Leave it to the Gutter to prove that old adage,
Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Bingo Gringo by Earl Javorsky
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I know I’m in
too deep.
They’ve given me
a gun. It’s a huge gun, a Desert Eagle, a hand cannon really, and they’re
behind me now as we walk into the park.
They slashed my
brother Tom’s throat while he was working undercover. They don’t know he was my
brother, but they know I was a cop. They think that ended when I got popped for
selling them back their own heroin from the evidence locker.
Three months
later, after a quick plea, I wound up in County. We had made sure it looked
like a weak case, and my one-year sentence meant I’d be out in less than half
that. They approached me, as we had hoped, the day I got put in Gen Pop. The
guards had kicked the shit out of me, but six guys had my back the whole time,
including a sniper in the guard tower. The whole setup was to make me
believable as a cop gone irredeemably bad, one that might make a good asset for
the Colonia Chiques. Before the guards dragged me away, a short, muscular guy came
up to me. His face and shaved skull were covered with scorpions and spiders killing
each other. He told me to reach out at @homiedaveputnam. Fucking bangers wanted
me to tweet them.
They knew I
still had people in the Department. What they didn’t know was that my mission
was to take down La Diabla Pequeña, the wife of Hector Cruz. She ran the crew
on his instructions from prison. Word is, she killed my brother. Nobody knows
where she’s from, there are no pictures of her, no arrest record, nothing. The
Gang Squad figures she came up from Michoacán, which is where Cruz’s family went
way back with Nazario Moreno González and La Familia.
I’ve fired a
Desert Eagle before. It’s a noisy piece with a jolting kick. I’ve also seen the
terrible things it can do to a human body. This one, I don’t even know if it
has bullets in it; it’s so heavy I wouldn’t know the difference. The whole
thing could be a charade. They did tell me, however, that there was a guy with
a rifle and a scope somewhere at the perimeter, so don’t fuck around or turn
the gun on the homies behind me.
The deal was, I
had to shoot a civilian. And now I can see that the civilian is a kid. A kid on
a swing. She’s just sitting there, with her head down and long hair drooping to
her knees, swinging slightly left to right. She has cute little two-tone Buster
Brown shoes and a short green tartan skirt. If I don’t shoot her, they’re gonna
kill me.
The park is
weirdly deserted, except for the girl on the swing. It’s a crappy little park,
quiet except for the creaking of the rusty swing chains and the distant sounds
of traffic. It’s not in Colonia Chiques turf, but they had cleared the area.
They told me
she’s the daughter of a rival gang leader and that they were going to kill her
no matter what I did. So, not a civilian. I wonder what she’s doing here alone.
A voice behind
me says, “You fucking pussy out now, you’re gonna die. And your faggoty little
kid, Benji.” How could they have my boy? He’s four hundred miles away with my
ex, using her last name. Tom was Benji's favorite uncle, and I hate that my boy
has had to live for this past year with the hideous images the ghouls in the press
have relentlessly harped on. They’re why I’m here at all.
“So what’s it
gonna be, pendejo?” I want to turn around and put a huge fucking Desert Eagle
hole in his forehead. I want to kill my way up the chain of command to the top
and put two thirds of an ounce of lead in La Diabla Pequeña’s mouth. I’ll even do
it with a blank, ’cause the muzzle flash from this gun will do the job nicely.
I pull the
trigger.
Nothing happens.
The girl looks
up and opens her mouth in a grin that shows teeth filed to triangles and capped
in silver.
“Bingo, gringo.
Now you work for me.”
