The 5-Bagger Arsenal

By Joseph M. Palafox

The 5-Bagger Arsenal is a story of a son’s struggle to fulfill the obligation of wreaking vengeance on his father’s murderers.
After refusing to be by his father’s side in a time of need, Miguel Angel Devora puts into motion the forces of his father’s demise. The result is the biggest shock in Miguel’s life, discovering his father’s mutilated body in a stainless steel tub on a dark, dusty street in Juarez, Mexico. The son, a police detective, investigates a crime and finds the remains of his father, the police chief.
Such is the nature of police work in Mexico. A father trains a son into his own image. But to be greedy in a corrupt world, one also has to abandon one’s heart and be cruel. Miguel opted out. Those characteristics are not in his nature. The result, a dead father who was a police chief, and Miguel banished from his home, his city and his country.
Across the border in El Paso, Texas, Miguel repossesses cars for a living and imagines the what-if and what-might-have-been scenarios if he’d acted like a true son. He can’t help but think about the past. He loved his father. But Miguel learns that even after death parents can put demands on their children. Before dying, his father’s last words to his captors were that his only son would draw his sword, hunt down and slay all enemies.
What do the murderers have to fear? They watched Miguel flee with his tail between his legs over the bridge above the Rio Grande River into the land of Lady Liberty, a coward’s run. But they’ve discovered that in addition to having been a police detective, Miguel has been trained in the arts and crafts of a sicario, an assassin, training that his father secretly supervised. The father’s dying declaration of how his son will seek retribution haunts his murderers like ghosts. The son is no coward, and may in fact be the ruthless image of his father. The son must die before he can live up to the picture painted by the father.
After returning a repossessed car to the owner of a bowling alley, and allowing a boy who was hiding in the back seat to be kidnapped, Miguel steps into another horror. Five bodies have been desecrated in the bowling alley in a manner identical to his father’s body. The butchers’ message is clear. Miguel is the target of the thin blades of their knives.
The boy has left Miguel a gold coin. Miguel uncovers the wealth of its source while skirting an assembly of greedy miscreants chasing him. The treasure trove and boy are in Mexico. Miguel crosses back into his past and is captured by his father’s killers. Seconds from being sliced by a psychopath’s knife, Miguel is aided by the boy who sneaks into his hand an instrument of salvation. The boy is prepared to sacrifice himself like a son would for a father. Miguel frees himself and does away with his captors.
Upon Miguel’s return to El Paso, he finds out that his father’s killers have survived and are in the county hospital. As fierce as vengeance can be, Miguel makes a compromise with the tenets of how his father lived and with the ones he lives by. In one fell swoop, Miguel vanquishes the entirety of all who had done harm to his father to the satisfaction of both his and his father’s philosophies of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph M. Palafox
• Release date: Apr 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311575050

Joseph M. Palafox

Acquired a wealth of experience and knowledge for his fiction by being employed in a civil engineering firm, a photography studio, a bank, a medical clinic and a police department.

Book preview

The 5-Bagger Arsenal

By

Joseph M. Palafox

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

The 5-Bagger Arsenal

Copyright 2014 by Joseph M. Palafox

Smashwords Edition , License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be

re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with

another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re

reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use

only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Your respect and support are appreciated.

* * * * *

Coming soon: Zona 0

* * * * *

Many thanks to the people of the law enforcement community on both sides who

helped provide insight into their professional lives, by detailing the methods used

in their daily work routines. Any factual errors are my own.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Contact Information

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The 5-Bagger Arsenal

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Part One

Birth of the Revolutionary Mexican

Chapter 1

About three hundred and sixty-five spins of the earth ago, I took up a new job. I was drafted for an assignment my heart would rather take a pass on. My mind and body had all the necessary accouterments for completing the chore, for sure. But without a charged-up spirit providing the incentive for the engine, I bobbed like an empty boat on an open sea, shoved by the demands of winds and currents.

My father controlled the weather, dictating the career change. I wanted to obey. He was my father whom I loved. But I’d be turning against my better beliefs, falling off a squall-induced crest of a wave to crash and drown in its trough.

My new job was taking other people’s lives, that impermanence we cling to with the last touch of a finger. My father trained me to kill. By his hand, rightly or wrongly, I became a sicario, an assassin.

