“POR FAVORE, NO me maten.” He is rocking the chair’s legs back and forth on the filthy warehouse floor. He knows he is going to die. “Por favore,” he screams, echoing off the cinderblock walls. The opened white washed windows let in the diesel-stinking air into the darkened space.
He is tied to a chair with nylon clothesline that I purchased that day from a supermercado. The asshole owed my lugarteniente money. When I torture and kill someone, I do lines of crystal and listen to N.W.A. to get into it.
Okay, I’m from East LA. My gang was King Korbras. A few years ago, my cousin recruited me to work here in Mexico City.
I’m peaking on the crystal. I’m more alive than I know. “Please don’t. I’ll pay you twenty-thousand Americano,” he screams. You know how often I hear that? All the time. “Only twenty-thousand?” I say fucking with him. “Fifty-thousand!” I slowly shake my head: no way. I take out my machete. I eye it with a reverence. Then the guy begins screeching. “Por favore, no me maten!” Oh, to finally shut him up!
I glare over at him. I tilt my head. “You should pay your bills especially to Il Puma!” I inhale, grasp my machete, extending it away from my body, slowly I begin to turn. With each revolution I turn just a little bit faster than the last. I love building up the momentum to the killing. All those serial killers are right, there is an art to it. My cell phone rings. Fuck. I stop. My head is still whirling. I grab the phone from my pocket and answer it.
“Hola,” I say.
“It’s Jose.”
“I’m busy right now.” I hate it when my concentration is broken. “We need you. Our capo needs protection. It is very important meeting with a head of another organization. We need you at an address in two hours.” It doesn’t matter that it will be one in the morning. “When I finish up here and I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
“The address is 342 Tolteas.”
It is nearby.
We disconnect. I breathe deeply. I carefully regain my concentration. With both arms I grip the machete’s handle, and then I swing it around rotating my body, once, twice, three times! Each time a little more faster. “No! Don’t,” he pleads and then with the gusto coupled with the will to survive, I slice right through his throat in one clean swoop. His head bounces like a cantaloupe off the wall. Blood bursts out of his severed neck like a ruptured water main. I vibrate with a sweet release. I have just sent a spirit back into eternity. In this world, everything is permitted.
