by Vremont, Ann
Oscar threw his arm back, catching me by the hair and lifting me off my feet. I threw my legs around him. He let go of my hair, grabbed my ankle and snapped the bone. Blood tears flooded my eyes but I didn't let go of the knife.
Behind us, I could hear Chris stumbling under Danny's weight as he made his way toward the emergency exit. Hope surged through me and I yanked the knife out and buried it just below Oscar's ear. He dropped to his knees, clawing at my arm and face.
Alarms sounded as Chris flung the exit door open.
"You hear that! They're out, they're fucking out!"
"But you're not, mija."
He wrapped his hand around mine, and I heard my bones splinter and pop as he twisted. The blade came out, went flying. Blood spurted from Oscar's neck, wetting my face, and then the skin closed over the wound. He rolled, trapping me beneath him. I could feel the bones of my hand and foot reforming, the sensation like the slow crawl of ants across sunburned skin.
"Sirens, they're almost here."
He had spun so that he was facing me. His hands squeezed my neck. "It'll only take me a second to kill you, mija."
"No rabbit holes, here, Oscar..."
"No retribution, either." He bent down, nipped my lip hard enough to draw blood and then he was gone.
Chapter Eight
With Oscar off me, I made my way outside to where Chris was folding Danny into the back seat of the car. Outside on the street, police cars raced past. The sirens, for the moment, weren't for us. I climbed into the backseat with Danny.
"We have to get him to a hospital!"
"No hospital," Danny grabbed my arm. "No hospital...no cops." He nodded weakly at Chris. "Just drive."
Grim obedience from Chris. We pulled out onto 51st and took the first turn into the surrounding neighborhood.
Danny tried to raise his left hand but it fell into his lap. "Front seat..."
I looked at the front passenger seat, saw a sliver of a red strap that disappeared into the darkness on the floor. I tapped Chris's arm. "Hook that."
Chris snagged the strap, pulling up a small red duffel with a white cross on it. I dragged the bag into the back, unzipped it. Danny pushed my hands out of the way. He put a squirt bottle in my hand.
"Clean it."
I had no idea what he meant until he jerked his chin in the direction of his shoulder. I peeled the Velcro straps of the safety vest apart and pulled it off him. The fabric of his shirt was sticking to his skin from the drying blood. I dumped some water on the shirt, loosening it enough to expose the stab wound. He kicked at the back seat as I rinsed the wound, a string of profanities punctuating each kick.
When the bottle was empty, he pressed a large foil-wrapped package in my hand and ordered me to rip it open. There was a sponge inside and a slight metallic scent mixed in the air with the smell of fresh blood from Danny's stab wound. Oscar may have missed hitting an artery, but the blade had gone all the way through Danny's shoulder and smaller cuts and puncture wounds marked his body.
"Push. It. In." Every word exited with a gasp. He was close to losing consciousness again, but the bright pain of my packing the sponge into the wound robbed him of any such mercy.
"Can he follow you?" he asked.
"Maybe - I don't know."
His head sank back against the seat, eyelids fluttering in exhaustion. "Find us a house."
"A house?" I repeated but he was beyond answering.
"You said they used foreclosures?" Chris offered from the front seat, where he had continued cautiously driving through the neighborhood streets, taking us further from St. Vincent's and any sound of sirens.
"Right, keep driving." I rolled the window down, my eyes and ears focused on the homes we were passing. I put my hand on Chris's shoulder. "Slower...there!"
I pointed to a cul de sac.
Chris took the turn, his gaze jumping from yard sign to yard sign. "Fuck, they're all foreclosed?"
"They're all empty at least. Pull into the one with the garage."
Chris turned into the drive. Seeing the padlock on the garage door, he gave an unhappy snort.
"Just pop the trunk," I said, getting out as he pulled the car to a stop. From the toolbox in the trunk, I took the thickest standard screwdriver I could find and a hammer. As a kid, I'd seen Paul do it maybe a dozen times, big thefts and small - once to get our stuff out of storage months after he had stopped paying and the place had put a lien on everything.
