The House of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

She proceeds from rooftop to rooftop, the houses so close to each other it’s less a jump than a running skip between most of them. The people inside surely hear the thumping of her footfalls, but no one comes out to see who’s tramping on their house. Some of the roofs are of corrugated tin, some of gravel over wood, some no more than tar-papered planks that yield somewhat under her weight as she crosses them. Some are festooned with clotheslines and she has to bat her way through hung laundry.

  She’s moving over ground of slight upward incline, and now she reaches its summit, atop a roof from which she spies brightly lighted streets straight ahead and about twelve blocks distant—red-yellow-green blinking of traffic lights, the play of neon. That’s where she has to get. Maybe half a mile, she figures, maybe a little farther. The moon has vanished in the growing mass of clouds, and a wind has come up. She shivers in her thin dress.

  She crosses another few roofs before finding herself on one that’s too far from the neighboring houses for her to make the jump. A tall tree stands close and she descends it to the ground.

  She has no idea how far she’s come from the hold house, but there’s less barking now. She thinks she’s reached the perimeter of the slum because the streets are a little better paved here, most of the residences fronted with small yards and shrubbery.

  She’s advanced another two blocks, staying in the deeper shadows along the side of the street, when she hears something behind her. The tread of running feet? She darts over to a row of bushes and crouches behind them and holds still, listening hard. Now hears nothing except the most relentless dogs.

  But maybe whomever she heard has also stopped and is listening as hard for her to make the next move. It occurs to her the ponytail was probably armed and she feels stupid not to have thought of it and taken his weapon when she had the chance. Damn it, girl, think.

  She silently counts to sixty, alert for any suspicious sound, but at the end of the count she hears nothing but the dogs and the rustlings of the trees in the rising wind. She resumes moving slowly down the street.

  Before she’s gone another block she hears a vehicle approaching from the rear and hurries back to the bushes.

  A compact car drives past, trailing rock music behind it.

  Get a grip, she thinks. You’ve lost them. You have. Just keep moving to where the lights are.

  Another vehicle is coming. She stays hidden and watches an ancient Volkswagen van pass by, a hand-painted logo of a crossed rake and shovel on its side. Two men in the front seat, two or three others in the back. Itinerant workers bound for yard jobs in some better section of town. As the van’s single taillight fades down the street, she regrets not having tried to get a ride with them. A lot less risky than being out here on foot.

  She moves on, alarmed by every rustle of leaves in every surge of wind, growing more conscious of how cold she is. A sweep of headlight beams comes around the corner behind her, and she again takes cover behind some shrubs.

  It’s an old pickup truck with slatted wooden sides on the bed. It clatters toward her in the weak glow of a streetlight. Another crew heading for a day’s work in the greater city. She looks all about, sees no one else. Do it, she thinks.

  She runs to the edge of the street, into the margin of the headlights, and waves her arms over her head. The truck slows with a squeal of brakes and stops a few feet from her. There’s no one in it but the driver.

  She runs up to the open passenger window and says, “Por favor, señor, necesito—”

  The door flies outward and knocks her sprawling.

  Stunned, she’s trying to get up when she’s grabbed by the hair and pulled to her feet. She sees it’s the blond man and tries to knee him in the crotch but he pivots to take the blow on the hip and counters with a punch to her midsection that doubles her over, stopping her breath and practically paralyzing her. Her knees give way but he grips her under the arms and drags her around to the other side of the truck and braces her up against it, holding her turned away from him.

  Her stomach feels crushed and she can’t breathe. She thinks she’s going to die. Then her lungs abruptly inflate and she’s breathing again, though every inhalation is a wrench of pain under her ribs.

  You going to throw up?

  She shakes her head. Then bends forward and vomits, her knees buckling at the pain, but he holds her in place.

  After several excruciating heaves, she can bring up nothing more. She hacks dry a few times and stops.

  Done? he says.

  She nods.

