This Wicked World (22 page)

Two sets of heavy glass doors keep the heat outside. Taggert pushes through them and enters the air-conditioned bubble of the casino. The electronic whoops and giggles of the slot machines swirl in his head as he makes his way to the bar, and he wonders how the dealers and cocktail waitresses stand the noise all day long. It would drive him nuts.

He’s passing the penny slots when a fat old gal slides off her stool and lands flat on her back on the carpet in front of him. He looks down at her bulging eyes and flushed face and knows right then and there that it’s all over. Nonetheless, he crouches beside her and says, “Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

No response, not a flicker.

“Carol?” another old broad calls, hobbling toward them down the narrow aisle separating the rows of machines, a long cigarette scissored between her fingers. “Carol, honey?”

Carol is tethered to the slot by a pink plastic spiral cord, one end of which is clipped to a belt loop on her pants, the other to her casino rewards card, which is still inserted in the machine she was playing when she collapsed. Taggert reaches up, slides the card out, and sets it on the floor beside her. His mind flashes to Daddy and Paw Paw and his brother, James, to Uncle Ralph, how they all dropped in their tracks just like this, and the thought hollows him out so that everything echoes longer and louder than it should.

Someone is calling for security. Foam bubbles between Carol’s lips, which have turned blue. Her friend kneels and takes her hand. “Hold on, honey,” she says.

A security guard, a big Indian in a dark suit, sidesteps through the gathering crowd and squats next to Taggert.

“What happened?” he asks.

“No idea,” Taggert replies. “I was coming in and saw her fall.”

“She has heart trouble,” the friend says.

The guard pulls the mic of his headset closer to his mouth. “I need medical at the penny corral.”

“Come on, sweetie,” the friend says, lifting Carol’s lifeless hand to her cheek. “Come on, now.”

Taggert stands as the guard sticks his fingers into Carol’s mouth to clear it in preparation for CPR. The Indian begins chest compressions, then places his mouth over Carol’s and fills her lungs. The air rushes back out between her slack lips with a sound like a Bronx cheer.

Taggert turns away and comes face to face with the onlookers. Their eyes are bright as they watch the guard attempt to pump life back into the woman, their expressions full of hope. A pack of rubes waiting for a miracle — angel fire and heavenly harps. One guy even has his head bowed and is mumbling a prayer. He must be seventy years old. You’d think someone who’d lived that long would have learned something. Taggert pushes past him and bumps his way out of the crowd. Anybody says a prayer for him when he drops, he’ll come roaring back just to punch them in the mouth.

The bar where he’s meeting Benjy is located in the middle of the casino. He passes two EMTs humping plastic cases and rolling a gurney on his way there. Benjy is standing at the railing that separates the bar from the casino floor, watching the commotion. Taggert sidles up to him and says, “You fucking turkey vulture.”

“What happened?” Benjy asks.

“Some old lady died,” Taggert replies. “Let’s have a drink.”

They move to the bar, snag a couple of stools. Benjy calls for a beer; Taggert goes for bourbon. He’s tense about the meeting. Things can go to hell in an instant, and here he is, no gun, no knife, Benjy’s contact having insisted they show up unarmed. That should have been out of the question.

Taggert sips his Maker’s, then sets the glass on the bar and rotates it slowly, his fingertips barely touching the rim. “You speak to your man?” he asks Benjy, who is intently pushing buttons on his phone.

“He’s got a couple bitches with him right now,” Benjy says without taking his eyes off the screen. “Said he’ll call when he’s ready.”

“Glad to see he’s taking this so seriously.”

Benjy shrugs. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” Taggert says. “Just keep right on diddling that thing.”

Benjy looks up, irritated. “I’m texting my mom, okay?” he says, then goes back to the keypad. Taggert has known Benjy since the guy was a little
vato
hustling eight balls of stepped-on coke to college kids. Now he’s losing his hair and has wrinkles around his eyes.

The bartender, a cute young blonde, drops a glass, and some asshole sitting across the bar from Taggert applauds. The girl ducks her head and massages her temples, then crouches to pick up the pieces. Taggert thinks about walking over and popping the loudmouth but instead adjusts his stool and has another sip of bourbon.

