In
a rundown neighborhood in South Phoenix, Eddie Easy Deal Wilson parked his car in front of a shabby
little house and swaggered to the front door. He heard violent coughing coming from
inside. Good. Shifty Logan
was home.
The
front door creaked open and a short white man with a pale haggard face and squinty
eyes appeared. Somehow he managed to cough without spitting out a burning
cigarette that dangled from the corner of crooked lips.
“I
came to collect the three grand I loaned you,” Easy Deal said as he shoved his way into an untidy living room that
smelled like tuna fish. “If I don’t get my dough I’m going to ransack this
fucking dump and take what I can sell. If I don’t get enough I’m going to break
something. Maybe your kneecaps.” Easy Deal was twenty-eight years old, six
feet, and a street-tough 190.
Shifty
held his hands up as a peace gesture. “Don’t go crazy on me, man. Ain’t we pals?”
“No.
I waited long enough. I want my money.”
“Listen,
man. I invested it but I been too fucking sick to cash in. I can hardly
breath.” Shifty took a drag on the
cigarette and started coughing again.
Easy
Deal rubbed his suntanned face. “Invested it in what?”
Shifty
snuffed the cigarette butt out in an overflowing glass ashtray he shoplifted
somewhere, bent forward, and put his hands on his knees. After awhile he
stopped hacking.
“Stolen
baseball cards, man.” He straightened and lit another cigarette. “There’s this
Mexican who’s holding them for me. These fucking cards I can get ten maybe twelve
thou for from a dealer. Most of it will be yours.”
“Take
me to this Mexican.”
“I
can’t, man. I’m too sick. You’ll have to do it alone.”
“Do
it where?”
“Nogo,
man. Mexico.
Ask for Raul. The Hotel Montoya. Just tell him you’re my partner and he’ll give
you the cards. A piece of cake.”
Three
hours later Easy Deal left his car on the U.S.
side and crossed on foot into Nogales, Mexico.
It was dark when he found the Montoya, a seedy bedbug hotel a mile from the
border and next to a rough looking bar.
A Mex
woman with hair dyed yellow and fire red lipstick sat behind the counter in a
dim dingy lobby.
“I’m
looking for Raul.”
The
woman sized Easy Deal up and down. Overpowered by her flowery perfume Easy Deal
stepped back. A slow moving ceiling fan kicked dust around.
The
woman gestured with a curt nod to the stairs. “Room 2. It’s unlocked. Kill him
if you want, I don’t care.”
Raul
sprawled on the bed naked except for piss stained jockey shorts. A needle, a
spoon, and some powdery brownish residue were near him on the dirty mattress.
“Raul.”
He
didn’t answer.
Easy
Deal spotted Narcan apparatus on a warped bedstand. He shoved a vial into an
applicator and shoved the nozzle into each of Raul’s nostrils. Raul came around,
barely.
“You
fucked up my buzz,” Raul slurred.
“Where
are Shifty’s baseball cards?”
“On
the dresser.”
Easy
Deal went to the dresser and found a pile of cut pieces of cardboard. “Who put
the scissors to these cards?”
“That
puta downstairs. We had a fight. Instead of using the scissors on me she used
them on Shifty’s cards.”
Easy
Deal noticed a dresser drawer slightly ajar. Inside the drawer, hiding under a Magnum
.357 and a dead cockroach, he saw a lone baseball card. “Here’s one your
girlfriend missed. I’ll take it.”
“That’s not one Shifty paid for. It’s for another
guy.”
“Fuck the other guy. I’m taking it.”
“The dude’s psycho. If he don’t get that card he’ll
kill me.”
“You probably lived too long anyway.”
With loud music from the bar next door invading the
room through an open window, Easy Deal studied the baseball card. He recognized
the player. An old timer, Honus Wagner.
“Holy fuck,” Easy Deal muttered. A rare Honus Wagner
baseball card like this one just sold in auction for three million dollars. Shifty
would get the cut-up cards. He’d keep this one for himself.
There were heavy footsteps in the hall. The psycho
dude – maybe. Easy Deal picked up the
Magnum and waited.
