The exhibit was protected by a high black fence winding around a pit the size of a baseball diamond, but I walked toward the flickering light, watching for Escobar. The light was coming from behind the fence, close to the tar.
“Gus?” I called. My body flinched, expecting an answer from a gun.
The light flickered more persistently. A pen flashlight, I guessed. I followed the paved path until the fence abruptly ended. A panel had been cut away, sagging inward.
My entry point.
The night stood still in the instant before I climbed over the broken fence, a moment of the unknown, of hope preserved. I was still alive. April might still be alive. The moon was full, casting a bluish hue over the black, silent tar. The creatures standing before me might have been real. Dad might have been beside me, holding my hand.
“Stop there, compadre.”
Escobar’s voice came from the far side of the larger mastodon standing on solid ground. I still couldn’t see him. Was he alone?
“Where’s April?” I said.
A muffled sound might have been from her, close to Escobar. I leaned over slightly to try to see under the mastodon, and I thought I saw two pairs of legs, one clothed and one bare.
“April?” I said, taking another step forward.
“I said stop,” Escobar said, and the new sound was definitely from my love, muffled pain. The sound sent pinpricks into my spinal cord. My knees turned to Jell-O.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said. “I’m here. I’m alone. That was our deal.” I heard my own voice and wondered if I knew how foolish it was to try to bargain with a psychopath.
“Stay where you are,” he said calmly. Unhurried. “Starting with your shirt, remove your clothes. Strip down. Ahora. Now.”
I glanced around, expecting to find a crowd of tourists gawking with cameras, but the tourists had left with the sunlight. It was nearly one in the morning. Wilshire Boulevard’s sparse traffic breezed past us, unaware. Any random jogger would have seen me, if anyone had been jogging. No security guard patrolled nearby. Shit. I considered trying to stall Escobar, but I didn’t want to test his patience.
April made another sound, an attempt at communication. A warning? She was obviously gagged, but she sounded like herself somehow. Escobar had not broken her.
“It’s all right, baby,” I lied, unbuttoning the dress shirt I had been wearing since my morning visit to Nelson’s office. I suddenly wished I had confided in Nelson instead of fleeing his car. Had I been thinking straight? Anything had to be better than facing Escobar alone.
“The rest,” Escobar said after I’d tossed my shirt to the ground. “Very slowly.”
I unhooked my slacks and let them fall to my ankles. I had lost weight in the past couple of weeks; my clothes barely fit me. I stepped out of my pants, taking time with each foot.
“Satisfied?” I said, hoping I could keep my briefs on. “I’m unarmed. No wire.”
“You’re a good boy. You know how to take direction better than that, Tennyson,” Escobar said. “Todos.”
He wanted me nude. Exposed. Vulnerable. I bent over slightly to tug down my briefs, keeping my eyes toward the voice. The morning air bit into my skin, but my shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
“Bueno. Now,” Escobar said. “Step toward the small one. Walk slowly.”
The baby mastodon stood in front of its mother, closer to the tar’s edge. As I took careful steps, I saw two shadowed figures behind the larger beast.
April was bent over in front of Escobar, and a shotgun lay across her back, pointed straight at me. April was wearing the dress I’d seen her in earlier; Escobar hadn’t stripped her. Maybe he hadn’t raped her. The gun was pointed at me, not at her. So far, so good.
“Please,” I said. “Let her go. April hasn’t done anything. She isn’t like the others.”
“Or like you?” Escobar said.
“Or like me. She’s nothing like me. You know that.”
“Look in the shadow. See what I have left for you.” When I hesitated, Escobar pumped his shotgun to chamber a round. I couldn’t make out all of the gun’s details, but it was a twelve-gauge. At this range, he could hit me without trying.
Confused, I did as he had asked and saw coiled there a pair of ankle cuffs, joined with eighteen inches of unbreakable plastic wire. Probably available at any sex-toy shop on Sunset Boulevard. I slipped the loops over my feet, desperation bubbling up like methane through tar.
