I glance down at Amanda, who has slid around me, and is now clinging to her mother’s side.
“Who are you?”
“Never mind that.”
“You work for my father, don’t you?” She’s figured out that much.
“The only thing you need to know is that I don’t work for Esteban Ontaveroz.”
“Esteban?”
“There’s no time to talk,” I tell her.
“Why should I believe you? All you wanna do is take my child.”
“If that’s all we wanted, you’d be on the floor gagged and bound,” says Susan.
“Why would Esteban want me? I didn’t tell them anything.” She’s talking about the authorities.
“It’s what he thinks you might tell them that has him worried.”
“Stick around a few more minutes and we can all discuss it with him,” says Susan.
She has a point.
“How did he find me?”
“There’s no time to talk about that now.”
“It couldn’t be him,” she says. “It was Suade’s people who called me.”
“Suade is dead.” I feel a shiver go through her body. The expression on her face is like she has been sucker-punched, a dazed look.
“She was murdered nearly three months ago,” says Susan. “It’s been in all the papers up north. Don’t you read?”
“I don’t get the papers down here.”
She’s no longer struggling. I loosen my grip on her arms. Step away, just a few inches. Amanda takes the opportunity, snuggles in closer to her mother.
“What about the TV?” I nod toward the set on the counter.
“The dish outside is broken. Spanish station’s all I get.”
“The man who called you, did you recognize his voice?” says Susan.
Jessica shakes her head, looking around at the walls of the kitchen as if for answers.
“When did he call?” I ask.
“Late this morning,” she says.
“When?”
“I don’t know. Maybe eleven. Just before noon.”
It’s clear they couldn’t have called from here in town. They would have been here by now.
“We don’t have time to talk about it.” I grab Jessica by the arm, pushing her toward the door.
“Who killed Suade?” She stops, turns and looks at me, wanting to discuss this.
I don’t tell her that her father is charged with the crime.
“Esteban?” she says.
“That would be my guess,” I tell her. “Looking for you.”
“Oh, shit.” She looks at Amanda. “We gotta go. Gotta get outta here.” She’s finally getting it. Reality is setting in.
Absently, I pick up the checkbook that’s fallen on the floor. I try to hand it to Jessica, but she’s already out the door, pushing Amanda ahead of her.
“The car’s down the back road,” I tell her.
Jessica grabs a purse hanging over the back of a chair in the living room. Susan’s carrying the beach bag and her purse. Suddenly she realizes she’s left the tape on the counter. She turns for it.
“Leave it.” I push her out of the kitchen ahead of me, as I take one last glimpse at my watch in the light. If Jessica was expecting them in half an hour, they’re running late.
We race through the living room, out the front door, not bothering to close it behind us, and head up the path toward the parking area behind the condos. Susan’s in the lead. Somehow she’s gotten ahold of Amanda. The child is running full out, her little legs struggling to keep up. I position Jessica ahead of me, where I can watch her. She’s having trouble in heels.
We’ve covered about twenty-five yards, a quarter of the distance down the dirt road to the concrete cistern and the Jeep, when a set of headlights suddenly veers onto the road below us. The dust kicked up by our feet hangs in the light like lasered smoke. Before we can move, the four of us are framed in the dual beams of light.
Whoever is driving hesitates. The car comes to a grinding halt. It just sits there, its engine idling, headlights staring at us. For a second I think maybe they’re just nosing onto the road, making a U-turn.
Then suddenly the car lurches forward, wheels kicking up dust, throwing gravel.
Instinctively, we know. Susan is first; she turns and starts to run up the road pulling the child behind her. She stops, tries to pick up Amanda, but the child is too heavy. I grab Susan by the arm, push her in the direction of the condos, and scoop up the girl in my arms.
We run back toward the condos, Jessica falling behind, her heels not working on the dirt road.
By the time we reach the parking area, the car, a vintage dark Cadillac, has already passed the cistern and is racing up the road, Jessica a dozen steps behind us. I put Amanda down. Susan takes her by the hand, down the path toward the condos. I wait for Jessica. She catches up. We run down the path toward the condos. I’ve got her by the hand, retracing our steps. Without thinking, Jessica heads toward her condo.
“No. Not that way,” I tell her. “There’s no way out.”
Instead we run down the terraced path, jumping sections of steps, two and three at a time. Jessica falls in front of me. I nearly trip over her. She skins her knees but barely pauses. Hopping on one foot, then the other, she pulls off her high heels and tosses them into the shrubbery. She is now barefoot, more fleet. We make it to the level of the swimming pool, down the stairs to the garages, where we catch up with Susan and Amanda.
We stop for a second, try to catch our breath. Car doors slam shut above us on the hill. I count three. Then one more. There are at least four of them, men running, the sound of footfalls.
“Vámonos.”
They’re coming down the path.
We start running, this time toward the street, under the wooden sign, LAS VENTANAS DE CABO. We race toward the antique shop on the corner, where Susan and I had first glimpsed the condos that morning. The lights are out. There is nothing open, no signs of life. The tourist area is still four blocks away. The nearest taxi stand is closer to eight.
