Author: jimlatham

Attend a wedding complete with carnitas, micheladas, and fireworks in your friend Rosa’s village. Notice the DJ is playing nothing but cumbias. Ask Rosa to dance. Don’t let on you’re into her. Apologize when you step on her left foot. Take the hint when Rosa tells you she doesn’t like to dance. Force a smile…

Forget lemons. Lemons are the small baby tossed out with generations of contaminated bathwater when you ditched the US. You live in Mexico now, where lemons are rarer than hen’s teeth. Limón means lime. There are two kinds, regular ones and what you think of as key limes. Get the key limes. Better flavor, fewer…

“Wait a minute,” the woman holding the nine-millimeter said. “You know this guy?” Sean looked at me and said, “Yeah.” The woman holstered the pistol and shifted her pint glass to her right hand. The yard sloped downhill from the house. The porch where they were standing was about ten feet above the bench I…

O’Connor raised an eyebrow. “Stop trying to be funny and answer my questions.” “Okay. According the Word, Dina would replace Young Mary and bear Jesus, the Son of God. She’d raise him to listen to her, essentially becoming queen regent of the universe. She’d use that power to set the Church and humanity on a…

I lay panting on the silk sheets of the king-sized bed in Dina’s upper room at the Judge. When the laughter and clinking glasses from the barroom were louder than the blood pounding in my ears, I sat up. I heard the stairway creak as folks moved between the bar downstairs and the lounge across…

“Wait a minute,” O’Connor butted in. “This other woman. Is she a real person or part of whatever weird religious theater you and Dina were up to?” “Dina called it the Enactment. As I’m sure you know, Detective, that there were two Marys. The Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, the, ah, sex worker.” O’Connor looked…

Detective O’Connor didn’t look much like your typical Irish cop, mostly because of the way her suit clung to her figure as she walked through the door of the interrogation room. She set her mug on the battered metal table and lowered herself into the chair across from me. “That’s quite a mess over there…

To celebrate turning forty-five, I learned to roll my own cigarettes. I’d been living healthy for four and a half decades due to childhood indoctrination, but I’d rarely been happy for more than forty-five minutes straight. Rolling smokes gave me something to do and was easier than learning to play an instrument. DIY cancer sticks…

Josh squinted in the cold air. “Do I know you?”  “Don’t think so,” the Mexican said again. “But I know you.” He took a step toward Josh. “My name’s Carlos. Me’n my friends been watching what you been doing. How you been acting. So, tonight, me and you gonna have a little chat ‘bout your…

Marcus ignored the video poker machine and put five bucks on the bar. Anna set a club soda with lime in front of him. Marcus squeezed the lime. “How’s our favorite asshole? He take the bait?”  Anna nodded. “He take the bait and he take her money, too.” “What?”  “You watch,” Anna said. “When Josh…