Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,94

shut the door.

“Let’s roll out!” I called and everyone quit fucking around and mounted up.

It was good riding weather and a long-ass fucking ride. As always, the whole little fruit grower’s village turned out to greet us, only this time there would be a change of plans.

We rolled up, shut off our motors and I looked up at Abuela who sat her fat ass on her lawn chair throne up on her sagging front porch in her imperious way. The woman had looked down her nose at people her whole life and now? Now it was time to take her down a few pegs.

“Doctor.” I nodded to the clinic doc who stood nearby, smirking when greeting him first caused Abuela’s nostrils to flare in indignation.

“You brought her back,” Abuela said with disdain as Marisol came up beside me on foot. “We don’t want her.”

“Well, you can’t have her,” I said matter-of-factly, putting an arm around my girl’s waist. “In fact, so long as you’re running the show, I think we’re done here.”

Abuela scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“Disrespect my man again,” Marisol growled at her, “see what happens.”

“Seems to me you been running the show a bit too long around here,” I called out. “That ends now.”

Abuela looked apoplectic, her face growing crimson, a vein standing out on her forehead. She fired off in Spanish at Marisol and Marisol’s grip tightened around my shoulders. I tightened my hand on my girl’s hip to let her know I was with her.

“English, Grandma!” she shouted back. “The people of this village are used to you calling me a whore and these men are obviously disinterested in dealing with you anymore, so what do you care if they hear it? It’s not like half of them don’t speak Spanish anyway! You’re not hiding anything. Not anymore!”

“Keep talking to my woman that way,” I said, “I’ll disappear you.” I leveled a flat and unfriendly look in Abuela’s direction.

“Go get your brother,” I said to Marisol. “The rest of you get ready to roll out. Seems these good folks just want to spectate and aren’t interested in these drugs. They’d rather kowtow to the wildebeest up there.”

Marisol went forward and up the steps. Abuela grabbed her arm and Marisol was a champion of her own destiny. She whipped out the pistol I’d given her and pressed it under Abuela’s chin. She gave her grandmother a scathing look and through gritted teeth declared, “No one is ever putting a hand on me that I don’t want there ever again. You want to keep your brain in your skull, take it off of me – now!”

Abuela glared, stubborn as a mule for a second and took her hand away and Marisol said, “I’m taking my brother and if any of you want this little arrangement to continue, I suggest you step forward and start negotiating with my man before I get back out of this house!”

She muttered something to her grandmother and put the gun up, back under her jacket and went into the house.

Abuela went white as a sheet and collapsed into the lawn chair on her porch.

“I’m deadly serious now. Y’all stand together and she goes or we go and we take these meds with us.”

“We need those pills, mister. We’ll die without them.” I looked over to where the doctor was standing but it wasn’t him that had spoken. It was a young man, around Marisol’s age.

“Well, alright then,” I said. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Julio. Julio Sanchez.”

I nodded slowly and said, “Get on over here, Julio, and let’s parlay.”

“What?”

“Let’s make a deal,” I stated.

He nodded and jerked his head at the clinic doctor who nodded and ghosted up after him.

“Nothing has to change here,” I said quietly, for their ears only. “Same usual rate…”

I listed off prices for each thing and the doctor and the boy frowned and looked at each other. I lowered the prices, just a bit from what we’d been charging before, just enough to make a noticeable difference and listened as Julio and the doctor had an exchange. By the dour look on the doctor’s face, I think my hunch played out right. My play had been designed to make it look like Abuela had been skimming. If she had been aboveboard, it would have been a light skim, but if not? It looked like the fat old broad was as rotten to the core as I thought she might be, and these people now had a personal beef with her.

“Problem,