Once Upon A Wish : Book One (3 page)
Read Once Upon A Wish : Book One Online
Authors: Richard Poche
Tags: #noir, #noir crime, #hit men, #noir crime thriller, #drug cartel fiction, #edge of your seat thrillers, #gripping thriller, #hit man book, #hit man series
The restaurant's famed chiliburgers quickly
became Hernan's favorite dish. Nestor would have fried chicken with
all the sides and they would sit there feasting like kings.
Today, there would be no chiliburgers.
Nestor lost as usual.
He said nothing as the two trekked to the
bus stop.
And waited. And waited some more.
“When is this fucking bus gonna come?”
Nestor said.
“I won a hundred dollars in that last
race,” Hernan said.
“What?”
“Windstorm. The five horse. I put ten bucks
on it. He looked at me in the paddock.”
“That horse was ten to one! He looked at
you?”
“Yep. I bet for the first time. The horse
looked at me. When I was watching him in the paddock. Kept glancing
over his shoulder, watching me watch him. The best horse that ran
all day actually noticed me.”
The bus came and they rode home in
silence.
Nestor sat on his stool and looked out the
window. He sipped their last remaining beer as slow as he
could.
He hated life.
Battling a bout of self-pity, he shook his
head at how one sole factor ruled his life.
A lack of money.
The root of all of his problems since
birth.
“Okay, if I watch TV?” asked Hernan.
“I want quiet.” Two cars with their stereos
turned up full blast rolled by. The hum of their dueling bass lines
vibrated the apartment windows.
“I hate this fucking place,” Nestor
muttered.
“It’s not so bad.”
“I don't know what's worse. Tijuana or
Oakland. At least in Tijuana ...Well... Everywhere is dangerous,”
Nestor said without completing his thought. “I still can't get over
that, man. Why did you pick that horse?”
“I just knew, man!” Hernan said. “The
favorite had bandages on his legs. Plus, the horse looked at me. He
looked straight into my eyes—alive. I saw the fire in his
eyes.”
“How much did you bet on him?”
“Ten dollars.”
“And how much did you bring with you?”
“Fifty.”
“See? Why didn't you go all in? If you bet
fifty dollars, you would have five hundred instead. Because of your
self-doubt, you shorted yourself $400 dollars.
“But what if I lost?”
“What if you lost?” Nestor shrugged his shoulders. “Winners don't
ask questions like that. That's the difference. A winner takes a
chance. Risks it all. A loser plays scared and is satisfied with
scraps. I know. I play it safe too much. Then I try to get it all
back in one swoop. It never works. That is why I'm a loser. Why
you're a loser.”
Hernan said nothing. His shoulders slumped
almost imperceptibly.
“You have to think bigger. Tomorrow is
dollar day. How much money do you have saved up?”
“I don't know. A couple of hundred,
maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Hernan went to his room. Opening his dresser drawer, he counted his
life savings and returned to the living room.
“Four hundred and four dollars,
amigo.”
“Tell you what.” Nestor picked out an
advertising flyer from the newspaper. “See this? That's twenty-four
hundred dollars for a giant screen TV. We make that our goal. We
make that much money. Twenty-four hundred dollars and we get
ourselves a giant TV. Cool? We’d have our own movie theater.”
Hernan looked at the television they
already had.
“There's nothing wrong with this one.”
“Keep thinking small,” Nestor said. “Next
week we'll take that money and study the form. We find the best
bet. Roll it into something bigger and bigger. Everyone does that.
So can we. I have this system but I need capital to get it started.
You gotta take risks. A man's capacity to enjoy the finer things in
life correlates to the risks he takes.”
Hernan looked uneasy. It did not take a
genius to figure out that Nestor did not know anything about the
handicapping of thoroughbreds.
“What if we lose?”
“What if we lose?” Nestor got up off the stool and pounded his
chest. “See what I mean? Only losers ask that question. That's your
whole problem.”
They did not make it to the racetracks the
following week.
Nestor had a run of bad luck outside the
ponies. They laid him off from his maintenance job at a housing
complex in Alameda. He received no severance or forewarning. Just a
boot in the ass.
There was an advertisement in the paper for
a dishwasher but he nixed the idea. They didn't need two
dishwashers in the same household. He thought about becoming a
waiter at any of the Mexican restaurants, but he hated people. He
would probably only last a day or two before he threw a hot plate
of rice and beans over a patron's head.
Sitting on the toilet, Nestor listened to a
motivational speaker on the radio. He found himself nodding his
head when he heard the man say how people move aimlessly through
life. He said most people lived lives of quiet desperation. They
hope their lives change but never take action to force the
change.
