Shot of Tequila Read online

  Completing the task, Tequila made sure both safeties were on and then put the guns back into their holsters. The holsters were a piece of work in themselves; a criss-cross leather rig custom-made to perfectly fit the .45s. It weighed almost three times as much as a normal dual holster set-up, and under casual inspection the holsters appeared to be too long for the guns. That was because each contained a ceramic magnet and a battery. Wires ran from the batteries through the leather webbing and to a hidden button in the center of the outfit. When pressed, the button engaged, juicing the magnets and holding the guns in their holsters with more than three hundred pounds of pressure. Depressing the button allowed the guns to slip out easily.

  It was a safety feature that not only prevented his guns from being taken from him, but was also necessary with Sally in the house. She was under strict orders not to touch his guns, but strict orders only worked with people who understood them.

  Tequila put the tray back into his box and locked it. Then he washed out his juice glass, dried it with a hand towel, and replaced it in the cabinet. He brought his rig—the guns safely magnetized in their holsters—with him into his bedroom.

  The bedroom was different from the rest of the apartment in that it completely lacked any decoration. The walls were bare. The furniture consisted of a bed, a dresser, and a small valet stand next to the bed. The decorator charged by the room, and a ridiculous amount at that. So Sally had a nice environment, Tequila paid that ridiculous amount, but he stopped when it came to his personal living space. The minimalism of the room suited him fine. He shut the door behind him.

  The alcohol had almost worn completely off, and Tequila decided on a quick work-out before retiring. He placed his holsters on the valet next to his bed and stripped the shirt off of his developed upper body. Then he took off his cowboy boots and the white athletic socks he wore under them. The boots went into his closet and the socks and shirt went into his hamper. Still wearing pants, Tequila dropped down to the floor and did three hundred push-ups. His chest and arms burning, he stood on his hands and walked on them over to the wall near the bedroom door. Feet against the wall, he did fifty vertical push-ups, his crew cut kissing the floor every time he lowered himself down.

  His thoughts when exercising were always the same, even though it had been almost ten years since he’d competed. It was a mantra for Tequila when he worked out. With every strained breath he softly chanted it. A single word. Once syllable. Three letters.

  Win.

  He never stopped to reflect that the word no longer held any meaning for him.

  Pushing off from the wall into a back bend, Tequila held the bridge momentarily to stretch out his spine, and then shifted his weight and pulled up to his feet. His breathing was hard but controlled. He considered doing some squats, but decided to jog tomorrow instead. He was supposed to be at work at nine o’clock. If he woke up at seven he could get in a few miles beforehand.

  He stretched his arms over his head, flexing his fingers, when he heard the cry.

  “Kill-ya!”

  It had come from Sally’s room. Tequila went to his dresser and took out a towel from the top drawer, using it to wipe the sweat from his face and upper body.

  “Kill-ya!”

  Hanging the towel over his shoulders, Tequila opened the bedroom door and walked down the hall to his sister’s bedroom. China was already bedside, trying to shush Sally down.

  “Kill-ya!”

  “I’m right here, Sally.”

  She smiled at him, her tongue protruding from her mouth. Her chubby cheeks and almond eyes shone in pure joy.

  “You gotta get to sleep, Miss Sally,” China chided. “You got school tomorrow.”

  “I want to show Kill-ya my pit-chur.”

  “You can show him tomorrow dear.”

  “It’s okay, China,” Tequila said. “What picture, Sally?”

  “I made a pit-chur of you.”

  She reached behind her, under her pink pillow, and removed a crinkled piece of notebook paper covered with crayon scribbling, holding it out to Tequila with triumph.

  Tequila took the paper from his big sister, staring at it hard. It was done in green and blue, and if he squinted and looked at it sideways, it slightly resembled a stick figure, except for the three arms.

  “It’s you, Kill-ya!”

  “I can see that. It’s like looking into a mirror. Thank you, Sal.”

  “It’s good?”

  “Very good.”

