"The Other Half is a B-Movie Screenplay" [Mister Martínez Part 32]

Back in the bar, a few more of the tubular-legged tables were occupied. Mostly by couples under forty – maybe married, some even to each other; a few students were escaping the mainland to go home for the weekend and one school group of around twenty, all in blazers, were doing what they were told but not liking it one bit. The school trip comprised the whole of the queue at the bar, although there was a peleton as well as a lead and tail. One of the teachers gave them an eyeroll as they began waiting.

‘Go get a table. You want another beer?’ Martínez pointed over at the tables near the windows, where there were more unoccupied seats.

‘Un chupito, Dulce.’

‘What? Whisky? Brandy? Tequila?’

‘You choose. I like surprises.’ She strode off. Martínez spotted most of the teenagers watching her and gave them a scowl.

Martínez realised there was no way to look cool carrying a plastic tray with six shot glasses sliding around it, so he didn’t try too hard. ‘Rita’s shoulders were shaking as he manoeuvred through tables of schoolkids, students and short-stay lovers. That was fine.

She downed a shot before Martínez had sat down. Her eyes watered just a little, but she  stifled the cough well.

‘Ginebra?’ She spluttered. ‘I suppose I deserved that.’

‘You were lucky, that was the only gin, the other five are tequila.’

Martínez pulled some sachets of salt and a halved lemon out of his pocket. He nodded at ‘Rita’s cellphone lying on the table top.

‘Find anything useful?’

‘I know where he lives and yeah, it’s out in the sticks.’

‘What else?’

‘Aren’t you having a drink?’ She sat back with her arms folded. Martínez opened a salt packet tipped a mound on the back of his hand, licked it and threw the tequila to the back of his throat, before giving a squirt from one half of the lemon into his mouth.

This time ‘what else?’ came out as a gasp.

‘No lime, huh?’

Martínez’s fist clenched and he laid it on his thigh. ‘Rita downed a tequila shot, no salt, no lemon, no problem.

‘I learned a lot in that strip-joint in Barcelona. You won’t drink me under any table, and certainly not one of these.’ She pointed at the ‘phone screen. ‘Have you thought about how we get in to see him?’

‘I’ll get in. You can wait on the ‘bike. It shouldn’t take long.’

‘Classy. Like he won’t go to the press if you leave him alive.’

‘Who said I would?’

Her finger was still pointing at the cell screen, ‘Why would you need to off the guy? He says in this interview that the film-rights haven’t been sold yet. . We could pretend to be movie producers. He’s vain enough. “Es mi ilusión, hacer un peli de mi vida increíble”’

‘It’s an incredible life, for sure. Half of its mine and the other half is a b-movie screenplay.’