Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (27 page)

“Thanks,” Gabe said in a voice above a whisper.

“You seen Julie?” Bobby asked. “Julie here?”

“Ain’t seen shit. Been in a container for days. I pulled a dumbass move coming here. Pretty sure they forgot about me. Then someone remembered and thought I was going to die, so they put me here. They’re fucking idiots. Chucho comes in, kicks me a few times. No Julie. Sorry.”

“Want to help?” I said.

“I’ll fight every one of these motherfuckers. Tie me up? Fuck that.”

Gabe’s arms and legs fell to his side as Bobby finished cutting him loose. He rolled onto his stomach and shook the blood back into his hands.

“What do you need me to do?” Gabe asked.

“Make some noise,” Bobby said. “Loud enough for those two fucks to hear.”

Bobby took out his pistol and pointed it toward the entrance. I did the same, waiting for the space to fill. Gabe grabbed a pipe just to be armed, and then he screamed for help in two languages.

Both dice-rolling guards rushed into the space, the faster one almost running directly into my pistol. He stepped back, confused. Both men’s eyes got huge when our presence and the presence of our pistols registered.

“Who the fuck are you?” the one with hair said.

He didn’t get an answer. Unless pipe was an answer. Gabe dropped him, not unconscious, but to his knees. He put a hand to the visibly growing lump. I reached down and took his pistol from his belt.

“Don’t got to hit me, man.” The bald guard reached down with two very dainty fingers, plucked the pistol from his waistband, and dropped it on the ground. Gabe quickly picked it up, feeling its weight and examining it. The man held up his hands.

“What the fuck, Pelón?” Pipe Lump said.

“They got us,” he said to Pipe Lump. “Why should I get hurt, too? And I know you been cheating at dice.”

“You’re out of Los Hos,” Pipe Lump said. “When Goyo, Chucho, when they find out, you’re done. These pendejos are just a couple of backward ass country fucks.”

“You must like getting hit with a pipe,” I said.

Bobby pointed at the men with the barrel of his pistol. “This is you, Gabe. We got to keep moving. Only got a short window. Got to go now. You watch these guys. Have Pelón here tie up fuckface. Then you tie him up. Keep them quiet. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Pistol at the ready, I threw open the trailer door and rushed inside. Girl screams greeted me. Seven teenage girls, their ages ranging from fourteen to nineteen, lounged around the living room area of the trailer.

There wasn’t much in the way of furnishings. Mattresses filled most of the floor areas against the walls. Water and soda bottles sat piled in one corner next to full garbage bags that stank of takeout Mexican and Doritos. Six fans blew the stench around, but did little to cool the stuffy space.

“Anyone else here? Is there anyone in back?” I shouted.

Bobby didn’t wait for an answer, rushing into the back of the trailer, throwing doors and curtains open as he passed various alcoves. It only took him a few seconds to come back out with a young black girl, held by her skinny bicep. The girl didn’t look scared, like she was used to being manhandled and told what to do.

“Back’s clear,” he said.

A Mexican girl with neck tattoos and serious chola eyebrows stood and put her hands on her hips. “Who the fuck are you? You don’t look like no fucking cops. And what the fuck is up with that dude’s hair?”

“Where’s Julie?” Bobby shouted.

“She ain’t here.”

Bobby and I looked at each other. Could I have been wrong?

Bobby let go of the black girl and grabbed Chola by her shoulders. “What does that mean? Not in this trailer? Or not out here in Plaster City?”

“Get off me,” Chola said, shrugging out of Bobby’s grasp. She hit his bad shoulder hard, Bobby biting his lip to avoid shrieking in pain. “How the fuck should I know where she is? That bitch don’t stay with us. Why you want to talk to her?”

“We came to bring her home.”

“Are you like her daddy?”

Bobby turned to me. “What the fuck do we do now? If she’s not here. Grab the truck and Rudy and go?”

“You got a ride?” Chola said. “That means you can prison-break my shit. Take me out of here with you.”

