Book Two: Three Men

Three men sat round the table in the quite back room of the bar. The bar was in Nogales. The other Nogales in Sonora, Mexico. Just across the border from the US, and its Nogales. One of them lived in Nogales, Arizona, the other two almost two hundred miles north in Tucson. All were in their early or mid thirties. All looked unhappy. All looked like they needed a fairy godmother to give them a wish or three because their lives had faults that would not easily be fixed. They were in the bar because while they were there they didn’t have to go and live in those lives. They were on a time out. Rudy, Doug and Alan. A Mexican-American and two white guys, playing hide and seek with their difficult lives.

‘Money is all it is, man,’ Alan said. Rudy and Doug raised their glasses.

‘Isn’t it always?’ Doug said. ‘Money was there, you wouldn’t have problems. Not the same way you do now. Sure, situations would still be there: My ma would still need drugs that drain me dry even when I buy cheap Mex copies, You’d still be living in a bigger house than us, Rudy, because you’ve been rash enough to go marry a fine woman and have three kids who’re all old enough to need their own room and you need to run two cars and all, and Alan, you ass, you’d still be listening to your unfeasibly classy stereo and watching your forty-two inch plasma TV, and you still wouldn’t be able to keep your plastic in your pocket and balance a chequebook. But we had money, all those things, they wouldn’t be problems. They’d just be situations.’ Doug sat back, even more worn down by his money worries after he’d spelled out the hopelessness.

‘And guys,’ Rudy said. ‘We all know what makes it worse. DEA salaries. We know the government can’t pay the honest agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency like stars and princes. But the opposition, they make your heart ache every day of the week. Don’t they just?’

‘You mean you don’t like to see them in their Porsches and their Hummers and their villas in a hundred acres, Rudy, man? What kind of a spoilsport are you?’ Doug asked.

‘I’m the kind who needs to buy two pairs of thirty buck school shoes this weekend, who can afford it too, but who hasn’t had two straight days away with his gorgeous sexy wife for five years, because when it isn’t school shoes, it’s tyres, or a pump on the airco, or one of a thousand things that I can just about afford, so long as nothing really bad happens. I’m one pay cheque from disaster.’

‘Cheers.’

Doug and Alan raised their glasses in another salute.

‘Here’s to Honest Johns and government pay scales.’

Alan waved through the curtain separating them from the main bar. The waiter brought another jug of beer, six clean glasses, another bowl of ice and another bottle of golden rum.

‘We’ll be regretting the bar bill too, tomorrow.’ Rudy said

Alan shook his head.

‘Hector owes me a favour. The bill tonight is the favour repaid. We’re all on the house. Food we have to pay for.’

Doug shook his head and frowned.

‘We should pay, guys. Favours, debts and favours, freebies, it’s a short step to pay-offs. It’s a slippery slope, man.’

Doug’s lecture took the edge off. Cooled down the mood.

Rudy filled his spare glass with rum, up to the half way point, no ice, and downed it. He shuddered with the shock of the raw alcohol.

‘The hell with it guys. We’re the good guys, we’re all suffering here, and we all know there’s more than one way to take money off the bad guys and they don’t all mean going over to the other side. You don’t have to trust me no more, you don’t want to, you can report this conversation to the chief and have me put back in the office and out of the field you like, but come on guys. We need to straighten ourselves out here. Get some self respect and take off some of the bad guys in a way leaves us in pocket.’

Doug and Alan exchanged glances. Then Alan smiled and slowly Doug followed.

‘You know, ‘ Alan said. ‘I’ve been waiting for someone to say that for three years, ever since my Visa bill passed what I earn in half a year. But I always thought my guys on my team were as straight as they thought I was, and I guess I didn’t have the balls to open my mouth.’

He poured a half glass, just like Rudy, and downed it.

Doug poured a third.

‘If this is the secret password…’ he said. Down went the rum.

‘I’m in.’