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By Root 1095 0

these days. So, the thing is, no big deal right? It’s just a story and people tell stories all the time especially about the kind of shit that went down in that bar, regardless of how this dingleberry may have the facts all fucked up. This ain’t the first and it won’t be the last time you hear a version of this story. Except now, he gets all intimate with you, leans in close, ’cause he’s got the real skinny, he says. Tells you, This guy, who did all this killing, he didn’t have money trouble, well he did, but the money trouble he had was how many people would he have to kill to get this big sack of cash that all these people were after. Tells you, There was this bag of cash and the killer was looking for it and some black street gang from the Bronx called the Cowboys and a whole precinct of dirty cops and the Tong, and the Russian Mafia and even this semipro professional wrestler called the Samoan Tower.

You think about things. A gun going off in a Chinese kid’s mouth. A big Samoan in the middle of a café, blood gushing out of his left temple. A cop on his back in the rain, waiting for you to finish him. The brothers who beat your woman to death, ripped open by your bullets.

—And the maddog is the one who came out on top, took all that money, like twenty million easy, and slipped off to someplace warm, south of the border, Mexico way. Out of sight. But that kind of cash? The guy says, That kind of cash, that’s like treasure and people want to hunt for it. And they do. Like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, if Sam Peckinpah directed it. People go hunting for this maddog and his loot. All. The. Time.

You think about being hunted. What that feels like. You think about going through it again, and curse yourself for forgetting the damn cigarettes.

—Anyway, that bit about the money and Mexico and the treasure hunters is a coda to this particular story that you have never heard before, which is why you are hearing this story right now from me.

And that is how things start to get fucked up again. That and the backpacker with the Russian accent.

THE BUCKET is right on the beach. It’s a small place, a thatched palm roof over a bar, no walls. Stools don’t work on the beach, so eight rope swings hang from the beams, and sets of white plastic tables and chairs are on the sand. There’s no electricity. Pedro hauls bags of ice down here every morning on his tricycle and dumps them into corrugated tubs full of bottles of Sol and Negro Modelo. If you order a cocktail, you get the same ice the beer sits in. If you want to eat, Pedro has a barbeque he made by sawing a fifty-five-gallon drum in half. You can get ribs, chicken, a burger, or whatever the fishermen happen to bring around that day. Every now and then Pedro’s wife will come down with her comal, make fresh tortillas, and we get tacos.

I’m at The Bucket around nine, after my morning swim. Pedro gets the coffeepot off the barbeque grill, pours me a cup and drops yesterday’s Miami Herald in front of me. His wife gets the paper every day when she goes in town for the shopping or to pick up the kids from school. Pedro brings it to me here the next day. I glance at the sports page. Dolphins this, Dolphins that.

Pedro has chorizo on the grill and a frying pan heating up. He cracks a couple eggs into the pan, gets a plastic container of salsa from the cooler bag on his tricycle, and stirs some in, scrambling the eggs. He takes a key from his belt, unlocks the enameled steel cabinet beneath the bar, grabs the bottles of booze, and starts to set them out. I walk around to the grill, give the eggs a few more stirs, and dump them onto a plastic plate. The chorizos are blackened, fat spitting from the cracks in their skin. I spear them, stick them on the plate next to the eggs, and sit back down on my swing at the bar. Pedro brings me a folded towel and sets it next to the plate. I open it up and peel off one of the still warm tortillas his wife made at home this morning. I stuff a chorizo into the tortilla, pack some of the eggs around it, fold the thing up, take a bite, and sear the inside