NASARIO PUT ON THE RADIO AS THEY DROVE to Juárez. Flip sat in the back seat next to Emilio, with Nasario and César in the front. The Mexican police at the border barely even glanced at them, though Flip felt the gun in his pocket weighing him down and so cold. He wondered if Emilio was carrying and what Nasario would do if Emilio pulled his own gun.
The car wound down dark streets with little lighting, past closed businesses secured with iron. Emilio seemed to know where they were going, or if he didn’t he didn’t seem to mind one way or the other. Flip was afraid Emilio would catch the look on his face and the whole thing would be blown. Emilio barely glanced at him.
“Hey, man, why you driving so slow?” Emilio demanded of Nasario. “I want to get back before the party’s all over.”
“We’re almost there,” Nasario replied. Flip clenched his hands until he thought his knuckles would burst.
They drove slower and slower until they were barely crawling along. Nasario peered into the empty spaces between buildings where there were no lights at all. Finally they stopped before a broad vacant lot. Nasario killed the engine.
“¿Que carajo?” Emilio asked. “This isn’t Octavio’s place.”
“We’re gonna wait for him here,” Nasario said. “Let’s get out.”
Flip was the last one out of the car. Emilio was already complaining about the stop, about the delay. Flip saw Nasario had his gun out and by his side as he rounded the car.
“I’m telling you, esé—” Emilio said.
Nasario shot Emilio through the neck and Emilio danced sideways. César drew his pistol from the waistband of his pants and put two rounds into Emilio’s chest. Flip fumbled with his pocket, trying for the pistol there, as Emilio staggered out into the lot. His mouth was working and blood was coming out.
Nasario and César shot Emilio six more times before Emilio fell. Flip finally had the little gun in his hand, but he was trembling so hard he nearly dropped it. He watched from the side of the road as Nasario came close to Emilio and shot him twice more in the head.
They came back to the car. “Gracias por tu ayuda,” Nasario said. “You want to take a shot now?”
Flip shook his head. He was breathing shallowly and words wouldn’t come. The pistol was gripped in his hand as if he were ready to throw it, not shoot it. Already Nasario and César had put their weapons away.
“Get in the car, man,” Nasario told Flip.
He thought to drop the gun right where he stood, but his fingerprints were all over it and surely the police weren’t so stupid that they wouldn’t be able to find him. Flip stuffed the gun back into his pocket and climbed into the back seat, sitting right where Emilio had.
Nasario turned the engine over and gunned down the road with his high beams on, making for a bend up ahead and then a sharp turn north. They were within a mile of the border. If Flip looked toward the United States, he could see bright lights coming from El Paso.
The car crisscrossed its path several times and then they drove on a road parallel to the border fence. Flip couldn’t make his hands be still. The bridge wasn’t far.
“Here,” Nasario said and they turned into the lot beside an auto shop. Cars were parked haphazardly, butting up against each other like insects in a hive. They came up alongside a long dumpster piled high with metal scrap. Nasario stopped. “Give me your piece, man.”
Flip was happy to be rid of it. He pushed the gun away from himself as if it were a diseased thing and Nasario took it out of the car to the scrap loader. César went with him. Flip watched them use a red mechanic’s rag to wipe the guns down and then toss them in with the metal. They came back to the car in a hurry. Within a minute they were back on the road.
He could still feel the gun in his pocket, only now it was a void where the weapon had been. Anyone who looked at him would know he had just seen a man die, he was sure of it. “Pull over,” he told Nasario.
“What? We’re almost there.”
“Pull over!”
Nasario turned the car onto the shoulder. Flip barely got his door open before the beer in his stomach came boiling up and he vomited into the dust. He spat to clear his mouth, heaved again on an empty stomach and then closed himself in again.
César laughed and Nasario cast a smile over his shoulder. “You didn’t even do anything, dumbass,” César said.
“Don’t tell José,” Flip managed.
“Don’t worry, we won’t tell José nothing.”
Nasario turned up the volume on a song by MC Crimen and they went on. Flip leaned his head against the window and felt the cold glass against his skin. He was not sick again.