Illegal

by Paul Levine

Intended to keep people out, the fortifications trapped her inside.

  A noise.

  She stood frozen in place.

  A car engine.

  She moved to one of the windows, peeked out between the boards. A car approached slowly, turning sideways in the driveway. A rack of lights on its roof, a star painted on its side.?La policia!

  But she had seen policemen at the brothel. Everyone, it seemed, worked for Rutledge.

  The driver's door opened. A man in uniform got out and took several steps toward the building. Backlit by the car's headlight beams, he threw off a shadow ten feet tall. "Marisol! Marisol Perez. You in there?"

  She stayed quiet.

  "You're safe now, senorita," the man called. "I'm the chief of police."

  Why should she trust this man? Except for her father, what man could she trust?

  "I'm here to help you."

  Help me do what?

  The policeman stepped back to the car, opened the rear door, and pulled a boy from the backseat. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Could it be?

  He was the size of her Agustino, but she could not make out the boy's face.

  "Lemme make it easy for you." The policeman's tone had gone hard. "We've got your kid. Give a signal you're in there."

  "No! Mami, hide! Run!"

  Tino's voice!

  The policeman grabbed Tino's neck. "I don't want to hurt anybody."

  Tino flailed, tried to twist free. "I'll kill you, cabron." Sounding as if he was choking.

  "Let him go!" Marisol screamed, pounding a fist against a window plank. "Let him go! And take me!"

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  The old truck wheezed to a stop alongside an earthen levee. Payne heard a chuga-chuga. The pump station. Peering up from the cargo bed, he saw the grille of an old Chevy poking out of the dirt, where it had been left after a flood thirty years ago. He had passed this place on his horseback ride.

  Rutledge leapt out of the truck cab and trudged up the slope, his boots sinking into the wet clay, the color of cinnamon. The rain had slowed. Lightning blinked to the northwest, the storm past them now.

  Payne waited until Rutledge had crested the levee, which stood twenty-five feet above the surrounding fields. Louisville Slugger in hand, Payne climbed out of the cargo bed and scampered on all fours up the levee. He lay on the ground at the top, peering at the pump station straddling the stream. A concrete-and-steel structure resembling a dam, the station channeled water into three separate culverts. Utility poles topped by sodium vapor lights gave the streams an orange, toxic tint.

  Payne watched Rutledge at the foot of the levee, yelling into his cell phone.

  "Where the fuck are you! Do you have her?" He whisked the Tejano from his head and slapped it against his thigh, shaking water from the brim. "Okay, good work, Javie. Now get her the hell over here."

  Javier Cardenas again. And he has Marisol.

  Payne sized up the situation. One man with a kid's baseball bat against one man with a gun and knife. That was bad enough. But two men with guns? He had to take out Rutledge before Cardenas got here.

  Rutledge walked along the shoreline, crouched on his haunches, and peered toward the sluice pipe, the artery that carried the lifeblood of his empire. Payne calculated the distance between them. Down the side of the levee and across a flat space to the culvert. Ninety feet. Maybe a hundred.

  Rutledge's back was turned. Payne figured that the noise of the pumps and the angry flow of the water would mask his footfalls. It better. The fear rose in his chest, and for one paralyzing moment he questioned whether he could do it. Then he thought of Tino and Adam, and all that had been lost, and all that could still be saved.

  Payne got to his feet and crab-walked down the muddy slope, cutting a diagonal path across the levee.

  Eighty feet away.

  Rutledge stared into the water. Was he looking into his past? Three generations of men who lusted for land and water. Men who built wealth and power on the backs of the poor, all the while telling themselves they were pioneers and visionaries and men of the soil.

  Seventy feet.

  Payne's Nikes squished in the mud, the suction slowing him down.

  Sixty feet.

  Rutledge rose from his haunches and stretched his neck, working out a kink with the palm of a hand.

  Fifty feet.

  Payne raised the bat to shoulder height. Tripped on a rock embedded in the muck. Caught himself but lost a step.

  Forty feet.

  Rutledge cocked his head, as if sensing something.

  Thirty feet.

  Payne planned his swing. He'd smash Rutledge's skull right above the temple.

  Twenty feet.