  Sure?

  She considers, and nods again. She now feels even colder than earlier and hugs herself.

  A vehicle appears a few blocks away. He helps her to get in the truck and tells her to sit on her hands, then reaches past her and turns off the ignition and removes the key.

  If you move from there or show a hand without my permission, I’ll break your arms. You understand?

  She nods.

  Say it.

  I . . . understand. She’s still dazed. What she wants more than anything is for the pain to subside.

  He shuts her door and waits beside the window for the vehicle to go by, an old sedan with a whining engine, then takes out his phone and makes a connection.

  I got her, he says. Get back to the house.

  He listens, then looks at Jessie. Really? he says. Well . . . it’s another thing she’ll pay for.

  He puts away the phone and goes to the rear of the truck. She hears him rummaging in its bed. After a minute he reappears at the door and opens it and tells her to get out and stand facing him. She steps down, her balance largely recovered though her knees are still tenuous.

  He holds her by an arm and says, All right?

  She nods, fixing her gaze on the holstered pistol under his coat.

  Don’t even think of it, girl, he says. You’ll get hurt worse.

  He’s got a wide roll of black electrical tape and he binds her wrists together in front of her with snug around-and-over loops of tape, and then winds a few loops over her upper arms and around her waist, securing her arms to her sides. He tears the roll free and lobs it into the truck bed.

  He helps her back onto the cab seat and closes her door and goes around and gets in and cranks up the engine. Then makes a U-turn and heads slowly down the street.

  Who taught you to fight?

  She stays silent.

  When I ask you something, answer me.

  Nobody, she says, staring ahead.

  Liar. I was just told you beat the shit out of the Apache. That’s very funny, although you shouldn’t have done it.

  Apache, she thinks. Of course.

  12 — JESSIE

  He parks the truck in front of the house and leaves the motor running and comes around to her side and helps her out. The dogs next door have resumed their commotion.

  The pain in her chest and stomach is such that she’s hardly aware of the soreness of her feet. The Durango is parked behind the Suburban along the front of the yard.

  As the blond assists her to the house, two men come out the front door and one of them starts toward them, carrying a large tool chest. She doesn’t see the Apache. The man with the toolbox passes by without word or glance. She hears a truck door open and shut behind them and the old pickup rattles away.

  The other man is still on the porch, sipping from a bottle of beer. The hook-nosed man who collected their phones and valuables. He grins at her and says, Hey, wildcat, glad to have you back.

  She looks away.

  You can take the cuffs off the women now, the blond tells him. But first shut those dogs up.

  The hooknose nods and heads for the wall.

  Jessie stumbles on the porch’s bottom step, but the blond steadies her, then helps her up the other steps and through the door. The living room is dimly lighted by a crookneck lamp at one end of a worn so
fa, and, at the other end, by a shrine of glimmering candles around a three-foot statuette of a black-robed Santa Muerte, a sequined mantilla atop her grinning skull, a scythe in one hand. The Mother of Death, worshipped by outcasts of every sort, and the patron saint of Mexican gangsters. There’s a redolence of fried chiles and other spices, of maize tortillas, pintos, cooked tomatoes. On the table of the adjoining dining room is a black-and-white television no one is watching, its volume barely audible. Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando are in Old West costumes and conversing in dubbed Spanish. Adjacent to the dining room is a kitchen at whose door stands a dark bony woman holding a wooden stirring spoon.

  Jessie hears a thonk and pained yelping, then three more thonks in succession and the dogs are silent.

  The blond man steers Jessie toward a hallway entrance, then draws her aside to let a girl pass by, a large pail of water in each hand. At first glance, Jessie thinks the girl is winking at her, then realizes she has a squint eye.

  Come on, the blond says, and leads her into the dim hallway. At its far end is a staircase, the dark form of a man sitting on its bottom step. She supposes the others are being held upstairs and she’s being taken to join them. But midway down the hall the blond opens a door on the right and says, In here.

