Sally shook her head—still determined to bluff her braveness to the world.
“All right. If we lay down our weapons and give you what you want, will you agree to let the lady go?” Emily said in a measured voice.
Corazón laughed. “You’re in no position to make deals, mujer.”
Flaco tightened his grip on Sally’s neck. “Why don’t we beat the shit outta these scumbags, and if this pinche maricón don’t give us what we want, I’ll start slicing off little pieces of granny till he changes his mind.” He took the knife away from Sally’s throat and made slicing motions toward Abe. “Huh-huh-huh.”
“You might want to give that some thought,” Corazón said to Abe, showing his canines again. “Flaco loves to play with his knife.”
Taking the knife away from Sally turned out to be a careless move on the biker’s part. She seized the opportunity to make a run for it, but Corazón yanked her back by the hair and held her in front of him. No one fired a shot, probably fearing, as Abe did, that a stray bullet would land on Sally. Corazón gave Sally’s hair another hard pull, causing her to flinch in pain. “Don’t try being cute again, vieja, or you’re coyote bait.”
“What do you want from her?” Emily said. “I know you killed Easy Jackson, but what’s so important that you’d kill a harmless old woman, too?”
“Jackson got what he had coming. He was a rat.”
Abe felt vindicated when the biker said those words. He hoped Emily still had the tape running because he felt they now had confirmation Corazón killed Jackson. A lot of good it’s going to do us if we can’t get out of this mess, though, he thought.
Corazón took Emily’s weapon and the .22 pistol Abe had taken from Vito Benavutti, who had slipped into unconsciousness with his head resting on the table. “Now no more talking and there won’t be any killing, unless I say so. Huero, Chino, Largo, take these guns and go get the rest. Frisk them all, get their money, then tie ’em up tight. Flaco, keep an eye on la abuela, and don’t screw up this time.”
Paco remained grim faced, looking like he wanted to blow Corazón away, but relinquished the shotgun when he saw the knife back at Sally’s throat.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” DiMarco said. “You’re a dead man, Corazón.”
Rico Corazón chortled and hit him on the side of the head with Emily’s Glock. DiMarco toppled to the floor. Benavutti raised his head, opened his eyes, and was sent tumbling beside his boss when Corazón rewarded him with a vicious blow.
Paco and his Vietnam buddies were stripped of their weapons and left hog-tied and gagged with duct tape. Paco’s eyes burned with hot hate as he and his friends were kicked and dragged behind the bar.
“I won’t show you where the key is if anyone gets hurt,” Abe said. “Leave the little lady here and I’ll take you to where it’s hidden. If you do anything to these people, you’ll never see it. You can go ahead and kill me.”
Corazón appeared to be considering his options. A few minutes later he told one of his men to bind and gag Emily. She tried to say something, give Abe some kind of message, before her lips were sealed shut, but he silenced her with his eyes.
Then, having evidently made up his mind, Corazón turned the Glock on Abe. “Okay, amigo. You’re coming with us. We didn’t plan on killing anyone tonight, but if you’re lying, you’re a dead man, and we’ll come back here. Comprende? Muerto.” With a long-nailed index finger he made the sign of a knife across his throat. “Flaco, take the old lady and the Indian over there behind the bar with the rest of those hijos de putas. Get the cash from the register and grab some bottles of tequila. Might as well celebrate after we get our prize.” He cackled, exposing pointed teeth.
Corazón held the gun on Abe while another member of the Mexican Mafia, the one called Huero, bound his hands behind his back. “Lights out,” said Corazón, and someone hit the switch, throwing the bar into darkness. Abe was shoved outside and ordered onto the gang leader’s bike. There wasn’t much room behind Corazón, and he could barely move his fingers enough to grip the back of the seat for stability.
The streets remained dark and empty. Seemed like nobody wanted to venture out in the midst of a full-blown dust storm. There were no sounds except for the sudden gusts of wind and the frantic barking of a dog.
Corazón revved his engine. “Which way, cabrón? And you better not lead us wrong.”
Abe hoped his trip out west wouldn’t end with him lying dead somewhere in the Arizona desert. “When you hit the highway, go southeast.”
