by David Levien
Paul’s mind raced and his heart hammered as they drove. He had a thousand questions fighting in his brain and the result was that none reached his tongue. He looked over at Behr’s left hand gripping the steering wheel as he stared intently out the windshield, only turning occasionally to check their coordinates in the desert by instinct like a seasoned mariner in familiar waters.
“Frank,” Paul finally asked after a moment, “how did you get the password?”
“It’s not important,” he said.
“No?” Paul’s eyes were on Behr’s left wrist, now naked of his watch. Behr saw this and switched hands on the wheel.
“It’s not important,” Behr said again.
The car bounced low into the ditch that ran alongside the road, then the suspension gathered and they surged up onto the surface. It had appeared like magic, a line dissecting the empty wasteland that stretched endlessly in all directions. Behr spun the wheel and made the left turn as if he was pulling into his driveway. They drove on, nothingness ahead of them, until it seemed they would continue on forever into an endless void. And then, sticking up out of the desert like antennae, they saw the light poles. Paul swallowed. Behr’s hand tightened on the steering wheel like he was trying to wring an elixir from it. The coiled wire atop the fence came into view next, and after that the whole place. They could see the two vehicles they had seen arrive from their vantage point: the pickup and the well-kept Cadillac Eldorado. Wandering over from one side of the entrance came the gate guard, the day man every bit as large as his nighttime counterpart.
“Hopefully he speaks some English and we can use this password. Otherwise …”
Paul nodded. He glanced at the backseat, where a .12-gauge pump shotgun rested beneath a beach towel.
“Smile. We’ve been here before.”
They stuck wide grins on their faces and Behr raised a hand in greeting.
Ponceterra entered the room where he’d been keeping the rubio. He was already shucking his shooting jacket as he kicked the door shut. The room was at least twice as large as any other and easily the nicest one in the place. He was losing potential profits by not having the room in use, his concession to his heart, but it would be worth it when finally things had begun. He felt his own inner clock racing and wondered how long he would be able to remain patient. He looked at the rubio, who took a single step toward him. Hope sprung alive in him and he felt his mouth wet with anticipation. The boy crossed the room toward him. Perhaps his patience had paid off. The rubio was finally coming close.
“¿Qué pasa?“ Behr said to the gate guard, a large man with narrow, suspicious eyes.
“Buenas, señores,“ the guard answered. “¿Qué quieren ustedes aquí?“ He had only opened the gate enough for himself to step up to the driver’s window.
“Ah,” said Behr. “Quiero visitar … Hablas inglés?“ The guard shrugged. Behr, running out of Spanish quickly, went on in English. “We’re sportsmen. Clients. ¿Entiendes? Our friends brought us here before.” Behr produced his last hundred-dollar bill. The guard took it, his eyes narrowing further. But he didn’t open the gate for them. Instead he put his hand on his pistol. It was clear the man knew someone unwelcome might be coming.
“Get out the fucking car,” he said, and when Behr hesitated, he kicked the door.
“Easy. Easy there, friend,” Behr said, slowly pushing open the car door to step out. “Pajarito. That’s what we said last time. I should have said that first. Pajarito.” Behr waited for the password to have an effect. It was not the one he expected. “¿Problema?“ he asked. As he spoke, the guard began to draw the gun.
Paul saw the sap Behr shielded with his body as he got out of the car. He had not yet risen to his full height when he swung the sap and connected. The guard’s teeth flew through the air like popping corn. The man sagged back a few steps, ropes of blood falling from his mouth to the dusty ground near where he’d dropped his gun. Most men, inexperienced in these matters, would panic and crumple from the pain of the blow. This man gathered himself, turned back toward Behr, and advanced.
