by Buck Sanders
The old man seemed to consider this for a moment. He showed absolutely no sign of fear, or any indication that anything was wrong. His expression was more one of idle curiosity. The last thing Slayton expected him to do was laugh.
His laughter was thin and pallid, but it was honest. The little man’s face seamed into a thousand-wrinkled map of smile furrows; what few yellow teeth he had left were exposed. He pointed as he laughed.
“That is Fuentes’s gun. His pistola.” He seemed to find that even more amusing.
“They aren’t dead,” Slayton said, a bit giddy.
“I know,” said the man, as though he were some kind of mystic. “Those two are deserving of death, but not yet prepared to die. Fuentes and Cholla.” He laughed again. “You are the first man ever to escape their place of murder and torture. For that you deserve respect. You will probably not live very long if they are still alive.” He related this with a pragmatic deadness of tone.
“Is there a telephone?” Slayton said. His skull was pounding sickly; he suddenly felt the urge to vomit. It was the heat.
“There is no telephone,” the man said. “No telephone for two hundred miles.” He turned back toward the screen door. “Come inside, out of the sun. You cannot drive two hundred miles.” He was right.
Dazed, and realizing the old man had the more sense of the two of them at that moment, Slayton obediently followed him into the cool, damp sanctuary of the building.
The old man’s name was Ramon Dagoberto Enrique Lucia Jesus de la Villa Ortega. He had been called “Wheelo” as a boy, and was nicknamed Chispa, which meant “quick-witted.” “You may call me señor Ortega,” he told Slayton helpfully.
Slayton had sunk into the comfortable shadows of an easy chair, his stomach loaded with citrus juice and cold tea into which Ortega had sprinkled a combination of powders. Slayton did not want to know what they were. The headache, the nausea, and the grinding pain in his bones subsided, and now he was quite naturally exhausted—drained dry and beaten thin. The prospect of eating was not as disgusting as it had been several hours before. He felt pretty chipper for a man who, according to Ortega, should have been dead.
He sat quietly, knocked out of time-sync by whatever medicinal mickey Ortega had slipped him, while the old man rattled about doing his chores and talking in his general direction. The room in which Slayton sat was filled with arcane bric-a-brac. His eyes wandered sleepily over it all as Ortega talked.
“I grew to know both men well,” Ortega said. “Fuentes was an hijo de puta, the kind that feeds a scorpion to a hill of ants and watches while the scorpion stings itself to death. I once swore to kill him after he struck me and knocked me to the ground, bleeding from the mouth.”
“What happened?” said Slayton. “If anyone deserves a death of vengeance, it’s a sadist like Fuentes.” He recalled being held by the hair and having his teeth jarred by the hammy fist. Slayton dimly remembered the sensations of spit in his face, of crawling on the dirt floor to the rhythm of Fuentes’s boot.
“I was a younger man, and angry all the time,” Ortega said. “I used to plot to kill him; now I sell him cerveza. I understood that he would not change, but that I might. I did not wish to become like him.” He shrugged. “Can you understand such a thing?”
Slayton could have blown away both men in the cell with their own guns. His not doing so he had excused for reasons of expediency, the need to escape. He knew it was not entirely true. But he knew that Fuentes had run up a huge bill that would someday be due and payable on behalf of the old man, of himself, of other victims. His ethics and his sense of justice warred.
“Cholla was different,” Ortega continued, “but just as bad. As Fuentes was cruel, so was Cholla corrupt. It was not difficult for them to end up in uniform.”
“Why didn’t Fuentes just kill me right away?” said Slayton.
“Fuentes hates the Anglos, the gabachos. He probably wanted to make you last. Did they give you drugs? Did they give you the agua fria? Fuentes made the mistake of taking so much pleasure that he forgot he was letting the drugs wear off.”
“How do you know that?”
Ortega shrugged again, like someone to whom everything is equally obvious. “Do you think you are the first man the mero-meros have sent down here to be killed? Fuentes would get a sparkle in his eye whenever there was a new one. There have been many times I have seen such a sparkle, when he comes down to buy supplies to take to the desert station. It is in the middle of nowhere, near the Mesa Locote. What other purpose could it serve?
