The Lies that Bind

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Um,” I mumbled into the rag.

  “Well, hold your horses.” He laughed, and his teeth flashed quick and bright as a knife blade. It was a stupid joke, and he had a stupid sense of humor, although you have to have a fairly good command of a language to be able to joke in it. I gave him credit for that.

  “So full of curiosity,” he said. He clucked his tongue as though he were talking to a horse. “You asked too many questions, and now you will have to keep your mouth shut.”

  They began unloading the horses one by one. Cinco, the biggest and meanest, the king of the machos, snorted, flicked his head and took a last lunge at Arturo before he went out. I waited my turn. There was no guarantee the next place would be any better than this one, but at least it would be a change.

  After the last horse clomped down the ramp, Jorge shut the door and padlocked it. “Adiós,” he said. I heard the lock close with the terminal click of a cell door slamming on a lifer. “Hey,” I yelled into my gag. “Let me out of here.” I kicked the door and got a dull thud in reply. A running shoe doesn’t make the same kind of statement as a hoof with a thousand pounds of horseflesh behind it.

  “Why are you always so impatient? We will be back when we are ready,” Jorge said.

  They weren’t ready for several hours. The sky changed from late-afternoon blue to midnight black while I waited. We were in a bosque somewhere. I could see cottonwood trees and the corner of a barn through the horses’ tiny windows. I watched the bare arms of the cottonwoods scratch the sky and then disappear into it. I spent the time pacing the trailer, kicking the walls and wishing I had a cigarette. By the time it got dark I’d memorized the confines of the trailer and knew where all the manure piles were. I didn’t need light to find my way around, but I still craved it. One of the worst things about being stuck here was the darkness. Like my need for cigarettes, I promised myself that my desire for light was something I wouldn’t reveal to my captors; it would give them more power over me. One reason people smoke is that focusing all the intensity of your desire on one reasonably satisfiable craving takes your mind off the other things you need. Thinking about cigarettes (opening the pack, lighting the match, sucking in the smoke, exhaling it) kept me from thinking about life, death, food, water and going to the bathroom. I know cigarettes are death too, but it’s a ways down the road and there was a good chance something else was going to get me first. What form would it take? I wondered: a knife, a gun, a kick in the head, the loss of my hands?

  I can’t sit still for long thinking thoughts like that, with or without cigarettes. I paced from one end of my cell to the other like an animal in a cage, a lion the circus left behind in a boxcar on a siding. I pulled against the rope until my wrists were rubbed raw, but I couldn’t loosen the knots, and I couldn’t get my gag untied either. The day got darker and colder, and I couldn’t even sing or scream to keep myself company. The deepening darkness became an empty canvas like the black velvet people paint pictures of tigers and Elvis Presley on. I had nothing better to do, so I filled up the canvas, and the face I created had the outlaw eyes of Niki Falcón. What had made her kill Jaime Córdova and precipitate this sequence of events? It was an act a lot of women might have considered but few would have committed, even if Jaime Córdova had deserved it. Maybe Niki’s bucket had been full of love or hate or recklessness. I imagined what her life would have been like if she’d gotten caught. This trailer was a mountain resort compared to the inner-city hell she’d have gone through. She’d have been confined to a cold, dank cell or a stinking hot one, lucky if she had a hole to piss in or a mattress to sleep on or edible food, waiting to be raped or tortured by the machine. Compared to that, Martha Conover and a big American car could seem like a blessing.

  As time went by I also got a sense of the ambiguity a prisoner feels about her jailer. You hate the guy, but his is the only face you see all day, the only hands that can release or feed you or let in light, and you do begin to feel something like relief when he comes back. When I heard the footsteps on the ramp, the key in the lock, I was almost looking forward to Jorge’s smile.

