Vlad didn't answer.
Pinto slouched against Danny Duck, a gristly, hollow-eyed speed freak in jeans and a T-shirt, his face a skull, his hair in clumps. An irregular reddish purple scar ran from his left ear, across his cheek, and down his neck-a souvenir of a meth explosion years earlier. Pinto had been cooking up a batch in his uncle's storage shed, but he was in a hurry, as usual, and added the anhydrous ammonia too quickly. Rookie mistake. He was twenty-seven now, and a pretty good cooker when he wanted to be, but he preferred sales. He had the knack, and he got all the samples he wanted. His foot wouldn't stop tapping. No idea what the tune was, either. He saw Arturo watching him. "You know me, man. I'm good for it."
"Sure… we know you, Pinto. You are the man who is late."
Pinto laughed too loudly.
Vlad stared at the brightly colored cartoon characters on the walls: mama rabbits feeding lettuce sandwiches to their bunnies, Mr. and Mrs. Quack-Quack at the swimming hole with their ducklings. He did a slow turn; a tall, pale man wearing thrift-store pants and a striped short-sleeved shirt. His face was sharp and angular, his wispy hair the color of wet straw. His eyes reminded Pinto of the Canadian glaciers in the bottled-water ads on TV, clean and blue and frozen.
The three of them were inside the Down the Bunny Hole ride at the Kids Unlimited Karnival, located for the next two weeks in the north parking lot of the Yorba Linda Mall. The carnival wasn't open for another two hours. Pinto was doing regular maintenance on the rides. He had already finished adjusting Mrs. Piggly Wiggly's Tunnel of Fun, and rewired Dr. Frog's Lily Pond Party, which still gave off sparks, lights flickering. The rides were falling apart, reeking of spilled cola and orange drinks, and dangerously loud, the insulation worn away-to compensate, the management turned up the happy-music sound track to the maximum. Pinto heard "I Am a Friendly Fuzzy Bunny" in his nightmares, woke up wanting to kill the asshole who wrote that song.
"How did you know I was here?" asked Pinto. "I only got this job a couple days ago."
"Your girlfriend told us," said Arturo, his full lips barely moving.
"You talked to Lily?"
Arturo shrugged. "It was unavoidable."
Pinto let that one slide. "She's not supposed to answer the door when I'm not home."
"I think we forgot to knock," said Arturo.
"This is a pretty picture…" It was the first thing Vlad had said since they slipped inside, his voice soft and lightly inflected. He pointed at Harvey Hare spray-painted on the ceiling, a bright blue Harvey with a cowboy hat and chaps, a carrot in his holster. "Pinto, do you know the artist who painted it?"
"Ah… no, man."
Arturo patted the pockets of his jacket, found a carob power-protein bar. He sat there listening to Vlad sing along to the piped-in music. Vlad liked to sing with the commercials and kids' songs on Radio Disney. They sometimes sat in their car for hours, Vlad singing while Arturo squeezed the hand-grip exerciser he kept under the front seat, right next to the Red Devil-brand lye. It had to be Red Devil. Not just because it was the best-lye was lye, after all-but because Arturo had started out with Red Devil a long time ago, and it had never let him down.
Vlad finished the last verse of "I Am a Friendly Fuzzy Bunny." He had a good voice, too, high and clear. "How wonderful to work in such a beautiful place," he said to Pinto.
"Yeah? Then you must think having brain cancer is wonderful." Pinto spit on the floor. "Like the bumper sticker says, 'I'd rather be tweaking.' " Think it, do it-he pulled a power hitter out of his jeans, gave it a twist, grinding the flaked methedrine inside, then slipped the plastic torpedo into his right nostril. First the right, then the left. He felt the top of his head lift, the chill running down his brain stem. He glared at Arturo. "You and Vlad didn't have to bother coming around this morning. It's fucking insulting."
"Is it?"
