The Business District

Looking out of Coop's window into the heart of the business district.










The top floor of this building is fourteen stories up in a small elevator. The four of us and our “luggage” are a work out for the lift. When the doors open we step out into a long hallway.
“Down here on the right.” As Lou speaks, his friend Mike pops his head out of an office half way down the hall. We huff the bags into the office.
This is a newer building with a nice design on the outside. That must have been where they spent all their money because the inside looks like shit. It is just kind of plain with very little interior decorating. It doesn’t feel quite right.
“Louis, how ya doin’ man?” Mike Cooper grabs Lou in a big hug. He is a head shorter than Lou. Probably picked last for every team in his school years. To hear Lou talk about him you would think he was as big as Ollie and a stone cold killer. He looks like a used car salesman, one that could kill his own deal.
“Coop, these are my bros from down south. The hippie is Jerry, that’s Jake next to him, and the big guy is Ollie.”
“Pleased to meet you guys.” He makes the rounds, shaking all of our hands. He has a firm handshake, which puts him back up a notch in my book.
“Why don’t you all come in to my office and we can take care of some business.” He steps into another doorway and ushers us into his office. We set the bags down between us. Now this is what I would expect from someone who is dealing with the kind of money that buys a couple of hundred pounds of gold.
The inner office is trimmed out in mahogany, brass, and maroon leather. There are volumes of books, many of them first editions upon closer examination. He has a crystal brandy or whiskey decanter, a walk in humidor with what looks like a few hundred cigars.
“Cigar?” Coop lifts the top of the smaller humidor on his desk.
Lou steps up and takes one. He rolls it in his fingers and then runs it under his nose. “That’s nice.”
Ollie takes one too. Me and Jerry pass.
Once the smokes are rolling, Coop gets down to business. “Is that it? That’s quite a bit more than last time.”
Lou looks at the three big bags and then his. “I told these boys that you would be able to take care of them, same deal as me. Is that a problem?" Coop says nothing, just draws in some smoke and lets it out slowly. "They were my ride up from Santa Cruz.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem." Coop leans forward and tips his cigar ash in a huge black ash tray. "Sixty five percent?”
Lou smiled this quick smile and then his mouth was a straight, firm line. “Seventy five, Coop. You get a twenty five percent cut for just handing out money.”
"Hey, I have to split with the bank, Lou, and then it still has to make it to market."
Coop picked up the phone and spoke softly into the receiver. Before he hung up three men walked in, one carrying an electronic freight scale. These guys are Ollie’s size and totally without any sense of humor. I mentally go to the gun in the back of my belt.
Coop walks into the other room and comes back with a five pound bag of sugar from the coffee station and sets it on the scale. It reads five pounds on the nose.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The whole weigh in takes about twenty minutes. Ollie has to pull everything out of each of the big bags and weigh them separately. When the grand total is added up and verified by Ollie and Jerry, it comes to two hundred and six pounds ten ounces. Lou’s is a little more than twenty eight pounds. That is a lot of gold.
Coop turns to his goons and says something under his breath, then turns to us. "We will need to transport this to another building and then it will have to be verified."
"And where is this other building?" Lou seems a little tense at this point. He didn't realize that Ollie had brought so much gold from Nester's keep. It made things dangerous.
"Just across the street, Lou, relax." He draws another breath off of the cigar and then talks while letting the smoke go. "You don't think that I have that much money in this office, do you? And you don't think the people I deal with are going to make a deal without checking every last ounce of this shit to make sure that we're not getting hustled, do you?"
Lou's stance changed ever so slightly, like a leopard that was about to jumps its prey. Coop quickly added, "I trust you and your twenty-eight pounds, Lou. But I don't know these guys from Adam."
It makes sense. I don't know what we were thinking when we arrived here, but who the hell is going to hand out a couple of million dollars without going over the merchandise.
"How long will this take?" I ask Coop.
He keeps his eyes on Lou and answers
"Several hours I'm afraid. I can get your twenty eight pounds verified first, Lou, and you will be free to go."
"We came together, we go together. And that goes for the gold too. We need to watch this inspection or whatever you call it."
"Lou, you surprise me with this shit. Now, all of a sudden, you don't trust me? Fuck you, Lou. Take this shit and get the fuck out of here." He looks over at his boys, as if to tell them to get ready for something.
"Just hold on here." Jerry puts a hand on Lou's shoulder and feels nothing but tensed muscle.
"We are all friends here. There is no trust lost. You don't know us, and I can respect that. Take your time and verify this shit. It doesn't do us any good until we get that part of it done."
Coop relaxed a little, and with that so did Lou. "I should have never saved your scrawny ass in that jungle." Coop says with a smirk.
"If you didn't, then you would have had your nuts blown off and been walking on a couple of pieces of oak."
Coop pulls the drawer to his desk open and brings out a hand blown bottle of tequila, no glasses, and uncorks it. He takes a swig and passes it to Lou, who takes a guzzle and passes it on. "Been a long time, Coop."
"Two years and eight months."
"Thought I would make it up here for Jessup's funeral."
"We missed you at the reunion."

