Frankie Menendez could get just about anything anybody wanted; but he always tried to steer people to his preferred merchandise, which was crystal meth. He also ran a small trade in spindly, ghoulish meth head girls who let themselves be turned out in exchange for a few moments of chemical happiness. But he tried to steer people away from the girls, he said, on general principle. “Besides,” he’d smile and show his half rotten teeth, “there are better things than bubblegum pussy, anyway.”
I bought weed off him twice and smoked with him once. The first time, I didn’t realize Dino could get me better stuff. The second time, he came by my room at a vulnerable moment; I was a little down in the mouth and had just finished my last bottle of cheap wine. And wine always makes me more social than I ought to be. He had all the manners of a door to door salesman – the kind that scared little old ladies into buying expensive vacuum cleaners they didn’t really need by showing them blown up pictures of bed bugs. Except that Frankie smelled like he hadn’t showered in months and had never been taught about simple things like deodorant or a comb.
“Don’t worry,” he joked when I expressed some hesitation. “I’m no illegal and no chiva, either. I bought my papers like every other Mex here.” He smiled wide at his own joke and I could swear he’d managed to lose another tooth. He looked like a damn jack-o-lantern. Except the light was burned out.
I let him in because, like I said, the wine makes me friendlier than I should be. Cheap wine is a nice warm drunk. A philosophical drunk. Most of the old winos I’d known – the ones who really preferred their rock gut vino – were friendly and talkative. They didn’t remember names or the days of the week. Their conscious memory of the world stopped at the day they started drinking. And they weren’t always aware that they repeated themselves most of the time. But were friendly and honest – until the bottle was empty. When Frankie knocked on my door, I was about to go out and get another bottle.
He came in and sat down like we were old friends. “Hey, man,” he said, “you keep a pretty clean room. You sure you’re not a fag?” He smiled again.
I looked around. The bed wasn’t made, and I hadn’t taken out the garbage in a while – it was mostly empty bottles. But I kept my clothes off the floor; even my shoes. There are few things worse than putting your foot in your shoe only to squash a cockroach that had made its way into the toe. Difficult to clean out, too. I smiled and nodded, signaling that I knew he was joking.
“Listen,” he said, “you interested in anything?”
“Got any weed?”
He whistled through the gaps in his teeth. “Shee-i-t, gringo, I always got that.” His eyes widened a little. “How ‘bout I give you a free taste of meth? Come’on, man. It’s on me.”
I shook my head. “Just weed.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Ok, gringo. But you don’t know what you’re missin’ man.”
I thought of the girls I’d seen wandering in and out of his apartment. Some of those girls didn’t look much older than my brother’s kids. “Just weed,” I repeated. My buzz was starting to wear off and so was my patience for Frankie’s company.
“Cool, cool.” Sometimes when Frankie talked, I got the feeling he was trying to imitate characters from movies he’d seen. When he said “cool, cool,” I heard what I thought was a bad attempt at a Jamaican accent – the kind you might hear in a low budget drug comedy. If he says, ‘Ja-makin-me-crazy!’ I’m going to toss his toothless ass out. I bought a little weed from him. Then he insisted on staying and chilling a little. “Gotta get outta my room sometimes, man,” he said. “People always coming by and driving me cra-a-zy. “ Then he smoked a joint with me from the weed I bought.
We finished one joint together and he offered me a taste of “the good stuff” one more time. I turned him down and he left. Before I closed the door on him, though, he said, “If you change your mind, gringo, come on down to number 9. I hook you up.”
Even after I closed the door on him, his stench lingered. I decided to walk up to the liquor store for another bottle.
I tried to avoid him as much as possible after that. We didn’t really talk, but he’d smile and wave every time he saw me or passed me on the stairs. He was always up in Loyce’s room. I suspected that maybe he was her connection and that maybe his knocking on my door was a last minute decision he’d made on his way back from her place. Loyce didn’t strike me as a meth head, though. She wasn’t all sunken and gray and ghoulish like Frankie’s army of underage whores. I think he knocked on my door a couple of times; but I didn’t answer and he finally stopped coming around.
About a month later, the cops showed up. The Sheriff’s Department. There were eight squad cars and a news truck. I was standing out in front of my room smoking a cigarette, and I watched as they pulled the desk manager off her fat ass and made her unlock the door. Frankie never had a chance. The cops knocked in the door, and a few shots were fired. Girls screamed and ran out of the room, only to be caught by the squads of women deputies who covered them with blankets before putting the hand cuffs on them. It didn’t take them long to drag Frankie out. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“They’ll put him away, I think,” Loyce said to me.
“He won’t make bail?”
She chuckled. “Shit. He smokes all the money he makes.”
“He doesn’t have friends?”
She shook her head. “His kind of friends might not take too kindly to him being picked up.” She leaned in. “You know he gets his shit straight from Mexico, right?”
