The Starshine Connection (14 page)

“But you’re correct,
amigo.
I’m the big man.” His hand was still holding his “package”; the
cholos
laughed again, on cue. “I’m the
chingón.
You don’t fuck with me. Did you know you’re a trespasser here? You know what we do to trespassers?”

Slayton was sick of everyone whooping it up. “Marry them?”

Ortiz shook his head again, an expression so pleasantly banal that it belonged on a suburban insurance agent. Slayton got
a hard slap in the face concurrent with a blast in the stomach that stole his wind. Blood began to drip from his nose to his
mouth. He was lucky he had not bitten a chunk out of his tongue. It was not a simple matter of a
machisimd
verbal joust; Slayton knew that such games, for the Chicanos, were taken with pathological seriousness. He had to shut up
to live. But Slayton’s own education and experience would not allow him to stand idly and quietly by while such asses pranced
and brayed before him. It was a classic Mexican standoff—but it was in Slayton’s own mind, not on the warehouse floor.

“You’re really a punk, Ortiz,” he growled, blood outlining his teeth. “And a coward. You couldn’t stand me one to one, and
you know it. What’s better,
I
know it, you chicken-shit bastard.” Slayton swore he could feel the blood temperature of the
cholos
restraining him cool off by ten degrees. Nobody ranked Ortiz, not if they wanted to keep their teeth. It was an old story—the
biggest-kid-on-the-block syndrome. History would defeat Ortiz in the end. They always forgot that it doesn’t really matter
how
bad
you can be. No matter how frightening you are, there was someone, somewhere, who could reduce you to shivering obeisance.
Everyone thought he was immune to the rule. Even Slayton.

The
cholos
had him spread-eagled on the cold stone of the warehouse floor, on his back. Ortiz shucked Mercy away like empty cellophane,
taking steps measured to place his final stride dead-on in the saddle of Slayton’s crotch. He planted a harness boot laced
with biker chains there, his stacked heel mashing Slayton’s scrotum, and leaned forward, shifting all of his weight to the
foot while his sweating, manic face hovered inches from Slayton’s nose.

The sour agony that lanced up from his groin in nauseating waves pushed Slayton to the very rim of consciousness. Ortiz placed
his hand in almost brotherly caress around the back of Slayton’s neck, cupping it, then jamming his thumb savagely into the
hard knot of his Adam’s apple, cutting off Slayton’s wind. Ortiz’s childish grin never left him. Slayton crimsoned from lack
of air, but never let his eyes break contact with those of the young killer on his windpipe and balls.

As far as Slayton was concerned, it took forever. Nineteen eternities, with an odd eon or two tossed in.

Ortiz rasped a string of invectives at him. He could see the lips skinning back wolfishly as Ortiz talked and threatened—he
had huge bicuspids—but Slayton could not hear a word.

As his perception fought to swim away into blackness, Slayton realized that these theatrics probably meant he was not going
to die in the warehouse. It was all muscle-flexing, otherwise he would be dead already. He hoped.

It seemed to take a long time for his hearing to come back after Ortiz let him have it full in the face. Slayton felt his
nose break, felt the fresh cascade of blood. But the first thing he heard was Mercy protesting, and Ortiz slapping her around
to shut her up. They had a quick, jabbering argument in Spanish; he hit her again to stave off her protest, and returned to
Slayton.

“We figured out what to do with you, man,” he said in his leering voice. “You’re going on a trip. You should be real happy.
You wanna suck up Mexican atmosphere, hey, have I got the guys for you!”

More rough laughter.

“But first I gotta go give this
puta
some real
chora,
you know what I mean? I gotta shoot her full of Mexican wisdom so she’ll see straight again. So I gotta leave you with my
friends for a while—you understand.”

The sick smile split his face again, and he grabbed Mercy by the waistband of her jeans and pulled her away into darkness.
She was feather-light in his grip. Then the hyena pack closed in around Slayton, obscuring them from sight.

The beating was unprofessional, but thorough. For some obscure reason, as Slayton felt his body cave in under the repeated
blows, the image in his mind was of the split lip Ortiz had just given Mercy with his smack in the face. Two dots of blood
had speckled her chin. Slayton focused on the two dots and nothing else, withdrawing into his own mind as his body was kicked
and stomped.