  “Good as a girl who don’t have Down Sin-dome?”

  “As good as any girl who doesn’t have Down Syndrome, Sally. I’m going to hang it on the refrigerator right now.”

  Sally beamed, clapping her chubby, curved hands together.

  “I love you, Kill-ya!”

  “Love you too, Sally. Now it’s bedtime. You have school tomorrow.”

  “Night-night, Kill-ya!”

  “Night-night, Sally.”

  Tequila nodded goodnight to China, who was already tucking Sally into bed. He walked back down the hall and went into the kitchen, hanging the picture up on the refrigerator with a magnet. He stared at it again.

  The expression on the stick-figure’s face was blank. The mouth a simple straight line. The eyes two blue dots. Six strands of hair stood up from the head like embedded arrows. Other than the third arm, it was probably the best picture Sally had ever drawn. And she’d drawn hundreds over the past thirty years.

  Tequila’s first memory of his sister was from infancy. He’d been six or seven months old, and Sally, four years his senior, was trying to help him walk. She would hold his hands up over his head and walk behind him, keeping him on his feet when he started to fall.

  She called him Kill-ya because she couldn’t pronounce Tequila. She probably could now, but there was no real need to correct her. To Sally, he had always been Kill-ya, and always would be.

  Tequila walked back to his bedroom, closing the door behind him. He lay down in his bed and locked his fingers behind his head. During the day, Tequila maintained focus on whatever job was at hand, his self-discipline almost military strict. But at night, just before sleep, his focus slipped, and Tequila’s mind would wander. Like he did most other nights, he closed his eyes and thought about the past.

  “Shoulda killed the little retard at birth,” their father would often say about Sally. Sometimes to her directly. Tequila had begun defending his sister from their dad when he was around six years old.

  “Don’t call her that,” he’d reply, his face as serious as any Kindergartener’s could be.

  “And what you gonna do about it, Kill-ya?” his father would mock. “You’re a runt even for a six-year-old. You don’t talk back to me till you’re man enough to back that shit up.”

  And then Tequila would get swatted across the room with a hard slap. Sometimes, if the old man was drunk or in a particularly bad mood, he’d get whipped with the belt.

  But the beatings didn’t stop Tequila from talking back. Every time the old man called Sally a retard, Tequila would tell him to stop. He also took Sally’s punishments as well. The old man didn’t care if Sally was mentally handicapped. If she crayoned the wall, he beat the shit out of her. Tequila couldn’t take that. Sally screamed for hours after a beating, which usually prompted more beatings because she wouldn’t be quiet.

  So Tequila claimed responsibility for every mishap that happened in the household.

  The name-calling, and the abuse, continued up through his teenage years. By then they had taken their toll. Tequila had no friends in high school. He was too cold, too introverted. He did mediocre in classes, scoring well on tests but rarely completing homework because he spent most of his free time with Sally. He also got into a lot of fights, defending himself when bullies picked on him because of his height. On the fourth trip to the principal’s office, Tequila was threatened with expulsion unless he calmed down. The principal suggested he focus all of that energy on something constructive rather than destructive. He all bu
t ordered Tequila to join a sport.

  Tequila enrolled in gymnastics because it was the only sport open to him with his small size. He excelled immediately, coming in third on floor exercise at Nationals at the age of fifteen. But it was at a sacrifice. His training meant time away from home, which meant no one to care for Sally except for whatever floozy their father had living with them at the time. And whoever the floozy was, she didn’t care a bit about Sally, which meant Sally would get into trouble without Tequila being there to take her punishment. Often Sally would wet the bed, and then try to hide her dirty clothes somewhere in the house. When the old man found them, he’d have a fit.

  “That’s why your bitch mother left. Because she couldn’t handle looking after no retard and no preemie.”

  “Stop calling her a retard,” Tequila warned. “Maybe if you sent her to school she could take better care of herself.”

  But their father, even though he earned enough as a factory foreman, refused to send Sally to school.

