by Sam Hawken
A man leaned against the wall outside the door. He looked at them and his expression curdled, but he did not move to block them.
Jack went through the door first.
The windows were barred, but they were big enough to let in sunlight and the open space of the cantina was brightly illuminated. Tables were scattered around and in the back there were booths that sat in a line perpendicular to the front doors, so it was possible to sit in them and not be seen by anyone coming in.
Three of the tables were occupied, two by groups of men playing dominoes and drinking beer. The third table was bare, the two men seated there simply watching Jack and Gonzalo as they entered. Their eyes were lidded and somehow they managed to convey distaste without moving at all.
Gonzalo stepped up beside Jack. ‘He’s not here,’ he said quietly.
‘The booths,’ Jack said.
‘I’ll be at the bar.’
The cantina’s bar was not large, but it was stocked with so many bottles that it seemed to bristle with glass. Jack was aware of Gonzalo moving away on his left hand as he walked past the two men and their empty table. He could barely feel his own feet, but he felt the weight of the men’s stares keenly.
There were four booths, each separated from the next by a lattice of brown-painted wood. Jack’s breath quickened as he came to the first. He looked and it was empty. To the next. Empty. Suddenly he was aware of a burgeoning panic that somehow Guadarrama had gotten it all wrong and águila was not here. Or he had been and gone.
The third booth was empty. At the end of the row there were batwing doors leading to restrooms and an open doorway through which came the clatter of cookware and the smell of meat. A short man in a cook’s cap poked his head out briefly, saw Jack and then retreated.
He came to the fourth booth.
Gonzalo had not told Jack what águila looked like except for one thing: the mole on his cheek and his gold watch. The man sitting in the booth had both and in front of him was a plate of enchiladas, half eaten, and a tall glass of beer. He wore a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt in deep blue.
Jack froze. His first urge was to grab the man and haul him out of the booth by the front of his shirt. The next urge was more violent still. He clenched his fingers.
águila took a long time to look up, and when he did Jack saw a handsome face marred only by the mole. The man smiled and had straight, white teeth. ‘Who are you supposed to be?’ he asked.
The words wouldn’t come. Jack pushed them out. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Sit. Talk.’
Jack slid into the booth across from águila, face to face over a plate of food and a sweating glass. The butt of the Browning Hi-Power in his waistband pushed hard against the wooden back of the seat. Jack could feel it against his flesh.
‘You are from the States?’ águila asked.
Jack nodded mutely.
‘What does a man from the States want with me?’
‘You’re águila,’ Jack said.
águila took a drink from his beer. ‘Yes, I am. And what is your name?’
‘Jack.’
‘Mucho gusto, Jack.’ The man’s eyes were a deep, woody brown and he did not blink when he looked at Jack. He cut a bite of enchilada with his fork and ate it, still watching.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Jack managed to say at last.
‘You found me.’
‘I have questions.’
águila gestured with his fork. ‘Questions are bad for business. You’re here for business, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got business.’
‘I have people who do things like this for me,’ águila said. ‘You really should be talking to them.’
‘I didn’t want to talk to your people.’
‘Okay, so you don’t want to talk to them. I can respect that. A gringo coming across the bridge to do a deal… that takes cojones. Like coming in here when I have my lunch. Cojones.’
Jack cleared his throat. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something that happened a month ago.’
‘That’s a long time for me to remember things, Jack.’
‘You bought a couple of girls.’
águila had raised his glass to drink, but now he stopped. The brown eyes went black. He put the glass down firmly. ‘Let me tell you something, Jack: I don’t put up with a lot of bullshit. I don’t know what you heard on the other side, but I don’t. If you want to talk to me about mota or chinaloa, we talk. You want metanfetaminas? We talk. But I’m not talking to some gabacho about girls.’
‘You bought them off a cop named Guadalupe,’ Jack said. His voice trembled, but he was not afraid. ‘Two girls. Remember them?’
‘You get the fuck out of here,’ águila said. ‘You leave right now and maybe I don’t take those big, swinging cojones and cut them off.’