But there was hope, too. If he was focused on me, he wasn’t thinking about April.
“You’re right,” Escobar said, his voice tight. “She’s not like you. But her judgment was poor, no? And now here we are. So you must watch her drown, Tennyson. That’s her price for foolish choices. When I’m finished here, I’ll come for Chela.”
He must have done something to April—something outside of my vision—because she tried to suppress a sound of pain as he pushed her closer to the tar. A tide of rage stirred in me, but if I let myself hear April’s pain, it would blot out that part of me that could save us.
“You only get one shot before this place is crawling with cops,” I said. “You picked the wrong spot, Gus. You picked the wrong weapon.” You picked the wrong man.
April let out a muted yell as Escobar forced her to take another step closer to the edge of the tar pit. April’s hands were bound behind her back. Under Escobar’s grip, she walked bent over, as if she carried an overwhelming weight on her back. But Escobar barely seemed to notice her.
“You’re wrong, Tennyson,” Escobar said. “The first shot will attract attention, sí. But I will aim low. And there you’ll lie, screaming and helpless, while I force her head beneath the water. She will drown quickly. In panic, they always drown quickly. I shoot you a second time, this one in the head, and I will vanish—a phantom once again.”
I forced a chuckle. “Sorry, man, but you don’t know April. That girl doesn’t panic.”
Was April laughing, too? She made a sound remarkably like my chuckle, and I nearly smiled. Good girl, April. If we unnerved Escobar, we could knock him off his game.
Escobar made a sudden jerking movement. April’s laugh, if that was what it had been, became a wounded animal’s cry. I heard the wet snap of a breaking bone. April shuddered, nearly lurching off her feet, but Escobar pulled her close. April sobbed once but stopped midway through, as if from pure will. My whole body went cold to try to block out her pain.
“Laugh at me again,” Escobar said, “and I’ll break her other wrist. They’re as fragile as a sparrow’s wing. And you, April—walk, or see him castrated.”
He pushed April another step closer to the tar.
Think think think think think think think think think
“Whatever happens to April, the same thing happens to Louise,” I said.
Escobar barked a laugh. “You’re truly desperate, Tennyson.”
“You know she’s been working night and day trying to finish your masterpiece,” I said. “Don’t try to tell me you haven’t been spying on the woman who was supposed to be the mother of your child. When’s the last time you saw her, Gus? You thought I came out here without a bargaining chip? You let April go—my people let Louise go.”
“I care nothing for her,” Escobar said.
But we were both lying. If he hadn’t cared about Louise, he would have kept moving instead of stopping to deny his feelings. I heard it in his voice.
“Yes, you do. She’s the closest you’ve found to someone who understands you. You care about Louise, and you care about that damn movie,” I said. “My partner hunts and hurts people for a living. If she doesn’t get good news from me in five minutes, we both lose somebody tonight.”
My description of Marsha didn’t sound that far off, if only she had agreed to help me. If Marsha had backed me up, by this time, Escobar would have been cooling meat.
Escobar hesitated. “She?” Good. He’d been listening.
“Yes,” I said. “I know a lot of interesti
ng women. Some of them aren’t very nice.” Bingo. The devil is in the details. A female was so unlikely in this context that I could see that he was struggling not to believe me.
“Always an actor, Tennyson—and not a very good one,” he said, deciding I was lying. He dragged April closer to the muck.
I hadn’t expected a threat against Louise to work. Even if Escobar cared about Louise, his mission would come first. But I had bought a few seconds to try to unsettle him, break his concentration, force a mistake. I only needed seconds. Escobar wouldn’t want to fire his gun any sooner than he had to. As long as we were hidden, he could say or do anything; but the moment his gun fired, he might have three minutes or less to finish his work.
His sickness was hurting his logic; it was much harder to try to wound someone with a gun rather than simply firing at the center of mass. And the logistics of trying to drown April were complicated. Escobar couldn’t outsmart his compulsion to follow his ritual.