Pinto hated when Arturo used that tone. A Yuppie beaner and the man from Transylvania giving him shit, hassling Lily… He pushed back his hair, hit both nostrils again, heart racing. "Look… Arturo, I fronted some weight to this guy runs a landscaping business. Guy's got all kinds of clients on his route who like a taste, and don't mind paying top dollar for curb delivery. Mr. Greenthumb is supposed to come by my place tonight and pay me. I was going to call you this afternoon, tell you not to worry about your money."
"We're not worried." Arturo finished the protein bar, then swallowed three B12 capsules and a fat blocker, washed them all down with a couple swallows of bottled water. He took his pulse, then pulled a PDA from his jacket, entered in the data.
Arturo took thirty-eight vitamin and mineral supplements daily, monitored his bowel movements, and worked out every morning. Only five-eight, he weighed a brick-solid 201 pounds, about the same weight as Vlad, who was at least six-three and never exercised. Sometimes Vlad accompanied him to the gym, watching as Arturo went through his bench-press routine, not saying a word; then, when Arturo would max out around 410 pounds, Vlad would lie down and, without even a warm-up, crank out fifteen or twenty reps. It was unreal. Vlad wasn't on the juice, either; Arturo had never seen him take drugs of any kind.
Arturo's PDA beeped, alerted him to a new e-mail. He tapped the password, checked his mail, his face getting red. "Quentin's having trouble with the batch," he told Vlad, then glared at Pinto. "We cut too much slack; everyone tries to play us."
"Don't put me in that category, man," said Pinto. "You'll get your ten thousand-"
"You don't owe us any money," said Arturo. "It's been taken care of."
Pinto looked from one to the other. His sinuses dripped the bitter chemical into his mouth. He loved that taste.
"We hauled away your Mustang, so now we're even," explained Arturo. "Left another quarter pound of frost with the little woman just to show your credit's A-one again."
"You can't have my-"
"It's not yours anymore. We just came by to have you sign over the pink slip."
Pinto felt the scar tissue on his neck get warm. "That's a 1967 convertible. The four-barrel. Took me over three years to restore it. It's cherry." His scars were even warmer now. "Got to be worth at least twenty thousand… maybe twenty-five, and I wouldn't sell it for thirty. I love that fucking car."
Arturo unfolded the pink slip.
"I ain't signing that," said Pinto. "Fuck the both of you."
Lounging on Gloria Goose, Arturo sucked the last bits of protein bar from his eyeteeth.
Vlad reached under his shirt, pulled a black pistol out from the waistband of his pants.
"Hey… no, no." Pinto backed up, tripped over Danny Duck, and fell onto the floor.
Vlad squirted the right leg of Pinto's jeans, twirled the pistol around his index finger, and slipped it back into his waistband.
Pinto sat up, laughing. "A water pistol? Shit, Vlad, who knew you had a sense of humor?" He looked at Arturo. "So you were just fucking with me about the Mustang?"
Arturo ignited a wooden match with a flick of his thumbnail, tossed it at Pinto. His leg flared with a bright blue flame.
Pinto squealed, beat out the flame with his hands. "That ain't cool."
Vlad quick-drew the squirt gun, pumped a couple of blasts of gasoline into Pinto's chest.
Arturo tossed another match but missed. His next two matches were batted aside by Pinto, but the fourth match set his chest on fire, singed his chin before he put it out.
Pinto backed up, eyes wide. He tried to dodge, but Vlad was good with the squirt gun, hitting him in the leg, the crotch, and even his scalp with the cold gasoline.
Arturo kept up a steady rain of burning matches, he and Vlad working in tandem, herding Pinto from one end of the room to the other. Pinto twisted and ducked around the bright plastic animal cars, but no matter what he did, he kept blazing up. The back of one hand caught fire, and when he tried to wave it out, he just made it worse. The stink of burning hair followed every move he made, and it was like the meth explosion that had scarred him happening all over again-the burn, the smell, the fear.