The Hard Bounce - [46]

“Yeah. You’re a fucking genius.”

“You were just about to get a lap dance on the Maloney Pony, weren’t ya?”

“I can kick you again, Junior.”

G.G. waved his hands in horror. “Aw, hell no. Not booty interruptus. Kick him again.”

“Hey!” Junior folded up defensively.

“What is this shit all about? That is if you two clowns are through fucking with me.”

Junior held his palms out, setting the moment. “Okay, so I come in and G.G. here is eating his dinner, this thing that looks like some kinda dog-food croissant.”

“Hey, man,” G.G. said, “that’s my culture you’re fucking with.”

“That wasn’t no soul food I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s Colombian, you moron.”

“Yo, G.G.? I don’t want to bust your cultural bubble, but you’re black.”

“You ignorant little potato-fucker. Ever heard of the Moors?”

“That’s like a field in England, right?”

G.G. gave me a “you believe this shit?” face. “In case you didn’t know, the second G in G.G. is for Gonzalez.”

“Sorry,” Junior sang sarcastically. He turned back to me. “So anyway, G.G. is munching on this hideous looking thing.”

“It’s called an empanada.”

“I’m getting to that! Christ!” Junior shook his head in exasperation.

“This does go somewhere, right?” I said. “Like somewhere close to a point?”

Junior smiled. “Papa makes ’em.”

“What?”

Junior went into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crinkled yellow wrapper. He unfolded the grease-smeared wax paper and held it up for me to see.

My mouth went dry. “How many of these are in the city?”

Junior grinned. “I gave them a call while you were limping down here.”

“And?”

“Only one, my brother. Only one.”

The wax paper read PAPA’S EMPANADAS in bright red letters. Junior moved his hands over select letters to drive his point home. I didn’t need the visual. I already saw the letters in the logo. I recognized them from the neon image that was burned into my mind.

APA and PANA.

Chapter Fifteen

Stakeout #2.

We were better prepared for a long night in the car the second time around. First, we went to Junior’s and filled two thermoses with his famous home brew. Coffee is the closest Junior comes to cooking. That said, the man knows how to make a great goddamn cuppa joe. He uses only the finest grounds and, I believe, strains it through old sweat socks.

Once we’d stockpiled the caffeine and picked up a couple grinders at an all-night packie, we chucked it all into a disposable cooler on Miss Kitty’s backseat. Junior pulled an empty gas can from the trunk for when the coffee punched its way out of our bladders.

It was close to three in the morning by the time we got to Papa’s and got a parking space. As luck would have it, there was a Store 24 right next to the restaurant. I slipped the clerk a twenty and guaranteed myself use of the bathroom. It was better than sticking my dick in a rusty gas can.

Junior chose to continue using the gas can. “Meh,” he said, “stuck my dick in worse.”

Papa’s Empanadas sat on Washington Street, right off Blue Hill Avenue, smack dab between Roxbury and Dorchester. For some people, not the safest place to park and stare. Roxbury is what many of the more polite Bostonians refer to as an “ethnic” neighborhood, while Dorchester is where the working-class Irish migrated generations ago-not the two most compatible cultures. Heaven help any man, woman, or child who accidentally stumbled one block too far. The neighborhood’s inhabitants were tough enough on themselves. They were worse if you didn’t belong there. Above and beyond our lookout for Snake, we had to keep our urban radar set on high for any roving Irish, Puerto Rican, or Black gangs that might want to test our cultural allegiances.

Using our best guesstimations, we triangulated the angle of the window’s view on the DVD and narrowed down the apartment’s location to somewhere opposite Papa’s Empanadas.

NASA, we’re not.

All we knew was that we could eliminate the boarded-up tenement directly across the street. For good measure, I ripped a strip of plywood off a smoke-stained windowsill and peeked inside to make sure our boy wasn’t squatting.

So we sat, windows open, listening to the city lullaby of distant traffic.

My eyes flicked from window to window on the apartment buildings, hoping. But creeping doubt began to poke its finger in my brain. Nothing said Snake lived where the video was shot. For all we knew, it was a rented space where he shot the videos, only returning when he had a new girl lured in. He might only use the space every few weeks… or months.

I kept convincing myself that this wasn’t the case, that the apartment in the video had that bachelor lived-in look. A pair of full ashtrays. More than one meal’s worth of pizza boxes.

Besides, it was all we had.

Junior loudly munched on a chunk of green pepper that curled up over his lip, almost sticking in his nose. He mumbled something unintelligible through the mouthful of food.

“Swallow first, you goddamn savage,” I said, never taking my attention off the empty street, the empty windows, the empty everything.

A little clearer, he said, “I bet you say that to all the boys.” He finished swallowing and took a breathy slurp from the coffee. “I said, I talked to Underdog.”