  Rutledge pivoted. "You? You sorry son-of-a-bitch!" He pulled the big revolver from its holster.

  Payne drew back the bat.

  The gun was waist high, the barrel sweeping toward Payne's chest.

  Three more steps. I won't make it.

  Payne let the bat fly. Just as Rutledge pulled the trigger, the Louisville Slugger caught the tip of his shoulder. The slug smacked the mud at Payne's feet.

  Rutledge grunted and dropped the gun. Payne went low, aimed for Rutledge's knees. Tackled him, shoulders square, a linebacker wrapping up a running back.

  The men toppled backward, rolled over each other. A flailing of arms and elbows and knees. Both men struggled to their feet. Rutledge got his hands around Payne's neck. "You stupid shit! You could have been rich."

  Payne broke Rutledge's grip and threw a left jab that caught him squarely on the nose. A snap of cartilage and a fountain of blood.

  Rutledge roared. More in anger than pain. He came at Payne. They collided head-on and tumbled into the culvert, the sluice pipe dousing them from overhead. Waist deep, the water slowed their movements. Scrambling to get their footing, they each clawed their way to shore like prehistoric amphibians. Payne slipped and Rutledge got to dry land first. Diving face-first into the mud, Rutledge reached for the gun, which slipped from his wet fingers. Payne leapt onto Rutledge's back and squeezed his right arm around the man's neck. Gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Payne pulled upward, catching Rutledge in a choke hold. Rutledge spat mud, grunted, snorted an unintelligible curse, and jackknifed an elbow backward, burning Payne's right ear.

  Rutledge was strong and slippery, all long muscles and hard bones and wiry gristle a dog couldn't chew. Swallowing his own blood, he lurched to his knees, dipped a shoulder, and tossed Payne off his back. Payne clambered to his feet just as Rutledge came at him. Payne shifted his weight to one leg, swiveled a hip, and used Rutledge's momentum to toss him to the ground, the gun out of reach.

  Payne saw the bat on the wet ground. Scooped it up. Turned, thinking Rutledge would still be going for the gun, several yards away. Instead, the man was just an arm's length away, drawing the foot-long knife from the scabbard on his leg. Payne sidestepped a forward thrust. But a downward slash sliced him from the tip of the left shoulder halfway to the elbow. The cut long but shallow.

  The movement left Rutledge off balance. Before the pain from the wound even reached Payne's brain, he latched both hands around Rutledge's wrist. Payne twisted the arm outward, Rutledge yelping with pain.

  The knife fell to the wet clay.

  Payne, bleeding from his left arm, threw a straight right into Rutledge's already shattered nose. Rutledge staggered backward, blood pouring from his nostrils and soaking his brushy mustache. But still, he didn't fall. He wobbled side-to-side, arms down, eyes unfocused. Payne picked up the knife and tightened his grip.

  Lightning blinked in the distant sky. In Payne's mind, a flare burst with dazzling images of startling clarity. Adam, so young. Sharon, stoic in her loss. Tino, filled with life and promise. Marisol, what horrors had she known, and what dread must she feel now?

  Payne sized up just where he would bury the blade. The gut? The chest? Maybe the neck. Let him drown in his own blood. He would kill the man for Adam and Tino and
Sharon and Marisol. And for himself.

  He would plunge the knife to its hilt, tearing tissue and ripping organs from their moorings. He would hear the steam explode from pierced lungs. He would yank out the blade, time and again, to the satisfying squish of flesh sucking at steel. He would strike a hundred times, baptizing himself in the bastard's blood.

  Holding the knife in an underhand grip, Payne advanced a step. Rutledge's eyes seemed to clear, to focus on the blade.

  Let him taste the fear and hear his own last breath.

  A gunshot echoed off the concrete walls of the pump station.

  "Freeze, Payne!"

  Cardenas stood atop the levee, aiming his 9mm Glock at Payne's head, Marisol and Tino a few steps to one side.

  It had all come crashing down, Payne thought, the weight of his actions pounding at him. He had tried to save Marisol but succeeded only in delivering her-and Tino and himself-to wet and lonely graves.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  "Toss the knife down," Cardenas ordered. "Then step away."

