Swimming with the Angels

by Colin Kersey

  “Yeah?” She snorted. “What about Stu? What about the guys that are chasing you?”

  “What’s Stu going to do? Get a bigger bat? Shoot me? He nearly killed me already.”

  I studied the sunlight illuminating a spider web in the stern. “I don’t know about the others. Maybe I will study kung fu. Become a Ninja warrior. I don’t know, Valerie.”

  “My Ninja warrior.” She smiled. She put down the bottle. Then she hugged me. It hurt like hell, but I was okay with that.

  “Let’s just sit here and rest for a while, okay?” she said. “I am tired.” She yawned, then leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “Are you going to stab me? If you are, I’m going to need another bottle of brandy.”

  “I’m through making promises,” she mumbled. “Or believing them.” She took another drink from the bottle.

  We sat there for a long time in the sun-dappled interior of the rotting boat. I may even have dozed off. I woke when she began to tell me another story about her mother:

  “Not long before she died, Momma made me go swimming with her in the big pond. I was terrified. I had been swimming in a lake before, but she was always there beside me, holding onto me. ‘Won’t the trout bite me?’ I asked. I remember running my fingers all over her face trying to understand. Her head was nearly bald from the chemo.

  “‘Relax and float on your back,’ Momma said. ‘They won’t bite you.’ At first, she held onto me, but then she let go and I heard her moving away.

  “I cried, ‘Momma, don’t leave me.’ Maybe it was my imagination—I was only ten—but I thought I could feel their fins brushing my skin as the trout swam near me and it scared me. ‘I can feel them!’

  “‘Silly girl,’ she told me. ‘Those are angel wings. You are swimming with the angels now.’”

  I thought the story was ridiculous. Likely her mother had been close to the end and suffering from a chemo-induced fog. But if you were a young, blind girl about to lose your mother, teacher, and best friend to a deadly disease, the memory was something to hold onto.

  We sat quietly, not saying anything for another half-hour or so, until Valerie sat up suddenly.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Outside the boat, I could hear Patsy pacing, a low growl in her throat.

  “Is it Stu?” I figured Stu might be coming to give me another whipping. I glanced at my watch, but it was broken. “What time is it?”

  “Shhh.” Her hand covered my mouth. “How many would come for you?”

  I scrambled up from the seat. “What do you hear?” I whispered. I could not hear anything except Patsy growling. “It’s probably just your father and Vonda looking for us.”

  Her violet eyes were huge, but she had an oddly peaceful look on her face. “I hear screaming. Vonda’s screams. There is a bit of an echo. I think they are in the barn.”

  I marveled again at her extraordinary hearing. Patsy’s growling was louder now, too. Yet I could hear nothing. “You stay here while I check it out.”

  She clung to my arm. “We could stay here together, hide until they are gone. I will hear them if they come this way.”

  I struggled to tear away from her grip. For being so tiny, she was surprisingly strong. “I have to go, Valerie.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t deserve this.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  I looked into her amazing eyes. She did not seem upset by her sister’s screams. “No one deserves to be hurt because of me, least of all you and your family.”

  “Then I am going, too.”

  “No.” I peeled her arms away. “Promise me you will not go anywhere. Just stay here, be quiet and keep Patsy quiet, too, if you can.”

  She nodded, a tiny smile edging her lips. “Okay, kemosabe.”

  I hugged her for a moment. “I will come back for you.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I ran back the way I had come, limping from the pain in my hip and stumbling over tree roots hidden in the long grass, my heart threatening to erupt from my chest.

  I hoped Valerie was wrong and that what her keen ears had heard was Stu returning in a rage to continue taking out his many frustrations on Vonda. Because if the cartel killers had arrived, there was little hope of survival for any of us except possibly Valerie, but only if she remained hidden in the Lucky Lady.

  I was concentrating on trying not to trip as I ran and did not see Stu until he had a hand over my mouth and had thrown me up against a tree. “Shhh,” he warned. “I think Vonda and Virgil have been taken captive. I need your help.”