Jack grabbed the edge of the table and ripped it away from the wall. Plate and glass shattered on the floor and the table flipped onto its back. He snatched up a fistful of águila’s shirt and dragged him from the booth. ‘You tell me!’
At the front of the cantina, the two men at their empty table leaped up. They yanked guns out from beneath their shirts. A game of dominoes was scattered as the players went for cover and the bartender vanished behind his forest of glass.
‘Don’t move!’ Gonzalo shouted. He had his pistol out and leveled at the gunmen. His aim did not waver.
Jack closed his arm around águila’s neck and used his free hand to draw his gun. He put the Browning against águila’s head and put the man between himself and the gunmen. ‘You back off!’ he told them. ‘Put your guns down!’
‘You’re being stupid,’ águila said quietly. ‘You’re being very stupid.’
‘Shut up! The two of you put your guns on the ground!’
The gunmen looked at Gonzalo and then Jack and then they laid their pistols on the floor. They held their hands high.
Jack shoved águila back into the empty space where the booth’s table had been and águila collided heavily with the wall. He turned toward Jack and Jack pointed the Browning at his face. ‘I have questions and you’re going answer them,’ he said.
A trickle of blood slipped from águila’s hairline. He swiped at it. ‘You think you’re so smart? You think you’re so tough? You’re a dead man, Jack.’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ Jack said.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want the two girls you bought. You had them in Boys’ Town. I want to know where they are now.’
águila’s expression changed. ‘Are you serious? This is about some cheap coño? You’re out of your mind, man.’
Jack cocked the Browning. ‘You call my daughter cheap pussy again and I’ll shoot you in the fucking knee. Where are they?’
‘Vete a la mierda.’
The bullet went through águila’s leg, but it missed the knee. águila went down as if he’d had his foot swept from underneath him. Blood spattered the white-painted wall in drooling specks.
‘Where are they?’
‘Jack!’ Gonzalo shouted.
If he had not looked, he would not have seen the man from outside pass through the open door, or the gun in his hand. He would not have seen the gunshot or the way it crashed into Gonzalo’s side. He would not have seen Gonzalo fall.
The man was silhouetted against the light and Jack fired, striking twice. The man spilled backward out of the doorway, his gun discharging into the ceiling.
The two gunmen kicked over their table and went for their weapons. Jack heard gunfire and realized Gonzalo was shooting from the floor. Blood soaked his jacket and he scrambled with his feet to make the end of the short bar before the gunmen had their pistols again and opened fire. Their bullets stripped wood from the face of the bar.
‘Are you all right?’ Jack asked Gonzalo.
Gonzalo nodded, but did not speak.
Jack leaned out far enough to take two shots at the men huddled behind their table. The bullets went low and bl
asted into the plastic surface, spraying splinters from underneath. The men returned fire and Jack ducked back.
He put his hand in a puddle of blood. Gonzalo’s wound was bleeding freely and his face was drawn with pain. His grip on his gun was loose, the weapon resting on his leg. ‘Can you walk?’ Jack asked. ‘We’ll try for the door.’
‘I’m better… here,’ Gonzalo managed.
More gunfire smacked into the bar and showers of colored glass fell down on Jack’s head. He poked out again and caught one of the men in the open. The Browning opened up two expanding holes in the man’s chest and he flopped over as if all the bones had been yanked from his body.
A new figure exploded into the doorway from outside. The watcher from the car. He held a submachine gun in his fists. Jack took a shot that missed and the watcher returned a burst of fire.
‘¡Yo me voy de aquí!’ the bartender cried from his hiding place, and he broke from behind the bar for the rear of the cantina. He was cut down in mid-stride by the watcher and his automatic weapon. He collapsed onto his face.
águila chose that moment to head for the kitchen door. He moved more slowly than the bartender, forced to lean heavily on his good leg. Jack took that from him with two shots to the back of the knee. águila crumpled.