He decided to wear a suit today as a sign of respect — no tie, but a nice jacket and slacks — and here’s Benjy in jeans and a T-shirt. Now Taggert wonders if he’s overdressed. Used to be he could give a shit, went everywhere in motorcycle boots and greasy Levi’s. These days, though, he’s trying to be more professional, trying to elevate his game. Looks like he’s the only one.

Benjy’s phone blares a tinny tune. He jabs a button, puts it to his ear. “
Sí,
” he says, then, “
Bueno.
” He snaps the phone shut and says, “Time to go.”

They finish their drinks and leave the bar. The EMTs are loading Carol onto the gurney. She’s still dead. Taggert follows Benjy across the casino to the hotel lobby. They find the elevators and step into an empty car. As the doors are closing, a woman carrying two suitcases rushes over.

“Hold that, please,” she says.

“Sorry, full up,” Benjy replies. He and Taggert exchange smirks as the doors slide shut in the woman’s face.

Taggert straightens his jacket when they step out onto the Mexican’s floor. He follows Benjy down the hall to the suite and waits with his hands clasped behind his back while Benjy knocks. A bodybuilder with a woman’s eyes opens the door.

“We’re here to see Mando,” Benjy says.

The bodybuilder looks both ways, checking the hall, then quickly pats Benjy down and motions him inside. Taggert is next. The muscle takes his time with him, makes him open his jacket, and runs his hand up and down his torso, his legs. The guy smells like a woman too. Must be the crap he uses in his hair. He squeezes Taggert’s nuts as a final flourish, then steps aside to let him pass.

Mando, standing behind a table, is silhouetted against a big window that frames a view of rocky desert and, beyond that, the snow-covered crest of Mount San Gorgonio. Benjy strides across the room to shake his hand, and Taggert follows. The way the light is, Taggert can’t see Mando’s face until he’s right up on him. Curly black hair, a nose that looks like it’s been busted a few times, a gold tooth. His hand is hard and rough, like a seashell. A working man.

“Sit, sit,” he says, sinking into a chair.

Taggert and Benjy take seats across from him. On the table are the remains of a room-service platter of chicken wings, a mound of tiny bones surrounded by half-eaten celery sticks and small plastic cups of dressing. Mando slides the platter out of the way and motions for the bodybuilder to do something with it.

“You speak Spanish?” he asks Taggert.

“
Dos tacos, por favor.
That’s about it,” Taggert replies. He rests his forearms on the table and turns his hands into fists.

“So we speak English then,” Mando says with a smile.

“I’ve shown him your paper,” Benjy says.

“Good stuff,” Taggert interjects. “Best I’ve seen in a long time.”

“And you seen a lot, huh?” Mando asks. He leans back in his chair and fades into shadow against the window again, playing hide-and-seek.

“Can we close the drapes?” Taggert says. “I like to look in a man’s eyes when I’m doing business.”

Mando says something in Spanish to the bodybuilder, who moves to the window and yanks the cord that draws the curtains shut. They sit silently in the dark until the muscle turns on an overhead light.

“Okay now?” Mando says. “You are comfortable?”

Taggert nods. He can tell the guy is irritated with him, so he tries to keep things moving. “How many of the hundreds can you get?” he asks.

“How many you want?”

“What about half a mil to start with?”

Mando purses his lips and rocks his head from side to side, thinking. “This will cost you seventy-five thousand,” he says.

“I can handle it.”

“You sure?”

“And if everything works out, I’ll take more next time.”

Mando smiles and says, “You got a lot to prove before then, hombre.” He hooks his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and tilts his chair onto its rear legs.

Everything he says and does seems like a challenge to Taggert, an invitation to fight. Even his shirt — blood red with a scorpion embroidered on it, two rhinestones for eyes, another sparkling at the tip of its tail — pisses Taggert off. There’s a chance, though, that the guy is just testing him to see if he’s some kind of hothead whose anger could blow everything, so Taggert swallows the insults boiling up into his throat and asks, “How will it work, the exchange?”

Mando puts one snakeskin boot on the table and leans way back. “Is it true you burned a man a little by a little because he stole from you?” he says.

Breezy Petty, about five years ago. Nasty. Very nasty. “Yeah, it’s true,” Taggert replies.

“How you do this?”

Taggert scratches the scar on his throat and squints, pretending he has to dig up the details from his memory. “I started with his right hand,” he says. “Dipped it in gas, set it on fire, and let it burn a while, then put it out. Then his left hand, left foot, right foot, and so on. He hung in there for a long time. I think I eventually had to put a bullet in him.”