The blade of the screwdriver in position, I brought the hammer down once with all the strength I had. The lock shattered, small bits of metal biting for an instant at my flesh before being repelled. I raised the garage door and waved the car in.
With the garage closed, I forced the door into the house and we carried Danny inside. There were cheap, pull down shades on the front windows, nothing in the back. No furniture or electricity, but pale moonlight spilled in from the back yard.
We placed Danny on the living room's carpeted floor. I went into the kitchen. The water was still on and the garbage hadn't been emptied from the last visitors. I fished some plastic bottles out and cleaned them, then filled them with water for Danny.
Chris stayed near the front door, watching the entrance to the cul de sac as I coaxed Danny into drinking some water. Holding him, I searched for bite wounds but couldn't find any. I didn't know how much of his condition was blood loss and how much was pure exhaustion from Oscar toying with him. But his heart rate was rapid and his skin was pale and cool to the touch.
Was the blood loss so much he would die without help?
I helped him settle back against the floor, my lips against his ear. "I can fix this."
He didn't ask me how, just warned me away with a scowl. I retreated to a wall, watching as he reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled his hand out and I saw the dark red reflection of garnet and then the cold glint of silver. He'd detached the crucifix from the necklace I'd left on my dresser.
He had taken it with him to capture Oscar. I wondered why - as a talisman of his god or of me? Not that it mattered anymore. I could tell by the way he had just looked at me and how his fingers smoothed over and counted the inset crystals that he thought I was as big a monster as Oscar.
As if I could feel any worse, Chris came into the room and settled a few feet from me. He kept his attention mostly on Danny, but every few minutes I could feel him looking my way. I couldn't meet his gaze.
I'd just ruined his life.
***
It had been near midnight when we reached the safety of the house. We would leave, on Danny's insistence, a little before sunrise. After instructing Chris how to dress the shoulder wound, Danny made sure he left every cop marker he had on him at the abandoned house. Chris tossed Danny's safety vest up into the crawl space and we buried his badge deep down in the trash.
Leaving the cul de sac and its empty houses, Danny had Chris point the car towards South Phoenix and straight into gang territory. We passed fences and buildings with old and new tags for Las Cuatro Milpas, Lunatix and Malditos, plus a lot more I didn't recognize. I focused on the names, trying not to hear the pain in Danny's breathing.
We stopped at last in front of what looked like a house with a junkyard behind it on S. 10th that was surrounded by treed, but otherwise empty, lots.
Three guys were hanging out in front of the house. The youngest approached the passenger side of the car, where Danny was sitting with the window rolled down. Only he wasn't Danny any more - not in this neighborhood, not with these gangbangers.
The Mexican leaned into the window until he was looking Danny in the face. His gaze traced the cut along Danny's cheek and then eyed the slashed shirt and bloodied bandage beneath it. "Lazaro, man, you're bleeding."
"Not any more. Tell Robles I'm here." Danny's voice was strong when he answered, with zero trace of the hellish night he'd survived.
The man straightened, resting his arm on the roof of the car and looking over the street as he talked. "Man, you don't come
around for weeks and then you show up bruised and bleeding?"
Danny ignored the question and the man brought his face back down to the window and glanced first at Chris and then at me. "What's with the chica and the maricon?"
"Why, you looking to suck dick or lick pussy?"
I kept my face a bored mask while my brain cart wheeled through Danny's memories for Robles or these men in front of the house or Danny's under cover life as (a seemingly foul-mouthed) "Lazaro." But I came up with nothing - it was as if this place and the men in it didn't exist in Danny's mind. He had compartmentalized his undercover identity down to a molecular level.
I didn't have time to think about it because the guy put his hand through the window, tongue flicking as he reached for me. "Pussy, definitely."
Danny caught him by the pinkie, holding it in a way that brought a flash of pain and surprise across the guy's face.
"Quite wasting my time, Cabron." Still holding the guy's hand through the window, Danny opened the car door and motioned for Chris and me to follow him. Deftly, he switched his hold on the man's hand and we walked through the open fence and the lot of wrecked cars beyond it.