Gonzalo sagged against Jack. His eyelids fluttered. Jack shook him. ‘Gonzalo! Wake up! Stay awake!’ Gonzalo did not respond.
‘Take him!’ shouted the watcher from his place by the door.
Jack took a breath. He let it go slowly, as slow as time. He rose from behind the bar at the same time the last gunman exposed himself from behind the overturned table. For an instant they were face to face, gun against gun, but Jack pulled the trigger first and ruined the man’s face with a wild shot that went high.
The watcher shot Jack with his submachine gun. The bullets struck him low, beneath the ribcage, and the impact drove the air from his lungs. He stumbled but did not fall, aware of the slugs passing through his body, bursting out of his back, and the pain, the nerve-searing pain that impaled him.
He fired as he staggered and the first two shots went wide. The watcher stepped forward, triggering his weapon again. A new explosion of glass sent fragments flying into Jack’s face. Jack kept on shooting until his bullets found their target and then the watcher and his submachine gun were falling to the floor in silence.
Jack collapsed onto his backside, one leg twisted beneath him. He tasted blood in his mouth. The empty Browning was out of his hand, lying amid a shower of glass and wood fragments. It was impossible to catch his breath because breathing itself was painful. His lungs burned as if he had run a dozen miles.
Gonzalo sat against the bar, his head hanging. Jack pulled himself across the floor to him, the movement pulling things inside him that were not meant to be pulled. His wounds felt like hot metal. He was bleeding everywhere.
‘Gonzalo,’ Jack said. When he touched Gonzalo on the shoulder, Gonzalo slumped over completely. His eyes were closed. Jack put his hand on Gonzalo’s neck and felt a pulse, however faint. He patted Gonzalo’s cheek. ‘Gonzalo.’
First Jack saw only the whites of Gonzalo’s eyes, but then they rolled into focus, the lids barely parted. Gonzalo whispered something. Jack’s ears were stunned from the ferocious noise of the guns. He put his head closer.
‘Help is coming,’ Gonzalo said.
Movement made Jack bring his head up and he saw the domino-playing men emerging from their hiding places amid the overturned tables. They put their hands up and moved sidelong toward the door, watching Jack the whole time. He raised an empty hand to them, as if to say go, and then dropped it.
‘Jack.’
‘What is it?’
‘There’s too many of them, Jack.’
‘It’s done. It’s all done, okay. Listen, you rest,’ Jack said. ‘Just rest here.’
He took Gonzalo’s pistol and using the bar as a lever he managed to make it to his feet, though the floor was dangerously unstable.
águila was gone from the main room. Blood trailed into the kitchen. Jack found him halfway to the rear door of the cantina, clawing at the plain concrete floor with fingernails that had splintered and bled. His legs were almost useless, though they moved when he urged himself forward.
Jack knelt beside the man and seized him by the shoulder. águila rolled over without resistance. He was pale around the eyes and lips from blood loss, but his expression was hard. Jack put the gun in águila’s face. ‘I want to know where my daughter is,’ he said, and blood slipped over his tongue.
‘Who are you?’ águila asked.
‘What did you do with the girls?’ Jack shouted, and specks of red sprayed from his mouth to dot águila’s face.
‘Why do you want some fucking girls?’
Jack’s face wrinkled and his eyes were suddenly hot with tears. He pushed the barrel of Gonzalo’s gun against águila’s cheek and thumbed back the hammer. ‘Just tell me what happened to them.’
Now the hardness fragmented and Jack saw the fear underneath. águila saw the red face of death in Jack, streaked in blood. He felt the steel of the gun. ‘I don’t remember any girls,’ águila said. ‘I don’t remember them. Please don’t kill me.’
‘The girls,’ Jack murmured. It was harder to speak clearly.
‘Please don’t kill me.’
Jack’s vision darkened. As he bled, his heart beat faster and faster and the edges of the world blackened. The gun was firm in his grip, his finger on the trigger. Squeezing was easy. Marina.
águila spasmed once and then he was still. A crimson halo of blood painted the kitchen floor. The hole in his face was strangely small, but starred with black. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing.
