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She wasn’t wrong. I ignored her question and asked one of my own, “Can I find him here? In El Destierro?”
“No.”
I leaned on the counter, clenching my fist outside of her view. I was trying to be patient, but I wanted this shit done. “Then where?” I demanded and hated the tone that naturally came through in my voice when this woman had been nothing but hospitable toward me. Guess hospitality wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
She stared me down, the same way Bou did when she challenged me. I’d been gone for weeks, but in my mind, Bou still watched me every second of the day. My lungs squeezed, and I fought for breath for a moment as I had to turn away to hide a regretful grimace. But then and there wasn’t the fucking time to be reminiscing about Bou. I gathered myself and looked back into Sola’s flat, brown eyes.
“You’re sure you want a part of that?” Sola asked again.
“Ma’am,” I strangled out, “I don’t want a part of anything. My plan is to end that man once and for all.”
“Alone?” she challenged.
I said nothing, just stared her down.
She pursed her lips. After a moment, she gave a single nod. She retrieved a paper from under the counter and spread it between us. A well-used map.
Sola pointed to a small town a couple of hundred kilometers away. “El Tiro. You’ll find him there most weekdays, It’s only the weekends he comes through this town.”
I licked my lips and glanced out through a dirty window. The sky was already beginning to darken.
Sola followed my gaze. “I have a room in my house that I rent out to tourists sometimes. If you want it, it’s yours for the night. I nodded my head and pulled my wallet out to pay her in Pesos.
“Thirty US Dollars.”
I counted out the money and handed it to her.
She put the bills away and came out from behind the counter. “It includes a meal too.”
I followed her through the curtain to a pleasant abode that looked a hell of a lot nicer on the inside than outside. She pointed out a dining table then showed me to a small room. The bed wasn’t made up, but sheets and a blanket were folded neatly on top.
“Dinner is in one hour, no later.”
After walking Betty round the back of the gas station, I headed back inside and washed up for dinner. It had been an awful long time since I’d eaten a meal with anyone else. Sola’s son and husband were already at the dining table when I left my room.
Her husband gave me a hearty smile and introduced himself as Miguel. He gave off good vibes and touched his wife affectionately as she moved about. Sola was a fine cook, and the hot meal was the best I’d had in weeks. Their little family life made me consider what might be possible with Bou if I’d been born a different man.
In the morning, I rode out. After a couple of hours, a faded sign announced that I’d arrived at El Tiro. If I’d considered El Destierro a ghost town, El Tiro was a sheer void. Other than a rundown shack on one side of the road and an eight-room motel on the other, there wasn’t a goddamn thing as far as the eye could see. I cut Betty’s engine and coasted into the motel. Music blared from the room in the front. I palmed the guns Celt had given me and took a deep breath.
Inside, my first sight was the top of a blond man’s head as he bent over the counter and snorted a line of coke. To the right, in the waiting area, several other men wearing AX3 cuts lounged on the couches.
“Hi-dee-ho, motherfuckers,” I said leveling one gun at the cokehead and the other at the lounge lizards. I wasn’t taking any chances. One of these assholes had to know my father.
Apart from the thumping music, time stopped when they looked up, but not a one of them made a move. The men on the couches didn’t stand. The one behind the counter crouched over his last remaining line, frozen. Then he ran a hand under his nose and slowly straightened. He stood almost a head taller than my six feet. I swallowed and held my ground.
“Where is El Griego?” I demanded.
The men on the couch busted out in laughter. A smile broke out on the man behind the counter.
A thud landed on my neck at the base of my skull. As I sank to the floor, I heard blondie...“Lights out motherfucker.”
33
Bou
I darted back into my shop, locked up the front, ran out back, and jumped on my bike.
When I made it into town and turned west at the only intersection between Louie’s diner and the market that doubled as my brother’s police office, my palms were sweating inside my leather gloves and I felt hot and cold, all at once. I rolled the throttle and turned into one of the two neighborhoods in town. A sea of black and chrome surrounded Celt’s house. Bile hit the back of my throat, emphasizing the fact I hadn’t eaten anything that day. I parked and made a line for the house. When I recognized some of the artwork on the tanks nearest the front, I breathed a little easier.