  I nodded.

  “This way.”

  We veered toward the direction of the shed. I was just a step behind him when we burst into its dark confines and both paused in surprise. The normally locked closet door stood wide open.

  Then I heard a voice behind us, “Looking for this?”

  Some things you wish you could forget. Like a sin whose stain will never go away no matter how often you repent and try to scrub it away. When I spun around, I recognized the man I had spotted through the viewfinder of the camera as he stood on the pier aiming a gun at us on the day Heide was murdered. Now he held the shotgun with double barrels pointed at us.

  “This way, señores.” He motioned with the gun. He had small teeth and wore a goatee and mustache in the shape of an anchor. When he spoke, his mouth barely moved.

  Catania was right. The cartel had not quit looking and had somehow managed to find me. The fear that had stalked me for several months—ever since that doomed Saturday in Newport Harbor—suddenly fled, leaving a feeling of eerie calm. All the uneasiness that had gripped me was replaced by the certainty that I was about to die. At last, the running, hiding and secrecy would finally be over. I hoped they would make it quick.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The two of us were ushered at gun point into the barn. Sunlight streamed in the large doorway, illuminating Virgil who was sitting in one of the office chairs with his hands fastened behind his back and Vonda whose hands were tied to the steering wheel of the John Deere riding mower. It was obvious that she had been crying and that she had put up a fight. Her blouse was missing a few buttons so that her bra was exposed, her jeans were torn and dirty and one shoe was missing as if she had been dragged.

  “Look what I found,” the man called out. He motioned Stu to sit in the other chair and fastened his hands behind it with a cable tie. Then he shoved me with the barrel of the shotgun so that I stumbled and fell before the other killer. “Here is la cabron who messed up your leg.”

  I looked up at the woman identified as Ramona Gutierrez on her mug shot who had shot me that fateful day in Newport Harbor. She was taller and slimmer than I remembered, her skin lighter than the man’s. Her hair was now blond, and a fine scar etched her cheek, but her blood-red lips were the very same. The face I recalled in my nightmares was cruel, but up close she was good looking, perhaps even beautiful once. Before she became the angel of death. She held a gold-plated pistol with a long barrel in one hand. It looked like the same one she had used to shoot me and kill Heide.

  Flash. Boom.

  “My goodness. Look who we have here.” She laughed. She used the gun’s barrel to turn my face toward hers. “Ouch! You do not look so good, my friend. What happened to your face?”

  “Have you not got anything better to do than hunt for me?” I said.

  “You have not answered me. Was it something to do with her?” She pointed with the pistol at Vonda. “What do you think, Arturo?”

  “Probably the tall one had something to do with it,” Arturo said. He used the shotgun to poke Stu in the back. “Speak up, señor.”

  “The bastard fucked my wife,” Stu said.

  “Ah, I see. How awful for you.” Ramona turned back to me. “He does not like you, amigo.” She smiled with perfect teeth that had either been bleached or were as false as the tone of her voice.

&nb
sp; “Frankly, I don’t like you either. What about you, ‘Turo?”

  The other man grunted.

  “Arturo does not say much, but what he can do with a coat hanger is truly inspiring.” She smiled again. “I think maybe no one likes you. It seems that we do the world a big favor by killing you.”

  I wished now I had drunk more of the brandy. The false invincibility I had briefly felt in the Lucky Lady was long gone. “Just get it over with. Kill me and let them go.”

  “Not so fast.” Ramona tapped her leg with the barrel of the pistol. “You see what you did?” As before, she wore a dark-colored sweat suit. Now, however, her right leg was encased in a leg brace from the thigh to the ankle.

  “Think that’s bad, you should have seen the boats.”

  Ramona swatted me in the forehead with the gun barrel, hard enough to break the skin and hurt like hell, but unfortunately not hard enough to knock me out

  She shifted her weight as she studied me. “You made my life very difficult. Now I must take pills every day and night.” She frowned. “You even managed to ruin my fucking sex life, not that it was ever that great.”

