"How can you know?" was the kid's first, and entirely predictable, response.
"He fits the profile." Sands said easily. "He's ambitious and greedy, with quite a creative vicious streak if anybody happens to step on his toes. He's got big plans unfolding to expand his legitimate interests with no suggestion of where the money's coming from."
"That fits pretty much all of those bastards," Lorenzo bitched. "So why pick this one?"
Sands smiled at him, bright and confident. "He's also been making a lot of calls to every name on that list of yours, plus a few extras I've tied into Honaker's 'businesses.'"
"You hacked his phone records?" The kid actually sounded impressed for once, which proved just how stupid he really was.
"I paid off the guy who shreds his papers. He cost a lot less than a good hacker."
Shifting movement from the chair on the right – this little chat had been deliberately timed around Fideo having one of his less tequila-soaked sessions. "You say if we kill this man, the others will be frightened and give up?"
"Well, nobody's casting any microalloyed steel round it, but there's a good chance it'll play that way, yes."
"Then we kill him," Fideo said, the agreement instant and almost too easy.
"And just how do you plan on doing it?" Sands still had some curiosity prickling through his head when it came to the dipso – when he wasn't so drunk to be a complete waste of respiration, there were occasional flashes of insight to his remarks that suggested there might be an interesting, practical intellect drowning under the pickle juice.
"Shoot him, what else?" That was Lorenzo opting for his usual up-front solution to any problem.
Sands tipped his head towards him with a hint of smile. "Details?"
"Who cares? Three of us are enough to put a rotating tail on him, whoever gets the chance takes the shot."
"No. It needs to be a done a certain way," El said, the careful words that shaped his thoughts. It was the first contribution he'd bothered to make, leaving Sands to do the talking, even though Lorenzo would take it easier from El. "It has to be dramatic – a message. It has to be obvious to everyone who did it, and why."
"Obvious to everyone but the local branches of law enforcement," Sands added, "since I don't suppose the two of you are keen on adopting El's lifestyle." He swung his head slow around the full range of his audience. "El Mariachi's going to jump out of retirement again and remind people just how unhealthy it can be to ask the wrong kind of questions." He turned to El with slightly raised eyebrows and a twist to the edge of his lips. "Looks like that shotgun's going to earn its keep. I hope you packed the outfit."
"I brought it," El said, flat and clipped.
"So we're going on a trip to Morelia." Sands smiled wide over the room. "Ayala prefers his inland house during hurricane season. I think you'll like it."
"I'll start packing our shit," Lorenzo said. "How long are we gone for?"
"It's just me and El at first." Sands snipped the kid's thoughts back fast. "We still want you two here looking wholesome and boring for the informants. Once we've checked out the choices and come up with some possible plans, we bring you in for the fine-tuning and the, how should I say it, execution."
One of those quick, charged silences as the mariachis confirmed agreement with each other, before El rose to his feet. "Then it's time for me to fill my guitar case," he said. "Lorenzo, what do you have?"
"All the good toys." The kid bounced up from the sofa with that insta-grin. "Come on, I'll show ya."
"If there are any flash-bangs, make sure to being a few along," Sands said as they passed him. "Might be useful to add to the show."
El's feet paused by the door. "Any more special orders?"
Sands tipped his head as if thinking and then smiled. "I think that should do it."
He waited till the paired steps were well down the hallway before he turned back to the chair, where a high, steady grate of unscrewing already followed the end of the chat. "You'll play along with it, just like that? You're not going to question me on the details, the information?"
Liquid sloshed before he got an answer. "El knows the reasons, he's not against it."
"And that's enough for you? El believes me, so you do too? You know nothing about me."
"I know more than I might want to." The words were a statement, no sharp indent of teeth behind the tone. "El knows what he's doing. It would be strange to start doubting him now."
"You'll actually trust him that far, base all your choices and risk your life on his judgement." Sands' contempt spiked through his words, but Fideo only took another drink, then answered with the same calm.
"Don't you?"
Sands didn't have to consider the truth of it; that was a decision he'd made long ago. He much preferred to have the details, the reasoning, the chance to check for flaws in El's thinking, but when the bullets and noise and the cordite stink enclosed them, he simply did. "Only in his specific area of expertise," he said, with a quick smile. "I certainly don't trust you just because he does."
Sweeping rustle of cloth from the chair, and Sands got the distinct feeling he'd been saluted with a bottle. "I'll keep it in mind."