A couple girls stood, shouting “yeahs” and “me toos.” The others soon followed. They started to surge toward us.

“Hold on, hold on,” Bobby said. “We came here for Julie. We can’t take all these girls.”

“We got the truck,” I said. “They stay and Tomás comes in, he’ll take them. Same game, new team. They’re trapped for good.”

“Fucking Morales.”

“Tomás Morales? He’s coming here?” Chola said, her face turning white. She looked around wildly, like a trapped animal. “You got to get us out of here.”

The other girls whispered to each other, Tomás’s name sparking fear in English and Spanish. The rising terror on the girls’ faces made them look even younger, in need of protection.

“Damn it.” Bobby waved me over.

I turned to the girls. “Stay there. Don’t move.”

“Don’t leave us here,” Chola said.

Bobby and I huddled near the door, heads close, whispering to each other.

“We can’t take them,” Bobby said. “Julie. That’s it. We can’t.”

“She’s not here. I say we have to. And officially it’s still my show. They’re all someone’s daughters. But instead of having a dad to break them out, they got us.”

Bobby looked at the girls. If he saw what I saw, in front of him were children forced not into adulthood, but into some purgatory where they were objects for amusement.

“Fuck,” Bobby said. He broke the huddle and then one of the fans by kicking it. “For nothing, man. All this and no Julie.”

A few of the girls started from Bobby’s mini-tantrum, taking a few steps away.

“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” I said, trying to calm them. “He’s just upset about his daughter.”

“Julie really is his daughter?” Chola said. “Yo, she’s probably in her trailer.”

Bobby turned to Chola quickly. “You said you didn’t know where she was.”

“I don’t. I said she’s probably there. We don’t leave this fucking trailer except to fight. I don’t know where no one is.”

“Which trailer is hers?”

“Once you’re out the door, turn right. You’ll see it. It has a bird painted on the side.”

I barked orders to Chola. “Okay, you’re in charge. There’s a panel truck at the far end of the loading docks. You’ll see it. Says
O
COTILLO
B
EER
& A
MMO
on the side. There’s a trapdoor underneath. If you climb under the truck, you’ll be able to get in the back. Find water—a lot of it—wait for us, stay out of sight.”

“You seriously did like a Trojan Horse to get in here?”

“I guess we did,” I said.

“Do I get a gun?” Chola said.

“No,” Bobby said. “Soon as we find Julie, we’ll drive everyone the fuck out of here.”

“Julie know you’re coming to save her? She might’ve used to been like us, but she ain’t got to be saved no more.”

“And why is that?”

“She runs this shit, yo. She’s the fucking boss.”

“Of course she is,” I said.

We found Julie for the second time in our long hunt, sitting at the kitchen table of her air-conditioned Winnebago. She sorted and uncrumpled different denominations of bills, stacking them in neat stacks and making a tally of the count on a columnar pad. When the door crashed open, she jumped in her seat and turned quickly to face us. Seeing me, she put one hand on the money and reached for her backpack with the other hand.

I brought my pistol up quickly. “Don’t do it, Julie. Bobby might not have the heart to shoot you, but he’s your father. Me? I’m looking for a reason.”

Julie called my bluff and reached anyway. Of course, I didn’t shoot her, but I covered the distance quick enough to grab her wrist before she was able to pull her weapon. I easily pried the small pistol from her girl fingers, wondering if this was the gun she shot Bobby with. It was small, compact, and deadly. Just like her.

The whole time, Julie screamed the entire Spanish/English dictionary of obscenities at me. Not in alphabetical order, but she was under duress. She definitely exceeded my limited vocabulary, making me curious as to what a
panocha
and a
joto
were.

Bobby watched from the doorway, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. Julie stopped struggling when she saw him. As if out of reflex, her face took on that teenage girl face that every parent knows, the snide one that looked like she smelled bad yogurt.

“You didn’t die,” she said.

“Wow” came out of my mouth.

Bobby shook his head, looking at the ground. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Julie said.

I’d heard more convincing apologies from waiters telling me they were out of the chicken fingers.

