Page 15

Nice Hat

Hector was clipping around the teen’s ear when he spotted Hank’s big frame lumbering by his front window.

The bulge in Hank’s back pocket signaled the husbands were upping their ante.

Hector wasn’t surprised, as these kinds of jobs generally took a turn or two before it was all said and done.

Hank took a seat in the row of chairs lined up against the wall and selected a fishing magazine, but Hector noted he didn’t look at it.

Instead, Hank’s eyes darted about the parking lot, like a hunted animal.

Under his arms, circles of sweat inched down the sides of his blue button-down.

Hector slowed as he brushed the trimmings off the boy’s shoulders, giving himself time to think the situation through.

As he tidied his workstation, he took a good look at the parking lot himself.

When he went to the storage closet for more aftershave, he locked the back door and set the dead bolt.

Satisfied, he returned, shook out the boy’s apron, and draped it over his arm.

He slid open the drawer at his station and discreetly withdrew his gun from its place next to his professional-grade clippers and tucked the weapon in the apron’s folds.

When he joined the boy at the cash register, he set the apron on the counter, the gun beneath it, its muzzle aimed at the front door.

Again, his eyes swept the parking lot for anything out of the ordinary and finding nothing, he rang the boy up.

Hector watched him leave and then motioned Hank to his red leather chair and set the gun and apron on the rolling tray beside him.

As he climbed into the chair, Hank slid the envelope from his back pocket onto Hector’s station.

Their eyes met in the mirror.

Just then, two men walked by the barbershop window and slowed to look inside.

Hector noticed Hank’s knuckles whiten on the chair’s arms.

Hector, his finger on the trigger, rotated the tray so the gun was again pointed at the door.

When the men moved on Hank’s head dropped in relief, and Hector flung a clean apron around Hank’s torso like he had done a thousand times over the years.

He was about to grab his clippers, but since he had trimmed Hank’s hair just a few days previously, there was no point in going through those motions.

Even on Hank’s wildest hair days he merely needed a quick buzz to tame the unruly fringe that hung over his ears.

Instead, Hector ran the clippers over Hank’s neck and then sprinkled some Bay Rum aftershave on his brush and slowly swiped the soft, long bristles along the back of Hank’s neck and nodded while Hank talked.

After Hank left, Hector turned the lock, plugged in the closed sign, and turned off the lights as he made his way to the office in the back of the shop.

When he opened the door, his wife glanced up from the monitor and smiled.

His heart skipped a tiny beat, and he paused a moment to take in her messy bun and the scrunch of her nose.

He set the envelope of cash on the desk and sat down across from her.

Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth formed the cutest O.

She thumbed through the money, then swiveled to tuck it into the safe, then back to him.

The light from the screen highlighted her sprinkle of freckles, and her eyes twinkled as though she were sitting in front of one of those social media ring lights.

He wasn’t sure how, but her dark eyes always seemed to reflect light.

“You were right.

He came back.”

“I could hear.”

“He liked our idea.”

Brenda smiled. “I complete you.”

Hector chuckled. “I think it’s ‘you complete me.’”

“Same diff.”

“You did have me at hello,”

Hector said.

“Well, what did you expect? I was just a girl standing in front of a boy—”

“I was standing, you were sitting,”

Hector said.

“Best day of your life.”

Her smile slayed him.

“Look at you, telling the truth and it’s not even Christmas.”

Hector beamed.

“Well, I’ll tell you another truth.”

Brenda folded her arms and shook her head. “Some people. Yi, yi, yi, yi, yi.”

That was one of the things Hector loved about his wife.

Nothing riled her.

He could have told her the husbands had decided they wanted Hector to deliver two giraffes and kill a koala bear at sunrise, and Brenda would have the same response:

“Yi, yi, yi, yi, yi. Some people.”

Although she would never, ever have let Hector kill an animal. Not in a million years, for a million dollars. That was a given.

Hector speculated most husbands in his line of work wouldn’t share the details with their wives, but they weren’t lucky enough to be married to Brenda Palumbo.

When he had found her on that El Salvador beach, where she had been spending her day off from volunteering at a local animal shelter, her nose in a criminology textbook, he thought he’d found his golden ticket out of the gangs.

That plan had worked for one of his better-looking cousins and three buddies.

They had each conned a lonely American into hooking up, convinced them they were in love, and once they were sponsored into a better life in a new country, they’d ditched the heartsick woman.

But there was no conning Brenda Palumbo.

She had Hector figured out before she raised her hand to shade her eyes from the sun.

By the time he had bought her a hat, she had him committed to helping at the shelter for the rest of her stay and to bringing along a friend.

Before Brenda had even packed up, she had decided she was taking a neutered beagle mix, and Hector, home with her.

Part of Hector’s immigration process was being quizzed on what you know about the other party.

They call it testing “the genuineness of the relationship.”

