97, Bickering

“You’re a disappointment as a human in every way possible,” Dirt said in Spanish.  He was drunker than a dozen frat boys on homecoming but somehow he said every word perfectly clear in Spanish without slurring.  “There’s no way in hell your mother or father would ever be proud of you.”

“My father is sitting in jail from bootlegging moonshine and my mother smokes four packs a day.”  Demolitions expert Dale O’Connor spoke perfect Spanish as he took a direct drink from a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey.  “Neither parent was affectionate in either way, unless you consider constant second hand smoke as some sort of emotional gift.”

“This explains so much,” Dirt replied with heavy drunk eyes, trying not to drool out his own sip of whiskey.

The two Americans were torturing two captured hit men by arguing in front of them and not letting them fall asleep.  O’Connor and Dirt had been bickering in Spanish for twenty four hours straight and neither man showed signs of slowing down.  The never ending barrage of insults flew back and forth like a ping pong match between two Asian table tennis masters.

The Americans had been peeing into empty pitchers while the bad guys had pissed themselves several times.  The warm room smelled strongly of urine, but despite the fowl odor, it didn’t deter the agents from drinking heavily and insulting each other.

O’Connor kept the momentum rolling.  “Your mom is so fat, when she cries, tears roll down her back.”

Dirt didn’t flinch.  “Your mom is so fat that when she fell down, no one laughed, but the sidewalk must have thought it was hilarious because it cracked up.”

In a moment of honesty, the truth was the funniest thing O’Connor could say.  “My mom has smoked acres and acres of tobacco.  She is rail thin with bird bones, and it’s a miracle she even can walk, to be honest.”

With no mercy, Dirt’s Spanish was like a comedic dagger to the heart.  “Your mom stopped smoking when I used a fire extinguisher.”  The joke sat in the air for a few seconds, then Dirt slam dunked it home.  “She didn’t smoke anymore after I lubed up.”

The hit men had been hired to kill two bankers in the city of Juarez by a Mexican narcotic boss named El Padre.  One hit man had been successful in his mission, but as soon as he’d committed the murder, Team Whiskey had apprehended him.  The other hit man was about to complete his assassination but fell short as he was incapacitated and captured.

The banker who didn’t get whacked was a man named Matteo.  He was currently in his house trying to pack his suitcase to make a run for it.  Matteo frantically grabbed clothes from his dresser and unceremoniously jammed them into his luggage, but he froze in fear when he heard his front door creak.  Someone had entered his home.

His survival instinct kicked in.  He dropped low and crept around his dresser, then side stepped into his bathroom.  He tried to quietly close his bathroom door and lock it, but the door also creaked.  His heart beat wildly in fear.  The sound of fast footsteps getting closer made him abandon any attempt at stealth.  He slammed the bathroom door shut, locked it, then stepped into his bathtub, cowering low in pure terror at what was to come.

Whoever was in his house was now outside of his bathroom door.  The silence was terrifying.  All of a sudden, the bathroom door handle blew out of its holding place as bullets smashed through it.  The sound was deafening.  Matteo’s mind couldn’t process the fear.

The sound of more gunshots filled the house, shortly followed by a large thud.  Something heavy had been dropped on the floor boards.  The place went silent for ten seconds, but it may have well been an eternity.  The banker was completely frozen with panic.

“Matteo?  Are you ok?”  An American voice called out from the other room in English to him.  Matteo could understand English but he was too terrified to open his mouth.  The door opened and the banker looked up to see a wide eyed white man holding a hand gun.  The gun was pointed towards the floor.  Matteo recognized the man.  It was special agent Bradley McVandalay, the same man who’d helped him escape death twice before.  Matteo’s Mexican superstition was on full throttle.

“Estas bien?” McVandalay asked in Spanish.

It took every ounce of energy for the banker to weakly answer, “Sí.”

“We gotta get out of here.”  The American took a moment and dug into his brain for any Spanish he could muster.  “Ven con migo, por favor,” McVandalay said with a terrible accent.  

Matteo couldn’t argue even if he wanted to.  His nerves were too fried.  The large, strong American helped Matteo stand up.  His shaky legs seemed to find their strength.  The banker stepped out of his bathtub and exited the bathroom.  His eyes froze as he saw a dead man lying face first in front of his bathroom door.

“We gotta go,” McVandalay said.  “Leave everything.  My team will get in here and clean this all up.  We have to get you to a safe place,” the man said in English.

Even though he didn’t comprehend the words, the banker nodded in understanding.  The two men drove off as the hot, unforgiving Juarez sun beat down on their car.

Back in the safe house, the hit men were tied up and gagged, each bound to a chair, forced to listen to the never ending bullshit of Dirt and O’Connor.  They’d struggled to get free, but the ropes that bound them seemed to get tighter and tighter with every flex and twist of their aching muscles.

