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When he’s around ten years old, tio Hector takes him on a ride. It’s early in the morning, the exterior trim of tio’s Impala glistens in the pale rising sun that is just peeking over the red tile roofs. Usually, tio lets Lalo admire the whitewall tires and the shiny grill for a moment, lets Lalo raptly touch the always smooth and clean paint and run his fingers along the Chevrolet logo. Every time Lalo sees this beautiful car, he’s itching to open the hood and have a look at its inner workings. But he’s not allowed anywhere near the engine, no matter how much he begs.
Today is different though. Today, tio orders him to get inside the car with a gentle but firm tone, which Lalo is smart enough to obey.
They drive for an hour, out of town, far out into the desert. Tio doesn’t turn on the radio, and he doesn’t talk either. That’s unusual.
When they halt, still in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the sun has risen over the horizon and is stinging in Lalo’s eyes as he gets out of the car.
“What are we doing here, tio?”, he asks, curious. Sometimes tio Hector takes him to see how the family business works. Mami doesn’t like it, but tio says no one cares what she thinks, and that is that.
“Be quiet”, tio answers, and Lalo complies with the smallest pout.
Lalo hears voices, and instinctively turns his head towards them.
There are four men in the desert, three standing, one kneeling. For a moment, Lalo is sure that he’s dreaming, because it feels like the sand under his feet is slipping away. He turns around, he wants to run away, but suddenly, tio’s hand shoots forward and grabs him by the back of his neck. “Look”, tio says, and guides him forward, closer to the men in the desert, the grip on Lalo’s neck growing painfully tight.
Through all the blood and the swollen flesh, Lalo can’t make out the face of the man on his knees. But he recognizes his pleading voice. It’s tio Franco. Lalo hasn’t seen him in quite some time. He’s been suspiciously absent from family gatherings, and when Lalo has seen him, he’s always had a stranger in tow, a young man with a smile so radiant that it kept Lalo up all night.
But the stranger isn’t here, and there is no reason to smile.
Part of Lalo struggles to call the man on the ground tio Franco in his head. There is nothing remotely humane left in him. He’s just wordless cries and various bodily liquids staining the sand. He’s more of a wounded animal that bites and whines pathetically.
And it scares Lalo. There’s a tingle running up his spine to his scalp. He strains against the grip of his tio, starts to fight and scratch, but Hector doesn’t let go, and again, with more emphasis, he repeats: “Look.”
One of the standing men gets out a gun.
Lalo’s mind is not ready to take in the events playing out in front of him. It focuses on the little things instead. He sees the tight coils of rope cut into sore skin, sees vivid red liquid and pulp spray all over tio Franco’s purple shirt, sees the shadows of three men moving over the rippling surface of the sand like seagulls that fly over the waves of the sea in the summer, and then he feels his mind go blank and white and empty.
“Look”, tio Hector says, and Lalo does.
-
Lalo is in his early twenties when he gets his own car. It’s also a Chevrolet, a brand new Monte Carlo. It’s not as flashy as tio’s, the paint is much less obtrusive and the excessive trim Lalo used to admire so much in his childhood has grown out of style. First thing Lalo did was take apart the entire engine bay. There’s nothing quite as fascinating as holding every working part of the heart of a car in your hands, inspecting it, figuring it out, improving it if possible, replacing it if necessary.
Maybe it’s Hector’s influence, but Lalo understands now why good old tio would never let him touch the insides of his Chevy. Lalo doesn’t get to work on it until he is absolutely sure that he has the entire afternoon all for himself and there will be no unannounced visits.
The garage door opens and closes behind him, letting in a short gust of warm air from outside.
“You wanted to see me, Eduardo”, says the man who just entered. It’s one of the Salamanca’s foot soldiers, a wiry guy with a broad, confident stance and a receding hairline despite his age. He has his hands folded in front of his hips, his shoulders are relaxed, but there’s a wary glint in his eyes.
Lalo pushes himself up and carefully closes the Chevy’s hood. “How many times must I tell you”, he sighs and cleans up his oil-smeared hands with a towel while regarding the man in front of him, “call me Lalo.” He smiles his most fetching smile, even lets it reach his eyes.
The man shoots the four empty beer bottles on the workbench a quick glance. He’s always been one of those a bit quicker on the uptake. That’s why Lalo likes him. Lalo is sure he doesn’t suspect the reason he’s here yet though. If he did, he’d probably already have taken to his heels. Lalo has seen him, two nights ago, tucked away between the hedgerows in the garden. There was no way of recognizing the other guy, but there's little doubt about what the two had been doing there in the middle of the night, all quiet and secretive and hurried.
