As she spoke this supplication, she raised her eyes to César, but he wouldn’t look at her. Instead he plucked the phone from her hand, and spoke into the mouthpiece: “You come to the warehouse, amigo, as fast as you can get there. Manolo will be waiting for you. Bring the money.”
With this, he ended the call, and returned the phone to Manolo. “Go,” he said.
Manolo nodded, and took his leave. A moment later, it was only Lucie and César, alone together once more. They took their respective seats, and stared very hard at one another, each seemingly attempting to read the other’s thoughts.
~
Half an hour later, César’s phone rang. He snatched it up, and answered it as if it were a juicy steak, and he a ravenous wolf. He was fairly slobbering over it, as he shouted, “Hello?”
What followed couldn’t have actually been called a conversation; for César never said anything else. He merely listened, with a countenance growing graver and graver, and finally took the phone from his ear, to look at Lucie with a pair of solemn eyes.
“That was your brother,” he told her. “He says he will not come for you. He says he will keep the money.”
“No – no!” Lucie cried. “No – you’ve got it wrong. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t!”
“He would not?” César asked, with a very sad smile.
“He – he –”
Lucie covered her face with her hands, and uttered a rough sob. “I don’t know what he’d do,” she admitted.
“I know,” said César, as he rose to his feet, and crossed the room to lay a hand on Lucie’s shoulder. “I know what he would do. He would take my money, and leave you here alone. He would keep the money for himself, and leave you here to die.”
Lucie looked up with a start. “Then you – you really mean to kill me?”
“I must spend the next three days as well as I can,” he answered. “I must hunt for your brother as if I were a hound, and he a fox. I must smoke him out of whatever hole he is hiding in. I cannot have you spoiling everything, or telling Clara what happened tonight.”
“I won’t say anything!” Lucie protested.
“I am so very sorry – but that is what they all say, dear Lucie.”
“I promise, César! I promise you I won’t.”
“No,” he said, with a firm shake of his head. “Robert Benoit must be exterminated. With him you must die.”
“But why?”
“It is the way of the business.”
“Your business is a joke,” Lucie spat. “You’re nothing but a common criminal. You’re worthless! You’re a lowlife.”
César smiled patiently. “Given what I am about to do to you, you can say anything you like.”
“I don’t want to say anything to you, you filthy pig.”
“As you wish.”
He retreated to his armchair, where he sat with his chin on his fist, looking very thoughtful indeed.
“Aren’t you going to do it?” Lucie demanded. “Get it over with, you pansy!”
“First I must think.”
“Think? Think about what?”
“Do not worry, Lucie,” he said, as he looked up at her with grim determination. “I will make it so quick, and so painless!”
He fell again to whatever it was he was thinking about; and then he said:
“And besides, you know – it would not do for you to carry on with Clara, the way you have been doing. She should be with Tomás. She has always been with Tomás.” He sighed mournfully. “But I would have liked for you to be with me, Lucie. If you had chosen me, I would have tried to find a way –”
“To let me live?” she burst out. “You would let me live, if I loved you the way I love Clara?” She spit across the room at him, and sneered as it fell on the end of his shoe. “Oh, I hate you!”
“As you wish,” he repeated. “But spend your last minutes, perhaps, in thinking of something other than that. They will be your last in the world, you know. This, Lucie –” (he held up his hands, and looked all around) “– will be your death room.”
Lucie felt her toughness begin to ebb, and her resolve to break. “Will you,” she asked, with a voice that couldn’t help but quaver; “will you let me talk to Clara?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Do you think I am stupid? I must go on, after this, the way I did before. My sister cannot know that I am a murderer. You! – you are the lucky one. You will be dead.”
“Please, César –”
“No! That is the end of it.”
“Then kill me!”
“When I am ready.”
Lucie threw herself back on the bed, and cried in spite of herself. She covered her face with the dirty pillow, and sobbed quite to her heart’s content – though one might argue, of course, that a heart faced with the knowledge of its impending death can never be truly content.
After a while she sat up, and leaned back against the wall, looking out of the window and into the darkness, with not much of even a single thought in her head. But she noticed, as she sat, that the silence was strange. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t strained; but rather it was almost easy, with an inexplicable sort of unspoken harmony flowing from murderer to victim. Lucie tried to dredge up a hot coal of anger, so that she might throw it at César – like the devil threw one at Jack – and hurt him somehow; but she couldn’t seem to find one. In fact, she almost pitied him. She knew very well that his heart was in turmoil. Did she hate him? She couldn’t say that she did.
“It’s been good to know you, César,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s going to end this way – but you’re still my friend.”
César looked up with shining eyes. “Do you mean that, Lucie?”
“I do.”
“Ah!” he cried, as he ran his fingers through his wild hair. “Ah, no! I would rather you despised me!”
“Why?”
“Because you make it harder!”
“To do what?”
“To kill you.”
“Then don’t kill me.”
His face couldn’t have been more tortured, had someone been twisting screws into his thumbs. “I must!” he cried.