“You know all this, and yet—?”
“I know,” Ortega interrupted. “But I am, as I have said and as you no doubt can see, an old man. I will live in this place until I die. I am prepared to die. I say this without sorrow, for everyone dies, and I have had a full life. But I am not willing to be killed by Fuentes, or his kind, or the American masters they serve.” He motioned toward the curtain, on the other side of which was his little shop with its small stock of staples, desert gear, and utility items. The little shelf of liquor. The Coca-Cola machine from the Middle Ages—the kind with bottles trapped by the neck in a coin maze. The cooler of beer. Under the counter, cartridges in faded boxes. A cigar box half-full of fresh smokes, another with the receipts from the gasoline pump outside, another full of screws and bolts that might someday find use.
“This is all I have,” he said, conclusively.
Slayton relaxed, not into unconsciousness, but calm sleep. While he was out, Ortega applied an astringent to his more serious cuts and wounds, chatting as though Slayton were still awake. It did not matter. He got so few people with whom to pass the time in pleasant conversation that it did not matter whether they were paying attention or not.
A small backwater of Slayton’s mind did manage to find excitement, even though he was drifting off fast. The cholo barrio dwellers were the functionaries of the Star-shine ring, not the leaders. El mero mew, the head man, the big cheese, was a gringo.
Ortega improvised some clean bandages and set Slayton’s nose, applying a swath of bandage across it that was to impede Slayton’s vision over the next few weeks. As evening rolled into chilly night, he cut away Slayton’s shirt with a bone-handled hunting knife. The edge, stone-whetted until the blade would split the lines on the pad of a man’s thumb at the slightest touch, halved the bloody and stinking fabric with a tiny ringing sound. Ortega covered Slayton with a blanket, and Slayton automatically drew it around him. He slept deeply, hardly moving at all throughout the night.
Slayton awoke alone, cataloging the hurts even before opening his eyes. His mouth tasted like a jockstrap locker, but the sleep-numbness throughout his body deadened the pain a litttle. Until he tried to move. His joints were particularly raw, sanded down to the nerve endings and sealed up with molten slag that had cooled into solid lead. But he felt better. He discovered he was bandaged and shirtless. The danger of infection in some of his more serious gashes and cuts had been staved off by Ortega’s ministrations, and the wounds seemed less tender and inflamed.
He trailed a seductively rich odor to the front of the shop, and found Ortega brewing a pot of very strong Colombian coffee and dangling a pair of tin cups from one finger, impatiently. He looked up at Slayton and smiled, but said nothing.
Ortega handed him a brocaded shirt. Slayton’s jeans were still filthy, but serviceable. He could always use the boots for motorcycle riding—or something. Gratefully, he accepted the coffee, cradling the cup in his hands, absorbing its warmth and strength. It was potent and good.
“What will you do when you go back?” Ortega asked.
“I was investigating the men who make the agua fria.”
“That is how you ended up here? And you still plan to oppose them?”
Slayton did not quite know how to explain the situation succintly. “They are killers. The agua fria kills. If it doesn’t, sometimes it drives the users mad. I have to stop the people who make it. I will, as soon as I go back. I have men in L
os Angeles who will help, and they’re waiting to hear from me. I suspect they’re wondering where in hell I am.”
“You are committed in this?” Ortega asked, almost insistently.
“Yes.”
“I know of the agua fria,” he said, standing up from a low stool and setting his coffee cup on the counter. “I regret I do not know anything that would help you bring those who make it to justice. That shirt you are wearing?”
Slayton looked down at it.
“It belonged to my son. He lived in the barrio in Los Angeles. He was acquainted with the gang members who worked for the men who make the agua fria. He drank it and died. Before that it was only mota. But I know of the agua jria. All I have left of my son are the clothes he left behind.” He raised his voice slightly. “I have other sons, but none of them, as you can see, are here with me. They have gone to live their lives. Arturo drove his automobile down here twice a month, to see me, to help me with the physical things difficult for an old man. Now he does not come, but I manage. I am proud of that for myself. The others, I have not seen for years. It is not sad that Arturo is dead; it is sad that he should have died in such a way. Do you understand?” There was no remorse in the old man’s voice.
