“No te preocupes,” said César, very gently. “Él no va a estar vivo el tiempo suficiente para castigarte por esto.”
Belén positively beamed; for she was thrilled at the thought of Folsom’s imminent demise.
César began to make his way down the hall, with Lucie’s hand held tightly in his own. He had a plan, upon unlocking the lobby door, to shoot the secretary if she tried to interfere. But, fortunately for him, she was out.
He crept with Lucie into the dim room, and looked warily about. He breathed a sigh of relief, when he saw the door to Folsom’s office shut fast. He then tiptoed over to it, and put his head down to listen.
“If I know anything,” he whispered, “then I know that Tom Folsom is crouching somewhere behind this door, with his eyes glued to a camera, which is showing him my every move. He knows, he saw, that I shot Larson; and he has this apartment surrounded with his goons. So, when I let go of your hand, do not try to run away. They will shoot you dead, I promise you.” He sighed; shook his head; and went on, “I have lost everything already. If I want to get it back, I have to make things worse. Turn your head, Lucie, if you do not wish to see.”
Lucie, however, was far too morbidly curious to do any such thing. She watched, utterly riveted, as César kicked down the door with a single blow. She flew into the corner behind the jamb, when she spotted a man huddled behind the desk, with a rifle perched over the top.
“Stop where you are, Vicente!” he shouted. “Come one step closer, and I’ll kill you!”
César took that single step; but then leapt aside, in anticipation of the rifle volley. When it stopped, just long enough for its operator to reload, he dashed forward with the speed of a tiger, jumped over the desk, and tackled Tom Folsom to the ground. Lucie heard the momentary sound of his pleas – it was a pathetic and whimpering sound – before a loud pistol shot silenced him forever.
Perhaps we can’t feel too very sorry for, or commiserate very wholly with, a man who daily exploited, and never too long afterwards brought about the deaths of, innumerable African children. Perhaps we can’t so much as pretend sympathy, for someone who corrupted countless Mexican youths for his own gain, and to his own advantage. Perhaps we can’t fake empathy, even for something so tragically irreversible as death, for a gentleman who abused and misused, by the handful, innocent young women like Belén – who had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, and therefore were not very likely to lash out at their employer, or demand fair changes in their stations. It’s a hard thing, we say, even to make a play at evincing compassion for the plights of men like Tom Folsom.
And yet – the executioner made not a whit more noise than the dead man. Rather, he hovered for a long moment over the body, looking down at it very sadly, before he made the first motion to begin his intended quest. He was, of course, in search of Folsom’s safe.
For an inexperienced individual, this feat would have taken some time indeed; but César’s trained eye was perhaps only five minutes in the looking. The rest of the time was spent in the unlocking. This particular task enveloped the whole of thirty minutes, a period filled with César’s frustrated shouting, and Lucie’s carefully looking this way and that, on account of a genuine fear that she wasn’t long in the waiting for a violent death. Any moment, men would come bursting through the locked door of the lobby, and would, as César had cautioned, “shoot her dead.” An intense paranoia was settling over her, and she could scarcely feel her tongue in her mouth, or her toes in her shoes, for the effects of it.
She was so preoccupied with watching the door, and harnessing the strange, familiar wave of madness which was attempting to accompany her fear, that she didn’t notice when César finally came to her. Several times, while she was waiting for him, she felt her grasp on reality nearly lost; but she managed on each occasion, somehow, to rein it back in. The effort made her oblivious to César’s reappearance. She didn’t feel it, as he tried to yank her up on her feet. She didn’t feel it, when he patted her cheek. She did feel it, however, when there came suddenly a sharp, stinging slap across her face. Her hand flew to the spot, and she looked wonderingly up at César.
“I am sorry,” he said. “But I need you to move.”
So she got up to her feet, and positioned herself carefully behind him, as he started on his way out of the place. At the lobby door he paused, and looked back at Lucie over his shoulder. “There will be people waiting in the hallway,” he told her. “With guns.”
He reached under his shirt, and pulled out a second pistol.
“What do you have in there?” she demanded. “An armory?”
“Close enough,” he replied, as he handed her the gun.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not touching that.”
“Do you want to die?”
“No. That’s why I won’t touch it.”
“Do you want to live?”
She sighed very heavily, and took the gun in ginger fingers.
“You will have to hold it more tightly than that,” said César. “Hold it like you are shaking hands.”
“With a gun? Why would I do that?”
Lucie, for one, had not realized that handguns recognized such common forms of politeness.
“Would you just do it, Lucie?” César begged.
So Lucie tried. Still she held it awkwardly, but she thought it might be possible – if absolutely necessary – for her to get her finger round the trigger.
“Like this?” she asked.
“That will have to do. But do not point it at me.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Are you ready?”
“I suppose.”
With that, he stepped behind the wall, and motioned for Lucie to do the same. Once she had hidden herself, he threw open the door. Caught by surprise, the small group gathered in the hall made no move; and this gave César enough time to curl his arm round the jamb, and let off a few shots. More than one voice was raised in pain – and at least one sounded like a marked death-howl.