  It was in place and as malevolent as I remembered, but I didn’t get to see it for long. Lights blazed briefly, long enough for me to see Jorge in the doorway and Manolo with a bandanna in his hand, though not long enough for my pupils to adjust to the change. The men grabbed me, tied the bandanna tight around my eyes, dragged me out of the trailer, pushed me forward, dumped me on the floor of a car and threw a blanket over me. One of them sat down and put his feet on the blanket to keep it and me in place. It was an abduction in the best Argentine thugs’ manner. I couldn’t speak or see any evil, but I could hear Manolo giving directions, an indication those were his feet on my back and he was the one who knew where we were going—east and uphill all the way.

  When we reached our destination, Manolo lifted his feet and the blanket, pulled me out of the car and pushed me forward. “Tenés lasllaves?” asked Jorge. Do you have the keys?

  “Sí,”said Manolo.

  I heard one of them try several keys in a lock. When he found the right one, he opened the door. They pushed me forward. I stumbled on a hardwood floor and tripped on a rug. My shoulder landed hard against a banister, and I heard the sound of metal rattling against wood. “Silencio,” Manolo whispered, jabbing me in the back with his gun. It was a very quiet place and dark too. Only a sliver of light came in under my blindfold.

  “Ádónde vamos?” asked Jorge.

  “Allá,” said Manolo.

  They pushed me forward stumbling through a large house. We walked down hallways, crossed rooms. A door opened, a light came on, my feet stepped on a thick carpet.

  “Shit,” a voice I recognized said. “How in the hell did you get in?” It was a question I might have answered myself if my mouth hadn’t been tied shut. They had a key, taken most likely from Martha Conover’s key ring by their buddies at Mighty. The house we were in belonged to her, although she didn’t live in it. “What are you doing here?”

  “We heard you wanted to talk to us,” Jorge, the spokesman, said.

  “To you, yes, but what did you bring Hamel here for?” I could have answered that one, too, if I hadn’t been gagged.

  Someone untied my blindfold but left my gag in place. I blinked back the light. We were in a house I knew but a room I hadn’t seen yet, a large study with wall-to-wall carpeting, bookshelves and shabby but valuable furniture. It had the look of old money gone threadbare or broke. A brass lamp with a green shade sat on a large mahogany desk. The light switch on the wall beside me was flipped up, indicating, possibly, that it controlled the green lamp, the only light in the room. It illuminated the apoplectic face of Whitney J. Reid III, who was standing behind the desk, wheezing and drumming his thick fingers on the polished wood.

  “She made the connection,” Jorge said. “She went to Mighty and was asking questions about Argentina and the car keys. She told the courtesy van to take her here. We got curious and we started to follow her. She went to Atalaya. She went to your building in Arizona. She came to the polo field. She knows about you and us.”

  “You guys are really brilliant. Hamel didn’t know a thing until you brought her here,” Whit said. “She’s a two-bit divorce lawyer with no credentials or experience, whom my mother-in-law hired to represent her. If you’d left things alone she would have fucked the case up and my mother-in-law would have gone to prison for sure.”

  And he would have gained control of her business and her bank account and gotten a head start on life after foreclosure. The reason, apparently, Whit Reid had recommended me was that he thought I wasn’t up to the job, that my incompetence would get Martha a prison term and out of his way. I had made the right connection. Whit needed money. He played polo. He knew Niki Falcón came to Albuquerque and visited Michael Velásquez’s grave every Halloween night. He’d found out there was a price on her head, and he knew Argentine polo players who wanted to help him collect it. Whit Reid had turned his stepso
n’s girlfriend over to assassins for blood money, as if she were another piece of real estate to be bought and sold. As a side benefit he appeared to have set up Martha Conover.

  “You were supposed to have gone to Argentina and come back with the money before now,” he said. “Did you bring it?”

  “The Córdovas want evidence that the girl that died is Verónica Falcón,” Jorge said. “She shot Manolo in the leg and got away from us at the cemetery before we got proof.”

  Whit looked at Manolo and shook his head. “You guys are real screw-ups. You let a girl shoot you and get away.”

  “You didn’t tell us she would have a gun.”

  “She was a known assassin. Did you think she’d just give up?”