After half a day of struggling, Dale O’Connor had walked over to each captive and placed an electronic collar around their necks while still spewing pathetic insults and mind maddening conversation at Dirt in perfect Mexican Spanish.  Whenever the bad guys wobbled in their chairs or tried to break free, the collar would shock them into being still.  Occasionally, one of the agents would hit a button on a key chain to shock the bad guys if they started vocalizing their discomfort through their gags.  The bad men had no choice but to sit and listen to the never ending bickering.

“Your mom worked in a brothel and your dad was a donkey,” O’Connor said insultingly in his perfect Spanish.

“Your mother worked at a donkey brothel while my donkey dad boinked her every morning in the mouth,” Dirt shot back in Spanish with his mild Colombian accent.

O’Connor couldn’t help but appreciate how much better Dirt was at insults compared to his best friend Trent Murdock.  “That was so good,” he thought to himself, but he didn’t say it out loud.  Instead, he replied, “Your donkey dad’s dick would smell like lung cancer if he put his dong within a mile radius of my mom’s chimney mouth.”

Dirt was unbelievably fluent in Spanish, more so than O’Connor.  He never broke character and kept his face stern.  “Your mom’s mouth would be wider than a basketball hoop if my dad ever got ahold of her.”

“Your dad’s hands would fall off from touching my mothers scaly, cigarette hardened scales that she calls skin.”

Ignoring the bit about O’Connor’s mom, Dirt somehow spit back without drunkenly slurring, “God himself is jealous of my dad’s dick.”  He was so drunk that he could barely keep his body upright, but his brain was as sharp as a razor.  He was quicker than O’Connor because he could actually think in Spanish and didn’t have the lag time to translate in his head.

“Are you telling me you’ve sucked your own dad’s dick?” O’Connor asked rudely in his monotone, passionless Spanish.

“I would need a mouth the size of a blue whale, amigo.”  It took all of Dirt’s mental power to fight through his drunken stupor to remind himself, they were torturing bad guys.  Somehow, he held back the laugh that was burning deep in his soul.

O’Connor and Dirt both had attention deficit disorder and could change the subject without even trying.  O’Connor turned his back to the room and started to relieve himself again into an empty pitcher.  “You are literally a monkey who rolls around in your own fecal matter.”

One of the bad guys received a hefty shock as he flexed his arms to try and work himself free.  The bad guy couldn’t help but think of all the bad things he’d done in his life.  An ominous feeling swept over him.  This is how he would die.

“My shit smells like roses, amigo.  Bards sing songs celebrating my floral dumps.”  Dirt took a sip of Jameson and started to question his own life choices.  “Experts agree that my excrement has helped reverse global warming.”

A clanging sound reverberated through the room as O’Connor mindlessly knocked over an empty bottle of Jameson.  Ignoring the sound, O’Connor plainly said, “Your poop jokes stink as bad as your dumps do.”

“I feel badly for your fiancé and any roll of toilet paper you use, because they both have to put up with way too much crap.”

“Well if you’re constipated, Dirt, it just means you’re full of shit.  Don’t trust your farts,” O’Connor shot back.

The drunken part of Dirt’s brain turned itself towards deep philosophy.  “When comedians take a dump, do they smell funny?”

The two bad men shocked themselves again from their collars as desperation overtook them.  The conversation was a form of torture unlike any kind of pain that either bad man could imagine.

“I think that comedy comes from a place of deep pain, and a need for social validation,” O’Connor said honestly.  “So when comedians fart, it’s like a lonely cry from being an abandoned little turd.”

In the other room, McVandalay escorted Matteo into the safe house.  Agent Death said, “Wow, I didn’t think this guy would still be alive after a day.”  She reached into a bucket filled with ice and pulled out a bottle of beer.  Without asking, she tossed it unceremoniously at McVandalay.  He caught it and nodded in appreciation.  “Anything fun happen while you were out?” she asked as she took a sip of her own ice cold beer.

“I got there just in time.  I took out another hit man only moments before before Matteo here would’ve been toast.”  McVandalay looked at the banker.  “Cervesa?” he asked.

Matteo’s nerves had calmed down, but not entirely.  He could think straight or argue.  “Sí, por favor,” he replied in a feeble voice.

McVandalay twisted the top of his own beer and handed it to Matteo as Death instinctively tossed her friend another cold one.  They raised their beers in a toast.  McVandalay grinned, “To killing El Padre before he kills off half of Mexico.”

Death nodded in agreement, then added, “To Murdock and Miller for being clean up crew at Matteo’s place!”  Trent Murdock had just walked into the room and heard the toast.  Death turned to him and said, “I’ve been on the last three clean up crews.  It’s your turn, fucker.”

“Clean up crew?” Murdock asked in confusion.

“Bradley will fill you in.”  Death turned around and headed towards the kitchen.  “I want chips and salsa.  Fuck all of you.”

