Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
by Edward Grim
August 10, 2009
Mario Vasquez wished he had bought a convertible, a white one that reflected everything. If he couldn’t have a convertible, he wanted something with air conditioning and tight windows, anything to keep out the heat. He liked to keep his dark hair slicked back like his dad had done, but something with the gel and the hot air made it stick up in the back and on the sides and kinda everywhere. In weather like this he looked like a hotshot computer programmer, dressing beyond his ability, and Mario couldn’t do a thing about it. His old car had been shot up. Now all he had was Oscar’s car, which was every color except for the one that he wanted. The fan didn’t work and the guy who owned it probably didn’t notice because his skin was three layers of thick. Mario wished he still had his Lexus. Sometimes he just felt helpless.
He had a broad face, high cheekbones, and an ambiguous tan which allowed him to be mistaken for any number of ethnicities. His hands were just large enough so he could grab somebody’s arm or pat him on the back like he meant every word he was saying. He took care of his teeth and made sure his smile was white. Every morning, he woke up early and worked out meticulously, to make sure he could look at least three quarters as imposing as the people who worked for him. He didn’t necessarily enjoy intimidating people, but he put a lot of stock in being respected.
Which made this car ride through the desert all the more annoying. It was an embarrassment and should never have had to have happened. There were better things he could be doing, but he’d told himself ever since he’d gotten into business that there were certain things he could not delegate. Mario would not be Mr. Vasquez if he allowed other people to carry out the worst consequences of his own decisions. In a strictly legal sense, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but somehow it made what he did ethical.
Mario turned onto a dirt road. The car wasn’t made for the bumps and the uneven terrain, so Mario swore quietly at the dashboard to see if he couldn’t make the car more cooperative. Turning around an outcropping of red rock which conveniently blocked all sight lines from the already distant road, he stopped the car about ten feet away from Wallace and his pickup truck, both of which looked silently over a man who sat on the ground, cross-legged and sullen, his arms tied behind his back but his legs left free for an unexplained reason. As he approached, Mario checked the man’s face for any sign of fear or worry, but the man kept up a poker face of grudging acceptance. The man was going out of his way to make it look like he was scheming.
“Hey, boss,” Wallace said. His sweatpants and baggy T-shirt did little to hide the walrus fat that had been growing on him since he started working for Mario about a decade ago. Ordinarily, he was dressed a little better than that, but under the circumstances, the sweatpants were forgivable, and also a little incomprehensible in this heat. His pale skin turned red as he sweat.
“Did you bring him here all the way in the truck?” Mario didn’t look at Wallace while he talked, only at the man on the ground, who looked up briefly, almost meekly, up at Mario before returning back to the ground. He had a long face, almost like a horse’s or like the face of a ten foot tall circus freak whose limbs are all strangely out of proportion. But this guy couldn’t be more than 5’9”. An ugly sonofabitch.
“He was knocked out. I put him in the back.”
“Did you cover him up?”
“There was nobody out there.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“Out, um, at the . . .”
“The yard?”
“The yard.”
“Find anything?”
“Don’t think so. I searched him.”
“Wallet?”
“No ID, no cards or nothing.”
“Money?”
“Twelve bucks.”
Mario noticed a patch of dried blood on the back of the guy’s head. His hair was dark and cut short, which was why it had taken Mario so long to notice.
“Did he put up a fight?”
“Didn’t hear me coming. One good knock to the back of the head.”
“The hired type?”
“Hasn’t said a thing ever since he came to.”
“Hired type. Or he’s mad about something . . . Shit.” Mario breathed in, looked around, then walked back to his car. He took out a pistol from the glove compartment and walked back to the man who, even though his legs weren’t bound, wouldn’t run. Instead he softly closed his eyes in expectation. Swiftly and professionally, with a certain degree of reverence, Mario stepped up to the man, pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the trigger, telling himself all the while it was something that needed to be done.
The pistol let out an empty click.