The little drinkfest in the offices goes until the bottle is nearly empty. We are told to leave our hardware in Coop's office and then we all head across the street through an underground passage that runs between the buildings. When we come up on the other side, we are in the Mexico National Bank. It's legit.
Coop introduces Lou and Ollie to the bank president, and the three of them go into the office to talk over a few details.
"That was some good stuff." Jerry says to me, referring to the tequila.

We stand in the outer office for a while longer, then the door opens and all of them are smiling, all of them except Ollie who keeps that "don't fuck with me" look on his face.
"Okay, we are going to leave these gentlemen to verify the lot, and we can come back in an hour or so." Lou says with a smile. Now he smells like Scotch.
"An hour?"
"It won't take long. This is the day they make the transactions for the Mexican gold corridor. They'll be paying out a lot more than what we're cashing in."
Ollie says something to Lou, low so no one else can hear.
"The big man here doesn't know if he should leave. They won't let him in the counting room because there is more than just our gold being figured." Lou puffed on his cigar, but it was out.
"Bank president says every assayer in Mexico is here today. Most of the mines have their own assayers working with the bank to get their gold in the market. The bank will provide assayers to figure our tally."
He looks at Ollie and nods, "Estos tipos son bien." (these guys are okay)
Ollie whispers something else, then turns and walks back to the bank president's office.
"The big guy isn't too trusting. We'll leave him here."
"Where are we going? I ask him
"El árbol colgante."
"And what the hell is that?
"It's a bar right around the corner. They make a mean taco."

We leave Ollie and head outside the building. Lou is temporarily lost before we remind him he is on the other side of the street from where we came in.
The bar is a stand alone building in the middle of these semi-high rise buildings. It has a knarly old tree growing in the middle of it. There are several seedy looking characters inside for being in the business district. Turns out they just work here.

We are on our second round of beer and tequila shooters when Lou cuts loose with the story of this place. It turns out that this tree was used to hang desperados and outlaws of all types for hundreds of years. You can see the branch they used. I wonder how many ghosts are tripping around here. Just as I am trying to figure out how this thing lives inside, they open the roof and let the sun in.
"Now that's cool."

We eat tacos, drink more beer, but slow down on the tequila. We still have a lot of work to do before we can relax and party. Lou orders four tacos to go for Ollie, and brings a beer for him. The hour passes by and we head back to the bank to see how things have progressed.

Ollie is in with the bank president once again. Mike Cooper is in there with him. Lou excuses himself and steps in there as well. Jerry and me are standing there alone, but even through the closed door, Jerry can hear what is being said. They are haggling over percentages. Lou's voice is booming now, siding with Ollie. Now the bank president tries to calm them. Now Coop is siding with the boys against the Bank President.
"The market is dropping today." Jerry translates, "Gold has lost about thirty bucks American since the market opened." He squints a bit while he listens... like that helps. "The best he can do is seventy percent of market."
"I thought Coop was offering seventy five."
"Coop is just a middle man. He is using his connections for Lou. You probably would have had to make arrangements weeks ahead of time to get this kind of service. He probably takes five percent for his side."

The discussion in the bank president's office is over and now they all file out, the bank president is talking a mile a minute, trying to mend whatever fence he kicked down in there.
"Sounds like a cluster fuck."
"It is a cluster fuck." Jerry looks at Ollie, who looks even meaner than when we walked in here. "He thinks he is getting fucked."
Jerry walks up to the big guy and Lou and they had a little discussion on there own on whether they should just take the gold and walk. Apparently Coop had held the bank to the seventy five percent, but they were light on the price they were going to pay. Lou would walk with just under eighty grand, Ollie would bring back around one point eight million, and we would get our little bit.
Jerry comes back with the guys and tells me "We are done here. We take the money and get the fuck out of Dodge."

