Bandit sent a copy of Sheila?s recorded tape to the slick drug dealer and told him to take a powder, and he did. He still needed to handle the girl. Marko and Frankie cornered her in the change room, tied her up and drug her into an SUV. Bandit knew a group of outlaws who lived in the desert. She was sent to entertain them in forced rehab center surroundings. He knew they were dealers, but they knew better than to use. They could handle addicts.
All seemed calm around Bandit?s Cantina for a short period. The little wiry Mexican living out back hassled Marko constantly with his notions of how to make the Cantina even more successful. ?I can show you,? Juan told Marko on a Sunday afternoon.
?Listen, goddamnit,? Marko said. Tomorrow were closed. I?ll be around, so show me.?
?Yes, sir,? Juan said grinning from ear to ear. He was a dealer of sorts, always working into people?s lives, twisting the angles. He was short and overweight, but had the looks of a circus clown. His dark eyes bulged brightly over a broad mustache spreading along his upper lip like a two lane highway. When he grinned it turned into a freeway.
Marko rolled out of the sack early Monday morning. He ran for five miles, ate scrambled eggs and leftover Mexican food in the Cantina galley and downed it with a fruit smoothie. He showered, dressed, checked his bike and read a new weapons magazine. As the afternoon lingered nail- biting incessant tapping, on his tin door, interrupted him. Juan was poised for action, grinning from ear to ear. ?Let?s go sir,? he said.
Marko rolled his stretched, by Jesse James, FXR chopper into the streets and fired her to life. He indicated for Juan to lead the way. Juan drove a mid ?80s faded Ford Explorer containing several giggling Mexican broads. They were cute, but Marko considered them miniature human beings.
The girls were dress to the Mexican nines. Their make- up was severe, with eyebrows drawn on shaved foreheads with magic markers. They weren?t midgets, just slight women less than 5 feet tall. Their curves were in all the right places, but they were small. Brothers would consider them spinners. Marko followed the smoking Explorer into Wilmington, the third world country between Long Beach and San Pedro. It was a small suburb of LA tucked behind Terminal Island and behind the Port of Los Angeles. The town was right on the water except the port owned all the seaside land and attempted to purchase anything remotely for sale in the area. So the people of San Pedro had a five-mile access to the coast, whereas the 95 percent Mexican population of Wilmington had access than 600 feet of waterfront. They were fucked.
There was nothing in Wilmington except methadone clinics, flophouses, bars, container parking lots and 18-wheelers whizzing in and out of town. At night Southern Pacific locomotives pulled mile long trains packed full of 40-foot shipping containers into downtown Los Angeles, a place called Vernon.
Juan pulled up in front of a small bar, no bigger than a stucco two-bedroom house, in the industrial section of Wilmington. It had a small vacant patio then a single story building that could have been a shed behind a truck parking lot. Marko couldn?t believe what he saw as he dismounted his modified, all black FXR, and followed Juan and the bubbly broads into Sis?s Bar.
First he was hit with the window-rattling sound of Mexican music, loud enough to set off car alarms a block away. The bar consisted of two, low ceiling, rooms. One was vacant except for a couple of empty tables, with plastic NFL blow-up helmets, floating above them. Marko was astonished. He was reaching the age of calm. This joint was the opposite. Everything flickered from the Budweiser neon signs, to the lights around the electronic dartboard, to the multiple screen television entertainment center.
The music blasted from an interactive jute box, while televisions displayed Insider TV programming, Donald Trump ads for a Property Wealth Expo in Los Angeles, then old Movie and TV stars would jump onto the screen for short moments, but you couldn?t hear a damn thing.
?This is happening,? Juan said. ?You can bring in your favorite songs and the Jute Box man will program it into the sound system. Look at all the TVs. That?s a plasma screen. And we need pool tables. You can make a grand a month on pool.?
Marko could only decipher half of what Juan screamed into his ear. He watched a bubbly white girl play a video games in the corner. She was trashy, but sexy in an open sweatshirt, with one of those elastic tube-tops, pulled over massive boobs. As she played, her top crept lower to reveal more of her creamy white tits. The pool table barely fit into the room. The gangsters around the table, an assortment of wicked characters, including Juan, the dealer, a white guy with coke-bottle-bottom glasses who overtly attempted to be a pool shark, but could only make half his shots, and an old man in bib overalls who was too drunk to see the table. They were heavy hitters.
Marko was beginning to lose it. He couldn?t focus, wanted to kick some ass and escape. The place was a loud mess of TV screens full of old actors and TV stars with caked on make-up. The noise was blistering. He couldn?t look at anyone, or get a conversation going without seeing Donald Trump shouting in the background, or Jane Fonda being interviewed. As he watched the TV, ?cause that?s all he could do, he noticed that people talked way too much and decide to hinder his practice. He motioned to Juan who followed him outside.
?Juan,? Marko said. ?You think this is a happening place??
?Yes sir,? Juan replied fervently.
?You?re fired,? Marko said. ?Stay here.?
Marko straddled his chopper and got the hell out of Wilmington.
