The House of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  A short, stout man carrying a toolbox, his Windbreaker beaded with rainwater, his fedora brim dripping, the locksmith introduces himself as Anuncio and begs their forgiveness for his tardiness but says it couldn’t be helped. There are no signs on most of the streets around here and very few buildings have numbers, and in the rain it’s been an effort to find the house by way of nothing more than Espanto’s description of it.

  He listens patiently as Barbarosa berates him anyway and expounds at length about the stink. Anuncio sniffs the air with a face of disgust and nods in sympathetic understanding. Then asks to be shown the troublesome lock.

  Barbarosa says he doesn’t know why they should bother trying to find the cause of the smell at this point, but leads Anuncio to the kitchen and the landing of the basement stairwell.

  Woo, the locksmith says as he descends into the greater stench.

  Yeah, says Barbarosa, stopping midway down the stairs. Like something dead rotting in an unflushed toilet.

  The stairwell is very dim, the only light from the kitchen door. Anuncio coughs a few times, takes a handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes his eyes and nose, then gets a flashlight out of his toolbox. He turns the padlock this way and that, examining it closely. He fingers the small section of exposed shackle and purses his lips as if forming a silent whistle. I don’t have anything with me that can cut this, he says to Barbarosa. There’s a certain grinder that could probably do the job, but I’d have to rent it from a place back in the city.

  Jesus Christ, by then we’ll be out of here, Barbarosa says. Fuck it. We’ve put up with it this long.

  I’d sure like to know what that stink is, Flaco says from the top of the short staircase.

  I may be able to pick it, Anuncio says.

  A lock that hard to cut sure as hell can’t be picked, Barbarosa says.

  That’s not always true, the smith says. I’d like to try.

  Do what you want, man, Barbarosa says, going up the stairs. I gotta go out and get some fresh air, rain or no rain.

  Flaco follows after him.

  The locksmith endures another coughing fit, then folds his handkerchief and ties it around the lower half of his face like a bandit. He takes a ring of keys from his toolbox and finds three keys that will enter the lock face. He inserts one and bumps the lock lightly and repeatedly on the door, simultaneously trying to turn the key with each bump. He tries this with each key unsuccessfully. It would have been too easy had this technique worked, but you never know. He again resorts to his toolbox and extracts a small metal case containing an array of instruments. He selects one shaped like a little saw blade and one that looks like an ice pick with a curved tip, both of them very flexible. Then he once more sets to work.

  Again and again he curses softly as he feels the tumbler pins’ sly evasions of his probing. At times he feels the instruments touch exactly where they should, but each time, one or the other slips off its mark before he can execute the requisite manipulation. He pauses occasionally to work the stiffness out of his cold fingers and ease his frustration even as he admires the lock’s interior design. From time to time, one or another of the men comes to the top of the stairs to watch him work, then goes away without comment.

  Anuncio has been laboring at the lock for more than half an hour when Flaco shows up again and sits on the top step to observe him. When Barbarosa appears at the doorway, Flaco gestures at the locksmith and says he’s never seen anyone so determined.

  Barbarosa scoffs. “So crazy,” you mean. He watches for a minute, then shakes his head and starts to turn away.

  And there’s the unmistakable snick of the shackle uncoupling.

  Holy Mother, Flaco says.

  Anuncio expels a long breath and pulls down his mask, removes the huge lock, and with a victorious grin at them raises it high like a trophy.

  Barbarosa pushes the basement door open to almost total darkness and an even more powerful concentration of the stench. The men cough and cover their mouths and noses with their hands and stand fast just inside the threshold, reluctant to enter any farther for fear of what they might step on. A decomposed body or a bunch of rats rotting in traps, or as Flaco has suggested, a litter of starved cats after they pissed and shat in every corner of the place. Barbarosa now detects something vaguely familiar about the stink, yet can’t quite place it. He runs his hand over the wall to one side of the door and says, Where’s the light switch?

  The locksmith feels about on the other side. “Aquí ’sta,” he says, and clicks the switch.

  The basement comes alight from a pair of shaded lamps to either side of the room and a naked high-watt bulb dangling on a frayed cord from the center of the ceiling. Tables line three sides of the room, covered with glassware and opened and unopened crates, with car batteries, plastic jugs of antifreeze, hot plates, rolls of plastic tubing, boxes of coffee filters and plastic baggies. The walls are stacked almost to the ceiling with propane tanks, cans of lye and paint solvents, acetone, lighter fluid, drain cleaners, kerosene, ammonia.

  The lights flicker, cut out for a few seconds, plunging the room into darkness, and come back on again in a tremoring cast. Then the room again goes black and this time stays that way.

  “Chingada!” Barbarosa says. Work the switch, man.

  The locksmith clicks the switch up and down a number of times before the room’s lights come back on but continue to flicker.

  Terrible wiring, the smith says.

