Buena Rosa Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven
Snowflake had set up camp in the shade of a large, white box trailer behind the hotel. Seated in a folding chair, with headphones on, he looked every bit the tourist. As he saw Manuel round the corner, he flipped open the little Coleman cooler at his feet and retrieved a can of beer, tossing it to the tired detective as he approached. Manuel let go of one of his forearm crutches, snagged the beer out of the air while putting all his weight on the other arm. Snowflake smiled at him from behind his wrap-around sunglasses. “Well, it looks like things went better than I was expecting.”
“Well, your expectations must have been pretty low.”
Snowflake shrugged and took a pull on his beer. “I figured you’d get arrested, at least. Maybe shot. It doesn’t even look like they roughed you up.”
Manuel tucked the sweating beer into his jacket pocket and made for another folding chair on the far side of Snowflake. “How disappointed you must be.”
Before Manuel could sit, his friend waved him away from the chair. The sparkle in his eyes should have been a warning, but it wasn’t. “Hold on. I have something to show you.”
Manuel had been covering too much ground by foot already, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He looked skeptically at Snowflake, but his friend wasn’t to be dissuaded. “Ok. I’ll bite. What do you have for me?”
Snowflake stood, smiling cryptically. “Not out here.” He motioned towards the travel trailer with a discreet tip of his head. “In there.”
It had been a long time coming. Manuel had tried getting away from his past, from the life that had chosen him. But time and time again, it had been made abundantly clear. He may have given up on Gato Loco, but no one else had. Katherine, Snowflake, the Tesla kids Xander and Tamika, even Donegal who had known for months but had never said anything. None of them was ready to give up on a part of him that he wasn’t even sure existed anymore.
But he had only seen one way to do this, to get his cousin out without causing a ruckus. Esther had pretty much scuttled that plan. If not Gato Loco, then what? Take on the systemic corruption of Mexican law enforcement, like Esther wanted him to do? She had no idea. She had been fighting the beast from the outside looking in, but had never done any lasting damage. A pinprick here, a pinprick there, but it was never much more than an inconvenience for the system.
He had gathered information to take down a corrupt department before. Just gathering the information had taken a year, from the inside. And even then, the actual prosecution dragged on forever and ultimately didn’t change much of anything at all.
Manuel had neither the luxury of time nor the advantage of political alliances. No. Esther’s way wouldn’t work.
And that left him with Gato Loco. Damn. “Ok. Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”
Any concerns Manuel might have had about the security of the trailer were quickly dismissed when he saw the set up Katherine had no doubt insisted upon. Besides a standard high grade padlock, a concealed panel housed a full retinal and voice scan security suite. He was directed by Snowflake to look into the light and say the word, “Shadow” - the name he had given to his old cycle. A quiet click, and the door popped open half an inch.
They casually glanced around to confirm that no one was watching, but Snowflake had done an excellent job parking the trailer. The wide door was close to the windowless back wall of a small western wear shop, and thus visible from only one narrow angle around the corner. With the floor of the trailer very low to the ground, stepping up into it was easy for Manuel, and it only took them a few seconds to climb inside without anyone seeing them.
The interior had flickered to light when the pass code unlocked the door, and Manuel was so stunned that it fell to Snowflake to close the door after them.
Set dead center in the 15’ trailer was his bike. Some changes had been made, yes, but they were minor and he had little doubt that they were improvements on the original design. The suspension alone was state of the art, and the power cell battery could only be more powerful than the prototype model the original Shadow used. Sleek and black, this café-racer style bike had more in common with Japanese animation than Harley Davidson, but that was the way he liked it.
His helmet hung on a rubber coated S-hook on the equipment wall. The high density fiberglass had been molded to resemble a yowling cat head, with stylized three-dimensional teeth framing the smoky visor and two eyes painted above, one tiny, one huge. The ears on the helmet were folded flat, in anger, and also for aerodynamic purposes.
“I don’t see the suit.”
Snowflake pulled out a key ring and pressed a button on a small remote. A seemingly innocuous tool chest unfolded, and held within was a new set of leathers – the new skin of El Gato Loco. “Xander figured that since he was more or less starting from scratch, he might as well make some minor fashion changes while still keeping the basic look.”
