Orbital Velocity

“Slapped a sign on the side of the van, rolled up behind the bar, got called a spic by the troglodytes working security,” Blancanales said.

“Didn’t they wonder why you weren’t driving a garbage truck?” Schwarz asked.

“Dumpster inspection. Clipboard and a few stickers and said that their can wouldn’t need to be replaced because of the rust on the bottom if I got a few bucks,” Blancanales explained.

“That’s one way to get your ass stomped by those slope-headed knuckle draggers,” Schwarz growled. “Yet I note the lack of bruises.”

“Sure way to find out that these pricks are doing some serious dirt if they don’t want to draw attention by smacking a county worker around,” Blancanales answered.

“So it could be a gun or drug deal,” Schwarz noted, musing. “But if that were the case, they’d have brought some vans and automobiles.”

“This is a rabble-rousing meeting,” Blancanales said. “Just standing out back I heard them revving the crowd with hate metal.”

Schwarz frowned. “Sure?”

“I could hear the lyrics,” Blancanales said. “And I can’t make a mistake about Nick Cobb and Night Heat.”

Schwarz nodded. Able Team, as a component of their general domestic awareness, made certain to keep an eye on two particular brands of music. One was narcocorridas, the songs glorifying the life of Mexican and Central American drug dealers. It was a genre of music that had expanded into Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California. The other genre of music they kept familiar with was the aforementioned “hate metal” or “white power rock,” which was far more widespread than the chosen medium of the Latino drug dealers. Rosario Blancanales, the son of Puerto Ricans who had immigrated to the U.S. to give their children a good life, had taken a special interest in Nick Cobb and his band, Night Heat, a group of so-called Minutemen who sang the anthems of the white supremacists, the same racists who corrupted the immigration-reform movement. Cobb and his group jabbed a raw nerve on the first-generation-American Blancanales, so he became intimately familiar with the bigoted venom they spewed as a form of political protest.