Bull Mountain(62)

Pepé didn’t look at it. He just dug his eyes into the man with the gun.

“Do you remember her?”

Pepé dug his stare in deeper. Holly gave it right back and leaned in a little closer. “Look at the picture before I put a bullet in each of your f*cking kneecaps.”

Pepé looked down at the picture of a woman sitting in the grass with a small boy. He studied it closely before hawking up a big wad of snot and spitting on it. Holly moved like a blur. A white-hot blast of pain exploded in Pepé’s face as Holly belted him with the Glock. Pepé was used to pain but hadn’t experienced it in a long time. Not since getting out of the game. It leveled him.

“Okay, man. Fuck. What do you f*cking want?”

Holly pulled Pepé’s head up off the table by his obviously dyed, greasy black hair. He yelped. “Ow! Goddamn it, ese. What do you want?”

Holly let go and picked up the picture. “I asked you a question, you disrespectful piece of shit.”

“What? What f*cking question?”

Holly held the photo within an inch of Pepé’s face. “I asked you if you remembered the girl.”

Pepé looked again. “She look like every other bitch whore I ever ran.”

Holly pressed the barrel of his gun against Pepé’s forehead hard enough to leave a mark. He put the photo back down on the table and spoke calmly. “This is your last chance, homes. Show me a little respect and answer my questions, and maybe you come out of this alive.”

Pepé swallowed a mouthful of the blood. “Who you f*cking kidding, ese? It don’t make no difference if I answer your questions or not, and you know it. I come in here. I see you sitting in my chair, in my place. Don’t even have your gun in your hand. Sitting there without a care in the world. Like we good buddies. You wear that f*cking mask like it’s suppose to hide something, but it don’t hide your eyes. You got a killer’s eyes, homes. That’s why I knew right away, one of us was going to die. You a f*cking killer through and through. Just like me, ese.”

“You’re wrong about that, Pops. I’m nothing like you.”

Pepé smiled through blood and broken teeth. “I say we just alike, white boy. So go ahead and do it. Pull the trigger. I ain’t scared to die. I’ll catch up with your white ass in the next life. You can believe that.”

“So it’s fair to say you don’t want to tell me anything about Angel?”

“Who?”

“The girl in the picture. You named her Angel.”

“Right, right, Angel. That’s the name I have for my dick. The one I made your mother suck on before I—”

Holly swung the gun at Pepé again. Harder this time. Pepé’s neck twisted and he slumped down into the seat. Holly grabbed his hair and yanked him back up. The retired gangbanger drooled blood down his chin and the front of his shirt.

“Errgg . . . just do it . . .” he said through a broken mouth.

“Not yet, Pepé. There’s someone I want you to talk to.” Holly let go of the gangster’s hair and pulled out his cell phone. He tapped in a number and held the phone to his ear. When someone answered, he put the phone on speaker and laid it on the table next to the picture. A child’s voice came from the phone in frantic Spanish. All the attitude melted from Pepé’s face, replaced by panic. He yelled back at the phone in Spanish. Holly tapped the phone and ended the call. “Carlos is your sister’s kid, right? He’s the reason you got out of the game and relocated here in Titty City. He’s a cute kid. What is he . . . nine?”

Pepé sneered at Holly. “I’ll f*cking kill you, white boy.”

“No, Pepé, you won’t. But if you tell me what I want to know, I won’t let my friend hold your nephew underwater in a motel bathtub.”

Pepé struggled to get up and make a run at Holly. Holly easily knocked him back down.

He had nothing left but to beg. “Please don’t hurt that boy,” Pepé said. “It would kill my sister. He is all she has.”

“Then talk to me. Just a conversation, then I call my friend and everyone goes home happy.”

Pepé slumped back down, defeated. He looked at the picture on the table. “I don’t know her, man. I ran a lot of girls. It was a long time ago.”

“Look real hard. She might have had blond hair then. She got her face cut up real bad.”

Pepé leaned down closer to look at the picture again, then looked at Holly. “Yeah, I remember her now. Angel. What about her?”

“You remember the night she got cut?”

“Yeah, some john did it. Motherf*cker cut her up real good. I sent her packing. She wasn’t any use to me no more. But I didn’t do that shit to her, man. I helped her. I got her fixed up after that shit happened.”

“Who was the john?”

“I don’t know, man, I didn’t keep records of that shit.”

Holly leaned back on the fridge. “Why didn’t you retaliate? Do you normally let johns affect your money like that?”

“Hell, no. I tried, but that dude was protected.” Pepé rested his forehead in his hands.

“Protected by who?”

Pepé was clearly done holding back. “The Englishman.”