What a fucking clusterfuck!
I literally dodged a few bullets as I made a beeline for my Harley. I think I surprised a beaner kid who was being just as yellow as me, hiding away from the main action inside the warehouse. Luckily his rounds went wild, and I plugged him with one of my last two Springfield rounds. He went down holding his stomach like a guy uttering a Wilhelm Scream. All dramatic, but, ultimately, dead.
I was off almost before I pushed the engine button, my boots searching for the foot pegs. I’d kept my leather chaps on before sneaking inside the warehouse, but now I didn’t have time to slap on my lid or goggles. I just thrashed it out of there.
It was kind of embarrassing that killing the baby gangster was my main claim to fame in that botched hit. I should’ve eyeballed the scenario a lot better than I did beforehand. I only saw El Ba?os’ red Mustang out front. If I had bothered going around the corner of the warehouse, I would’ve seen more vehicles.
It was a basic mistake that had almost cost me my life. Ortelio Jones, my boss, was going to be unbelievably tweaked, especially if it came out that that nancy-boy Santiago Slayer had done the deed. And why had I never heard of Slayer? Because he’d been acting in a Mexican telenovela the whole time? And I’d only managed to put down that kid and probably a couple more enforcers inside the warehouse. I hadn’t even seen El Ba?o.
Regardless, word of my failure was probably already winging its way to Ortelio Jones, just as surely as Santiago Slayer’s bullets were winging their way toward El Ba?o’s head. It was only a matter of time before Jones ordered me back inside the borders of New Mexico, my danger zone. Jones knew I couldn’t go back inside those borders. He’d been hinting that he was holding it over my head, too. Just little things, you know the unfunny jokes cartel kingpins make.
Things like, “Ha ha, abogado. Maybe you’d enjoy vacationing in the Land of Enchantment.” “Very good one, abogado. Too bad you’ll never be able to see the Carlsbad Caverns again.” And “next time you screw up, you’re getting a one-way ticket to the Billy the Kid Museum.”
Regardless of my desire never to set foot in the Billy the Kid Museum in the first fucking place, I knew that Jones was good for his word. He’d just followed a diligent reporter who posted updates on him, tracked her like a hound. She knew Jones was getting close to her hideout, and kept tweeting her reports just the same. He shot her in the face, then used her phone to tweet the photos as a warning to her followers.
Maybe I wasn’t the best sicario in the world! After all, it wasn’t what I’d trained for, what I had degrees in. It wasn’t my dream job when I was a kid. I was a white guy—very white, according to the SPF level of my sunscreen, the bright ginger shade of my hair—operating in the dark underbelly of the Sinaloa cartel’s world. I thought I did pretty well for Jones. I’d racked up eleven high-profile kills since coming to work for him over a year ago. Not bad for someone whose hair blared out like a searchlight from a mile away, one reason I usually wore a slouch beanie in public.
I had a rental house off North Royal in Nogales, but I didn’t feel like going home. Someone was probably already waiting there for me. Jones wouldn’t see the finer points of how I’d buried the kid and those other brutes. He’d only see the fact that El Ba?o had gotten away—or, perhaps, been put down by a guy who looked like he should be singing “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” in South Lake Tahoe. I didn’t know which option was more humiliating.
I found myself hanging a north on the frontage road toward Tucson. Maybe I was going to my favorite watering hole, I don’t know. It wasn’t until I was almost to the bar that I realized I didn’t want to go in there, either. In case word had already spread—and it spread fast in these circles—I’d be the laughingstock of my favorite comfort place.
I kept going, eventually pulling over in the parking lot of Margie’s Corner Café, dark like a church at two in the morning. I wanted to look at my arm wound. I had no mirror, but I did have a flashlight. I took off my leather jacket and went under Margie’s security light to look at it. It was my first stroke of luck that the bullet had grazed the arm, cut a channel through the leather and flesh before continuing on its way.