Gun Work

The women he remembered as shades, reduced to one-liners: Jessica, long burnished hair and long of leg, a coffeehouse songstress. Kyrie, another ex-cop, tough as a cement nail. Brianne, his bombshell, too perceptive and destined to be damaged by the world, thus fostering dangerous notions of protection. Geneva, sharp and too smart for him, with centuries of turbulence in her mixed mocha bloodlines. Kate, who pulled him out of his shell long enough to teach him how to dress and otherwise fake human function in public. The Other Kate, who had fooled herself into believing she loved him. Whenever he felt the tendrils of another human being’s needs begin to form a chrysalis around him, Barney reversed polarity and repelled them, concentrating on how to simplify his life. Whatever was supposed to emerge from that chrysalis would never be. Barney contented himself with becoming the best possible caterpillar, because it was hard, not convenient, not easy, and therefore not a path most ordinary people would willingly choose. The most rewarding personal effort is always the most difficult.

Such mandarin focus might constrict most lives, which was perhaps another reason Barney had taken on Carl’s wild-card proposition. Or maybe it was the arrogance of ego — Barney to the rescue. Maybe it was because he had wired his body for momentum, and stasis could drive him buggy, stir-crazy inside the safe walls of his world.

Whatever the reason or rationalization, Barney would not quit. He was committed to the tactical clarity of eradicating mystery — perfectly in character, for him — and answering these new and unbidden questions, especially the ones he was now asking himself.

Cocooned in his stolen, air-conditioned car, in the company of his guns and jerry-rigged equipment, Barney tailed Carl into an even worse part of town.

Driving in Mexico City is not recommended for the inexperienced (or for that matter, anyone without a death wish), but for Barney it was no worse than, say, Beirut.

The brown brick building had no title. No address. Heavily barred windows; sepia shades drawn. Welded plate steel over the ground-floor ingresses. It looked vaguely industrial, like a sweatshop or piece-goods mill, or the self-contained microcosmic hives where indentured laborers fabricated merchandise for American deep-discount chains. It was three stories tall and Barney noted that fire escapes had been removed from the exterior. It was a lost structure amid the chaos surrounding it — obvious whorehouses, night spots with glowering security thugs, rave space and drinking dens, the traffic mortared to gridlock by sidewalk commerce, tented night-market stalls hawking everything from bootleg DVDs to brown heroin (abundant and cheap), assorted losers unconscious or dead in gutters and door archways, viper-mean street denizens cruising for meat, disenfranchised lunatics pinballing about, religious pamphleteers, more bored cops, everybody jostling everybody else in that cultural denial of personal space that is peculiarly Mexican. The people here seethed. Here you could smell the food, the flavors, the populace, the perfume of the city. It was nasty, exhilarating and more than a little bit lethal.

Carl unfolded himself from the back of one of the city’s omnipresent green-and-white classic VW Beetle cabs called vochos — the kind not advised for tourists due to the ebb-and-flow trend of robbery, yet cheaper than hotel-assigned taxis and perfect for anonymity on the go. He had a big satchel with him, the type of briefcase used to carry bulky files, with a fold-over latched top. If that satchel contained money, then Carl had to be packing at least one firearm, meaning he had stepped out of character as soon as he thought himself unobserved. He moved to an iron door, was eyeballed via a peephole, and was admitted to the murk of the nameless brown building.

Dusty street brats banged on Barney’s window, trying to sell him chewing gum — known brand names with slightly modified ingredients best left unspecified. The BMW was an advantage in this ‘hood; locals would assume it was just another drug exec making rounds or extorting protection, but it would also attract urchins and beggars, first the Artful Dodgers, then the kids huffing paint or zoned out on crystal meth. Barney kept his window up and his focus on the building. Some of the kids thumped the car but it was just a show of bravado, a test to get a rise out of the gringo. No sale.

Some people were worth a million bucks. Some were not worth spare change, like Estrella, who had probably been plucked from a stable of a dozen just like her and aimed at Carl with the surety of a cruise missile. She had been butchered for no more than dramatic impact. Point: If Carl only had some back-alley deal cooking, nobody would have bothered to lay Estrella out in a bloody-rare buffet back at their first lodging house. If nothing else, it proved the opposite side was deadly serious.