Free Cool in Tucson by Elizabeth Gunn Page B

Dietz.  She squinted at him humorously while she pulled her hand away and said, “Then again, you know, we could be looking for a mugger who doesn’t even know he just killed a guy with connections.”
    Tony Delarosa didn’t like being turned off.  His eyes turned flat and cold above a small, condescending smile. “Oh, I seriously doubt that, Sarah,” he said.  He put both hands in his pockets and stood there jingling his coins, considered a few seconds and gave another of his little self-endorsing nods.  “But if you do catch a guy like that, you know what you’ll have?”
    “What?”
    “The luckiest dumb sonofabitch in the world.”                 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
     
     
    First thing to do after I get the car put away, Hector decided as he neared Exit 303, is call Mama.   Tell her I got this chance to make a few dollars doing cleanup in a pecan grove in Benson, and I’ll be home tomorrow, sometime late. 
    Hector was nineteen, still lived at home, paid his mother a little every week.  Called her Mamacita, hugged her a lot andshowedher his dimply smile—that shit-eating grin she called it, pretending she didn’t like it, saying don’t you come around me with that shit-eating grin—but it always worked.  She was happy to cook all his favorite things, keep his room nice and give him his space. 
    He paid his two sisters in Middle School a little something too, to do his laundry every Saturday like Mama showed them.  Besides that he had two aunts in the neighborhood who doted on him, were glad to warm up a plate of beans and rice any time.  Hector had things pretty much the way he wanted in his life except when the women started in on him about school, saying you should go back while you’re still young, at least get your GED.  School, shit.  GED, for what?  Hector had a plan. 
    He had been working for Ace for almost four months, had a little over two thousand dollars saved, in fifties and hundreds in a tight roll saran-wrapped and taped to the bottom of a loose floor tile under his bed.  Owned an ’87 Subaru Brat with a dented hood, no air but it was paid for, had papers for it so he didn’t have to worry like before when he was boosting cars.  It looked about a hundred years old but the brakes were good and he kept it tuned.  It took care of business for him now and would make the trip to  Mexico when the time came if he couldn’t trade up by then. 
    He still kept his stupid part-time job at the car wash that paid a couple bucks over minimum wage and they took out payroll taxes besides, shee-it.  But it was good cover, kept his parole officer happy.  He even bagged groceries sometimes at the Food City down the road, his Mama and aunts saying Good boy, works so hard.  Since he did that stretch in juvie, his Mama and aunts would do just about anything to help him stay straight.  Funny how things worked out sometimes, ever since he served time they treated him sweeter than ever and with more respect—like he was a man now. 
    He understood of course that Ace had arranged to have him take most of the risks and do all the worst drudgery for a small cut of the money.  That was what you had to put up with in the beginning, to get started.  Hector and his friend Miguel, when they talked about getting started, agreed they were lucky to live in Tucson.
    “Always plenty of action here,” Miguel said.  “Been working a safe house for a coyote lately, you wouldn’t believe how many people he’s got crammed in there.  All’s I do is stand around with a gun under my jacket, three or four days whenever he needs me, and I make me some damn good money.”
    “There you go.  And any time crossers and dope get slow,” Hector said, “you boost a car, it’s only sixty miles to the border.” 
    “Fact.  Anybody says he can’t get started in Tucson gotta be a real menso .”
    Privately Hector thought Miguel was welcome to those crazy coyotes, always