“I got a load of things to say to you that need to be said, but we don’t got time to dick with that now,” Bobby said. “I’d give you the choice between the easy way and the hard way, but I know the fucking answer. Let’s tie her ass up, Jimmy. We’ll carry her out of here.”

“You want to tie up your daughter?”

“Gag her, too.”

I turned to Julie. “And that’s why you don’t shoot your father.”

Even with all her wriggling, I was able to get her arms and feet bound in only a couple minutes. The big, chunky knot I used to secure her was pathetic even by my standards, but it did the trick. We couldn’t find any tape, so we used a torn-up shirt to gag her ongoing barrage of original profanity.

Bobby and I looked at the money on the table.

“You never know,” Bobby said. He threw the loose bills into Julie’s backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He spotted something in the backpack and pulled it out. It was another one of Julie’s journals. He put it back and zipped up the backpack.

Opening the Winnebago door a crack, he peeked out. “Looks good.”

I threw Julie over my shoulder. And as hesitant as I was to leave the air-conditioned space, I followed Bobby, Julie’s weight feeling like next to nothing. Small victories gave me strength.

But those victories never lasted.

As soon as my foot hit the ground, five Mexican bikers with drawn weapons walked out from behind the trailer. Chucho led the way, armed with Bobby’s pistol. The smile on his still-busted-up face appeared to revel in the five-against-two odds. That guy had never won a fair fight in his life.

Bobby looked down at the pistol in his hand, thought about it for a moment, but let it fall to the ground. One of the bikers pulled the gun from my waistband.

EIGHTEEN

“Is that Julie?” Chucho asked me. I still had her draped over my shoulder. He bent to get a look at her face. “You fuckers don’t give up.”

He walked to Bobby and said, “I had dreams about seeing you again. Beating your ass.”

Bobby smiled. “That’s the thing about dreams. They’re always about things that ain’t never going to happen.”

Chucho gave Bobby a hard right to the stomach, just below where his arm was tied to his body. Bobby took the punch, didn’t budge. He showed no sign of pain or even that he’d been hit. His expression looked like he was waiting in line at the Post Office. I wondered if he remembered that he’d learned that move from me way back in junior high.

“That punch was so weak, if it was tea, it’d be Earl Gay.” Bobby gave me a wink.

He did remember.

Chucho tried to stare Bobby down. Bobby looked back, bored. The scenario was not going as Chucho had planned. He couldn’t risk hitting Bobby again, for fear of looking even worse, but he had to do something. He didn’t get to make a decision.

Bobby gave him a hard open-hand slap to the side of the head. The blow sent Chucho reeling and crashing against the side of the trailer. The other bikers’ guns came up, but thankfully nobody fired.

I remained as motionless as I could, knees shaking a little. But I chalked that up to still having Julie hoisted onto my shoulder. She wasn’t heavy, but I couldn’t carry her all day.

“You going to let him bitch slap you, Chucho?” a younger, heavily-tatted Hermano said. “Fucking embarrassing.”

Before Chucho could answer, Bobby turned to the young biker and laughed. “What’s embarrassing is that you need those fucking guns. There’s five of you. Two of us. We’re old and I only got one good arm. And you’re scared of us.” He turned to me, shaking his head. “Today’s youth. Total pussies.”

“I ain’t scared of shit, bitch. Especially not some gray-haired pocho fuck.” The young guy jammed his gun into the back of his pants and took off his shirt.

“He’s taking off his shirt,” Bobby said. “That’s how you know he means it.”

The other men didn’t look as anxious to fight, but they put their guns away, too. Nobody wanted to look weak.

“We’re supposed to get back,” said a fat guy who—considering the originality of their nicknaming, I guarantee—was called Gordo. “Goyo said to drop off the money and get right back.”

“If the five of us can’t cripple these two in less than a minute . . .” the young guy said, not finishing the thought.

Chucho made his way behind the other four men. He didn’t look like he had any fight left. He’d tangled with Bobby three times and none of those encounters went well. When it came to messing with Bobby, most people stop at once.

