Chapter 5 from the R.M. Dolin novel, “What Is to Be Done“
The Al Azar is subsumed by a sublime silence pensively waiting for what happens next, and as surely as the madness of May pushes cast-offs into the bar with a powerful presence of what can only be described as destiny, Dario stares blankly into the void of this exceedingly deep and desperately dark night feeling bone chilling coldness cut through his last five minutes. He flexes his bruised and swollen hand recognizing that while this is not his worst fight, it’s been a while since he’s gone off on anyone with that much rage.
Still in combat mode, still executing based on what needs to be done, still not willing to consider if his actions were excessive, or worth the wrath that’s sure to follow, he walks back inside to the woman laying lifeless on the floor. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers softly brushing blood from her bruised cheek and swollen eye. “I should have gotten here first.” He resolutely lifts her limp form into his powerful arms and carries her to the table in the back-storage room. Then, with the abject deliberateness of a battle tested surgeon, he sets emotion aside and goes about dressing her wounds.
The paralyzed PhDs stare blankly at each other, unsure what or how to think. The two Mexicans, certain things are far from over, quickly leave forgetting their remnant money on the bar. The old man calmly continues sketching in his journal. There’s such a collective sense of shock, no one hears multiple car doors closing, no one picks up the cadence of feet on a menacing march scraping against wooden steps. For all anyone can recall, Miguel and his entourage of four bouncer-built bruisers just magically appear in front of the poker table.
Massively powerful if not somewhat cliché, Miguel’s coral black hair is slicked back and unnaturally shines in a way that accents his satin black sports coat. His sinister smile reveals crooked brown stained teeth that lack the care of any responsible person. His black slacks and shiny boots highlight the success he’s had avoiding hard work. It doesn’t take deductive logic to conclude who Miguel is, what he’s here for, or how far he’ll go to get it. “Which one of you beat Ruben and took my whore?” Miguel bellows with doom-filled authority.
Jake stutters to answer this sudden stranger but his mind races too fast over scenarios and probable outcomes. “I-, I mean-, I think you-, what I mean is-.”
Before Jake can compile a cogent response, Miguel steps to the side of the table for a better look into the back room. “Who the hell are you?” Dario steps out positioning himself in a way that blocks the doorway. “I believe you have my whore.”
“Go to hell,” Dario counters as combat adrenaline restarts its flow.
“Not before reclaiming my property and extracting restitution for my poor employee you so harshly accosted.”
“Nobody owns anyone, and he got what he deserved.”
Miguel carefully measures the room, dividing residents into binary bins of who he can dismiss and who has to be accounted for, quickly concluding only Dario and Armando pose any threat and given the muscle under management, complete conquest is a forgone conclusion. This puts him in a perversely whimsical mood. “You are wrong my friend; we all belong to someone. But perhaps that’s a conversation for another day.” The massively muscular men in Miguel’s entourage fan out. One moves to the bar to keep an eye on Armando. One watches the poker players from a flank position while another monitors the front door. The fourth man remains at Miguel’s side. These are huge men whose tactical presence fills the room and while Miguel could easily move to violence, that would violate the invisibility rule. ‘Tearing up the bar brings police, which starts an investigation finding its way back to the ranch.’ Miguel glares at Dario with the haunting coldness of a cougar on prey. “I just need what’s mine.”
“Go to hell.” Dario reiterates devoid of emotion.
“Excuse my poor manners,” Miguel loudly apologizes to the room as he takes a different tack. “I’m a bit surprised you’re open, aren’t there mandates against such things?”
“Mandates don’t matter here, Cabron.” Armando asserts.
“Is that so.”
“I support law enforcement in all their celebrations, no one’s gonna mess with me.”
Miguel shifts his attention back to Dario. “You perhaps don’t know me, I’m Miguel Martinez, and the young lady is in my employ, she unexpectedly left in the middle of her shift, which concerns me greatly. This is why I have come, to make sure she’s okay and of course, to escort her home.”
