by Paula Paul
“All right. I’ll take care of these three. The rest of you get busy loading the boxes.”
“And you!” Maureen said again, her eyes on Angel this time. “I didn’t see you over there in the corner.”
“Hello, Maureen.” Angel’s voice was calm, polite even. “Those jeans look good on you, but we have a designer pair in your size at the store. You’d look marvelous in them.”
A faint smile played at Maureen’s lips. She opened her mouth as if she was about to speak, but instead she gave a quick glance at the men in the room and said nothing.
Webster looked first at Angel and then Maureen. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“We sell designer clothes on consignment,” Angel said. He smiled at Maureen.
Webster frowned and looked at each of them again. “You sell designer…What are you? Some kind of fag?” he asked, turning to Angel. The smile Angel gave him was dazzling, maybe even flirtatious. Webster started to lunge at him, but Maureen stopped him.
“Leave him alone. He’s no fag.”
Webster sneered at her. “Your boyfriend? A little young for an old broad like you, ain’t he?”
“How would you know?” Maureen said, with her own sneer. “I’m betting I’m too much woman for you. I’d scare the shit out of you.”
“Enough of that!” P.J. shouted. “These three are going outside with me. I’ll take care of things.” He waved his gun toward Irene, Adelle, and Angel. “The rest of you stay here and try to keep from killing one another. Or better yet, don’t try.”
“We got no time to kill nobody,” Webster said. “We got to get this stuff loaded.”
“I’n not going outside!” Adelle said. “I’n not going to let anyvody kill ne. Certainly not you.” She pointed a long finger at P.J. “Irene said you were a nice nan. She even said she liked you. Irene doesn’t usually like anyone. Esvecially not nen.”
“Will you get her outta here before I kill myself!” Webster said.
Adelle sat down and folded her arms across her chest. “I’n not going.”
Irene looked at Adelle, annoyed at first, and frightened for her, but in the next second she sat next to her and folded her arms in front of her, just as Adelle had done. “I’m not going, either.”
Angel appeared momentarily confused just before he sat down in the same posture. “I’m with them.”
Irene saw P.J. frown, then his face went white with something that looked, oddly, like fear. “What the hell?” he said, glancing from one to the other of the three who sat in front of him.
“You’ll have a really vig vess if you kill us here.” Adelle was still holding P.J.’s handkerchief to her swollen lip.
“Fuck it!” Sagan said. “Just kill ’em. To hell with evidence!” He grabbed the gun from P.J.’s hand and aimed it at Irene first.
Chapter 18
Getting out of the house was easier than Rafael thought it would be. There were more windows and doors in the Delgado hunting lodge than there were in all of the houses in the village of Pecos. It was easy enough to unlock one of the doors at the back of the house just by turning the latch to release the deadlock. He’d done just that after he made a quick check on what was going on in the basement. He knew Irene had seen him, and he tried to send a mental message that he was going for help. He wasn’t sure she got the message. He didn’t know if gringos understood the principle.
Although getting out of the house was easy, getting away from the lodge was a different matter. He had parked his pickup in the trees at the edge of the property, out of sight of anyone who might drive up to the front of the house. He sat there in the driver’s seat for several minutes trying to decide what to do. The pickup had a big engine. A loud one. Everyone in the house would hear it, and they had weapons they would not hesitate to use on him. The only thing to do was to start the engine and then tear out of there fast.
He was still considering when he saw the small moving van pull into the circular drive in front of the house. It was there to haul away those boxes in the vault. The ones marked FURS. The ones he knew damn well were not furs. He was pretty sure there was something else in there. Something illegal and worth a lot of money. You pick up a lot of information when you keep your ears open in a bar. What he hadn’t known, however, was who was behind it. That is, he hadn’t known until today. He would never have guessed it was P. J. Bailey. Damn good lawyer. Made plenty of money. It must have been that he was exposed to a lot of opportunity, associating with high-roller criminals the way he did. It must have been that he got greedy.
