by Ryan Schow
“I’ll leave you to her,” Isadoro said. Then: “I trust we can talk after you’ve introduced yourselves?”
“Yes, yes,” Cubidero said, shooing Isadoro out.
When Isadoro was gone, Eliana thought she heard something behind the door, a small scuffle perhaps, but then it was quiet and she was left with only this brute of a man.
“A young woman like you, kept only in the home to preserve your beauty—as Mr. Dimas has suggested—does this mean you haven’t had the company of a man before?”
Dimas? His name is Isadoro Dimas?
“It does,” she said, seeing all the ways she ached to send this monster to his maker.
“Are you wearing panties under this lovely dress?” he said, tracing a finger down her hip. She smiled, nodded her head slowly, seductively, her fake grin more than compelling.
“And a bra?” he asked, walking his fingers up her chest.
“Just this dress, these heels and my hairpin. But I can take that out if you’d like.”
He sniffed her hair, frowned then said, “I would have thought a woman of your propagation would smell more…fragrant. Like citrus, or sweet like a flower.”
“Shampoos like those smell good but dull the shine,” she said, unable to escape his body odor and trying not to gag.
His breath was like old cheese.
When he stood back, delight brightened his eyes, his dark complexion daunting. Seductively, he said, “Take your pin out slowly. You can’t rush a moment like this. Besides, I want to see your hair fall onto your shoulders. That’s the best part.”
His right hand hovered against his heart, his fingers fidgeting with anticipation. She saw the moment and smiled; slowly, gracefully, she took out the pin, her eyes on his eyes the entire time. Her hair cascaded down, his gaze following to where it fell below her shoulders.
She swung the metal hairpin at him in a tight, ferocious arc. The thick metal pierced his mouth, shattering his teeth in the process. She yanked the pin back out and punched him square in the nose twice before sending the mother of all kicks right up into his balls.
He folded forward with an ooof!
Wasting no time, because a girl her size could never hesitate, she grabbed him by his hair, jerked him forward with all her might, and quietly rejoiced when he fell face first onto the carpet with a moan.
Wasting not a second of time, she mounted his back, hairpin still in hand, her lithe body supercharged. She pressed the tip of the hairpin to the milky surface of his right eye, then lowered herself to his ear.
“I want you to see something with both eyes, but if you fail to cooperate, you will only ever see out of one eye. Or perhaps you will be difficult and I will be forced to cut out both your eyes and replace them with your broken testicles.”
He spit out a glob of blood and part of a tooth. The crimson red on his ivory white carpet was a startling contrast. From inside her dress, up against her breast, she withdrew the picture of Carolina.
“Have you seen this girl?”
“Si,” he said.
“Do you remember her?” she growled.
He started to laugh, then said, “We split that little bitch in two, then sent her away.”
“Where?”
“Far from here,” he said.
She dimpled his eyeball with the hairpin’s fine point. He began shouting for her to stop. Any minute now and his guards would burst in. Then what? Her sharp accessory was no match for automatic weapons.
“Where?!”
“Chicago,” he finally grunted out.
“I want a name and an address,” she said.
He gave it to her.
Then, laughing like this was some kind of a joke, in English, he said, “That little girl was one of the sweetest peaches we ever did destroy. She cried out for her mamma. For her aunt. For her grandpa.”
He didn’t think she could speak English, but her father made her learn early on with the hopes that she would one day leave Guatemala and start a new life in America.
“Did she cry like this?” Eliana snarled back in marginal English.
That’s when she went to work on his neck, stabbing it with a rabid ferocity so many times she lost count.
When she finally stood—when she saw the red mess on the white carpet, when she felt it on her face, in her hair, all over her clothes—she heartlessly savored a sense of accomplishment, and perhaps a bit of bewilderment.
She stood, spit on his corpse, then said, “Got you, cochinillo.”
Using the last of her strength, she rolled his big body over. Her chances of getting out of the mansion were slim to none. Mostly none.
“Killed by a girl!” she swore, then spat down on his chubby, dead face.
When she walked out of the room, she expected to die, but what she saw instead were two guards slumped over, dead.
The servant she saw earlier was waiting for her, the woman’s eyes frantic.
“We must go,” she said.
She took Eliana’s arm and rushed her to a laundry room where she said, “Clothes off. Quickly!”
Eliana removed her clothing. The servant wiped her down with a wet towel, cleaning away as much blood as she could manage. When she was done, she dried Eliana then gave her a long dress and heels that were too big for her.
“Come,” she said when Eliana was dressed. “Do not waste time.”
Eliana followed her, nervous because she didn’t expect to get this far, scared because now she was not resigned to death anymore.
When they got outside, the servant stopped. All the guards were dead. Isadoro stood over the last of them, taking the man’s weapon and checking his billfold for money.
“You did this?” Eliana heard herself ask, walking brazenly up to him, her heels slipping, but not so badly that she couldn’t walk straight.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Well…”
“I have to say, I’m glad you made it. It went well I presume?”