Today was my first day, a complete surprise. I’d gotten the promotion without much warning. And I was beyond nervous. I’d never been on the giving end, the one extinguishing the life. But plenty of times I’d witnessed the fruits of their labor, the movers and shakers in the business who’d applied their special craft.

What I usually got stuck with was figuring out the How? and the Why? of their efforts. As of yesterday my former career involved uncovering the doers of the dirty deeds, those responsible who were on the safe side of a gun or the rounded handle of a knife, or those whose hands had touched flesh, obliterating a windpipe or pulverizing the bones of a face or the back of a skull. Plenty of work was around when murder was a commodity traded daily and frequently without end.

Late in the morning my probation period started. I was to do the opposite of what cops routinely defend against. My father wanted an all-out sicario rite of passage. He wanted an ultimate test seeing if I had cast-iron guts in handling the in-and-outs of staying alive. That was the first day’s duty, wearing the uniform of a dupe.

After many months training to learn the skills of doing harm and I got put in the game solo, not allowed to showboat for comrades. Instead, I’d become the solitary player against a band of opponents. My mascot was called the Sitting Duck, a team of one going up against five superstar sicarios.

Give me a V! an I! a C! a T! an I! an M! What’s that spell? Victim! What’s that gonna mean? Your ass ain’t gonna be around long unless you break the rules of the game.

The five assassins were given the job of putting out my lights any way their imaginations led. From what I’d heard, they’d had bona fide participation. All had found their true calling, but were held back from pursuing their heartfelt inclinations except on occasions when ordered.

More than an hour ago was one of those times. They were let off their leashes. They had me on the run and were coming with everything they had.

The five gave chase during an ordinary early afternoon on a Juárez, Mexico, city street. The end of the street contained the ultimate of escape valves, a route over the bridge to the U.S. side.

I’d worked alongside three of my pursuers in my previous capacity as a cop. I was always suspicious to their true nature. The other two were my age. I’d grown up with them. We’d gone through kiddie school up through high school together. But whatever friendships had been accumulated were tossed aside today, and in a little over seventy minutes we’d been branded as mortal enemies.

Jesús was sworn to kill me. Not the one-who-died-for-our-sins Jesus, but another one who I was pals with in school. He was Jesús, but his name was pronounced Hay-sues, the Spanish way of saying it. Like all Spanish-speaking Jesuses, his nickname was Chuy. And because of his physical, facial resemblance to that other Jesus from way back, a thin nose, straight hair parted in the middle and a certain skeletal development along the cheeks and jaw, he was given an extended nickname, Chuy the Idol.

But where the original Jesus was blessed with buckets full of kindness, my friend Jesús, was an empty canyon when it came to compassion. He was more of a black hole of self-absorption. The universe existed only for whatever was in his reach to snatch for his own pleasure.

The other friend I’d known well was Marco. He’d hung around us like a far-off asteroid circling the close orbiting planets of friends. He never said much, never offered a hand when things went wrong, like a lift for a buddy when his car broke down. But Marco was accepted for reasons I still can’t put my finger on. He was a scavenger, taking advantage of things and situations of what was left or discarded.

The last three assassins were older. I only got to know them when I started working at my former job. They’d already been at it for years before I got there. All three looked alike, dark hair, dark eyes and skin, short in height, and muscular with a simian stride in their walks, hands open and low to the ground.

One of the three had been a wrestler, a guy named Mono, for obvious reasons. Mono appeared more monkey than human, big ears sticking out, hairline close to his brow and a smile that never looked quite right cutting a curve up his face.

One time at the station, Mono picked up an officer he’d disagreed with over some silly point regarding European soccer. Mono slung the fool off his feet and hefted the man over his head in pro wrestling style, arms straight up without a shiver of strain from the weight, fool’s body high with arms and legs kicking doing an Australian crawl. Mono threw the guy over a ring of folding tables to the cheers of El Santo lives! rising to fever pitch in the lunchroom. The man landed face-up on a red and white ice chest, breaking his back in a couple of places.

