“Then Pate and Durazo’re telling the truth about everything except stealing the shoes from the navy?” Nell asked.
“Exactly,” Fin said.
“But if they had nothing to do with Pepe Palmera, then how easy is it gonna be to connect them up with the shoe that was on his foot?” Bobbie asked.
“Not easy at all,” Fin said, “unless they can be persuaded to drop a dime on each other.”
“Shit!” Bobbie said. “They just gotta be involved in a conspiracy with the dead guy. They drove that truck to T.J. The two thousand pairs a shoes’re in Tijuana and they know where at. They dumped the waste that killed that little kid.”
“I’m getting tired of this,” Nell said. “Let’s go find those two guys and sweat them. First the big fat one, then the skinny Mexican.”
Bobbie looked at Fin with anticipation. He looked back into her blue eyes for a few seconds and said, “Okay, sailor, but stay close to me. Hear?”
Bobbie beamed at him, and put her hand on his forearm.
Nell shook her head slowly, turned her face away, and said: “Dis-gust-ing.”
The old waitress shuffled over and said, “It ain’t that bad is it, love? I can make a fresh pot.”
CHAPTER 22
Abel Durazo didn’t see the ox’s pickup truck in the parking lot at Angel’s Café so he thought Shelby wasn’t there. But then he spotted Shelby’s hog parked directly in front with four other Harleys, and on each bike was a hated helmet, now required by law.
When Abel entered he found the ox watching two truckers playing Pac-Man. Shelby’s costume was designed to give off outlaw-biker death rays: black leather jacket, black jeans, studded boots, and a dirty gray tee with GRATEFUL DEAD in black across the chest. Instead of his usual loose and scraggly style, the ox had his dirty-blond hair tied back in a severe ponytail.
The ox showed his gap-tooth grin to Abel, threw a heavy arm around his partner’s shoulder, and led him to a quiet booth where they ordered burritos and beer.
“Why we meet so early, Buey?” Abel asked, after the waitress was gone.
“I got some un-real news!” Shelby said. “We’re gonna go into partnership with Mister Jules Temple!”
Abel Durazo had often thought that the ox might someday just blow out all the wires in that massive skull, and now he feared it had happened. The Mexican looked around at all the various truckers, bikers, rednecks, and other lowlifes who used Angel’s for various purposes. Several of them looked much more demented than the ox.
“Tell me one more time,” Abel said carefully. “We going to be … partner weeth Meester Temple?”
“Senior partners,” Shelby said, cackling. “Man, my life’s become totally fucking amazing! I am in titty city, dude! I am gonna live in a meadow of meth! I am gonna reside in Harley heaven! ’Cept I ain’t buyin no more Harleys. You ever seen that Honda Shadow eleven hunnerd? It ain’t a fag bike like most a them. I’m thinkin about buyin me one. I’ll buy you one too.”
“Buey, you go crazy!” Abel said, with a sincerely worried look.
“If it wasn’t fer you makin me steal them fuckin shoes, none a this ever woulda happened,” Shelby said. “I am mega-fuckin stoked! Totally!”
“Okay, Buey, okay,” Abel said soothingly, the way you’d talk to someone straddling the railing on the Coronado Bridge.
“Know that manifest? The one from Southbay? We was haulin bad shit, baby! And Jules Temple manifested it as not-so-bad shit, okay to take to L.A. fer ordinary disposal! Kin you see where I’m comin from, dude?”
“No, Buey,” the Mexican said. “No.”
“I didn’t throw it away like you wanted me to. That manifest says we was haulin ordinary waste back to our yard for disposal at the L.A. refinery. But we was haulin big-time poison! And it killed the guy that stole our truck.” Then the ox paused and the gap-tooth smile vanished. “And … and it killed that kid, that kid with the ringworm.”
“We don’ know eef eet was the one weeth the reeng-worms!” Abel said.
“Okay, but it killed a kid. On’y it wasn’t our fault, was it, man?”
“No,” Abel said.
“Anyways, that shit was illegally manifested by that cheesy faggot, Jules Temple. We never woulda let it outta our sight if we knew we had real bad poison, would we?”
“But Buey, we never look at manifest!”
“I know, goddamnit, but that’s what we say to Temple. We say, we only did our thing in Mexico ’cause we thought we had ordinary waste!”
“He going to know we steal from navy.”
“So what? Stealin shoes for guys like us is no biggie. Illegally manifested waste that kills somebody is the end a the fuckin world fer him!”
It was the first time that Shelby had ever seen Abel look scared. Flaco was a ballsy little dude, but for once he looked scared.
“I don’ know, Buey.”
“You don’t know what?”
“Steal shoes, okay. Make report of stolen truck, okay. Tell Meester Temple we partner? I don’ know.”
“You jist lemme handle it, okay? You ’n me, we’re fifty-fifty. I’ll deal with Temple.”
“He ain’t like us, ’mano,” Abel said. “He deeferent people.”
“No, he ain’t like us. That bogus asshole don’t know dick about the real world.”
“Okay,” Abel said, “but I scared.”
“Don’t be scared. Jist concentrate on the cool time we’re gonna have tonight with six very very big ones that we’re gonna collect from Soltero.”
Then Abel broke into a grin. “Tonight, we have berry good time.”
“There you go, Flaco!” said the ox. “Party on!”
“We go to T.J. now?”
“Pretty soon,” Shelby said. “First we gotta stop by Green Earth before the overtime crew locks the fuckin place up.”
“Why we go there?”
“I gotta git somethin.”
“What?”
“Somethin I got in my locker. A derringer.”
“Wha’s that?”
“A little gun, dude. I ain’t goin down there to Soltero without an edge. Don’t worry, it’s untraceable.”
Abel said, “We get caught weeth gun in T.J., beeg problem!”
“I ain’t gonna be talked outta this. I’d rather end up in the Tia-juana jail with those sphincter-stretchers stickin a cattle prod up my ass than meet Soltero without a backup.”
“Buey,” Abel said. “I scared now!”
“I know,” Shelby said, “but I’m gonna make you rich and scared.”
While Nell was driving down the Silver Strand from Coronado she couldn’t stop thinking about how hard she’d worked on her hair that morning. First she’d ladled the mousse on her perm the instant she stepped out of the shower, then she’d combed it out ever so carefully, then she’d scrunched it up for twenty minutes until her do cried out: Tousle me with reckless abandon!
And Fin hadn’t even noticed. He couldn’t take his eyes off that kid. But of course that was typical. Why had she thought he’d be different from every other male person who walked the earth? Why was she even remotely concerned with what that three-time loser thought about her freaking hair?
For the first time, Nell Salter considered that it might not be horrible to get old, not if mid-life agony ended then. She hadn’t noticed that tension was causing her to goose the gas pedal.
Not until Bobbie, who was in the back seat, said, “Nell, I’m getting seasick.”
Nell turned toward Bobbie and said, “You’re a sailor, aren’t you?”
From the corner of her eye Nell saw Fin turn toward Bobbie as though to say: Just ignore the old girl. She’s a woman of a certain age.