“Go ahead. Let’s see if all that practice bought you anything,” the Don urged.
The boy adopted a military shooting stance, two handed and slightly crouched. Comfortable with the weapon’s weight, he fired once at each coconut. Both slugs found their mark and the coconuts shattered. Their ears ringing from the percussive blasts from the pistol, the pair stood admiring the boy’s impressive handiwork. A gentle breeze whispered through the surrounding trees, rustling the leaves as though they, too, approved of the marksmanship display. Don Miguel clapped, delighted at the performance.
“Good shooting. You make me proud. I’ve never seen anything like that. Really amazing,” he congratulated.
The boy grinned, warmed by the compliments, and then turned and shot Don Miguel between the eyes.
“That’s for my mother and my sister.”
He undid his belt and urinated on Don Miguel’s face, a look of incomprehension still etched into its rigid features.
“That’s for my other sister.”
He then dropped his pants and defecated on the great man’s corpse, using the Don’s handmade linen shirt to clean himself afterwards.
“And that’s for my father. Now rot in hell, and may the devil do worse to you than you did to them. I’ll see you there, you bastard. I’ll be the one pouring the gasoline on you.”
That afternoon, Enrique, the Don’s most trusted lieutenant, was surprised to see Don Miguel’s new SUV pull up to his luxurious Tuscan home on the outskirts of Culiacan. He approached the tinted windows to greet the Don and was startled when the window opened and he found himself looking down the barrel of a shiny new pistol. The boy spoke four words.
“Get in and drive.”
In another clearing, where long ago his father’s tomato field had been, the boy got out of the truck and trained the weapon on Enrique. Nature had long ago reclaimed the land, eradicating any trace of the event that had changed the boy’s life.
“Do you remember this place, you cock-sucking lowlife?” the boy asked, conversationally, his voice betraying no emotion at all.
“Fuck you. If you’re going to shoot me, do it, you little cunt. I bet you don’t have the guts,” Enrique hissed in response, spitting with the curse.
The boy clubbed him across the face with the pistol, and then slammed him in the head with the butt, knocking Enrique out.
When he came to, he was sitting beside a tree on the edge of the field, the boy holding the weapon on him, unwavering. At the top of the tree, a large black form rested motionless, its feathers gleaming in the afternoon sun. Neither man noticed, their attention stolen by other things.
The boy smiled, and reaching into his back pocket, tossed Enrique a small bone-handled pocket knife.
“What’s this for?” Enrique asked, rubbing his head and wiping the blood off his face with his arm.
“Last year, I read a book on the American Indians. They had a way of killing their enemies I thought about every time I remembered you raping my mother that night. What they would do is tie one end of their enemy’s intestines to a tree, and then force them to walk around it until they’d pulled out all their guts. That’s a lot of trips around this small a tree. I want you to cut a hole five inches above your navel, and cut the intestine, tie it to the tree, and then start walking.”
“You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to do that.”
“You can do it, or I can shoot you in the gut and it will take you many hours to die, in extreme pain. And then I’ll tie your feet to the back of the truck and drag you back to your house. By the time we get close, you’ll look like hamburger. Your choice.”
Enrique ultimately wound up with door number two. When they found his body the following night, it wasn’t recognizable at first as human.
At the end of the week, the boy enlisted in the navy for a three year stint. His aptitude with weapons quickly impressed the officers in his unit, and soon he was receiving grueling specialized training in explosives, clandestine operations, and commando techniques as a special ops marine.
When he deserted after a year and a half, he singled out the Tijuana cartel, offering his services as a hit man. The first few contracts were considered suicide but he pulled them off flawlessly, and soon he became the go-to killer for tricky situations, at an ever increasing price.
El Rey had been born, risen from the ashes like the mythical phoenix.
Present Day
Cruz paced his office, contemplating his next move. Briones was still sitting with the sketch artist, trying to get the drawing closer to his recollection. That was always tough, as it was a highly inexact science, and often when they wound up catching a perp he looked little like the drawings. Still, it was their only lead, albeit a tenuous one.
Dreading the call, he picked up his desk phone and dialed an inside line. Tomas Llorentez picked up — the chief of the El Rey taskforce, and in Cruz’s opinion, a complete jerk-off. They exchanged pleasantries, and then Cruz got down to business.
“I may have a case related to your boy, Tomas,” Cruz said.
“Oh yeah? I didn’t hear of any assassinations today,” Tomas quipped.
“No, nothing like that. Have you got any photos or sketches of him?”
“Very funny. Yeah, based on descriptions, he’s between twelve and ninety years old, shape-shifts into animals whenever he needs to, and can levitate. Oh, and he’s got hooves and a tail, and scaly red skin,” Tomas joked.
Cruz’s generally non-existent sense of humor deserted him further when dealing with nitwits like Tomas.
“That’s very helpful. No, seriously. What have you got on him?”
“Not much, other than a chronology of his hits and a collection of rumors, many of them contradictory. He’s a crafty bastard, I’ll give him that. Every time we think we’ve got a break, it evaporates and we’re back to the drawing board,” Tomas groused.
“How long has the task force been in existence, Tomas? Is it already three years?” Cruz couldn’t believe this lazy drunken shit was still with the force, much less a squad that apparently couldn’t find its ass with both hands.
“Three and a half, actually. Tracking this guy has been a long road,” Tomas complained.
Cruz wondered whether his supervisors actually bought any of this crap. They must have, because he was still getting resources and funding, much to Cruz’s chagrin.
“So, to summarize, nobody has any images of him, or even an idea what he might look like?” Cruz tried one last time.
“There are a bunch of sketches, but no two look alike. We have one from a woman at the church from when El Gallo was whacked, and a few stool pigeons gave us descriptions they swear is him, but in the end they all look like a mid-twenties to mid-thirties Latin male. Generic. So, about as helpful as saying that he’s Mexican.”
“Would you mind having someone drop copies by my floor, Tomas? I know you guys are busy down there, but I’d really appreciate it,” Cruz felt the bile rising in his throat, protesting at how nice he was being, but figured he could take one for the team.
“No problem, for you. Give me a few hours and it’ll be with your secretary,” Tomas promised.
“I don’t have a secretary.” Cruz realized instantly that Tomas undoubtedly did have one. Probably two.
“Oh, well, you know, then, I’ll have them in your office. Always glad to help a fellow officer out, Cruz,” Tomas declared with a patronizing flourish.
Cruz couldn’t get off the line fast enough.
That went well, he thought. The country had a buffoon running the hunt for the most dangerous man alive, and was paying handsomely to get zero results.