Escobar pushed April forward another step, and suddenly, they were less than ten yards away from me, fully visible in the pale moonlight. April was gagged, but her eyes staring up at me hadn’t changed. If she was crying, I couldn’t see it. Despite the pain from her broken bone, all I saw in her eyes was defiance. And love. April looked more concerned about me than she was about herself.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, baby girl,” I said, as if we were alone. As if there were no gun riding across her back. “This will all be over soon.”
“Sí,” Escobar said, giving her a harsh push that nearly sent her to her knees at the edge of the water. “It will be over soon.”
The water gurgled, and an odor like stale farts wafted from the pond. Timeless rot. The water looked as if it was boiling in slow motion. While Escobar glanced toward the ripples in the tar pit, I inched closer to him. With my brown skin against the night, he never saw me move. Despite the ankle cuffs, I would be close enough to leap at him if he gave me another chance. A shotgun was unwieldy; if I came at him from the right angle, he would never have the chance to aim.
My heartbeat sped. In the dark, it would be hard to recognize the right moment, and there would only be one.
Escobar chopped his knee behind April’s so that she collapsed to the soil, her bare knees hitting the ground too hard. She looked like an impending execution, gagged, with her hands behind her. April cried out again, but only briefly, trying so hard not to. Her cry tried to pummel past my defenses, but I shut her pain away.
As much as I wished I could, I couldn’t turn away from April’s face. She needed my eyes to give her hope. I nodded to her: I’ve got this. Just trust me.
“Come, Tennyson,” Escobar said. With an exaggerated wrenching movement, he grabbed a tight handful of April’s hair with his free hand, yanking her head back the way he had pulled Brittany’s on the set. April’s hair was short, so he must have caught her by the roots. The sound April made this time was more indignation than pain.
Escobar grinned at me with déjà vu. “This,” he said, “is how you take control. So now it’s your turn. Come take her from me.”
He waggled his shotgun at me, a beckoning finger. A Mossberg twelve-gauge. When I blinked, I thought I saw the barrel blaze. The mass of pellets would travel faster than the speed of sound. I might not live to hear it.
“Better watch your aim,” I said. “That’s gonna rip me up.”
“I can live with that if you can,” Escobar said.
“But then April is wasted,” I said. “You did all this for nothing. No purpose. Would this make Mami proud? For this she sacrificed herself?”
The anger on Escobar’s face was nearly bright enough to glow, but he didn’t speak. He glared at me with lips pursed tight, still hyperalert. He never looked away from me or loosened his expert grip on April. If I couldn’t rattle him by mentioning his mother, rattling him might not be possible.
Escobar struck April with his knee again, and she fell flat to the soil with an oof. He planted his weight on her, driving her into the ground. Her face was inches from the black, oily water.
“You don’t need April, Escobar,” I said. “Let her go. You got me. Here I am. Look at me.” My arms akimbo, I shuffled in a slow circle so Escobar could look me over at every angle. Every vulnerability.
“Come, Tennyson,” Escobar urged. “If you love her, fight for her.”
He would fire as soon as I took a step, and Escobar was deluded if he thought a shot at close range with a Mossberg would leave him a living toy to play with. I might be able to exchange my life for April’s, but I couldn’t trust Escobar to let her go after I was gone.
“We both know that’s a losing game,” I said. “The first move I make in that direction, I’m dead.”
Escobar’s gun never wavered, and April was too off-balance to resist him; her head flopped like a rag doll’s under Escobar’s death grip. He teased us both, bringing her face closer to the water, then away again. My adrenaline tapped out, leaving only a blind panic I wasn’t sure I could shut away.
“You’ve surprised me, Tennyson,” Escobar said with a resigned sigh. “I expected you to be more impulsive. More eager to play the hero. If this woman isn’t worth it to you, pues . . . I understand.” When he shrugged, the gun’s aim shifted from my waist to my face. “Help will come sooner if I shoot you, but you’ll live longer if I don’t. That’s your own decision. Truly, all that matters to me is that you watch this woman drown before I kill you.”
A man of his word, Escobar plunged April’s head into the tar.
