Gun Work

“Primo,” Barney told him.

Sirius asked, “How was New York?”

“I can take the city for about ten days at a spell,” Barney told him. “But longer than that and my skin begins to itch.”

“How are your hands?” one of them asked.

“Well, I can still feed myself and wipe my own ass, which I count as progress.”

“Find out what you needed?” another of them asked.

Felix Rainer had been willing to sacrifice Carl Ledbetter, and Carl had been eager to sacrifice Erica, if only she could be found. Dead end. It really did start to look as though she had outsmarted everyone, and Carl had never even met this person who was responsible for his heavy losses. Never seen her live, in the flesh. She was the best ghost of all, an unbeatable mystery. What was the next link in the string, when everybody was equally willing to eat their own soldiers?

Armand said, “You look spent, amigo.”

“Yeah,” said Barney. “I’m gonna sleep now, lapse into a coma I feel I’ve earned. I have to check in with Dr. Brandywine. Two days, say, to lock and load. Then you guys suit up, because we’re going to Mexico.”

The four fishing enthusiasts wearing aloha shirts and tinted sports sunglasses assembled in the bar at the Hotel del Rey to discuss their strategies for bagging swordfish and marlin once they received shipment of their fishing gear and caught a connecting flight to Mazatlan, after tonight’s recreational stopover in Mexico City.

Their conversation was extremely boring.

The pallet holding their heavily insured custom fishing equipment was marked PRIORITY - CUSTOMS - EXPEDITE, and sailed through clearances with barely a nod of notice. As El Atrocidad had counseled, nobody smuggles stuff into Mexico... and that was not even considering the art of properly placed baksheesh, the bribe, a.k.a. el soborno or la mordida, literally “a little bite.”

The next day, once they checked out of the Hotel del Rey, they simply vanished. Happens all the time in Mexico. It happened to a hundred thousand people a year in the United States. People got lost, got waylaid. Got murdered and never found. Went underground. Changed identities. Advantaged ironclad credit for other people who never existed in the first place. They ran from spouses, assumed disguises, ducked under Witness Protection, or just plain etherized without a trace. Out of nearly seven billion people on the entire planet, the percentage was microscopic, not even worth mentioning.

When Barney introduced his crew to the hidden wonders of La Pantera Roja, it took Armand nearly a full minute to stop laughing. He buttoned his mirth when Barney informed him that a special deal had been cut with the management of the sex motel — absolute privacy for a premium price. The desk man, an avaricious toad named Umberto Somethingorother, had winked knowingly. Sí, comprendo totalmente.

“You told him we’re all gay?” Armand roared.

“Not in so many words, but it’s not a first for him,” said Barney. “Just tip big for his shitty microwave food and we’ll be fine.”

They swept the room for surveillance cameras or mikes and found none. There was a wall mount bored out behind a huge velvet painting of a naked Amazonian temptress (the frame hard-bolted to the beams, like everything else in the room), but nothing had been hooked up to it for years.

Each man set to the task of cleaning and checking equipment with a minimum of chitchat. They were no longer acting the part of visitors on fishing holiday and silently subsumed to their tasks with knowledge and competence — no rivalries, few jokes. The talk, the sizing up and slapjack of weapons, the speculations were for men between battles, not rubbing elbows with crunch time.

For the dirty and dangerous outing Barney had in mind, he had no wish to involve his local allies near the city, but he decided to risk a phone call to El Atrocidad in order to find the best and quickest way to procure a nondescript, used vehicle. As it turned out, the big wrestler was already involved. Past his pleasure and bonhomie at hearing Barney’s voice and learning he was still among the living, Atrocidad shared the bad news:

“Amigo, you remember Flecha de Jalisco?”

“Of course,” said Barney. The gravel-voiced técnico in whose debt he would always remain. “Cristobal. I hope nothing bad has happened.”

“His son, Almirante, was taken by los secuestradores last week. They demand a ransom, or will start cutting off his fingers.”

The news hit Barney like a body blow.

“There is something very interesting about these criminals,” said Atrocidad. “They specified a money drop at the bridge on the Rio Satanas.”

“I think I know where they might be keeping him,” said Barney. He described the brown brick building where he had captured Carl Ledbetter. “It’s in a bad part of the city, a freefire zone, like Neza.”

He pictured El Atrocidad going crimson with fury. “Can you find it?!”