Finnegan's week

CHAPTER 23

The thing was, nobody would do a serious investigation into the death of a Mexican citizen on Mexican soil, Jules was certain of that. He was not going to have to face federal officers, or San Diego police, or even that busybody bitch from the District Attorney’s Office. It would just play itself out and pass from his life. A pity that the Mexican kids had been contaminated, but there was nothing he could do about it. Everything would work out just fine.

Sitting in the hot tub, Jules took a sip of Scotch and for a brief instant convinced himself that things simply couldn’t go wrong. Except that there were several layers to the rotting onion that Shelby Pate could drop into his soup. In the first place, if Southbay Agricultural Supply was brought into it, Jules was sure that Burl Ralston would panic and confess. For an agreement to testify, the authorities might give immunity to the old bastard. They might even grant immunity to the idiot truckers who caused this whole misery. That, in order to convict a real environmental threat: the owner of Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. Jules could become a sacrificial lamb to the green administration of Clinton-Gore: a prosperous and greedy waste hauler who illegally manifested hazardous waste that ended up killing a child of the Third World. Good press for the new administration.

Jules thought about offering Shelby Pate $10,000, more than that imbecile had ever seen in his miserable lowlife existence. Jules might even raise it to $20,000 if he could be guaranteed that both Durazo and Pate would maintain their silence. But what if they turned over the manifest to Jules only to blab to the authorities at a later time? Burl Ralston would then be contacted and he’d spill his guts the first time a cop mentioned jail. If Burl Ralston had a fatal heart attack it would be very helpful to Jules’s predicament. If Shelby Pate and Abel Durazo died suddenly it would be a time to rejoice.

If Jules paid extortion money, what would be his assurance that six months down the line he wouldn’t get a visit from Pate and Durazo showing him a photocopy of the manifest? A little something they’d set aside for a rainy day. The fact was, Jules’s only real safety lay in the destruction of the manifest, Pate, and probably Durazo, in that order. There was no other way. How could he come this far, with his entire life about to be transformed, only to let it all be controlled and ultimately doomed by two morons?

Even though he had no experience whatsoever with acts of violence, Jules Temple felt certain that he could do what he had to do. They had forced this course of action. There was only one question left in his mind: How?

Abel and Shelby were working on their second drink, but still Soltero hadn’t arrived. The Bongo Room was a cut above the last bar they’d visited. At least this one had some bamboo paneling nailed to the walls, and some blinking colored lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was a similar stage and a similar long bar, and all too similar women sitting in booths and tables, not looking hungrily at gringos with bucks, only looking shabby and tired.

So much so that Shelby turned to Abel and said, “I think they feed downers to the babes around here. Or maybe they’re all shootin that Mexican tar heroin. Now that’s bad stuff. Me, I never even shot meth. I’m scared a needles.”

With that he leaned over and snorted what was left of a bindle of methamphetamine.

“Hey, Buey!” Abel said. “We got work to do!”

“I kin handle it, dude,” Shelby said. “Anyways, I think there’s somethin wrong with this cringe. I ain’t feelin a rush.”

But Abel knew that was a lie. The ox was twitchy. He kept looking around, twisting up his cocktail napkin, blinking, sniffling.

“Hey, baby!” Shelby yelled to the waitress. “Bring us two more mega shooters!”

After the tequilas arrived, a man slid into the seat beside Abel and said, “I am buying your tequilas, please.”

“What’re you, a fag?” Shelby wanted to know.

The man smiled and spoke to Abel in Spanish. Shelby recognized one word that was uttered several times by both men: Soltero. Abel looked like he was getting mad, but the man raised both palms as if to say, “It’s not my fault.” Then he got up and left the saloon.

“What the fuck’s goin on?” Shelby demanded.

Abel said, “He say we see Soltero een one more hours at club by pasaje on other side of Revolutión. He say we see Soltero there.”

“Hope it’s better than this joint. One hour?”

“Ees okay. There good theengs to buy down below avenue. Many many shops down there. We go now and look at leather jacket. We stop dreenking tequila.”

Shelby said, “Know somethin, dude, when we git our money tonight, I might jist reach over and snatch that Soltero’s ponytail right off his skinny little head, that’s what I might do.”

Abel watched in dismay as the ox gulped the last tequila and reached inside his boot for his stash of meth. Abel Durazo was getting a very bad feeling and wanted to get outside pronto.

This time Nell and Bobbie were ready for them when they came out of the bar. Abel walked, Shelby weaved.

“He’s amped,” Nell said to Bobbie.

She and Bobbie were standing next to a donkey cart. The sad-eyed animal was painted black-and-white like a zebra, and gringo tourists wearing huge sombreros posed for photos while seated in the donkey cart.

“Where’s Fin?” Bobbie wondered aloud.

Bobbie looked worried, and that made Nell ask, “Do you two have something going or what?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Whaddaya think I mean?” Then Nell added, “Of course it’s none of my business except I hate to see a girl like you get all messed up with a guy like Fin.”