  Jorge shrugged. They hadn’t, apparently, expected to encounter a woman as competent or as tough as Niki Falcón. If the Argentines hadn’t killed her, it put a new slant on this case that turned me back toward where all roads had been leading but where I hadn’t wanted to follow—square one, Los Cerros, with the headlights on.

  “She didn’t trust you,” Jorge said to Whit. “She asked if you were the one who sent us. She wanted to know what we were going to do with her next.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Claro. Why not? She had the gun.”

  “Brilliant,” Whit said. “Well, she’s dead now. What difference does it make what she knew? It was a lucky break for you guys that the way things happened she died anyway.”

  “Yes, but we cannot get the second payment without proof that the girl who died was Verónica Falcón.”

  I could see conflict and anger ripple across Whit’s face. He was pissed, and he didn’t trust his associates any longer, if he ever had. Criminals usually know better than to trust each other, and these criminals were also separated by a canyon of language and culture. If Whit had the proof and he gave it to them, he would lose whatever leverage he had, but if he didn’t produce it, he wouldn’t get his second payment. “You can take it from me she was Justine Virga and Verónica Falcón.”

  “Your word is not enough. The Córdovas looked for Niki Falcón for a long time. They have already paid you very well and they will pay more, but they must have proof. If we had gotten the girl we would have taken something for identification.” He smiled his knife-blade smile. “Her hands, maybe, for the prints. Do you have proof?”

  Greed won Whit’s battle. He reached into his desk drawer, opened a box and pulled a piece of jewelry out of a bed of cotton, a heart-shaped locket on a chain that looked precarious as a butterfly in his thick fingers. He tossed the locket to Jorge, edged his hand back into the drawer and breathed heavily through his flattened nose. “Falcón’s aunt gave this to my wife. She was wearing it when she died.”

  “You traitor,” I squawked into the muffler of my gag.

  “Shut up, Nellie,” Whit said.

  Jorge inspected the locket. “Bueno.” Inside was the photograph of Justine and Michael smiling like newlyweds for the camera. The back was engraved with the initials VF. “The Córdovas will be very happy with this, very happy.” He smiled and put the locket in his pocket. “Muchas gracias, señor. And now it looks like our business is finished.”

  “Our business will be finished when I get the final payment,” said Whit, drumming the fingers of his left hand on his desk.

  “Verdad?” Jorge laughed. Manolo watched them intently, his stagnant-water eyes moving back and forth from Jorge to Whit, his hand reaching into his pocket. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, señor.”

  Their business deal was breaking up in Whit Reid’s study. A contract to commit an illegal act is not legally enforceable, but there are always extralegal means, and people who enter into illegal contracts don’t hesitate to use them. The Argentines had what they wanted; Whit was of no more use to them. He was, in fact, an unnecessary expense. Whit was used to having high-priced lawyers fight his battles, but they weren’t any good to him now. It was his businessman’s cunning against the Argentines’ street smarts. We were on Whit’s territory, which gave him one advantage, but it looked to me as if the winner of this contest would be the one with the fastest draw and the biggest weapon. Whit’s right hand inched deeper into the drawer. “ Self-defense,” he would say, if the last word was his. “They were robbers who broke into my house. It wasn’t my fault.”

  My future was looking dimmer than the green desk lamp’s bulb. Whoever won the draw, I’d witness it. Since I’d be the only one left to incriminate the survivor, the next bullet would have my name on it. I visualized the scene if Manolo won. Their horses hadn’t kicked me to death, but the Argentines would get another opportunity to finish me off—here. Manolo’s gun would end up in my hand, with no prints on it but mine. Whit and I would be found dead together in this study. I’d hate to have anyone think it had been a lovers’ quarrel. I didn’t know how Whit would explain my body on his floor if he won, but he was enterprising enough to think of something. “Which one do you want to be killed by?” I asked myself. “Neither,” myself replied. There was another woman in the house. Whose side was she on? Where was she? The men glared at each other. It took only a fraction of a second for them to act, but it felt like a slow-motion tango. The hands came up, the guns appeared. I threw myself against the light switch, hoping the green desk lamp would answer. The light went off, the guns fired, one right after the other. I rolled to the floor, taking an end table with me. Someone swore in Spanish. Someone else screamed, but I couldn’t tell who. Pain speaks a universal language.