“He saw it my way.”
“Is he dead?”
“Very.”
“Good, let’s get you out of here,” he said. Then, to the servant: “Take what you can and leave as quickly as you can.”
When they left, Eliana began to shiver and then shake. What was happening to her? All she could see was that man’s red ending. The murder of the Federales. The boy’s terrified eyes and the girl sitting naked on the floor, holding herself, crying. When the tears came, the pain came harder. She tried to hold it back, but she couldn’t. As angry as she was at herself for folding to all this emotion, Eliana began to cry.
“It’s okay,” Isadoro said. “You can do that.”
She turned away from him, not looking at him or talking with him all the way back to her hotel. When she was there, she reached for the door handle, but he stopped her.
“Wait,” he said. “Are you done? I mean, is that it?”
“I’m done here, yes.”
“But?”
“I have a long trip ahead of me.”
“Chicago?”
“It appears Valenzuela’s men were right.”
He reached under the seat, took out a folded white envelope and handed it to her. “I put this together for you in case you lived. I almost didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you are an itty-bitty fish in shark infested waters, and women like you never survive.”
She took the envelope, thanked him and went inside the hotel, not even looking at the concierge on the way by. She still had the taste of blood in her mouth, and it was crusted in her hair and nailbeds as well. All she could think of was getting back to her room where she could wash herself clean.
While she had the name and address she’d sought fresh in her mind, Eliana tore away a flap of the envelope Isadoro had given her and wrote it all down.
She turned on the television for the noise, then opened the envelope to a thin stack of money. On any other day she would have rejoiced.
Instead, she opt
ed to unwind.
Eliana drew herself a bath, nearly fell asleep in the hot water, then double checked the door before crawling into bed naked. She wore nothing because nothing she owned was clean. If Héctor hadn’t left for the border yet, she would try to connect up with him tomorrow. If not, she’d have to find her own way into America. The problem was, according to the television, rogue drones had shot up dozens of miles of the border killing nearly two thousand Mexicans crossing over and upwards of fifty US border guards.
She was too tired and too rattled to even consider what she was seeing, so she changed the channel a few times, stopping on something mindless.
At that moment, she felt more relieved and more desperate than ever. She fell asleep with Carolina’s picture in her hand, tucked close to her heart.
And for a second, she almost felt hopeful…
Chapter Five
Isadoro was not starved for money, but he did make a modest life for himself in Juarez. With thick shoulder length hair, a medium length beard, a lean body and alert eyes, people tended to move away from him. They didn’t exactly cross the street to avoid him, but it was clear he was out of his element, yet perfectly in it.
Isadoro was a man who looked like he might want trouble, but that he could take it or leave it all the same. Rather than kill you, he would first seek to understand you. That was why he looked to the eyes; he was always searching for the stories they might tell. That was also why he worked so hard to hide his own eyes. To make them dead if need be. He was human, even if he didn’t feel like it most days, and in those more vivacious moments, if he wanted to, he could add a bit of life to his expression and become someone you might like, someone you might trust. Those were the two sides of Isadoro Dimas.
But now everything had changed.
As he thought about Juarez, the city he called home for nearly two years, he thought about how much money he’d made getting paid by one cartel to kill leaders of the other.
He hated these rodents, these self-absorbed cockroaches, but the job needed doing and he was the person to do it. Maybe he’d miss the life. Maybe he wouldn’t. What concerned him most, however, was the thought of going home.
He was terrified of the memories this would dredge back up.
The night Eliana killed Pablo Cubidero—something he thought impossible based on who Cubidero was and what little Ice knew of this young, pretty stranger—everything tight and constricting in his chest loosened up and let him go.
He didn’t care about his employer. The drug lord was as good as dead the second Ice walked through his front door anyway. But now Ice found himself wondering about the woman. This curious young chameleon. When they met, she smelled like ripe sweat socks and mildew, but with the bland look of a mud eel. Who would have guessed there was such a gift hiding beneath all that grime?
He turned over in bed, stretched, checked the clock. His eyes then fell on the woman beside him. She was not a pretty woman, but he didn’t care. Fifty-one year old Leidy boasted a fine body and had needs he could fulfill. She liked him more than he liked her, but together they agreed they didn’t want much more than sex together. She needed a break from being a mother and a widow; he needed to lose himself in the delights of a woman. For her, it didn’t hurt that she was with a much younger man, but Isadoro appreciated Leidy because she looked nothing like his wife.
The arrangement didn’t garner much consideration, but he feared a bond greater than just their physical connection had begun to form.
Isadoro inched a bit closer to the languid, Columbian-born woman. Gently, he ran his fingers through her hair—not for her pleasure, but for his. Aside from a sultry voice and eyes intense enough to stoke any man’s carnal appetite, the woman was a heavy sleeper. He pulled several loose strands of long black hair off her cheek, tucked them behind her ear.