  The shadowy figure at the staircase stands up and the blond says, Wait there. Then he guides Jessie into the room.

  It’s a small, spare bedroom lit by a bedside lamp. Her first notion is that they’re all being put into separate rooms. From the outside, the house hadn’t seemed that big, but she supposes it might be, if all the rooms are this small. Then she thinks of a likelier reason he’s brought her to a room with a bed.

  She starts at the touch of the blond’s hands on her back. He carefully removes the tape binding her arms to her sides and sticks the tape to the rail headboard.

  She feels a tentative relief. He wouldn’t have to untape her arms to rape her. She offers her hands to him so he can free them too, but he doesn’t.

  Do you need to use the bathroom?

  What? she says. No.

  You’re sure?

  No. I mean, no, I don’t have to. Why do—?

  Lie down, he says.

  Her alarm renews. She tries to read his eyes in the low light.

  Don’t make me repeat myself.

  She sits on the edge of the bed and says, What are you going to do to me?

  Nothing. Lie down.

  She does. He pulls her bound hands over her head and uses the removed tape to secure them to a headboard rail.

  Why do this? she says. I can’t run away again, not from in here. Leave my hands taped if you want, but . . . please, you don’t have to tie me to the bed.

  It’s as if he doesn’t hear her. He tests the firmness of her bonds and is satisfied. Then goes out into the hall, leaving the door open.

  She tries to free her hands from the headboard rail, twisting this way and that, trying to push herself backward and effect some slack in her arms, but her contortions serve only to tighten the tape around her wrists. Her frustration churns in her chest, burns her eyes.

  The blond returns and sees the disheveled bedcover and shakes his head. A man comes in behind him and closes the door.

  The ponytailed man called Apache.

  Her skin tightens. One side of his face is darkly swollen, its eye half-closed, its ear a raw mass. His lips look like small blue jellyfish, his nose bloated. There’s no white at all in his eyes.

  The blond takes out a switchblade and opens it and cuts her dress straps and puts away the knife. Without uncovering her breasts he slides his hand under her and unhooks her strapless bra and pulls it off her and drapes it over the headboard.

  She feels tears forming and angrily blinks them back. Don’t, she commands herself. Don’t you dare fucking cry. Don’t say anything. They’ll hear it in your voice, how much they scare you. Don’t give them the satisfaction, do not.

  Catalina, she thinks. Catalina.

  You harmed this man, the blond says to her, and he believes you owe him compensation. Unfortunately for you, you also caused me distraction and extra work. Had you been successful in your escape, I may have been severely punished for it, and I certainly would have seemed a fool. Like I can’t hold on to a prisoner—a woman prisoner, worse yet. What you’ve done must be punished. Don’t make a fuss about it. All you’ll do is frighten the other women. Nothing’s going to happen to them because neither of them tried to run away or kicked anybody in the face. The truth is, you’re getting off very easy. Your only punishment is to be fucked by somebody you don’t have any choice about. So what? We all have to do things with people we have no choice about. Think of it as just another dick.

  She’s stupefied with disbelief. Charged with dread.

  Just don’t hurt her, he tells the Apache.

  She did this, man, the Apache says, indicating his face. She owes me.

  That’s why you can have her and that’s plenty enough payback. Just don’t hurt her.

  The Apache’s damaged mouth warps in a grotesque sneer.

  Understand? The blond says. He unholsters the Glock.

  Or what, you’ll shoot me? Bullshit.

  You hurt her, I’ll bust you on the head so hard you’ll never remember your name.

  The Apache attempts another distorted sneer and returns his attention to her.

  Understand? the blond says.

  Yeah, yeah, Apache mutters, his eyes on her.

  Say it.

  I got it, man.

  The blond goes to a ladder-back chair in the corner and sits down and crosses his legs and holds the pistol on his lap.

  What’re you doing? the Apache says.