  “Why should I pay to try and teach that dumb bitch retard something she’ll just forget anyway?”

  “Then I’ll get a job and send her myself.”

  “You little faggot. How you gonna get a job when you spend all your time in the gym, playing on the mats with all your tights-wearing, dick-sucking, homo buddies?”

  Tequila got a job during the weekends, sweeping floors. He saved his money, and eventually was able to send Sally to a special school twice a week.

  But the old man refused to let her go.

  “I said she ain’t going, so she ain’t. Use your money to buy a pair of those lift shoes, so you ain’t so goddamn short.”

  When Tequila turned eighteen, his father called Sally a retard for the last time. Puberty had come, and though he didn’t sprout up tall, all of his years working out and practicing gymnastics had turned Tequila’s body into a rock. Tequila liked making his muscles bigger, almost as much as he liked working the rings or the high bar. And he was getting noticed for it. Colleges began actively recruiting him. Even professional gymnastic coaches came calling, scouting for the Olympics. Tequila, for the first time in his whole life, was finally being appreciated by someone other than Sally.

  “You’re too stupid for college, and you won’t make no money on the Olympic team. It’s non-profit, dummy. You should quit that crummy janitor job and come work for me at the plant. We can start you on the line making $6.35 an hour. Maybe if you do that I’ll think about sending your retard sister to school.”

  “I’d rather eat shit than work for you,” Tequila told his father. “And if you call Sally a retard one more time I’m going to kick your fat ass.”

  His father did a double-take. He’d been talked back to by Tequila before, but never insulted and threatened.

  “All those trophies gave you a big head, you little prick. That will be the day when you kick my ass. And your retard sister can…”

  That turned out to be the day. Tequila hit him hard enough to dislocate his father’s jaw. He shouldn’t have gotten up off the floor, but Ben Abernathy was a pig-headed man. He went for his son, anger masking pain. Tequila ducked his father’s punch and gave the man ten broken ribs, a busted nose, a fractured pelvis, and a concussion before he finally stayed down. Then he dragged his father into the street and left him unconscious in an alley.

  Ben Abernathy was discovered by a jogger. He was rushed to the hospital, but died en route. Of a heart attack, which may or may not have been a result of his fight with Tequila. When Tequila was given the news he felt nothing. No guilt. No resentment. No elation. The fact that he might have been the one that killed him didn’t bother Tequila a bit.

  Tequila hadn’t expressed any emotion over anything since childhood; happy, sad, or anything in between. He laughed occasionally, if something was funny, but true joy always eluded him, even when he won gymnastics championships. Tequila had fought so long to control his emotions that sometimes he wondered if he had any left.

  He sold his father’s house, and with the money sent Sally to a live-in institution for the mentally handicapped. It was in Nebraska, and he’d looked at a dozen schools before finally deciding on this one. Its reputation was excellent, and its staff seemed to genuinely care.

  He signed her up for two years, visiting every weekend that he could. Then he went off to pursue Olympic gold.

  Two years later he picked up Sally with two bronze medals and a silver medal to his name. With the money he had left over from the sale of his father’s house, Tequila rented an apartment and hired a weekly care-giver. Then he got a job teaching gymnastics at a local YMCA.

  A case of mistaken identity changed his life.

  The apartment Tequila and Sally had been living in was in a bad neighborhood, all they could afford. After four years without visitors, Tequila was awoken one night by someone banging on the door. He got up to investigate just as the door burst inward.

  Standing in the doorway were two large, burly men. They wore tailored suits and each boasted enough facial scars for an entire football team.

  “We want the money, Jackson,” one of them said to Tequila.

  “Then go find him. I’m not Jackson.”

  The thugs snickered. They had never seen the man Jackson they’d been sent to collect from. But they were told that this was his apartment, and that Jackson was a short man. A very short man.

  “Not Jackson, huh? Who are you then? One of Santa’s little helpers?”

  The thugs snickered again.

  “My name is Abernathy. Tequila Abernathy. You guys have the wrong apartment.”

