The disappointment stings, but I hide the pain behind a smile. “Gracias. Después.” A snack can wait, as I don’t want to dribble coffee and crumbs all over my work.
Toro leads me through the cramped living room to the kitchen table. I pause once to catch my breath. The stairs about wore me out. Last year I got stabbed by Levon Spencer. No reason to carry a grudge though, Levon mistook me for Antonio Lopez — all us greasers look alike. I get it. Besides, Levon OD’d a couple of weeks later, so according to the school counselor, it’s best to forgive and forget.
Always look for the blessing, right, ese? The blessing here is that stabbing, the collapsed lung, and the resulting breathing problems downgraded my health mobility profile to a 2B, meaning no hard physical labor, and so my name is automatically deleted from lists when jales for roofer and warehouse technician circulate through Community Force Placement. Thanks to the injury, the toughest gigs I used to get were as a flagman at construction cone zones, but the robots have taken those jobs like they have most everything else. Though they’ve yet to make a robot that can do what I’m here to do for Toro.
In the living room, throw pillows decorated with la Virgen and copies of noir movie posters are scattered over a sofa cocooned in clear plastic. A cumbia murmurs from a speaker alongside unlit votive candles on a spice rack. A calendar for Jimenez Tortillas hangs on the wall. Through the sliding glass door I scope out the narrow balcony where an ashtray sits in the center of a small patio table. Toro seems alone.
“¿Y tu tía?” I ask.
“Comprando sus frajos en el 7-Eleven.” He opens the kitchen blinds to let in more light. I set my tool bag on the table and hang my backpack on a chair. I pull out the chair and sit. After I zip open my satchel of tools, I arrange what I’ll need on a square of repurposed yoga mat.
As I do this, Toro digs into my backpack, curious, suspicious as ever. He stacks the books I carried onto the table: Remains of the Day. Paisaje de otoño. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He fingers the book spines. “These any good?”
“I like them.”
He grunts in approval. “Me cae que estudias. No como esos grifos que caminan en nuestras calles. We need more bookworms and fewer junkies.”
From under the table, Toro retrieves a large canvas tote that he places in front of me. It’s an RF-blocking bag. Inside I count five heaters — three 9mms, a .380, and a .38 Super. The bag smothers any tracking signals from the “smart” guns inside.
Toro makes his bones in this neighborhood as el sicario número uno. You need to settle a score or send a message, who you gonna call? Since violence is his stock in trade, he makes extra cash fencing guns and ammo.
Returning to the bag, with a signal detector (that I stole from my last day at Huerta) I check for an active GPS transmitter. I figure the guns have been in the bag some time, as the batteries are all run down.
“Can you do this one?” Toro handles a really nice PW-Pro 9mm stamped SFPD. “But I don’t want you to fuck it up.”
“Time me,” I boast.
He sets the stopwatch on his phone.
I steady the PW-Pro in my left hand. “Go.” With a portable drill I bore a small hole in the back of the frame to puncture the embedded microprocessor, which lobotomizes the gun.
Smart guns are designed to lock up without the necessary permission code — supplied by a special ring, or a matching smart watch, a fingerprint reader, some caca like that. But there’s gotta be a way to disassemble the gun in case things need fixing. I center a brass punch over the take-down pin in the slide, give a couple of taps with my plastic mallet, the pin falls out, and the slide... well, it slides off.
I disable the locking solenoid with liquid weld. In another minute, the grip panels are off and the frame lies bare on the yoga mat. More taps with the brass punch and mallet, some twisting with needle-nose pliers, the electronic interface between the firing mechanism and the trigger falls loose, and this PW-Pro is as high-tech as my abuelita’s cast-iron comal.
After fitting a small length of coat-hanger wire to replace the interface linkage, I reinstall the grip panels. I put the slide back on and rack it. Clack. Pull the trigger. Click. I repeatedly work the slide and pull the trigger — clack, click, clack, click — and every time, the trigger snaps crisp as it should.
“Listo,” I blurt out.
Toro announces, “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds.” He grabs the PW-Pro from me. As he examines the pistol, I take a workman’s pride in my craft, regardless of what consequences it brings to the community. I, a high school dropout, in less than five minutes, have outsmarted a gaggle of white-bread Silicon Valley engineers and their million-dollar solution to the epidemic of gun violence. It’s a misdemeanor to alter a smart gun and a felony to show anyone how to do it. But just go to the dark web and you can find all kinds of tutorials for things you shouldn’t do.
“Algo más.” I pick up a nail file. “I have to alter the firing pin.”
Toro lifts an eyebrow.
I explain: “The end of the firing pin is engraved with a code to trace the gun by imprinting the ammo it shoots. A quick swipe with the file and no more code.”
Toro squints down the sights. “Maybe I want the code. Let the world know que una arma de los marranos fue que mordió un soplón.”
It’s not my concern what he does with the gun, but in this case, a snitch is gonna learn what happens when you cozy up to the law.
Toro loads the magazine with a couple of 9mm rounds he fishes from a pocket in his shorts, fits the magazine into the PW-Pro, and racks the slide. An icy chill freezes my nerves. What the hell is he doing?
He steps to the audio player and turns up the volume till it rattles the windows. Aiming the pistol at some books on a shelf, he fires lengthwise through the stack. Despite the loud music, the blast spanks my ears. The empty casing whirls toward me, bounces off the table, and rolls to the floor. The gun worked flawlessly.
He lowers the volume and, on the PW-Pro, thumbs the magazine release. The empty mag falls into his left hand. He cycles the pistol slide, catching the remaining cartridge as it flings out the ejection port. For a moment he bounces the pistol in his hand, appreciating its heft, smiling, smirking; it’s not just a firearm but a fiendish weapon, something evil, a talisman of bad tidings. Armed and dangerous.
I want him to acknowledge what I’ve done for him. That I’m special. His special.
Instead he says, “Te aventaste, güey,” then picks the spent cartridge off the floor and fits it like a hat on a nearby plastic Jesus.
Güey, like we’re big buddies instead of ex-lovers.
Toro lays the gun on the table. He disappears down the hall, a door closes, I hear a shower run. I imagine the water spattering off his muscular body and recall when it was me soaping his smooth contours and the crevices between them.
I fumble my screwdriver and almost let it fall. The act of catching the screwdriver brings my mind back to task. During the next minutes, I take care of the other two smart guns. The last pair in the bag are ghost-gun knockoffs of Serbian Zastavas, which I inspect and deem okay.
He’s left his phone on the table, and it vibrates with incoming messages.
The shower squeaks off. After a moment, he returns to the kitchen. His pink hair is slicked back so it looks like an old-fashioned bathing cap. He’s changed into designer jeans, alligator cowboy boots. A nice shirt hangs unbuttoned over his chest, a fresh wife-beater plastered to his still-wet, hairy pectorals. Lingering at the hall mirror, he reapplies kohl around his eyes. He pulls a gold chain from his pants pocket and strings it around his neck. Stepping close to retrieve his phone, he smells of soap and cologne, and the fragrance makes my heart ache for things that will never return.