“Listen, like we can’t just kick them out, alright?” Earl smoked his cigarette about twenty feet from the back door. “They’re paying customers, okay?”
Terrence squatted on a milk crate near the back door, but he held his T-shirt collar like he might pull it over his nose at any moment. “Bro, it smells like a warf in there.”
Hitch smirked. “Smells like sunbaked Alaskan, alright.”
“Like, that’s not my problem, alright? We done everything we can.” Earl took a few steps towards the door and grimaced.
“Except kick them all the fuck out.” Terrence offered.
“Which we’re not going to do, alright?” Earl paced back out into the parking lot.
Hitch watched a few more civilian customers mutter about the smell as they walked back to their car discussing their options for a meal elsewhere. “At this rate, they’ll be our only customers for the day.”
“Like, they can’t go back to the hotel, okay?” Earl pulled another cigarette from his pack and lit it from the butt of his old one. “Lisa says something died in the ventilation shaft and the whole place is getting worse by the minute.”
Terrence kept pulling his shirt up over his nose, but he didn’t bother moving away from the back door and the tidepool breeze. “A fucking fish, Earl? A fucking fish crawled up into the ventilation shaft and died? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a few hundred miles from anywhere a fish might crawl into any fucking thing.”
“Mudskipper,” Hitch mumbled.
“What?” Earl asked.
“Mudskippers can crawl. Maybe it was a mudskipper.” He smirked without looking up from his screen.
Terrence pulled his t-shirt up over his nose and held his vape pen up under his shirt so he could hot box himself with strawberry scent. “The fuck is a mudskipper?”
Hitch chuckled. “It’s a little guy, lives in brackish pools. Walks around on its little flippers.”
Terrence pulled his shirt collar up to his forehead. “That ain’t no fuckin’ mudskipper, bro.”
“Nah, maybe like a squirrel, okay?” Earl offered.
“Bro, that ain’t what a dead squirrel smells like.”
“How the fuck should I know?”
Hitch chuckled and inhaled deeply. “Just take a whiff of that fetid, fish market breeze, man. That is no dead varmint.” He scrolled through his phone, opening and closing various apps like he was looking for something specific. “That’s Alaskan Salmon roe. Expensive as fuck to ship second-day air, that’s for sure.”
Earl and Terrence watched the old guy poke at his screen. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t flinch. He just kept on poking away at his pictures of lawnmowers. They exchanged a glance.
“Bro, you are so full of shit.” Terrence braced himself to head back inside.
“The fuck do you get this shit?” Earl tossed his cigarette into the coffee can and followed Terrence back into the fish-reeking restaurant, shaking his head. “Fuckin’ salmon roe.”
Octavio laid his head on the old cook’s shoulder, watching the cook scroll through what looked like maps. After a moment, he sniffed Paco’s lapel inquisitively. “Aye, Paco. Tambien apestas a pescado.”
Hitch sniffed the shoulder of his chef coat and inspected the sauce-speckled front of it. “Yeah, yer right. Probably best to leave it here.”
Octavio watched bemusedly as the cook unbuttoned his gravy-stained white chef coat and peeled it off. Under it, he wore an old black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing tattoos discretely hidden for professionalism. “Tienes lindos brazos.” Octavio admired Hitch’s slender shoulder and squeezed his bicep playfully. “Porque tienes esse tatuaje?”
Hitch glanced down at his shoulder as he swiped his screen to check his messages again. “Es el punto de ebullición del agua.” He scowled down at his screen.
Octavio traced the elaborate olde English script with his fingertip. “¿Lo olvidas a veces?”
Hitch flipped the phone cover closed and glanced around the lot like he was taking stock of the cars. “Es una metáfora de la mente humana.”
“Creo que fumas demaciado de esa marihuana.” He picked up the half joint that fell from behind Hitch’s ear when he’d pulled off his coat.
Hitch stood up and stretched out, still looking for something in the lot. “Es la delgada línea entre la cordura y la locura absoluta.”
Octavio pinched the joint between his thumb and forefinger, mimicking how the aces held it. “Definitivamente demasiada marihuana.”
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Hitch peered in the back door for just a moment. “No tienes que creerme. Puedes verlo por ti mismo.” He pointed into the restaurant, nodding.
Octavio rolled his eyes and leaned back like the drogados did. “Ver agua hirviendo? No gracias.” He half-closed his eyelids and nodded his head slowly like the drogados did.
Confident that the coast was clear, the third cook pulled his satchel and sunglasses out of his locker. “Puedes ver a todos estos superpolicías perder la chingada cabeza.” Still grinning playfully, he backed away from the restaurant and scuttled off toward the dumpsters.
Octavio inspected the joint and rolled his eyes again. “Estás drogado ahora mismo.”
The old guy checked his phone, still looking around the lot for something, but checking around under the cars near the dumpster enclosure. “Ese no es el punto.”
“Tal vez por eso tienes problemas para hervir el agua.” Octavio watched as the guy who called himself Paco Herte swung the dumpster enclosure door open and crept in.
