Bad to the Bones(28)
“You come into Bihari a lot?” he asked Rafael in Spanish.
“Not much until lately. Suddenly we come a lot with these garbanzo beans.”
“You pretty familiar with the layout up there, the…map, the location of everything?”
“Oh, certainly. I need to know everything. It’s my job.”
“You know where this Swami Shakti pendejo might be living?”
Rafael became wary, understandably. This was his job, his occupation. Knoxie was obviously not interested in delivering Shakti a load of French ticklers or nipple clamps. Knoxie almost felt sorry for Rafael until he remembered that Rafael had been complicit in spreading cheese heroin at least throughout the whacked-out compound, if not into Pure and Easy itself, since the wingnuts often sold handicrafts and more in town.
A little persuasion wouldn’t be out of line now. Since the dual marble pillars that marked the Bihari entrance had popped into view, Knoxie yanked the semi over onto the soft shoulder, put it into neutral, and engaged the air brake. Rafael’s face was frozen into a mask of fear before Knoxie even unholstered his piece from his waistband.
Waving it around casually, he told his copilot, “Look. This is how it’s going to go down, jornalero. I’m a sicario. I’m a hitman. You don’t need to know my boss, but just know that these people up here in Merry-go-round Fucking Canyon are very bad people. They’re imprisoning young women, raping them, drugging them. Drugging teenagers. One of them could be your kid, comprende? Now, I’m not going to just drive up there and take out that swami. That’s not my style. But there’s a girl I’m looking for, and I’ll bet she’s with the swami. You can either help me or…” Knoxie let his voice trail off suggestively. When Rafael didn’t flinch, Knoxie felt obliged to finish his sentence. “Or I could stick you up there in the sleeper cab with your buddy Se?or Presención. It’s your choice.” He shrugged.
Rafael whispered something.
“What?” Knoxie didn’t want to lean closer, but he felt safe. There was no way Rafael was armed. Knoxie had put the piece belonging to Presención he’d found in the console also into his waistband as insurance.
“I’m an informant.”
Whoa. That was an unexpected game changer. Knoxie recoiled back, wrinkling his nose. “You’re a f*cking informant? For who?”
“DEA. They arrested about six of us down in Nogales a few months ago snorting some of Presención’s cheese heroin. I was the only one not deported back to Sinaloa. I’m allowed to remain free as long as I give them information on Presención’s…his activities.”
“All right, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that you flipped. It doesn’t go over too well in the brotherhood if it was known I was working with the law.”
Rafael smiled knowingly. “You bikers are almost as bad as the cartel.”
“Almost as bad?” Knoxie was insulted.
“I am not sure who to be afraid of more. If Abel Presención knew I allowed Manuel to be killed and our truck driven by a motorcycle pinche guey, I may as well be dead anyway.”
“All right. Then we’re on the same page. You show me the swami’s house and I’ll take it from there.” Knoxie looked around suspiciously, as though a federal agent would pop out from behind the nearest boulder. “I don’t like the idea of riding with a f*cking snitch who’s probably wired—”
“I’m not wired!” cried Rafael, lifting his shirt to reveal his bulging, hairless belly. “I’d be discovered in a second if I was wired.”
That was true. Confidential informants were usually so deeply embedded and undercover they would submit to the most grisly ordeal rather than have their cover blown. In fact, the more the idea sank into Knoxie’s brain, the more he liked it. Rafael could be of assistance to him if they worked together. “You spend the night at Bihari? You’re known to them? How many runs have you made up there?”
Rafael convinced him he could easily get in, out, and around the compound, so it was in Knoxie’s best interests not to ice him.
They got past the daimyo at the front gate all right, Knoxie explaining he was filling in for Se?or Presención. In particular, when Knoxie mentioned Stuart Grillo, the guards became all palsy-walsy. He knew he had to wrack the recesses of his brain to find the tidbit that would tell him who the f*ck Stuart Grillo was. All Rafael would tell him, now that they were butt buddies, is that he was a very disgusting, foul pinche guey. He lived in Nogales and facilitated transport between Sinaloa and the north.
“See that building on that butte?” Rafael said now. “That’s Wang Cho House, Swami Shakti’s. He’s usually there. He doesn’t like to leave because he’s so sensitive to his surroundings, allergic to everything.”
“I’ll give him ‘sensitive,’” growled Knoxie, keeping a death grip on the steering wheel. “We’re making a personal delivery to Jim Jones’ temple. I’ll give you your piece back when I leave. You might need it.”
“Gracias,” said Rafael.
They parked the truck in front of some loading dock bay doors. Two daimyo armed with Russian ladies stood by, but they barely appeared to notice the grocery delivery truck. No doubt Shakti received many shipments of food and supplies here in his twenty-two bedroom Desert Modern structure. Knoxie, who had been stuck renting mid-century pillboxes more suited to a solitary army private than a family of four, was enraged with jealousy. Here came a faker, a charlatan, a con artist spewing a few Indian-sounding pearls of wisdom, raping women and, no doubt, children in the name of his warped religion. Knoxie had never done anything worse than bang some cum factory skanks. Yet he was the one living above the bar.