Gun Work

Barney did not care whether he meant ten minutes to live, or that ten minutes of torture were coming. All of Barney’s attention was focused on making his own adrenals squirt.

When Sucio came in like a bullet train Barney was able to stop him short by saying, “Hey, Sucio — that’s a woman’s watch, man.”

Confusion clouded Sucio’s anger, then redoubled it.

Sucio roared in for the kill, and Barney nailed him in the left eye with the long-forgotten copy of ¡Alarma!

A lot of things had to fall into place for that one desperate bet to work. But he had to chance it.

Drunk, overconfident from the past beatings he had administered, Sucio would be easy to provoke, and probably never more vulnerable than he was now, alone, almost completely out of control.

El Chingon had explained to Barney his lack of barter value. If Barney did not strike right-goddamn-now, even restrained and at such a major disadvantage, he might not get another opportunity.

The ¡Alarma! was about thirty pages of blackly thumbed newsprint — limp pages, no staples. The word “tabloid” originated in the pharmaceutical industry to denote proper dosages in smaller tablets; it was quickly hijacked by newspapers to mean more info, smaller package, and came to refer to the size of the paper itself, or half-broadsheet size. ¡Alarma! was the next step down — “compact” size, or about an inch smaller than tabloid.

Barney’d taken this furred and gray copy of a paper about the heft of a thin Sunday supplement and rolled it up into a tube, as tightly as he could compress it, in the hope that this object might make a good weapon. It was all he had.

He jammed it into Sucio’s eye now and twisted, the paper edges cutting Sucio’s eyelid. The big man howled. Before he could fall back, Barney rapped him sharply across the bridge of the nose, breaking it, bringing a glurt of nasal blood.

Barney’s plan was to bring his improvised stick up, hard, under Sucio’s jaw for a possible kill, or use it as a ram to drive Sucio’s Adam’s apple through the back of his neck. But Sucio’s skin was like rhinoceros hide or leather toughened by salt. This guy was used to having his nose broken, and the sight of his own blood was no deterrent, as it would have been with a normal human, thus losing Barney that critical split second.

Sucio hoisted Barney into a brutal chokehold and held him aloft. The tendons in Barney’s neck snapped audibly, like misfired popcorn. No use in whacking Sucio’s bald, corrugated head; that would be like trying to knock down the wall.

Plus, Barney was notably weakened, his response zone eroded, his countermove time all used up.

After nearly a minute of asphyxiation and a possible crushed esophagus, most of the starch drained out of Barney’s brilliant plan, and he belonged to Sucio, who worked him over the way a chef pounds a cut of beef.

Barney regained enough sense to realize his own gun, his stolen .45, was jammed up against his front teeth, which recorded the vibration of the hammer cocking.

“You like this gun, eh?” Sucio growled. “You kiss it goodbye, because you ain’t never gonna shoot it again, pinche gringo.”

That seemed a bizarre threat for Sucio to make; perhaps he had intended something a bit more acidic?

Barney did not have the chance to inquire. Sucio pistol-whipped him with his own gun for nearly a quarter of an hour, mangling Barney’s face to raw burger.

Barney never felt Sucio amputate his right index finger with the tin snips. His trigger finger.

By the time Sucio repeated the procedure on Barney’s left index finger, Barney had passed beyond feeling simple pain. He did hear the liquid cellophane sound of the blades meeting through his flesh, though, and the more arid sound of them dividing bone like brittle chalk.

Some time after that, Mojica entered Barney’s room long enough to cauterize the damage of amputation using a propane torch. Barney’s fingers were nowhere to be found. Mojica considered his own fingers — he still had a full set — and scuttled out as fast as possible, making sure he was not observed.

At least, that was what Barney thought he saw. Funny, he could smell burning flesh, but he couldn’t feel his hands at all.

The next thing Barney saw were the maggots, busily feeding on his hands, where his index fingers used to live. That was all right. The little buggers would eat the necrotic tissue. They were nasty, but they were protein. He might eat them himself, if he ever woke up again.

Surely this was less traumatic than being shot in the head.

Maybe that came next.

Of all his freedom scenarios, Barney had not anticipated leaving the place he had come to call the Bleeding Room on his face, being dragged by one foot.

A foot that was no longer encased in the unforgiving leg shackle.

Assorted parasites had been at work on the rawed flesh of his leg. Where the cuff had secured him now felt like a third degree burn.