After a few thuds of the dumpsters smashing against the stucco walls, the cook hollered. “Well fuck me sideways!” There was a loud metallic grinding noise of some sort and a loud clank as something solid hit the asphalt. A moment later, Paco peered around the dumpster enclosure door. “¿Sabes qué? Realmente te voy a extrañar, querido.” He held up his lighter like he was offering a dog a treat and tossed it just a little over Octavio’s head so that it clattered across the sidewalk behind him. When the sleight dishwasher turned to retrieve it, the old guy pulled the dumpster enclosure shut behind him.
Octavio took his seat on the milk crate again, still holding his joint and Paco’s lighter. He heard the dumpsters banging around and the grinding metal again and then it was quiet, just the sounds of highway traffic and a light breeze mercifully free of a fishy odor. If Paco was peeing back there, he wasn’t making a sound. After a few minutes of waiting, curiosity finally got the best of him, and Octavio sidled over to the enclosure. “¿Estás jugando con eso?”
But Paco didn’t answer.
“¿Puedo ver?” he purred, leaning back against the wall.
When no one answered or even stirred in there, Octavio playfully opened the enclosure door to find nothing but a half-full dumpster and the overflowing recycle bin. He checked those, just in case, but Paco had vanished completely. Feeling more spurned than amazed by the impromptu magic trick, Octavio didn’t waste much time trying to figure it out. He glanced around the lot wistfully, hoping to catch a glimpse of the lanky line cook making his escape. Realizing that he was alone, and worse, that he had no way to communicate with Terrence and Earl in the kitchen, Octavio took his seat on the milk crate again with Paco’s parting gifts. He considered the joint still pinched in his right hand and the lighter in his left. “Lo que sea, drogado.”
* * *
Whether they liked it or not, the Yahtzee agents did indeed smell fishy and had all day. While it had started badly, like something crawled into the ventilation shaft and died, conditions at the motor inn worsened by noon. They returned midday to change uniforms only to find that the rotten seafood smell had permeated everything in their rooms. They carried the fish market atmosphere with them, and they were more than a little sensitive about it. The Arroyo Grande residents living downwind of the motor inn were a little upset as well and the locals were rolling up the welcome mats all around town. Even if it wasn’t their fault, wearing the stink with them everywhere wasn’t helping.
With the case gone cold for everyone, there was little to do but wait for new marching orders. As the town cooled on the agents themselves, there were few places left available to them besides the Silver Spoon. With bottomless coffee and air conditioning, it was as decent a place as any to debrief and get some fresh air. Unfortunately, the fresh air was 86’d just after they arrived, and the kitchen was fast running out of patience, as well.
Bad ideas gain traction with large groups of unintelligent people, and it is possible that the few members of the Smith and Johnson family reunion with histories in legitimate law enforcement ought to have known that. One might make the case that if a few sleuths hadn’t discovered Jeremiah Jiménez’s checkered past, most of the following misunderstandings might have been avoided entirely. Unfortunately, someone did their homework on a few people of interest, and the Desert Sands Towing and Automotive lot lit up warning lights on several screens.
Besides the owner’s legal problems going back decades, his gang, Los Nudillos, had been lightly involved in various drug trafficking rings before the Jiménez kid’s detention a few years earlier. Since he left the scene, complaints had tapered off, and the gang itself seemed to have dissolved. This was the result of guilty consciences amongst the remaining Nudillos, that their youngest member went away for a brick of schwaggy Mexican weed. In any case, the bright junior detective who discovered this circumstantial bit of trivia did his math the old way and might have missed a decimal point somewhere.
The DEA might have confirmed that Los Nudillos were small-time at best, if not entirely recreational. Their few dozen actual forays into outlaw biker territory had been a history of drunk in public, drunk and disorderly, public disturbances, and even a gang fight which consisted of a pair of half-brothers splitting the gang over whose dad was stronger. In addition to these and a few dozen mediocre Yelp reviews, The Desert Sands had a history of unlawful extratemporal infractions dating back to the early seventies, not the least of which, the fact that Jack came back from the dead to run it. Rumor had it in some early temporal investigations circles that Jack didn’t belong there in the first place. According to some, the real Jack had been lost in a rice paddy, and this new guy just didn’t belong to the timeline at all.
Any of these past infractions might have sufficed to pique the Smiths and Johnsons' combined interest, had anyone bothered to scroll past “Jeremiah bad.” Instead, the Yahtzees arrived at the same conclusion that the Tiggers had, almost precisely twenty-four hours later. Lacking the general grace of a beat cop’s intuition and finesse, and free of the limiting influence of an oversight committee auditor, the Smith and Johnson family reunion’s commanding officer felt obliged to engage all of his newly acquired investigative resources. Whether it was an overzealous ego or an itchy trigger finger, the commanding officer placed a call to mobilize the Stryker, a handful of drones, and an around-the-clock satellite feed of the Desert Sands Towing and Automotive lot.
In later satellite analysis, it was clear that the distinct almond-shaped outline of an extraterrestrial craft was visible in various light and heat spectrums the entire time. Had any of the investigative teams still been looking for a saucer, somebody, somewhere might have gotten excited. Instead, a team of analysts in an underground bunker diligently scoured several spectrums for the missing mufflers and catalytic converters, preferring to digitally disassemble complex collections of stuff piled around the lot, mostly because it was a much cooler use of the technology.