He mentioned how a person's self-talk is
their barrier to success.
Nestor thought about how he never went for
anything higher than a manual entry-level job. He felt insecure
about his accent and his own self-talk told him he'd be rejected
for it. Or that they would reject him because of the burn on his
face.
He stopped asking out pretty girls. They
wouldn't like him for the same reasons.
His own self-talk never shut up.
Hernan came home that night and did not say
a word. Just a quick “hey” and he went to his room.
Nestor turned on the television and waited
for Hernan to come out.
But he didn't.
He walked over and knocked on his door,
seeing him turned over on his side.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“The boss. Told me I wasn't moving fast
enough.” Hernan’s fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, the
veins in his neck showed clearly.
Nestor said nothing. He had to let Hernan
vent.
“Says I'm moving too slow. Says he wished
he hired someone else.”
“Fuck him! He talks to you like that again
just quit.”
But Nestor knew Hernan would not take his
advice. Nor did he really want him to. He knew he had to suck it up
because if he lost his job that they would be up further up shit
creek.
Hernan curled up into a little ball and
slept for ten straight hours.
bed. He waited on the strip on East 14th with the other immigrants
for someone to pick them up for manual labor. Usually low-end
construction work picking up scraps after the crew.
Hernan left for his day of washing dishes
and chopping vegetables with his head hung low and shoulders
slumped.
A life of deprivation and drudgery.
Nestor readied to leave when he heard a
knock on the door. He did not have to look through the peek hole to
know who it could be.
They were behind on the rent.
He opened the door and his hunch was
correct. Faisal, the building supervisor, stood in front of the
doorway, walking in without waiting for an invite.
“These are always unpleasant
conversations.” Faisal scanned the apartment's scuffed carpet. He
looked at the walls, and went into the bathroom to scrutinize the
toilet and shower. Nestor followed him without saying a word.
“At least you guys kept it clean,” Faisal
said.
“Why wouldn't we?”
Nestor did not like Faisal. The Arab looked
at him with heavy-lidded eyes that rarely blinked. He had a hooked
nose and his face resembled that of a rat that returned from the
dead. “I need the rent money within forty-eight hours.”
“Fine.” Nestor said.
“You have been out of work for a while
now?”
Nestor nodded.
“Take your stuff to storage. Shouldn't take
too—”
“I'll get the rent.”
“Okay.”
Faisal saw himself out and Nestor slammed
the door on him. Living on the streets again was not an option. He
lived on the streets as a kid. He would not go through that
again.
The situation had its own irony. In Mexico,
he could earn more money smuggling people into California. Selling
immigrants on the American Dream, but his own hopes shriveled up
and disintegrated like a corpse.
Nestor opened the window. Hip-hop bass
lines screamed from at least four cars. Multiple sirens blared. The
beeping horn from a cement truck topped them all as they competed
for to be the loudest distraction in a cacophony of chaos.
The next day Nestor told Hernan to call in
sick to work.
They took the bus to Golden Gate Fields in
a last ditch attempt to make some money. Nestor hoped Hernan's
sixth sense about the ponies could work some magic one more
time.
“When a horse looks at me, I know he's
going to win.” Hernan repeated as he studied the horses coming into
the paddock.
Hernan hung over the railing for the first
seven races. None of the horses gave him a second look. Until the
eighth race.
A beautiful white horse came out of the
stables and into the paddock. He glanced over at the crowd and
Hernan smiled big.
“That's the one,” Hernan said. “He looked
at me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Nestor looked at the racing form. They
called the horse White Noise. An 18-1 long shot. He bet half of his
remaining funds on the horse. They would need the other half to
move their stuff into storage.
If they won, the money would cover the rent
and more than a few dinners at the Merritt Restaurant.
rang out.
Nestor's heart burst through his chest.
White Noise took the early lead. The horse ran impressively, nose
down slightly. His breathing seemed controlled and his jockey
pushed him. The horse responded, digging deep.
He hated when his horse took the lead too
early. He preferred that they come off the pace and wait for the
other horses to tire out.
White Noise held his ground, digging in his
hoofs and increasing his lead at the top of the stretch.
Both Nestor and Hernan jumped up and down
as the horse crossed the finish line. They made spectacles of
themselves but they did not care.
Cashing out their ticket, Nestor realized
that he'd not felt this happy in a long time. He whooped as they
exited the gates and Hernan did the same. They high-fived each
other and made their way out of the track.