  Get to it or get out, the blond says.

  Fuck you, the Apache snorts. Think I won’t if you watch? Watch all you want. Jack off. What do I care?

  She watches in terrified outrage as he takes off his pants and undershorts at the same time. He’s already hard.

  She wants to plead that he please please please not do this, but she remembers the look in her Aunt Catalina’s eyes and the sound of her voice when she’d recounted some of the things she had survived. It was Catalina who had told her never to beg for mercy, never. Eat shit if you must, she had said—that proud woman who rarely spoke a coarse word—but there’s no greater shame than to beg for mercy. You can always wash shit from your mouth, she had said, but begging for mercy will leave a vile shame on your tongue you can never get rid of.

  She bites her lip and glares at the Apache as he looms over her, his grin distorted. He tugs the dress down her body and over her feet and drops it on the floor. He pinches her nipple and she twists and kicks at him, striking him on the thigh and just missing his erection.

  He snarls, Cunt! and punches her leg and she cries out.

  Don’t hit her! the blond says, springing from the chair. Then points a finger at Jessie. You! Any more of that shit and I’ll let him hurt you.

  He returns to the chair.

  The Apache gets on the bed and rips away her panty and flings it aside, then pushes her legs apart and positions himself and spits into his hand. She wants to laugh at him, insult him, tell him how much fun it was to kick his ugly face and how she’d fight him again if he were man enough to unbind her, but speech fails her as he tries to insert himself and curses her tightness. She wants to vomit, to loose her bowels, anything to repel him with disgust, but all her effort is concentrated in clenching herself against him—a resistance suddenly breached, her teeth baring in a yowl of raging shame at his invasion, at his grunting and grunting with the guttural pleasure of impaling an enemy, his rank odor shrouding her, his exhalations hot on her face.

  And despite her resolution not to cry, not to show any sign of defeat, she cannot keep the tears from coursing.

  Blurring his bloody grin.

  IIr />
  RUDY

  13

  The plane is a five-passenger business jet belonging to the Three Uncles, but it isn’t ready. Something about a faulty instrument light. It’s not till a couple of hours later that Charlie shakes me out of my doze in an office chair and we board the plane and take off. It’s a little four-seater but we’re the only passengers.

  The rain has stopped but the cloud cover’s still thick. As we turn southward, the lights of Brownsville and Matamoros are patchwork glimmerings. Then we’re over Mexico and there’s only darkness down below.

  Uncle Harry Mack has seen to the clearances for us to land at an auxiliary strip at Benito Juárez International in Mexico City, where we’ll be met by our cousin Rodrigo Wolfe. We’ve got passports and a bag of clothes. Everything else we need, the Mexican Wolfes will provide.

  I can’t remember the last time Charlie left home to attend to a problem personally. That’s what Frank and I are for. From the time we graduated from college almost twelve years ago, we’ve worked as field agents for Wolfe Associates, which makes us state-licensed investigators, a handy sanction. According to the firm’s job description, a field agent traces witnesses, serves subpoenas, runs background checks and so forth, and sometimes we actually do such things, though the firm contracts with a private company to do most of that. For us Wolfes, “field agent” is mostly an occupation of record we enter on our tax forms. In truth we work for Charlie Fortune, mainly as gunrunners and sometimes as “fixers” for both him and Wolfe Associates. Whenever the firm is faced with a serious difficulty that can’t be resolved in a courtroom, or whenever someone fails to hold up his end of a deal with Charlie or in any way threatens a family project, we’re called on to resolve the matter. To fix it, if you will. Sometimes someone who wrongs us will haul ass and go into hiding, and so we first have to find him. We always do. At present, there are two other fixers in addition to me and Frank—a cousin named Roy Wolfe, and as of six months ago when he graduated from LSU, Eddie Gato. Roy likes to work alone, while Frank and I usually work as partners, but because Eddie’s new to the trade, Charlie has had him working with me since last summer.