Too many of his conversations with the dipso went that way – Fideo always refused to rise, and how much of that was the man and how much the doping drag of the booze, Sands hadn't entirely figured out.
Not that it was going to matter, because a few more days with the sidekicks was all it would take to finish this deal.
It still irritated him not to know. But not enough to make him want to stick around.
They took the drive to Morelia the next day. Sands booked them a vacation rental place, two bedrooms for when the hangers-on joined the game. It was less hassle than to keep switching hotels for the next few weeks, and more anonymous and private, no minimum wage staff watching their every move, ripe to be paid off.
They already knew the addresses of Ayala's house and the local offices of his legitimate business fronts, and El scoped those from a respectful distance, getting a feel for layout and style and people. They tracked the man where they could be discreet, through the crowds, while Sands arranged for the architectural plans to the main buildings. Ayala seemed to keep a reasonable degree of routine to his days, touring his offices during the usual business hours, with other, more interesting engagements sometimes taking up part of his evenings.
He never went anywhere alone; he always had a driver for his car, and an 'aide' alongside him, who scanned the surroundings and didn't look at too many papers. They tailed him to a number of restaurants, three of them quickly becoming obvious as his favourites. They ate lunch at those places on other days, checking layouts and exits and lighting and the routines of the staff. Not the flashiest of the city's joints, but the man had excellent taste in food – Sands had always preferred running surveillance on people who were a little more discerning.
Between the watching, and Sands' meetings with a few delicately selected people, they spent hours at the apartment dissecting the information, picking through the details, the options and the obstacles. This was El at his most Elemental – the man walked through a door and saw the room drawn as a series of exits, elevations and sight lines. He unrolled a building plan and shaped it into cover and pitfalls, a complex maze of climbs and leaps routed through. Sands sprawled across the bed, relaxed without jacket or shoes, lighting their cigarettes as he built his own mental maps from the flow of words; he fired off comments and criticism, and the replies were fast and sure, any trip the failure of speech to keep up with a mind that flashed with instinct and years of experience.
He'd missed this. Missed the strategising, the chaos and improvisation of the full-scale assault, missed the challenge of testing El at what the man did best. As a full-time occupation, it grew tedious and unpleasant, but as a sideline hobby it was distinctly entertaining.
There was still the fundamental, irritating drawback of their geographic location, but Sands was more relaxed than at any point since they'd boarded a plane to goddamn Mexico.
He might have enjoyed it more if somebody in a nearby apartment hadn't been keeping a big hairy mutt that barked half the night. Who the fuck rented out vacation lots to people with animals anyway?
El would wake up with the first deep blast resonating through the walls, then be asleep again by round four. Unless Sands metaphorically prodded at him, because insomnia was a little less onerous when it was shared, and he'd take the opportunity to do some extra tunnelling into the sidekicks by the indirect route.
"So just how far can we rely on these friends of yours?" he asked through the ringing silence after one canine outburst. "And yes, I do already know your first answer to that, I'm talking on a purely practical level." Better to kick these things off on a motive that couldn't be questioned, then lead the conversation 'naturally' to more interesting territory.
"Fideo's still a good shot, even with his problems." El wriggled round in the bed, turning back to face Sands after he'd rolled away in sleep. "Sometimes when the fighting's hard, he can be a little... rash."
Sands arched his eyebrows – the drapes weren't thick, and the light leaking from the street would be enough to see by. "If you call him rash, that translates to suicidal in any reasonable language."
"No, but we might want to keep him from coming up against large numbers at once," El conceded. "He can make choices based more on his emotions than on good tactical grounds."
So there was a man who'd react buried there under the booze – interesting to have that suspicion confirmed, more interesting to dig out some of those triggers the next time they met. "How about the kid? What's his weakness we need to work around?"
El didn't answer right away, and when he did, his words were shaped and heavy with thought. "As a fighter, I'm not sure he has one. He's fast, precise, methodical – he sees his chances and he takes them." His voice flashed into a quick smile. "He's been shot less often than me." Short pause among the rustle and ripple of sheets. "His true weakness would be that whatever risky things I do, or Fideo does, he follows us in, no questions, no hesitation."
"So whichever plan we run with, we should keep him separate," Sands offered, a little bait for more. "Let him fight his own style without interference."