To kiss another man out in the open like that is risky. To do it in the garden of the Salamanca estate is stupidity, and stupidity must be punished. But first, it must be exploited.
“There anything you need?”, the foot soldier asks as Lalo leans against the hood of his car. He’s growing uncomfortable, Lalo can tell. He knows something isn’t right, but he’s trying to hide it.
Without much ado, Lalo reaches for his own belt buckle and undoes it, with the same lack of urgency as he cleaned up his hands earlier.
That finally sets the other guy off. “I better take my leave”, he’s trying to say, but Lalo interrupts him.
“Come here”, he orders, charming smile still in place. “And drop the pants.”
Lalo can feel the tension settling over them, can see the other man sizing him up. He has noticed Lalo’s revolver on the bench beside him. It’s too far away for Lalo to reach in case the foot soldier decides to grab his own gun from his waistband. And yet he doesn’t do it. The power of Lalo’s smile alone holds him back. Or at least that’s what Lalo likes to think.
“Way I see it, you got two options here”, Lalo breaks the silence. “You come over here, and let me suck your dick, and everyone’s happy. Or you disobey me, and you suffer the consequences.”
The man in front of him snorts and takes a step back. That isn’t the reaction Lalo hoped for. “And what are you going to do, hm?”
For a second, Lalo sees himself from the outside, sitting there on the hood of his big, shiny new car that he’s bought with his family’s money, nothing but a spoiled, tipsy brat. No threat at all, no authority, despite his family name. He clenches his jaw shut so hard it’s probably showing on his face.
Despite the humiliation churning in his stomach, he can’t help but feel the slightest bit of admiration for this man, and the thoughts that have been whirling in the back of his head for the past two days start picking up speed again.
Lalo reclines a bit further on the car hood and tilts his head to the side. “Oh, you know how tio Hector is: He just loves his favorite nephew to death! And he would not be happy to hear a filthy little minion like you made a move on me.”
That still does not have the desired effect. The man remains unmoved, only his Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, and the tendons in his neck tense, all the way down to his shoulders, and Lalo wants to… wants something… so bad-
“What about your noviocito, hm?”, Lalo all but blurts out. It’s a big gamble. Lalo hasn’t seen the other guy clearly enough to recognize him, and he has no clue whether he’s even important enough to the man in front of him for this to work.
But to his delight, the foot soldier deflates. Not physically, but mentally. His defiant expression fades, the hands, curled into fists, open up and hang like the wings of a dead bird caught in barbwire. It’s a beautiful sight in and of itself, Lalo concedes.
-
Lalo doesn’t rely on such clumsy mind games anymore. He’s learned how to hide in plain sight. Hector has taught him a valuable lesson when he made Lalo watch tio Franco’s unfortunate demise. Tio Franco could have fucked men all day long, if he just had been a little smarter about it. Smart like Lalo, who is not going to repeat Franco’s mistakes. It’s not even all that hard. In fact, it’s almost funny how easy it is, and Lalo wonders how Franco could have been so stupid. Lalo does not even have to be particularly secretive. Most people are so insignificant, they can straight up walk in on Lalo getting sucked off by a guy and it doesn’t matter.
Indulgence is just as much part of the human life as power and death. And the Salamancas in particular are very aware of that. Standing between a Salamanca and whatever it is he covets is a dangerous position to be in. But there are subtle, civilized ways to go about getting what you want. And Lalo has come to see growing up while sometimes still feeling the unrelenting grip of tio Hector’s hand on the back of his neck as a blessing. He doesn’t wake covered in cold sweat like a child anymore, from dreams about the shadows of birds on sand circling over him and picking at his bloody remains. Knowing that he is moving through a pool of sharks that won’t hesitate to turn on their own kind if they smell blood has made him alert, sharpened his senses, taught him the importance of not showing your hand and a charming smile.
Lalo might even think of it as an art. Taking ones handicap and turning it into an advantage, that’s a skill, he thinks, as he busies himself working on the engine of his Monte Carlo while Nacho is walking in. Lalo doesn’t bother closing up the hood, even lets Nacho have a peek inside and talks to him about the mods he’s planning.
He doesn’t have to play mind games with Nacho. He just has to let his hand trail down the inside of Nacho’s arm and lace their fingers together, and everything falls into place. He fucks Nacho over the hood of his Monte Carlo until his cries echo through the garage, but no further than that.
How could tio Franco be so stupid, so self-absorbed, so blasphemous to think he could live without the slightest bit of self-denial? It’s laughable, Lalo thinks, and really not that hard.