Manuel worked his way over to the wardrobe locker and inspected it more closely. Instead of boots and a one piece body suit, kid genius Xander Tesla had gone with boots, sleeveless body suit with what looked like a very breathable mesh top, and a heavy jacket with the signature Gato Loco yowling cat head emblazoned across the back. A close inspection showed the bio-synthetic muscle implants which were standard issue in Xander’s designs in the thighs of the body suit. A power pack in the lining of the jacket connected to the pants and the helmet with retractable cables to give power to onboard systems and the stage field generator which he sincerely hoped was in place.
One of his few edges in the war against crime was the stage field generator, originally designed with the purpose of keeping him safe in a high speed cycle accident. It generated hundreds if not thousands of weak, molecule thin force fields around his body that sapped kinetic energy. It was his own kind of personal air bag, and it had saved his life numerous times. It had saved him when the bike blew up, as a matter of fact. It brought up a curious conflict of emotions in him. On one hand to hate the technology and on the other knowing that it would keep him alive when nothing else would.
Snowflake seemed to sense his mood and kept back, watching Manuel take it all in. Eventually his eyes turned away from the skin of who he used to be and who he would have to become again, and took in the rest of the trailer. Whoever had designed the interior space had been ingenious, finding ways to store tools and spare parts, including two different sets of optional tires for the bike, as well as creating some lab and work space. “You said the tests on the suit were positive?”
“The simulations and the tests with the dummy showed that the stage field generators are flawless. Xander tried to calibrate the musculature as best he could, but without you coming in for fittings and tests, a lot of it ended up being guess work.”
“So it might not work.”
“And it might snap your thigh bones like a twig the first time a muscle impulse runs through it. No way of knowing.”
“Comforting.”
“We pays our money, we takes our chances.”
Manuel nodded ruefully. Well, it was better odds than he had given himself earlier in the day, so it wasn’t all bad. “Who else has access to this?”
“You, me, and Katherine has limited access in an emergency.”
Snowflake’s voice sounded grim, and it prompted a concerned look from Manuel. “What constitutes limited access and an emergency?”
“Um, an emergency would mean that you and I both were dead or arrested and someone tried to access the trailer. And limited access means that she could activate some of the security systems remotely.”
“Such as?”
“She could fry the locks, sealing it entirely closed. And if the outer shell is breached after that...” Snowflake pointed to a rectangular box on the ceiling of the trailer. It was the size of a bag of concrete and painted red. Just looking at the box made Manuel nervous.
“That looks dire.”
“It’s a shaped charge. Incendiary too, I think. I don’t know the details, and I don’t want to know. But nothing in this trailer is going to survive a close scrutiny, and neither is anyone within ten or so feet of the door when this thing goes.”
“Drastic.”
“Or we could let corrupt Mexican cops or drug lords or whoever get access to an advanced energy cell cycle, synthetic muscles, and a bullet-proof force-field body suit.”
The question for Manuel suddenly became not if Katherine should have rigged the trailer, but if she used enough explosives to do the job. He sat on the work bench and opened the beer that had been sweating in his jacket pocket. “So, there’s a new plan.”
“And that involves you coming out of retirement?”
Manuel was already too tired to fight about it so he nodded. “This afternoon, I should compile a list of places to check out more thoroughly after dark. So that means Pegasus Motors and their executive suburb. I would like to get a look at the shanty town and ask some questions.”
“I’ve told you that it’s dangerous for gringos around there, right? Just want you to know why I won’t be going with you on that one.”
Manuel saluted Snowflake with the beer can. Truth be told, he figured the locals would open up to him more without Snowflake there anyway, so he was going to suggest the panda stay behind and get some rest. “I know where the victim’s sister is supposed to be staying, so I would like to try and track her down and talk to her. Maybe she knows a little more about what’s really going on here. And then I hit anything that looks promising late tonight, including the arroyo where Aldovar met us this morning.”
“Anything you’d like me to do in the meantime?”
“Get a little rest, try to distance yourself from me in case I make worse enemies than I already have. And if you get a chance, switch out the tires for the studded off road models over there and adjust the suspension. I might not take it off road, but the roads around here aren’t the best, and I would rather be prepared.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it ready by evening easy. I can even get in a nap if I want.”
Manuel finished his beer then stood. He knew he needed his forearm crutches, and even though he felt like he was using them just as much as always, somehow he felt stronger as well. It was a strange feeling. “Get rest when you can. From here on out, I don’t think either of us will be getting a good nights sleep.”