El shook his head, hair rubbing heavy over the pillow. "He won't go without Fideo. He lost that battle with me long ago, but he won't leave Fideo to fight alone."
Sands twisted to lie on his side, facing El, closer, pulling the bedclothes tighter over his skin. "You know, El," he said slowly, "you sound like you've gone to a lot of trouble to get rid of a guy who should be exactly what you want at your back."
No catch to the slow slide of breath, no twitch through the sheets. "I don't want to drag him into all my problems. He has a life of his own, a home."
"My stab at the donkey tail says Lorenzo had racked up quite a body count by an age when you'd shot nothing more than a few desert lizards." El didn't answer, which was more than Sands needed. He smiled, slow. "If you're looking for someone to save, you'd have better luck starting with Fideo."
"Not save," El said instantly. "I can't save him from what he wants. But there are mistakes he hasn't made yet."
"Mistakes like getting a bit too famous, maybe? You're really not helping him out with that one."
"That's why I had to come back to fix it."
Sands' lip twitched upwards at one corner. "Whether you wanted to or not?"
"My life hasn't been about what I want for a long time now." Still no reaction under El's tone, just the heavy, clinging drag of resignation.
"You really should look into changing that, El," Sands said, lifting his voice light and breezy. "Too many obligations aren't so good for the soul." Especially when those obligations sucked Sands in with him.
"I'll try." The smile was back with the words, and El rolled closer, fingers curling over Sands' ribs. "So if something I want is close by, I should just reach out and take it?"
Sands let himself relax under the hand, every joint and muscle loose, pliable. "It's never too soon to start building those good habits." It might have been interesting to tease the conversation along a little further, but sex was good too; better when El was reinforcing Sands as what he wanted.
And maybe when he'd come, he'd be able to sleep through that goddamn dog.
Sex and schemes, packaged with good food and cigarettes - it was ten days of pleasant, entirely cooperative accord, and it didn't survive an hour past the arrival of the sidekicks, the transition from theoretical discussion to an actual, detailed plan.
"It needs to be the house," El said.
"No, it doesn't. We know the layout, but we've got nothing on the security." Except that it was there, and a lot of it. There was only so much detail Sands could put his hands on when he couldn't get within sight of the subject or anyone close to him. "One of those restaurants of his would be less problematic."
"Nowhere public. Bystanders mix badly with guns."
"Coming from you, El, that should almost be funny," Sands drawled.
"I never chose it that way," El said simply. "It was chosen for me."
"So we set off the fire alarm and everybody gets the hell out," Lorenzo said.
"Including our target," Sands pointed out.
"Yeah, but he's jumpy, suspicious - he won't take the front door with the masses."
"Neither will all of the masses, they'll take the nearest door," Fideo said. "Where one person goes, more will follow."
"And then our target's somewhere in the middle of a panicking crowd on the street." El said, wrapping up the scenario rather accurately. "I don't see how that helps."
"Well, if they're not trapped in a small space, the incidentals can get out of the way faster when the shooting starts," Sands said, aiming him a quick, closed-lipped smile.
"Yeah, everybody but grandma," Lorenzo snapped. "But I guess you don't give a shit about her."
Sands turned his head the brat's way with a half-raised eyebrow. "I'd hoped you might just be good enough to miss her and shoot the actual target instead. I know El is."
"None of that matters, because we're not doing it." El's voice was gaining a bit of crackle around the edges. "So we're back to the house."
"Which I veto. Unless of course you all want to die."
"You wanna come up with a plan some time instead of just knocking everybody else's?"
"The three of you know the details of how you work together, I don't." Sands kept his tone perfectly mild and reasonable, finely tuned to annoy the ill-tempered. "Anything I suggest will obviously have flaws."
"So you're gonna admit you're not perfect now? Never thought I'd get to hear that one."
"We're supposed to be thinking of a plan," El cut in, knife-blade voice that was pure, precise threat, "and you two are making thinking difficult."
"I'm just telling it how it is," Sands said easily, stretching his legs out to cross at the ankles and slouching deeper into the sofa.
Flicker of sound from the kid's direction, then stilled, and Sands smiled faintly. He had the option of oblivious immunity to those kind of El looks, but Little Lori had to oblige or really piss him off.
A soft, rhythmic grating fired up from his left as Fideo unscrewed a bottle cap. Or was it re-screwing now? Sands was losing track.
"Why's it need to be a building?" Lorenzo offered into the silence. "We can take him out between stops, ambush the car."
