Instead, he found the dude’s hard-assed lady. Victorino had done business with her, but he had never tried to push her around because the puta was pretty scary herself.
The woman’s name was Francis-something, but everyone called her Frankie. The woman was old, which was intimidating to begin with. Probably early forties, and she had muscles like a man from shooting up all that gear shit the couple made to sell. She had a hoarse steroid voice like a man’s, too, but everything else was all woman, particularly her store-bought double-D chichis, which she showed off braless, wearing muscle T-shirts and tube tops, probably trying to look like the muscle-magazine covers she’d posed for ten or fifteen years ago.
Mix the lady’s chichis with a body covered with tats, dyed scarlet hair, pierced tongue and her nasty attitude, it was no wonder that even Latin King soldiers watched their behavior, and their asses, around Frankie. Harris Squires probably believed they showed the lady respect because of him and his muscles. But the dude was wrong.
Frankie was the scary one, which is why even the V-man had never crossed her. How you gonna win, crossing a gringa ballbuster who was six feet tall with biceps the size of his own calves?
That was about to change.
Standing outside a new double-wide, Victorino got up on his toes, looking through a bedroom window into Squires’s private trailer. The place was a mess. Closet and drawers ransacked, clothes on the floor, a suitcase lying open on a bed that hadn’t been made, so at first the V-man thought, Shit! They’re already gone.
It made sense they’d run off, and not just because of the six o’clock news. There were cops all over the place, which is why Victorino hadn’t turned into Red Citrus. Instead, he had parked his truck at the shrimp docks down the road near a rum bar. Then he had walked through what reminded him of a boat graveyard and jumped the fence, saw a squad car and two unmarked SUVs waiting by the garbage dumpsters, where, he guessed, they would soon be dragging the lake, looking for more pieces of the dead girl. Or maybe dead girls.
Three of Victorino’s ladies had gone missing, so the timing was about right. It was a year ago that Squires and Frankie had started shooting porn up there at their fancy hunting camp, small-time at first, but then with a special video room with lights, a water bed and all kinds of weird black leather contraptions hanging from the ceiling.
Neither Squires nor the redhead had appeared in any videos that Victorino had seen. But he’d heard they both got off behind the scenes, enjoying all kinds of kinky shit. The couple had taken a special interest in the V-man’s girls once they got seriously into the business. They’d hired more than a few Indigena as talent, and several Mexican cuties, too.
About ten months ago, Victorino’s first chula had disappeared. After that, about every three months, he’d lose another one. The V-man had suspected them for a while, but bones inside the belly of that redneck asshole’s pet alligator was the final proof he needed. His pandilleros realized it, which is why they’d given him those looks at Hooters.
Maybe the cops suspected, too. No wonder the pair had split before police started asking questions, so the V-man figured he’d missed them. But then he saw Frankie walk into the room, carrying an armful of folded clothes, a joint between her lips, curling smoke, and he felt better about the situation. The woman hadn’t finished packing, so maybe Harris was still here, too.
No… the white giant was gone. Victorino confirmed it when he circled the trailer and saw that the dude’s big V-8 Roush Ford monster truck was gone. Squires wasn’t smart, but he wouldn’t have loaned that sweet ride to nobody.
Victorino checked a couple more windows, then went to the door where a sign read NO ENTRY! in Spanish and English. He tested the knob and was surprised to find the door unlocked.
A moment later, he was standing inside, seeing a big-screen TV and stereo equipment, then a kitchen that didn’t look like most kitchens, but that was no surprise to the V-man. On the counters were four big gas-burner plates, each with its own canister of propane. The shelves were lined with a mess of medical-looking shit, bottles of oil and chemicals, and measuring beakers that looked like they belonged in a lab. Which was exactly what this place was-a lab for cooking steroids.
Jesus, just a spark, the whole place would explode like a bomb-maybe not a bad way to handle the situation, Victorino decided, if he could get Frankie and her muscle boy into the trailer at the same time.
Victorino had seen a kitchen like this before, only a lot bigger. It was at Squires’s hunting camp, where Victorino and his pandilleros had partied themselves on a couple of occasions. They weren’t invited often, but, when they got the call, the V-man and a few of his boys made an appearance because it was a mutually beneficial business association.
Squires and Frankie ran three trailer parks, which provided handy instant housing for newly arrived illegals. On the side, they shot porn, which the Latin Kings also made and marketed as a sideline, and that put money into everyone’s pocket.
Victorino’s soldiers pedaled the videos to dumb little Indigena dudes, who’d probably never seen a naked woman in their pathetic little lives. The gringo couple needed girls for their movies, of course, which meant they also needed weed and blow, which put cash right back into the V-man’s pocket.
Not that Victorino trusted the gringos. No way. It was business, nothing more. The couple treated him like just another wetback. To them, there was no difference between him, a Mexican stud and some scrawny little Indio from Guatemala or El Salvador or some Nicaraguan pendejo.
A wetback was a wetback, to most Americanos. That’s how clueless they were. But the V-man never let it show that it bothered him. When he looked into a gringo ’s eyes and saw the contempt or indifference, all he did was smile his great big gold-toothed smile, pretending to be their Mexican amigo. But he was really thinking how goddamn stupid they were.
These two especially, an old woman with wrinkles on her muscles and her redneck boyfriend, the two of them acting like bigmoney hotshots until the cops finally took them down.
Which would happen. If the V-man didn’t get busy and take them both out first.
The V-man wasn’t smiling now as Frankie came into the room, stumbling because he surprised her, then yelling at him in her deep voice, “What the hell are you doing in my home?”
Then she caught herself because she recognized Victorino as the V-man yet didn’t sound any friendlier when she added, “Oh. It’s you. What the hell are you doing in here without knocking? I’m in a hurry. We don’t need any more grass or shit today. Get out. Get out of here right now.”
Victorino let the woman watch him react slowly, making her wait as he turned his back to her. He made sure the door was closed but unlocked in case he wanted to get out fast. He pivoted to face her, then snapped on the surgical gloves he had brought along for effect.
First the left glove. Then the right.
Then he surprised the woman again by flashing the box cutter he was palming and asked, “You don’t want any smoke or blow-but what about girls? You don’t need any more of my pretty little chulas? The way you been killing my girls off, I thought you’d be in the market by now.”
The V-man expected the woman to squat right there and piss her panties, she should have been so scared, seeing the rubber gloves and the razor. Instead, it was the woman’s turn to surprise him.
Frankie balled her hands into fists and took a step toward him, shouting, “I’m trying to figure out just how goddamn stupid you are! You come in here, cops all over the place, looking like a faggot or a fucking serial killer, with those gloves, your bandanna and your pissy little knife. I should slap the shit out of you right now, then tell the cops you tried to rape me.”