Targets. Behr’s mind’s eye went wide, seeing the man as a whole, not looking at any part of him in particular. Knees. Groin. Bladder. Ulnas. Saphe-nous. The man drew into range and Behr flew at him, closing the rest of the distance, allowing him no space. He raked the man’s eyes. It was not a hard blow, but his fingers made contact with an eyeball, gouging deep. The guard’s hands flew up to his face. Behr went up the middle with a swinging kick and caught the guard full in the testicles with his shin. The man was suffering involuntary spinal reactions now, and no amount of training or practical experience could help him. He doubled over at the waist, hands going to his groin, his chin extended. Behr passed on the chin and instead delivered the sap to the side of the guard’s neck. It sounded a dull thwack as it caught the vagus nerve. The man shut off and landed heavily on the ground. Behr stepped over him, rolled him to the side, pushed the gate open, and headed back to the car, where Paul had slid behind the wheel.
The time was now. All sound and thought fell away. He felt small and weak and that it would be easy for him to die. But he did not care anymore. Across the small expanse from him the Fancy Man babbled in Spanish and smiled. He wanted more than anything to erase that smile. He forced his feet and body to move in a single direction. The smile bloomed bigger on the Fancy Man’s face but froze when he saw it coming. His hand rose up from behind his thigh, where he’d hidden it. He drove the sharpened spoon handle into the Fancy Man’s heart. Or what would have been the heart if he’d had a proper weapon. As it was, the sharpened spoon handle lodged in bone and the remnants of muscle that covered the Fancy Man’s wretched organ. The man screamed the high-pitched shriek of a woman that dissolved into pained snorts.
Esteban heard the shriek from inside the room down the hall and it stopped him from what he was doing. He wiped his bloody hands on the front of his pants as he ran down the hall. He tried the knob and found the door locked.
“¿Patrón?“ he called out and banged on the door. “¿Patrón?“ He put an ear against the door and finally heard Don Ramon’s voice.
“Está bien. Todo es tranquilo. Tranquilo …” came through the door.
“¿Necesita algo usted?”
“No, nada“ was all that came back. Esteban waited there for another moment, but on hearing nothing further, he returned down the hall to continue his work.
Ponceterra rested on his knees for a moment and slowly realized that the blade hadn’t killed him and was not going to, that it was a flesh wound. He peeled open his shirt for a closer inspection, the fine linen shredding around the embedded metal. He stood and felt a surge of power run through his body. Whether it was seeing his fresh blood or his own inner clock, he decided the wait had gone on long enough. Circumstance had brought him here today. And today it would begin at last. He worked at the cravat around his neck, his fingers fumbling at the knot in their excitement, and he realized he had been right, that he could live forever. I CAN LIVE FOREVER. He heard the words in his head. He felt triumph and confirmation, and also desire. He looked toward the rubio. The veil of the special had been lifted. After all his kindness and patience, this is how the rubio had repaid him. The boy was a piece of meat to him now, and it was time to feed. He moved toward the boy, speaking low.
Eres mi posesión, mi tesoro. Eres mi carne. …
And that’s when the noise started.
Behr held the shotgun at port arms and twice kicked the front door hard near the knob. The fiberglass door bowed but didn’t open. He’d have it with another half-dozen tries, but he didn’t have the time. The car waited behind them, and beyond it the body of the guard lay motionless. Behr leveled the shotgun and fired, spending a shell blowing away the knob and chunks of the jamb. The door swung open. He handed the gun to Paul.
“Four rounds left in it.” Behr could scarcely imagine a scenario in which Paul would get the chance to reload. “Don’t forget about those dogs.”
&nbs
p; They entered the building. Behr pulled out his pistol and led the way into a fussily decorated parlor. Someone had made an attempt to create an elegant old Mexican look but had succeeded only in making it cheap and tawdry. Behr nodded down a hallway lined with closed doors and Paul advanced that way while Behr continued on into a sitting room.
Paul kicked the first door open, falling to the ground for cover as he entered. A man wearing a holster, his gun already drawn, shot a naked, dark-haired teenage boy twice in the back and then turned the gun on himself, putting a round through his own temple before Paul could get to his feet and do it for him.
Behr registered the shots as he had made his way through the empty sitting room and went through a closed door. He found himself in a large dormitory-style room with three or four sets of bunk beds. A warm breeze greeted him as a metal grate had been peeled back and a window smashed. Looking out, Behr could see the lithe bodies of four or five dark-haired teens racing over the horse crippler and, as their feet were bare, hopping in pain, before making it through the front gate, which was swinging open and still abandoned. They continued on, around sagebrush and tarbush, and into the distance.