"That's not a plan, that's improvisation," Sands said. "The first mistake, he heads off in a cloud of stinking rubber, and we won't get another chance. He'll hole up where we can't get near him, and bring the wrath of Ayala down on the both of you from afar." He turned full on to the kid and smiled brightly. "On second thoughts, I like that one, let's roll with it."
"We could do it when he's already stopped," Fideo said. "Somewhere we know he goes. Outside one of those offices."
El shook his head. "The window's too small. The car stops right outside, then he's in the door. Less than five seconds on the street."
"And if he makes it inside, we're back in Scenario Sidekick Slaughter."
"So we need him on the sidewalk away from places he owns, somewhere without too many people." Fideo's words were slow, but considering now instead of drunk. "You say there's a coffee stop he makes in the mornings?"
"Lobby of the Alameda early, before he hits the offices," Sands filled in. "The corrupting mark of too many foreign business trips, a weakness for lattes."
"The car waits on the street. He goes inside with the bodyguard, but they have to cross the forecourt to the door." El's voice was rising a little, quickening, definitely interested. "That takes it to around twelve seconds."
"Car running or off?" Lorenzo asked.
"Running. It's supposed to be a no parking zone."
"Still not enough. We'd need to hit him fast out of the car, so he can't make a sprint for the hotel, but if he's too close he could dive back in the car."
"We box it in," El said. "Then the car won't help him."
Sands uncrossed his ankles, let his fingers tap over his thigh. "We'll need one car in place outside, early – two showing up at once will trip his paranoia, he'll be gone before he's trapped."
"It won't work - his driver never pulls up close to another car."
"So there's somebody in the first car to back up once number two's in place behind," Lorenzo said. "And they can roll it round the block if anybody bitches about the parking."
"It might be easier just to ram the fucker, we're assuming the driver sidelines as a bodyguard on top of the obvious gun." Sands threw a quick smile out around the room. "We don't need to worry about tipping Ayala off, he's going to know by then anyway."
"Hell, if the driver's one of the bad guys, we can just shoot him through the windshield. It takes time to push a corpse out of the driver's seat and kick out the glass."
Sometimes the kid's direct approach actually came in useful. "Fine with me, but we still box him to be sure, and add that extra dramatic flair. So that's Lorenzo and Fideo in the two cars – we put Fideo in the sitting spot, that way it doesn't matter if he's drunk."
"Hey, if I can shoot, I can drive," Fideo protested.
"Any cop who pulls you over on a DUI won't be impressed by the logic," Sands said, dropping into his slow drawl for the mentally deficient. "It's really not worth fucking over the entire plan because you need to prove yourself."
"I never said I should, only that I could." Fideo didn't sound truly offended, but there was something a little spikier than usual in the words – maybe it really was the booze that doped him into indifference most of the time.
Maybe that was the point.
Sands dropped his head back to rest on the top of the sofa. "One of you takes out the driver, the other can have the bodyguard." He twisted and smiled brightly sideways at El. "El, of course, will be waiting out on the street to make the main shot, since publicity's part of the deal with this one."
"And what about you?" Lorenzo asked.
Sands sprawled unmoving, not bothering to turn his way. "What about me?"
"That's all of us mapped out, so where are you?" Less of a question this time, more of a demand.
Sands steepled his hands together over his lap, fingers tapping loosely at his knuckles. "It needs to be quick, noisy, and in particular it needs to be messy - just what the three of you specialise in. I think I'll sit this one out."
A short rustle-shift from El alongside him, and he could feel the look that went with it.
"Lori here mentioned they've got the photos to go with my name, if you recall. It really wouldn't be wise for me to try and blend in before an ambush."
He still had all El's attention on him, that momentary absence of movement as El studied, considered, but he didn't question it. At least not yet – that might change when they were alone.
Backing El through a fight, tracking El, that was easy, running in Sands' head on a level that was almost instinct. Keeping tabs on both the sidekicks too, on those less familiar feet and movements and unfamiliar fighting styles through a gun-battle of quick take-downs and passing pedestrians - he didn't know if he could do it. Didn't know if he could hold back on the 'shoot-anything-but-El' that was more reaction than thought, not when his ears were blasted by gunfire and impacts, cordite and blood burning into his nose with every breath.
And if he could, if he stopped to double-check exactly who he was about to shoot, well, that was just too likely to end up with dead Sands.