“Well what the fuck,” Mario said. He pulled the trigger a few more times, not really aiming. If the gun had actually fired, one bullet would have landed in the dirt two inches behind the base of the man’s spine, another would’ve hit him in his left hamstring, another would’ve hit Wallace in the right shin, and the last would’ve landed in the man’s kidney, which might’ve been good enough to do the job given enough time. But the gun didn’t fire at all. Mario checked the clip. “It must be jammed or something.”
“It’s dusty out here,” Wallace said.
“What’s that have to do with it?” Mario turned away from the man so he could look angrily out at the dry rock and the blue sky. “I never even use this one.” He thought about chucking the thing out into the desert, but throwing around evidence wasn’t going to help. Mario walked back to the car, then thought about it again and chucked the gun out into the desert. “Piece of shit.” Then he walked back to the man on the ground, whose mood didn’t seem to have changed. Mario stood across from him and crouched, looking the snoop bastard in the eye.
“What’s your name?” Mario asked.
“Mitch,” the guy said, not looking up.
“Mitch?”
“Yeah. Mitch.” The ugly sonofabitch was acting tough. Sorta. Just tough enough. “Mitch, Mickey, Michael . . . Just don’t call me Mario Vasquez.”
“Why not?” Mario asked.
“Because Mario Vasquez is in over his head.” Mitch flinched at what he was saying, as if his body hadn’t yet figured out there wasn’t much it could do in the middle of a desert.
“Who do you work for?” Mario continued.
“You work with the cops?” Wallace stepped in.
“I serve my client’s interests,” Mitch said.
“And who is your client?”
“My client is the person who pays me.”
“Cute,” Mario said. “Where does your client come from? What is your client paying you to do?”
“My client pays me to go for long walks.”
Wallace stepped in again. “Do you want me to see what he knows?”
Mario turned around. “Did you see his car?”
“I got the keys right here.” Wallace’s sweatpants had no pockets, but by reaching underneath the waistband, he was miraculously able to produce a rather full keychain. Mario took it from him reluctantly, regrading a stray piece of lint with suspicion before flipping one by one through each of the many keys.
“Did anyone come to get it?”
“I wanted to call you first.”
“Is it still out there?”
“Yeah. But I got the keys.”
Mario flushed with a sudden wave of sweat as his glands decided it was getting too hot to be polite. Feigning careful thought, he wiped his brow, took off his suit jacket, removed his tie, loosened the top button of his shirt, and laid both the jacket and the tie on the ground with the utmost grace, as if being cautious about it would keep his clothes from getting covered in dust. Wallace couldn’t remove either his T-shirt or his sweatpants and still keep his dignity, so he looked at the seated Mitch in doubt and growing confusion. Mitch wore slacks and an ancient plaid shirt and couldn’t do a thing about either.
“We’ll have to call someone for the car,” Mario said. “Go call Steph. Tell her where the car is.” Wallace hustled to his truck to get his cellphone. Mario watched him. Wallace was large, but usually he was faster than this. He had been at it for a long time. When Wallace came back, Mario was staring helplessly at Mitch. “Wallace?” Mario said.
“Yeah?”
“Shoot him.”
Wallace stood there helplessly. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? The gun’s sticking out of your sweatpants.”
“Well --”
“If you can’t shoot him, give it to me. I’ll do it.”
“It’s not loaded.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not loaded.”
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous!”
Mario looked Wallace up and down in disbelief, wondering at the use of unloaded guns and glancing unavoidably at Wallace’s giant ass. “Do you ever load your gun?”
“Sometimes.”
“When?”
“Sometimes.”
“When was the last time you loaded your gun?”
“Robert Trenet. That time on the pier.”
“That was six months ago.”
“That ain’t my thing. All that shit you got out in the yard was someone else.”
“I take care of that myself.”
Mitch coughed absentmindedly, because of the dust. He wasn’t going away. He couldn’t. It would take a long time to walk somewhere from here, and running would take longer. Mario sat down next to Mitch, figuring it was a good idea to save his energy. But he couldn’t keep from yelling. “Two days ago someone shoots up my Lexus, and you don’t load your gun.”
“I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” Wallace said.