“No,” I said. “I never asked him.”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Aw, come on,” she said. “All them Mex’es get their shit from across the border.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s what he gets for not buying American.”
She chuckled. “Look at him,” she said. “He won’t last an hour inside. He’ll either be clawing at the walls or some big fat queer’ll knock the rest of his teeth out and make him a bitch.” She seemed to enjoy the thought a little too much.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” I said.”
Loyce flicked the ash off her cigarette. “Shit. And them girls. Most of ‘em aren’t old enough to drive, let alone work.”
I couldn’t tell if she was disturbed by the thought of teenage girls giving blowjobs to the dirty old men behind the adult bookstore, or if she was annoyed at the competition; so I nodded kept my eyes on the circus down in the parking lot. More news crews had shown up.
“You know they’re gonna talk to us, right?” she asked.
“Who?” What the hell could I tell a reporter? I’m not weepy, sympathetic, or desperate looking enough to make the evening news.
“The cops,” she answered. Her tone was impatient.
“Figured that.”
“You gotta be careful in what you say,” she cautioned me. “Any little thing and they might close this place down.”
I looked at her. I was getting the feeling that she was less concerned about me or the Lost Dutchman as she was what I’d say to the cops about her. I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. Hell, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what happened. After the raid was all over, the plain clothes guys showed up – the Sheriff himself, all dressed up for the cameras and his eleven o’clock cameo, and another plain clothes detective who looked familiar. It was the one I’d seen leaving Loyce’s room a few times. I looked over at her, and she was smiling a satisfied smile.
“They can’t just close the motel, can they?” I asked.
“If they think it’s a crack house they can,” she answered.
“All I can say about Frankie is that he needs new teeth.”
She chuckled and smiled at me. “I like you. You’re kinda cute, you know. In your own way.”
“Good genes and hard living,” I said.
“You don’t look old enough to know what a hard life is,” she said.
“It’s not the age,” I answered, “it’s the mileage.”
She nodded. “True that,” she said. She looked me up and down the way people look at cars or new clothes. “How is it that nice guy like you don’t have a girl?”
I can’t afford them, I wanted to say. I shrugged instead.
Loyce’s attention shifted to the uniforms dispersing and starting to walk up the stairs to the second floor. “Here they come,” she said.
“Yup.”
“If you got anything,” she advised, “you might want to go flush it.”
I didn’t, but I nodded and used it as an excuse to go back into my room. A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door. It was a uniform. He asked if he could come in. I let him.
“We just have a few questions about Mr. Menendez in number 9,” he said through his mustache. He had a notebook and pen out to take notes, but he was nonchalantly trying to scope out the room. I would’ve felt sorry for the poor rookie bastard, since he was doing all the leg work and getting none of the glory, except for the way he was looking around to find an excuse to bust me. What? I wanted to say. Did you walk in expecting dirty needles and empty crack pipes lying around? Watch a lot of Kojak reruns? Maybe Law and Order? Maybe you thought I just kept a small pile of coke out on the table… just in case I feel the urge. He did take notice of my empties, though, and after he confirmed my name with the list he had from the front office, he asked me what I did for a living.
“I’m currently between jobs,” I said.
“And how long have you been… ‘between jobs’?”
“I work through Ready Labor sometimes,” I said. “But I haven’t in a while.”
“How do you pay your bills, sir?”
“The same way everyone else does. With cash.”
He huffed and shook his head. I took that to mean that the public service announcement was over. “Did you know Mr. Menendez?”
“I knew him when I saw him,” I answered. “How could you miss him with all those missing teeth?”
The rookie smiled a little at that one. “So you didn’t know he was drug dealer?”
“I don’t know what anybody here does,” I said. “For all I know, they’re all on vacation.”
“You think people would come here to stay at a place like this?”
“You think they wouldn’t?”
“Sir,” he was getting impatient. “So you weren’t aware that Francis Gutierrez Menendez sold crystal meth?”
“I didn’t even know his name was Francis,” I said.
“And you weren’t aware of the string of young girls he pimped out? Twelve and thirteen year old girls?”
“I don’t pay a lot of attention to what people do,” I said.
He looked at me like he didn’t want to believe me. “How much do you drink, sir?”
I shrugged. “Only as much as necessary.”
The rookie looked around my room one more time. “Ok,” he said “Thanks for your cooperation.”
He turned and left the room, and I closed the door behind him. Then I locked the deadbolt and chain, and found a three-quarter empty bottle of whiskey and downed the remains. After the cops left, I took a couple of bucks and walked up to the liquor store for some beer. When I got back, the news trucks were still there, all trying to get Frankie’s room in the shot while the legion of all too pretty talking head told the tale of the daring raid. I didn’t watch the news that night.
