They had that yellow VW van, though, those pinches narcos. He liked that van. He was going to take it when he was done with them. He would shit in their mothers’ milk first. Then park their van beside the sea.
His ridiculous mother came into his mind. She had named him Benigno, a stupid peasant name he never forgave her for giving him. But her sayings, her dichos, came back to him sometimes. Her tone came into his voice when he didn’t want it. Usually advising a course of mayhem. She hadn’t survived as a trash picker by being soft. He shook his head and grimaced at the memory of that little leather-faced demon. He saw a flash of her striking a pit bull over the head with a pipe. Today, Mother’s voice said: Vengeance is the pleasure of God. Oh yes, he had heard that one before.
“Bueno, pues, Mama,” he said out loud. “I must be God, then.”
He descended.
He first saw that VW van at the prison.
Before Benigno got into the orphanage racket, marrying the widow Abigail in Tijuana and opening their house to street kids and abandoned waifs and attracting Baptist missionaries with their endless vanloads of food and clothes and toys and doughnuts—and cash—Benigno had been a guard at La Mesa. The penitentiary, that stink hole east of town. He’d been hired because he was good with guns and was meaner than any inmate. He met Abigail when she brought the pinches gringos there. Translating Bible stories for the scumbags inside. But she was just what he liked—a bustling fat woman with a big bottom. And a car.
“You cook?” he asked her. “I know you drive.”
It was his idea of courtship.
He shacked up with her shortly after that. The Christians gave him a Bible and a cross he wore. He drank only when they weren’t around. They feared him—he was smaller than the blond gringas with their folk guitars, but his red eyes and grimace repelled them like a force field. He sometimes sat outside the little house and listened to them all shrieking their hymns, and he’d smoke and watch the street. You couldn’t own guns in Mexico, but he was a guard, and to hell with them all. He kept a Glock in the back of his pants, and if anyone did not return his smile, he thought: I know what you would look like with your brains on the street, chingado. Those were good afternoons. Plus doughnuts.
The yellow van had appeared at the prison in the midst of the uproar surrounding the capture of El Surfo. Shit, Benigno thought now. He had to spit every time he heard that stupid name: El Surfo. Jesus Christ, they had enough Mexican narcos and sicarios, but this red-haired asshole was raised in California and had come down here chopping heads. Big celebrity. American accent. Calling himself the Surfer.
Benigno liked walking guard duty on the wall. Nobody in his right mind went down into the yard or into the cell complexes. It was a den of monsters. There was nothing like it outside of Mexico. Gangsters with La-Z-Boy loungers and big-screen TVs. Transvestite hookers and children. Women washing laundry and doing chores and marrying and cooking and working as whores. Booths selling tacos and knives, and babies playing in the dirt. Smoke. Screams. Music. Barbers. They had their own little city in there, and the gangsters sliced up anybody they disliked. Guards got Christmas bonuses from the narcos. Life went on. Benigno stayed up above it—aside from the smell, it was all right. It was like watching TV.
Then that fat red-haired bastard was dragged in, wrapped in chains. Helicopters and TV news crews swarmed. He’d grinned as he was led in. Smug. Looking around like a big movie star. His chained hands out in front, his big body laid back against the cops. He started to laugh. “?Me vale madre!” he called.
Benigno watched from atop his wall and held his ancient M1 to his chest and hoped for a chance to drill him through one of his eyes. He didn’t care if they sold drugs, if they chopped off heads. He hated it that they were lazy and arrogant. These narcos thought they were tough. He, Benigno, was the one they should have feared. If the government gave him enough guns and bullets, he’d have every one of those fools cold and facedown in the street.
Later, when El Surfo strode around the crowded yard with his bodyguards and hookers and fans and, sometimes, gringo journalists, Benigno tracked him, keeping his melon head in the sights.
Who had bright yellow VW vans in Tijuana but surfers? Benigno understood that van was Surfo’s. It was his trademark. That’s why it was painted so brightly. Everybody knew who was in it, even if the windows were black. But nobody dared take a shot. They had seen pictures of skinned enemies, their terrifying grinning red skulls left on street corners.
Surfo’s associates came every day as a form of narco theater. Showing off. Parking that famous VW in the lot.