Mando licks his index finger and idly rubs at a scuff on the toe of his boot, like he’s bored by the story, like he’s all kinds of rough and tough. “I’ll talk to my boss in Mexico,” he says. “If he says okay, we come up with a way to get the paper to you. I’ll contact him” — he motions to Benjy.

There’s a knock at the door. Worry ripples across Mando’s face. He slides his boot off the table and sets the chair down. Taggert tightens up, like there’s a big screw in his stomach that’s attached to everything. Again he thinks how dumb it was not to bring a piece.

He turns to look over his shoulder as Mando waves the muscle to the door. The guy puts his eye to the peephole, then curses under his breath. When he opens up, another bodybuilder, not as pretty as the first, steps into the room and rattles off something in Spanish.

“An old woman is died while playing a machine,” Mando says. “Enrique is afraid. He thinks it could be a bad sign.”

“We saw it,” Benjy says. He points at Taggert. “He tried to help her.”

“Really?” Mando says to Taggert. “So now maybe you have a ghost following you.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Taggert replies.

“No?”

“No.”

Mando shakes his head ruefully. “We got a lot of ghosts in Mexico,” he says. “A lot. I have seen some myself.”

“Oh, yeah?” Taggert says.

“Seriously, hombre. In my town, the children, we play by the water, the stream, you know? One time after the rain the stream flooded, and the water took away a little girl, Rosa. The men search and search but never find her. Her family buried an empty coffin.

“A month later, another girl, Isabel, woke up crying. Her mother says, ‘What’s wrong, Isabel?’ and the girl says, ‘I’m not Isabel; I’m Rosa.’ The mother tells the girl it’s wrong to talk that way, but Isabel is still crying and still saying she is Rosa.”

Music blasts on the other side of the closed door separating the bedroom from the rest of the suite. A woman laughs.

“Hey!” Mando yells. “Hey!”

The door opens, and a dark-haired girl in a tiny bathing suit pokes her head out. Taggert can see another girl, a blonde, sprawled on the bed behind her.

“We are talking,” Mando says.

The dark-haired girl rolls her eyes and closes the door. The music cuts off.

“So, anyway,” Mando says, picking up his story, “Isabel’s father brought the priest to talk to Isabel. The priest ask her questions about Rosa’s family, about her house, and Isabel answered them all. She tell the priest she wants to see her mother, and then she will show him where her bones are.

“The priest took Isabel to Rosa’s house. I remember I seen them walking. The girl looked strange to me, and I was scared, you know, very scared. Rosa’s mother speaked to the girl and couldn’t believe it. It was really Rosa’s ghost in Isabel’s body.

“They talked for a while, then the ghost said she must go. Rosa’s mother begged her to stay, but the ghost said God was waiting for her.

“The priest put Isabel on a burro and took her into the desert. They came to a place where all the garbage from the flood was piled up, and Isabel told the priest where to dig.

“Right there he found Rosa’s body. Isabel, she was asleeping then, and he couldn’t wake her. He wrapped Rosa’s body in a blanket and tied it to the burro and carried Isabel all the way back to the pueblo.

“Isabel waked up like normal two days later, only talking about a dream of heaven. I remember the whole pueblo came when they dug up the empty coffin and put Rosa inside.”

One of the bodybuilders crosses himself, and Mando raises his hands and tilts his head as if to say to Taggert, “Ghosts. What more proof do you need?” Taggert can’t suppress a snicker.

“You don’ believe me?” Mando says, his heavy eyebrows crashing into each other above his nose.

“Oh, I believe you,” Taggert says quickly. “It’s just it sounds a little crazy, you know?”

“It’s not crazy,” Mando says.

Taggert leans back in his chair, trying to ease the tension. “Look,” he says. “I just wanted to come here and let you see my face, let you see the kind of man I am.”

“A man who don’ believe in ghosts,” Mando says.

“A man who’s all about putting money in his pocket,” Taggert says. “The same kind of man as you.”

Mando flashes his gold tooth in a quick smile, but Taggert doesn’t trust it.

“Okay,” Mando says. “I talk to my boss and contact you soon.”

The music starts in the bedroom again. Mando tenses as if he’s about to shout once more, but then something sly comes into his expression, and he turns back to Taggert.