At the back right corner of the lot was a long, narrow shed, its rusting metal body hidden from the sky and street by the closely packed trees. Danny's captive gave a trilling whistle a few seconds before we reached the open door.
I heard several metallic slides and clicks and reached for Danny's arm. "Guns."
He cut his gaze in my direction. "What? You want to walk through first?"
His eyes, the set of his mouth, the dripping sarcasm told me I was in the backseat on this one - even if he had left a good fifth of his blood on the floor at St. Vincent's. I dropped my hand and slid to the side - between Chris and the door. Chris offered a small gurgle of protest at my shielding him.
Danny stepped through the door, still leading the young man from the front yard.
Someone said that other name, Lazaro, the one I still couldn't accept as belonging to Danny, and then the three handguns aimed at this head were lowered. Danny released his captive after he squeezed a small yelp from the guy.
"Fuck, dude, that better be someone else's blood on you - or ain't you as Teflon as I thought?" Using the barrel of his pistol, the man speaking pushed at the fabric surrounding Danny's knife wound. "Lazaro, levántate y anda! Primo, who fucked you up?"
Danny answered with a hand gesture, something that apparently had meaning to the men around him. Their chests inflated and their hands tightened around the guns they hadn't quite put away.
"You don't listen. I told you Rogelio was looking to have you sliced." Pulling back, the man wiped the barrel against his jeans and then tucked it in the back of his pants. He nodded towards Chris and me. "Los gabachos?"
"Other business." Danny walked over to Chris, took the keys from him and tossed them at the yard man. "Get it off the street."
"Robles?" The yard man looked to the guy doing all the talking. A quick nod from Robles and the yard man was back out the door.
"Other business?" Robles repeated as he started to circle me. "They look like they just walked off a zombie movie."
It was true. Neither of us had cleaned up before leaving the house. We both had Danny's blood on us. The tidy goth circles that had ringed Chris's eyes last night had thinned and spread to hollow his eye sockets. I could feel the smeared remnants of my own makeup on my face.
"But, sweet culo," Robles said and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "I bet you clean up real nice, chica."
"That's why I'm here." Danny stepped further into the shed. There was a small pile of KA Bar knives on a battered banquet table. He slid one through his belt loop and then sank into a ratty recliner a few feet from a rusted out filing cabinet.
"You want me to clean her up?" Robles laughed. "Oh, chica, me and you, steaming hot shower, me rubbing soap all over that tight body of yours." He smoothed his hand suggestively over my stomach, trying to scare me or see if I meant anything to Danny/Lazaro. The only reaction he got was from Chris -- a step forward that was immediately checked by one of the two door men.
"Primo," Robles said, looking over his shoulder at Danny. "It's not even my birthday."
"Clothes, another car." He threw a pointed look at Robles. "Money that's mine." He reached out, towards where the filing cabinet met the shed's wall, and wrapped his hand around shadow. He pulled a rifle back, rested it across the arms of the recliner as he examined it. I knew from Elliot that it was an M24. Bolt-action, so it was slower to fire than a semi-automatic but deadly precise in the right hands.
"You got any ammo for this?"
"Just what's in the chamber."
"Couple Ninas on top, then."
"How I like all my girls," Robles laughed and threw me another look before he disappeared into the far end of the shed. He returned a minute later with two 9mm pistols and a box of ammunition for each.
Robles waved his hand at one of the door men. "Lalo, clothes."
Lalo came bag with a black garbage bag and the three of us were ushered to a busted out motor home on cinder blocks with more black bags duct taped to where the windows used to be.
"Can't invite you into the house," Robles half-apologized to Danny as he opened the motor home's door. "One look at her and mami will have my dick in a noose."
Most of the motor home's interior had been torn out. There was a sink and an open toilet. There were pillows and blankets on the ground and a fat little box of a television hooked to a battery. The smell of meth and marijuana permeated the air.