He saw flash-images of flailing hands, of laughing faces, of feet pumping into his sides, his head, his butt. They weren’t
going to kill him, but they were going to come damn close.

He kept his mind on the two dots, abstractions now. There was no pain after a minute or so. And then suddenly fiery pain crashed
into him, and after a hovering moment or two, Ben Slayton passed completely out.

The acrid odor steaming up from Slayton’s clothing told him he had been revived by someone urinating in his face. He made
a mental note to thank the gentleman at his first opportunity.

Reality fluttered in and out of focus, not yet ready to be captured and held by Slayton’s mind. He shifted his concentration
away from the two red dots—where in hell had he gotten that?—to the steel girders in the ceiling of the warehouse, far above.

“Está felón,”
Ortiz muttered, looking at him. “You’re a real tough guy now, aren’t you?” His surprisingly correct English grammar seemed
to register with Slayton—
that
was what made his speech so strange; its precision unnatural for a barrio spic, to say the least. “You look like something
the street department wouldn’t bother to flush into the sewer,
amigo.”
He made a tiny hiss, of disgust. “Did they cut off your
palomita?
Do
garbadinas
even have one? No?” This last was more performance for the boys, strictly disposable taunting. Slayton ignored it.

“
Dácalo,”
he said. A flunky
cholo
hurried up with a leather case. Ortiz snapped it open and extracted a hypodermic needle and a small ampule of amber fluid.
“We figure you need to try the
agua fria,
to get some firsthand experience,” he said. “But I know a guy like you won’t cooperate with a civilized approach, a nice
social drink with your
güisas.
So after you have this”—he held the hypo so Slayton could see it—“you’ll be more agreeable.”

Two
cholos
pounced on Slayton’s forearm and bicep, rendering everything motionless while Ortiz stuck the needle carelessly into the
crook of his arm, pushing the fluid into Slayton’s muscle tissue, and thence to his blood vessels. Up close, the stuff looked
like thin honey—or urine. Slayton tried to grind his teeth, set his jaw—but the throbbing in his face defeated his efforts.

For almost a minute nothing happened. Then the pain in his jaw ebbed away, with the slow, yet perceptible feeling of a tide
flowing out. Ortiz’s shining black hair was next to his broken nose, and he heard the
cholo’s
soft, menacing voice, like the voice of God, coming seemingly from all directions.

“
Amigo,
you are so goddam thirsty you can’t bear it. You want something to drink. You want something to drink more than anything
else, more than a woman, more than life. If you don’t get something to drink, you’ll die and nobody will ever know your name…”

This went on for a while, until it seemed to be a persistent background counterpoint to Slayton’s inner thoughts. He tried
to force himself not to think about drinking, and felt his throat constrict dryly. It was no good; it was like telling him
not to think about a rhinoceros. His throat began to ache for liquid.

Ortiz said, “Now he’s gotta meditate for a minute.” What the hell had happened to Mercy?

When Ortiz at last handed Slayton the Starshine bottle, he almost dropped it in his disorientation and his greed to drink.
All the straight lines of the building had bowed hypnotically sideways, and any physical movement caused instant plunging
vertigo. Slayton managed, with a silly grin on his face, to empty the decanter into himself.

“Two or three more oughta do it,” Ortiz said, and everyone laughed again. Slayton laughed, too. Ortiz was really funny! A
brotherly kind of guy; Slayton thought that possibly they could be buddies. Maybe Ortiz would let Slayton join the gang!

The real world, or what was left of it, faded away. Time was meaningless as physical reference. The world strobed past Slayton
like a fast and indifferent rerun performance of a coming-attractions trailer, all static images with no continuity or sense.
He watched it dumbly, passively. It was pretty and flashy, it was fun to sit and watch, like television, and it didn’t require
you to think. That was his problem, Slayton thought. No time for the pretty things. No time to appreciate Art.

They pushed him around some more, principally for laughs. He was aware of that, but there was no pain associated with the
memory. Tactile sensation was as stable as cotton candy. He saw the car he was loaded into. He was aware of telling the
cholos
how to tie the knots in his bindings so he could not get away from them.