It seemed there were six men altogether. They stood in such close proximity, three of them had been felled by César’s practiced shooting-hand; and the remaining three did as he had done, and ducked behind the wall.
“We will have to make a rush at them,” said César. “On the count of three.”
“Wait!” Lucie cried. “I didn’t agree yet!”
“One,” he said.
“I won’t do it.”
“Two.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Three.”
César leapt from his place, and threw himself out into the hall. He landed, as he had intended, on his back, so that the first shots whizzed over his head. This gave him time to drop two more of the gunfighters. Sure as she had promised, however, Lucie didn’t follow him out into the hall; so she was utterly baffled when there came the sound of another shot, from behind César. This felled the last of Folsom’s men.
Now that there seemed no more danger of bullets, Lucie rushed out into the hall, to see whether César had been hurt. He appeared fine, but was busy looking over his shoulder, into the dark shadows of the hall. “Who fired?” he called.
Belén stepped, then, into the pool of light cast from the lobby. She held in her small hands a very large shotgun.
Of course César addressed her in their common tongue, and she answered him in it; but seeing as the exchange which followed was a little more lengthy than their last, we will simply tell you what it all meant. (The same shall be done, by the way, in conversations which will occur in the near future, between Clara, and an assortment of other individuals, as it should be fairly obvious that the words passed are foreign ones; but they may be somewhat tedious to decipher, in exactly the form they are spoken.)
“It was you?” César asked Belén.
“It was me,” she replied.
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
César tried to peer past her, into the darkness. “Are there others
?” he asked.
“They left two in the hall,” said Belén, “but I got them.”
“You got them?”
“Yes.”
“What can I say!”
She grinned. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m just glad you’re not dead.”
“Ah! That’s very kind.”
Lucie helped César to his feet, and together they followed Belén down the hall, to the door of the apartment which stood open. César peered out into the exterior corridor, and saw two dead bodies, leaking red stuff onto the carpet.
“You’re very good!” he said to Belén.
“My father was a soldier,” she answered.
“I see.”
They stood looking at one another for a moment. Belén seemed very happy, and César appeared almost mesmerized.
“In the case that you should, for any reason, need it,” he said, “I’ll give this back to you.”
He handed her the pass card. Then, as if some other important thing had presented itself to his mind, he darted his hand back into his pocket, and came out with a roll of bills. “This is for you,” he said to Belén. “I realize I just killed your employer. But this should help.”
“You – you give this to me?” she asked, looking in amazement at the money in her hand.
“I give it to you,” he said. “I’m sure that you need it, just as much as I do. Therefore I give you half.”
“Thank you!”
“We’re even, then, I think?”
“Not even close!” cried Belén, as she threw her arms around César. This time, he let her linger there a little; and when he deemed it time to go, he kissed her forehead very gently.
“I must leave now,” he said. “But I wish you the best.”
“And you!” she exclaimed.
“Goodbye –” he began; but his farewell was cut short, when he realized that he didn’t even know her name. She merely smiled, and answered, “I am Belén.”
“Belén! Well – goodbye, Belén.”
“Goodbye, César,” she rejoined. Then she smiled, and added, “I know your name already, because Folsom screamed it so many times.”
With a last, meaningful parting glance at Belén, César took Lucie once more by the hand, and hurried her back to the elevator. Lucie was very affected, perhaps even more than she had been by the dead bodies in the hall, by the look on Belén’s face. She said nothing to César, of what her real feelings must have been; but she stared wistfully after him, and then turned slowly away, with the ghost of a contented smile on her otherwise tortured face.
32
The Death Room
Once inside the car again, Cesár took what money remained in his pocket, and counted it out. Of course, he knew already perfectly well how much was there; but he felt the need to hold it in his hands, and to take in the very greenness of it, with a pair of wide eyes.
“It is a start,” he muttered. “It is a start.”
But then his face fell, and he dropped the money into his lap. “No,” moaned. “No, no – it is not nearly enough. Even if I had not given her half, still it would not . . . but how will I get it? How?”
“Not nearly enough for what?” Lucie asked.
“For Jiménez. Now Folsom is gone – but what about Jiménez? If I do not get him his money, he will have me killed. I must, I must get that money.”
“But how?”
Cesár looked seriously to Lucie, and stared at her for a very long moment. “That is exactly why I need you,” he said.
“What?”
“Just be quiet. We are going to a quiet place now.”
~
The place he had in mind, however, wasn’t by any means Lucie’s idea of a “quiet” one. Rather, he guided the car after about twenty minutes into a crowded street, strung with dim and dirty lanterns. There were people absolutely everywhere. They crawled all over, like ants in a hill. They divided into two groups as the little Toyota moved through, and swelled on either side of it like thick honey, or a heartbeat. Lucie was shocked, when Cesár parked the car directly beside the curb, and motioned for her to follow him out.
“Aren’t you afraid someone will take it?” she asked.