“Celebration time, amigo!” Nestor said as
they passed an alley. They were crossing between a doughnut shop
and a bridal store. They had no interest in either. Merritt had
much more to offer.
“Give me the fucking money!” a voice called
out from the shadows before stepping up toward them
The punk looked to be in his early
twenties. He had the practiced deadeye look of a wannabe
gang-banger. He wore a bandana bearing the Mexican flag around his
forehead, but Nestor could tell he was native born from the lack of
an accent.
A few feet behind him stood a Samoan. He
wore a sleeveless t-shirt showing his massive arms. His hair was a
frizzed out afro, adding to his intimidating appearance, but his
facial expression suggested something other than a tough guy.
He looked nervously behind himself and to
the side. Probably his first robbery, Nestor thought. The punk had
a practiced air about him. He grabbed Nestor by the shirt. Tattoos
of crosses dotted the man's forearm. His bicep read, “RIP
Antonio.”
“You speak English, mother fucker?”
The punk pressed the gun to Nestor's
stomach.
Nestor eyeballed the young man with
disdain.
“Don't look at me, bitch. Give me the
fuckin' money. All of it. Now.”
Nestor slowly took the wallet out of his
pocket. The punk reached over and snatched it from his hands.
The punk took out the money and dropped the
wallet to the ground.
“Where's the rest of it?”
A blue 1980s style Camaro came screeching
out. A skinny Latin girl sat in the driver side. Her eyes narrowed
at both Nestor and Hernan before glancing to her side to make sure
they were alone.
“I said, where's the rest of it?”
Nestor wanted to get a look at the license
plate but then the gun smashed against his temple.
rattling his windows. Then a siren.
Looking up, he saw Hernan eating a bowl of
Boo Berry cereal at the window.
“What happened?”
“Two guys jumped us.”
“Yeah.” Nestor massaged his throbbing head.
“Then what?”
Hernan did not answer immediately as Nestor
felt his pant pocket for the money. Then he looked on the coffee
table and saw the bills neatly bundled up.
“How did you?”
“I took care of them.” Hernan shoveled a
spoonful of the cereal into his mouth. Then he idly looked out the
window.
CHAPTER 4
an ice tray and dumped two cubes into a napkin.
head exasperated. “We don’t have enough to cover the back rent. Guy
came over yesterday and they'll throw us out tomorrow.”
became Hernan's favorite dish. Nestor would have fried chicken with
all the sides and they would sit there feasting like kings.
Today, there would be no chiliburgers.
Nestor lost as usual.
He said nothing as the two trekked to the
bus stop.
And waited. And waited some more.
“When is this fucking bus gonna come?”
Nestor said.
“I won a hundred dollars in that last
race,” Hernan said.
“What?”
“Windstorm. The five horse. I put ten bucks
on it. He looked at me in the paddock.”
“That horse was ten to one! He looked at
you?”
“Yep. I bet for the first time. The horse
looked at me. When I was watching him in the paddock. Kept glancing
over his shoulder, watching me watch him. The best horse that ran
all day actually noticed me.”
The bus came and they rode home in
silence.
Nestor sat on his stool and looked out the
window. He sipped their last remaining beer as slow as he
could.
He hated life.
Battling a bout of self-pity, he shook his
head at how one sole factor ruled his life.
A lack of money.
The root of all of his problems since
birth.
“Okay, if I watch TV?” asked Hernan.
“I want quiet.” Two cars with their stereos
turned up full blast rolled by. The hum of their dueling bass lines
vibrated the apartment windows.
“I hate this fucking place,” Nestor
muttered.
“It’s not so bad.”
“I don't know what's worse. Tijuana or
Oakland. At least in Tijuana ...Well... Everywhere is dangerous,”
Nestor said without completing his thought. “I still can't get over
that, man. Why did you pick that horse?”
“I just knew, man!” Hernan said. “The
favorite had bandages on his legs. Plus, the horse looked at me. He
looked straight into my eyes—alive. I saw the fire in his
eyes.”
“How much did you bet on him?”
“Ten dollars.”
“And how much did you bring with you?”
“Fifty.”
“See? Why didn't you go all in? If you bet
fifty dollars, you would have five hundred instead. Because of your
self-doubt, you shorted yourself $400 dollars.
“But what if I lost?”
“What if you lost?” Nestor shrugged his shoulders. “Winners don't
ask questions like that. That's the difference. A winner takes a
chance. Risks it all. A loser plays scared and is satisfied with
scraps. I know. I play it safe too much. Then I try to get it all
back in one swoop. It never works. That is why I'm a loser. Why
you're a loser.”
