Chapter Three - Tyler
As I drag him inside and slam the door, I think that I’ve just about had it with this whole Carlos Castillo gang of idiots. I immediately recognize this dummy as the same t-shirt-wearing jackass I knocked out in the alley behind Pete’s. The one I so cleverly dubbed “T-Shirt.” And even though he’s wearing a light sweater today, I’m still gonna call him T-Shirt. Y’know, for simplicity. You start handing out too many nicknames and shit gets confusing.
Anyway.
On the one hand, it’s nice of him to ring the doorbell and stand there like a dumbass, allowing me to see who’s there by looking through the fucking window and then punch him in his stupid, drug-dealing face for a second time.
But on the other hand, it really, really bugs me that these are the dipshits we’re dealing with. That these cock-knockers are the ones who killed Pete. And Jeff. And are threatening Maddie. I dunno. Maybe it’s just ego, but I think everything would go down for me a lot smoother if it didn’t seem like Amateur Night at the Apollo every time I had to confront one of these clowns.
And right as I’m thinking this, I get a powerful reminder about the dangers of hubris.
Because just as I’m about to tap him up again and give him a middle-of-the-day nap with a rock-a-bye-baby, he spins out of the way with some, like, crazy Krav Maga-looking shit, grabs my arm, pins it behind my back, and then slams me against the wall.
Honestly, apart from the fact that my hard-on slamming into sheet rock instead of into Maddie is a huge bummer, I’m pretty stoked. I may have misjudged the guy, and the fact that I now might have a chance to win something resembling a fair fight makes me feel a little less bad about the ass-kicking I’m about to hand out.
And then, for the second time in five seconds, I am again taught a lesson about over-confidence.
Because just as I’m about to push backwards, driving this knobgoblin across the room so that I can break free and see just how much pressure his windpipe can take before it snaps… He throws me into a choke-hold and presses a SIG P320 against my temple.
Well, shit.
It may be strange, but the only thought I have in this moment is, Eh, this’ll be quick. That’s a really good gun. I hope the blood doesn’t ruin Evan’s suit.
But before he can pull the trigger, Maddie screams, “No!”
And in return, T-Shirt says, “Dile a tu amigo que se calme, Madison.”
Now here’s the thing: I like to think of myself as pretty multi-lingual. I can say “hello,” “thank you,” “give me a beer, please,” and “I didn’t know she was your daughter,” in like six different languages. But it turns out that while those phrases are more or less all you need to get by in most situations, they don’t really help me much in the one I’m in now.
“What?” I ask. Then I tell him, “Fuck you, dude. What’d he say?” I ask Maddie.
She ignores me. “What are you doing here? I still have two weeks for the money and you’ve already taken a more than sufficient deposit, don’t you think?” She spits out the words, and then she actually spits at the guy. She’s fucking awesome.
“Maddie, calm down. I’m just here to talk,” he says.
Huh. Either I speak more Spanish than I thought, or this dude’s speaking English now.
“What the fuck do you want to talk about?” She steps toward him. He spins me around, putting my body in between him and Maddie. She stops, but doesn’t take her eyes off T-Shirt. And I can’t help but smile. I twist my neck to talk in his direction.
“Bro,” I say, “you need to think real hard about what your next move is, because if I’m still standing in ten seconds, you won’t be. And if I’m not, then you really won’t be.” And I wink at Maddie.
(Shit, that was awesome. That’s better than most movie dialogue. Maybe I should write screenplays. If I don’t die in the next couple of minutes, I’m gonna put some thought toward learning how to be a screenwriter.)
There’s a tense beat where I think he’s gonna call what he believes is my bluff (it’s not, she’ll totally kill him if I don’t) and blow my brains out, but then he wisely thinks better of it and pushes me forward, toward Maddie, while keeping the gun on both of us.
“Jesus,” he says, “Do you think if I came here to hurt anybody that I would’ve rung the goddamn doorbell?”
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “From what I’ve seen, you guys are really bad at your job.”
“I just want to talk, OK? I’m gonna put the gun away.” And he commences slowly lowering the gun. I’m just about to Conor McGregor the dude one more time when he asks me, “Were you Special Forces?”
The question grabs my attention and I stop calculating his demise for a second.
It’s not that I trust his actions, or really even the question itself that stops me from turning his day into night. It’s the way he asks it. Without an accent. At least without a Spanish one. Or Mexican. Or whatever. My ear is not well attuned enough to regional dialects to be able to discern precisely where this dude might be from, but I likely would not have said Wisconsin. Which is where he sounds like he’s from now. Or Ohio. Illinois. Idaho. Wherever. I dunno. Someplace that my high school speech and debate coach would’ve called Standard American. Which is dumb. There’s no such thing as Standard Americans. I hate generalizing.
But then again, I was just kind of generalizing where T-Shirt might be from just because he was speaking Spanish. He could be Russian and just speaking Spanish to throw me off for all I know. I have no idea.
Ugh.
Rambling.
“Ty…?” Maddie looks up and nudges me to bring me back to the present.
“Uh… No. Special Forces? No. EOD. Navy. Why? Fuck do you care?”
“Because you punch like a Ranger,” he says. And, rubbing his jaw, he gets a little smile and adds, “It’s a compliment. Only been knocked out twice in my life. Once by a Ranger in Mosul and once in an alley behind a strip club in Vegas. By you.”
This whole exchange just took some unexpected turns.
“Fuck were you doing in Mosul?” I ask him.
“Fighting ISIL,” he says, tucking the gun away in the back of his pants and raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Ricky?” says Maddie, shaking her head. “What the fuck?”
“You know his name?” I ask, confused and mildly agitated.
“He drove me back after I convinced Carlos to give me time to get his money instead of being his sex slave or whatever.”
“What?” What is she talking about? “Um, I feel like there’s a lot I still don’t know about what’s going on,” I say.
“Not now,” she says, waving me off. OK. That’s fair. I still haven’t told her I burned my apartment down. I’m in no position to judge. “His name is Ricky Ramirez,” she says. “His card says he’s a distributor for Castillo Tequila, which means that he actually distributes Carlos’s meth, or cocaine, or whatever the fuck it is.”
Ricky nods carefully and volunteers, “Yeah, well, I also have another card. Which is what I’m reaching for now, OK?”
He leans over slowly, unbuttoning the side pocket of the cargo pants he’s wearing. I take a step toward him, just in case. So does Maddie, which makes me hard again.
Fuck! Jesus Christ. Not now, Chuckie.
Sure enough, he pulls out a business card, cautiously, and hands it to me. I hold it so that Maddie and I can look at it together. It reads…
“United States Department of Justice. Drug Enforcement Administration.”
I glance up at him without lifting my head. He nods just enough for it to register as a nod. I shift my eyes back to the card. Underneath the header is…
“Richard Martinez. Special Agent.”