It wasn’t that he blamed P.J. for making money. He liked him. P.J. helped him out of a jam once, the time he got caught growing pot deep in the forest wilderness. P.J. got him off because he was able to show that there wasn’t any proof it was Rafael who was tending the patch. Never mind that the entire village knew whose it was. Never mind that there was evidence that someone had been hoeing weeds in the patch or that he was driving toward home only a couple of miles from the plot with a dirt-encrusted hoe in the back of his pickup when a cop stopped him.
P.J. got him off because he was a smooth talker. By the time he finished talking to the jury, even Rafael himself wasn’t sure he was guilty.
P.J. only laughed when Rafael tried to compliment him. He said it wasn’t that he was so smart, it was that the prosecution was lazy. “Can’t let ’em get by with that,” P.J. had said. Then, when Rafael asked him if he ever felt guilty for getting guilty people off, P.J. said, “Hell, no! I’m upholding Blackstone’s Ratio.” Rafael had no idea what that meant, and he’d had to get his granddaughter to Google it. He had only a dim notion of what people did when they Googled, and he had an equally dim understanding of the Blackstone Ratio after he read what his granddaughter printed for him, except that it meant something like it being better for a guilty man to get away with something than for an innocent man to be condemned. He’d turned it over and over in his mind and wasn’t at all sure he understood it, and if he did understand it, he wasn’t sure he agreed. All he knew was that he didn’t have to go to jail.
Not that what he was doing was so bad, anyway, he reasoned—just growing a little weed for his own use and to share with friends now and then. It wasn’t anything like what P.J. was into. Big-time crime. He was sure it was big-time. You wouldn’t see that many fancy cars driving up there if it wasn’t big. They weren’t going up there just to spend the weekend hunting. He’d seen no signs of hunting rifles or other hunting gear, and he’d made it a point to keep his eyes open. Nothing visible when he glanced in the windows of the car in the bar’s parking lot. No one dressed like a hunter when they stopped by for a drink.
He didn’t want to believe P.J. was part of it. But the evidence was there. Just like that hoe in the back of his pickup.
While all of that was running through his mind, he still had his eye on that truck, sitting there with its motor still running while someone—it looked like a woman—was preoccupied with something in the cab of the truck. Maybe she was trying to figure out how to turn off the motor. In the next instant it occurred to him that maybe God was watching over him. Maybe God had set it up this way.
With that loud truck motor running, he could start his own motor and leave with no one noticing. Once the motor started, rather than gunning the engine to move away quickly, he moved slowly, giving the pickup as little gas as possible, trying not to make too much noise.
Rather than driving to the front of the house and the road, he drove toward the forest and stayed along the periphery, where the trees had been cleared away as a fire break, mandated by the forest service. He knew the clearing circled the property and eventually led out to the main road. He followed the glade, grateful for his four-wheel drive because the stretch, though devoid of trees, was full of rocks, crevices, and stumps that an ordinary vehicle would never be able to navigate.
Once he reached the road, he sped up, driving in a dry mist of dust all the way to the tavern. It was late enough that plenty of p
eople, mostly men, had already begun to gather at the bar. He scanned the room, taking in who was there. He spotted the Sena brothers, José and Manuel. They were barely in their thirties, too young and hotheaded. Juan Hernandez sat next to them, trying to ignore them. He’d known Juan all his life, went to high school with him. He was trustworthy, but he was all crippled with arthritis now.
He saw Carlos Gutierrez with his back to the door. He was the same age as Juan and strong as an ox, perfect for the job. Rafael was still scoping out the room when Jeraldo Werner walked by, slapped him on the back, and asked him in Spanish what the hell he was doing just standing there gawking. Jeraldo was half gringo, but he’d spent his entire life in Pecos, which was his mother’s hometown. He’d inherited his brawn and height from his German father and knew how to handle himself. He’d even spent a few years on the rodeo circuit. He came home with a few broken bones, but he was still tough as a mule. Before Jeraldo and Carlos had finished their drinks, Rafael had enlisted both of them to help him.