He left the room and reentered the main part of the house when behind him he heard the clink of a metal chain, then a growl, and turned to see the dogs coming at him in a staggered pair. He let them come. Their teeth bared and eyes mad and black, they were a tableau of fury. He raised his .44 at the lead animal’s open mouth and fired. The dog slid to his feet in a heap, its face blown off by the hollow-point round. Behr heard the word “Mierda!“ through the ringing in his ears caused by the shot. Out of the corner of his eye Behr saw the man who had released the dogs turn and run. Before Behr could redirect his weapon, the second dog leaped. Behr leveled a forearm and the dog went for it like it was a training exercise, colliding with Behr and taking him to the ground. He felt a bolt of lightning shoot through him as the Presa’s teeth went through his jacket, shirt, and then the flesh of his bad arm. The dog, a writhing mass of power, ripped its head from side to side, threatening to dislocate the arm. When it had and the arm was dead, Behr knew the dog would release it and move for his groin or his throat and he’d be done. He gouged the dog’s eye with his thumb, but the animal ignored it, so Behr took to fishing around in space with his right hand. Behr realized that when the dog had brought him down, he’d dropped his gun. …
Paul continued on through two other rooms that contained shag carpeting, neatly made beds, and temporary-looking fiberglass sinks but were empty of people. He pushed the last door open. A slim, aged man came toward him, shirtless, covered in blood and wailing incomprehensible Spanish. A silver piece of metal protruded from his chest. And against the wall, partially obscured, was Jamie. He was taller now, very thin, and with blood on his hands. Their eyes locked in a split second’s recognition, which Paul broke by gun-butting the wailing man in the side of the head as he tried to barrel out of the room. The blow contained more than seventeen months’ worth of frustration, agony, and fury, and the man went sideways, his skull yielding to the shotgun’s stock like an overripe melon, then collapsed to the ground and didn’t move again. The man’s breathing became a gurgle, weak and irregular, and then grew inaudible. Paul moved jerkily across the room. It seemed his legs would hardly function, and his knees wouldn’t bend. He looked into his son’s eyes in wonder at the brokenness he saw there. He reached out and felt his boy’s shoulders, thin but strong under his hands. He was alive. Paul grabbed his son in an embrace.
“Dad,” the boy said, the word muffled in Paul’s chest. “They stole my bike, Daddy. …”
“Jamie, shh,” Paul said, then disengaged and spun toward the door as he heard someone enter.
Get up! Behr commanded himself. Get the fuck up, Frank. He could squat four hundred pounds easy, and though the dog weighed a third of that, having the thing swinging from his arm changed the equation. He managed to roll to a knee and drove the animal against the wall. Thin wood paneling buckled and snapped free, but the dog didn’t disengage. Behr tried to drop his weight on the dog, to crush it, but the thing writhed and squirmed and endured no damage. Behr’s feet were beneath him now, and moving. Improbably the image of a blocking sled flashed in his mind from his high school football days. He continued on a few steps and the struggling pair crashed through a temporary bar setup. Broken bottles rained down around them, and Behr felt his hip grinding in broken glass. He found a bottleneck with his loose hand and drove it into the underbelly of the dog. The glass just crumbled and could not penetrate the dog’s thick hide. Finally the Presa let go of his arm, but there was no relief. It lunged for his throat. Behr tucked his chin. The dog’s skull slammed into his jaw, and he was almost knocked out by the blow. The dog sunk its teeth into Behr’s upper chest and hung on. Behr threw himself down on the animal again, beginning to lose hope. They landed among the broken glassware once more, and also on a cutting board and a half dozen limes. And a paring knife.
The shotgun was leaning against the wall where Paul had rested it, and it may as well have been in the car for all the good it would do him, for coming at him quickly, with smooth, assured steps, was a sinewy man with blood speckled all over his shirt and face and smeared on his pants. That was all Paul had time to register as he was grabbed around both arms and had his feet swept out from under him. He went down hard on his shoulder and ribs, the air crushed out of him. A tunnel of blackness swallowed him for a moment and then opened back up into a searing flash of white light.