Hernan said nothing. His shoulders slumped
almost imperceptibly.
“You have to think bigger. Tomorrow is
dollar day. How much money do you have saved up?”
“I don't know. A couple of hundred,
maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Hernan went to his room. Opening his dresser drawer, he counted his
life savings and returned to the living room.
“Four hundred and four dollars,
amigo.”
“Tell you what.” Nestor picked out an
advertising flyer from the newspaper. “See this? That's twenty-four
hundred dollars for a giant screen TV. We make that our goal. We
make that much money. Twenty-four hundred dollars and we get
ourselves a giant TV. Cool? We’d have our own movie theater.”
Hernan looked at the television they
already had.
“There's nothing wrong with this one.”
“Keep thinking small,” Nestor said. “Next
week we'll take that money and study the form. We find the best
bet. Roll it into something bigger and bigger. Everyone does that.
So can we. I have this system but I need capital to get it started.
You gotta take risks. A man's capacity to enjoy the finer things in
life correlates to the risks he takes.”
Hernan looked uneasy. It did not take a
genius to figure out that Nestor did not know anything about the
handicapping of thoroughbreds.
“What if we lose?”
“What if we lose?” Nestor got up off the stool and pounded his
chest. “See what I mean? Only losers ask that question. That's your
whole problem.”
They did not make it to the racetracks the
following week.
Nestor had a run of bad luck outside the
ponies. They laid him off from his maintenance job at a housing
complex in Alameda. He received no severance or forewarning. Just a
boot in the ass.
There was an advertisement in the paper for
a dishwasher but he nixed the idea. They didn't need two
dishwashers in the same household. He thought about becoming a
waiter at any of the Mexican restaurants, but he hated people. He
would probably only last a day or two before he threw a hot plate
of rice and beans over a patron's head.
Sitting on the toilet, Nestor listened to a
motivational speaker on the radio. He found himself nodding his
head when he heard the man say how people move aimlessly through
life. He said most people lived lives of quiet desperation. They
hope their lives change but never take action to force the
change.
He mentioned how a person's self-talk is
their barrier to success.
Nestor thought about how he never went for
anything higher than a manual entry-level job. He felt insecure
about his accent and his own self-talk told him he'd be rejected
for it. Or that they would reject him because of the burn on his
face.
He stopped asking out pretty girls. They
wouldn't like him for the same reasons.
His own self-talk never shut up.
Hernan came home that night and did not say
a word. Just a quick “hey” and he went to his room.
Nestor turned on the television and waited
for Hernan to come out.
But he didn't.
He walked over and knocked on his door,
seeing him turned over on his side.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“The boss. Told me I wasn't moving fast
enough.” Hernan’s fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, the
veins in his neck showed clearly.
Nestor said nothing. He had to let Hernan
vent.
“Says I'm moving too slow. Says he wished
he hired someone else.”
“Fuck him! He talks to you like that again
just quit.”
But Nestor knew Hernan would not take his
advice. Nor did he really want him to. He knew he had to suck it up
because if he lost his job that they would be up further up shit
creek.
Hernan curled up into a little ball and
slept for ten straight hours.
The words of the
motivational speaker ran through his head. The phrase
quiet desperation
fit
both of their lives.
bed. He waited on the strip on East 14th with the other immigrants
for someone to pick them up for manual labor. Usually low-end
construction work picking up scraps after the crew.
Hernan left for his day of washing dishes
and chopping vegetables with his head hung low and shoulders
slumped.
A life of deprivation and drudgery.
Nestor readied to leave when he heard a
knock on the door. He did not have to look through the peek hole to
know who it could be.
They were behind on the rent.
He opened the door and his hunch was
correct. Faisal, the building supervisor, stood in front of the
doorway, walking in without waiting for an invite.
“These are always unpleasant
conversations.” Faisal scanned the apartment's scuffed carpet. He
looked at the walls, and went into the bathroom to scrutinize the
toilet and shower. Nestor followed him without saying a word.
“At least you guys kept it clean,” Faisal
said.
“Why wouldn't we?”
Nestor did not like Faisal. The Arab looked
at him with heavy-lidded eyes that rarely blinked. He had a hooked
nose and his face resembled that of a rat that returned from the
dead. “I need the rent money within forty-eight hours.”
“Fine.” Nestor said.
“You have been out of work for a while
now?”
Nestor nodded.
“Take your stuff to storage. Shouldn't take
too—”
“I'll get the rent.”
“Okay.”
Faisal saw himself out and Nestor slammed
the door on him. Living on the streets again was not an option. He
lived on the streets as a kid. He would not go through that
again.
