“El Zopilote demands it,” Cesar said, not so much to her as to the room. “ ‘She needs to disappear. She’s already spoken to a reporter. The reporter’s nosing around out here. Him and some photographer. Tonight. It’s a problem.’ ” He turned back toward Humberto. “Your fucking problem, big shot. Not mine.”
Photographer, Shel thought. Danny. Out here. Tonight.
“Guess what else?” Cesar added, his voice rising. “Francisco Fregado, Frank the Mess?
He flipped his hand at her, like a prod: Go on, say something. Shel’s body sagged. A feeling of unreality numbed her for a moment, then a damning sorrow took hold. “How do you know?”
“The reporter, him or this photographer, I don’t know.” Cesar inspected his bloody sleeve. “But you should have seen them, El Zopilote, the rest of them, working it out. ‘Does Felix Randall know? Does he know but think we don’t? Will he still be interested in the woman?’ Round and round, till they finally threw up their hands. Hey, Plan B. The hostages are history. Now we go, set up an ambush like they did to us and cut off their balls.”
Spotting the Chanaco by Humberto’s side, he staggered over to the bottle, trying to peel off the left sleeve of his jacket. He trembled and gasped from the pain. Once he had the sleeve tugged down beneath the wound, he picked up the bottle and poured the liquor over his bloody arm. He fell against the wall, gritting his teeth, emitting a woozy howl of pain.
Shel tried to get up. Seeing her move, he pulled the gun from his belt and charged over, pulling back the hammer with his thumb.
“What did you tell them?” he said.
To the gun, Shel said, “Tell who?”
“Don’t fucking play games with me,” he shouted. Saliva dripped from his mouth. He was shaking.
“There was a doctor,” she said. “He came in with him.” She nodded toward Humberto’s corpse. “The doctor called you romantic. He wanted to know what you told me.”
Sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip. “What did you say?”
“I said we talked about the squatter children. About the rain. The trees.”
He wagged the gun at her, grimacing. “They tried to kill me,” he said, and began to weep. Eyes clenched shut, he lifted the gun to his face as if to hide behind it. “Motherfuckers. Stupid fucking cocksuckers. And Pepe, of all people, they choose Pepe. The fool. Started reaching for his gun while he drove, like I wouldn’t see. I jumped on it, pressed the barrel into his belly and shot him with his own fucking gun, the asshole. He tried to crash the car. Went into a spin, almost went over, he got off a round…” He inspected his arm, tugging at the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt, wincing. “Left him there by the road. Sorry piece of shit.”
He turned so that his wounded arm lay between him and the wall. Using his legs, he pressed his upper body against the lifeless arm to stem the blood or at least dull the pain. He grimaced, eyes shut.
“I said nothing that would make them want to kill you,” Shel told him. “You’re the last person I wanted dead. We had an agreement, remember?”
He laughed, and when his eyes opened they regarded her with terrifying bitterness. “Stop lying to me.”
“I don’t have the strength to lie.”
He turned toward her, pointing the gun. “Walk,” he said.
“I can’t.”
He stumbled toward her. “Walk, or I kill you here.”
Shel found herself staring into the gun barrel again. He pressed it to her forehead.
“Get the fuck up,” he hissed.
She lowered her eyes. Her glance settled on the picture of her in the newspaper clipping. Danny, she thought. He was trying to find her. Frank was dead, she’d have to deal with that sometime, but Danny was alive and doing everything he could. He’d come out here hunting, risking his life, and all that was asked of her in return this minute was to stand up. Walk.
She rolled onto one haunch, put her hands to the floor and tried to pull her legs up beneath her. With effort she squared them under her body, but the moment she tried to apply weight and rise they toppled beneath her like sand.
Cesar grabbed her hair, pulling her up. “Stop acting.” She flailed at his hand and his grip on her hair broke. He tottered back and in the same moment she found herself possessed of the rage and terror she needed and she rose, half on her feet, leaning against the wall.
They stared at each other.
He tucked the gun into his belt again and reached out his arm. He grabbed Shel’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulder. She tried to get her legs to work, but they wobbled beneath her and every two steps she fell. Without the help of the wall she couldn’t support her weight.
“I’m going to carry you,” he said.
He bent at the knees, leaned his shoulder into Shel’s waist and rose up under till her torso leaned across his back. He spread his legs, the better to bear her weight, and lifted her off the ground. It was like she’d drowned; he was carrying her from the river. Her weakness made her body all the heavier and he lunged sideways for the wall so they wouldn’t tumble to the floor. “Let me down, I can walk,” Shel said, but with a howl of determination he shoved off from the wall again. Extending his free hand toward the door, he adjusted her weight on his shoulder and staggered toward the opening.
They made it through, then toppled headlong into the mud of the root cellar, floundering there in a tangled sprawl of arms and legs, trying to get traction in the muck. Using one of the cobwebbed shelves, Shel clawed her way to her feet. “I’ll pull myself along, just give me your shoulder,” she said. He got to his feet, came up beside her and she reached her arm across his body as before. With the other arm she dragged herself shelf to shelf, hopping on the stronger of her legs. They fell twice again before reaching the wood plank stairs. She stared up through the hurricane doors at the dark sky. When he put his good arm around her waist, she told him, “No,” gently, preferring to drag herself up the stairs on her own, out into the drizzling night.
The wind swept through the marigolds, the eucalyptus and the oak trees, combining with the rain to create a gentle, constant hiss. The car stood idling twenty feet away, headlights forming a corridor of light in the rain. A bullet hole had punctured the windshield just to the right of the steering wheel. A spray of blood marbled the shattered glass. Another bullet had shattered the driver’s side window, leaving behind a webwork of fissures circling out from a jagged hole.
She pulled herself to her feet, standing erect on her own for the first time in hours. Cesar came up beside her, offered his shoulder. She reached her arm across it, and together they made it to the car.
In the easterly distance, perhaps a mile away, a searchlight scoured the low winter clouds. Closer at hand, just beyond the eucalyptus trees, wood fires burned beneath the awnings in the squatter camp. The rust-eaten vans and trucks formed an arc around the fires to form a shelter against the storm. The children were out of sight, and Shel guessed someone had seen the bullet-ridden car pull up, or heard the gunfire from within the house. Only the adults remained outside. The women tended the fires, feeding them with scrapwood. The men, wearing straw Stetsons and ragged coats, sat in their folding chairs beneath the awnings, motionless as stones.
From one of the vehicles, a radio blared. As Cesar eased Shel down into the passenger seat, he stopped, listening to the tune. An ugly grin appeared.
He turned the car around and headed out the gravel road flanked by the eucalyptus trees. The fires of the squatter camp faded behind them. Around the first bend a man’s body appeared, facedown in the road. Cesar put the car in park and removed a pearl-handled
“I’d like to leave a message,” he said, as though speaking into a phone.
He opened the door, tottered out into the rain and knelt down beside the body in the mud. Resting one knee on the dead man’s arm, he began to saw at the wrist with his knife, cutting through the muscle and digging at the
