“What?”
“He left his arm with Carlos, man.”
Esteban stared at Norberto.
“Give him the shot.”
Amado woke up. His arm, or more precisely the spot where his arm used to be, was throbbing. His eyes focused on the ceiling. Cottage cheese with specks of glittering gold. A lamp on the bedside table cast a muted yellow glow around the room. Amado twisted his neck and saw that the chest of drawers had been draped with a sheet and was lined with stainless steel doctor tools. Amado noticed that an IV drip had been attached to his arm. He heard something in the next room and croaked a sound out of his mouth.
The door swung open and a young black man entered.
“You’re up? How ya feeling?”
Amado tried to say something. He croaked again.
“Hang on. I know what you need.”
The young man brought a cup with a flexi-straw up to Amado’s mouth.
“The anesthetic can really dry you out. Go ahead. Drink it.”
Amado sucked on the straw. He was disappointed when cool water entered his mouth and trickled down his dried-out throat. The young man looked hopeful.
“Now how are you feeling?”
Amado nodded. He tried to speak.
“Malo.”
The young man nodded.
“I’ll give you something for the pain. But you’re going to have to rest for a few days. You move around too much that arm’s gonna open up. Trust me, that won’t be good.”
Amado nodded as the young man loaded something into some kind of needle and shot it into the IV drip.
“¿Dónde?”
The young man smiled at him.
“My Spanish is really bad. You’ll feel better soon.”
And before he could respond, Amado was out.
Seven
DON DIDN’T LIKE beer. He liked wine. Good wine. He couldn’t stand the stuff that passed for chardonnay at The Roost. That’s where his partner and the other LAPD detectives liked to go to drink beer and watch sports on TV. Don wanted to go. He enjoyed spending time with his friends and colleagues. He even liked the dim little bar with gnawed booths and sawdust on the floor. But that cheap shit they called wine gave him a headache. One glass and a little pinprick of pain would materialize right behind his left eye. Two glasses and the pinprick would grow to a dull throb and he’d feel slightly nauseous. Three glasses would guarantee a hangover so toxic that Don would consider taking his gun and blowing his brains out. So Don went to the fancy wine bar nestled among the skyscrapers in the financial district downtown.
He liked the bartender, a fresh-faced kid just out of college with a degree in enology. The kid referred to the bar as an enoteca — a wine library. Maybe he was pretentious or just overeducated, but the kid knew his grape juice. Don liked that. It made getting lit seem like an intellectual pursuit. What he didn’t like was the clientele. The wine bar was crammed to the rafters after work. Young men and women, lawyers and businesspeople, all smartly dressed in their Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor suits, schmoozing each other. Talking about cell phones and BMWs, personal trainers and the stock market.
Don didn’t fit in with this crowd, but he didn’t stand out either. His face had taken a few punches in its youth, but the misshapen nose added a blast of rogue beauty to his handsome, angular features. He was solidly built with a stocky, muscular body underneath his off-the-rack brown suits and his Fantastic Sam haircut. In fact, without the gun tucked into the back of his pants, Don could easily be mistaken for a salesman or a community college math teacher.
Don watched as the young and well-heeled passed out business cards and tried to make deals. He glanced over at the bartender.
“When I was their age I was trying to get laid. Now all they want is cash.”
The bartender nodded.
“Money is the new god.”
Don raised his glass.
“I prefer the old ones. Here’s to Bacchus.”
Don drank.
“You want to try the same wine, another year?”
“Is it a better year?”
The bartender smiled.
“You tell me.”
He poured a taste into a fresh glass. Don swirled the wine and gave it an expert sip, lightly sucking air across his tongue as the wine rolled around inside his mouth. Finally he swallowed.
“Currants. Currants and figs.”
The bartender smiled.
“I thought you’d like it.”
He filled Don’s glass, then went off to take more orders, leaving Don to contemplate his drink. Don was a compulsive people watcher, an eavesdropper more out of professional habit than anything else. On a normal night he would listen to the chatter, easily discerning the give-and-take of games commencing and ending, men and women dancing the mating dance, human nature falling into predictable patterns. But tonight he tuned them out. Tonight he was preoccupied. He’d had quite a day.
It started out normal. Shower, shave, shit. Head to Betty’s for two eggs, toast, and coffee. Read the sports page. The Dodgers were in spring training, they still needed left-handed hitting. Life as we know it. Then it went straight to the crapper. Detective Lee, the fat Chinese guy from Homicide, called him and told him to get his ass over to a crime scene.
It was a generic enough crime scene. How many times had he seen a body in a garage? Twenty? Thirty? If they weren’t in a Dumpster or the bushes they were almost certain to be in the garage. And this was a double homicide, or so it seemed. One identified body and one unidentified arm. Don was sure the rest of the body would turn up somewhere sooner or later. Look in the Dumpsters nearby, was what he told the unies standing around the scene. The Dumpsters and the bushes.
But that was all pretty mundane. The thing that preoccupied Don was that the one identifiable victim was Carlos Vila. Don had spent the better part of the last two years working in the LAPD’s Criminal Intelligence Division trying to build a case against the Mexican mafia. His investigations had begun to focus on Esteban Sola, leader of a violent faction of mobsters out of Juarez. Carlos had been Don’s informant. Now Carlos was toast and Don had to tie Esteban Sola to Carlos’s murder or he was fucked. Two years of work and no conviction, that wouldn’t look too good on his record. Don made a mental note to talk to one of the local feds about making a RICO case against Esteban.
The bartender came back.
“Do you want another? Or would you like to try the Saint-Estephe?”
“Take me to France.”
Don knew that at eighteen dollars a glass he was running up a bill he couldn’t afford, but what the hell. The bartender popped the cork and poured a small taste for Don. He swirled the wine, watching the light glint through the deep red. He inhaled. The wine smelled of earth and flint and melons. Don let the wine hit his tongue. It made him smile.
Bob lay in bed. Maura came in from the shower and looked at him.
“You’re still awake?”
“Can’t sleep.”
Maura threw the towel on a chair and stood in front of him, naked and defiant.
“If you think I’m going to fuck you now — ”
Bob tried to interrupt her. He knew where this was going.
“No. No. I — ”
She cut him off.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Try harder.”
She climbed into bed, her back to him.
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
Maura rolled over and looked at him.
“Honestly?”
This was maybe more than Bob had bargained for.
“Sure.”
“I love you, Bob. I really do.”
“Then what is it? We haven’t made love in over a month.”