to the north. When
Corazon
scanned the area and saw that he was surrounded and covered by a dozen officers, all holding a variety of automatic rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatic pistols, he surprised himself and decided instead of living like a caged animal in prison for the next thirty-plus years (with
his
rap-sheet), he would rather be dead. So, the man who had deceived him, this shit-kicking, sister-fucking, backwoods looking piece of shit of a buyer would have to go down with him.

El Corazon
turned towards his buyer, bringing out his pistol as his gaze met the buyer’s, but aborted his half-baked plan rapidly when he realized that the barrel of officer Tyler Swanson’s gun, which was tucked idly and harmlessly in the waistline of his ripped hillbilly jeans a second ago, was now resting against
El Corazon’s
perspiring forehead.

“Uh-uh. Don’t even think about it, amigo,” Tyler threatened. It was a line that should have sounded hokey, but coming from Tyler, it did not. It had just the right amount of authenticity.

Bad-ass extraordinaire,
El Corazon
, the most ruthless vato in Clark County, suddenly realized that perhaps he could get used to prison life after all, and that he wanted more than anything to live. His would-be suicidal cry-for-help moment came and went. He had proverbially sliced his wrists and then promptly held a towel over the wounds and applied pressure while whimpering. He reached for the sky and officers swarmed in to cuff him and recover the buy-money and drugs.

Sergeant Lukas Kulick approached his cream-of-the-crop plain clothes officer and swiped the pen out of the breast pocket of Swanson’s ridiculous Hawaiian shirt and clicked it so that the ballpoint retreated back into the shaft of the pen.

“Neat little toy, huh?” Kulick asked.

“I swear, Sarge, they just keep getting more and more creative with wires every year. I love it.”

“What excuse did you create to use the pen?”

“Well, the prick wanted to inspect the buy-money, so I used the pen tip to rip through the cellophane,” Tyler answered. He went on, “and all I had to do to get the dickhead to say ‘heroin’ on tape was question the quality. Amazing; although it’s nice to see that some people still take pride in their work, you know?” Tyler said.

Swanson and Kulick had a good laugh while the occasional passing officer pat Tyler on the back.

“Hey, what if he didn’t want you to open up the buy-money so he could inspect it?”

“I’m a hell of a mimic,” he started. In his best latino gangster accent, he continued, “I would’ve just done my best
Corazon
impression and said
err-o-ween
myself, as many times as it took to get it
perrrrrrrrrfecto
!” Laugh break number two ensued and when Tyler continued, his regular voice was back. “Nah, you know me sarge, I would’ve thought of
something
.”

“Hey how’s Lilith doing? I know she wasn’t hot on you switching to plain clothes duty. She seem to be coming around?”

“Well, she knows that it’s temporary until a firearms instructor position opens up at the academy. As long as there’s an end in sight, it becomes more bearable, you know? Plus, no offense, but I was happy in my hometown back in New York. I took a position out here to support her with
her
job.”

Tyler’s cellphone vibrated and sung a familiar generic tune in his pocket. He removed the phone and saw Lilith’s name on the touchscreen window and held it up to his Sergeant.

“H-hey! Speak of the devil, huh?” Sergeant Kulick joked with a wink. Kulick walked away, giving his best man some privacy. Kulick figured the least he could do was save Tyler the embarrassment of being overheard on his schmaltzy husband/wife phone call; God forbid that brand of conversation was overheard amongst all of the testosterone that currently permeated this corner of the desert.

“Hey babe, what’s going on?”

“Am I interrupting anything?”

“Actually, no; perfect timing. You have a knack for that! A couple of minutes earlier and you would’ve been interrupting big time,” he chuckled and then quickly thought of what a potential disaster that would have been had the call come a few minutes earlier.

“Ok, just hurry home after work today. I have a cool surprise for you,” Lilith said.

“Ah, nice. Ok, I have a couple hours of paperwork ahead of me and then I’ll be home. How was court today?”

“Please, they never stood a chance. I have to go. I’ll see you when you get home.”

“Ok, love you,”

“Me too. Bye, Ty.”

Some people would find “me too” a strange response to someone telling them that they loved them. But it’s been said before and is even commonplace in certain vernaculars, correct? Tyler thought that was surely what she had meant, that she loved him too, and most likely, she did. This was one thing that irked Tyler about his wife…the “speaking in riddles,” as he called it. This example was the epitome of his insecurity, as benign as it was.