APRIL HAD KNOWN she needed her own plan as soon as she saw Tennyson—especially after he stripped off his clothes and she realized he hadn’t brought a weapon. Tennyson was a weapon, but a short-range one. He couldn’t get past the shotgun and planned to sacrifice himself to try to save her. She could see it in his every motion, hear it in every word. His plan was in his eyes as he gazed at her.
It’s up to me. She could jolt Escobar in some way, kick him, butt him with her head. She just had to find the right time, the right way; that was all Tennyson needed. She had to show him that she could fight with him, that he didn’t have to die for her.
But Escobar wouldn’t give her a chance to think. Every time she tried to map out a plan, he hurt her. Pain scattered April’s thoughts.
She’d ignored the pain from having her arms twisted behind her back while Escobar walked her like a dog on a leash. But a sharp crank made her realize he would try to break her left wrist, and then hot, sharp pain flared when he finally did. Her wrist was a twig to him. While he distracted her with agony, he walked her closer to the water. More pain, and her knees were sinking into the damp, cold bank. He was moving too fast.
She inhaled, held it. Exhaled hard. Inhaled deeply. Packed the air down, compressing it in her lungs. Exhaled hard. Repeated.
You’ll have to hold your breath. Pretend to struggle. Pretend to pass out. Hold your breath—
Then the world was gone. Only water, and something like sticky thin mud, everywhere.
Escobar’s sudden motion took April by such surprise that she almost lost her breath. The water was so cold, the darkness so sudden and complete, that April forgot her plan. She forgot everything except the need to stay calm, as she appeared to be consumed with panic.
Instinct made her try to raise her head, but she couldn’t move against Escobar’s grip of stone. Struggle, but don’t burn up too much oxygen. She let a trickle of bubbles escape her mouth. He’ll be watching for signs that you’re losing control.
Pretend to struggle. Pretend to drown.
Her writhing felt real, tiring her. The water was absurdly shallow over something the consistency of oatmeal. Only inches separated her from living or dying, and she tried to free her mouth and nose from the liquid cage. She felt the air on her shoulder, the back of her neck. Once, her ear broke the surface, and she heard Tennyson shout, “Don’t do this!”—more a roar than a shout—with so much alarm in his voice that she knew he was on the verg
e of charging into Escobar’s shotgun blast.
Go limp. Pretend to suffocate.
Even as her lungs screamed for air, April forced herself to flop forward, paralyzed. Her neck drooped, no longer pushing back against Escobar’s palm. How many seconds had she been holding her breath since he’d pushed her in? Twenty? Thirty? How long would Escobar think she could last? Did he know she was a swimmer?
She had to take a chance. If he had contempt for women, he could easily underestimate her capacity. He had felt her struggle. Mightn’t he believe she was exhausted, done?
April went limp.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand—
Escobar shook her, as if to test her, and she didn’t move despite his claw grasping the hair on back of her head. As her face sank deeper into the pool, she felt the water’s texture change, thickening. Her nostrils felt plugged with cold, oily asphalt. Her heartbeat sent tremors throughout her joints. Escobar would never believe she was unconscious if he felt her move.
April tried to lie perfectly still . Seven one-thousand . . . eight . . .
Escobar only had to loosen his grip for an instant. That was all she needed.
But could she wait long enough?
April was dying while I watched.
She had stopped fighting. Had she gotten a good breath? Was she drowning or playing possum? I’d seen the rush of bubbles. Water invading her lungs? Escobar kept his eyes on me, grinning. Only his clamped teeth showed his effort to hold her face beneath the water.
My muscles ached from being spring-loaded, ready to leap at him. But Escobar never stopped watching me. If I shifted my shoulders right or left, Escobar’s gun followed me, waiting. Even in the dark, he saw every move I made, as if he knew my mind.
“You stand there and do nothing?” Escobar said. “You’re so weak, Tennyson?”
The simplistic-minded confuse weakness and strength every day.
“Look at her, dammit!” I said, pointing. “You killed her!”
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