26
Abe squeezed his eyes into narrow slits, trying to protect them from the stinging dust that swirled in the bike’s path. The highway was nearly obliterated by freshly formed dunes, and the night loomed pitch-black. With Abe pinioned to the biker’s back, they rode as one, leaning together in the twists and turns, and close enough for Abe to be enveloped in the rank smell of Corazón’s body. Several miles south of Bisbee, they passed through Tintown. “Slow down,” he yelled over the roar of engines. “There should be a graveyard someplace around here. The road is right past it.”
“Better be,” snapped Corazón. “I’ve had enough of you stuck to my back like a goddamned leech.”
“Turn your headlight over there on the left.”
Corazón swung the motorcycle around. The other bikers pulled alongside and pointed their lights in the direction Abe indicated. The dim outlines of crosses, barely discernible among windblown mounds of sand, beckoned them with erratic arms.
“There’s the road.” Abe exhaled a deep breath, no longer feeling fear, only a dogged resignation.
The five motorcycles turned onto the dirt trail and quickly became bogged in dunes. Their tires spun, threw sand, and left them half-buried, with nowhere to go.
Corazón turned off the ignition and put the kickstand down before giving Abe a shove. “Get off my back, asshole. The bikes can’t handle this shit. How much farther we gotta go?”
“A mile, maybe two.” Abe staggered to his feet. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. We need a flashlight.” His hands were still trussed tightly behind his back; his head pounded from the reopened cut. He brushed that aside and concentrated on the task at hand, spurred on by the belief Emily would get free.
They were forced to abandon the motorcycles near the turnoff, and Corazón remained in a foul mood. The five members of the Mexican Mafia stumbled through the choking sand, drinking tequila from the bottle, and cursing each step while the beam of a flashlight bounced ahead of them. Corazón pushed Abe in front, pulled out a gun, and snarled, “I have half a mind to waste you right now, gringo, or let Flaco cut you till you tell us where the key is. You’ve been playing games, bringing that wop piece of shit and his dickhead hit man out here, trying to cash in on both of us.” He jabbed the gun into Abe’s back. “I’ll leave your head on a fencepost for the buzzards if you mess with me anymore.” He grabbed the bottle from Flaco and tilted it up to his mouth, guzzling tequila as it dribbled down his chin.
The windstorm subsided, leaving a sky mottled with cumulus clouds. A crescent moon peeked through the clouds, exposing its narrow face, and illuminated the skeleton of the burned-out shack.
“There it is.” Abe stared at the charred hulk, the image of Will’s scorched body flashing through his mind. He had made a mistake in going along with the crazy scheme. If he had stopped Will, none of this would have happened. Will would not be lying in a hospital bed, burned beyond recognition. He heard his mother’s oft-repeated admonition as she held the leather strap above her head: Abraham, you’re too damn smart for your own good. Let’s see you talk your way out of this. And, to himself, he said, Okay, smart guy, what are you going to do now?
The one they called Huero, the pale-skinned goon with icy eyes, ran the beam of the flashlight over the burned timbers. “Don’t look like a good place to hide something, jefe. This guy’s stalling. Want me to take him out? We can go back, get the girlfriend—make her talk.”
&nb
sp; Something caught Abe’s eye when the flashlight beam skimmed over the ruined building. The shack had been erected so that the back was built into the cliff, and he saw what appeared to be an opening to a mine shaft. “The key’s back in there.” He indicated the four-foot-tall hole in the rocky cliff. “Let me have the light; I’ll go in and get it.”
“Chino,” Corazón yelled. The heavyset, bald Latino with slanted Indian eyes looked up but didn’t say anything. “Get the flashlight and go in there with the gringo. Make sure he don’t come out without the key. And hurry up, andele.”
“Uh, jefe, why don’t you send Huero in there? He’s already got the light. You know, man, I don’t, uh, like them closed-in places.”
“What’s the matter, Chino? You scared of the dark? You chickenshit or something?”
“No, man. I ain’t scared of nothing. Caves and things make me nervous is all. I ain’t scared.”