“What is it, exactly, that you want us to do?” Carlos asked in Spanish.
“We got to rescue some friends,” Rafael said.
Jeraldo reached for his hat, which he’d placed on one of the tables. “Rescue from where?”
“Mariposa lodge.”
“Mariposa?” Jeraldo said. “Since when do rich people need rescuing?”
“It ain’t rich people,” Rafael said. “Couple of mujeres and a boy.” Rafael, like the others, was mixing his Spanish with English.
“Couple of women?” Jeraldo said. “What women?”
“Remember the two gringas that came to the bar several days ago? Not young chicas, but of a certain age, as they say in English. Nice-looking, too. Especially that one named Adelle,” Rafael said.
“Yeah, I remember,” Jeraldo said. “The one you were flirting with. You better hope your wife don’t find out about that.”
Rafael dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “She’ll forgive me. I was a little bit drunk. She’ll understand.”
“Like hell she will,” Carlos said. “Not when she finds out you’re wantin’ to rescue her, as you call it.”
“You got a dirty mind, Carlos,” Rafael said. “Adelle is up there with her daughter and some dumb kid named Angel. They’re in bad trouble. Coupla gringos holding ’em against their will. Crooks. Been usin’ that big old house to store something illegal, I think. When I left they was trying to get P.J. to take the women and the boy out in the woods and shoot ’em.”
“Who the hell is P.J.?” Jeraldo asked.
“My lawyer.”
“Your…Oh, the one that got you off for growin’…”
“Yeah, that one.”
“All lawyers is crooks,” Jeraldo said.
“Maybe so,” Rafael said, “I never woulda thought he’d be mixed up in something like this. I still can’t see him killing people, but you just never know. We got to get there before it’s too late.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeraldo said. “They probably got guns, don’t they?
Rafael nodded. “Probably.”
“So you want us to go up there and take ’em down when we ain’t got but one gun. That old pistol that used to belong to Carlos’s dad.”
“There’s three of us and two of them,” Rafael said. “Well, three, counting P.J.”
“Three against three,” Jeraldo said, mulling it over. “Any cops?”
“No cops,” Rafael said.
“Why didn’t you call ’em?”
“You kiddin’? Me? Call the cops?”
Jeraldo clamped his hat down on his head with a firm push. “Hell, let’s go. It might be fun.”
—
Carlos was wedged in the narrow backseat of the pickup, his long legs doubled up and almost touching his chin. Jeraldo’s half-German body was even bigger, so he sat in the front with Rafael.
As they approached the lodge, it looked like a dark hulking monster in the shadows of the approaching night. Rafael stopped the pickup almost one hundred yards away from the house. “Don’t want ’em to hear the motor. Don’t want ’em to know we’re here,” he said.
Carlos looked through the fading light toward the house. “No lights on. Maybe they left.”
“Their cars are still here,” Rafael said. “I can see both of them there in the driveway. See? Right there. But the truck’s gone. Guess they must have loaded up all their loot and left.”
“What kind of loot?” Carlos asked.
“The boxes are all marked FURS, and they all got it wrote on there that they are the personal property of Susana Delgado.” Rafael said.
Jeraldo snorted derisively. “How many furs does one woman need?”
“Don’t know,” Rafael said. “But I don’t think it’s really furs in them boxes.”
“Then what is it?” Jeraldo asked.
Rafael shrugged. “How would I know? I’m no criminal, so I don’t know how this stuff works.”
Carlos laughed. “The hell you ain’t. You got, what? Ten? Twelve plants in the woods.”
“What does that make you for mooching it off me?” Rafael said.
“Are we going in or not?” Jeraldo asked. He opened the door and stretched his legs outside.
“There’s a light on down low,” Jeraldo said. “Looks like it’s in the basement.”