“Not necessarily,” Lucie returned.
César sprang suddenly out of his chair, and bounded to the bed with tripping feet. With one hand he held his gun, and with the other he clutched at the roots of his hair. His eyes were red and crazed. It seemed very much as if he had gone mad.
Lucie felt, suddenly, very sure of the fact that she was going to die. That fact, of course, had already been present in her mind; but now it seemed, with the nearness of the pistol to her face, somehow to solidify. She had been thinking, thinking while she watched the madness scroll across César’s face – and now she knew what she wanted to ask him. She wanted an answer, and truly, how much worse could it make things?
She recollected old Pablo. She remembered what he had said. The words had made no sense to her, at the time – but since then she had been turning, turning them over and over, until she found a place where they seemed to fit. When she heard the sound of the pistol shot in Folsom’s office, she had known. She had known, and now she knew – but still she wanted to ask.
“Do you remember old Pablo, César? Do you remember when we saw him?”
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“You kicked him quite a few times.”
“I do not remember.”
But Lucie didn’t hesitate. “Did you kill his son, César?” she asked. “Did you really do that?”
César’s tailspin seemed to escalate. He had closed his eyes, so that he couldn’t see Lucie; but now they flew open again. He seemed about to burst into tears.
Lucie couldn’t help but think, that he was quite the hardened criminal.
“Well, César?” she said. “Did you do it?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, César!”
But then Lucie paused, and pursed her lips.
“Although,” she added, “you did kill Pablo, too. So why should I be surprised?”
“I killed him to protect you!” César exclaimed.
Lucie looked dubiously at the barrel of the gun, and said, “That’s a very strange thing to say, at this particular moment.”
César said nothing, but shook his head miserably.
“Why did you kill Pablo’s son?” Lucie asked him.
“He owed me money,” César replied. “He would not pay.”
“You killed him for money?”
“Yes.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is business!”
“Your business is terrible.”
“That is not for you to say!”
She smiled grimly. “Your business has a gun pointed in my face, César. I think it is for me to say.”
“Oh, Lucie – please stop talking!”
“Don’t worry. That’s all I had to say.”
So he stood there before her, shivering visibly, teeth chattering audibly – gun shaking very unsettlingly in his trembling hand. But Lucie hadn’t lied.
She had nothing more to say.
33
(Pause)
Now, while this silent battle of nerves was taking place, in a besmirched little apartment in one of the very worst neighborhoods in Juárez (and that, we can tell you, is saying something), Clara Vicente was driving through the streets, and looking, in her distress, every part the maniac that her brother César presently appeared to be. She drove long and fast, thinking furiously – though her thoughts never seemed to come to any fruitful conclusion. So she thought, and she thought a bit more, till her head ached so badly that she thought it would burst.
But, just when the pain was worst – it came to her. She had once overheard her brother say, when he was talking to Manolo at the cantina, that they would meet, some night or other, at the “usual place.” Curious, Clara had listened more attentively to the remainder of the conversation, and had gleaned that this place was an old warehouse, lodged at the end of some street whose name she didn’t remember. But she did recall the name of one of César’s associates, who was said to live near the warehouse. This associate was a childhood friend of César’s, one known to the Vicente family (though perhaps not in the capacity that would have revealed him most honestly) for many years. Therefore, when Clara pulled over at a phone booth, and searched through the directory under the name Aguilar, she immediately recognized the name of Alba Aguilar – Adán Aguilar’s mother. Knowing from César that Adán still lived with his mother, Clara jotted the address onto a slip of paper, and hurried back to the car.
It took her a while, in the dark, to find the place; but finally she pulled up beside the shaggy lawn of a tiny brick house, dirty and dilapidated. She went through the high grass to the front door, which was inlaid with a single pane of glass so grimy, she didn’t even see anyone approaching, before the door swung open.
Before her stood a bent and wizened old woman, with grizzled hair and greasy spectacles. She demanded, in a very unfriendly tone, just what in the world Clara meant, tap-tapping at her door at that time of night. Clara began by apologizing profusely, in an attempt to placate the old woman; but followed almost immediately with an inquiry after Adán.
“I suppose you’re one of his whores?” the old woman asked. “Well – far be it from me to turn you out! God knows it’s none of my business, what goes on under my own roof. Just go on down to the basement, why don’t you, like all the rest. Only don’t make too much noise, for God’s sake! I’m watching television.”
As she really had no time to be taken aback, Clara made no reply. She only pushed past the old woman, who was pointing with a gnarled hand towards a door standing partway open, situated at the top of a very dark staircase.
“Go on!” cried Alba Aguilar. “Get on with you, then. Just don’t go giving my boy any diseases!”
“Couldn’t you call him upstairs?” Clara asked.
“Upstairs!” the old woman exclaimed. “Why, what do you want – to do your nastiness in my bed? I don’t think so! Maybe you’ll have learned your lesson, when you wake up in the morning with a backache, after flopping around on the springs of that sofa bed. Maybe you will!”
“I don’t think you understand. I hardly know Adán – I just want to talk to him.”