“I’ll wash. You dry,” Bobby said to me, bringing up his good hand in a fist.

I dropped Julie from my shoulder a little harder than I meant to, but carrying a live person is an awkward thing. She grunted, but couldn’t do much more than that. I raised my fists slowly, a weak attempt to delay the inevitable.

“I guess that means I rinse,” Gabe said, walking out from behind a nearby tent, pistol held in front of him. When the Mexican bikers turned, Bobby quickly picked up his pistol and aimed it at the young Mexican. I stood there like a dumbass.

The young Mexican looked genuinely hurt. “What about all that shit you said? We were going to square up. Fight like men.”

“Why would I do that when I got a gun?” Bobby said. “I could get hurt.”

“You’ll understand when you get older,” I said. “When you realize all this posturing macho shit is what children do. You’re young. That means you’re still stupid. It’s okay. We were too.”

“Fuck you.”

“Gabe, grab their guns. Then we’re the fuck out of here,” Bobby said.

After I got my pistol back, Bobby and I covered the five bikers as Gabe frisked them and made a small pile of firearms between us. When he got to Chucho, they stared eye to eye for a moment and then Gabe punched him hard in the liver, dropping Chucho to a knee. Gabe put his pistol to Chucho’s head.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

Gabe leaned in close to Chucho and grabbed his face, squeezing his cheeks.

“We were best friends,” Gabe said.

Chucho pointed toward the pile of person named Julie. “It was her. She had these plans. Said the gang could make all this money. That we’d be rich.”

“Don’t blame her. Man up and admit the shit you did.”

“Don’t do it,” I repeated.

We stood frozen for what felt like weeks, as Gabe pushed the barrel of the pistol harder against Chucho’s head.

Bobby’s voice calmly filled the silence. “You can kill him, but if you’re going to do it, find a rock. Shoot him and they’ll hear it across the road. If you want revenge, make it quick. And quiet. We have to get the fuck out of here.”

Gabe nodded and pulled the pistol away from Chucho’s head. Then he brought the pistol back down, pistol-whipping Chucho in the jaw and side of his head. Then twice more. Blood quickly covered his face, its lower half distorted and out of place.

Bobby stepped forward and pushed one of the men forward toward the truck. “The rest of you. Start walking.”

Gabe gave Chucho a kick, but Chucho didn’t feel it. He was already unconscious. Gabe started following Bobby.

I hollered after Gabe, “Finish the job or carry him. Can’t risk him waking up and giving us away.”

Gabe grabbed one of Chucho’s feet and dragged him along the hardpack behind Bobby.

I picked up Julie and threw her over my shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Bobby turned and gave a sharp laugh. “You hear this kid? Heat of the moment, he finishes the catchphrase. ‘I’ll rinse.’ You’re making me feel worse about shooting your ear off.”

“I still got most of it. What about kicking my ass?” Gabe said.

“No, I still feel pretty good about that.”

We corralled the men into the empty storage container. It was going to get oven hot but we didn’t have time to tie everyone up. Gabe dragged Chucho inside, his head bouncing off the lip of the container with a wet thud.

“Fatty said you had some money for us,” Bobby said. One of the boys shook his head and handed two big rolls of bills to Bobby. He stuffed them in his pocket.

“We going to die you leave us in here,” Gordo said.

“Not if you resort to cannibalism,” Bobby said. And on that bon mot, he slammed the doors shut and locked them down. One of the men slammed against the door, causing Russell’s rocket to fall from the roof where it must have lodged. Bobby and I looked at it and gave each other a smile.

I might have felt bad about the five bikers, but they gladiatored teenage girls for human cockfights. If you live in a world where that’s acceptable, you deserve what you get. They could roast in hell for all I cared.

I popped my head through the trapdoor into the truck trailer. The girl nearest me jumped and screamed, causing a chain reaction of screams, mine included. When everyone calmed down, I dropped back down and then shoved Julie up through the opening, pushing her body away from the trapdoor as far as I could.

