Gun Work

The headboard of the whorehouse bed was screwed to the wall. The lamps were bolted to the tables. Everything was garishly overpainted. The TV was coin-fed and locked down. A metal band secured the top of the toilet to the tank so nobody would steal it. A payphone was mounted to the brick wall. It was perfect. They were able to drag Jesús inside under complete cover.

“We’ve got to get some more shirts,” Barney said as he rustled the gun cleaning kit in his rucksack to one side to retrieve a roll of duct tape, for Jesús, from whom Carl had also liberated an extra mag of ammo for the MP5.

Jesús was glazed, eyes dilated and breathing shallowly.

Carl could do little apart from watchdogging the damned cellphone, trying to will it to ring.

So Barney was stuck trying to obtain some fresh clothes, minimal food, and another terrific plan. When he returned, the bloodless expression on Carl’s face told him that he’d been on the phone.

“Thirty seconds, maybe less,” he said, frittering with his hands. “Erica talking, again. Telling me what they told her to. She’s alive. At least she was —” he checked his watch “— eight minutes ago.”

“They’re not going to kill her,” said Barney, handing Carl a beer. “What did they say?”

“The usual gangster movie crap about paying the penalty for violating their goddamned rules. Estrella was to demonstrate they are serious. They don’t give a damn about ole Jesús, over there. All they want is for me to call them when I get the money. The extra money.” Carl killed the beer in a swallow.

Barney quickly checked to see if Jesús had overheard. Nobody home. He was almost snoring, palate clicking, not so much asleep as unconscious.

“You should have heard her, man,” said Carl, voice cracking. “Repeating that crap. ‘Tardiness in any form will result in additional damage to your merchandise.’ Christ.”

“I bet they said come unarmed, come alone?”

Carl made a little thumb-and-forefinger gun. “You got it.”

“Carl, this guy you know in New York, the money guy. Would you call him a friend?”

“Sure, I guess so. I mean, a million bucks...”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about a friend — do you trust him?”

“He’s the only person I called before I called you. When I realized this was too deep for me to do by myself. Yeah, he’s into all kinds of shady crap, but he’s a friend.”

“Sort of like me, then,” Barney said. “Call when cornered?”

“I guess,” Carl repeated, not sure of where this was going.

“But... after you get your wife back, and you go back to your nice, safe American way of living, you still have to find some way to get this guy his money back, right?”

“Sure, I mean... of course.” He still looked puzzled.

“How you going to do that, Carl? How’re you going to pay the guy back a million bucks? Or two million?”

“I don’t know. Barter counts for a lot. He needs people to run straw accounts, dummy corporation drops, money laundering, that sort of thing. He wants me to do something like that, well, I owe him, don’t I?”

Barney wondered just how far Carl’s ethics permitted the notion of debt. Not money, but actual obligation.

“What’s his name?”

Carl looked at Barney as though he had just sprouted eyes on stalks. “I can’t tell you that, man.”

“Sure you can. These dinks just tried to frame us for a murder, just to make a point. We haven’t actually killed anyone yet, but not for lack of trying, plus we kidnapped Jesús there. We’re driving around Mexico in a bullet-riddled car with Federales looking for us. You can damned well tell me who your sugar daddy is, your friend, or we are less than friends and I quit — do you copy?”

“For god’s sake, it’s Felix, all right? Felix Rainer, in New York. Okay? Happy now? God, what’s with you?”

Carl would have to phone New York like a deadbeat college kid begging more cash, and Barney hated his reflex desire to listen in on that call, because it meant that Carl’s fidelity was sliding into a gray zone. To distract himself from the relentless logic chain forming in his mind, he said, “Want to hear our Plan B?”

“Shoot.”

He lowered his voice. “We tag our pal Jesús with the GPS chip and dump him at the nearest clinic. With luck...”

“He’ll burn ass back to his bosses.” Carl smiled.

“But,” said Barney. “You’re going to call Felix and get the cash. Because we cannot afford to fake it, not now. Not after gunfire.”

Carl’s brow furrowed. “We might not even need the cash.”

Barney forced a smile and it felt like his face was cracking. “What’s the matter, Carl? Don’t you trust me?” He’d meant it to play as a joke, but it just wasn’t very funny.