So before Carl embarked to a bank to collect wired funds, Barney had tagged him, not Jesús, with the GPS chip. He had amputated the receiver from what was left of the rental limousine and had it with him as he boosted the BMW, his “job” while Carl was presumably working high finance and Jesús was cooling his wheels and deliriously considering his severely limited options back at the Pantera Roja.
In fractured Spanglish Jesús had requested the bible from the bedside drawer. Barney left the book in his lap so he could thumb the tissue-thin pages with his wrists permanently duct-taped to the metal. Jesús said gracias señor to the man who had shot him, squirming uncomfortably on the bullet still lodged deep in his beefy ass. It had to feel like sitting on a flaming poker.
And now Carl was on the move. Not at the bank, not at the motel. In a cab, most likely, and his trajectory was eating up new ground, northeast, into the thick of the city.
Barney hated what he was doing, and did it anyway. That was his special talent, his social mutation, if you will. He recalled more words of the Old Assassin: “I have no one, I care for no one, and I am cared for by no one. So all I have is what I can do.” Barney disliked feeling beholden, and appreciated that throughout his existence he had taken pains and occasionally made grand, operatic gestures to ensure he never belonged to anyone. He never had.
Except his veneration of the Old Assassin’s counsel had obligated him to the memory of the Old Assassin. Great — he kept the guy alive in his head, like one of those shoulder-perching angel-or-devil advisors of conscience, and thus Barney was obligated, dammit to hell, connected to someone who had long since chewed that mouthful of grave dirt that awaits us all.
This is not to say Barney did not form liaisons or forge friendships, but there was always a clear demarcation, an unspoken line of hazard tape that could never be crossed, that kept his plus-minus columns internally ordered. He had acquaintances. He had connections. He had friends, but no intimates. He enjoyed the company of women, but no intimacy. He had sex; he had never made love. “Making love” denoted the manufacture of something that would need to be maintained. Barney’s golden rule was to always be ready to jump out of the chopper and start shooting at a millisecond’s notice. He had never cohabitated with anyone. The closest he ever came was stuff like sharing bedsprung motel rooms with guys like Carl.
Carl, who had now birthed a goblin of doubt in Barney’s calm.
There were other people Barney trusted in his limited fashion. Armand, for example, back in the States, feeding Barney’s goldfish, which did not have a name other than “the fish.” Armand was a champion target shooter fond of the customized assemblies known as “race guns” in the trade. Their relationship was one of mutual gunslinger respect, and they did not pry into each other’s biz. There were a few others: Karlov, an old-school gunsmith; Sirius, a jolly ex-cop who was fun to drink with. Most everybody else was take-or-leave as needed; sketches, not people. Background extras. To shut out the noise of their lives was to assist Barney’s lifelong quest for a kind of technical purity.
The women he remembered as shades, reduced to one-liners: Jessica, long burnished hair and long of leg, a coffeehouse songstress. Kyrie, another ex-cop, tough as a cement nail. Brianne, his bombshell, too perceptive and destined to be damaged by the world, thus fostering dangerous notions of protection. Geneva, sharp and too smart for him, with centuries of turbulence in her mixed mocha bloodlines. Kate, who pulled him out of his shell long enough to teach him how to dress and otherwise fake human function in public. The Other Kate, who had fooled herself into believing she loved him. Whenever he felt the tendrils of another human being’s needs begin to form a chrysalis around him, Barney reversed polarity and repelled them, concentrating on how to simplify his life. Whatever was supposed to emerge from that chrysalis would never be. Barney contented himself with becoming the best possible caterpillar, because it was hard, not convenient, not easy, and therefore not a path most ordinary people would willingly choose. The most rewarding personal effort is always the most difficult.
Such mandarin focus might constrict most lives, which was perhaps another reason Barney had taken on Carl’s wild-card proposition. Or maybe it was the arrogance of ego — Barney to the rescue. Maybe it was because he had wired his body for momentum, and stasis could drive him buggy, stir-crazy inside the safe walls of his world.
Whatever the reason or rationalization, Barney would not quit. He was committed to the tactical clarity of eradicating mystery — perfectly in character, for him — and answering these new and unbidden questions, especially the ones he was now asking himself.
Cocooned in his stolen, air-conditioned car, in the company of his guns and jerry-rigged equipment, Barney tailed Carl into an even worse part of town.
Driving in Mexico City is not recommended for the inexperienced (or for that matter, anyone without a death wish), but for Barney it was no worse than, say, Beirut.
The brown brick building had no title. No address. Heavily barred windows; sepia shades drawn. Welded plate steel over the ground-floor ingresses. It looked vaguely industrial, like a sweatshop or piece-goods mill, or the self-contained microcosmic hives where indentured laborers fabricated merchandise for American deep-discount chains. It was three stories tall and Barney noted that fire escapes had been removed from the exterior. It was a lost structure amid the chaos surrounding it — obvious whorehouses, night spots with glowering security thugs, rave space and drinking dens, the traffic mortared to gridlock by sidewalk commerce, tented night-market stalls hawking everything from bootleg DVDs to brown heroin (abundant and cheap), assorted losers unconscious or dead in gutters and door archways, viper-mean street denizens cruising for meat, disenfranchised lunatics pinballing about, religious pamphleteers, more bored cops, everybody jostling everybody else in that cultural denial of personal space that is peculiarly Mexican. The people here seethed. Here you could smell the food, the flavors, the populace, the perfume of the city. It was nasty, exhilarating and more than a little bit lethal.
Carl unfolded himself from the back of one of the city’s omnipresent green-and-white classic VW Beetle cabs called vochos — the kind not advised for tourists due to the ebb-and-flow trend of robbery, yet cheaper than hotel-assigned taxis and perfect for anonymity on the go. He had a big satchel with him, the type of briefcase used to carry bulky files, with a fold-over latched top. If that satchel contained money, then Carl had to be packing at least one firearm, meaning he had stepped out of character as soon as he thought himself unobserved. He moved to an iron door, was eyeballed via a peephole, and was admitted to the murk of the nameless brown building.
Dusty street brats banged on Barney’s window, trying to sell him chewing gum — known brand names with slightly modified ingredients best left unspecified. The BMW was an advantage in this ‘hood; locals would assume it was just another drug exec making rounds or extorting protection, but it would also attract urchins and beggars, first the Artful Dodgers, then the kids huffing paint or zoned out on crystal meth. Barney kept his window up and his focus on the building. Some of the kids thumped the car but it was just a show of bravado, a test to get a rise out of the gringo. No sale.
Some people were worth a million bucks. Some were not worth spare change, like Estrella, who had probably been plucked from a stable of a dozen just like her and aimed at Carl with the surety of a cruise missile. She had been butchered for no more than dramatic impact. Point: If Carl only had some back-alley deal cooking, nobody would have bothered to lay Estrella out in a bloody-rare buffet back at their first lodging house. If nothing else, it proved the opposite side was deadly serious.