“Then don’t give me that shit. Take the flashlight and that piece with the silencer you picked up in the bar, and don’t let this pussy come out without the key.” Corazón took a long pull of tequila, then grabbed Abe’s shirt collar, pulling him up close, his rancid spit splattering Abe’s face. “You understand what I’m saying, punk? Produce, or you’re not leaving this place alive, then we go back for your girlfriend and the old lady.” He pushed Abe away, but the sour stench of his breath lingered, even as Abe bent down to enter the mine adit. Chino, looking reluctant, followed.
The tunnel roof did not provide room for a man to stand upright, and in some places the beams had collapsed, making it hard to maneuver. A jumble of rocks and litter cluttered the path in front of them. Shortly after they entered the cave, the two men were swallowed in total darkness with only a narrow beam from the flashlight to guide them. Abe felt spiderwebs brushing his face, but instead of loathing, he felt a certain comfort from the arachnids. As a child, whenever he found a spider in the house he would carefully whisk it outside, out of reach of his mother’s swatting newspaper. The habit of rescuing spiders continued into adulthood, so that now he moved carefully through the webs, silently apologizing for destroying their labors.
Not so Chino. He batted at the sticky structures, groaned and cursed. “Get that fuckin’ key so I can get out of here, goddamn it.” His high-pitched voice, betraying panic, reverberated through the mine shaft.
“It’s up here, on a ledge,” Abe lied while he considered his odds if he made a run for it. “Cut my hands loose, so I can reach it.”
Chino hesitated, but Abe insisted. “I can’t get it unless my hands are free. It’s behind a big nest of black widows,” he said, sensing the arachnophobic biker would never put his own hand into a nest of spiders.
“Fuck this. Make it fast.” The biker took out his pocketknife and cut through the duct tape that bound Abe’s hands behind his back.
Once his arms were free, Abe flexed them and clenched his fists to get the circulation going. He positioned himself in front of Chino, moved faster, feeling his way along the wall, putting distance between him and the biker. When he felt sufficiently ahead, he wedged himself behind a slab of rock and waited.
“Hey, gringo. Where the hell are you? Get back here.”
He heard footsteps, the clunk of metal against rock, saw a flash of light, heard the sound of gunshots, bullets pinging off the rock sides of the cave. Abe held his breath and counted—one, two, three, four, five, six—then silence. He remained in his hiding place and listened. A minute later Chino’s voice echoed through the cave.
“Jefe, I can’t find the damn flashlight. Rico . . . jefe . . . I can’t see nothin’ . . . there’s spiders everywhere. Ayee, ayúdame, por favor!”
Abe knew it would only be minutes before the others came into the mine and started looking for him. His head felt like someone had hammered it with a sledge, and the blackness of the cave disoriented him, but he had to move forward and find a better hiding place. He eased his way out of the rocks and felt for the wall of the tunnel, then hurried along in the direction he hoped would take him away from Corazón and his men.
Loud voices and thudding feet resounded through the mine. Abe looked back and saw a faint light bobbing. Then he heard Corazón’s angry voice when he came upon Chino.
“You stupid pendejo . . . you let him get away.”
Abe heard the sounds of thuds and groans, as if someone was kicking or pummeling Chino.
“Aye, jefe, por favor . . . no mas. Let me get out of this cave. I swear I do anything you want. Anything, I kill him for you. Por el amor de dios, jefe, no, no, don’t shoot.”
Abe heard a scream, two gunshots, and then nothing from Chino. Shortly after, the enraged voice of Corazón bellowed through the cave. “See what you made me do, Jesus Eyes. You gonna die now. I will tear you apart, piece by piece!”
He flattened himself against the wall of the mine shaft, shaking uncontrollably, cold sweat drenching his body, his throat as dry as the Arizona desert. He couldn’t think, only react to adrenaline and instinct. The voices and footsteps came closer, the light brighter. Someone fired in his direction, the shots sounding like cannons. Abe had to move on and stumbled forward. Trying to shake off his dizziness, he groped the wall, searching with his fingers for anything to grasp, but felt instead a slimy wetness. His feet slipped from under him and he began to slide downward, plummeting through space as if there were no bottom to wherever his body headed. He thought this must be what death feels like—until the jolt of landing in a frigid, underground pool brought him to a sudden wakefulness.