  And now Barbarosa sees that the far corner of the room is piled almost to the ceiling with cartons of cold medicine. The floor is littered with torn and empty blister packs and small plastic medicine bottles, with flattened cardboard boxes.

  The overhead electric cord starts to sizzle and a wisp of black smoke issues from the tattered insulation just above the bulb.

  Oh Jesus, says Flaco, and takes a step back toward the door.

  That’s when Barbarosa remembers the laboratory in Jalapa where last year he and the lately murdered-by-his-girlfriend Chisto delivered a truckload of equipment—and just as the word “anfetamina” enters his mind, the overhead cord crackles and sheds bright blue sparks and the room detonates in a white blaze.

  The stone-walled basement compresses the force of the explosion and directs it upward in a fiery eruption through the floor that sunders the house and everyone in it and propels wreckage as far as the next block. Chunks of concrete smash through neighboring windows. Burning pieces of woodwork clatter on adjacent roofs. The Beta house occupants who had been above the basement now litter the street, smoking and disfigured beyond recognition, all of them missing at least one limb, two of them headless. Body parts are strewn into weed lots and shrubbery and will be discovered and fed on by crows and dogs and rats. Of those who were in the basement no remnant will be found larger than a ham or other than charred black.

  The neighbors pour out into the mizzling rain to gawk at the fiery remains of the Beta house and the smoking roofs of flanking homes whose residents stand huddled and crying in the muddy street. A few people with phones call the fire department, some the police, but it will be most of an hour before the cops or the water-tank trucks arrive and by then the rain will have dampened the fires to steaming embers.

  The blast was heard at the perimeters of the slum but did not carry into the central city’s tenacious clamor, and the smoke of its fires is hardly distinguishable in the overcast sky and perpetual haze encircling the Federal District. Still, word of the explosion reaches the city’s news centers, and though the misfortunes of the slums are rarely deemed newsworthy, it has been a slow day marked principally by its miserable weather, and two television stations dispatch camera crews to the scene in hope of footage they might fashion into a local drama for the afternoon broadcast.

  30 — CHATO

  Chato follows Sosa from the bank into the beltway’s teeming traffic, the chains of headlights and
taillights streaking through the heavy grayness, but the yellow Cadillac is easy enough to keep in view. Even though Galán told the two fathers they would be followed to and from the banks, you don’t want them to spot you. You want to keep them apprehensive with the knowledge that you see them but they don’t see you. Chato maintains a buffer of one or two vehicles between himself and the Caddy, a tactic requiring deftness, as Sosa is staying in the rightmost lane and holding to the speed limit. Behind Chato, vehicles pull out to pass at the first opportunity, horns blaring and shadowy drivers making rude gestures as they go by. Chato pays them no mind. The radio is tuned to a rock station and he taps his hands on the steering wheel in time to the music.

  A carpet store truck follows Sosa onto the exit ramp, preserving the shield between Chato and the Caddy. As he comes down the curving exit, Chato checks his mirrors and sees a pink-and-white station wagon directly in back of him and glimpses a blue car and a black one behind the wagon. Sosa makes a right turn onto the two-lane junction road, on which the traffic is heavier than it was this morning. The carpet truck makes the same turn and Chato stays behind the truck. Six blocks farther on, Sosa turns off the road and Chato makes the same turn and in the rearview sees the next cars and the station wagon pass on by, their tires raising small rooster tails of water. There’s no one behind Chato now and only Sosa up ahead as they follow the winding street to Belmonte’s house.

  Chato imagines himself forcing the Cadillac to the curb, taking the money from it, absconding to some distant haven of the world to live in luxury for the rest of his life. It’s a mere fancy, of course. Because he wouldn’t be robbing only Los Doce, but Los Zetas, too, who are expecting a one-million-dollar membership fee from the ransom. Nobody to fool with, those boys. They would find him wherever he went, and what they left of him could be buried in a shoebox.

  The Belmonte estate comes in view. The Caddy slows as it approaches the entrance to the driveway, and the attendant opens the gate. Passing by, Chato gives him a glance—Arturo, he recalls, whom he recently enriched by a thousand pesos.

  Going through the next intersection, he sees a black car at the stop sign to his left, only the driver in it. Then in the rearview sees the car cross the street and vanish. A two-door.

  He exits the Chapultepec district and before long is on a secluded narrow road winding through a rolling expanse of pastoral properties whose residences are set far off the road and unseen in the woods. He’s thinking of the kid enchiladas he will soon be enjoying at Cuates Locos, a café at a shoddy little plaza a few miles the other side of these mini ranches. The plaza is on the way to both of the hold houses, except that two blocks west of the plaza you must turn south to go to the Alpha house, and north to go to the Beta. Chino will be at the café too. That’s where they are to await Espanto’s call to action.

  The hills are higher here than in the Chapultepec neighborhoods, and more closely together. The road curves and dips and rises as it follows their contours, the muddy shoulder at times only a few feet from a rocky upsweep on one side and, on the other, a verdant sloping drop-off. The radio begins to pick up static. He pushes buttons until he finds another rock station with better reception. Then glances in the mirror and sees a dark car appear out of the curve. About forty or fifty yards behind him. He loses sight of it when he goes into the next bend.

