“Catherine, it’s me.”
“Matt!? What the hell? Where are you? We have to get out of here!”
“I’m already gone,” he told her. “Sorry, but I didn’t have much choice. I got one of them unconscious and we can maybe get some info, but you need to get out of there right now. How fast can you grab our stuff and get out?’
“Fast,” she told him, hanging up and grabbing a bag. “Come on, kiddo!” she yelled to Julio. “We gotta move fast.”
Yesenia was beginning to get used to her new surroundings. While Ceci and her family were settling into a house they all rented on the other side of Mexico City, Yesenia was also settling into the little frame house in Dallas. She unpacked her bag and cleaned the house for Armando and Ricky from top to bottom.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he told her with a smile when he came home.
“It’s the least I can do,” she said.
“Hey,” said Ricky, looking around and then flopping himself on the couch. “This is pretty nice. Cleans up pretty good.”
She was too afraid to go out of the house for the first couple of days, but finally Armando convinced her to come with them to the Super Wal-Mart so she could pick out some more clothes. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.
“I can’t believe how much stuff they have,” she told him, marveling at the endless aisles of wares. “And all the clothes!” she walked through the clothing department like it was Tiffany’s. “It’s like an entire market back home all in one building. Two markets, even.”
“It’s really not that special,” he tried telling her. “There are Wal-marts all over the place, and they all look like this.”
She seemed amazed. “Papa was right. Americans are rich.”
Armando laughed. “Trust me, we aren’t. Some, maybe, but not us.”
That night she lay with a man because she wanted to for the first time. Part of her did it because she felt it was expected, but another part of her because she genuinely had developed emotions for Armando. It was different being with him that night. She’d had a choice for one. She knew his infatuation with her was physical, like so many men she’d now known, but she could see beyond that he was genuinely a good guy, warm, caring, and even funny. She still wasn’t sure exactly how long she was going to stay with Armando, but she knew she was beginning to like him. She was feeling safe since for the first time in a long time and it felt unbelievably good.
Catherine met up with Matt just outside of the city behind an old gas station and they transferred the unconscious man to the rental car. The vehicle was a Ford Taurus with a trunk release latch, which Matt promptly pried off with the car’s lug wrench.
“God, nobody’s ever going to rent me a car again,” said Catherine, watching as he through the pieces on the ground.
“Well, we can’t have him jumping out of the trunk like a stripper out of a cake at a bachelor party, can we?” She helped him load the guy in and they slammed the trunk shut.
“You think it’ll hold?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“They must have been tailing Ramirez,” said Catherine as they were back in the car cruising down the road. She’d been pondering how they found them at the hotel. “I’m glad I used a different name for the room.” Julio sat in the back seat watching the gnarled trees along the road as they went.
“Well, that solves one problem,” said Matt.
“What’s that?”
“We don’t have to go looking for them anymore now that they came looking for us. I’m sure we’ll get a lot out of Pedro back there.”
Julio, whose English wasn’t very good, could only wonder who Pedro was, but he decided if the adults were talking in English they probably had a good reason. He was happy to leave the planning up to them at this point. It was twice now Miss Catherine had saved him and if she wanted a little privacy to talk to Mr. Matt, he certainly wasn’t going to complain.
Playa was only an hour’s drive from Cancun and when they arrived Matt’s friend greeted them warmly. “Hola, Amigos!” he yelled from the porch of a small hacienda. He had bushy red hair thinning on the top and didn’t stand to greet them. He was pale once upon a time and covered in freckles, but had apparently spent most of his days out in the sun and now was an off dark orange color. As they walked up Catherine noticed first that he had a couple of terrible black spots on his shoulders and when Catherine couldn’t help but let her eyes fall on them, the man answered her curiosity. “Basal cell carcinoma,” he laughed.
“Cancer?” asked Matt, grasping the man’s extended hand and shaking it while giving each other a half hug.
“Oh, it’s harmless,” said the man. “Just ugly as sin. Wife hates it, though. She’s always on my ass to go get it taken care of, but you know how I feel about those Goddamn doctors! Can’t afford it, anyway.”
“You know the VA hospital back home could help,” offered Matt.
“Yeah, I know. But this is home, now. I’ll be fine.”
Catherine hadn’t noticed the man’s missing left leg until she was already on the porch being introduced. “Catherine, this is Patrick Reynolds, one of my old marine buddies from back in the day.”
Catherine shook hands with the burly man. “It’s nice to meet you,” she told him, making sure not to stare at his missing limb.