Leaning over, he kissed her lightly on the edge of her mouth. The lips twitched just the smallest bit. A smile in the embrace of slumber. This was her happy place.
He though it best he leave her there.
Getting out of bed without making a sound, he collected his clothes and walked down the apartment hallway tho his bathroom where he silently closed the door. He never did like being without a shirt, not after what happened in Chicago, but with Leidy, his insecurities were unwarranted. She loved what he did for her. Also, she couldn’t care less about his past or the way he earned his money, for she was just a woman who took delight in being loved. While he was with her, while they were together, he became adept at filling all the little voids within her. The truth was, he was a better man for having her in his life, and it would be near impossible to leave her now.
Sadly, it was time.
Staring at himself in the mirror, appraising his features, his hair and his beard, he frowned at what he saw. He’d grown tired of the look. This wasn’t him. His eyes naturally dipped to the two pale discs of scar tissue on his chest. Spinning around, eyes still glued to his reflection, his gaze crawled over the landscape of scar tissue that marred his back. The large patch of skin that was burned so long ago concealed the two gunshot wounds, but not well enough to escape his scrutiny.
The entire mess blended together along the upper half of his back, a constant reminder to everything he would never be able to leave behind.
For this gigantic blemish, or because of it, Isadoro took painstaking measures to stay in shape. It was the only way to detract from the damage to his body. He also worked out the way he did to keep the anger, the aggression and the emotional turmoil at bay. The day he got those scars was the day he was given an impossible task, the day he succeeded and the day he lost everything.
With the clippers, he trimmed his beard to bare-blade length, then he used a pair of old shears to trim his hair. He slicked it back with what was left of an old bottle of hair gel, then cleaned up the residual clippings in and around the sink.
Twenty minutes later, in the mirror, he did not recognize the face looking back at him, but he did find recognition in the eyes. In those deep brown spheres, there was no way to exorcise the demons, or dispense of the ghosts.
He knew that now.
And his eyes, they were no longer his.
Isadoro was resigned to the notion that no matter the changes to his exterior, his occupation or the women he brought into his bed, he would always be a man too haunted by his past to make any kind of respectable difference in the future.
Fixated on his reflection, he was not upset with what he saw. He’d become the man he was before all this. Still, he was conflicted. He both loved and hated this face, for this face was still reasonably good looking, but it was also the screaming admission of a failed life. Not to anyone but himself. But this was enough. When he thought back to the night where everything went wrong, he could hardly wrap his mind around it.
Leidy stirred when he came back in the bedroom, but she did not wake fully. She pulled the covers up around her chin, her eyes still closed. He kissed her and she kissed him back, but then she rolled over, taking the sheets with her. She’d be upset when she woke alone. It would take her no more than twenty minutes to go through the place and realize he was gone, and then she’d be even more upset that there was nothing more than a broken TV and some dirty dishes to take. He left a stack of cash in the nightstand with a note saying she was the most lovable women he’d ever met and to take care of herself and her child.
When he left the apartment for good, he didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see it or he might turn back and forget he ever met this violent young enchantress, Eliana. She was just a means to an end, though. A traveling companion at best.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.
It was probably a mistake going back home. Everyone thought he was dead, but perhaps it was time to show them otherwise and make amends. He was not one to think in such broad strokes, but then Eliana came along and Isadoro got what he came down to Mexico for: an end to Pablo Cubidero, the devil known as The Hatchet.
; No less than ten times now he asked himself if he was upset that she’d been able to kill Cubidero when that was all he dreamt of. He hadn’t expected Eliana to live, let alone kill the head of such a ruthless cartel. In a round about way, Cubidero was responsible for so much of what had happened to Isadoro and his family. It was his cartel that supplied the human slaves to America, his cartel that kicked off Ice’s vigilante crusade in the first place. He wasn’t unhappy with Eliana for doing what he’d set out to do, but he had been looking forward to killing the pervertido himself. So now that he was thinking about it, yeah, he was a little peeved.
Perhaps this was a sign from God. Perhaps it was time to address the past.
Eliana was headed to Chicago. For him, Chicago was his home. Maybe this was indeed some kind of a sign. Or maybe he was just tired of living this life. Before he laid down and closed his eyes last night, he decided he was going with her one way or another. It was time he resurface. It was time he tell his brothers he was still alive. And it was finally time he tell what was left of his family that they were wrong about him, and that he was ready to set the record straight.
He staked out the hotel where Eliana was staying, then followed her when she left to the staging ground for the dangerous trek into America. She was with a group of people and a hard looking coyote he heard someone call Héctor.
Isadoro got close enough to see Eliana did the best she could to dirty herself back up, and that she was wearing that old green hat again. Just like the bar where he’d first met her, she had the hat pulled low over her eyes. She was unapproachable. He knew her well enough to know that what her eyes weren’t telling her, her ears would.
For that alone, he dared not get too close.
Instead he approached Héctor and said, “I don’t have an escort, but I’m told you might have room for one more. You’re Héctor, yes?”