Sucio actually punched one of the other guys to get up close and personal with Barney that time. He shoved, then struck, a smaller fellow apparently nicknamed Condorito, who had an unfortunately prevalent Mexican body type: low-slung, bow-legged, no ass to speak of. Condorito went submissive, then beat Barney up third in line.
While he was bludgeoning Barney, Sucio unleashed his idea of a poisonous stream of rancid insult. He went crimson and saliva sprayed. What he failed to realize was that he had violated the hitherto-uncrossed line, and was yelling at Barney directly, thus acknowledging his existence.
When his compatriots pulled Sucio off Barney, Barney recognized another important watershed: They did not want to kill him yet, either right away or accidentally.
Between meals and punching-bag sessions, Barney gathered other useful intelligence.
One of the guys — Zefir — made reference to other rooms with other prisoners, some of which did have television sets. Which made the building an operative concern as a hostage hotel, thereby helping Barney define where he was. Some of the legitimate or high-ticket captives apparently interested Zefir, a porcine man fond of making fornicatory gestures with his hands. ¿Chicas, retozonas, panochas, papayas muy bonitas, eh?
Another had said something about a courtyard inside the building, which implied that while fortressed from the street, an area within the structure was open to sky like an atrium.
A further slip of Condorito’s tongue had clarified other “guests” as actual hostages (rehéns).
Sucio had appropriated Barney’s Army .45 and had waved it in his face on several occasions. Since he kept it shoved into his waistband, the bore smelled like his crotch, which was no treat at all.
Several days passed and while the casual beatings continued, they came with no actual threat or grisly detail of what Barney’s eventual fate might be. No ransom, no payoff, nothing. Also no change of clothing, no bath, and no room service. Barney began to feel like a moldering corpse that lacked the sense to know it was dead.
It was important for him to remember the name Felix Rainer, although most days, Barney could not recover enough short-term memory to know why. He repeated the name to himself while bunched into a corner on his filthy sleeping pad, rocking back and forth. Felix Rainer. Carl Ledbetter. And Carl’s wife, Erica. Every body-blow was another entry on a past-due bill that was slowly, excruciatingly becoming more expensive.
It was generally a bad sign when one of Barney’s jailors showed up alone. Today it was Mojica.
Usually, a solo entrance was the cue for some off-the-books sadism, or at the very least, a harsh kick in the balls laced with tons of spittled obscenities about Barney’s madre.
“Hey, you. Guy. You awake?”
Barney did not know Mojica could speak, let alone speak passable English. He rolled up from his fetal curl on the floor. Something about his attitude threw out defense warnings on a subdermal level; he could not help that, or prevent or disguise it. It did nothing to dispel the flies intent on eating every drop of his sweat, or the gnats (what he’d heard called “see-nots” in the American South) they kept trying to set up housekeeping in his eyes. He didn’t even want to think about what was living in his hair by now. Or infesting his groin, or tape-worming up his anus while he tried to sleep.
“Listen, man, I’m not here to hurt you.”
Oh, great, I feel so much more cuddly now.
“Seriously.” Mojica chanced a couple of steps nearer. Not quite within grabbing distance, given the chain on Barney’s leg.
“Listen. You don’t gotta say nothing if you don’t want to.”
If Barney was sketching an insulting caricature, he would have written that dialogue down as joo don’ godda say notheeng if jew dun wanna. But that shit had never worked in books, never worked in movies, and rarely worked when you were trying to dehumanize your opponent in order to justify killing him without compunction. Barney decided to respond, to indicate that he still had two dendrites of intelligence not rolling around loose on the floor.
“What do you want, Mojica?”
Mojica smiled as though finding out an injured pet was still alive. “Oh, you awake, eh?”
“Let’s get this over with. Your primo was an accident. I was going to let him go.”
“Nah, it ain’t that.” He came closer, confidentially. “El Chingon is keeping you here; I don’t know why ‘cos you’re not a hostage, man, you understand what I’m saying?”
“Entiendo,” said Barney. “Claro. Who’s El Chingon?” It was a slang term for the bossman, El Mero-Mero, big dealski — literally, as in el gran chingon: the head fucker. That would be Mr. Lazy-Eye-Doesn’t-Talk-Like-A-Mexican, but his drones probably called him el jefe, at least to his face.
“Don’t ask me shit I can’t tell you.”
“Fair enough. So what do you want?”
“I want to show you something.” Mojica moved forward with his body, cautiously, looking for a sign that Barney would not attack.
“Mojica, I’m too fucking tired to get into it with you...”
“Here.” Mojica popped a can of America’s second most popular soft drink and handed it over. “You like this, right?”
Barney regarded the chilled can in his grasp with befuddlement and briefly wondered if it was drugged, then decided it did not matter. The first swig burned all the way down, fizzy and caffeinated and shot through with sugar, beautiful carbonated nirvana. In times like these, simple, small things could freight tons of meaning. If you had asked Barney what he wanted most of all the things in the world, in that moment, he might have answered that he already held in his hand all good things, and could die happy.
“Look at this,” said Mojica, removing his ever-present mirrorshades. He pointed at a small skidmark of scar tissue on his right temple. “See this?” When he pressed the scar, it went concave, then boinked back as though made of rubber. He turned his head to show the lower portion of his right occipital. A similar scar, similarly gelid.
“I got shot in the head once,” he said. “Brains came out, so maybe I’m not the smartest vato in the world. But I tell you this — they killed my ass. I was dead once. And I’m still here.”
Barney’s hand loved that soft drink can; would not give it up. Nor use it to hit Mojica in the side of the skull so hard that what was left of his brains would come flying out his ear. Not until he finished the drink, anyway, because it was too good. Mojica had bought himself an audience for whatever confessional he cared to stage.
“This ain’t right, them keeping you,” Mojica said. “We grab people, we got all this set-up, we don’t torture hostages, and anyway you ain’t a hostage.”
“You kicked my ass with the others.”
“Because I ain’t stupid, man. But keeping you here... I mean, for what? So Sucio can whale on you until you’re a retard? There ain’t no ransom on you. No pickups, no negotiation, nada por nadie. So... so...”
“So what did I do?” said Barney.
“Yeah, that’s it. What the hell did you do, man?”
“I tried to help a man I thought was my friend.”
“Some friend.” The incredulous expression on Mojica’s face almost made Barney laugh, but he could not actually laugh, not in this place.
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” said Barney. He reasoned that Mojica was not here to help him. Draw him out, maybe; play good cop and get him to say something that would rationalize a quick kill.