This goddam Starshine was really a trip!

He was a bit angered that they put a blindfold on him, but cooled off when he found that he could still see things. He had
the power to see through the cloth! That was something he had not counted on—an advantage, a palpable testament to his superiority,
because he was the Good Guy.

They refused his request to go back to the warehouse for his white hat.

All of this was very important. It had something to do with the mouthful of dirt Slayton kept trying to spit out. It was floor
dirt. He had taken a bite out of the tamped brown earth that formed the floor of the Mexican cell into which he had been tossed…

Things began to connect, not unlike a chain that is chopped up into serviceable lengths, each composed of several metal links.
The parts held together, but it was still not a complete chain equalling total consciousness. The first thing that resolved
itself into clear focus was the pain.

Slayton doubled up in the cell, alone now. Fuentes had kicked him in the ribs, possibly breaking one or several, but he could
still breathe freely. The dry bood on his clothing reeked; in fact, Slayton stank richly from the abuses of the past two days.
He was still wearing the same clothes in which he had infiltrated the Starshine warehouse with Mercy.

The particulars of the cell wafted from infinity focus into clear-cut objects and textures. That was it! He was bringing himself
back up to the surface!

Lying on the floor, with stinging and slow movements, Slayton tested his arms and legs—flexing the fingers, bending the elbow,
wriggling the toes. He attempted to do a sit-up, rose several inches from the floor, and plunked back, raising a small cloud
of dust. Not yet. He had no idea of how long it would be before the guard returned, to stuff more drugs into him, soften him
up some more, or kill him. Slayton had to be ready for the next time he came back, had to force himself to use his remaining
time usefully. Tentatively, he tried waking his body up with isometrics, remaining virtually still on the floor. Each muscle
screamed individually as Slayton forced the pain to come, using the sensation as verification that he was still alive, and
applying it toward regaining a hold on reality, so that he might save his life.

Over and over, he told himself,
You’ll die if you fail.
He’d die. Where, he did not even know. They’d investigate, but they wouldn’t find out anything useful for months, and by
that time the Starshine people would have shifted gears neatly, leaving no trace of themselves. Slayton could not fail.

He worked methodically. In several moments he was able to sit up under his own power. If the guard, Fuentes, returned now,
Slayton’s attack would be crude but effective. There was a fifty-percent chance he would be able to cold-cock the fat guard,
Fuentes, by using his own weight against him. Slayton’s chances for success increased with elapsed time. He was like a guitar
player, hurrying to get in tune for a concert. The show had to go on.

Slayton stood up. Wobbly, black and purple with bruises, but okay. The pain in his face from the broken nose had receded to
a dull borderline ache, pulsing steadily, but manageable. If he waited too much longer he knew he’d lapse, vomit, pass out
again. That could not be allowed to happen.

There was the brief slam of a wooden door, and Slayton heard the guards coming to collect him.

Cholla was huddled back in his ratty office chair trying to make sense out of a copy of
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
that was a year or so shy of its fortieth birthday. It had come to the rural police outpost when a border barbershop had
closed its doors. It had been there for the occasional American customer.

Over the edge of the pulp magazine, Cholla saw Fuentes. He had clumped into the station and returned to the back cell after
relieving himself of the water-weight of four more bottles of Dos Equis against an ocatilla plant outside. The station, when
in use, had no official bathroom—just the area behind the parking canopy for the jeep. Usually the officers bunked themselves
in town with the less picky whores.

Today Fuentes was dragging it out. He had not gotten his paws on a
gabacho
in some time. He intended to make this one last a little longer before blowing his brains out with the long-barreled Colt
he packed. Then the
gringo
would be dumped out in the middle of the Mesa Locote, the “uncaring plateau,” at the waterless end of a two-hour trail drive.
His body, conveniently relieved of all personals, with strict attention paid to anything that might have a negotiable value,
would be without identity, fit in the merciless heat only to be
came asada
for the buzzards. After that came the part Cholla favored, with his inestimable good taste: the trip north, the lavish graft,
the quality whores. All things considered, the most distasteful part of his sideline was working with a sweating hog like
Fuentes. But they maintained the smiling good friendship that only partners in murder must actively nurture.