The buds had these beautiful red hairs on them and were so moist with resin that it really took an effort to get one lit up after it was rolled.
“Man, I am fucking toasted. Nice and evenly toasted. This is some dynamite shit.” Jake lay back on the sand as he exhaled the hit. “Is any of that beer in the cooler cold yet?”
It wasn’t even eight in the morning and they were at it again. Jake, two gay windsurfers from Michigan named Lance and Robert, and Ozzie, a grizzled old marijuana smuggler with hair down to his ass and the filthiest mouth Jake had ever heard, who had given up the trade when carrying a gun became part of the job description. The party had started off with some late afternoon windsurfing the previous day and had continued on into the early morning hours. After a short cat nap, Ozzie had made a run to town in his battered jeep for some breakfast staples and more beer. The old fart had made a damn good biscuit, something you didn’t see a lot of in Mexico.
Ozzie passed the joint over to Lance as he dug a beer out of the cooler for Jake.
“You guys weren’t doing any butt fucking last night while we were sleeping, were ya?”
“Jesus Christ, Ozzie,” Jake roared with laughter.
The couple laughed along with Jake.
“No, Ozzie,” Lance said, “we didn’t. But I was thinking about sneaking over and sliding my dick in your mouth while you were snoring. Your mouth was inviting.”
“You better fucking not have,” screamed the old hippie as he jumped up and ran down into the surf and dove in. Ozzie had joined the party late the previous evening and had not realized that the windsurfers were an item until after he had started breakfast.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” laughed Jake, “he’s a little behind the times for an old smuggler and he is very burned out.”
“No problem. We’ve gotten use to that bullshit.” Robert handed the doobie to him. What brings you to Baja, Jake?”
“Warm weather helps keep my leg limber and it was always the dream of my aunt to live down here, so after her husband died, I helped move her down here and never went back.” His rehearsed bullshit line.
“For a guy who walks with a cane, you can handle a board pretty well,” said Lance. “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
“Not at all. I was in the navy and doing some high overhead work and took a tumble overboard. Had a compound fracture and after surgery wound up with a medical disability and a pension. I’m getting closer to shedding the cane, but it will be a while yet. Do you like it? I picked it up at a survivalist shop in Tijuana a while back.”
Jake took the cane and gave the gargoyle head on the handle a twist. A long stainless steel blade slid out of the body of the cane.
“Nasty looking weapon,” whistled Lance.
“I’ve never had any problems down here. But with my aunt being wheelchair bound and all, I like to have a little protection.”
“Robert was in the navy, too,” volunteered Lance. “Really? What was your rate, Robert?”
“Actually, I was a officer. In the administrative branch. Only for about two years though, so I only made lieutenant.” Robert opened up a can of Tecate and took a long pull. “I was forced to resign my commission.”
Jake was finishing up the final touches on another blunt. “Problems with marijuana?”
Robert snorted and took another long drink. “I wish. No, I was involved with another officer and we had a place off base. He was assigned to the intelligence department. We kept our relationship real low. Real hush hush. Never even associated with each other during working hours. One night I had the duty and I got a phone call from a NIS agent. He told me that Darrell, that was who I lived with, had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in the living room of our apartment, and I better get over there right away.” Robert stood up and looked out at Ozzie swimming in the bay.
He continued talking like he had narrated this story a dozen times in his life.
“Something was real wrong there. We didn’t have a gun in the house, but there was one in Darrell's hand. We didn’t have or even believe in pornography, but the apartment was absolutely crawling with it. Books, magazines, videos, there was so much of the shit in here we wouldn’t have had time to even to go to work if we were that into it. If Darrell did kill himself, I’d like to know how NIS found out about it so quick. But I know that Darrell didn’t kill himself. He was too happy of a person. We were happy. When it was all said and done, I resigned my commission. That’s what the bastards wanted anyway.”
Lance went over and put his arms around Robert.
“I’ve always known that if I hadn’t been pulling the duty that night, that I would have been killed too. They wanted to make it look like it was a lovers quarrel. But when whoever got there that night saw that I wasn’t there, they just killed Darrell and made it look like we were a couple of sick perverts. I guess they figured murdering one fag would make his lover get the message.”
Robert turned and looked at Jake with distant, haunted eyes.
Jake felt a chill go up his body like someone had just stepped on his grave. He remembered the night in Vegas when Jasmine had called him stupid for thinking that he had been the first one that Banks had used for his missions.
Ozzie came shuffling back up the beach with his head hung low. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But I got my reasons. When I was a boy back in Michigan, I had a gym teacher who wanted me to jack him off. Fucking pervert, I was only in the seventh grade.”