“If you are going to fight those who make the agua jria,” he continued, bending with careful slowness to open a wooden chest on the floor, “I have another gift for you.”
The chest contained more clothing which, Slayton supposed, had also belonged to Arturo. Ortega brushed it aside and dug beneath. He withdrew a gun.
Slayton’s brows came down in amazed scrutiny. “Gun” was a misnomer—this was one of the most elegant weapons he had ever seen or held in his hands.
It was a shotgun of a most unconventional type. It had the smallest stock and the shortest barrels Slayton had ever seen, even considering the weapons of his sometimes specialized trade. The mouths of the barrels were belled slightly and were mounted in vintage, aromatic wood carved to accommodate them perfectly. The wood was as hard as steel, and polished to a reflective sheen. It was inlaid with gold filigree. The twin hammers were ornamental, as was the guard over the single trigger. The entire weapon was only slightly over fifteen inches in total length.
Slayton marvelled. It was a one-shot weapon that would, for all practical purposes, destroy everything in front of it, given the right loads. He was sure Ortega would produce those, any moment now. It was beautifully lethal.
“I wish to be with you when you oppose them,” said Ortega. “And for that reason I ask you to take this, when you go. I have kept it for years, but you need not return it. You see, I have decided that it is all I can do.” He put the stubby shells into Slayton’s outstretched palm, then resumed his seat and his coffee. “You are not too injured to leave now,” he said, quietly. “I suggest you consider it before Fuentes and Cholla are able to alert anyone to the loss of their jeep.”
Slayton smiled, realizing the old man had read him like a billboard and operated by grindingly strict, though infinitely subtle, rules of honor. “No, I did not kill them.”
“Then they will be loose and dangerous to you. Stay here longer, and you gamble unnecessarily. The yerba buena will give you stamina.”
“And when Fuentes shows up here? You know he will.”
“I will treat him as I have always treated him,” Ortega said, implying the ease of the matter. “He will not notice. We have endured each other’s presence for years.” He seemed to ponder this. “I will remove your tire tracks from my lot. You will take their guns with you. I have burned the shirt.”
Slayton knew that to thank the man for his boundless generosity would be insulting, so he gambled on a different level as he stood up to leave.
“I will see you again, Chispa,” he said.
The old man smiled broadly.
15
Mercy had been detained by the authorities almost as soon as she left the warehouse. While Slayton was being pounded inside, and after she had been raped by a furious Ortiz in the machine room of one of the lower floors, she had been expelled from the company of the gang with instructions to ditch Slayton’s car somewhere suitable. Ortiz handed her Slayton’s keys, wiped tears from her eyes with his thumb—his hand lovingly cupped around her neck in the same fashion he had used to choke Slayton—and told her to meet him after she had gotten rid of the car.
That much, Slayton learned from Lucius Bonnard when he was picked up after his phone call from the border station at Tijuana. He learned the rest from Mercy after Lucius chauffeured him to the Department’s L.A. offices. She had been on ice ever since Slayton had been taken into Mexico, though he subsequently discovered most of his time spent incommunicado had been not in Mexico proper, but in Baja California.
He ignored Lucius’s overenthusiastic tirade concerning his disappearance and sudden return.
Slayton walked through customs carrying a sling bag okayed by the U.S. Treasury Department. To smooth over the less rulebook aspects of this reentrance into the country, Lucius exploited an old debt owed him by a customs man named Enrico Ricos. “Rich Ricky” made sure that Slayton’s bag came through unopened, and met Slayton at the opposite end of a procedurally simple check-in. When Ricky asked Lucius what was in the bag, Lucius had said, “a gun,” and both men had smiled. Slayton was back in the U.S.A.
“What the hell transpired back there?” he asked Lucius as they sped north along the Pacific Coast Highway in Lucius’s BMW.