“Hold on, everybody. It might get a little bumpy.”

I hopped back down. Gabe waited to climb in. “Those girls back there might not act scared, but they are. Make them feel safe. That’s your job.”

Gabe nodded and climbed into the trailer. I made my way to the passenger side of the cab. Bobby sat waiting in the driver’s seat.

“Gabe, Julie, and the girls are in. Let’s go,” I said.

“No keys,” Bobby said.

“You’re kidding. Which guy drove?”

“I don’t know. I was with you in the back, remember?”

“His name was Flaco.”

“So we look for a skinny Mexican. Great.”

“Fuck. Hotwire it.”

“Don’t you think I would’ve if I knew how? Mexicans aren’t born with the genetic ability to hotwire cars, Jimmy. Why would I know how to hotwire a fucking car?”

“Because you’re basically a criminal,” I shouted.

“I’m a rapscallion. It’s different.”

“Gabe. He fixes motorcycles. A mechanic.”

“And he’s Mexican, too,” Bobby said sarcastically.

I jumped out of the truck and shimmied underneath to the trapdoor. When I knocked, it opened immediately. I poked my head inside. “Gabe. We ain’t got keys. Can you get this truck started without them?”

“Not without any tools.”

“Swiss Army Knife do it?”

“Maybe.”

“You guys are pathetic,” Chola said. “Give me the fucking knife.”

Bobby and I stood guard as Chola climbed underneath the steering column of the truck, knife in hand. There were dozens of cars and trucks parked on the factory grounds and along the road. We could see blurry activity through the fence, if not the specific action.

I climbed on the hood of the truck to get a better look around. “Oh, shit. We might have a problem.”

A fleet of black SUVs sat parked in a line in the dry wash where we had fired our rocket. The dozen vehicles were still, but their cleanliness and precision were ominous. They could only be Tomás’s men.

Bobby stood on the bumper to get a better look. “Shit.”

As if on cue, the truck roared to life beneath us. I slid down off the hood. Chola hopped out and tossed me my knife.

“What took you so long?” I said.

She rolled her eyes. It reminded me that she was a teenager. No more than sixteen. And she knew how to hotwire a car. I let myself believe that she learned it in shop class. I lied to myself all the time.

“Let’s go,” I said.

But Bobby was staring at the factory grounds across the highway. He turned to me. “What about Rudy?”

“We got to get the girls and Julie out of here. Can’t take the truck in there.”

“You’re right. Got to grab him and meet up at Rudy’s ranch later.”

“There’s a whole slew of bad guys over there. That’s beyond even our usual shitty odds. This was a sneak-and-snatch, not an attack-and-grab.”

Bobby squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You can’t just make up expressions. Seriously, bro. When it’s just you and me, that’s one thing. But there’s people around. It’s embarrassing.”

“ ‘Sneak-and-snatch’ isn’t an expression?”

“Not even in England,” Bobby said. “I can’t leave Rudy there. He’d never let me hear the end of it if he got killed.”

“You know what? Chucho and Julie are the only ones who know our faces. What says we can’t waltz in there like we want to see the fights? Get Rudy and go.”

“Bro, you’re not going. I was talking me, not we. You got to drive the truck.”

“Gabe can drive the truck.”

“You’re done, man. Gone above and beyond. To the edge of the cliff. You don’t got to jump off with me. I’ll be okay.”

“Said the guy with one working arm. No argument. I’m in.”

I gave Gabe directions to Rudy’s place. Told him that no matter what, he was not to untie or even talk to Julie. Get to Rudy’s and wait. If we didn’t get back by nightfall, he was to call Griselda. She’d take it from there.

Bobby chucked Julie’s backpack into the truck. Gabe held out his hand to Bobby. They shook.

Gabe said, “I know you weren’t here to save my ass, but you did. Thanks, Julie’s Dad.” He turned to me. “And whatever your name is.”

“Jimmy.”

Gabe climbed into the truck, Chola sliding over.