  Fighting off dizziness, his arm bleeding, Payne obeyed. In his mind, he saw the last seconds of his life ticking away, his body buried in a levee alongside an old Chevy. Strangely calm, he accepted his own death in a way he had never accepted Adam's.

  "About goddamn time you got here, Javie." Rutledge spat blood, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  "Now, there's a thank you, Tio Sim."

  "Don't be so damn prickly." Rutledge picked up the. 45 and slid it into his holster. "Payne don't have the guts. If he couldn't do the pollo who killed his boy, he sure as hell couldn't do me."

  "Give me back the knife," Payne said, "and we'll see."

  "You had your chance. Just like with your own boy. You blew it then and you blew it now."

  Payne felt a molten wave of heat flow through his chest. He could bull-rush Rutledge, knock him down, go for the gun. Then what? Get shot by Cardenas. That wouldn't help Tino or his mother.

  The chief motioned with his gun. "Move on down, both of you."

  Marisol and Tino angled across the levee like skiers carving their way down a slope.

  "You okay, kiddo?" Payne asked, pressing his right hand against the wound on his left arm.

  "I'm good, Himmy. I got mi mami. "

  Payne looked toward Marisol. All this time, he felt he knew her, but he was setting eyes on her for the first time. Soaking wet. Hair tangled. Face bruised. Still a beautiful woman, with a stubborn jaw carved from stone.

  "Marisol, you've got a great son. You're gonna be really proud of him."

  As if the boy would grow up. As if she'd be around to see him.

  "Tino has told me all about you, Mr. Payne. You are a wonderful man." A strong woman with a tender voice. "Bless you."

  Something passed between them. The mother who feared for her son and the man who had watched his own son die.

  "Tino's a real valiente, " Payne continued.

  "Very fucking touching." Rutledge tore strips of cloth from his shirt and jammed them up his nostrils. "Take care of those two, Javie." His voice was hollow as a foghorn. "I'll handle Payne myself."

  Cardenas scratched a knuckle against his chin, as if checking to see if he had shaved. "I've done a lot of shit, Sim. But I never killed anyone. Much less a woman and a boy."

  "About time you got your hands dirty."

  "Not this way."

  "Don't fuck with me, Javie. You want to see that puta on the witness stand?"

  Tino's hands balled into fists. "Don't talk that way about mi mami!"

  "Hush, Tino," Marisol ordered.

  "So what are you saying, Sim?" Cardenas asked. "We kill three people to keep you out of prison?"

  "You're goddamn right we do."

  "Problem is, you're gonna do time, anyway." Cardenas swung his 9mm toward Rutledge. "Keep your hands where I can see them, Sim."

  "What the fuck?"

  Stunned, Payne tried to figure out what was going on. The police chief defying the man he called "mi tio." It made no sense.

  Rutledge kept his right hand perched just above the walnut grip of his holstered revolver. The men were staring each other down, two cowboys itching for a shootout. But what was the fight about?

  Marisol looked at Payne, her dark eyes alert, as if asking what to do. The Marine knife lay in the mud. Adam's baseball bat nearby. But there were two men with guns. Payne chose to wait it out.

  "Javie, I got plans for you," Rutledge said. "Always did, ever since you were a baby."

  "I've got my own plans."

  "What the hell's that mean?"

  "I know about the indictments and the plea you turned down. About your will, too."

  "Whitehurst?" The realization seemed to nail Rutledge to the ground with a railroad spike. "That shyster. The going gets tough, and that damn lawyer turns yellow. Hell, you both do."

  "Your time has passed, Sim."

  "Not while I'm still standing, you little pecker. So you'd better put a bullet in my heart or lay your gun down."

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Rutledge didn't want to kill Javie, though he knew he could.

  Just look at him. Stiff as a scarecrow. A death grip on his gun.

  Rutledge would prefer to talk Javie down. Hell, he liked the boy. Always had. "Jesus, Javie. Haven't I treated you like my own son?"

  That brought a rueful smile. "In school, the kids thought so. Told me I was your son."

  "Bullshit. Not that I didn't wish it was true."

  "I remember coming into Mami 's bedroom in the morning and finding you there."

  "Only after your daddy died." Watching the barrel of the Glock.

  Are your hands shaking, Javie?