"So while you're keeping your own face conveniently out of the frame, how about El? You're putting him right out on stage under the spotlight." It was the kid who broke the silence again, provided the distraction. Sands might have appreciated it more if it hadn't been the kid who'd hauled the issue to the fore in the first place.
"Nobody will see El. Nobody ever sees El, they only see the suit – it's like Superman." He flashed a wide smile across his shoulder to the Mariachi. "Of course the guns help as a bit of a distraction there too."
"I don't know how it works, but something does," El said, the humour creeping back through his voice. "I've seen some of those pictures the police make from witnesses, and they don't look like me."
Fideo shifted in his chair, creaking wood and rustling cloth from Sands' left. "Even with three of us, it won't be easy," he said. "It's two cars to get in place, one of them after our guy's out on the street, but before he gets close to the lobby. The timing's going to be tight."
Christ, they really had to be slacking if they were relying on the drunk to drag the conversation back on track now. "I've got short range comm sets laid on. Lorenzo in the tail car can fill you in when he's close, so you and El don't need to wait on alert the whole time." Sands ran the stare of his lenses over the arc of room."It's the best chance we're going to get. Unless anyone has another suggestion they've been nesting down with all this time?"
Nobody was confessing, only what he expected after the first few appalling suggestions, so he fixed his attention on the kid. "Did you get hold of those flash-bangs?"
"Not the trademarked type, but Fideo's rigged up something close."
"How lovely, especially since I won't be the one handling them." Sands aimed a wry smile into the corner, but this time the dipso ignored the edge slicing his way. "Toss a couple onto the sidewalk before you leave. It adds to the newsworthiness, and it covers your exit while everybody watches the show." He twisted back El's way to pre-empt the protest. "There won't be anyone on the street by then, they'll all have found something solid to hide behind."
"There won't be so many to begin with," El said, "unless we get unlucky and meet an airport coach arriving." And then El was speaking directly to Sands, words lowered and air brushing warm at his cheek. "If that happens, I'm calling it off and we wait a day."
Sands shrugged, his voice entirely neutral. "I don't see how a day will matter. Your hit, your choice."
"Well, I'm all for getting this bastard turned over sooner instead of later," Lorenzo said, twitching and vivid with that vicious snap escaping him once again. "Then I can get back home and start having some fun, my sex life's been for shit since these fuckers started giving us the eye."
It was tough to call if that last part was a crack at anyone else's choice of sex life without knowing if a look flashed alongside it, but if it was, El wasn't reacting.
"We should stick around a couple more days after the hit. They'll expect the guilty ones to run, and I've got a few people who'll fill me in on any activity in unanticipated directions. We can keep a check on what the police are putting together too." He showed the kid a faint smile under raised eyebrows. "I take it you do want to be certain you're free and clear before we end this."
El wouldn't leave Mexico before he was sure, whatever Sands' take on it.
"Two days, sure, what the hell. Who cares so long as it works?"
"It will work," El said quiet, confident. "It has to."
It didn't take a day to set it up. Trashed out autos for cash sale with no paperwork were easy enough to come by in Mexico, and the other equipment was all pre-order. They ran some tests with the comms for range and interference – not great on the range, but they worked inside the cars, and more importantly they were compact and unobtrusive, no more stand-out than somebody wearing an iPod. The mariachis talked some more over details, timing, and El's position for the wait, until Sands felt it was as fine-tuned as they were going to get it. If this turned into a total fuck up, it would be down to the sidekicks broiling their own asses.
When El left the bed to dress the next morning, it was the faint waxy scent of burning and the low, irregular chinks that plucked Sands from half-doze to full wakefulness. He lay sprawled, the warmth of the bedclothes folded around him, El's movements round the room enhanced by the metallic notes behind each step that had been missing for more than a year.
It was familiar in an oddly distanced way – the fundamental El as Sands had originally burned him into his brain, movements and suggestions and aural cues superimposed on that one visual image he was left with. The El woven through memories of adrenaline and exhaustion, bullets and the stink of blood and the constant, endless running; of that early, burrowing terror, clawing down through his soul to depths far more destructive than the pain.
But it was also the El of fervent, reaching sex, and bitter-dark humour as they fled, alive, and it was El, whatever sounds he wrapped himself in on a particular day; the memories stayed neatly detached, vivid in Sands' head, but his pulse slow and sleep-steady under sheet-warmed skin.