The situation had its own irony. In Mexico,
he could earn more money smuggling people into California. Selling
immigrants on the American Dream, but his own hopes shriveled up
and disintegrated like a corpse.
Nestor opened the window. Hip-hop bass
lines screamed from at least four cars. Multiple sirens blared. The
beeping horn from a cement truck topped them all as they competed
for to be the loudest distraction in a cacophony of chaos.
The next day Nestor told Hernan to call in
sick to work.
They took the bus to Golden Gate Fields in
a last ditch attempt to make some money. Nestor hoped Hernan's
sixth sense about the ponies could work some magic one more
time.
“When a horse looks at me, I know he's
going to win.” Hernan repeated as he studied the horses coming into
the paddock.
Hernan hung over the railing for the first
seven races. None of the horses gave him a second look. Until the
eighth race.
A beautiful white horse came out of the
stables and into the paddock. He glanced over at the crowd and
Hernan smiled big.
“That's the one,” Hernan said. “He looked
at me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Nestor looked at the racing form. They
called the horse White Noise. An 18-1 long shot. He bet half of his
remaining funds on the horse. They would need the other half to
move their stuff into storage.
If they won, the money would cover the rent
and more than a few dinners at the Merritt Restaurant.
rang out.
Nestor's heart burst through his chest.
White Noise took the early lead. The horse ran impressively, nose
down slightly. His breathing seemed controlled and his jockey
pushed him. The horse responded, digging deep.
He hated when his horse took the lead too
early. He preferred that they come off the pace and wait for the
other horses to tire out.
White Noise held his ground, digging in his
hoofs and increasing his lead at the top of the stretch.
Both Nestor and Hernan jumped up and down
as the horse crossed the finish line. They made spectacles of
themselves but they did not care.
Cashing out their ticket, Nestor realized
that he'd not felt this happy in a long time. He whooped as they
exited the gates and Hernan did the same. They high-fived each
other and made their way out of the track.
“Celebration time, amigo!” Nestor said as
they passed an alley. They were crossing between a doughnut shop
and a bridal store. They had no interest in either. Merritt had
much more to offer.
“Give me the fucking money!” a voice called
out from the shadows before stepping up toward them
The punk looked to be in his early
twenties. He had the practiced deadeye look of a wannabe
gang-banger. He wore a bandana bearing the Mexican flag around his
forehead, but Nestor could tell he was native born from the lack of
an accent.
A few feet behind him stood a Samoan. He
wore a sleeveless t-shirt showing his massive arms. His hair was a
frizzed out afro, adding to his intimidating appearance, but his
facial expression suggested something other than a tough guy.
He looked nervously behind himself and to
the side. Probably his first robbery, Nestor thought. The punk had
a practiced air about him. He grabbed Nestor by the shirt. Tattoos
of crosses dotted the man's forearm. His bicep read, “RIP
Antonio.”
“You speak English, mother fucker?”
The punk pressed the gun to Nestor's
stomach.
Nestor eyeballed the young man with
disdain.
“Don't look at me, bitch. Give me the
fuckin' money. All of it. Now.”
Nestor slowly took the wallet out of his
pocket. The punk reached over and snatched it from his hands.
The punk took out the money and dropped the
wallet to the ground.
“Where's the rest of it?”
A blue 1980s style Camaro came screeching
out. A skinny Latin girl sat in the driver side. Her eyes narrowed
at both Nestor and Hernan before glancing to her side to make sure
they were alone.
“I said, where's the rest of it?”
Nestor wanted to get a look at the license
plate but then the gun smashed against his temple.
rattling his windows. Then a siren.
Looking up, he saw Hernan eating a bowl of
Boo Berry cereal at the window.
“What happened?”
“Two guys jumped us.”
“Yeah.” Nestor massaged his throbbing head.
“Then what?”
Hernan did not answer immediately as Nestor
felt his pant pocket for the money. Then he looked on the coffee
table and saw the bills neatly bundled up.
“How did you?”
“I took care of them.” Hernan shoveled a
spoonful of the cereal into his mouth. Then he idly looked out the
window.
CHAPTER 4
an ice tray and dumped two cubes into a napkin.
He turned on the lamp and
flopped on
the
couch, holding the ice to his eye. He wanted silence but the
apartment was full of slamming doors from the neighbors, thumps,
and scrapings. The distractions were worsening his
headache.
head exasperated. “We don’t have enough to cover the back rent. Guy
came over yesterday and they'll throw us out tomorrow.”
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