The last two, Iladio and Ramon, had grown up together riding horses and castrating cows on cattle ranches to the south in Chihuahua. I knew this after overhearing them discuss their so-called good old days. Iladio and Ramon bragged with the glee of schoolboys about how they used to compete to see who could cut off the most testicles in a day.

The starter’s pistol had grown cold, the moment arriving for finding out who’d be more adept at killing, me or them.

I kept my head low as I strolled in rhythm among the weaving lines of passersby on the sidewalk. I ducked under the umbrellas over red-painted wooden carts, owners selling knick-knacks, cheap knock-offs of any item ever made.

I snatched a glimpse of one of the five across the street, walking out of sync from the rest of the pedestrians. He was sneaking under the awnings advertising dentists, restaurants, dance clubs and pharmacies, most abandoned behind galvanized-steel rollup gates painted turquoise and burnt orange. I followed his gait. It was Mono, the super-strength wrestling champ, the naked hairy ape mingling among higher primates.

That meant the other two, the castrating cowboy gorillas, were nearby, closing in to finish me off. Chuy the Idol and Marco would hold back until they were sure I was trapped. Afterwards, they’d stamp their own trademark of punishment on my body.

It didn’t matter that we were members of the same organization, or that I was the boss’s favorite and his son. The command had been decreed. I was to be given a final exam, and not allowed a pass and be simply maimed. I was to be the recipient of the amassed knowledge and experience from five murdering human machines. If they died and I lived, so much the better for me and the organization. Good for me because I’d continue to function as a righteous human, to eat, love and feel my senses react to the world’s stimuli. Good for the organization because the workforce would be streamlined and made more efficient and productive.

If only.

My breath drew in, labored. My heart trumpeted blood into my ears, almost drowning out the scrape of tires rolling on asphalt and pistons firing from the traffic easing by on the street. I had little confidence in my seeing tomorrow.

In Juárez, sicarios were a peso a dozen. At the corner on my side of the street, Iladio and Ramon leaned against a washed-out green antique lamppost. Both faced me. They pretended to gaze at the shapes of women close by. But they’d tagged me with laser-point marksmanship under a masked concentration, their eyes seeing off to one direction but actually trained on the bull’s eye of my chest.

Mono galloped on the outer edges of the crosswalk at the intersection meeting up with them. All three had changed out of the dark-blue military Battle Dress Uniforms they wore most days, the ones I avoided wearing. Throwaway civilians clothes were needed for this task so as not to leave trace evidence of our encounter.

Did they think this was a casting call for amateur night? Their ploy was a novice display at best. As if seeing the three in front intimidated my advance, frightening me into a one-eighty to head the opposite way from where I’d come.

That’d leave either Marco or Chuy the Idol behind, lurking in the crowd. The thin scalpel blade of a stiletto parked in their hands under a jacket was in wait for my retreat. One poke in my ribs with the knife was a game ender.

I broke the rules of engagement. I stopped in my tracks and clapped my hands in crisp thunks getting the three’s attention.

"You pendejos, I yelled in Spanish so they couldn’t mistake my words. What’s a bunch of pussies like you got business coming after me?"

Three pairs of brown eyes zoomed in, eyes close together in front like most hunter-carnivores. Their no-IQ reptilian brains registered a hungry aggression. I added a finishing touch, in more ways than one, and whipped out the flag of short-lived victory, my raised middle finger, pointed arrow-straight toward their warped mugs. I thrust my hand in the air three times, telling them to proceed with the anatomically impossible.

Their heads swiveled, looking at one another. The hell he say? they must’ve been thinking. Heat from the insult likely warmed their veins.

With petulant grimaces they turned back to hunt me down. But I’d disappeared, high-tailing it inside the nearest store.

Frigid air and a tanner’s odor of leather goods welcomed my entrance. Saddles, boots, whips and jackets crossed my line of sight. Curios of all types filled shelves. Deer antlers and polished steer horns took up space on the top ledges along three aisles or hung suspended on the ceiling with fishing line.

A bald man with a pencil-lined moustache stood behind a glass counter on the far right side of the store, his expectant glance greeting me. I was his only customer. Soon I’d be brightening up his day fivefold with the arrival of new clientele.

