Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

24

Dwyer sat quietly in the back corner of La Pasion, the Latin restaurant his lead shooter supposedly favored, spooning black beans and rice into his mouth and watching the place unfold in front of him. It was a small, local spot, undecorated save tables and chairs and a cerveza calendar next to the cash register, so it was a bit unusual for him to be there. He’d sat and ordered, and after a while they had forgotten about him more or less. He saw that most of their business was takeaway. There were a few mothers with children who chatted in Spanish with the counter girl, who was also the waitress. She was a pleasant eighteen-year-old who spoke good English and had gone a little plump from too much comida criolla. There was a wizened old cook, his whites food stained and sweat soaked, who appeared from time to time in the kitchen doorway in the back. Dwyer asked a young, wiry busboy for a refill of his water and noticed a jailhouse tattoo of three teardrops near the webbing of his thumb and a scar on his face. The tattoo was gang or prison code, either of membership or signifying he’d killed. Dwyer didn’t know whether the three represented a first killing or a total number of victims. Of course the kid could’ve been some aspirant who’d done the inking himself.

The waitress had come by to see if he needed anything and he’d asked for hot sauce. When she brought it to him, he’d made a little show of how hot it was, saying “caliente” and waving a hand in front of his mouth. It amused her and bought him some goodwill and an extra half hour of sitting there watching. Even so, he was at the limit of how long he could reasonably stay and hadn’t yet spotted his angle, besides possibly the busboy, when two stout men in their early forties entered. In tight T-shirts that stretched over their arms and hard, round bellies, they might have been brothers or cousins. The larger of the two moved behind the counter and hugged the waitress warmly. It was clear from the indulgent nature of the embrace that she was not his daughter. The other man sat on a stool at the counter and waited. The waitress made him a cafe con leche, while the larger bloke popped the till drawer, removed a stack of bills, counted and split it, and handed over half to the coffee drinker.

Dwyer saw them notice him in the corner, size him up, and disregard him. He sized them up as well, and while they didn’t seem like they’d provide much of a problem, they probably wouldn’t volunteer whether or not they knew a Jose Campos just because he’d asked. He didn’t see much point in getting into it in the middle of their restaurant during business hours though, so Dwyer stood.

“La cuenta, por favor,” he said, amusing the counter girl once again with his poor Spanish. He was just a novel fucking fellow. He paid his check, mildly overtipped, and exited. He got back in his car and took up a position where he could watch the men and follow them when they left. It was almost fiesta time.