Jack cried even when he could no longer sit up, his wounds forcing him flat until he could only see the cliffs of the rising cooktop and counters and the grease-spotted ceiling. He coughed up red and it painted his face, mingling with tears. He knew he was breathing blood.
He did not know how long he lay there, but he was aware of a dark spot in his memory that came and passed. Maybe his eyes had been closed. He was not sure.
‘Lidia,’ he said.
There were places to get a grip on the unlit stove. Jack climbed them until he could get his feet underneath himself. Gonzalo’s gun was lost somewhere. It didn’t matter. He made it to the kitchen door, then through the door into the main room and across the main room to the bar. Gonzalo was there, though if he was alive or dead, Jack couldn’t tell. Instead he moved, now from the bar to the front door, past the bodies of the dead. Through the door into the bright street. He was trailing blood in spots and splatters.
Jack lurched across the street and down the block. Each step forward was a lifetime’s effort. His arms flopped at his sides. When he saw the truck it seemed alive with white, as gleaming as the surface of the sun and just as blinding. He smeared red on the panel and door. It took all his power to step up into the cab, to lean back into the seat with his hands on the wheel.
Keys. They were slippery in his grasp. The blast of the air conditioning when he turned over the engine was breathtaking.
He drove lying on the wheel, aware that he was weaving, that signs were passed unheeded. Horns blasted at him and once he clipped another car but kept on, taking no notice of the shouting he left behind. He knew he was headed north, but the details were lost to him, just a buzz in the back of his mind that told him when to turn and when to drive.
The Federal Police vehicle fell in behind him when the bridge was in sight. It flashed its lights and put on the siren. Jack pressed the accelerator and the truck surged forward.
A man’s voice crackled over a speaker, telling him to stop. Jack went faster. His lap felt full of hot liquid and blood drooled over his lower lip as he drove. Four lanes with booths appeared ahead. A few men in colored smocks stood in the street selling newspapers. A large sign read FELIZ VIAJE.
Jack did not thread the needle. He crashed into a lane and t
ore off a chunk of concrete, glass and metal from one of the booths, strewing the mess behind him. The side mirror was ripped from the truck. In the other mirrors, the flashing red and blue lights surged closer.
The footbridge was on his right, the path across the river ahead. The traffic grew thick ahead, red brake lights in a forest aglitter. Jack jammed his foot to the floor and aimed for the gap between a small car and a looming tractor-trailer.
The truck speared between them, then wrenched to a halt. Unencumbered by a seatbelt, Jack slammed into the steering wheel. The airbag deployed in his face.
He opened the door against the side of another car and fell out amidst angry shouting that he could not understand. Words meant nothing to him anymore. There was only the pain and the bone-deep weariness that threatened to pull him to the ground forever.
A woman stepped in his way, but she saw the blood and jumped back to let him pass. Jack heard the skirling of more sirens behind him. He looked ahead through the gathered shadows that pressed on him and put one foot ahead of the other.
Panicked faces appeared in windows as he passed them, frightened by the noise and the vision of a man dressed in his own blood. More voices followed him, authoritative shouts with the hint of a threat in them. Jack did not look back. One foot ahead of the other.
His balance fled him again and he bumped side to side, leaving streaks of deep crimson on glass and metal. Soon there would be no more; there could be no more. He would be empty and then everything would stop. Jack put out a hand and left a perfect handprint on the closed window of a yellow minivan. One foot ahead of the other.
Jack saw the flags. They were mounted on the bridge side by side, Mexican and American. The middle of the span, suspended over the Rio Grande, where one divided against the other. He coughed and something tore inside. His knees gave way and he fell to the ground to crawl, crawl, and crawl until the flags were nearly overhead.
Footsteps rushed up behind him. The flags barely fluttered in the breathless afternoon. The concrete surface of the bridge was hot on his hands, but he did not feel that pain. The other pain, the grinding agony of things wrenched apart and left to bleed and bleed, swallowed it.