It was an interesting form of aural discontinuity.
At least until the repetitive chorus of barks echoed through the walls again.
Sands sat up, swiping stray strands of hair back from his face with his hand. "One day I'm gonna shoot that fucking dog. And whoever owns it for keeping the goddamn thing around."
"Dogs aren't so bad." Steady swish with jangles, and no stress to tell in El's voice as he shrugged into the jacket. "I had a dog once."
Sands tipped his head, curious. It was surprising when new facts and thoughts slipped out of El now, little corners and angles of him still to find that Sands hadn't already explored. "I wouldn't have tagged you as the dog type."
"Neither would I, before I had one." El was smiling, but there was the hollow note beneath it Sands hadn't heard in a while. "He wasn't really mine, he was Domino's. She was the reason I made myself into this." Soft rustle and clink from the Mariachi clothes. "She died because of me, and left me with a dog and a motorbike."
Sands flexed his legs beneath the sheets, leaning forwards to rest his elbows over his knees. "That doesn't sound like a terribly practical combination."
"No, the dog rode the bike just fine." El's humour flashed warm, and gone. "For a while anyway. He didn't live so much longer than Domino."
"But you didn't like the dog enough to get another."
The bed dipped and shivered beneath Sands as El sat at its edge, slow, rubbing slide of a boot drawn over fabric. "I missed him when he was gone. He saved my life twice before he died, but that seemed a poor reason to replace him and lose that one too."
Banging, fast and heavy at the door, twitching ripple through the mattress as El jerked upright. "Hey, El, get your lazy ass outta bed, we're on a schedule here."
Another slide and a heavier, more definitive chink from the spur, El pulling on the second boot. "Let me hear Fideo out there with you, then I'll hurry," he called, loud, smiling.
"Yeah, yeah, he says the same shit about you." The kid's eyes rolled in his voice, hollowed by the door between.
El jingled once, low with the shift of weight; Sands felt the slow exhale of breath, the swish of hair alongside his cheek; the momentary touch of forehead and nose against his own, before El turned away towards the door.
"Have fun," Sands called after him.
"I hope not," El said, his tone entirely dark.
Sands didn't doubt it, but it would happen anyway. Once El got a target in sight and the hunt mode kicked in, the adrenaline would hook him and burn him through every bone.
El got off on the challenge, the risk, on pitting his skill against someone else's when it was winner takes all. There was a distinction between liking the fight and liking the kill, but it was a line El's conscience didn't see too well afterwards, when he remembered just how good it felt to bring a gun around and pull the trigger.
He should just admit he was a junkie and learn to like it.
Sands wriggled down again beneath the warm touch of the sheets, thumping at his pillow to beat it back into shape. It was only a little before seven, barely sunrise as far as Sands kept track of these things. While it wasn't exactly relevant to him now, the psychological impact of knowing it was dawn stuck around.
El wouldn't eat right before a planned hit, and Sands guessed the other mariachis would be the same. Food sat in the stomach like lead, a slow, sick feeling as adrenaline sucked all the blood from the gut and pumped it into muscle instead. Sands lay, tracking the soft sounds of feet and half-heard words from the rest of the apartment, ending with the slam of a door and the fading note of an engine.
There was still sound, still the low background hum of voices and traffic around the apartment complex, distant and rhythmic and real. He figured he'd have gotten past the part where silence gave him the creeping heebies by now, grating over him with metallic teeth that humped his whole skin into prickles of tension, but sticking around the cities where the fun was meant he never actually had to test it out.
It was early, and it was comfortable, the air brushing the tail of the night's cool across his cheek, the sheets folding their warmth to his body, and he was just too fucking awake to get back to sleep.
He tossed off the bedding and dropped to the floor, running through his morning set of push-ups, sit-ups and stretches. It was always easier to get that goddamn shit out of the way early.
He threw a load of washing in the laundry, because they'd be moving on again in a couple of days and the dirty stuff was annoying to pack. He hoped he'd hit the settings he wanted, and wasn't going to shrink or dye everything – it was one of those dick-biting ever-rotating dials, where following the instructions El had given him worked just fine, so long as it had been left in the right place. But he sure as fuck wasn't gonna wait around and ask every time, and with his colour choices now, the worst he could get was his T-shirts grey-washed.