  Blood dripped into my right eye and down my cheek. “Next time you decide to kill an unarmed woman, or a little girl, maybe you should think twice.”

  Ramona uttered a low growl that reminded me of the inhuman scream I heard following the boat crash.

  “You are very brave when you are behind the wheel of a powerful boat, but what about now, hmm?” She traced my jawline with the barrel of the gold pistol. “Not so much, I think.”

  I hung my head. It was abundantly clear that I was a turtle astray in the carpool lane, an instant away from death. I could envision a lonely grave marker in a county cemetery, no one knowing my real name, who I really was, what I aspired to, how I lived, and who I loved. But, if I were only half as brave as I once thought I was, perhaps I could still do something to save the others.

  “You sound like an intelligent woman,” I said, hoping to flatter her. “Why not let them go? They had nothing to do with it.”

  She crossed her arms, the pistol resting against her good leg. “Tsk, tsk. I do not think you understand the gravity of the situation you have put these people in,” Ramona said.

  Virgil’s face and neck were inflamed, the cords of his neck standing out as he strained against the cable ties that bound him. “Will somebody tell me who these people are and what they are doing trespassing on my property?” He glared at me. “Was this your doing, young man?”

  I wiped the blood from my eye, the better to see the injustice I was responsible for causing. “These people killed my wife and her friend and tried to kill me.”

  Vonda spoke for the first time. “Why? What did you do?”

  “My wife stole money from where she worked. She didn’t know it was theirs.”

  “I thought you said she was killed by a drunk driver,” Stu said.

  Vonda ignored him as did everyone else. “What has this got to do with us?” she asked.

  “It’s got nothing to do with you,” Ramona said, “and everything. You helped him hide from us.”

  “That ain’t fair,” she said. “We didn’t know nothing about it.”

  “Fair?” Ramona laughed. “What is fair? Can you please explain this concept to me?”

  Vonda did not answer.

  “When I was ten,” Ramona said, “my mother and sister were raped, tortured and killed by members of the Mexican Navy. They used my eleven-year-old brother for target practice while I hid beneath our house. Why? Because my family would not tell them where my father was hiding. You think that was fair?” Her red lips were curled as if smiling but her eyes were black abysses.

  “After several days living on the streets, begging for food, my father found me and sent me away to a private school in San Diego followed by San Diego State University. I had to beg him to let me join the cartel with him. It took more than a year before he finally gave in.”

  She turned toward Vonda. “I am very sorry to be the one to tell you that this day is not about being fair. No, señora,” she said. “As you are about to learn, life is not fair.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Virgil said. “We might have prepared for these devils.”

  “I told you he was a world-class fuck-up,” Stu said. He squirmed against the tie that secured his hands but could not free himself.

  “I know where the money is,” I said. “Let them go and I’ll tell you where it is.”

  Instead of looking pleased, however, Ramona appeared disgusted. “You expect me to believe you know where the money is now, when you are living here in this shit hole?” She waved the gold pistol in the air.

  “What money?” Vonda’s voice squeaked.

  “Oh, dear!” Ramona laughed. “Such a bad joke you play on these poor people.” Arturo chuckled.

  “He never told you how his wife stole one hundred million US dollars?” Her voice suddenly changed, becoming deeper. Any pretense of civility was gone. Even the light in the barn darkened as if her evil humor had obscured the sunlight filtering through the barn doors. “Probably he never told you that I killed her. Or that Arturo killed her business partner and his family. And now, quite sadly, I must do the same to all of you.”

  “Jesus, Gray! How could you do this to me? To us?” Vonda red-rimmed eyes stared accusingly.

  “If you don’t believe I know where the money is, why would you drive all this way to kill me and these innocent people?” I asked.

  “You mean in addition to this?” Ramona tapped her leg. “This is not reason enough for you?”

  “It is time,” Arturo said. He tapped his wrist.

  “Don’t rush me, ‘Turo. I’ve waited for this moment for a long time.”