“Pat, this is Catherine James.”
“The Catherine James?” Patrick asked. “I’ve heard about you,” he told her with a big grin.
“Yeah, Pat. The Catherine,” he said sarcastically, but a little flushed.
“Matt tried to talk me into giving you a ring some years back. Said you might be a good somebody to help find a job. I told him he was fucking crazy if he thought I was going to babysit a bunch of rich oil pussies. No offense. So I went back over for another tour.” He pat his leg, “Guess I should have babysat instead, huh?” he said with a laugh.
“No offense taken,” said Catherine with a half-hearted laugh. “We do get some whiney ones now and then.”
“And this is Julio,” said Matt. “Julio,” he addressed the boy in Spanish, “This is my good friend Mr. Patrick. He and his wife are going to look after you for a couple days while Miss Catherine and I try to fix things so the bad men will leave you alone.”
“Hola,” Julio told the man.
“Hello, yourself.” He then switched to Spanish with an odd sort of accent. “ I got a boy about your age. He’s in the house playing. You want to go play with him?’
“Okay.”
“How do you have a boy his age?” asked Matt.
“Step kids, amigo. But I treat ‘em like my own. Pretty good kids unless they feel like being little shits for fun,” he smiled. “They’re father left ‘em when they was just babies, so now I’m their dad. Pretty fucking amazing, huh?” Going to be an interesting childhood, Catherine thought. But at least he seemed to really be attached. “Just go on in and tell him his daddy said you’re visiting for a while,” he told Julio.
He ran into the house with a pronounced limp, his leg still bandaged.
“What happened to his leg?” asked Patrick.
“He was shot,” said Matt. “It’s a long story,” he added quickly, cutting of Pat before he could ask. “Needless to say he’s had a hard time.”
“Well, hell! A boy after my own heart already, I see,” he grinned. “At least he got to keep his. We’ll try and take it easy on him, then,” said Pat. “Well, bring your asses on in here and have a beer with me!” He started to get himself up on his one leg. “I got a prosthetic in the house but I hate that damn thing. Rubs the shit outta me.”
Matt stopped him from getting all the way up, “Actually, Pat. We really can’t.” Pat looked dejected. “We ran into a little trouble earlier.” He whispered, “We’ve got a gang banger in the trunk of the car.”
“Oh,” said Pat, his eyebrows rising. “For a minute there I thought it was me,” he let out a laugh. “Well, we’l
l make it a quick visit, then. I see you all got a lot going on. Aracely!” he screamed towards the house. “Bring us out some beers, woman! And bring my leg while you’re at it.”
A moment later a woman in her early thirties came out of the house carrying three bottles of Carta Blanca beer in one hand and a metal pole with a shoe on one end and a blue receptacle on the other where Pat’s thigh would rest when he wore it. Pat handed both Catherine and Matt a beer. “This is my wife,” he said proudly. “Wife, meet some friends of mine.”
Aracely smiled politely, “Nice to meet you.” She turned to her husband and said, “Here, love, I’ll help you with your leg.” And she knelt down and slipped Patrick’s leg on for him, rolling up the overly large sock on the top that came up to his hip.
“Ah, thank you, dear,” he told her. “I’ll be in in a bit.”
“It was nice to meet you,” said Catherine as Aracely disappeared back into the house.
“Good woman, that one,” he told Matt. “She’d have to be to put up with my ass, right? Sweet as an angel, cooks like a chef, and screws like a . . . Oh, sorry,” he remembered, looking to Catherine. “Well, she’s a good woman. I’ll say that. Now why don’t you tell me a bit about what’s going on?”
Catherine decided that if Matt trusted Pat, then that was good enough for her, so she didn’t protest when Matt basically summarized everything that had happened for Pat. “Yeah, I heard about that girl,” he said. “God damn shame, that. And you think these fucking gang bangers. . what do they call themselves, Barrio Boys?” Catherine nodded. “So these Barrio Boys are the little sons of bitches who did it, the kid saw, and now they’re trying to off all of ya?”
“That about sums it up,” said Matt.
Pat laughed. “Well, hell! They just don’t know who they’re fucking with, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” said Matt. “But they’ll be finding out soon enough.”
“We’re just trying to find the ones who did it,” said Catherine, not overly please with the way Matt had said that. “Then we’ll figure out what to do after that.”
“Don’t go letting one of them pussies get a lucky shot on ya. You haven’t gotten rusty, have you?” he asked Matt.
“Oh, he’s not rusty,” said Catherine.
