Sayulita Sucker - Eight

Dead geckos and sewer grates.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Sayulita Sucker - Eight

“Do you know Capoeira?”

“Jazz drummer from the 50s?”

“I am from Brazil. In my country peasants learned to fight this way to disguise their training from their oppressors,” she said.

“I would think those kinds of moves might look a bit suspicious,” I said.

Esmeralda was airborne, her feet pointed toward me. For about half-a-second it was really something to watch. It’s an odd thing getting kicked in the head and thinking, hmm, she has really smooth skin.

When I came to she stood over me, one of those tender tootsies poised over my head. Even in my dazed condition I was impressed by her balance.

“Why did you come here?”

“Morales.”

“Who is that?” she asked, a small tremor in the foot.

Scuzzy groaned. Turning my neck I saw he was up on his knees. Carlos was also sitting up, a long line of blood trailed down his forehead onto his flowery shirt. Lopez was still down. I spied a chunk of black in his hand, whatever he’d been reaching for.

“I said—”

I grabbed her foot and twisted hard before she could drive it down. We were a pair of circus performers, as my move corkscrewed her, she hit the floor with her palms and was ready to spring again. I was a hairpin quicker and kicked her hard in the ass. It wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t proud and I wasn’t Brazilian.

I slid across the floor and grabbed the gun out of Lopez’s hand. I fired one into the ceiling and one into Carlos’s split guitar.

“Hey, I need that.”

“Learn the flute,” I said.

“That makes no sense.”

“Shut up. I’ve had enough of all of you.” I fired again into the ceiling. There was a splat next to me as a headless Gecko hit the floor. Shit.

“You are a cruel man,” Esmerelda said.

I had a second of regret for the dead lizard, but under the circumstances I moved out of my emotional state damn fast. The gunshots had brought Lopez out of his hibernation.

“You, Scuzzy, uh, Marko go over and sit by him,” I pointed the gun toward the bleeding guitar player. “You too, Lopez.”

“What? Who are you? You work for the government?” 

“Doesn’t matter. Get over there. Esmerelda too, make a nice tight group like you’re on a campout.”

“You are a--”

“Canadian.” I cut her off. “And all that weird shit you heard is true.”

I didn’t have a lot of bravado left in me, so I needed to finish this up.

“If you are going to execute us, do it quickly,” Marko said. “But know that our deaths will not go unanswered.”

“Where is Soleil?” I asked.

“Who?” Lopez asked.

“We don’t know anyone with that name,” Esmerelda added.

“Sunny, then. Or some other form of it. Maybe just Sol?”

Nothing from the fun bunch.

“So why did you all turn on me?” I asked.

“You had a look about you,” Marko said.

“We have learned that when the undercover ones come from the government, they are usually asking for someone. We believed you were that,” Esmerelda said.

I looked down at the dead gecko. Dammit, even the innocent get hurt. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I started.

---

I’d pushed the group behind the curtain, half-expecting to find others back there, maybe the ones they were offering for purchase. But there was only a small table and another door that led to a baño. I told them all to stay there for an hour, and if I caught any of them following me I’d shoot out their kneecaps. It sounded sufficiently badass, though I’d never do something like that.

A few moments later I stepped into the Sayulita heat. I didn’t think the small leaf-covered house was that much cooler until I got outside. I had absolutely nothing to show for my time in there, except for a headache and dead lizard remorse. I also decided to keep Lopez’s gun. It was a Colt 1911, I’d fired one at a range in Northern Ontario. A simple and damn accurate pistol. I was damn glad Lopez didn’t get a chance to fire it. 

I made my way down a road that I guessed took me back to the way I’d come in. It was as close to a city centre as Sayulita had. Riding in the Bug, I’d paid attention to the side streets Lopez had taken to get here in case I had to make a quick exit. I hadn’t figured on getting into a brawl with some human traffickers or shooting a gecko. I still felt bad about that. Little guy was minding his own business and then blam, he lost his head. That seems to be the way it goes in life.

I went past a couple of taco joints that had seen better days and more customers. A shop owner sat in an orange plastic chair chewing on the last quarter of a fat cigar. He gave a half-hearted hand wave to call me into his store, which looked like mostly t-shirts and bongs. But his heart wasn’t in it.

So was that what the group of them were, traffickers? The word had popped into my head. I knew it happened, but I’d never come across it first hand. Esmerelda asked if I wanted to make a purchase, but then Lopez said something about not being pigs. No idea what triggered them to think I was someone to be worried about. Maybe I had a look about me. 

I couldn’t really call this progress in looking for Morales’ daughter. None of them seem to recognize the name or the picture, even if I only had a chance to hold it up for a minute. Still, there was a burning in my gut that didn’t come from the hot salsa or lack of beer, though I made a note to remedy that. If I was an actual detective like those one in novels, I’d track down some clue, make some notes, and put it all together. Yep. Definitely needed a beer.

The number of people on the street increased as the shops became neater and the wares shinier. There were floral shirts hanging off hooks next to rows of sandals in every colour of the rainbow, hell, they even had a couple of brown pair. The owners now talked to me in English and Spanish, calling me to come in and buy a shirt, some pink shoes, toys for my kids, tequila, weed, and some plastic lizards that reminded me of my dead friend.

What made people reach a point in their life where they need to sell another person? Sure there was the usual greed, corruption, addiction and abject poverty. And maybe that’s all it was. You did what you needed to do to survive. What else did you need to commit crimes than to be brought to awareness of the fragility of your own life? No. That gave these bastards too much credit. When a sewer grate open, some got sucked in, and some dove in. It was the difference in how a human was put together. Some were put together very badly.

A darkness crept into my consciousness, not a single thought that made sense, but a cloud of oppression and pain. If that’s what happened to Morales daughter, sold and now someone else’s property, then what the hell could I do about it? The darkness held no answers. It rarely did.