The truth? If the bathroom didn’t smell as badly of the man’s cologne and tamales and the shits he took, Tomás would have been content to sit on the rusty throne and just read until the prison Zetas drinking on the loading dock ran out of mezcal and beer and came looking for him. But the shitbox did reek, and he didn’t have his book. So Tomás jammed the flathead screwdriver on his multi-tool into the door hinges and used his boot to hammer out the pins. That’s when the shots started. Then more gunfire. The nephew’s nine, the Zetas submachine guns firing back. Ni modo.
In moments, he had the door free of the hinges. He was climbing over the heavy metal desk when two Zetas burst in, one of them firing wide into the wall before the other stopped him from killing their boss. Tomás paused in his climb over to sigh at these fools. Then he sat on the desk lacing his boot as they waited for an explanation, an order, but he really had neither. This was such an entire mess, the whole thing gone to la chingada. Un desastre. Un problema.
El Problema. El Motown had said that, and then this stupid nephew of the boss said it too. And him with a DEA agent. Telling her about a tunnel. Realms burrowing into realms. What the fuck was he talking about, globalistas and consultores? It was messy. Muy messy. Shitty. Tamales and cologne.
He watched the prison Zetas who’d almost killed him pass a little joint in the doorway. This is how it’d end for him. Something like this. Today or someday. But probably worse.
More gunfire. Automatic. What would the bosses do with a dead DEA agent? That kind of heat? They’d turn him over to the Americans. His house in Los Feliz wouldn’t hide him then. No, the Americans would search it and pull up all those dead bodies. And then he’d fry in an American death chamber. But he’d already be doing that for the dead DEA agent. Even pinche gringo barbarians can’t kill a man twice.
And what would the bosses do if she got away and gave up the tunnel? El Esquimal would barbeque his ass for letting that secret go.
“Where’s the phone?” he asked.
The prison Zetas shrugged.
Worthless.
He walked through the warehouse, breathed the comparatively fresh air. The coolness of the night. They were waiting on the motorcycles when he made it to the loading dock. He told them to hold on. They rocked and urged like fighting dogs.
He got in the van and fumbled around the dash, the glove box. A phone in the cupholder. He dialed. He yelled at the men to kill the engines, he couldn’t hear. He waited for them to gutter out.
“It’s Tomás.”
“El Rabioso’s not here.”
“I don’t give a fuck. This is urgent.”
“Not here,” the guy said, and hung up on Tomás.
El Rabioso should’ve told him there was a tunnel. That the nephew was running to America. He would’ve approached it differently. He looked at the useless phone.
He got out of the van and nodded. The Zetas pounced on the kick-starters, the pickups roared to life.
He walked back to the warehouse as their engines screamed in the night and diminished away. The front office windows absent, the door all shot up. He went inside and over the shards of glass into the hall and then into the office where he had killed the owner of this place. He regarded the dead Zeta there. It would be a wonder for some cop to identify him, try and piece together how a convict with a military record from Penal del Topo Chico had to come die with this gabacho businessman in Tampico. They would puzzle over that one.
Puzzle pieces. Everything was enmeshed, everything could touch everything else. No one was out of reach. Nothing could be locked away. Realms within realms. Tunnels everywhere.