Stuff to Die For

by Don Bruns

  Angel, big, black, and menacing, had a gun in his hand and it was pointed at the back of the mouth’s rather large head.

  The big-mouthed man spun around, his right arm stiff and the pistol aimed at Angel’s midsection. It was a split second and it seemed to last forever. Angel squeezed the trigger, and I swear I could see it in slow motion. The explosion thundered in my ears and I thought I saw fire belch from the barrel of his pistol. The Cuban jumped into the air and swatted with his left hand like he was fending off a wasp. He came down on his hip and crumpled there on the asphalt pad outside Jackie Fuentes’s storage unit. Blood ran freely, a stream of the sticky, red fluid heading toward a drain.

  “Jesus.” The greasy guy’s head swiveled from Angel to James, back to Angel and then to me.

  James didn’t move, but tried to speak. “A . . .” He said it again. “A . . .” Finally he got it out. “Angel. You killed him.”

  Angel looked down, squeezing his eyes shut for just a moment. Then he leveled the pistol at the other Cuban. “Would you like to try something?”

  The man was wide-eyed, frozen in his spot.

  Angel shook his head. “I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “James!” He seemed to snap out of his trance. “Pick up the mail. Get it into the back of the truck.”

  We threw the mail into the truck in less than sixty seconds, and I pulled down the sliding door. Angel stood still, his gun aimed at the Cuban’s head. The man never moved an inch. He just kept breathing heavily—like he’d run two miles.

  James and I jumped into the cab, and Angel backed away from the man, finally climbing into the passenger side.

  “What the fuck do we do? Just drive away?” James seemed frozen, his hand clutching the truck key.

  I shoved him. “Hey, it was self-defense. And there’s still one of them alive. I’ll like our chances a lot better far away from here, James. Come on.”

  He turned the key and stepped on the gas and the truck threw gravel thirty feet from where he spun the tires. I was happy we’d left the gate open. We hit the road forty seconds later and never looked back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “CAN’T CALL THE COPS.” James was hunched over the wheel, staring at the road. I had no idea where we were going.

  “We’ve considered that how many times in the last three days?” There was always a reason not to call the cops.

  Angel rode shotgun, silent since we took off.

  “Angel, where did you get the gun?”

  “The Colt 380? Part of the package.”

  I must have looked surprised.

  “When you hire Angel, you get the complete package.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more.

  “He may be dead.” James looked like he was in a trance as the truck raced down the road.

  “I can’t imagine what kind of trouble we’re in.”

  “Hey!” I couldn’t let that stand. “Angel probably saved our lives. Jesus, the man was shot in self-defense and you’re worried about the trouble we’re in. James, think about not knowing the trouble we’re in. Think about us not being here to worry about it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. There’s that.”

  “Angel, what was the thing about rogues and imbeciles?”

  He smiled. “Alexander Dumas.”

  James and his movie quotes. Angel’s quotes from great literature. And I had nothing.

  When we pulled into the apartment complex, it was almost dark. No one had said another word.

  “Do you think this is a good idea? Here, where we live?”

  James shrugged his shoulders. “Where would you go? These guys have tracked us through the DMV, so they obviously know where Emily lives. They know where we live. I would guess they know where Jackie and Fuentes live. Maybe you have a better suggestion.” Bitter and cold, and he was right. We’d run out of options.

  Angel stepped out and I scooted over the seat and saw Em’s T-Bird right in front of our apartment. Not a good time.

  She was dozing in the driver’s seat and I tapped on the window. She blinked and opened her door.

  “Hi, babe.”

  “Em, what are you doing here?”

  The three of us stood there, looking into the car.

  “Em, this is Angel. Angel, Em.”

  They nodded at each other.