Coop pulled in about sixty grand for answering a phone call and walking us over to the bank. I didn't even want to know what the bank was taking off the top, but it was enough to piss our Aztec off. We ended up back in Coop's building to pick up our hardware. He apoligizes for the trouble, pulling the tequila up for one more round before we hit the road. Ollie takes an extra hit before passing it on. He seems a little calmer now. He wolfs down the tacos, the beer just one continual pull until it was gone.
We have the cash in bags now, doesn't seem any lighter. Jerry took our payment and put it in his pocket. Lou took a few minutes in the shitter and when he came out he looked a little thicker around the waist.
"Money belt?" I ask him. He nods.

Just as we are about to grab our guns from the desk there is a hell of a noise in the hallway. Coop's boys are down, hit hard by the five men that have just blown into the office. Their faces are covered, except for one, who's face is hidden behind a dark beard.
"Queremos nuestro dinero." He tells him.
"Oh shit." Jerry whispers to me.
"What?" I say out of the corner of my mouth.
"They are shaking him down. He must owe them some... " Jerry's words are cut off by the barrel of a sawed-off pump shotgun that is pressed into his back by one of our visitors.
Cooper tells them that they have to come back, that he doesn't have the money until Friday.
Apparently that is the wrong answer. Blackbeard checks him with the butt of the rifle he is holding and down he goes.
While Cooper is checking for loose teeth, the banditos pry the bags out of Ollies hands and drop him.
"Fácil, no lo dolió." Lou says, putting himself in the middle of all of it.
"Don't hurt him" Jerry translates for me.
Cooper tries to sit up, "That is ten times what I owe you. This is not my money."
"You are right... " Blackbeard hisses with a thick accent, "it is our money."
They quickly pass the bags among the three men in the office and then out the door to the two men that backed out to guard the hallway.
"On the floor, arms out." The sawed-off shotgun shoves me to the floor where I stay, along with Jerry and Lou. Ollie is sitting up, rubbing his head where they clocked him.
Now all but sawed-off are out of the room, and when he looks to the door, Ollie grabs the barrel of the gun and catches the man off balance. With a quick sweep of his legs, Ollie has the man on the floor and beats him hard across the face.
"El dinero." Ollie shouts as he gets to his feet and jacks a round into the shotgun, ejecting the shell that was already there.
We scramble for our pistols in the desk drawer. Coop is up now. "They probably came up in the service elevator from the garage. No one would have seen them," he tells us through a bloody mouth. "It's slower than shit. Take the stairs on the left."

We are out the door. Ollie is fast and is through the stairwell door, taking the steps four at a time.
"That crazy fuck is going to get himself killed." Lou says in the echoing stairwell. We are all jumping as many steps at a time as we can. We hear the door fling open at the bottom of the stairs. Before we can get to it, there is gunfire and shotgun blasts.
"Shit, here we go." Lou blows through the door, gun at chest level, right arm straight, the other cupping the grip. He pops off four rounds before I can get through the door way. Another shotgun blast and you can hear one or more of the banditos howling. Someone is hit bad.
"Deme el dinero." Ollie shouts from the side of the elevator.
Jerry and I are now out in the garage, pressed up against the wall, guns held out like on some cop show. Jerry fires a couple of shots and moves up. This has got to bring the Mexican Policia running. Not what we want to see.
Ollie rolls off the wall and is standing right in the doorway. He peels off a shot and then you can hear a weak surrender from Blackbeard. A couple of pistols come sliding out of the elevator as we meet up with Ollie, holding what is left of the banditos at gunpoint.
Two look like they are probably dead, and Blackbeard and the other guy are shot up pretty good.
Ollie grabs the bags and the other men's guns, handing them back to us. We toss them to the other end of the garage.
"We better get the fuck out of here." Lou says. There is a distant sound of sirens.
The four of us tuck our weapons. Ollie grabs both bags and we turn toward the garage exit.

Up the ramp we make it out to the street where we came in. It is torture to walk slow when you know you want to run like hell. Lou laughs and punches me in the arm, "Now that was fun."
"You are a sick bitch, you know that Lou?"
The cops are coming, you can see them. I quicken my pace, but Lou grabs my arm in an iron grip, "take it slow, they don't know."
Just then Jerry turns and laughs, slapping the top of my head. They are all nuts. Ollie is the only one who looks like he is running away.
Jerry tells him something in Spanish, I am hoping it is slow down and look like a tourist, but who knows.
Ollie looks at him and laughs, then points up at an old church between a couple of the buildings... just like a tourist.
We turn the corner and see the Green Machine. Keeping our composure, we load the bags in the trunk, along with the weapons, and drive slowly out and away from the business district.
"Pienso que he sido el disparo." Ollie says, slumping in his seat. He runs his hand down by his left side and then holds it up for inspection. It is crimson with blood.
Lou looks at him, "Awe shit, Ollie's been shot."