He showered, shrugged into a robe, and made breakfast, one ear following the patchy, static-broken chatter of the radio set-up, tuned into the police band. He sipped at too-hot coffee while his granola softened to the perfect consistency in the milk. He used to eat a real breakfast, back when he used to take real exercise, but he lived by an image; an image that cracked dangerously if he got visibly sloppy, and his image didn't have a bulge oozing over the belt.
He chewed on dull, tasteless food, while the machine spun up from a swish to a rumble through the wall, and voices came and went outside, distant, obvious, unthreatening.
He ran his spoon around the bowl, light and grating over the ceramic, and met nothing.
Everything should be in place by now; the crush cars collected, El and Fideo outside the Alameda, Lorenzo set a few blocks back to tail Ayala in.
He took out the laundry, wet and clinging round his hands, dumped it in the tumble drier and set it going. He cleared up his breakfast pots and emptied out the coffee maker.
The radio buzzed and crackled between routine messages of burglaries and muggings and pitiful, undisciplined assault.
He ran through the regular news reports on the laptop, the daily check on where they were, where they would be, and back in Bolivia. The polls were getting closer, Morales and Quiroga hovering around a tie, but the momentum was all behind Morales. By now, Lomas would have sniffed out the change in the wind, and he'd be sitting back tidy to wait it out.
Ah, well, he'd been fun to play with for a while, but there'd be others.
Sands set another batch of coffee steeping in the machine.
Maybe there'd been a hitch; El could've called it off, like he threatened.
He could call El's cell, find out for sure just what the fuck was going on.
Course, if he called at the wrong time, he could precipitate a fucking disaster. Then he'd be stuck in this charming vacation goat-hole for even longer, with the kid accusing him of sabotage as an added delight.
He brought the ashtray through from the bedroom and lit a cigarette, pulling the smoke in deep, holding it back in delayed breaths, feeling the heat of it slide past his lips, over his tongue.
The coffee-maker beeped across the room, sharp and intrusive and welcome against the background buzz of the drier, and he poured to meet his fingertip at the cup's edge, sucking off the bitter drops that clung. Fridge for cream, cupboard for sugar, the routine ingrained, mindless. He took his coffee over to the table by the radio, stirring in sugar, stirring, stirring, the rhythmic slide and ring of metal on porcelain loud in every sweeping circuit.
And then it was there, sliced through the fluctuating hiss of interference into his head – the call to the Alameda, to an incident involving gunshots.
So El had found his window for the show.
Sands left the spoon resting in his coffee and reached to turn up the volume, dragging hard on his smoke. Call acknowledged, location confirmed, multiple cars swinging around to head on over. Ambulances were on the way too, which was promising, though if the hit had gone right, nobody would be needing one.
He listened to the short bursts of reports for a few more minutes, confirming an auto accident right alongside the gunfire and victims down, everything in line with the pre-plan, then re-tuned to Radio 13, the news and sports band. The reception was easier on the ears, and he'd get the real info that way, once the reporters showed up with their enthusiastic eyewitness accounts, giving much more of the gory detail than all that terse, practical cop talk.
The first of the press were in place just minutes after the police, the signal vultures for the rest of the pack still descending. Morelia was hardly one of Mexico's 'active' cities, well away from the borders where all the more interesting events went down, so a shooting was a windfall that provided real juice for the week's blender. Something for a news guy to get a good bite into after all that hurricane bullshit that had been clogging the airwaves, a backed up drain of human interest refuse.
The reporters were almost amusing, their excitement trickling through the grave, serious tones required by protocol. Three people confirmed down at the scene, and with no gushing over the heroic efforts of the paramedics, they were long past saving. That boded remarkably well, assuming they were the right three guys.
Sands lit himself another cigarette, rolling it slowly with thumb and fingers between drags as he listened. One woman babbled high and fast and repeated about the big man in the mariachi suit with the big guns, who disappeared in a final flash of explosion and smoke, and Sands smiled. El never let him down, always added that extra flourish to the staging.
The Lesson was definitely on its way out to those who needed to hear it.
He hoped El had enjoyed his encore. With cameras starting to come built into more of the new cells as standard, that kind of street theatre was going to be a bit too much of an indiscretion for future use.
Sands crushed his smoke into the ashtray, and went to rescue the laundry before it turned into a big ball of creases. He could manage his own washing just fine, but he was never going to be real handy with an iron now; much easier to stay looking sharp if he bypassed that particular inconvenience.