Jake’s reasoning and discombobulated emotions have finally converged. He turns to Dario and grins, “Seriously?”
“Come on, Doc.”
Jake turns back still grinning, “Ya gotta love Northern New Mexico; I mean think of it, you two being cousins on opposite sides of a completely conflicted coin.” Jake gestures at Miguel then to Dario. “Miguel Martinez, meet Dario Martinez.”
“We may be cousins, Doc, but that don’t make us related.”
“Perhaps, I’m guessing though that somewhere in the past a good Martinez settled north to start your family, while his ancestors fled south to start the pendejo branch.” Jake smiles at Miguel. “Hell, you two probably played together as kids.”
“I don’t know about that old man.” Miguel glares back making sure he’s not the first to blink. “What I do know is I either get my whore back or I tear this place up – starting with, Cous, and finishing with you.”
Just as tension tumbles toward it’s pinnacle, the front door swings open and Ruben stumbles inside staggering to the bar to brace himself just ahead of collapse. Dried blood trails down his mouth and nose, and his badly bruised face leaves no detail surrounding what transpired unexposed. Ruben makes his uneven way toward Miguel continuing to use the bar as a crutch. Gathering himself as best he can, he raises his arm almost losing balance. “He’s the one.”
“I know that!”
“She’s in the back room,” Ruben continues with strained speech. Unable to hold his arm up, it flops against his thigh causing him to stagger.
“You think I don’t know?”
Ruben regains his balance even though it’s apparent, it won’t be for long. “Sorry boss.”
Miguel turns to Dario, “Since we’re cousins, and since I am led to believe we played together as children, I’m going to overlook what you did. I’m afraid though, my generosity ends there.” Miguel gets serious. “You need to hand her over.”
“Not happening.” Dario asserts without so much as an ounce of character in question.
Miguel is caught off guard – is Dario stupid, courageous, or for some unknown reason, confident? “Do you not see my men? Any one of them can do to you what you did to Ruben. Four of them together don’t break a sweat.”
“Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.”
Dario’s unwavering confidence against impossible odds is unsettling. “Don’t be stupid, cous, there’s no way you win. You called friends, that’s it isn’t it?”
“No.” Dario steps toward the poker table. “Just me and my buddies.”
Miguel bursts out laughing. “These old shits? Even Ruben in his current condition could kick their ass.”
“How about we settle this like men, vato? Mano a mano.”
“eee Cabron,” Miguel sings, “my plan is very much more better.”
Before Dario can respond the woman awkwardly stubbles from the storeroom clutching the door jamb. Miguel surveys his property with consumer calmness. “You look like hell, no worries though, we’ll get you cleaned up and back to work before the entire night’s lost.”
Dario knows Miguel’s right. Nothing could be done about her tangled and scattered hair, and while he did what he could for her bruised face, he couldn’t keep her eye from swelling shut. Blood stains paint a painful pattern on her cheeks and mud-encrusted dress. He stitched the cut on her shoulder but only managed to stop the bleeding after blood soaked through the bandage and trickled down her arm. All in all, she’s as used up as a person still breathing can be. “She’s good here,” he says with understated confidence, back-stepping toward the woman. “It’s okay,” he whispers when she recoils. He again reaches out, but again she reacts with coiled hostility.
“See cous, she’s no different than a dog that needs to be trained, and they can only be trained by their owner. Why not save yourself an obvious outcome?”
“Yo te protegeré,” Dario softly says to the woman.
Miguel’s impatience edges him to the boundary of the invisibility rule, no one’s going to say anything to the police after their beat down so why even try for a quiet solution? “She doesn’t need your protection; she needs to get back to work.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Jake unexpectedly interjects. All Al Azar eyes suddenly shift to him as the melodrama presents its first plot twist.
Miguel’s glare reveals his resurfaced rage, “You telling me how to run my business, old man?”
“What I mean is-, I mean look at her, she’s in no condition for anything.”