We run under the veranda of the shop, around the front, down three steps into the street, and across toward the plaza.
Amanda is about to collapse. The child is out of breath, confused and scared. I grab her in my arms, throw her up over my shoulder, and we cut down the hill along the side of the plaza. Susan has now taken up the rear, beach bag and purse over her shoulder.
We cross the street below the plaza. Only two more blocks, all downhill. If we can make it, we can lose ourselves in the crowd of tourists.
I’m running, jogging with Amanda, her head bouncing on my shoulder, concentrating on the steep incline of the street, as it curves toward the right. The footing is treacherous, stone stairs loom up out of the dark. Like an obstacle course, the steps extend only two or three feet across a seven-foot-wide sidewalk. The rest is a sheer drop with no railing, and little light, a four-foot fall onto hard concrete if you’re not looking.
I’m trying to watch the steps, so I don’t look up until I reach the bottom. That’s when I see them across the street, about a block down. The one on this side has just slammed the driver’s-side door and is crossing the street. The other one is coming around the front of the car.
Trying to look like tourists, being casual, in dark suits and black shirts, just two studs out on the town, when one of them blows it. He makes eye contact with me.
Instantly he knows that I’ve made him. It’s the driver, the man behind the wheel of Cyclops the night they followed me from the jail.
As soon as he realizes, they start to run, closing the distance between us. One of them reaches inside his coat. When his hand comes out, it’s holding a pistol. I’m frozen in place. Jessica, then Susan come flying down the stairs, ne
arly piling into us.
Susan tries to keep going. I grab her arm, try to stop her for a second, then realize it’s our only chance: the intersection to a small side street about twenty yards down. We run downhill toward the two men.
One of them stops, takes aim, pistol up in a two-handed stance.
“Get down.” I nearly drop Amanda on the sidewalk. We crouch down behind cars parked at the curb, lower our silhouettes and keep moving.
The gunman loses his target, doesn’t shoot, finally lowers the gun and starts running toward us again.
We reach the intersection before they do. Now it’s a full-out race, up the street. I’m lugging Amanda, her head over my shoulder.
Up ahead I can see tourists moving on the street. Neon signs, a walled courtyard, and an iron gate leading to a restaurant. Music, the strains of “Kokomo.”
Jessica is ahead of me. She starts to slow down, false sense of safety. These men have been programmed to kill, and they’re going to do it.
“Don’t stop.” As I say it, a bullet ricochets off the building a foot from my head, followed by the crack of the shot like a muted firecracker a fraction of a second later. No one seems to notice. The crowds keep walking up ahead. People ambling in and out of shops.
We race across the street toward the restaurant, its courtyard and neon sign. There’s a guy out front, wearing one of those traditional Mexican white cotton shirts, the kind they wear to weddings, greeting customers, working the courtyard gate from inside, watching us as we run toward him, wondering, I can tell, why we’re working up a sweat on a warm summer night.
This thought coincides with the crack of air as the bullet passing my ear breaks the sound barrier. The guy’s face at the gate assumes a vacant, quizzical expression. A perfectly round red circle appears with the suddenness of a fly landing, just above his right eye. An instant later a river of blood gushes over his face, turning it into a crimson mask. The report of the shot reaches us just as his knees buckle. He hits the stone pavers like a sack of dirt, his crumpled body blocking the closed gate.
A young woman sitting at one of the tables outside in the courtyard realizes what has happened. She screams, others turn. Panic sweeps the courtyard. Chairs are overturned as people run into tables. A large umbrella tips over and starts to roll.
I push hard against the gate, shoulder against wrought iron. Another shot. This time it hits stone over my head. I push harder, sliding the dead weight of the man’s body maybe eighteen inches until it jams up against the gate. I send Amanda through.
“Run,” I tell her.
Instead, she stands there looking at me, frozen in panic.
Susan and Jessica follow her through the gate. Susan grabs the child’s hand, nearly jerking her off her feet, and hauls her toward the restaurant, Jessica grasping for Amanda’s other hand trailing in their wake.
I step through, look down at the man on the ground. His eyes are wide open, death trance. There’s nothing I can do, so I use his body. Close the gate and push him up against it. Another round whizzes by.
I move deeper into the courtyard, out of the line of fire. By now the yard is empty of people. I’m the last to retreat down a wide course of steps that seem to span thirty feet, like the mouth of some giant whale, hot salsa music erupting from the bowels. I find myself in a disco and bar, subterranean flashing lights.
Near the door the place is in a panic, people trying to crawl over one another to get away.
One of the bouncers is looking over from the bar that spans one side, wondering what the hell’s going on. People are turning over tables, running for the exits.
Deeper inside, the panic spreads slowly, dampened by the noise. Couples on the dance floor are oblivious, their bodies gyrating to the music, timing their moves to the flashing colored lights that shoot up through the floor with each beat.
Susan topples a table and gets behind it with Amanda, Jessica on the floor behind them.
I’m watching the door, waiting. I join them, and suddenly realize there’s no protection here.
One of the bouncers, cue ball for a head, standing at least six-four, two-eighty, heads for the entrance.
