Don was annoyed. In the old days people had real vices. You’re looking for a guy who likes to gamble, you find him at the track or one of those card rooms in Commerce. A guy likes to drink, you find him at his local bar. A guy’s a sex addict, you find him in bed. This guy Bob, what was his vice? Surfing the Internet? What was that? Don pondered the possibilities. He could canvass all the cyber cafés in Los Angeles, or look for some scraggly guy in a park typing into a laptop. Or he could do what he did. He went to UCLA to see if Bob had made his delivery there.
The first thing Don noticed when he entered the lab was a funky smell. It was a mix of chemical preservatives, stomach acids, and rotting flesh that assaulted his nostrils and made him gag. He walked past a group of four med students who were busy performing an autopsy on what looked to be a sixty-year-old Caucasian female. Don had seen his fair share of guts and corpses, but they were always in context. There was something about the detached way the students were working that made him feel slightly queasy.
One of the students scooped the intestines up and over.
“Are you going Friday night?”
“Where?”
“Party at Jill’s apartment.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“You are now.”
“What’s the purple thing?”
“That’s the liver, right there.”
“Why does it look all splotchy?”
“Hard to say; let’s cut a sample.”
Don walked to the back of the lab and found a teaching assistant filing some papers. Don identified himself.
The car was parked in front of a tattoo parlor in Hollywood. Bob watched as Esteban and Amado went in. Bob turned to Norberto.
“Maybe I’ll get a tattoo.”
Norberto smiled at Bob.
“Yeah, ese, get the fuckin’ Virgin of Guadalupe inked on your chest.”
“I was thinking maybe something, I don’t know, something tough.”
“Nothing’s tougher than a virgin, man.”
Norberto broke up laughing. Bob smiled, but he was deep in thought. Maybe like a tiger or a dragon or something on his arm. Then again, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“We’re not going to kill him, are we?”
“No, man. Nobody fucks up, nobody dies.” Suddenly the car lurched as the weight in the trunk began to shift and stir.
“Looks like sleepyhead is waking up.”
Norberto took a bottle of water out of a paper bag and unscrewed the lid, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny vial. He quickly dumped the contents of the vial into the bottle of water and screwed the cap back on.
“What’s that?”
“Rohypnol.”
“What’s that do?”
“It knocks them out, man. Knocks them out and they don’t remember shit when they wake up.”
Esteban stuck his head out of the tattoo parlor door and signaled for them to come in.
Bob was more than a little nervous when they went around to open the trunk.
“What if he tries to get away?”
“Relax, man, he won’t even know his name.”
Norberto popped the trunk. Inside, the stocky guy in the track suit lay curled up and disoriented. He blinked up at Norberto and flinched, expecting to get hit again. Norberto spoke to him in a soothing voice.
“It’s cool, man. You’re all right. You must be thirsty. Here, have some water.”
The guy just nodded blankly and took the water from Norberto. He drained it in a few gluttonous gulps.
“Can you get up? Do you need some help?”
The guy tried, but his legs must’ve been asleep or something. Bob and Norberto each grabbed an arm and hoisted the guy out of the trunk. The guy looked at Bob.
“Thanks.”
“No problem, man. Feel like getting a tattoo?”
The guy looked up at the garish designs painted on the tattoo shop’s facade.
“A tattoo?”
Norberto patted the guy on the shoulder.
“Yeah, man, everybody’s got a fuckin’ tattoo now. It’s all the rage.”
Don was getting frustrated. Sure, the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. It was only a matter of time before he tracked Bob down. But right now, when he could be processing that arm, running the prints, beginning to piece together an indictment that could bring the Mexican mafia in southern California to its knees and make Don a law enforcement hero all in one fell swoop, right now Don was in the second act of a wild-goose chase, and it was starting to piss him off.
Don went over the checklist in his mind. He’d been to Bob’s place of employment, apartment, and girlfriend’s place of employment. Don smiled thinking about that. Who ever heard of a masturbation coach? Don had never given masturbation much thought. Sometimes he felt slightly, er, engorged, and just did it. It helped him fall asleep when he was stressed out. But he had to admit that the idea of a coach was exciting. Or maybe it was the idea of that particular coach. She was really attractive. He pulled her card out of his pocket and looked at it. Then he thought better of it. Maybe he just needed a girlfriend. Don put the card away.
Don hadn’t had a girlfriend in about a year. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if his friends weren’t always trying to set him up with some Amanda, Karen, or Dana. He’d just gotten into his work. With the exception of his enological pursuits, Don had done nothing but work. He had pored over every wiretap word by word, he had begun to learn Spanish, had gone through the income tax returns like an auditor, studied phone bills; thousands of tiny details about Esteban had been scrutinized. To clear his head, to keep his sanity, Don had spent nearly every night drinking a bottle of good wine. Drinking alone in that fancy wine bar. Letting the wine wash the minutiae away in broad burgundy strokes.
Don sat in his car, stuck in traffic. This was annoying. Why did Bob have to break up with his girlfriend today? Why couldn’t he just do his job? Don was doing his. He wasn’t mooning over some lost love somewhere. He considered arresting Bob for obstruction, not that the DA could ever make it stick, but just to fuck with him. Let him stew in jail for a few days. Run him around a little, just like he was running Don around now.
Don had to laugh at himself. He was not normally a vindictive person. He didn’t usually get emotional about the small glitches that occur in any investigation. But Don had to admit that he was growing tired of his obsession. It had gotten to him. Ground him down. That’s why he was so anxious to find Bob and get that arm over to Processing.
Bob and Norberto led the stocky guy into the tattoo parlor. The drugs were kicking in fast, the guy’s legs functioning sporadically and then not at all. Bob shifted his grip.
“Heavy fucker.”
Norberto agreed.
“Gringos eat too much, man. They eat the fuckin’ world.”
After they went through the front door a bearded man in a tattered leather motorcycle jacket and ripped jeans flipped the sign around so it read CLOSED and locked the door behind them. When the biker guy walked he produced a distinct rhythm, his biker boots clomp-clomping as a long wallet chain ka-chinged against his leg. Bob was impressed, not so much with the place but with himself. Here I am in a real tattoo parlor with a real Hell’s Angel — looking tattoo artist. Cool.
The tattoo artist looked at Larga.
“This the guy?”
Esteban nodded.
“He looks fucked-up, man.”
Norberto answered this one.
“He is, man, trust me.”