“Hell she ain’t, I got ten Mexicans ready to pay thirty bucks a go.” Miguel surveys her condition further. “I could easily find a couple trust-funders who’d go a grand for a girl in her, shall we say, ‘unique’ condition.” Miguel checks the status of his men, something they know from experience is a signal negotiations are concluding. “This is your last chance Cous.”
Dario glances again at the woman struggling just to stand, then to Jake, and from there, Armando. He feels the painful resistance his fingers have to overcome just to form a fist. Miguel gives Dario time to deliberate, recognizing this pathetic remnant of an obsolete form of Hispanic honor is going to stand against overwhelming force, odds be damned. Most men would respect that kind of chivalry, but unfortunately for Dario, Miguel’s not that kind of man. “boys-.”
Without pause or hesitation, Miguel’s men erupt into action. In one fluid motion the muscular man monitoring Armando thrusts his arms across the bar, grabs Armando by the shirt, and jerks him over the counter as easily as a diner reaches for a napkin. The two weightlifting freaks flanking Miguel dash toward Dario with the aggressive momentum of a run-away locomotive on a collision course with devastation. Dario braces for impact.
Newton’s first law of motion asserts that an object in motion remains in motion until acted upon by an equal and opposite force. No one could have imagined that force would be Jake. “Stop!” he shouts with room-altering authority and amazingly, everyone does. The thug dragging Armando across the bar lets go leaving him straddled halfway over. The two men sprinting toward Dario stop just shy of contact. As if frozen by phasers, all Al Azar motion comes to a staggering stop and a quietness descends as each side sorts through what’s happened.
Collectively the PhDs are shocked by Jake’s propensity to stand up to a gang of despots. Miguel sizes up the situation plenty pissed, he steps up to the poker table yanking Theo and Jon from their chairs. “Get out,” he shouts tossing them aside like last week’s stew. Jon and Theo stubble backward coming to rest beside the old man. While not expecting to be so aggressively evicted, they’re relived to have escaped ground zero. Miguel leans over the newly created opening. “What the hell you think you’re doing, old man?” Miguel’s crooked tobacco-stained teeth peer out from behind rage curled lips dripping with foam like a rabid animal.
Jake draws back, nervous to have Miguel so close and not completely sure he thought this through. “Actually,” he awkwardly answers, “I have a proposal.” He slides his chair back to create space between himself and the psycho in his face, desperately wanting to portray an illusion of indifference while willing to settle for keeping Miguel away from his jugular.
“It better be better than good, Old Man.” With hard won effort, Miguel pushes past his rage enough to consider the possibility this could still end within the parameters of the invisibility rule.
Jake gathers himself careful to maintain the space he’s created and briefly attempts to stare Miguel down, but the evil is too overwhelming. “I can’t help but notice,” Jake begins, his voice betraying trepidation, “there’s been a lot of unnecessary violence tonight.”
“So?”
“You’re a businessman, surely you appreciate none of what’s happened is good for business?”
“I’ll recover cash flow soon enough, and the rest is just, shall we say, personal perks.” Miguel flashes a sinister grin at Dario after a satisfying reflection on how sweet kicking the crap out of him will be. He abruptly refocuses on Jake. “Get to your offer.”
“You intimated she could earn a thousand dollars tonight, right?” Jake fumbles nervously with his hands on the poker table. “I’ll give you the grand.”
“What the hell could you want with my whore?”
Jake can’t conceive of paying for a woman’s company, especially after all he’s been through. Ironically though, he doesn’t much like having his manhood mocked either. “I have needs same as anyone.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What difference does it make, so long as you’re paid?”
“Guess it really doesn’t. Just curious is all, I mean how could I not be?”
“Do we have a deal?”
“I agree, but just one hour. No way you get it up twice, so an hour’s enough.”
“Okay.” Jake quickly agrees, by his calculations, an hour is all he needs.
“Let’s see your money.”