“No one will take it,” he answered. “They know me here. They know I would kill them.”
Though her mouth dropped open slightly, Lucie lost no more time in getting out of the car. She slid across the seat, so that she could step out onto the sidewalk, rather than the busy street. She huddled close to Cesár, as he started to move off.
The street was lined on both sides with apartment buildings. From many of the apartments there protruded small metal scaffolds, on which scantily-clad women were posing shamefully, in the hope of summoning some fellow below – preferably a fellow with a considerable amount of cash in his pocket – up to their rooms. In addition to these ladies, there were what seemed scores of others all along the sidewalk, who leered at César as he passed, attempting to lure him into the dark and narrow alleys at whose ends they hovered. One woman made the mistake of leering a little too heartily, and a little too closely; for when she came within about two feet of César, he raised his fist, and punched her directly in the nose, so that she went sprawling alone into her own alley, with a great quantity of blood spurting fiercely from her nostrils.
“Sabe usted quién soy yo?” César demanded of the bleeding woman.
“Claro está!” she cried.
“Quién soy yo?” he shouted.
“Cesár Vicente! Usted está César Vicente!”
“Es correcto,” said César. “Recuerde a tus amigas!”
“Por supuesto, Señor Vicente! Por supuesto!”
Having demanded whether or not the woman knew who he was, and being answered in the affirmative, César told her to remind her friends – obviously hoping that such a reminder would save him future nose-punching. With that said, he turned away from the woman; and the sea of people parted before him. “Filthy whores,” he muttered in disgust, as he tightened his grip on Lucie’s arm, and led her to the left through the door of one of the many buildings.
They went up two flights of stairs, and then down a long hall, till they reached the very back of the building. They turned into the last room on the left; and at the window of the room, Lucie could look down into the rear street, which was much darker, and much quieter than the one they had just left. The room was lit with a single dingy bulb that hung from the ceiling, and was furnished with only a single dirty-looking bed, and a moth-eaten old armchair. César collapsed into the chair, and then gestured for Lucie to lie down on the bed. “Some sleep will do you good,” he said.
But Lucie only perched herself on the end of the bed, and turned towards him. “What are we doing here?” she asked.
“We are waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for Manolo. He will meet us here.”
“Why?”
“Because Manolo always helps me.”
“What will he help you with?”
“Ay Dios mio, Lucie!” César cried. “Will you not go to sleep?”
“No.”
“Fine,” he muttered, as he slumped himself down in the armchair. “Then I will go to sleep. Have the goodness to keep quiet.”
Lucie sat up as long as she was able; but finally her eyes grew hot and weary, and she couldn’t keep them open any longer. She was forced to lay her head down on the musty pillow, where she would have been astonished (had she been able to see herself, that was) to know that she fell immediately asleep. But her sleep was broken, and restless, for her dreams were filled with blood and death. For a while she was tormented with images of what things she had seen that evening; but then her mind became clouded, and she was pained with the sight of Robert’s retreating back, moving away from her, never to return. Even worse was a picture of Clara, standing in the distance, and waving sadly – for she knew that they would never meet again.
Lucie snapped awake with a start. She didn’t thi
nk, at first, that there had been a reason; but then she heard the knocking at the door. César rose up to answer it, and a moment later, Manolo stepped into the room. He didn’t even look at Lucie, as he began a rushed conversation with César that she couldn’t understand. They talked fast and long; and after a while César looked to Lucie, with a grieved expression on his face.
“What is it?” she asked slowly.
“Manolo tells me that I have been given a deadline,” he answered. “If I do not get the money to Jiménez within three days, I will be killed.”
Lucie shrank back a little, and eyed him warily through the dim space that separated them. She didn’t know exactly what this situation could portend for herself; but she was sure enough that it couldn’t be anything good.
“But Manolo says that he has found a number,” César went on; “another number for your brother. It is another cell phone, another which it has been proven he used, to speak to one of his contacts. I want you to call that number, Lucie, and leave a message.”
“What will I say?”
César paused for a long moment before answering. “Tell him,” he said finally, “that he must bring me back the money. He must bring it back, all of it – or I will kill you.”
Lucie’s breath caught in her throat, and her heart beat painfully. “Do you really mean that?” she asked.
“Of course not,” said César. But she watched him closely; and she knew that he lied.
“Give me a phone,” she said.
Manolo took a phone from his pocket, and dialed the number for her. She listened to the line ring once, twice, three times – and then its mailbox answered. The message was automated, with a human voice sandwiched in between, which offered the name of the mailbox’s owner. The name was strange to Lucie, but the voice was Robert’s own.
There was a soft beep which signaled the start of the message. Lucie couldn’t keep her voice from breaking, as she began to speak.
“Robert,” she said quietly, as she clutched the phone in her hand, and squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Robert, it’s Lucie. I’m with César, and he knows you’re gone. He knows you’ve taken the money. He says you have to give it back to him – or he’ll kill me. I believe he’s telling the truth. Please, Robert – please come!”
Bella Page 20