Jose’s head was pounding, like a kangaroo was stomping a
thousand cockroaches to death inside his skull. Pounding so loud, he could actually hear it.
Usually, it took a bottle of gin or a cross-country flight
next to a chatty evangelical to make Jose’s head hurt like this, but he didn’t
remember coming within a thousand yards of either recently. In fact, speaking of memory, Jose was
having a little trouble remembering much of anything that would explain the
pounding.
Adding to his problems, it was pitch black and there was
some sticky dampness in the vicinity of his head.
Upon further assessment, Jose discovered that the darkness
was due to the closure of his eyes.
Once he’d opened them, though, he immediately regretted it. If he’d had access to a time machine,
he’d definitely have traveled back to that happy period of time when his eyes
had been shut.
The dampness he’d been feeling was due to the fact that he’d
been lying in a pool of blood.
“Pool” was an understatement.
There was enough blood on the floor to fill Lake Superior, or, at the
very least, two Eries and a Champlain.
Given the level of his cranial discomfort, Jose thought for
a moment that the blood might have poured forth from this own skull. That notion was instantly dispelled
when he saw the old man lying on the bed and the gaping head wound the man was
sporting.
Adding to veritable nightly news broadcast of information
that the opening of his eyes had brought with it, Jose realized that the
pounding was coming not solely from his own brain, but also from the door on
the other side of the room.
The thing that really brought this home was the realization
that a pounding head rarely bellows, “Policia! Policia! Abre
la puerta!”
The reality of the situation slammed into Jose’s head with
the force of a pageant mother slapping her daughter. The voice on the other side of the door was hollering in
Spanish because he was in Guadalajara.
He was in Guadalajara because he’d traced the missing father of his
gorgeous blonde client here. He
was tracing the missing father of a gorgeous blonde because that was the sort
of thing private detectives do and because he was hoping to get the chance to
play a few rounds of Naked Yahtzee with her after he’d found her daddy.
Given the large, drippy hole in the head of said father,
Jose was guessing that a Naked Yahtzee session was a long shot. Of more immediate concern was what
would happen if the men on the other side of the door were to find him there
when they eventually gained entry.
Jose made a quick assessment of his options. None of them seemed even as appealing
as a handjob from a Teamster.
He could hide in the closet. Which would work, but only if the city of Guadalajara
routinely employed lobotomized cops.
He could try to run past the police when they opened the door and hope
he’d be too fast for them to see.
Seeing as how he lacked superpowers, that one seemed tricky.
Which left the window.
Jose crossed the room, tore open the shutters and threw up
the sash. He peeked his head over
the ledge and nearly puked on the pigeon that was sitting there. The room was eight floors up, which was
not as bad a fall as, say, thirty floors, but nowhere near as survivable as a
trip through a ground-floor window would be. Jose made a mental note to only trace missing people to
first-floor rooms from now on.
The hotel pool looked to be maybe two yards from the base of
the building, but Jose had usually shown up drunk to his high school physics
class, so he had no idea if he’d be able to jump far enough.
Now there were added voices in the hall. Jose’s Spanish was rusty, so this new
conversation could be the police demanding that the manager unlock the door
with his key or two people arguing over a coconut cream pie recipe.
Either way, his time was running out.
Jose took a few deep breaths, heaved himself up onto the
ledge, said a silent prayer to Thor, God of Thunder and leapt out into the warm
Guadalajara night.
Happy Birthday, Beigey!
