Javier Guiterrez jumped from sleep. An adrenaline rush pulled him from dreamland and fuzzy headed, he peeled his ears. He could not be sure what sound had roused him from slumber, but he’d been dreaming about breaking beer bottles with rocks. As a child, this had been a favorite past-time of his. There had been little else for anyone, grown or child, to do in the little border town of Madera, Mexico.
Were those footsteps he heard, crunching on broken glass? Cursing and mostly naked, Javier rolled out of bed and started lacing up his heavy work boots. His penis kept trying to flop out of the hole in the front of his boxer shorts, but so what? Whoever had the cojones to break into his house could have their ass broken while staring down the barrel of Javier’s formidable Latin chorizo.
He made a furtive trek down the dark hallway with long, quiet strides. Images of some gringo putting his filthy, leche colored manos on Javier’s 35” plasma screen television raped his brain. He had sweat and bled to buy that television. Pinche bandidos. They would get a nice surprise.
Olivdé me pistola
Shit. He had, hadn’t he? The .44 with the long barrel lingered in the drawer beside his bed. Hell with it. His fists worked very well. He would tackle the puto and beat him silly, then get his gun and shoot the bastard in the face a few times. And if there were more than one? No. There would not be. Javier’s faith in God was strong, and he knew the Christo would not put any test before Javier that he could not handle. He worked too hard, and God respected that.
No matter. The sounds of burglary--
No. Not burglary. Pure devastation.
The criminal bastard busied himself with breaking Javier’s things, evidenced by crashing sounds of some blunt object against glass, his television, and Javier heard the unmistakable spray of another person pissing.
“You stupid shit,” a voice said. Javier recognized it. “Cut that out. That’s evidence. They got DNA testing now and there’s plenty of that in your piss.” The speaker had to be one of the men from the crew he had just used to finish the roof on the house of the Fire Inspector. What was that man’s name?
The light came on.
“Looks like we got us a guest,” Bob Aames said. Javier could see him now, a tall Caucasian man almost tan enough to be burnt sierra, and another guero holding his diminutive pita in his right hand. The pita leaked dregs of urine on the carpet.
“Ben,” said Aames.
Javier felt a hard pressure on the base of his spine, where the stem joins the neck, and a muscle back there did a twitching dance; something exploded inside Javier’s head. The lights went out.
2
“C’mon, Javier. Wake up. No se meto conmigo, motherfucker.”
Javier began slowly coming around. Aames gave him a light slap across the face to help the process along. Javier jerked his head to one side, trying to get away from that heavy, strong slap. He coughed, trying to speak. “Por que? Quíen coño te crees que eres? Me escupa en sus pinche cochinos!”
Aames grunted, punching Javier in the left eye. Javier first saw the word LUCK coming toward him, then heard a sound in his head like chewing crackers, but felt almost nothing.
“Quit speakin’ that fucken mud tongue,” Aames said. “You know English.”
“Maybe he don’t habla,” the man with the pissy little pita said.
“Oh, he fucken hablas.”
Javier began to pray in his mother tongue. He did not care about his things any longer. He petitioned the Mother and the Saints that he may keep his life. He would replace all the things these low men were breaking. Things did not matter, only life mattered.
“Quit it,” pissy pita man said. “God don’t save people without a green card.”
“That’s right,” Aames said. “No hay tarjeta verde, no Hay-Zeus.”
Javier could see the one named Ben standing with his arms crossed, his feet touching Javier’s bare toes. The stern giant stood still and silent, a towering mountain of muscle and sinew. Javier could not look at him. Instead, he regarded Aames.
“You ate dinner here, Bob,” Javier said. “Somos fumamos mucho mota juntos, mi amigo.” Javier said this in Spanish because he knew that Aames could also speak what the redneck bastard had only moments ago called a ‘mud tongue’. Javier did not know if these men with him enjoyed a good loco smoke. He only wanted to remind the man that they had enjoyed one another’s company.
“You ever read Machiavelli, Javier?” Aames asked. Ben chuffed, and smiled.
“No. Who is that?”
“Yeah, boss, who’s Makavelli?” Jack asked. “I thought that was a Tupac record.”
“Jack, shut the fuck up,” Aames said.
“Ye of no education,” Ben said.
“You know, I didn’t think you had,” Aames said to Javier. “Had you, you’d have been a bit more selective in choosing employees.”
“What?” Javier said. “We were friends.”
“Beware of flatterers,” Aames said. Turning to Ben, he made a slicing motion with his right arm.
What did that mean? Were they going to cut Javier’s throat? “You don’t have to kill me,” Javier told them, knowing it would probably do no good.
Ben advanced holding a very large serrated cuchillo. Jack began to laugh, and Javier prayed, hoping his prayers were louder than the fat man’s peals of laughter.
3
Aames leaned down and whapped Javier upside the head. Indignation came to Javier first. Damn this angry white man. Why did he have to be cruel? What was this horrible murder going to solve? Ben busied himself with wrapping Javier’s legs to the thigh in duct tape and the air reeked of gasoline. Jack carried a red container, still half full of the flammable liquid the gordo had just finished pouring in the living room, and down the hallway.
“Should I do the sink?” Jack asked.
Without taking his eyes off Javier, Aames flapped a hand at Jack. Damn this angry white man--all these angry white men.
Ben finished his work with a final yank on the roll of tape; the motion made a sound like the ocean being ripped in half, and finished the trussing with an efficient spin around Javier’s ropy thighs. Aames reached into his pocket. He removed a four-inch steel lock-blade. Showing the blade with a wrist flick that made the action stiletto fast, he asked Javier, “You believe this thing is legal?
“It is. Not as long as my palm is wide.” Aames held the blade along the length of his palm to demonstrate. The fat child of a weapon would cut flesh.
“Ben, get his legs up. Jack. You found everything I can sell?”
Jack looked unsure.
“Well, git at.”
Jack went down the hall, throwing the gas can into the living room as he walked. It bounced off the carpet on one plastic corner somersaulting back over spout.
“Noisy ass,” Aames said.
“Please.” Javier said. “Do not do this.”
Ben snaked a slab of arm around Javier’s gray one-leg. “He ain’t too proud to beg,” Ben said.
“Ah, well, they never are.” Aames bent at the knee, approaching Javier’s bound legs with the knife.
Javier reared his legs back, hard enough to bend the strong tape, and he used his well-conditioned thigh muscles, lean and wide from carrying immense weight up ladders for hours a day, to try and rip free of his bonds. Ben came with him, stepping back with one leg and never letting go with his impossible arm, he planted his immense boot squarely into Javier’s crotch. The whole works, perineum to penis were squished into Javier’s coccyx, and there was a pop! that Javier feared more than felt, so he did not scream. He began to choke.
A fire licked cold along the back of his ankles. There was a pressure against his tendons, faint and rapid, followed by a slick wash of warmth--sangre--wetting its way underneath the tape. But that didn’t matter. The tape was just a tool. A means to an end. Javier knew the face of death approaching. He had seen it enough in Mexico. No more outs showed themselves; one had to have feet to walk.
“Adios, coyote,” Aames said. Javier accepted the gift of his clarity, a clarity seen best behind the eyes and wearing the shroud of El Dios de la Muerte. Jack flicked the chrome wheel of a Zippo, holding it close to Javier’s closed eyes and Javier, sick of seeing the Grim Reaper’s ugly visage, opened his eyes and glared defiantly at the flame.
“You can get off his balls now,” Aames said to Ben. “He ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Aames sighed.
“All right, Jackie, light ‘em up,” he said.