Jake squirms in his chair suddenly realizing the gapping flaw in his plan. “Well, I’m a little short.”
“Then we’re done. I run a payment before pleasure enterprise. What about your friends?”
Preston, Jon, Theo, Dominic and Dwayne rummage through their wallets but can collectively only cough up $238. A glaring difference between Los Alamos intellectuals and their valley counterparts is intellectuals prefer the convenience of plastic, mostly because they buy stuff new. Conversely, valley residents operate on a cash economy driven by the fact they acquire a lot of things through trade, barter, and a friend who has a buddy who operates off the back of his truck.
“What about him?” Miguel points at Dario.
“I ain’t giving you money for this twisted shit,” Dario sneers.
Jake smiles at Miguel, “I think his position’s non-negotiable.”
“No money – no honey,” Miguel asserts, satisfied to be back with his original plan.
“My distillery’s just up the road,” Jake interjects. “We can settle up in the morning.”
“No shit.” Miguel settles back in his chair. “Hell, we’re practically partners. I mean think about it, sex, booze, drugs, it’s the golden triangle. We buy ourselves a couple politicians, and boom, we’re the great American corporation – just like the Kennedy’s. . .or Bush’s, I can’t remember.”
“Roosevelt’s,” Preston offers without considering the impact of inserting himself.
“No,” Dwayne corrects. “Their millions came from opium.”
“The Bush’s got theirs selling technology to the Nazis,” Dominic adds.
“It was the Kennedy’s who bootlegged alcohol and peddled pornography,” Theo finishes.
“Well,” Miguel mocks, “guess we’re on track to be president.”
“Or prison,” Jake adds.
“Politicians don’t do prison.” Miguel has a newfound respect for Jake. “I’ve had your shit, pretty good, too bad you don’t make Mula though. I’ll tell you what, since we’re on the same team, I can wait till tomorrow.” Miguel looks around sorting out logistics, “Is there a room I don’t know about?” He steps toward the woman, but Dario blocks his approach. Miguel considers pushing the matter but decides they’re close to resolving things without escalation. He tilts slightly around Dario. “Looks like your back on the clock.” Miguel walks to the poker table. “Where you doing this?”
“Here,” Jake answers.
“That’s how you Labies get your freak on?” Miguel leans over the table, “Want my boys to hold her down?”
“No!”
Miguel swings out Jon’s vacated chair and sits down. “I doubt she’s in the mood to be charmed – unless you want her in the mood. I don’t judge, if that’s your deal.”
Jake stares at Miguel with a rage he rarely feels. He desperately wants to give this contemptible soulless piece of shit the verbal lashing he deserves but understands that deviates him from his plan.
“I’m just trying to understand what you want, old man. For a grand you’re eligible for the entire girlfriend experience. Just get on with it. The night’s young and she’s got a full dance card.” Miguel leans back, “clock starts now. Use her once, hell twice if you can. Share her with your friends. I really don’t care. Just know in an hour we’re leaving.” Miguel looks at Dario with a taunting smile. “And she’ll be with us.”
Before Dario can respond Jake pushes forward. “I would like-.” Eager to learn how this ends, Miguel, Miguel’s men, the PhDs, even the old man, all lean in to listen. The only person not paying attention is the one being bartered about like a used baseball card. Jake methodically places both hands on the table looking directly at Miguel. “To have this lovely lady mix me a cocktail.”
“Don’t screw with me, old man.”
“That’s what I want,” Jake answers in a convincingly strong way, at least convincing in his mind. “You have a problem with that?”
Miguel flops back in his chair. “If that’s what gets you off you goofy Lab-ass bastard. You’re not even cracking the top ten of perverts I’ve encountered.”
Jake is pleased to get through phase one of his plan unscathed given that by his calculations there was a thirty-two percent chance things would not end well. He glances at Armando now standing on the customer side of the bar. “Mandy, show our guest the proper way to mix a bourbon rocks.”
“Really, old man, a grand to pour whiskey over ice?”