Paul felt the man atop him, lifting, driving sharp knees into his midsection. Paul struggled and rolled from side to side, but found his every movement checked by the man’s weight. The man rose up, the violence on his face making it piglike, and drove a punch down at Paul’s chin. A slight turn of his head at the last moment was all that saved Paul from having his jaw crushed. The punch still landed, though, causing Paul’s head to bounce off the floor and his vision to swim. Paul felt his breath choked off as the man jammed a forearm across his windpipe. Paul was utterly unable to move, as if a vise secured him to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jamie kicking his attacker in the side, but with no effect.
“Run, Jamie,” Paul said, or hoped he had managed to say aloud as he felt his strength slide away and his vision dim once again. He recognized unconsciousness and death coming at him from the near distance. He bucked his hips and clawed out in desperation, but to no avail. Then there was a thud, repeated, then repeated again. Paul felt it more than heard it, the basslike vibration coming through the man who was killing him and into his own body. The man relaxed over Paul, his body dead weight now, lurching forward and going slack.
Paul took in a huge gout of air and then, with a great effort, pushed the man off him and looked up to find Victor standing there, covered in blood.
“Victor?” Victor held the shotgun in bleeding hands and appeared to be missing a few fingers.
“Yo lo necesito,“ Victor said through broken teeth, and held up the shotgun.
Paul nodded, took Jamie by the arm, and exited the room. Victor, standing above the fallen man, swung the door shut.
Paul and Jamie came upon Behr, bleeding and big-eyed, in the narrow hallway.
“My god,” Behr said at the sight of the boy he’d stared at a thousand times in photos. “Is he … ?”
“We’re gonna go, Jamie,” Paul said. “Can you?”
“Yeah,” the boy answered.
“Can you, Frank?”
“Follow me,” Behr said, gathering himself and raising his handgun. They followed him down the hall and out through the carnage of the house. Furniture was turned over and broken in the main area. The smell of gunpowder and the thick copper stink of blood were in the air. There were bodies. Paul saw two dead dogs sprawled on opposite sides of the room. They encountered one last guard, who was in the process of stealing something from a lockbox. He might have been the night gate guard, though neither Behr nor Paul could be sure, having only seen him through
binoculars. Behr leveled his handgun. The man looked up and then ran out through a back door at the sight of them.
The sound of one, then another, shotgun blast reached them from inside as they made the car. Behr looked to Paul and gripped his gun.
“Victor,” Paul said.
“Victor?”
Jamie slid into the back and Behr lunged into the passenger seat. Paul started the car and began to drive. He expected the crack of a bullet from some unseen guard to tear his head away at any moment.
“Get down,” he said to Jamie, who did, lying across the floor in the back. Behr slumped lower, too, kicking off a shoe and peeling off a sock, which he pressed against one of his wounds. Paul rooster-tailed the car out of the gate, which hung open and still abandoned. No shot came. Paul fought to control his breathing, his sides heaving for oxygen, overloaded with adrenaline. He spit up in his mouth and let it go out the window, not taking his foot off the accelerator. Tears slicked his face.
“Jamie, get up now. I need to see you.”
His boy, impossibly, appeared in the rearview mirror. Paul thought for a moment that he himself had been shot back in the house and he was dying, and this was his death-moment fantasy image. But the moment went on and on. Paul got control of the car. Jamie was really there. Paul flashed on Carol, waiting at home for him, for them, to return. In his mind burned an image, of her face exploding with light, a light he could barely remember, in the instant when she saw her son again. Paul reached back with a hand and Jamie took it.
The dirt road gave way to gravel, and finally they were on asphalt again. They merged onto the main route, joining other cars and large trucks heading north. Mexican wind blew in the open windows. A cordon of federales’ cars passed them going southbound with lights and sirens rending the night. Paul glimpsed Jamie in the backseat, staring out the window, incomprehension and barrenness on his young man’s face. They used dirty T-shirts and what was left at the bottom of the water bottles to clean themselves up. Behr wrapped a shirt around his tattered forearm. They kept driving, looking out every window and then at one another. It wouldn’t be long now. They’d be at the border soon.