You have a back door? I said in Spanish, marching up. I pressed my hands on the display case and leaned forward. "I’m looking for a shortcut to my uncle’s joyería on the next block. You’ve heard of Samson’s Jewelry, haven’t you? I’d need jewels as big and tough as Samson’s to conquer the onslaught about to charge through the doorway. Well, do you?"

I heard my voice go too many octaves higher than normal, shrill, as if Iladio and Ramon had already flicked their knives through my scrotal pouch and removed its contents. The store owner found space a half-step back, alert to the panic seeping into my self-control. I was trapped. I searched for an exit. My body shook, on the verge of surrender in a soon-to-be wipeout of a defeat.

I remembered to breathe. Panic kills more than even the bullet. I blew out air, exhaling mightier than a hailstorm.

I have jewelry, the owner said. Silver rings for your señorita, maybe? Let me show you. I’d misread him. He waved his hand over the counter and peeled back a rubber mat on top of the display case. He only hoped for a sale. The finest silver from Taxco.

My eyes trailed to where his hands pointed. Under the glass on the first shelf, metal circles reflected light like mirrors. But underneath the rings, jutting out on the second shelf, was a prize.

Footsteps skidded at the doorway. Iladio and Ramon slowed their pace and made entry, cherub smiles planted on their faces.

Gentlemen, my store continues to be open to you, the bald owner said, flat hand up in a Spanish salute, ushering them in. Still interested in the saddle? Only the finest leather. I hadn’t said this before, but a farrier’s been looking at it as well. He may soon be here to purchase it. I wouldn’t wait.

The five lynxes had planned my move into the store all along.

I grabbed the rubber mat off the counter and rolled it over my fist. I kneeled in front of the plate glass of the display case, closed my eyes and plowed my hand into its center. The glass collapsed, wedges shaped like continents caved inward, a sound of startled dinner bells.

On the second shelf, positioned as if measured for military ranking, switchblade knives were spaced side by side in rows from the shortest to longest. Their blades snuggled in sleep inside shiny black handles, a gold button in the middle on each waited for an awakening.

When I unfurled the mat off my hand and reached in, Iladio and Ramon sped toward me.

What is this? the bald owner said.

A key to the kingdom of the living and breathing, asshole, my mind answered as my body remembered the training and took over.

You! the owner said.

The bald man launched a finger at my head as I scooped up the biggest switchblade. I saw that his other hand had already found the grip of a concealed machete, thick blade in motion arcing for my neck. I ducked, slipped and fell on my back.

In a blink, Iladio put on an imaginary cape and turned into Superman, borrowing Mono’s ability. In a flying leap Iladio sprung over the counter, headfirst into the owner, fists cinder blocks smashing the owner’s face.

Ramon sprinted for me.

With his head down and arms out, Ramon ran a blitz like a player in American football. To my surprise, Ramon lacked quick acceleration, launching like a sluggish bull with bad legs.

With Iladio’s impact into the owner, the machete sailed free through the air, sharp end spinning. Both Ramon and the machete poured on the heat in a mad dash racing to land on my body.

Ramon came in second and died hitting the linoleum floor at my side.

The machete was almost a winner. I spun on the floor out of its landing zone. The bottom end of the machete’s handle touched first where I’d been a moment before. The handle settled in place on the floor for only a second, long enough for Ramon to barrel down, intending to shackle me under his weight.

With me out of the way, the machete took up my old space, pointy business end upward toward the ceiling where steer horns danced on the fishing lines in the breeze of the air conditioning. Ramon tackled an empty floor except for the upright steel blade, his chest making first and final introductions to the world of battle-tested cutlery.

Ramon gasped and his body quit. The blade sliced upward through the back of his shirt, half its height popping up like a sprung, wet-and-red clown puppet in a toy jack-in-the-box.

On the ceiling the steer horns twisted on their lines with renewed enthusiasm as if in celebration of the death of the one who’d brought so much misery to their kind.

And I stood.

Iladio kept up with his super powers, his body hurdling the display case in a single bound. I dodged the hook of his arms but slipped on the floor in Ramon’s blood flushing from his body.

Iladio wrenched a fist load of my shirt and yanked. His other fist pummeled the side of my head. The sparkle of comet tails shot across my eyes, and I watched, fascinated by the inner celestial event. But he’d weakened me. My legs gave. I wobbled as if my bones dissolved.