“A guy like Fin?” Bobbie said, just as he came outside, looking the wrong way.

Then Fin spotted Shelby reeling across Revolución, barely dodging traffic. Fin followed after them with Nell and Bobbie bringing up the rear.

Now that it was early evening young Americans were milling everywhere, stopping only long enough to buy more beer cans to toss from car windows. A dozen drunken kids were hanging from the patio of a restaurant directly over their heads, yelling, “Cool it, Pancho!” to a harried traffic cop on the corner.

“Let’s move outta the way,” Bobbie said, “before one a those dweebs hunks a bellyful on our heads.”

“Keep an eye on Pate and Durazo,” Fin said. “Something’s going down. A guy came in and talked to them.”

“Probably a pimp,” Nell said.

“I don’t think so,” Fin said. “The conversation was very …”

“Intense?” Bobbie asked.

“Right,” Fin said. “It was very intense.”

“They’re just shopping, for chrissake,” Nell said. “Intense.”

Since they now had more time to kill, Abel wanted to keep the ox out of bars. He’d never seen his partner so wild-looking, not even on the night when he’d kicked the biker senseless.

“We got lotsa time,” Shelby said. “Let’s go git our knobs jobbed!”

“We walk, Buey!” Abel said. “Joo are drunk already.”

“Me, drunk? Are you mental? I kin drink two quarts a that cheap tequila and not even feel it!”

“Too much speed,” Abel said.

“Naw, this ain’t even good cringe,” Shelby said. “I’m jist mellow.”

Abel said, “Le’s go see jacket, Buey. We go down to pasaje. Good down there.”

Shelby was getting twitchier. He was wrinkling his nose like a hungry rabbit. He jerked his head this way and that every time he spotted something that gleamed, sparkled, or shone. He was blinking and snapping his fingers. And he’d started sweating.

Shelby’s anxiety level climbed in relation to their descent down the steep concrete stairway into the narrow passageways below the avenue. Shops were jammed cheek by jowl in a rabbit warren of arcades. There they sold ponchos and sarapes and papier-mâché birds as big as a human being, and velvet paintings, jewelry, souvenirs, curios and leather goods galore. Shelby stopped for a moment and played with a dangling Bart Simpson puppet. Everywhere he looked there were Bart Simpson dolls and figurines. He was getting light-headed and staggered more.

An old Indian woman with a face like a walnut, all bundled inside a sarape with violent stripes, startled Shelby by clicking castanets in his face. She laughed at him toothlessly, and a small boy next to her shook some hissing red maracas at him, hissing like rattlesnakes. “Good price, meester,” the boy said, and Shelby feverishly wondered if the kid had ringworm.

“All the peoples own their shops.” Abel tried to talk to him, but the ox was getting dizzy and wasn’t listening.

He wanted to stop for some cringe, but Abel made him walk. Shelby was afraid to get left behind, and he started feeling a sliver of panic behind his ear somewhere. It was like a shivery cold blade, and he was breathing faster in huge gulps.

Everywhere there were piñatas, and puppets and cardboard dancing figures in the shapes of skeletons and witches and goblins.

“Guess they celebrate Halloween here, huh?” Shelby said, leaning against a block wall to steady himself, his Grateful Dead T-shirt damp and sticky.

Abel saw that the ox’s face was flushed and his pupils were dilated. “Tomorrow ees El Día de los Muertos,” he said. “Day of the Dead. For two days the dead peoples they come home.”

“Whaddaya mean come home?” The ox just couldn’t stop blinking and twitching. He didn’t like this voodoo shit. And he couldn’t get enough air down there.

“We tell them welcome home. We burn candle at the cemetery and we put many flower on the path to their house. We feex altar for them. Berry eemportant day.”

“I don’t wanna see no dead relatives,” Shelby said, looking around at a life-sized witch hanging at eye level. He had an urge to kick that bitch clear off her broom!

“Eet ees no’ so sad eef there ees a day when the dead ones can return. My mamá, she see my papá every year. Eet ees true. The dogs bark always on the Day of the Dead. The dogs, they know.”

“What the fuck do they do when they come back?”

“We put out the bread for them. Sweet bread and chocolate and salt. They eat and they watch over their family. Then they go back to the graveyard. The leetle dead childrens they play weeth the toys we leave for them. We make the bread eento leetle animals for the dead childrens. My mother, she always puts out the mole. My father use to love mole. And some beers for my dead brother. He use to like beer. We have lots of beers and tequila in the cemetery on El Día de los Muertos.”

“I seen them cemeteries on TV,” the ox said. “They ain’t like ours with our little flat stones. You got humongous stones with pictures of the people on them and fences around these sorta walk-in graves. It looks like Munchkinland. Bunch a creepy little houses for dead people.”

“Ees berry beautiful our cemetery,” Abel said. “Many colors and pretty stones.”

The ox said, “You people’re Catholics, ain’tcha? I thought Catholics ain’t allowed to believe in that pagan zombie shit.”

Abel said, “We Católico but we use to have Indian gods long time ago. They was berry strong gods, ’mano.”