  "At the very end, in the hospital, she told me you'd been taking her to the barn long before that. Even before I was born. 'Me monto como un caballo.' Her exact words. 'He mounted me like a horse.' "

  "The woman was on morphine, for Christ's sake."

  "She didn't want to fuck you, but you let her know Papi wouldn't have a job otherwise."

  "Not the way it happened." Rutledge thinking Javie would get off the first shot.

  But you'll miss. Most gunshots do.

  Keeping his eyes on Rutledge, Cardenas said, "Hey, Payne. Did mi tio ever tell you about his first fuck?"

  "Yeah. Some girl in the barn with hands stained from picking grapes."

  "He tell you her name?"

  "Maria something. He couldn't remember her last name."

  "Sure he could. My mother, Sim! You fucked my mother when she was just a kid."

  Goddamn Maria, Rutledge thought.

  Quiet all those years, then she opens up like she's confessing to Jesus.

  "She couldn't turn down the boss's son, could she?" Cardenas taunted him. "Then you turned her over to your father. You're poison, Sim. A degenerate. You and your father and your grandfather. A family of sick, twisted bastards."

  "Fuck you, Javie."

  "Yeah. Fuck me for selling out. Fuck me for being a coward." Cardenas exhaled a long, sad breath and his eyes went dark, embers turning to ash. He looked toward the sluice pipe.

  "My mother told me something else in the hospital," the chief said. "She told me what happened the night of the flood."

  "She wasn't here. She can't know."

  " Mami harangued Zaga about it for years. It took a lot of tequila to loosen his tongue."

  "Jesus on the cross! Your father drowned in the flood. I saw it happen." Rutledge thinking he would have no choice.

  I'm gonna have to kill you, Javie.

  "Why not just admit it, Sim? After all this time, say it once before you die. Say it, goddammit!"

  Rutledge kept his right hand poised above the big revolver. He hacked up a viscous wad of bloody snot and spat into the mud. The memories came flowing back, like hot lava down a steep slope.

  "Not tonight, Javie," he whispered. "Not fucking tonight."

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  A December wind drives the cold rain in gr
eat sweeping arcs across the valley. Three hell-raising Pacific storms, back-to-back, have pummeled the state for the past week.

  Wearing a poncho and fishing boots, Simeon Rutledge, in his forties, stands knee-deep in mud. The rain falls hard and fast, like buckshot piercing the skin. Atop the earthen levee, he gauges the depth of the stream and the strength of the soil holding it back. A single fissure and one hundred thousand acres will flood. Crops lost, equipment destroyed, loans called. Three generations of sweating and bleeding, of clawing and scratching. All undone by Mother Fucking Nature in one week of gales and floods.

  "Faster! Drop the damn chassis!" Shouting at the crane operator, guiding a Plymouth Duster along the ridge of the levee. "No style points, Luis! Just drop the damn thing!"

  Thank God for Hector Cardenas. It was his idea to use junked cars to shore up the levee. One chassis worth two hundred sandbags.

  Rutledge watches Cardenas and Zaga run their crews, shoveling mud around the rusted-out cars, both men on their feet for days, taking breaks only to piss, snort cocaine, and sip whiskey. Good men, both of them. Brothers in arms.

  Cardenas is half-buried in muck, his arms braced against the hood of a Mercury Marquis that has flipped onto its side halfway down the levee. Two of his men, grunting and cursing, muscle the car upright. One man slips in the mud, screams something unintelligible, and lets go. The Mercury slides down the slope into the water, spins in a circle, catches the current, and sails downstream.

  Rutledge watches it, cursing. Fuck! The damn car will crash into Pump Station Two, fouling the pipes, maybe even cracking the concrete caissons. "Christ, Hector! Watch what your men are doing."

  Cardenas peers toward his boss. In the rain and fog and diesel fumes, Rutledge can't make out the Mexican's face. Cardenas trudges through the mud toward him.

  "What now, Hector? Got no time for your shit."

  Cardenas reaches under his slicker and pulls a pint bottle of cheap blended whiskey from a back pocket. He takes his time draining it, then hurls the empty bottle at Rutledge. It sails into the darkness.

  "Goddammit, Hector! Get your brown ass back to work."