Jake waits for Armando and Dario to persuade the woman to go with them to the relative safety of the bar-back. “Au contraire, bourbon on the rocks is perhaps the most complex cocktail there is. For starters, the only ingredient is bourbon, if you don’t mix it right there’s no place to hide your mistakes. Right Mandy?”
Armando scoffs, he has no idea what Jake’s up to and given his friends recent history, suicide by gangster has to be considered. Jake lowers his voice. “Man’s been making me cocktails for years and rarely gets it right.”
“But a grand, Senor?”
“You see, the perfect bourbon cocktail has just the right ratio of ice to bourbon. Where most go wrong is thinking it’s a volume-to-volume ratio when in fact, it’s all about surface areas. Too much ice and its surface area relative to the bourbon’s yields a watery cocktail. Too little and the surface area is insufficient to smooth out the whiskey. And that’s just first order effects, there’s an entire set of secondary parameters like ambient temperature, thickness of glass, density and shape of ice, and of course, relative humidity.”
The PhD’s nod in agreement, for a properly controlled experiment all those variables have to be accounted for. Jake nonchalantly picks up the deck of cards. “The Ideal Gas Law backs me up.” He shuffles. “As barometric pressure increases, ice melts at an inversely proportional rate. Long story short, on rainy days you can drink slower, provided you’re not running a dehumidifier.” Jake’s just blabbering, but he knows Miguel can’t tell shit from shinola anyway.
“I drink tequila.” Miguel watches Jake lay three cards out in front of him face down. “Less complicated. Lick your salt, shoot your liquor, bite a lime. Not scientific, but the train pulls into the same station.”
“I rode my bike in the Spanish mountains near Laredo once,” Jake rambles. “That’s in the Basque region. I had to summit three 10% grade mountains, one right after the other.” Without looking down, Jake flips over the right-most card and lightly taps the remaining two down cards. “All the way up that last damn summit I keep thinking how good a cold glass of bourbon will be. Any ten percenter is brutal, but three in series, I don’t even know how I did it.” Jake reverses the order of the two down cards. “‘Bourbon,’ I kept repeating as I gutted out that last grueling assent, ‘when wine and beer can’t get you over the top.’” Jake smiles knowing he has to carefully set the hook. He flips over the middle card, which is a six of diamonds, lower than the previously turned Jack of clubs. “So now I’m part of the ten percenters.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Jake casually taps the remaining down card. “Little I suppose, just pointing out that while some people pretend to be tough, guys like me are out there doing what we do.”
Miguel stares at Jake feeling insulted but isn’t entirely sure he was.
Jake lifts the last down card so only Miguel can see what it is. “I wager this card is higher than the other two.” Jake flips the card and watches it land face up on the table. “A stinky four, I could have been a contender.”
“I knew it’d be lower.”
“You should have bet.”
“I would have won.”
“Let’s go again.”
“For how much?”
“Figured we’d do it for fun.”
“Women play for fun,” Miguel mocks. “It only interesting when we play for things that matter.”
“Like what?”
“Large sums of money.”
“That matters to you?” Jake reshuffles.
“Whatever else there is, large sums of money provide.”
“Perhaps,” Jake counters while laying out three new cards.
“You don’t care about money?”
“Who doesn’t, right? Just other things matter more; a good bottle of bourbon, sunrise above the tree line, a twelve-pound Walleye on four-pound test, can’t put a price on that.”
“Can’t wager shit like that either.”
“Suppose not, it’s what perplexes us ten percenters.” Jake takes his time seeming to search for an answer. “Happiness, that matters.”
Miguel catches Jake stealing glances at the woman finally getting the game being played. “You wanna play for the whore’s happiness, if it weren’t pathetically predictable, it’d be funny.” He considers possible angles. “How do you propose winning her happiness?”
“Dicey indeed.” There’s a moment in every negotiation when you have to clearly state your position and hope things play out as planned. Now is that moment. “By winning her freedom.”
