Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

30

Ah, you’ll be better after a bit of a kip, Dwyer told himself, standing over the sink, scrubbing the soles of his shoes with enzyme cleanser and a toothbrush. Only right now he couldn’t afford to take one. That was one of the downsides of working alone. He’d used teams for the past eighteen years. He’d started out solo when he left the service, of course, until he could afford to start hiring on.

The ice-cold water pouring out of the faucet froze his hands stiff, but when dealing with protein stains cold water was required. Hot or even warm cooked the material right onto the surface that was to be cleaned.

It had been a hell of a night. After the burn job, he’d come back to the city and sat on the small house for a few hours, watching as the two stout men he’d seen at La Pasion arrived, then moved about, drinking beers, eating something at a table in the front room, and generally whiling away the late hours of the night. He’d wanted to make sure they were the only ones in the house, and eventually he had come to believe they were. Then he wanted to make sure they were good and tired before he got to them. Finally, the lights started going out, and he believed the time was right.

That’s when he crossed to their door and knocked loud and hard. He didn’t want them waking up confused as to what they were hearing.

He saw a light flick on, the front door opened, and an angry face appeared behind the screen door.

“Que haces, motherfucker?” the man, the one who had sat and drank cafe con leche said, tired anger in his dark eyes.

“I’m sorry to wake you, buddy,” Dwyer said in his broadest Southern twang. “I was hoping you could do me a favor, and I could do you one in return.”

“Que quieres? Hablas espanol?” the man said.

“What?” Dwyer responded.

“What the fuck do you want?” the man said, raising an aluminum baseball bat for Dwyer to see.

“I want to buy a piece of info, brother,” Dwyer said, and fanned a handful of hundred-dollar bills. The man lowered the bat, opened the door, and let him in.

He needed to find Juan Alfaro, Dwyer told them when the other fellow, who’d cleared the till, had joined them. He didn’t bother with a story about being friends, as he had with the old building manager. The two burly men sitting on either side of him, boxing him in in their living room, wouldn’t have believed it and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

Instead he told them it was a question of work. “I need him for a job and I’m willing to pay to find him.”

“How much?” the till man, who was the more thickset of the two, asked.

“Five thousand,” Dwyer said, dropping the money on their coffee table. They were experienced enough not to reach for it right away.

“If you will pay five for the information, how much you pay for the job?” cafe con leche asked.

“The job?” Dwyer said. “Hell, the job pays a butt load more than that.”

“Maybe we do the job for you,” the till man said.

“Well, sure.” Dwyer nodded. “Where’d you serve? For how long? What was your specialty? How much combat did you see? Is your passport good? Is it under an alias? These are the questions my boss is gonna ask. He’s always looking to hire on qualified dudes.”

The men waved the idea away with a tsking noise, as if it were all too much trouble, which told Dwyer there wasn’t much training to speak of.

“Maybe it’d be easier if you just told me where he is and keep the finders’ fee …” Dwyer suggested.

The men looked at each other and spoke in Spanish. Dwyer kept a dumb look on his face even though he understood what they said. Why don’t we call Banco and ask if we can say where he is?

“You know Banco,” the cafe con leche drinker said. “He’s very privado. We call him for you.”

Dwyer had an idea what would happen if they reached Banco and described him and what he wanted, but he also saw his opportunity, so he just nodded slowly.

Till man went and got a mobile and punched through the phone’s address book until he found the number and pressed Send. The room got quiet and Dwyer could hear the muted sound of Banco’s phone ringing. It went on for a long time, a good dozen rings, with no voice mail picking up. It gave Dwyer the idea that they were calling a landline, not a cellular. Finally, the till man’s eyes flared.

“Hola, guanaco. Soy Benito …” Dwyer listened as the till man-Benito-laid out the situation for Banco. He watched as the man listened to Banco’s response. The man’s face was placid, betraying nothing. He looked like someone reading a magazine in a doctor’s office, waiting for his appointment, despite the fact that Banco was probably saying, “Don’t fucking tell him where I am!” or “Kill him!” or “Run!” The lad across from him was good, Dwyer had to concede.

Dwyer held out his hand, as if it were his turn to talk. “Lemme say hi,” he said. Instead the man clicked off the call.

“He said ‘chill,’ he’ll be right over.”

“Great!” Dwyer replied.

Benito, the till man, stood and spoke to his compadre in flat Spanish. Dwyer didn’t flinch or in any way reveal what he’d heard: “I’m going to get this guy a cooler. We can’t let him leave.”

“Cerveza?” Benito offered, heading for the kitchen.

“Sure,” Dwyer said. As soon as he stepped away, Dwyer turned to cafe con leche. “You can have that. Count it, make sure it’s five thousand even.”

Cafe con leche picked up the money and was counting greedily by the time Dwyer had crossed to the kitchen. The Ceska was raised at head level as the freezer door closed, revealing Benito’s face. Dwyer fired and saw the “cooler,” a chilled.38, fall from the man’s hand. Dwyer was back in the living room just as cafe con leche was picking up the baseball bat. It wasn’t a fair fight.

The third to last thing Dwyer did was scroll the mobile and get Banco’s number from the contact list, memorizing it, then erasing it. The second to last thing he did was wipe down the phone and drop it on the couch and pick up his five thousand dollars. Then he noticed he was standing in blood, so the last thing he did was step out of his shoes and head for the door carrying them.

Now that he was back in his shite hole and all was cleaned up, including his shoes, he went on his computer to reverse directory Banco’s number. Banco had a bit of a head start, but hopefully it was one that Dwyer could make up.