Dos Tacos Guatemaltecos Y Una Pistola Casera

By Mark Troy

Three shadowy denizens of an online gaming chatroom—an undocumented refugee, a socially isolated teenager, and a sexual predator—make an abandoned Chicago stockyard run red with blood once again.

Getting off the bus from El Paso, Balam, the Mayan jaguar, arrives in South Chicago, hungry, broke, and cold, hoping to find MagcPanda, a girl he had befriended online. Balam believes MagcPanda has fallen prey to an online predator and has been trafficked to Chicago. His only link to her is a laptop stolen from a refugee shelter. Wandering the streets of the alien city, he is dismayed to find that Chicago is fraught with more dangers than any he had experienced in Guatemala or on the trek though the mountains and deserts of Mexico. When gangbangers take his laptop, destroying his hopes of rescuing MagicPanda, Balam is ready to admit defeat, only to get help from an unlikely source—the owner of a taco truck whose food is inedible, but whose “special” is sought after. Armed with the “special,” Balam resumes the hunt which terminates in the abandoned killing field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005232900

Mark Troy

Mark Troy is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. He and his wife served as Peace Corps Volunteers in Thailand where they taught English and supervised student teachers. After the Peace Corps, the Troys moved to Hawaii for graduate school. They now live in Texas where Mark is an administrator and researcher at the Texas A&M University. Mark has degrees from Quincy University, Washington University and the University of Hawaii. The Troys have two sons a daughter-in-law, one granddaughter and one grandson.When not writing, Mark runs marathons. He has completed 18 so far.

Book preview

DOS TACOS GUATEMALTECOS

Y UNA PISTOLA CASERA

Guns + Tacos Season Two Episode 6

Mark Troy

Series Created and Edited by

Michael Bracken and Trey R. Barker

Copyright © 2020 by Mark Troy

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by Zach McCain

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dos Tacos Guatemaltecos y Una Pistola Casera

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from the first episode of A Grifter’s Song Season Three

The Rule of Thirds by Matt Phillips

KaosKave—your last login was 18:39

Balam: where r u?

MagcPanda: joplin.

Balam: where is that?

MagcPanda: mo i think

Balam: r u on bus?

MagcPanda: stopped for break

Balam: do not get back on

MagcPanda: nigel is waiting

Balam: do not get on

MagcPanda: nigel is quiet. he is very serious

Balam: nigel is bad

MagcPanda: u dont know him

Balam: he is bad

MagcPanda: u r wrong. nigels aunt sara is here 2

Balam: u must leave

MagcPanda: aunt sara is calling. bus is leaving

Balam: RUN

MagcPanda: bye

Six days later

Balam, the Mayan jaguar god, closed his laptop as the bus pulled into the Tornado station on South Kedzie. Six days since MagcPanda had gotten back on the bus in Joplin. Six days since he’d last heard from her. He’d haunted the KaosKave chatroom. He’d posted messages for her to contact him. Everyday. Several times a day. Whenever he could get Wi-Fi. He’d asked so often, the other gamers became irritated. Dude, she’s not into you, one posted. Give it up, another said.

He stowed the laptop in his backpack and drank the last of his bottled water. He reached into his pocket and felt the dwindling fold of bills. He’d eaten nothing since boarding the bus in Dallas seventeen hours before.

The chilly night air shivered him as he stepped off the bus. He knew Chicago would be cold, so he’d packed a fleece vest and a windbreaker. Balam quickly put them on and headed to a McDonald’s whose lighted arches glowed a short distance down the street. A sandwich at Mickey’s would blow his budget, but he needed food, warmth, and Wi-Fi.

Balam’s hunger overrode his budget. He ordered the two-cheeseburger meal and coffee. He wrapped his hands around the cup for warmth before adding four creams and six sugars. Then he opened the laptop and visited the chatroom, hoping for word from MagcPanda. Nothing from her, but a message from the moderator flashed across the screen. STOP CYBERSTALKING OR U WILL BE BANNED!

MagcPanda’s real name was Amanda. Balam visited her Facebook page, but found no updates. Disappointed but not surprised. MagcPanda had never been very active on Facebook, posting sporadically, usually to display a recent drawing. Her latest from five weeks earlier was still at the top of her timeline. It was a pencil sketch of the snout, fangs, and claws of some wolf-like beast. Balam marveled at the details of sinew, nails and teeth as if taken from an anatomy textbook of nightmare denizens. MagcPanda’s subject matter gravitated toward darkness. Even her avatar, a yellow-eyed Panda who bared bloody teeth and whose white fur dripped blood, belied her sweet-sounding screen name, which was pronounced Magic Panda. The name, she’d told him, was an anagram of her first name and the first initials of her grandfather Gary, her deceased grandmother Patricia, and her stepbrother Cory.

Balam glanced at her sparse friends list. Cory, who lived with a foster family somewhere