Bite the Bullet - Saints Row

7: Old Habits Die Hard

Nacho meant what he said about turning heads, because the trip back for turnaround after our second round attracted far more stares and questions than our first big pass did. Maybe my purple car just looked a whole lot sexier at night.

I kept my word and dropped some hints about the mechanic responsible, but courting the attention spans of half-drunk hillbillies proved to be a tricky endeavor, with most of the conversation re-centering around how I talked funny and what brought me out there.

The driver of the Caballero stopped by with his wife and kid, congratulating us on the match and showing us the footage. Nacho did a better job at navigating the passerby spectators with his courteous, mute nods— a blank canvas for conversation , and I expected him to maybe sneak a beer or two and socialize, but it became increasingly apparent that he took this racing shit seriously.

Letting my head roll back, I blinked through the lights and blew lazy smoke rings, stars speckling the night sky beyond the fuzzy blue haze. I'd never seen them like that, untouched by smog and traffic, and even after two years in this town it never really occurred to me to stop and look up . Nacho sang to himself—of all things— as he raised the hood , unscrewing the oil dipstick and rocking on his heels, five-thousand tons of steel shooting by behind him without so much as a flinch. He was in his element out there, in the glow with motor oil under his nails, whether those cliffs were calm and balmy, or alive with the fumes and bustle.

Around this time yesterday, I was a hair's breadth away from getting zipped up in a black bag and stuffed in a freezer. I wouldn't be standing here if he didn't do what he did; hell, without him, I'd be spending my Friday night staring into a plastic tote of case files.

Did that make us even?

"I usually enter the 10.00 index class with my Bootlegger," he piped up after a while. "Maybe we could do that one in a few weeks...?"

"Oh, yeah?" I looked at him, relaxed. "What's the payout?"

"$6K again." He smirked, wiping his hands clean with a rag. "Pretty good."

"That's a lotta' cash just drivin' fast cars around." And nobody had to die for it. "...A'ight." I caved, and he smiled. "Why not?"

I raised my smoke for another drag when some obnoxiously loud catcalling broke in the distance—a cluster of voices so scattered and overlapping with battling laughter that I mistook it for a brawl. Puffing, I tried to see over the crowd. "'Ey—da'fuck's up with all the noise, huh?"

"Rollerz are here." Nacho replied, less than enthused. "They always like that. I keep my distance, most do. Unlike Los Carnales, they really like to run up in packs."

"That right?" I grunted, "Huh—sounds ta' me like somebody needs their ass kicked."

I heard him snickering, and he squatted down by the tire again. "Believe me—there've been scrapes. It calls the cops here, and nobody wants that, like I explain you. So, they just act like assholes. They usually do the head-up nitro races, which don't start for a while."

I exhaled smoke, crossing one foot over the other. I monitored the spotty herd of morons from my front fender while they laughed and carried on, but one hunched back going against the flow of foot traffic caught my eye. From across the track, my first thought was a heckler , migrating from one group to the next. But, I picked up on the body language, and waited for hands to start trading, making some bets with myself about the extent of this dude's game. Sure enough, he pawed at his pocket while his customer tucked a bundle into her bag and made a beeline for the ladies room.