“Little bit of one hand washing the other,” Lucius admitted. “Graft, for want of a better word. Ricky’s brother had a little work permit problem about six months ago. I helped him out with it. I had a premonition I might someday have a friend get into deep shit across the border, and insurance was especially cheap that day. And I was especially expansive.” He cocked his head, knowingly.
“For once, I’m glad legality didn’t stop you,” Slayton said, evenly. “You’re not as green as I thought, Lucius. I just may have underestimated you.”
“Everybody does, my man. That’s why I’ll remain a comer. Everybody thinks I can’t do it.” He rolled his eyes. “Do you know what a pain in the ass your damned stakeout would have been if that bitch hadn’t turned on you? I know you tipped to it, I mean, I was there when you did, but how?” He took both his hands off the wheel to shrug exaggeratedly. It was a gesture native to southern California.
“The suspicion stayed with me ever since the phono call at the hotel room,” Slayton said. “Call it intuition. Things just could not be as methodical as they came off. Canning her would have been easy, but it wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere. On the other hand, letting her lead me into a trap got you guys one warehouse location. It got me the gang connections who will lead us to the top man, who, by the way, is American, not a Chicano.”
“Huh!” Lucius barked. “I see it also got you abrasions and contusions and a busted face. Effective, alright.”
“What’s the status of the warehouse?” Slayton was absorbed in the abstract blur of traffic rushing by on all sides.
“Staked out. When Mercy strolled out and commandeered your car, we followed her—your instructions, you’ll recall. She went right back to the dump where she bunks in the barrio, not to the Starshine honcho’s, as you suspected. We picked her up as she got out of the car. Ortiz had obviously slapped her around, and there were tears all over her face. When we got back to the warehouse, we found where they had punched you around, but everyone was gone.”
Slayton winced in light pain. If Lucius had had a few extra men storm the warehouse as soon as Mercy exited, they might have gotten the gang and saved him a pounding—but he had been positive she would rush to a higher-up to report. What if she had been washed along by the situation, like him, rather than actually being a plotting part of it? There did not seem to be any extenuating circumstance Slayton could think of, but innocence—at least partial innocence—was a possibility he had automatically rejected in his quest to kill the case.
Tightly, he said, “D
id Mercy say anything?”
“Only that she’d talk to you. She doesn’t care about the detention. She’s apparently terrified of the gang.”
“Nobody’s shown up at the warehouse?”
“Not since your buddies fled into the woodwork after customizing your face. But they weren’t my job, remember?” Lucius’s tone bore no malice. He was crisp and businesslike, even though he was glad to see Slayton nearly intact.
“They didn’t do this. I got stomped, but it was a fast symbolic stomping. The gang did not want to do the killing—that’s something else you’d better pay attention to. I got my medals here from a creep across the border. As tough as Ortiz and his bunch act, I don’t think they have any stomach for killing; they’re too into theatrical threats.”
“Except for Kiko.”
“Yeah, I wonder about that.” He wondered all the way back to Los Angeles.
“Oh, my god—!”
The last syllable was drawn out into an upward-inflected cry of nearly physical pain. Mercy was responsible for the exclamation, which erupted from her as soon as Slayton walked into the interview room. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she made a helpless sort of gesture to him, her hands dancing meaninglessly in the air.
Slayton walked ahead of Lucius into the room. It was paneled entirely in drilled, white acoustic cork tiles. A one-way mirror connected with an adjacent observation room, and the place was lousy with electronic bugs. Two mikes were concealed in the table itself, leads running inside the legs through hidden holes drilled into the floor. Others, in the walls and ceiling, were activated by a man at a sound board in the next room. Beside the sound board was a video camera and taping hookup. Chairs, uncomfortably hard, and several ashtrays were the only other furnishings. People had confessed here, had been beaten here. It was antiseptically clean and spartanly neutral, yet for Slayton it evoked the same tightening of the gut that the death cell down south had. He had been inside that cell a little over twenty-four hours ago. The memory of it would stick throughout his life, but it was notably stronger and more disturbing at the moment he walked through the door and saw his betrayer sitting there at the table.