  I figured she had to know what had transpired. I didn’t want to go from beginning to end, so I started at the end. “Angel saved our lives tonight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MY FATHER NEVER CALLED ME. When he left, it was as if he’d disappeared, maybe died in a foreign war, and what memories I had would have to suffice for my lifetime. Oh, I heard about him from time to time. He sent my mother regular checks, although they were a fraction of what the courts ordered him to pay. Someone sent my mother a notice from a Phoenix, Arizona newspaper that he’d been picked up for DWI. A friend sent my grandfather a picture of my dad winning a father and son Halloween contest somewhere in Arizona, so I knew that he’d started another family.

  In my fantasy life I wondered if I had been rich and famous—a movie actor or recording artist—I wondered if my father would have come out publicly and announced that I was his son. And I always wondered if I’d done something wrong. Had I been less than a diligent offspring? Had I somehow been a bone of contention in my mother and father’s relationship? Something had caused him to leave our family. Maybe he didn’t want children. I worry that question to this day. And when it’s feasible, I’ll find him. I’ll hunt him down and make him answer the only question that seems to have any merit. “Why did you leave?”

  I often considered that when I was stressed. What would cause me to leave? I really had nothing to leave. Em? She wasn’t mine to leave. James? He was my best friend, but eventually we’d split and go our own ways. My mother? We hardly ever saw each other. My life was fluid, and leaving something as important as a family or a spouse wasn’t something I could fathom.

  “Maybe we should leave.” Em sat on the sofa and James straddled a vinyl dinette chair. “They know who we are, they know where we are, and now you’ve shot one of them.”

  Angel stood by the window, looking out at the parking lot, like a dark sentry.

  “The guy totally tripped when he saw we’d opened the Café Cubana envelope.” James kept clasping and unclasping his hands. “What was it that he said?”

  I tried to remember the exact wording. “Something about ‘this wasn’t for your viewing.’ As if some of the mail was for our viewing.”

  “Some high-powered names on that list, pard. Maybe they don’t want anyone knowing who they are.”

  Em’s cell phone chirped and she reached into her bag. “Hello.” She stood up and walked back into our small kitchen.

  James looked at me with his hands held up in surrender. “Where the hell would we go? Man, we are so screwed.” He glanced at Angel. “Angel, man, you probably did save our lives, but where the hell do we go from here? They can’t let us kill some guy and just walk away. Can they?”

  “James.” I was afraid he might lose it and God I needed someone with some strength tonight. “We don’t even know who they are.” I knew where the answers were. “We see Fuentes. We see him tonight.”

  “Oh, hell, he’s part of it. He’s the reason we’re in this mess.” James rocked back and forth on the chair until I thought it might tip over.

  “Fuentes can give us the answers and then we can decide whether to go to the police.”

  Em walked back in from the kitchen. “Want to know how they found you at the storage place?”

  James kept rocking. “Oh, Jesus, more bad news?”

  “Jackie. They stopped by her house.”

  I pictured the two bruisers trying to get past the guard. Apparently we weren’t pushy enough. “Jackie told them?”

  “They told her they worked with her husb
and and needed some of the things you had hauled. She remembered them hanging around when Rick worked out of her home. Remember?” She nodded at me. “She thought Rick was mixed up with terrorists. Well, these were two of the guys she was worried about. And, she thought you guys had unloaded everything by now so obviously she didn’t see any harm in telling them where it was. She just wanted to get them out of there.”

  “Couldn’t she have called Fuentes? To see if it was all right?”

  “Skip, she really didn’t care. Fuentes was screwing around on her and all she wanted was to get rid of him. These two guys had been in her home before, so she saw no harm. And she felt a little intimidated. She says that Fuentes told her he was having all the mail transferred to his new home, and then he insisted that she look through whatever else came to see if anything important showed up. Like she told us, she never bothered. Of course, now she feels like crap.”

  James stared through her. “Yeah. I’d feel that way too if I almost got someone killed. Jesus, she only missed a person’s finger, a class ring, and papers on the Café Cubana multimillion-dollar deal. Maybe she should have looked through some of that, you think?”