As soon as he hit the water, Abe’s eyes flew open and he gasped. He thrashed around in the icy darkness, not able to touch bottom, near panic. He forced himself to stop, realizing he had to conserve energy. Thinking there might be a spring or aquifer nearby, he swam until his hand touched the sides, then worked his way around the circumference of the pool. The steep, slime-covered cavity offered nothing. His body shuddered from the cold, but he kept moving, even though he wanted to surrender to the frigid water, believing this to be another sign of impending death, like one of Dante’s levels of hell. Next will be fire, if I live that long. Shivering and no longer able to feel anything more than a dull ache in his limbs and the downward pull of water, Abe nearly surrendered to the icy lake, allowing it to swallow him. But when he heard gunshots and the approaching sounds of men, he fought back. Thoughts of Sharon, her love of life, her courage and desperate will to live, until she acknowledged and accepted the inevitability of death, compelled him to keep fighting. She would not want him to quit. He dog-paddled in small concentric circles until he felt a current moving under his legs.
Abe dove under water, groping the bottom. It was as slick as the sides, but he felt something different, movement, and a split in the rocky depths where water seemed to be flowing into the pool. His hands searched for anything to grasp and finally clutched a jagged protuberance. Using a final reserve of strength, Abe pulled himself through the fissure and up onto a narrow streambed where he collapsed, gasping for breath, in its shallow depths.
He could hear voices, but their flashlight beam couldn’t reach him. One of Corazón’s men said, “He must have fallen in that hole, probably dead.”
Corazón answered back, his voice seething with rage. “We’re never going to find the bastard, or the key.”
“We gotta get out of here, jefe,” another said.
And Corazón answered in a maddened screech. “I’ll kill you, jodido Jesus Eyes.”
27
Abe crawled on his stomach along the shallow stream, clambering upward, toward its source, scraping his body against jagged rocks and strands of slippery moss, driven to continue in the hope of finding a way out. Pain racked his body, fatigue his mind, but he pushed on, inch by inch. He stopped frequently—to breathe, to rest, but never for long. Freezing water numbed his arms and legs, and things he could not see swept across his face, wriggling past him—salamanders, fish, snakes, or perhaps large aquatic insects. They didn’t bother him, and a
deadness began to dull the pain in his limbs. It would have been good to lie down and sleep, but he continued moving forward, upward, letting Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata fill his mind, drowning all thoughts of Corazón and his men, obliterating his fear. He didn’t know how long he followed the watery path, but at last his body gave out and he could move no farther.
Unsure how much time had elapsed, Abe suddenly awoke to high-pitched squeaking sounds and the thunder of fluttering wings. He opened his eyes to a weak light, and saw thousands of bats swooping above him. Rubbing his eyes and peering ahead, he discerned an opening near the top of the cave, and the source of light. In the breaking dawn, myriad bats were swarming into the cave by way of the small aperture.
He was in a grotto with a high dome, and could stand upright. Wading through the stream toward the light, Abe found the gap in the rocks and, stretching, explored it with his hands. Finding it too small for his body but large enough to poke his head through, Abe searched for something to stand on and spotted a pile of boulders against the wall. Using his remaining reserve of strength, he rolled a large boulder under the opening, climbed on top, and grasped the sides of the hole, letting his bruised and bloodied hands sink into a thick crust of guano. When Abe squeezed his head through and looked around, he realized he was on the edge of a rocky bluff. An endless desert, speckled with mesquite, saguaro, and prickly pear stretched in all directions. Buzzards circled overhead. Are they waiting for me? Other than those harbingers of death, there were no signs of life.
He shouted for help until his voice became a harsh whisper, but his cries were lost in the vast, empty land. Abe climbed down from the boulder and stood in a thick layer of guano. He retraced his steps to the stream in the hope it would lead to an alternative exit. That proved to be another dead end, as the stream dissipated into nothing more than a puddle formed from seepage through cracks in the limestone wall. Feeling hopeless, like a rat in a trap, running out of options, he returned to the boulder to look once again. That was when he heard the sounds, faint at first, then louder, of a barking dog. Oh, God, could it be? Could Patch have found me?
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