  The study door opened a crack, and light filtered in. “Neil,” I heard my old friend Cindy whisper. “Over here.” I slid through the door. Cindy pulled it shut and began to shove a large and ugly corner cupboard against it. I helped her by backing against the cupboard and pushing with my butt. “What should we do now?” she asked.

  I squawked and pointed toward my gagged mouth. Cindy untied the gag by the light from the street lamp. I grimaced and tried to work up enough saliva to speak again.

  “Did Whit get shot?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” They were the first words I’d spoken all evening, and they stuck to my tongue.

  “Whit,” Cindy called, “are you all right?” There was no answer. Only two bullets had been fired. At least one person was alive in that den, and dangerous as a cornered cobra. It’s a female fantasy that furniture against a door will keep the killers away; it could only be considered a temporary solution.

  “Can you get the rope off my hands?” I croaked.

  Cindy struggled with the knots, but they had worked themselves into a deep snarl. “Have you got a knife, clippers, scissors?” I said.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” she replied. We ran through the living room, with Whit’s mother watching us from her perch on the wall. Cindy flicked on the light in the kitchen, pulled a knife out of a drawer, put my hands behind me on the butcher block and cut through the rope. “The arguing woke me up,” she said with a shiver. She was in her nightgown. Her eyes were dazed and her hair hung loose around her face. “I don’t get it. Those men paid Whit to find Justine?”

  “They paid him to tell them where she’d be and when she’d be there.”

  “Why would Whit do that?”

  “He needed the money. He owed it to the federal government for S&L fraud. It was that or prison.”

  “He told me when we sold everything that would pay his fine.”

  “He was lying.”

  She pressed her hands down on the counter. “I was the one who told him Justine was Niki Falcón. I told him she went to the cemetery. It’s my fault.”

  This was no time to be indulging in guilt. We could hear the sounds of the door being pushed and the cupboard scraping slowly across the floor. The rope dropped off, and my hands broke free. I was ready to use them.

  I remembered the guns in the gun rack that I’d heard rattling when I came in. “The guns in the hallway,” I asked. “Are they loaded? Do they work?”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know,” Cindy answered.

  “Call 911 and get out of the house.”

  “Where will I go?”

  “Anywhere, but get out of here.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll get a gun.”

  I ran through the living room, dodging the overstuffed furniture, and crossed the dining room beneath the crystal chandelier that glittered in the light from the street. I reached the hallway, where the stuffed bear loomed, casting a long shadow even in the dim light. I heard the cupboard slide, then fall to the floor with a crash that had to echo from here to the valley. Dishes fell out and shattered. Wood snapped as someone pushed open a door and stepped on the back of the cupboard. I’d reached the gun rack, and I ran my hand quickly across the butts, feeling for one that had my name on it. None did. I grabbed one, any one, hoping I’d found the weapon that would save my skin.

  Footsteps creaked on the living room’s hardwood floors. All was quiet in the rest of the house. I inched behind the dusty bear, tucked myself into its shadow, the gun in my hand.

  “Marco,” a voice called out with a maniacal laugh. Of the three killers in the den, I’d gotten the one with the raspy voice, the sense of humor and the malevolent smile, the guy who could be the most deadly, one on one. I drew further into the bear’s shadow and held my breath. “Marco,” the voice called again, laughing and sending the lizard crawling up my spine. It was the child’s game played in swimming pools in summer. I said not a word. I didn’t even breathe.

  But the voice and the footsteps proceeded in my direction across the living room, into the dining room, circled the table. “Marco,” he called. “Marco.”

  He seemed to know exactly where I was, but how? Did he have a sixth sense? Was he smelling la hedionda?