Nine
BOB GENTLY PLACED the arm in the cooler and closed the lid. Just then Morris came back from the lab with several pouches of viscera. Morris looked at the cooler.
“That the arm?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna miss that arm, man.”
Bob looked at Morris.
“Why?”
Morris shrugged.
“It has personality.”
Morris held up the pouches of tissue samples.
“These are ready to go, man.”
Bob took the bits in bags and plopped them into the other cooler.
“What do you want for lunch?”
Morris thought about it.
“Burritos.”
“We had burritos the other day.”
“Burgers.”
Bob nodded. It wasn’t his idea of a healthy lunch but at least it was different. They almost always had burritos.
“See you later.”
Bob took the portable coolers and walked out of the room. Morris smiled. He went immediately to the computer. His thumb stomped down on the space bar, waking the computer from its digital dreams. Morris stretched, cracked his knuckles, and focused. It would take all of his concentration to master the seventh level of Tetris.
Martin continued to talk Esteban’s ear off. Something about building a hotel near Mazatlán. Something about a swimming pool that had no edge so you thought you were in the ocean. Esteban didn’t know what an edgeless swimming pool was and he didn’t really care. His mind kept returning to the blow job administered by Lupe last night. God, could that girl suck. Martin talked about Mazatlán making a comeback. The largest shrimp port in North America was being rediscovered as a tourist mecca by thousands of drunk, topless college kids. Esteban was getting annoyed; he hadn’t come this far to go to Mazatlán and open a fucking resort. Try building something in Mexico? The corruption alone would kill you. Yet Martin yammered on about keeping liquidity overseas, numbered offshore accounts in Barbados, and the relative value of real estate in Costa Rica. It was all about leaving the country. Esteban had killed, literally, to come here, so why the fuck would he want to leave?
He perked up when he saw Bob loading the coolers in the back of the black VW Golf with the United Pathology logo on the side. Esteban noticed another sign, one that said Human Blood in the window of the little car. Also, Driver Carries No Cash on the door. Human blood? What the fuck did they do with that? Martin realized that something was happening.
“That our guy?”
Esteban nodded and started the engine. He watched as Bob climbed into the car and started it up. When Bob turned out of the driveway and drove off down the street, Esteban followed. It was like the old days.
He still knew how to do it. It was easy enough. Esteban remembered when he was first starting out, they’d rear-end a tasty-looking car, usually with a single female inside, then they’d jump out acting all concerned and before anyone knew what hit them, both cars would be gone. A little body work on the stolen car’s bumper, a fresh coat of paint, you’d have a new car. Let the cops scour the countryside for that red BMW with a dent. He had a black Beemer without a scratch for sale. Those stolen cars turned out to be seed money for all kinds of things: marijuana, heroin, prostitutes, cheap weapons from Brazil and Italy. Esteban had built an empire off those early carjackings. And, being a smart businessman, he kept on dealing in stolen cars. Only now they chopped them up for parts, the parts being more valuable than the whole car. It was a good business. His “core profit center” or something. That’s what Martin called it.
Bob turned up the radio. Normally he listened to an alternative-rock station, but today he was feeling a little out of sorts. He switched over to an R&B oldies station and let the Reverend Al Green speak to him. Smooth, soulful, reassuring. Life has its ups and downs. That’s life. Love is sweet and bitter, pain and pleasure in equal parts. That is just the way it is, and at the end of the day, it’s all good. Bob understood the truth that Reverend Green was speaking. Intellectually he could grasp it, deal with it. But his guts were churning. Not with anger or hatred or that nauseating feeling you get when you’ve been betrayed. It was something else. Disappointment.
He was disappointed in Maura. Bob had hoped that she was, for want of a better word, the one. The girl that he would marry and have kids with. He knew it was old-fashioned, but Bob really wanted the domestic life that had eluded him since he was nine years old and his parents bickered, and argued, and fought, and finally divorced. He wanted the picket fence, the two kids, the station wagon, and the dog.
Marvin Gaye came on the radio and did his best to infuse Bob with a little optimism. His spirits lifted. “Sexual healing.” There was an idea. A prescription. A course of therapy that Bob could get behind. Because, despite his disappointment, and despite the utter drag of having to split up possessions and move, this was starting to feel like a step in the right direction. An opportunity. A good thing.
A woman in the street caught Bob’s eye. She had blond hair stuck up in a ponytail, green capri pants, a white shirt, and black sandals with orangey red toenails. She was slim but not skinny, not a creepy stick; she was nicely proportioned. Would Bob miss those huge heaving tits of Maura’s? Yeah. But, hey, man, life goes on. You can’t spend your time pining for someone who doesn’t want you. The woman in the green capri pants was looking pretty fucking sweet. Sweet enough to distract him momentarily from his quest for a voluptuous Latina.
Bob was still musing about the blonde when his car suddenly lurched violently. He’d been hit.
“Fuck!”
Bob looked in the rearview mirror and saw two big Mexican-looking dudes climb out of a new Mercedes sedan.
Bob turned on his hazard blinker thing and got out. One of the Mexicans, a big one with dark eyes and what looked like a toupee, came up to him, concerned.
“Señor? Are you okay?”
Martin didn’t like driving Esteban’s Mercedes. The thought that the touch of a switch, or in the case of an attempted car theft, the nontouch of a switch, could send a sharpened stainless steel shaft right up his ass was just too much. It gave Martin the creeps. It wasn’t just unnerving, it was barbaric and unnecessary. Still, when Esteban told him to get behind the wheel and keep the engine running, Martin didn’t argue. He did what he was told.
Martin watched as Norberto and Esteban approached the poor fucker in the delivery car. The two men feigned concern for about a heatbeat, then… Norberto clobbered the guy. Whacked him upside the head with something hard. The guy hit the ground like a big bag of shit. Esteban and Norberto scooped him up and threw him in the trunk of the delivery car. Norberto hopped in the car, Esteban came quickly around to the passenger side of the Benz, and away they went. The whole thing took about fifteen seconds.
Bob regained consciousness in the trunk of a car. A lump about the size of a Ping-Pong ball was swollen and throbbing just behind his ear. What the fuck had happened? One minute he’s talking to these guys and then… Bob remembered he’d been rear-ended. He’d obviously been hurt; maybe they were taking him to the hospital. Bob considered that, but it seemed far-fetched, weird even. You wouldn’t throw a hurt guy in the trunk. You’d call an ambulance or put him in the backseat or something. No, he probably wasn’t on his way to the hospital.