  “And maybe,” Em stared daggers at him, “maybe Ricardo Fuentes should have made sure all that mail went directly to him. Or maybe he should have kept his dick in his pants and stayed with Jackie so this never would have happened.”

  “In a perfect world, Emily. You’re the only one who lives there.” James stared back.

  She ignored him. “I say we visit Rick Fuentes. Ask him what the story is on Café Cubana and let him tell us how much trouble we’re in. Because that’s the real question here, boys. How much trouble are we in? With these Cuban people and with the law.”

  “You can’t go.” I couldn’t see it. We had to quit dragging everyone into the pit. First it was just James and me. Then we involved Em. We took Angel along. Now Jackie was knee-deep in the muck.

  “I can’t?”

  “No. We need somebody to stay behind and put out fires.”

  “No pun intended?”

  “And we can’t tell Fuentes how we know about Café Cubana. Only that these two guys brought it up. Why don’t you go back home. James and I will drive over to Rick Fuentes’s place and talk to him.”

  James shook his head. “You’re right. He can’t know we opened more of his mail. It’s like a disease with us. We just feel compelled to open envelopes addressed to Ricardo Fuentes.”

  “He doesn’t have to know. Just tell him that these guys thought we knew something about Café Cubana. We don’t have to tell him everything.”

  “None of this sounds good.”

  Em nodded. “But we’re involved. You’ve opened two pieces of Rick Fuentes’s mail and every time you do you just get deeper.”

  James threw his hands up. “Okay. Let’s get rid of his fucking mail. Take it back to him, dump it, tell him it blew out of the truck—”

  “James, settle down.” I wanted time to think. This wasn’t a time to make irrational decisions. “Those two bruisers would have shown up regardless. Angel would have had to shoot one of them, even if we hadn’t opened the mail.”

  “Yeah. But, Skip, we take his mail back tonight. That stuff is bad luck.”

  Angel kept his steady gaze out the window. “Do you need Angel anymore tonight?” he asked.

  I thought about it. Obviously the man made one hell of a bodyguard. “No. We’ve probably got you in enough trouble for one night.” I went to my bedroom, pulled down Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. One of my favorite childhood poems is in that book. It’s about a magical eraser. When a young girl makes fun of the poet for thinking he has a magical eraser, he erases her. I needed that eraser right now. I pulled fifty bucks from the inside of the dust jacket, checked to make sure I still had two hundred dollars left, and went back into the living room, handing the bill to Angel.

  He tucked it in his pocket and nodded to us, walking out the door and never looking back.

  I shouted after him. “Do you want a ride?”

  He just shook his head and kept on walking.

  “Strange dude,” James said.

  “Thank God for the strange dude,” Em said.

  “Amen.” I said it softly, but with feeling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WE DIDN’T CALL AHEAD. We both decided it was better to surprise him, and given the fact that we had some very pertinent information, I assumed he’d see us. We got to the guardhouse and he wasn’t home.

  “I believe they are out for the evening.” The stone-faced guard dismissed us and we pulled out of the drive.

  “Now what?”

  “Maybe they went to dinner. Maybe they’re shopping.”

  “A late dinner maybe.”

  The only bar close by served cracked crab and at first James refused to go in. “Isn’t it bad enough I have to live with that stench eight hours a day?” Finally he relented and we went in and ordered two drafts. A handful of patrons around us used small forks and crab crackers to extract the meat from the crustaceans. James shuddered.

  “We need a plan.” I put a dash of salt in my beer. I’ve found it gives cheap beer more flavor.

  “Things are not good, my friend. I’m usually the one with the plan. When you have to come up with the plan, things aren’t good.”

  “I don’t care who comes up with it. We need one. Listen to me, James. We’ve involved Em and Angel. It’s up to us to get them—and ourselves—uninvolved.”

  “Dude. We were there when someone was killed. It was our guy who did the shooting if you remember. You don’t get uninvolved from a killing.”

  “We don’t know anything. The shooting was to save our asses. We can make that case.”