He struck me again, and I dropped to my knees, butt slamming onto my heels. Through a swollen brow I saw his fist cock for the deathblow.

All the long hours of anti-terrorist training had gone misspent, a great loss of good time. But mostly my failure was a drain on the efforts of a superb teacher, someone I worshipped. Thankfully death would deal me the favor of not having to look into the eyes of my teacher, meeting his disappointment in a student he had so much confidence in. My death was a disgrace not only to his teachings, but to him personally, to his direct lineage.

Had I relaxed earlier, I’d have been aware of the power held in my hand. I clutched the switchblade within the curls of my fingers.

My thumb found the release button. My hand convulsed with the agitation of the mechanism. The leaf spring thrust the blade out in a jolt. I yelped a battle cry. And I plunged the knife upward with a robust strike, aiming below the heart into the stomach and intestines.

I missed. The steel tip and sleek tapered edges slid between Iladio’s legs to the hilt.

Iladio froze. His fist dropped. He stared down at the violation I’d caused. He inched backwards, wanting to walk away from the nightmare he was a witness to. But the handle followed, hanging down where his own member was usually kept.

My head cleared and I got to my feet.

Iladio tripped on Ramon’s body and landed on Ramon’s head with a sick squash. Iladio seized the knife handle but didn’t pull, unsure what measures would grant him asylum from the wicked crime to his anatomy. Maroon painted his hand and spurted with urgency when he tweaked the blade in reverse.

Do that, you’ll rain enough to paint the shop twice, I said, bending over the counter to check the owner. The man’s cheeks fluttered with the passing of air from his lungs. Where’s Mono?

When I turned back to Iladio, he gave a quick heave-ho on the switchblade handle and cast its foulness clattering to the floor. He strained under a deep, bellied grunt.

--kill you-- he managed saying clearly.

Iladio’s eyes clouded in a classic dead-man’s glaze, brown color yielding to gray slate. But my prediction was wrong about his blood raining into the shop two-fold. Instead, with arteries uncapped, his blood let out in a replay of Noah’s flood.

I hopped on tiptoes, not wanting my boots stained with fluids once occupying the internal organs of two pretend humans. I lit out around the front of an aisle, averting the traffic jam of two bodies blocking my exit to the back. I was a little surprised. I found him crouching midway between the shelves filled with granny trinkets of porcelain plates on one side and manly steer horns piled on the other.

Marco, the scavenger.

Why doesn’t the varsity ever take the field? I said, studying his rise to full height. They keep sending in the scrubs.

Marco’s verbal facility was lacking. He didn’t react to what I’d said probably due to an inability converting figurative language into everyday speech.

With feral concentration he reached behind his back, going for what I knew was the Glock 40 he’d picked off like a vulture from a crime scene four months ago. He liked bragging about how the cartels were killing their own with the latest in U.S. weaponry. I’d told him more than once that the pistol was Austrian. But he didn’t want to hear it, and his boasting turned into a rant.

In the middle of any dusty southwest street, circa the late eighteen-eighties, during a face-off, Marco’s Matt-Dillon pistol draw might’ve landed him on his back with his toes up. But those cowboy myths contained little truth. He remained standing because I didn’t have a gun, and I didn’t have time to shop around for one.

I went for the shelf to the right, rummaged a bit and got hold of the longest set of steer horns in the lot. Marco’s arm whipped around from his backside, taking his time because of my lack of fire power. The Glock 40 was blacker and more menacing than the days he’d brung it out and beat the drum with praises of its origins.

I burst forward, full out. Marco stood flatfooted, neurons in his dimwitted head not making contact, his reaction barely noticeable. With the slight spiraled end of the steer horn leading, I rammed him below the chin, goring the soft tissue in his neck.

His Glock 40 perked up in a single shot, bullet off course and nowhere near the target, into a florescent tube above, spraying glass particles and dust behind me. A quarter of the store shadowed. Marco gagged, slumped and was silenced in one movement.

I pivoted, hurrying, legs in a tremble for what might be strolling in behind me at the storefront entryway, Mono’s monster frame. I raced, body wavering down through the aisle. With my shoulder and hip I pounced on the push-bar of the back door. I broke out among the trash cans and wooden palettes strewn about in the narrow alley.