“Why do you want to talk to him, if you hardly know him?”
“He’s a friend of my brother’s.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“César Vicente.”
The old woman made a most terrible pucker, and shuffled huffily to the basement door. “Adán!” she called. “Come upstairs, boy. It’s the crack dealer’s sister.”
There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Clara took an instinctive step backwards, and peered towards the doorway through the heavy shadows of the hall. Finally there appeared a young man at the top of the staircase, with red and bleary eyes, a scruffy, stubbly face, and a frame so thin his bones could be seen to press rather rudely against the sallow skin. He looked from Clara to his mother, with an expression void of comprehension.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Clara looked pointedly to the old woman, before she spoke. The woman huffed, and grumbled, but trudged off just the same.
“My brother is César Vicente,” said Clara. “I think he’s in trouble. I need to find him.”
“So?”
“You know about the warehouse. Tell me where it is.”
Adán Aguilar sneered, and gave a boorish guffaw. “I won’t tell you that,” he said.
“I need to find César,” Clara repeated. “You have to tell me.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“I’m his sister,” Clara went on; and the passion in her voice began to grow. In truth, she wasn’t thinking of César – but rather of Lucie. She feared her brother, when he grew excited. Presently he was excited, anxious, nervous, whatever way you wanted to put it – and he had Lucie. She hadn’t been able to catch up to him, when he fled. But she would find him now.
“You said that already,” remarked Adán, who seemed to be growing bored with the conversation. He yawned widely, and shut his eyes. He teetered back a step, and had to clutch at the wall, to avoid falling down the stairs. “I’m tired,” he added crossly. “Are we done here?”
“No. We’re not.”
Clara knew, of course, all about César’s little gun-box, which he kept hidden under a loose floorboard in his bedroom. She didn’t know, though, how to open it. So, before leaving home that night, she had armed herself with a cruel little knife that César had given her for her last birthday. An odd gift, one might think to say – but then, perhaps not so odd when passed from a protective, drug-dealing brother to his younger sister.
Presently, Clara took this knife from her belt – and positioned it under Adán Aguilar’s chin, before that fellow’s blurry eyes could so much as blink. But they seemed to clear almost immediately; and he seemed once again very interested in the subject at hand.
“Are you crazy, woman?” he demanded. “Do you know who I am?”
“Do you know who I am?” Clara returned. “I am the sister of César Vicente! Now, what do you think would happen, if my brother needed me tonight – and I couldn’t go to him, because you wouldn’t tell me where he was?”
“I – I don’t know where he is!”
“Of course you don’t. But you know where the warehouse is.”
“César made me promise never to tell,” whined Adán.
“Will it do you much good, if I slit your throat?”
“No,” Adán said moodily. “No – I suppose it won’t.”
“Then tell me.”
He sighed, and squirmed uncomfortably over the blade of the knife. “Do you know the old lumber yard?” he asked.
“Morales and Sons?”
“That’s it. Go to the lumber yard – and keep going straight, all the way to the end of the street. The war
ehouse stands by itself.”
Clara retracted her knife, and tucked it safely away. “Thank you,” she said.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” muttered Adán, rubbing exaggeratedly at the place where the blade had pressed his throat.
“Just the same,” said Clara, as she disappeared out into the unkempt yard.
~
Settled again behind the wheel of the old car (lent her, for this night’s purposes, by old Teodoro, whose eyes had long been too bad for driving, and whose heart was far too kind to refuse anyone such a thing that so hardly affected him), Clara took off in the direction of the lumber yard.
The streets she passed through were black, and utterly devoid of lamps. Their twisting darkness clouded her eyes, and sent a chill round her heart that whispered, in the lowest of lowly voices, that her efforts were spent too late and in vain.
After César flew from the apartment that afternoon, she had sat for a long time, and waited for a call, either from him or from Lucie. But the hours passed by, and the evening settled in; and no word came to her hungry ears. She sat with her family round the television, and was immersed in a silence which seemed filled with awareness – awareness of something gone awry, something less than perfect, which couldn’t be explained at present. Eyes looked to her; but no one asked. César was missing, they knew, when he ought to be present. And where could he be? Eduardo, for one, was troubled with his own suspicions, that stemmed from what condemnation he had always expressed for what he knew of his brother’s illicit behavior. He sat with a frown and a shadowed brow, his eyes fixed unseeing on the television screen, and his thoughts more aligned with Clara’s, than any others in the room.
The trouble, however, was sharper for Clara. She had sat for some time, worried and fretting, before finally she sprang to her feet, and escaped the apartment without a word of explanation. She went first to Teodoro, whose compliance called for no second errand; and then embarked upon the journey which was, as of yet, unfinished.
Finally she came to the old lumber yard, which swam like a desert mirage out of the darkness, to assault her eyes as would a clear and running river to a thirsting man. She passed it speedily, and kept on without pause, till a great grey block of a building appeared before her. Its front was crumbling, and its windows were dark. The lot was overrun with weeds.
Bella Page 21