Norberto felt a little bit better. His ribs hurt from where he’d been kicked, and the blood from his split lip was caked and dried around his cheek, but all in all he felt better. He assumed that whatever poison they’d injected into him had finally worn off. Norberto shifted a little on the floor, trying to find some tiny degree of comfort. He realized that his pants were soaked with piss. His nice purple sharkskin pants.
The door opened and Esteban came in.
“How’re you feeling?”
Norberto was confused. There was a friendly tone in Esteban’s voice. What did it mean?
“Esta bien, gracias.”
Esteban knelt down and unlocked the handcuffs.
“Take a shower. I’ll have clean clothes waiting for you.”
“¿Qué pasa, Esteban?”
“Mucho trabajo, cabrón.”
When Bob got to the office, Morris was already there, playing Tetris on Bob’s computer. Several coolers were lined up on the desk, packed with dry ice and ready for the day’s deliveries. Morris shoved a coffee from Starbucks toward Bob.
“Dude, I got you that vanilla thing.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t know how you can drink that sweet stuff in the morning, man.”
“Normally I don’t.”
Morris looked stricken.
“Did I fuck up?”
Bob shook his head.
“What’s on for today?”
Morris turned back to the game with renewed intensity.
“Usual.”
His clicking turned frenetic for a moment and then the cloying little jingle sounded.
“Fuck.”
“How’d you do?”
“I’ll never get past the seventh level. It’s like rigged or something.”
“It just takes practice.”
Morris nodded and started the game again. Bob picked a clipboard off the desk and checked it to see the day’s work. He noticed that a large order of organs and tissue was going to the UCLA Medical School.
“Did you get the stuff for UCLA?”
“What?”
“The stuff for UCLA.”
“It’s upstairs in the lab.”
“Dude. Go get it.”
Morris concentrated and clicked.
“C’mon, Morris.”
Morris shot Bob a disgusted look and turned off the game. He stood up, picking up his Starbucks cup.
“Why you got to give me all the agro, man? All the time, boss, boss, boss.”
Morris grabbed a cooler and started to stomp out of the room. Bob felt bad. “I’m sorry. Maura and I broke up this morning.”
Morris stopped.
“Wow. Man, sorry to hear that. She’s hot.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to talk or something?”
Bob didn’t want to talk.
“Tell you what. I want to get out for a while. You get the stuff ready and I’ll make the run. You can stay here and play Tetris all afternoon.”
Morris broke into a huge grin.
“You rule, man.”
Norberto sat in the back of Esteban’s car. He’d put on one of Martin’s black gabardine suits, with a vintage fuchsia tuxedo shirt underneath, and was feeling better. Much better now that it was apparent that Esteban wasn’t going to kill him after all. In fact, his future was looking good. Esteban had told Norberto that he was a valuable member of the team. With Amado in trouble, Norberto would need to take more responsibility. More responsibility meant more money, more respect. Norberto was pleased. He smiled when he thought of last night. Perhaps enduring the brutality and the strange drug had proven his strength. He wasn’t sure. But, quizás, man, todo es possible. All he was sure about was that they were on their way to help Amado.
He watched as Esteban and that weird gringo dude sat up front talking about something. Norberto wished that he’d finished his ESL classes. But the teacher at City College was such a pendejo that he just couldn’t stand it. He had to quit. Well, actually, he had to quit after he jumped the hippie gringo teacher in the parking lot after class and kicked the crap out of him. The gringo didn’t understand that members of el grupo de Juarez were due a certain amount of respect. You couldn’t make fun of them in class. Thinking back on it, Norberto wasn’t sure the gringo had meant to make fun of him, but either way, it just wasn’t cool. You had to stand up for yourself. Draw the line. Punish those who crossed it. Besides, the gringos always thought they were better than him. It felt good to send one of them to the emergency room.
It may have been satisfying to go all barbaric on the ESL teacher, but it also made Norberto feel stupid, like he was subhuman or something. Martin had that same effect on him. With all his talk about money and investments and shelters and such, he made Norberto feel stupid. Stupid for sending his money Western Union back to his padres in the South. Stupid for keeping cash in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Like some dumb-shit wetback who didn’t know how the world worked. But Norberto knew how the world worked, a little bit, anyway. He knew he should go legit, open a bank account, and invest in a real business, a taco stand or something, just to launder the money so he could buy the kinds of things he wanted. Like a Porsche. But he just hated the idea of paying taxes to a country that would turn around and spend the money on law enforcement and immigration authorities that wanted to catch him and ship him back to Mexico. Fuck that, he thought, I’m an outlaw.
Bob took Amado’s arm out of the cooler. He carefully pulled back the plastic wrap to reveal the tattoo of the woman. Bob’s heart pounded as he looked at her. She was beautiful, even more lusty and erotic on the graying arm than in the Polaroid. Had Bob ever made a woman feel that way? He wasn’t sure, but he had tried. Bob was willing to throw himself into any erotic activity. He’d gone down on lots of women but couldn’t remember one of them who just threw her head back and let the sensation rock her world. A couple of women had come close, but they’d been drunk.
Was he attracted to uptight women? He wondered. How could a guy like him meet a woman like this? What if a woman like this didn’t exist? What if she was like a comic book character? Could he go down on Wonder Woman? Wasn’t she gay?
Bob felt a pang of self-pity shoot through him. Maybe he was too harsh on Maura. What if she was just going through something? Maybe they should go to a therapist, work things out.
Bob looked at the tattoo again. Even if she didn’t exist, there must be someone like her. It wouldn’t hurt to look. Fuck that, he had to look. If he didn’t, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
Bob wrapped the plastic back around the arm.
Esteban pulled his Mercedes to the curb. He cut the engine. Well aware of his antitheft deterrent under the seat, he was careful not to set the alarm. Martin looked across the street. A drab modern-looking building next to a drab modern-looking building next to a crazy Moroccan stucco strip mall.
“This it?”
Esteban looked over at Martin.
“Yeah. United Pathology.”
Norberto squirmed in the backseat, ready for some action.
“¿Vamos?”
Esteban lit a cigarette.
“Patience, cabrón.”
Maura stood naked in the bathroom brushing her hair. She thought about what Bob had said. She wasn’t angry or hurt. How could she blame him? She was the one who wanted a change. By forcing Bob to be decisive she got what she wanted but was afraid to ask for. Or maybe she got what she thought she wanted but was afraid to ask for. What if she was making a mistake?
Maura watched her voluptuous breasts bounce and heave in the mirror in rhythm with the movement of the brush through her hair. It suddenly occurred to her that maybe she was just bored. Maybe sex was boring. She thought about all the men she’d had sex with, remembering them. It all blurred for her. In the end it’s always the same. In, out, in, out, faster… until she came or they came or it was over. What’s the fun of that?