Robert and Lance both laughed. “That’s OK, Ozzie. No harm done. But we didn’t know you where from Michigan. So are we. We’re both from Grand Rapids. What about you?” said Lance.
Ozzie was beaming. “Fucking Detroit, of course. Home of the Red Wings, Lions, Tigers, and the greatest fighter of all time, the hit man, Tommy Hearns. Shit, what a small world.” He looked over at Jake. “What do you think of that, you big douche bag? They’re from Michigan.”
Jake felt like barfing up his huevos rancheros and biscuits. “Ya, what do you think of that?’ He grinned weakly. “Hey Ozzie, I’m not feeling the greatest. How ‘bout giving me a lift home?” He struggled to get up off of the sand with his cane.
Robert walked over and put a hand under Jake’s arm to help give him a lift and walked over with him to Ozzie’s jeep.
“Such a fucking lightweight,” taunted Ozzie. “I was just getting ready to get and down and do some serious fucking partying with my new amigos.”
Jake climbed up into the passenger seat of the jeep. Ozzie was still back at the camp site with Lance. He was babbling something about Hearns knocking that “homo Sugar Ray Leonard’s dick in the dirt” in their rematch.
Jake shook his head. “Ozzie will never learn.”
“I read about you, Jake.”
“What do you mean?” Jake wished Ozzie would hurry the hell up.
“You were the guy who suppose to be in Leavenworth prison for murder but the cops found you after you jumped off that bridge in Long Beach. Aren’t you?”
Jake didn’t answer.
“The agent that let you out is dead and the naval officer from the prison that he was working with committed suicide a couple of days later.” Robert continued. “I read all about it in Newsweek. Why did they let you out, Jake? What did they want you to do to in return for getting you out of there?”
Over Robert’s shoulder, Jake could see Ozzie was shuffling up the beach with his arm around Lance like they were old college buddies.
“I can’t talk about it. They forced me to sign a agreement,” Jake whispered.
“I saw the look on your face when I was talking about Darrell. It was like you knew.” Ozzie jumped up into the jeep , cocked his ass cheek towards Jake and farted loudly.
“Blew ya kiss there, my sweetheart.” The stupid old stoner cackled like a witch.
The jeep roared to life.
Robert reached into the vehicle and shook hands with Jake. “By not talking, Jake, you’re letting them get away with it.”
“C’mon, ya Mary. Let’s get your sick pussy ass home,” said Ozzie.
“We’ll be here for another week, Jake. If you want to talk, you know where our camp is.” Robert turned and headed back down the beach.
Ozzie put the jeep in gear and raced off down the gravel road. “What were you two talking about? Is he trying to get in your cornhole?”
“Ozzie, will you shut the hell up? Please?”
“Fuck you, dickhead.” They rode in silence up to the Winnebago.
“Looks like you got company, Jake.” The argument already forgotten. “Or does Dawn got herself a new guy.” Ozzie sounded jealous. He had had a enormous crush on Dawn since the first day he had come over to sell them a bag of weed.
“Wyoming plates on that piece of shit. Who the hell do you know from Wyoming.”
Jake slid out of the jeep without a word and began to limp around the side of the trailer while ignoring Ozzie’s taunt of “Hey, you dumb fuckstick, you forgot your cane.”
Rossington Collins Band was jamming on Don’t Misunderstand Me at a level that almost made your ears bleed. Uncle Billy's favorite band. He had always claimed that it was Gary Rossington and Allen Collins who had made Skynyrd. So after their plane crashed in that swamp in Mississippi, Billy said that had just helped fine tune the band a little and that the crash hadn’t been the tragedy or the end of southern rock and roll like all those faggot rock reporters wrote about.
Dawns old nameless hound came loping around the corner, barked a hello, turned and walked with Jake, all the while trying to sniff at Jake's crotch. Jake absently shooed the flea bitten mongrel away. He turned the corner.
It felt like an acid flashback. Maybe Ozzie’s red hair buds packed more of a wallop that he thought.
It was her. The woman that Jake was going to marry a lifetime ago. She looked exactly the same way she had the day he had left her to go off for his run. The day the ensign died in the fight and his life went to shit. He always had kidded her that she reminded him of Morticia Adams, with her snow white skin and jet black hair. Jake thought that she had ignored his letter. Had gotten on with her life. Married some evangelist and had forgotten about old Jake sitting in his prison cell. But now here she was. Sitting there with his Aunt Dawn and his uncle in a bottle between them. She was sipping on a glass of sun tea while Dawn was belting down her first margarita of the day. Listening to the survivors of a dead rock and roll band. Like time had never passed. They both turned and looked at Jake at the same time.
Jake Morrow, adrenaline junkie, drug dealer, armed robber, government hit man, dropped to his knees in the sand and cried like he was nine years old.