And Brenda wasn’t about to have her happily-ever-after torpedoed because Hector got tripped up in an immigration interview over details like her birthday, her favorite food, when she last had her period, or her family tree.

Brenda had prepared flash cards.

In the middle of the night Hector would feel her elbow in his ribs.

“Hec-toro,”

she’d say. She always called him that. Never HecTOR, or HECtor; always Hec-toro. Like the bull, she had said. One of her first Spanish words. “Hec-toro?”

“Sí?”

“What’s my mother’s maiden name? Her last name before she was married.”

“Ah.”

He’d have to shake the sleep fog from his head and sift through the strange details Brenda had piled on him, one after another, and finally he’d find it.

“Lucifora,”

he’d reply.

“Good. How many siblings do I have?”

“Siblings? I don’t know that word.”

“Sisters, and brothers. That’s what siblings are.”

“Ah. Three sisters. There’s you, Suzanne, Laurie, and Sharon. Two years apart. You’re the youngest. And the prettiest. Okay? Can I go back to sleep?”

“One more. What’s my pet peeve?”

“Another word I do not know.”

“Pet peeve. Um. The thing I hate most.”

He’d rolled away from her. “Oh. That’s easy. When someone eats your takeout leftovers. Never, ever eat Brenda’s takeout leftovers. They’re hers. Unless she gives them to you.”

She’d curled herself around him, and he felt the warmth of her smile and knew of all the women he had checked out on the beach that day, he had chosen the best one. That’s the day their life together had started.

A life of no secrets.

* * *

There was a quiet rap on the barbershop’s back door. Hector and Brenda exchanged glances, and Hector rose to look out the peephole. He nodded at Brenda, closed the office door, undid the dead bolt, and let Pam in. He looked over her shoulder and down the back alley to see the van with Nancy in the back and Shalisa in the passenger seat. They gave him a small wave, and he gave a nod and closed the door. The two stood in the narrow, tiled hallway at the back of the barbershop.

“Nice hat,” he said.

Pam touched the brim of Hank’s ball cap and raised her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I didn’t want to chance being recognized.”

Hector had seen that cap on Hank a dozen times. Should he point out to Pam that it was embroidered across the back with Montgomery? Brenda would get a kick out of that.

Pam thrust an envelope toward him. “Here it is. The fifty thousand dollars.”

Her words rushed out. “We don’t want to know any details. About how you’re doing it. We just want to make sure it happens Sunday. Got that? Sunday.”

Hector had learned the less said in these types of exchanges, the better.

“And . . . we don’t want them to suffer. Okay?”

Pam put her hand on Hector’s forearm, then pulled it back. “We want it to be quick. But remember, we need the bodies.”

Hector closed his eyes and gave a slight nod to signal agreement. “All right, then. I think we’re done.”

He reached past her to open the door. He held it ajar as she made her way out and was pulling it closed when Pam spun around. He paused.

Pam plucked her sunglasses from the top of her head. “It wasn’t always like this. It used to be good. Really good. For all of us. And then a few years ago it just got . . . not good.”

She looked at the sunglasses as she folded and unfolded the arms. She brought her eyes back up to meet Hector’s. “We just want our lives to be fucking fantastic again. You know?” She turned and jogged back to her van.

Experience had shown Hector anybody could justify anything to themselves if they wanted to. And these women wanted to. He closed the door and went into his office. He moved around to the back of the desk, dropped this second envelope of cash in front of his wife and wrapped his arms around her. He buried his face in her neck. “You’d tell me if things got that bad between us before you hired someone to kill me, wouldn’t you?”

Brenda smoothed his hair. “Hec-toro. If things got that bad between us, I’d kill you myself.”

“That’s why I love you.”

He kissed her cheek and sat down across from her.

She swiveled to the safe and slipped the envelope inside, then swiveled back to face him. “Well. This is an interesting situation you’ve got yourself into, Hec-toro.”

Hector raised an eyebrow and nodded.

Brenda leaned back in her chair. “The wives want the husbands dead for the insurance money. The husbands say someone wants them dead, but they didn’t tell you who or why, just that they want you to kill them. We know it’s their wives.”

She cocked her head. “Do you think the husbands know?”

Hector shrugged. The thrum of the air-conditioning unit kicked in.

Brenda continued, “What could those guys have done that was so bad their wives would want them dead?”

Hector shook his finger at her. “Don’t be wondering what people know or did. No good comes from that. For all we know they could be running a porn ring. Or sex trafficking. Or into drugs. Or be abusive. We’ll never know the full story. Or the truth. So, no point wondering.”

She held his gaze.

After a moment, he inhaled deeply, then exhaled. “All right. You think there’s more to it, don’t you?”

“I do. But you’re right—we’ll never know the truth. So, what are you going to do?”

Hector locked eyes with his wife. “I’ll do what I always do. I’ll do what’s right for us.”