Page 103 of The Slayer
“If the old man had seen that shit, he wouldn’t be so quick to sign the dotted line for all these arms deals.” Tino wasn’t listening, just kept talking instead of counting as he lifted. “That’s why accountants shouldn’t be running things. I mean, at least Nova gets his hands dirty sometimes outta some sort of brotherly guilt because I always end up with the hard jobs. That ex-KGB fucker not crying freaked his shit out too. He hates dealing with the Russians. That has to be why he sounds so stressed.”
“You really need to shut up,” Chuito growled at him and pulled the barbell out of his hands and put it back. “I’m serious, Tino. I don’t want to hear this shit.”
Tino rubbed the sweat off his forehead and laughed. “What? Who are you gonna tell? The Feds? I got shit on you too, motherfucker. We’ll go down together if you sell me out.”
Tino knew Chuito’s stance on law enforcement and was clearly using it as leverage because he needed someone to talk to now that the only form of communication he had with Nova was the phone, but Chuito still couldn’t help but point out, “Nova willsink meif he knows you keep telling me this shit.”
“You’re a friend of mine,” Tino said as if that alone made it okay. “Nova wouldn’t sink you. Besides, look at where we are.” He held out his hands to the empty gym, because the two of them were working out alone after hours. “Not even the Feds are gonna show up here. I have swept this gym for bugs six times. Nothing. I’ve never been in a place that I didn’t find a bug. It’s like the wastelands for washed-up gangsters.”
“What does sinking mean?” Chuito asked curiously, though he knew he shouldn’t.
“You sink them.” Tino pointed to the ground. “In the water. Concrete.”
“You fuckers actually do that?” Chuito was shocked. “I thought that was a myth.”
“You wanna stroke out my brother, give him a bloody body to hide. Everything’s gotta be neat with him. Who’s gonna find them at the bottom of the friggin’ ocean?”
“Do you kill them first?”
“Why would we do that? Then you gotta clean it up. I don’t want their DNA all over the place,” Tino said as if it was obvious. “What did you do with the bodies?”
Chuito shrugged. “I just left them there.”
“You didn’t worry about going down for it? You didn’t use chemicals? Nothing? Chemicals will eat a body faster than the ocean will, and you motherfuckers have the Everglades in Miami. All those fucking gators. A lotta dead liabilities have been buried in the Everglades.”
“The cops don’t give a shit about another dead gangbanger,” Chuito said with a bitter laugh. “Sell some blow to a few gringos, and you’ll go down for ten years, but they could give a fuck if we’re taking each other out.”
“Huh?” Tino said as he looked ahead. “What about their crew finding them?”
“Fuck them. Let them come find me.” Chuito snorted. “I wanted them to come find me. It’d give me something to do.”
“Did they find you?”
“At first.”
Tino smirked. “And then what happened?”
“They stopped finding me.” Chuito looked around the empty gym. It really was a wasteland for washed-up gangsters. “Now here I am.”
“You sent a message,” Tino said as if it explained everything. “Old-school. Messages work. They keep motherfuckers in line. My people learned that a long time ago. How’d you kill them?”
Chuito shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I sorta want to know,” Tino argued. “It had to be a pretty strong message if they stopped retaliating.”
“Mostly with my bare hands. I wanted to feel them die,” Chuito admitted as he stared past Tino’s shoulder and remembered it. “They killed my brother, man. He was thirteen. My Tía Camila was the nicest woman you ever met in your life. I lived with her since the day I was born. She was like a second mother to me. I stretched that shit out as long as possible, and then I made sure they weren’t recognizable anymore. That’s how I wanted their crew to find them, with their teeth all over the fucking pavement.”
“That’s a helluva message.” Tino stared at him for a long moment. “That’s sorta fucked-up.”
Chuito gave him a look. “And sinking motherfuckers in the ocean isn’t?”
“I didn’t want to sink him. I gave him a lotta opportunities. Seriously, my brotherhateswhen problems turn into bodies. He tries really hard to avoid that shit.”
“How diplomatic,” Chuito snorted and then pointed out, “he’s still at the bottom of the ocean. Those gangbangers killed my family. They shot at a house they knew had women and children in it. What’s your fucking excuse, Moretti? Money.”
“I didn’t put out the hit. The old man did that shit.”
“You just carried it out?”