Rafael nodded. “That’s where the loot is, or was. It’s probably in that truck I seen.” He squinted toward the house. “Maybe the truck ain’t gone yet. Maybe they pulled it around back, outta sight.”
“Where’s the women and the boy?” Jeraldo asked.
“Last time I saw ’em they was all in the basement,” Rafael said. He watched Jeraldo, who looked distracted. Rafael knew he was anything but distracted. Jeraldo was the thinker, the planner. He could almost see the wheels turning in his brain.
Carlos walked toward the edge of the forest and unzipped his fly. Before he had finished, the muffled sound of gunshots came from somewhere on the other side of the house.
Rafael heard them, too. There were three of them. One each for the two women and the boy.
Chapter 19
Harriet was doing her best to pay attention to what Dr. Phil was saying. A woman was sitting in a chair across from him, wiping tears from her eyes, while a man sat next to her wearing an angry look. It must have been some kind of marital problem they were discussing. Probably something having to do with sex—just the kind of thing to hold Harriet’s interest. But not this time. All she could think about was Adelle and Irene Seligman.
Adelle had been gone too long. Kidnapped, probably by that woman who’d tried to kill them. Adelle was most likely dead by now. That guy from the bar said she was still alive, but you couldn’t trust people you met in a bar. Especially not in a little town like Pecos. Everybody knew that.
She was worried about Irene, too. When she went by the store today, it was closed. Neither Irene nor Angel was anywhere around. She had tried calling Irene on her cellphone, but there was no answer. To make matters worse, Angel didn’t answer his phone. Had something happened to both of them?
“Why don’t you ask her?” Dr. Phil said, startling Harriet. She glared at the TV screen. There was a sulking teenage girl across from the woman. The show wasn’t about sex, it was about brooding teenagers, and Dr. Phil wanted the girl’s mother to ask her a question. Fat chance she had of getting an answer if Harriet was any judge of character. She punched the remote and made the screen go black.
“Are we out of bacon?” George called to her from the kitchen. He went in to the office only two or three days a week now. Trying out retirement, he claimed. Wanted to see if he liked it. Harriet thought he seemed to like it all too well. It wasn’t easy getting used to having him in the house all day.
“I don’t buy bacon anymore. Processed meat is bad for you.”
“Who says?”
“I saw it on TV.”
“And you believe everything you hear on TV? How in hell are you supposed to make a BL
T without bacon?”
Harriet was used to ignoring him. “I’m worried about Irene.”
“Irene who?”
“Irene Seligman. Adelle’s daughter. She didn’t open her store today.”
“Maybe she just wanted a day off.” George had his head stuck in the refrigerator, making his voice sound muffled. “What’s this stuff in the blue bowl?”
“No, it’s something worse.
“Worse than what? Bacon?” He sniffed at the contents of the bowl and carried it with him as he walked into the den, where Harriet still sat in front of the now-silent television. He was unshaven and still dressed in his robe and slippers.
“I’m afraid she’s gone to look for Adelle. I’m afraid she’s in danger. Maybe we should call the police.”
“My God, Harriett, that’s not necessary. Just call her.”
“I did. No answer. I’ve got a feeling she went up to Mariposa again. I think we should drive up there and find out. She might be in trouble.”
George shook his head. “She wouldn’t be stupid enough to go back up there after what you told me happened. Besides, the police told both of you to stay away.”
Harriet sighed. “I will call the police.”
“Whatever.” He sniffed the bowl again. “What is this stuff?”
“Tofu.”
“My God, Harriet! When did you start buying that?”
—
The receptionist at the police station asked in her usual too-cheerful voice if she could help Harriet. When Harriet asked to speak to the chief, she was told he was unavailable until Harriet told her she was Mrs. George Baumgarten.
“Oh, I think I just heard him come in, Mrs. Baumgarten,” the receptionist said.
There was a definite advantage to being married to George. They weren’t as wealthy as the Delgado family, but George made enough money to earn the respect of every public official in the city, especially when he opened his checkbook during campaigns like the race for chief of police.