They started strolling again. Colors and exotic shapes swirled around Shelby Pate. The colors of Mexico were too vibrant, the lights too hot. He stumbled into a Ninja Turtle piñata made of cardboard. His body temperature had gone vertical and he was nearing meltdown.

Abel said to him, “Joo don’ do no more speed, Buey! I tell you!”

They found themselves in a passageway where there were less exotic shops selling Guess? and Ralph Lauren, and Fila. Shelby calmed down a bit, and stopped at a display window full of soft Mexican gold jewelry.

“Hey, dude!” he yelled to Abel. “I gotta buy somethin fer my bitch!”

But Abel had walked ahead and had turned the corner past a very narrow passageway where shopkeepers had installed overhead flashing colored lights, like in the Bongo Room.

Shelby lost sight of Abel for a moment and staggered into the wrong passageway. The smell of new leather overwhelmed him, conjuring images of dead animal carcasses. The winking colored lights bedazzled him. The passageway got too narrow! The colors of Mexico kept blazing away at him! Skeletons and witches dervished all around!

There was another Indian woman squatting in the passageway. Her bare feet looked like they’d never been washed. A little boy with her was even grimier. On a spread-out blanket was a handful of chewing gum, and the little boy said to Shelby: “Chicle? Chicle?”

Shelby Pate bellowed, “Noooooo!” and started running away from the boy into another passageway. And he still couldn’t find Abel. And the colors-the swirling vibrant Mexican colors-were enveloping him!

Then he whirled and saw a man moving toward him in that demon cloister. The man was his age, perhaps older. The man was three feet tall. He did not walk on legs, but on stumps that ended six inches below his buttocks. The stumps were padded with leather for “walking.” The most grotesque part was that protruding from between his stumps in front was a tiny deformed bare foot. At first, Shelby thought it was a Halloween prank. A fake foot sticking out between the little man’s stumps. But when the man plodded past him he saw another foot protruding from between his stumps in the back. Two deformed bare feet which would never support a human being-growing out of what should have been his thighs!

“How’d you get like that?” Shelby cried out to the little man. “Did they dump poison in your momma’s water supply?”

Of course the man didn’t understand Shelby, and may not even have heard. He just plodded on. Shelby followed him. He watched the little man laboriously climb every step, one stump at a time, toward the avenue above.

“WAS YOUR MOMMA POISONED OR WHAT?” Shelby bellowed.

He was reeling now, and he pawed at the concrete wall of the passageway for support. His hand pressed not concrete but a molded plastic face: a death’s-head. Lining the wall for a distance of twenty feet were the faces of death, like the skulls painted on the drums of poison.

He was hollering for Abel when the young Mexican appeared and grabbed him by the arm, saying, “Why you yell, Buey? Wha’ happen, ’mano?”

“Oh, man!” Shelby blubbered. “Where you been? I got lost! It’s weird down here! Get me back up to the world!”

“I tol’ joo, Buey. Speed mess up the brains!” Abel said.

Fin, Nell, and Bobbie had split up, with Bobbie trailing behind Shelby Pate. She’d witnessed his extraordinary behavior: flailing at piñatas, running in terror from a boy selling chewing gum, yelling gibberish at a pathetic legless man. He was hopelessly drunk or wired on drugs, or both.

When Shelby and Abel wandered along the last passageway, Fin joined her and he said, “Don’t follow there. Wait’ll they climb the steps.”

“Was that Pate doing the yelling?” Nell asked when she joined them.

“Yeah,” Bobbie said. “I got a feeling he isn’t doing much for U.S.-Mexican relations.”

“You shoulda seen him at the Bongo Room,” Fin said. “He enters a joint like a Molotov cocktail.”

Nell asked Fin something that she was curious about. “What goes on in those nightclubs?”

Fin said, “The animal rights people who never appreciated what women used to do for the welfare of Great Danes and burros apparently have had their way. Their stage shows’re about as racy as a high school assembly.”

Shelby Pate was drenched and popeyed by the time Abel led him up the concrete stairway.

“I feel like there ain’t no more world up there!” Shelby said as he climbed, looking at a patch of sky as gray as ashes.

“The world ees there,” Abel said, “but joo won’ be een the world berry long eef joo don’ stop the speed.”

When they were halfway up the steps, Shelby started taking in massive gulps of air. Suddenly, he grabbed Abel by the front of the shirt and said, “You gotta tell me, dude, about them dead kids! If you put out toys ’n cake ’n stuff, how do ya know the kid’s gonna find the right house?”

“The dead peoples, they know, ’mano,” Abel assured him. “Ees hard for them to remember the way but they weel find eet. They find their way home.”

Shelby held on to his partner and said, “Will that kid come home tomorra? Will he get to see his momma again? That kid with the ringworm?”

Abel cried, “Goddamn, Buey! I get seek and tire’ of goddamn reeng-worms! I don’ wan’ to hear no more goddamn reeng-worms!”

“But will he come home, Flaco?” Shelby demanded, with inflamed horrified eyes.