Pat laughed again. “And what about you, Ms. James? You up for some fight after sittin’ on your ass in your fancy office all day?”
Catherine wasn’t offended. She had known men like Patrick Reynolds before and knew he meant well, even if he did curse like it was going out of style. She smiled and told him, “I’ll do what I can.”
“Well don’t go getting my friend here killed,” he said, still laughing. “Then I’d have to start killing me some gang bangers and it’d really turn into a cluster fuck. I can still move the ole stump around if I have to.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” said Matt. “This is just the kind of vacation I’ve been needing.”
“You would say that! By God, you’re still a crazy son of a bitch, aren’t ya, Matt?”
“He jumped off a three story balcony into a pool earlier today,” added Catherine.
“He did!?” Pat laughed even more. “Hell, I used to do that kind of stuff for fun. And got a gang banger in the trunk. Boy, I tell ya, if I didn’t think the Misses would have my ass, I think I’d join the two of you just for all the fun you’re having. I got the family now, though. And this leg thing does slow me up a bit.”
“We know,” said Matt. “Watching Julio is a huge help. He’s a good kid.”
Pat chuckled again, “Barrio Boys . . . what kind of stupid name is that, anyway? Sounds like a boy band or something.” Catherine smirked in spite of herself, as she remembered Ramirez saying there had been such a band. “Hell’s Angels. Now that’s a name.”
They finished their beers and made their goodbyes. Catherine made sure to explain about the necklaces the Barrio Boys wore and about how dangerous they were. “We made sure we weren’t followed,” said Catherine. “And I can’t thank you enough for looking after the boy. We certainly don’t want to cause you or your family any problems.”
“Oh, hell. Quit kissing my ass, woman. I don’t mind one bit. And if any of those gang bangers do show up around here, don’t you worry. I got something for their ass. I may be getting fat and lazy in my old age, but I’ll still drop a son of a bitch before he knows what hit him, one legged and all.” And despite his antics and beer belly jiggling over his Bermuda shorts, something about him told Catherine he was probably telling the truth.
As Catherine and Matt pulled out and onto the street he asked her, “Ready to have a chat with our friend Pedro?” The man in the trunk was conscious now and they could hear his movements as he tried to untie himself.
“Yes,” said Catherine. “It’s about time we got some real answers.”
“Look,” said the man. “I just did what they told me to, alright? I didn’t hurt nobody.”
“Well, you tried to kill us,” said Catherine.
The man shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t try to kill nobody. I was just there, okay. I’m the driver, that’s it.”
“Oh, yes you did,” said Catherine. “Tell us who killed the girl.”
“I already told you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Kelly Woodall, who killed her?” She asked coolly, for about the twentieth time now.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, okay. I don’t know nothing about that pinche gringa.” His eyes drifted downward to the metal ring Matt had place around his finger. Matt had finally convinced Catherine it was time to try a new approach.
Matt pulled the wire tighter and the man screamed in pain. The wire cut through his skin and Matt kept applying pressure and then pulled downward and layers of skin filleted outward like a peeled banana, the man screaming. “I told you it was going to hurt,” he told the man, “and I really wouldn’t talk about the girl like that in front of my friend here.”
When Matt stopped pulling, the man looked down and could just see the white of his bone beneath the few remaining layers of skin on his finger. He began to sway. Catherine tried her best not to let on how horrific she thought what they were doing was show on her face. We don’t have a choice, she thought. There’s no way this guy will talk without resorting to this. Matt smacked the man on the face gently to keep him conscious. “Hey, hey,” he told him. “You paying attention? You ready yet to start telling us what we want to know?”
“I told you! I don’t know nothing about that girl!” the man screamed. “I swear!”
“What do you think?” he asked Catherine, turning and looking at her. She only glanced back at him. “Nope, I don’t believe him, either,” said Matt, pulling a bit more causing the man to cry out again. Catherine turned away briefly. She didn’t like resorting to these tactics, but the man had been uncooperative up to this point and they needed what he knew. They had found an empty metal building down a lonely road from the highway and decided to use it that evening to question the man. So far, they’d garnered nothing. They’d started off with just questions, then a bit more forceful cajoling, but all he had offered was insults and curses. So now they were at the point of last resort. Matt worked the man’s hand like a butcher preparing some chops. Blood splattered on the floor, at first a trickle, but then it began dripping profusely like a broken faucet. “That looks painful,” Matt noted. “And we’ve really only started. Sure you don’t want to start sharing?”
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