Mono’s eyes twinkled. He waved a short-barreled shotgun at my chest as I leaped out. He shrugged his shoulders as if saying Those are the breaks, in commiseration with my capture.

Hey, Miguel Angel, Chuy the Idol said, leaning his lower back against the trunk of a gold Chrysler 300. His legs were crossed at the ankles, relaxed, all the time of the day to let by. Sounded like you rocked inside, man, he said in English. He made his hands into pistols, aiming them in the air. Bang-bang! You did good, Angel. But, you know, you made one mistake.

Two mistakes, I said, playing it off as cool. When I raised my hands, my arms shook like I was freezing cold. How ‘bout I go back inside? We do it over? Maybe I get it right?

Chuy laughed and slapped his thigh. "That’s why I’ve always liked you, carnal. You say things funny. Angel, when teachers and other assholes pissed on me in school, you stood with me. I’ll never forget that about you."

Mono drilled me at the base of my spine with the front end of the shotgun. What a clown you are, he said in Spanish. Returning you in one piece will upset your father. When he finds out how easy we got you, he’ll put a hole in me. Let’s go.

I dead-walked to the Chrysler. My feet dragged over loose rocks in the crumbling asphalt, the second-to-the-last stroll until the end of my life’s trek. Once they hauled me off to the outskirts of the city in an expanse of untouched desert, where Creosote bushes and jackrabbits etched out a paltry existence, I’d be exiled forever from planet earth by the shotgun.

You in front, Mono said, stabbing me in the same spot in my back as before. He slid a body’s length in reverse. None of that karate shit. You hear? Kick me, the trigger pulls. Taste the hot breath of the barrel.

Come on, Mono, Chuy said, going around to the driver’s side. He pried open the door. "Why you that way, ese? Angel’s my friend. That’s carved in granite forever, man. Now get in. We got us a little trip to go on."

Chuy mixed his sentences, spoke some in English and others in Spanish. Mono was clueless about the English.

I slipped into the front passenger seat and closed the door, barely sealing it in place. Mono became my twin, a perfect reflection of my actions entering the Chrysler in the back seat. But once under the roof, he improvised with the shotgun. Sitting behind me, he parked the shotgun’s barrel on my headrest where my head met my neck.

A bell chimed innocently with a warning.

Chuy the Idol was all verve and vigor, sitting down in the driver’s seat. He acted as if we were going out drinking with the boys on a Friday night, cruising Scenic Drive in his brother’s Ford Galaxy. Like old times.

In high school, when we got drunk enough, we’d drive down Scenic Drive and sideswipe the rock wall barricading the edge from the hundreds-of-feet drop off Mt. Franklin, sparks from the quarter panels and door lighting up the night. Our hoots scared the girlfriends more than the fireworks off the paint and metal, along with the potential for a plunge off the side.

Put your belt on, Angel, Chuy said, fastening his own seat belt. Or we’ll never hear the end of that fucking ringing.

I did as told, and the chime vanished. Chuy swung his hand onto my shoulder belt, checking its tension. He cupped the square where the buckle latched.

Bell bothers you that much? I said.

Chuy swiveled to the back seat. Mono? Come on, man. Look where you are. You know how I like to drive. I hit a bump too hard, that thing goes go off and tears into to me, too. Sit in the middle back there so the shotgun’s at an angle away from me, man.

Mono rustled behind me, sliding to the center, fart sounds from his ass rubbing on the leather seat.

Chuy faced front, eyes on the rearview. "Órale, ese. That’s better. See, you pull the trigger, birdshot sprays to his side."

It felt worse than a toothache while sitting in the dentist’s chair. Mono rested the end of the barrel on the backrest, propped next to my neck.

Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge, hombre. Chuy started the engine and pulled the gearshift. Like old times, eh?

The shotgun barrel emitted a radiation that burned my ear. Chuy punched the accelerator. My head jerked and pressed against the headrest. I was sure Mono’s trigger finger felt the same force.

We came to the street at the end of the alley, and Chuy braked like his life depended on it. Most of my mind was occupied with an image of the light sure to illuminate from the end of the shotgun’s barrel, ripping apart half my skull.

Chuy swerved onto