He shed his robe in favour of jeans and T-shirt, warm and light from the drier settling over his skin, clinging with a hint of static. He kept one ear cocked towards the radio as he folded the clothes into neat piles, but there was nothing new coming now, just the same comments, the same audience-enticing witnesses on rolling repeat.
He was in the bedroom hanging shirts in the closet when the engine came, familiar, learned over the weeks, rumbling to a halt outside. Footsteps past the window, and all three sets were there, regular and even, El still chinking bright beneath his big disguising overcoat, hidden only from people who thought their eyes could tell them everything. The key turned in the lock as Sands picked up the shades from the nightstand and slid them over his face.
The door slammed back against the stopper, shuddering heavy, and the brat bounced fast across the main room to a sliding halt right under Sands' feet. "That was fucking fantastic!" And okay, Sands hadn't bothered to shut the door when he was carrying an armful of laundry, and alone, but the kid knew well enough where he stood with Sands, and it wasn't in his fucking bedroom.
The shorter, quicker steps of the dipso were next, then finally El, closing and chaining the door after him with quiet, methodical clicks, shrugging out of the coat and dropping it over the chair. Soft, slow feet with muted metal overtones padding over to the table and helping himself to Sands' cigarettes in the hissing flare of a match. And with the kid in the apartment too.
El had hit the down-slope already, and was sliding fast.
"The look on that skinny bastard's face when El leaped out from behind those prissy bushes and stuck the shotgun up his nose! You should have seen it! Tell him, El!" It was like having a face full of outsized, enthusiastically muddy Labrador.
El came through into the bedroom in a heavy cloud of smoke, weighted thunk of the glass ashtray placed on the nightstand. "The plan worked exactly as we said, every detail."
"Fideo smacked that car so hard it nearly bounced back into me. Stupid fuck of a driver had no seatbelt, mashed his face on the wheel, we took him out before he could even think what the fuck was going on." Ah, yes, that perfect, vicious icing, layered smooth all across the surface when it was needed. Putting Lorenzo in the tail car had been a nice touch on so many grounds.
Fideo was predictably reintroducing himself to the bottles lined up alongside the sofa, too busy replenishing his blood alcohol levels to offer a comment on his role, or anybody else's.
"Christ, El, you gotta do that inside? It's bad enough holed up with the psycho, not that I'd expect him to listen." The kid's voice was wearing a distinctly wrinkled nose, but still too excitable to show any real teeth.
"You're in my room," El pointed out, followed by the distinctive double breath as he drew in more smoke. "And I stink, and I'd like to take a shower."
"Yeah, yeah, I can take a goddamn hint," the kid said with an audio eye-roll. "I'll cut you some slack this once, with getting that asshole off of our backs and all, but don't think you're pulling that shit when we get back to my place or I'll kick you out the fucking door myself," he finished with a grin.
The door shut behind Lorenzo with too much of a bang, and Sands tipped his head El's way in amusement. "Shower, my ass. You wanna fuck."
"Can't I do both?" El's voice was heavy with the drag of tension.
Sands lifted his eyebrows, let his lips curl a hint at the edges. "Well, that depends. Which one are you prioritising?"
El screwed the smoke into the ashtray and closed the gap between them, his body pushing Sands back to the wall. "You." Blood and sweat and gunpowder clawed stronger through Sands' nose, and he smiled.
"That works for me."
El pressed forward, warmth of breath through Sands' hair, lips and hint of teeth along his neck. "You smell good."
"I smell like soap and laundry detergent, lightly smoked," Sands pointed out.
"I know."
Sands tilted his head as if considering, and El's heat pushed deeper into the gap, a rasping brush over the tingling sensitivity of his own freshly-shaved skin. "Well, I suppose anything's better than dead guy, and tequila gets a bit over-sweet confined to the inside of a car." He shifted his leg around El's, wound his fingers into one of the chains at El's thigh, tugging the fabric tighter at the crotch.
"Shower," El said, releasing the pressure against him to snatch his fingers away and pull him in the direction of the bathroom. Sands peeled off the glasses as he followed, and smiled.
Just three more days and they'd be out of this miserable piss-pot country forever; and for now there was a great screw on offer, the tiles of the stall pressed damp against his hands, the beat of the water over his back, the flow of it twining all round the skin down his legs to enhance the pull of El's hand on his cock.
Like El said, the plan was running exactly as intended, every detail.