Twenty fours later in the back room of the safe house, the tied up hit men were starting to hallucinate.  Their grief and regret for all of the awful things they’d done in their lives was swimming through their minds.  They were dehydrated beyond belief and their internal organs were shutting down.  The room was an unhygienic hell.  It reeked of piss but Dirt and O’Connor had just cracked another bottle of Jameson and weren’t showing any signs of slowing down despite being sleep deprived as fuck.

“Why did the spy cross the road?” Dirt asked in perfect Spanish.

“To fuck your mom?” O’Connor replied, trying to ruin the stupid joke with his useless immaturitty.

“Nope, because my mother was too busy taking a shit on your mom’s alligator scales,” Dirt shot back.

“Alligators don’t have scales, puto.”

“Your mom does,” Dirt fired back.

O’Connor wanted so badly to smile but he was too tired and too drunk.  “Well I can tell you’re not a secret agent, because you actually think that a spy would even consider crossing the road,” O’Connor said as he realized he had a good retort to the earlier joke.

“Oh, this should be rich,” Dirt said, waiting for O’Connor’s punchline.

“The spy was never on your side to begin with,” O’Connor said proudly.

Dirt was so blind drunk that he didn’t even know what planet he was on, but his appreciation for the clever retort made him smile for the first time in two days.  The instinctual part of his brain that was holding on for dear life quickly made him drop the smirk, but the damage was done.  O’Connor didn’t say anything, but in the war of wits, he’d never let Dirt live it down in the years that followed.

Despite his intoxication, Dirt had the instinct to walk behind one of the hit men and remove his gag.  The bad guy was weaker than a wounded armadillo on the side of a desert highway.  Dirt asked in Spanish, “Where is El Padre?”

“I don’t know,” the man said faintly.  The guilt of his awful life swam through his head, and he decided he’d confess everything he could before his death.  “El Padre uses a website.”

O’Connor clicked a button on a voice recorder and taped everything the bad man said.  He told the Americans how El Padre contacted violent enforcers, how the drugs crossed the border, how money changed hands, and then he confessed to all the people he’d hurt or killed in his life.  “Forgive me,” he said weakly.

The sound of a very loud fart reverberated through the piss smelling room.  The stench was so bad that the hit man took one smell and his eyes got huge.  His heart stopped and he died.  The other hit man tried to weakly struggle from the smell but the collar shocked him.  His heart also stopped from the final electrical surge that went through him.

In English, O’Connor said, “In all my years of doing this job, I’ve never seen farts kill a man, let alone two men. Good fuckin’ work, dude.”

Drunker than shit, Dirt finally laughed.  “I’ve been holding that in for hours.  Thank god we got what we needed out of those dirty fucks.”  Even though he couldn’t see straight, he asked, “Do you do this kind of interrogation a lot?”

“Murdock and I seem to find ourselves doing this a couple of times a year.  It’s exhausting,” O’Connor said, realizing how dog shit tired he actually was.

As the two men walked out of the back room, their friends instantly started bitching about the odor.  Special agent Trent Murdock blurted, “Jesus, you two!  You smell like you were gang fucked at a dog kennel!”

Bradley McVandalay yawned as he watched sports updates on his cell phone.  “Don’t judge, Murdock.  You and Doc smell way worse every time you two interrogate bad guys, you know.”

“Me?” Murdock protested.  “I smell like angle kisses and unicorn farts!”

“The fuck you do,” agent Death said as she walked by with a handful of salty corn chips. She leaned over and flicked Murdock in the nuts lightly with her free hand.  He doubled over reflexively and grabbed his crotch as Death pointed at Dirt and O’Connor.  “You two smell like you’ve been fumigated for cockroaches.”  She pointed to the opposite hallways and said, “Dirt, that bathroom has the nice soaps that you like.”  She pointed to the stairs towards the basement.  “Doc, I put a cold beer on ice in the sink for you in the bathroom with the tiny shower.”  As she exited the room, she said, “Get showered up and get some sleep.  We’ve got more bad guys to find and kill.”

“Thanks for the cold beer, Death,” O’Connor replied as he staggered towards the basement for a shower.

McVandalay asked, “I simply assume the bad guys are dead?”

“Deader ’n Hank Williams senior,” Dirt joked.

McVandalay never took his eyes off his phone.  “Did you get anything valuable out of those fuckers?”

Shrugging as if it wasn’t a big deal, Dirt answered honestly. “Lots of stuff.  We’ll chat after I shower and sleep for a day.”

Without acknowledging Dirt, McVandalay cursed under his breath.  “God damn Cubs just gave up a run in the bottom of the eighth.”

In the distance, a banker named Matteo sat nervously in his office at the bank he worked at while he waited for more bad guys to show up as members of Team Whiskey hid patiently in various parts of the bank, ready to neutralize and apprehend any more henchmen that might try to do any harm to the banker.