  Ramona smiled at me as if talking to a child. “When you have seen as much killing as I have, you realize two things. First, there is no God looking out for his people. Second, the only thing that matters in this world is keeping score.”

  “This isn’t a fucking baseball game,” I protested.

  “In sports,” she continued, “the team at the top does not just want to win. No, they run up the score to send a message to the other teams. That is why we go to all the trouble to find you. In addition to the Mexican Military and your own DEA, there are other cartels that would destroy us if they could find any weakness.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” She leaned toward me. “Well, I confess, there is another reason. After all, in this business, I have my own reputation to protect. That is why we leave no one alive and nothing behind.” She waved the gun at the others. “Nada.”

  “We waste time,” Arturo said.

  “Patience, ‘Turo. Just a few seconds more.” Ramona looked down at me. My knees were complaining from the concrete floor, but I barely noticed.

  “I will tell you what ‘fair’ is. ‘Fair’ is when I make you watch your friends die first. ‘Fair’ is when I kill you last as payment for causing me so much fucking pain and for making us work so hard to find you.”

  I could think of nothing to say.

  “Bring me the tall one, Arturo,” she ordered.

  “Si.” The old man stood the shotgun against the office door, then grabbed the chair Stu was sitting on and wheeled it to the doorway a few feet from Ramona.

  “Wait.” I pleaded. It was the least I could do. “The money is in a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

  “No, amigo. I do not listen to you. I think you’re a comedian.” Ramona’s ruby-red lips and beautiful, scarred face now bore the same cold-blooded visage I had spotted when she shot me. “For your amusement, you get to watch the one who injured you die first.”

  Arturo poured gasoline from a two gallon can on Stu, drenching him.

  “Ah, shit,” Stu said as he realized what was about to happen. He squirmed violently as he tried to free his hands from the plastic zip tie that bound him.

  Vonda screamed. “No! Please, stop!”

  “Stop this evil right no
w,” Virgil shouted.

  Arturo pulled a black handgun from his waistband, racked the slide, and placed the gun against Virgil’s neck.

  “Save your voice for your prayers, señor,” Arturo said. “I think you are next.”

  “I pray that you both roast in hell!” Virgil said.

  I was the only one who did not have my hands tied and was Stu’s last possible hope. Before I could move, however, Ramona stuck the cold barrel of the pistol in my face.

  “Don’t move or I will shoot you in the testicles,” Ramona said. “It won’t kill you, but you will wish you were dead.”

  Vonda shrieked.

  Ramona squinted as if in pain. “That one hurts my ears. Next time she screams, shoot her.”

  “You can shoot her for all I care,” Stu said. “And go ahead and kill that bastard, too.” Stu nodded toward me. “I had nothing to do with stealing your money. I won’t say anything. Just let me go.”

  “What do you think, ‘Turo? Shall we let him go? He says he won’t say anything.”

  The other man smirked.

  Ramona withdrew a Zippo lighter from her jacket with her free hand and flicked it open “Now no one else will dare to fuck with our money.”

  “Hey, bitch,” came a voice from just outside the doorway. “Say something.”

  Ramona gaped open mouthed at the sight of a fey, naked Valerie standing just outside the barn door, blood running in rivulets down her arms and legs, fresh gashes across her forehead and stomach. “Madre de dios!”

  Valerie’s hand whipped the knife almost faster than the eye could track it. The blade winked in the sunlight as it turned end over end. It caught Ramona in the base of her throat. She dropped the lighter and fired wildly as she stumbled on her bad leg. The bullet skipped across the floor and disappeared out the door as a thundering boom reverberated in the barn.

  There was a whoosh as blue flames scurried across the floor. Stu kicked furiously to move the chair away from the flames as they raced toward his feet.

  Arturo dropped the gas can and fired his weapon, the shot knocking Valerie backward. Gasoline burped from the toppled can’s opening and spread upon the concrete floor, joining the previous pool. The acrid odor of gasoline and gunpowder saturated the heated air in the barn.