“You wanna buy my whore?”
“No,” Jake states with concise clarity. “I play for her happiness.”
“You want to buy her, just freaking say so!” Miguel studies Jake looking for his angle. “But I’ll bite, I usually get five grand for a girl, but that’s a physical transaction. Happiness however, is the rarest commodity there can be, and I oughta know, cause I’m in the happiness business. Tough to measure, even harder to put a price tag on.” Miguel’s now playing Jake’s game. “If I had to put a number on such an unobtainable commodity, I’d say it’s gotta be twenty-grand.”
The instant Miguel seizes control of negotiations Jake’s plan jumps the rails. Somehow, he saw compromise around five, perhaps even as much as seven thousand. “That’s absurd.”
“If happiness were cheap, Senor, we’d all paint rainbows. That’s my price, take it or leave it.”
Some may question the logic of stepping into another’s nightmare. Others still might wonder about the wisdom of assuming unnecessary risk. But those folks don’t include Jake and, given everything he’s gone through these past few months, helping someone like her is worth any cost.
Dario abruptly walks to the table with chivalrous certainty. “I’ll cover your play, Doc.”
“Cousin, please, the grownups are talking.”
“You know I’m good for it, Doc.” Dario tosses his thick wallet on the table. “Got five grand there, the rest I can owe you.”
Jake ignores Dario, looking directly at Miguel. “I accept.” He picks up the wallet and hands it to Dario. “I only gamble with my money.” Jake knows Dario holds himself to a strict gamblers code.
“One more thing,” Miguel interjects. “When I win, you convince Cous here to hand her over.”
“That I can’t do.”
Dario angrily shoves his wallet back in his jeans glaring at Jake. “Damn straight.”
Jake knows there’ll be a time when this can all be explained and until then, Dario won’t be satisfied. “You see, the trouble with Dario is that after six years tending to the medical needs of his Marines, he’s learned a very bad habit.”
“What’s that?” Miguel asks already disregarding the answer.
“Every hill’s a good hill to die on.”
The henchmen standing behind Miguel chimes in, “damn straight. Three twenty-four in Fallujah,” he says to Dario, “first in, last out.”
“Right on,” Dario responds with an approving nod. Just as Miguel’s henchman was compelled to acknowledge Dario’s service as a Corpsman, Dario is equally compelled to acknowledge his service. “Lost four of my guys on Falaka Island.” Of all the men in the Al Azar, only Miguel’s henchman fully understands the intense bond a Navy Corpsman has with his Marines.
Jake fails to recognize that Dario and the henchman are sharing a moment. “The game,” he boldly announces, “is called,‘Let’s Make A Deal,’ and here’s how it works; I place five cards on the table face down. You won’t know the card’s values, but I will. The game begins with you choosing any card you want me to flip; that becomes your point card. Then, I’ll randomly point to another down card and ask if you want to trade. If you trade, I’ll flip the down card and it becomes your new point card. Then we repeat. If you don’t trade, that card is discarded. When we get to the last down card, you have one final chance to trade. If you keep your point card, the down card is mine. If you trade, the down card is yours and the point card is mine. Either way, best card wins.”
Everyone is so fixated on Jake, no one notices Theo and Jon attempting to conceal amused grins. “A simple game of chance,” Jake continues. “No strategy, no odds, and best of all, you control the outcome. One round, win or go home.”
“I don’t know, Senor, twenty-grand is a lot for a one-shot game.”
“Only women waffle.”
While annoyed Jake’s turned his rhetoric against him, on some level Miguel respects his opponent’s cojones. Something though, is not right. The game seems simple enough, but there has to be an angle. Everyone plays angles, especially when twenty-grand’s at stake. Conversely, to whine or negotiate shows weakness. “One round it is, winner take all.” Miguel smiles sadistically. “Either way though, you owe me for the hour.” Miguel doesn’t need to push for the hour, but what the hell. Besides, from a purely contractual standpoint, he is right.