  “What if no one believes us?”

  “We try, James.”

  “But after tonight, if we meet with Rick Fuentes, what then? What if he tells us something? You see? We’re headed into the belly of the beast. We’re constantly involving ourselves further and further. It’s like we want to know what we’re involved in. And after you find out what kind of a mess this is, you can’t pretend you don’t know anything.”

  He was right. I was afraid for Em, for James, for myself, and even for Angel. And I was afraid for Vic Maitlin. I didn’t want to make too strong a case to James or Em, but I had an opportunity to return a favor, and I prayed Vic was still alive so I could at least have the chance. I really wanted to keep going. This was like a really good Hardy Boys mystery, except it involved people I knew. And it involved me.

  “What do you want to do?”

  He stared at the beer, then took the short glass and downed it in one single gulp. “I want the rest of our money. And I guess we’re just going to have to see Rick Fuentes to get it. This is a business, Skip. I lost sight of that. Somebody is trying to screw with my business before it’s even off the ground. It’s time to show a little backbone. Let’s see what the Cuban financier has to say.” He smiled at me and ordered two more beers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  HE WAS HOME WHEN WE CALLED.

  “You’ve got more information?”

  I hesitated. “We do, but we’d like to see you personally.”

  “No problem, I’ll alert the front gate.”

  “Mr. Fuentes?”

  “Yes?”

  “No gun this time.” I said it firmly, but felt like it was more of a plea. I couldn’t deal with another gun tonight.

  He was silent.

  “This visit involves our business. We’re business people. There’s no point in waving a gun around.”

  “Okay. No guns.” The man sounded exactly like the Fantasy Island guy, Ricardo Montalban.

  “Oh, and one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’d like to collect the rest of our money.”

  “Your money.”

  James was right. It was our business. “The $2,500 you owe us. We did watch the building.”

  “The gate will let you
through.” He hung up the phone.

  “He didn’t sound happy about the money situation, James.”

  “Skip, there are going to be a lot of things he’s not happy about tonight.”

  We pulled through the gate and parked the truck.

  “Do you think the big guy with the greasy hair is up there with him? What if he’s up there just waiting to kill us?”

  I’d considered it. “James, if Fuentes wanted the rest of that mail, he could have asked us for it. We told him we had it. Instead, these two goons went to Jackie and asked about it. If they’re in with Fuentes, he would have told them we had all the mail. I think they were by themselves.”

  He thought for a moment. “Skip, they obviously are part of this Café Cubana thing. The guy was really upset, finding out we had the donor list. Fuentes and these two guys are involved, and just going up there tonight could put us in a world of shit.”

  “Yeah.” I knew we were possibly walking into the lion’s den, but there was no other choice. We were being hunted and we had to find out why. “Jackie Fuentes said that the two overweight Cubans had visited her house a number of times when her husband lived there. Somehow they were connected with Fuentes.”

  We got out of the truck and James and I retrieved two boxes of mail from the back. I started to pull the back door down as James yelled.

  “Hold on. We can’t give him the Café Cubana envelope.” He held it up like it was slimy and untouchable. “Come on, amigo. It’s torn open. Christ, we cannot, cannot go to this guy with another piece of opened mail.”

  “We didn’t see a problem with this when we opened it. Ah, fuck it.” I took the offending manila envelope from his fingers and tossed it in the back of the truck. “Hell, he doesn’t know what mail came to Jackie’s house. Now, pick up the box and let’s get rid of this other stuff.” I pulled down the back door of the truck, leaving the brown envelope lying by itself in the middle of the floor.

  We entered the magnificent lobby where an entirely new arrangement of hundreds of flowers blossomed from the vase in the center of the vast room. I glanced at the vivid painting on the wall and marveled at the details. Seahorses and clams, neon fish with flashing eyes, and wispy strands of plant life all worked together in a potpourri of colors. We rode the elevator in silence, neither of us wanting to concentrate on what or who might be behind Rick Fuentes’s door.