  “Sure we do, Mr. Tequila. Couldn’t you think of a better name than that, Jackson?”

  “Marty sent us,” said the other one. “We want the three gees, or we have to break your legs for you.”

  The thugs stepped into the apartment. Tequila considered his options. The building was seedy enough that no one would have bothered calling the police when the men broke in, out of fear of getting involved. But if Tequila could prove to these guys that he wasn’t Jackson, he might be able to avoid an incident.

  “My wallet is on the kitchen table,” he told them. “It has my ID in it. I’m not Jackson.”

  “It better have three grand in it,” the thug on the right said. He walked past Tequila and entered the kitchen, picking the wallet up from the counter.

  “Seven lousy bucks.” He frowned. “I hope you have more hidden around this dump, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Look at my Driver’s License. My name isn’t Jackson.”

  “Sure it ain’t.” The thug pocketed the wallet without looking at it. “Now where’s the money?”

  “Kill-ya!”

  Both hoods spun at the sound of Sally’s voice.

  “You got a bitch in here, Jackson?”

  “My sister. She has Down Syndrome.”

  “You mean she’s one of those mongoloid freaks? How is she gonna kill us? Does the retard have a gun?”

  “Don’t call her a retard,” Tequila said.

  “Or what? You’ll throw us out?”

  “I’m going to throw you out anyway. But if you call her a retard again I’ll break your legs first.”

  “Louie, you go take care of the retard. I’m gonna kick this little shit’s—”

  Tequila took two quick steps and scissor kicked the big man in the face. The thug fell hard, and Tequila rolled to his feet a heartbeat later and threw a quick jab into his partner’s soft belly. The partner doubled over, and Tequila snapped an elbow up into his chin and knocked him onto his ass.

  The first guy sat up, shaking his head.

  “You little—”

  Tequila didn’t let him finish. He did a handspring and landed directly on the man’s knees, breaking them both. The man screamed in horror. Tequila silenced him with a chop to the throat.

  The other thug rolled drunkenly onto all fours, and Tequila focused all of his energy into his right hand and power-fisted the man in the side of the head, knocking him ou
t as well.

  It was all over in less than fifteen seconds. Tequila searched the men, taking their ID, their guns, and his own wallet back.

  “Kill-ya!”

  “Hold on, Sally!”

  Using their ties, he knotted their hands behind their backs and then used their belts to bind their feet. Then he called the police.

  When the cops came the thugs were still out. An ambulance had to haul them away.

  The next morning Tequila got a phone call.

  “You the guy that beat up my two men?”

  “Yes. Not only were they slow, they were stupid. They had the wrong guy.”

  “I know. Sorry about that. A misunderstanding. Is it true you’re a midget?”

  “I’m five-five.”

  “And you did that to my two best guys bare-handed? You into karate or something?”

  “Or something.”

  Tequila had been taking classes in karate, judo, and boxing at the YMCA over the last few years, and found he was equally adept at the fighting arts as he was at gymnastics.

  “No shit. Can you shoot a gun?”

  “I’ve never tried. Who is this?”

  “Name’s Marty. Marty Martelli. You know, I could use a guy good with his fists. I’ve got a shortage now, since you put two of my people in the hospital.”

  “I said I’ve never shot a gun.”

  “You can learn. I pay my men seven hundred a week, plus percentages. Meet me over at Joe’s Pool Hall over on Fullerton if you’re interested. I’ll be there until six.”

  “How do I know you won’t try to kill me?”

  “Buddy, I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

  And Marty hung up.

  After the care-giver showed up for the day, Tequila called in sick at the Y and went over to Jimmy’s.

  The place was a grimy little hole in the wall, boasting only six pool tables, all badly in need of repair. But it was full of people. Bad people. Seedy people. Gang-bangers and ex-cons and low-life Italians with nicknames like “The Knife” and “The Weasel.” They all turned and eyed Tequila when he entered, several of them snickering.