“No!” I shout at him above the music.
He gives me a look, like Who the hell are you? Whatever it is, he’ll deal with it. He disappears up the stairs and two seconds later I hear shots, three or four, rapid fire, almost imperceptible above the percussion of the music. The man’s body rolls back down the stairs. The dance floor empties. People disappear, vanish into the walls. The two bartenders are suddenly gone.
Jessica looks at me. “They want me. Take Amanda and go,” she says.
“No.” Amanda’s crying.
“Over behind the bar,” I tell them. It’s a long serpentine affair running with the curve of the wall, the only place left to hide.
Jessica’s not moving, but Susan grabs the child. Amanda’s arm gets hung up in the beach bag on Susan’s shoulder, so Susan takes a second and drops the bag. As she does, I see it.
“Go!” I’m not even paying attention to them any longer, my mind lost in thought.
Jessica tries to argue with me. I push her toward the bar.
She finally follows Susan, retreating on her hands and knees across the open floor.
I reach inside the beach bag, grab the small towel and can of ether. On the floor is a book of matches knocked out of one of the ashtrays as the tables went over. I pick them up and put them in my pocket.
I try to turn the cap on the can. It won’t budge, so I wrap the towel over it and try again. It comes loose. I unscrew it just one turn, then carefully keeping the towel over the can, I turn my face to avoid the fumes and scurry across the floor toward the stairs. I take a long sweeping arc, staying to one side to avoid becoming a target, and stop with my back against the wall, at one edge of a broad stairway.
There’s a good thirty feet of open space across the base of the stairs. There are only four steps up to the level of the courtyard outside. One of the gunmen is centered in the opening above. I can see him backlit against the lights from the courtyard outside. Fortunately he’s looking into a darker cavern with occasional flashes of light from the strobes under the dance floor, the music still blaring.
Now I’m committed. I unscrew the cap from the can and toss it, then turn and race across the opening, this time with the towel off the can, leaving a smoking stream of ether on the floor in my wake.
He takes a shot. It goes wide. Another shot. His friend has joined him. The bullet hits the floor where I’d been a stride earlier. What they’re seeing is a moving picture, flashing strobes.
They fire one more time at the flickering image, but it’s too late. I’ve made it to the other side, back against the wall, at the near end of the bar.
They work for an angle. I can hear their feet on the stone steps above. One of them puts three rounds into the wall above my head, plaster flying, covering fire, while his friend presses to the wall on my side and comes down two more steps. I can hear his breath around the corner.
Now there are voices outside in the courtyard. The second gunman, the one up in the courtyard, is talking to whoever is there. I realize their compatriots from up top have finally found us. That means there are now at least six of them. They’re regrouping. Final assault.
I feel in my pocket for the matches. Shake the can. It has maybe an inch in the bottom still, the opening covered by the towel.
Down on one knee, I pour out the remaining contents, carefully forming a thin stream. Shaking the last few drops as I huddle behind the bar. I struggle to suppress a cough, the effects of the ether. I’m getting dizzy, going cloudy.
I hear footsteps on the stairs. Book of matches in one hand, can in the other, I rise up on my knees and throw the can across the room. There’s a hail of gunfire, flashes matching the strobes on th
e dance floor as two of the gunmen are silhouetted in the opening.
“Paul.” I hear Susan screaming, turn to look. Jessica’s running across the open floor. Amanda’s gone after her.
Jessica senses it, turns, and stops. “No!”
They fire again.
The flash of my match hits the stream of ether, just as the bullets rip through Jessica.
A devilish dancing blue flame streaks across the floor, igniting in a fireball that sears my face as I am blown onto my back, behind the bar, by the blast.
Hideous screams as one of the gunmen twists and dances toward the opening at the end of the bar. As he comes into view he’s a human torch. Flaming, he falls nearly on top of me. I crawl away from him like a crab on my back, feeling the oxygen as it’s sucked from my lungs, out of the cavernous room.
I turn and scramble under darkening smoke to the other end of the bar. By the time I get there, Susan has thrown her body across Amanda’s, to protect her.
I hear the crack of gunfire outside, some of it automatic. I can’t see a thing through the haze of smoke and flickering flames. The other gunman has joined his friend. His body lies smoldering in a heap at the foot of the stairs.
THIRTY-THREE
* * *
I crawl across the floor toward Susan and the child. The heat over our heads is intense, the black smoke ominous. She and Amanda are shaken, but otherwise unharmed. The three of us crawl toward Jessica ten feet away. Her eyes are open, she is breathing, heavy labored gasps, frothing blood from her nose and the corner of her mouth. She looks at Amanda, smiles, and her eyes take on the trance of death.
I drag her toward the stairs under the ceiling of smoke. Susan follows on her knees, then tries to staunch blood from the wounds, alternately giving Jessica mouth-to-mouth, wiping blood from her own lips with the back of her hand as she does it. All the while Amanda is clinging to her mother’s arm. It is a futile gesture from the inception. I think Susan and I both know it. But we can’t quit, if for no other reason than Amanda.
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