“It doesn’t matter what you don’t believe in. The things you don’t believe in are out to get you.”
Wallace didn’t respond because he didn’t quite know what Mario was saying, and Mario didn’t respond to Wallace’s silence. There wasn’t much point. Mario couldn’t figure out what had just been said.
Mitch interrupted, “Is Robert Trenet in the yard?”
“Fuck you,” Wallace said.
“Fair enough.”
“What do you care about Robert Trenet?” Mario asked, turning his head from his spot on the ground so he could look Mitch in the face.
Mitch looked back. “Did he owe you money?”
“Bobby didn’t owe me shit.”
“Oh,” Mitch said, “that’s a problem. You ain’t worth nothing until you owe something to Mario Vasquez.”
“What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“Because I had something to do.”
“What else is new . . .” Mario was tired of sitting next to Mitch and stood up. “Can’t you just bash his head in with a rock?” he told Wallace.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What, are you gonna shoot me?” Wallace took a step back. “I just found the guy . . . The only reason I was out there in the first place was because Oscar was sick and someone had to check on the place. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. There’s always trouble out here. I used to work for UPS.”
Mitch looked at Wallace. “Can I see your gun?”
“Fuck you,” Wallace answered. “You’re pushing your luck.” The heat was bothersome. It made everyone angry, like they just had to lash out at something, but lashing out made them tired, which then made them angry again. “He’s a busy man. You shouldn’t get in his way. What are you doing out here anyway?”
“Nothing much. Not anymore.”
“You’re lucky is what you are.”
“You’d know better than me.”
Mario by then had walked back to Oscar’s car. He sat inside the car for awhile, but it was hot and all the surfaces were burning at the touch. He told himself he would sit there and take the heat, but he couldn’t. Maybe on some other day he’d be able to, but not today. Getting back out, he tried to sit on the hood but resorted to pacing in a circular pattern around the car. The only thing to do was add up numbers in his head and wait. Maybe something would happen. In time to get back and review the paperwork. How the quarterly report could balance out. Make the legal transactions a little messy to distract from the transactions he wanted to look legal. The people who paid back their loans. The ones who didn’t. The yard. All at once it came to him. “They’re the same fucking gun!” he yelled, walking swiftly back to Wallace.
“What?” Wallace asked.
“There are bullets in my gun. Now where the fuck is it?” He walked past Wallace and started pacing around the desert. He couldn’t have thrown it that far, and you’d think it would stick out on all this flat, dry ground, but it took a few minutes before Mario picked it up. He even waved it around like a little kid. “Now give me yours.” Wallace took it out of his sweatpants and handed it over. Realizing he couldn’t do much holding both guns, Mario handed Wallace the gun back, unloaded his own, then they switched guns. He loaded Wallace’s gun, lifted it to the sky, and squeezed the trigger. It let out a loud shot which justified the entire day. Mario walked up to Mitch, whose expression had not changed.
“You’re here on a job,” Mario said, not expecting a response right away, not even knowing if what he had said was true. “Somebody paid you.” He pointed the gun straight at Mitch’s head. “If I pay you, can I trust you?”
Mitch paused, then looked up to the gun and spoke to it. “If you pay me, how could you possibly trust me?”
Mario lowered the gun and shot Mitch in the leg. Mitch refused to scream, but rolled over and let out a painfully long grunt from between his closed lips. Mario took a wad of bills from his wallet and dropped them on the ground in front of Mitch. “Wallace,” he said, “go see if Steph did what she was supposed to.” Wallace went to his car, Mario went back to his car (but still it wasn’t his), and they drove off, leaving Mitch with a bad wound in one leg sitting in the middle of nowhere, tied up. Mario thought he might be able to get back somehow and contact the police. Or maybe Mitch would track him down and shoot him personally. Or someone would find the dried-up body on the side of the road and slowly unravel the whole story. Mario liked thinking about it. It made what he was doing sound romantic.
But then he thought better of it. Mitch’s dead body would rot away, because if anyone found it collapsed on the road, they’d know better than to do anything about it. They were a long way from home. Out here, there’s never any business but your own.