Danny dumped the bag of clothes on the floor. Chris bent and started sorting through, handing articles of clothing to whichever one of us the piece would fit. Chris had spent the last four years changing in front of other people and he quickly stripped down to his underwear.
Now that he wasn't performing for Robles, Danny was slow to move. The pain flaring in his right shoulder made that arm next to useless. I went to assist him but he brushed me away. "Just get dressed."
Taking my "new" clothes and a dishrag, I went over to the sink and filled the basin with water. I stripped my jacket and top off. The bra with its dried blood would have to remain in place until I could rinse it out. There were no underclothes in the pile.
I washed the blood and old make-up from my face, moved on to my chest and arms as I listened to Chris help Danny. My lover attending my lover and me closed off from both of them. It wasn't quite what Oscar had been aiming for, but it hurt all the same.
When the blood was off me, I moved away from the sink and put on the faded jeans and thin, pale yellow t-shirt. The elegant but impractical suede boots were traded for canvas sneakers with small holes in them. The outfit wasn't much different from the one Army had cut from me. Aside from my underwear and bra, the only thing I didn't swap out was the velvet necklace with its little bird's skull that Chris had fastened around my neck last night.
Chris and Danny were at the sink, arms and chests bare, jeans hugging their lower bodies. Danny leaned against the wall of the motor home. The cool mask of invincibility Danny had worn with Robles was put aside as Chris cleaned the blood from Danny with careful strokes. I watched for a moment, before a small flare of jealousy ignited at the almost domestic intimacy of their movements.
Clean, they finished dressing and I preceded them out the door. Robles was standing outside and caught me by the arm. He fingered the pendant at my neck. "Muerte hermosa, I'd die in your arms."
Danny brushed Robles' hands from me. "If you're done flirting, you want to find me a car?"
"Patience, primo." Robles held up a key chain and glanced at an old, hunter green station wagon one of the yard men was putting a newish tire on.
"And the money?"
Robles handed Danny a greasy paper lunch sack. He eyeballed me one last time. "You want to leave her here, ease your load a bit, I'm willing to help you out."
"Then mami would have my dick in a noose." Except for the tone, Danny might have
been joking, but it was clear he was growing tired of Robles' banter.
"Reina's been itching to have it in-"
I interrupted with a "TMI," and walked over to where they were lowering the station wagon back to the ground. Chris followed. He waited with me alongside the vehicle while Danny finished talking to Robles.
"Can you hear them?"
"Yeah." We were alone, the yard man having returned to the front of the house. "Just mundane shit."
I looked at Chris to catch him staring at my throat. He saw me watching him and offered a shy smile, the first smile I'd seen since before we had peeled out of the hotel parking lot last night.
He nodded at the necklace. "I'm glad you got to keep something."
I had no doubt that he meant it in the sweetest way, but my chest tightened in guilt. I was the only one who had kept anything and I was the cause of everything they were losing.
Danny joined us then, gesturing at Chris to take the front passenger seat. I climbed into the back. Danny started the car, pulled it forward to let it idle next to the house. A woman emerged. She had shoulder length hair, dark brownish red. Large breasts topped a tiny waist and shapely ass. My guess it was Reina -- mami. The woman with a noose and two dicks.
I forced myself not to growl when she stuck her head in the window, letting her breasts rub against Chris's arm as she leaned into the front seat to hand a small box and a pair of scissors to Danny. Danny passed both items to Chris.
She glanced at the box. "De mi madre..."
"Of course, beautiful." Danny threw her a wink and a smile and I felt another flare of jealousy that didn't fade as we pulled back out onto 10th Street.
Trying to distract myself from the desire to rip the woman's throat out for merely being, I reached over the seat and retrieved the box. White box, pink letters, picture of a woman with thick brownish red hair. Perfect 10 - Chestnut - Warm Skin Tones. I looked at Chris's hair. Tanned and blond, lithe muscles -- he was Mercury in cleats on the football field. The idea of changing anything about him was disheartening.
Frowning, Chris lifted the scissors. "And these?"