  The curve ends in a straightaway, and when the car reappears in his mirrors it is still at the same distance. From up ahead comes a pickup truck with a large load of old tires. It goes by the van with a high splash of road water and then Chato is into the next curve and both the truck and car go out of view.

  As the road again straightens, Chato reduces his speed, and when the car again shows in his mirror it’s only about twenty yards back—but it abruptly slows down to hold to that distance. A black two-door. There are of course many thousands of black two-doors in this town, but he recalls the one he saw on Belmonte’s street. That one contained only a driver, and this one looks like it has two persons in it. It’s hard to be sure at this distance, in this overcast. Even if it’s the same car, that doesn’t mean it’s a tail. Could be it stopped to pick up somebody and just happens to be going the same way as himself. Besides, who would be tailing him except cops, and the only way cops could come into this is through the parents, who would not risk their children’s lives by going to the police. Or would they? You can’t count on people to act in their own best interest.

  He and Chino have been instructed not to initiate further phone contact with Espanto after notifying him of the fathers’ departures from the banks unless there’s a justified need to call—as in the event that either Belmonte or Sosa did not take the money to the Belmonte house, or if he or Chino should spot a tail on either man. The question right now is whether the black car is following him. Considering the way it slowed down to keep its distance, Chato thinks it is. Which constitutes a justified need to call Espanto.

  The upcoming curve is a wide one bearing right, the hill sloping upward on that side and dropping away on the left. As he enters the bend, Chato takes out his phone and brings it close to his face so he can better watch the road as he thumbs up the directory and scrolls for Espanto’s name. Then he looks in the mirror and sees the black car closing on him at furious speed, a realization so startling he doesn’t notice the old tire lying in the road ahead until he’s almost on it.

  He drops the phone and swerves to the right and misses the tire but goes off the road and across the shoulder and the van leans leftward as it angles up the stony rise, rocks rattling on the undercarriage. He cuts the wheel and the van swivels downward and back across the road and onto the other shoulder and he’s fighting the wheel and working the brakes as the van skids through stony mud at the edge of the drop-off. Then the tires dig in and he swings back onto the road and gets the van under control for a moment before it’s struck from behind in a crash of metal and glass, snapping his head back, and the van grinds across the left shoulder again and the world tilts in the windshield.

  31— MATEO AND RAYO

  The pickup with the load of tires swooshes past in a raised splash that thumps their windows. They’re still not sure if the van guy has paid them any notice until they come out of the next curve and see the van only half as far ahead as it had been. There is no other traffic in either direction.

  Mateo slows down to hold their distance at about twenty yards. He’s checking us out, he says.

  Why would he think we’re following him? Rayo says. He has no reason.

  Nature of the beast. If he suspects us, he’ll call somebody and some of his pals will be waiting for us at the end of this road.

  She sees the van driver raise a phone to his face and says, Oh shit.

  Hold on, Mateo says, and the Charger leaps forward like it’s been let off a leash. As they speed toward the van it veers to the right and goes off the road, spraying mud and partly climbing the rise and they see the tire it almost hit. “Águila!” Rayo shouts.

  Mateo taps the brake and skirts the tire as the van comes off the rise and across the road and slews along the other shoulder. Rayo’s sure it’s going to go over but it somehow regains the road for a moment—and then Mateo deliberately rams it into a skid back off the pavement and into a fishtailing slide along the shoulder and it keels over it and is gone.

  They slow down and pull over, see no other vehicle on the road, then slowly back up to where the van went out of sight. They put on baseball caps to keep the rain out of their eyes and get out and cross the road to the rim of the slope.

  The van lies halfway down the incline, about fifty feet below, on its right side, its underside facing uphill, the two upside wheels still turning. Steam rises off the engine compartment into the cold rain. The upturned doors are shut.

  Think he’s dead? she asks.

  Could be. Or just hurt. Or might’ve got out.

  Can’t be hurt too bad if he got out so fast, she
says.

  He checks the empty road and draws his Beretta. Let’s go down and see what we’ve got.

  She unholsters a Ruger 9 and ensures there’s a round in the chamber. She has never shot at anyone but is prepared to do it if necessary. One of the first things she’d been asked when she sought to become a Jaguaro was if she believed she could kill. She’d said yes with stronger conviction than she’d actually felt, but she knew the face to show her questioner, the tone to use.

  He tells her to go around to the right of the van, he’ll go to the left. Let’s hope he’s in there and alive but not able to make a fight of it, he says. If you spot him outside, let me know where and take cover and leave him to me. But if you think you have to shoot, shoot.

  Charged with adrenaline, gripping the Ruger in both hands, she makes her cautious way over the tricky footing down through the dripping trees and brush, water running off the brim of her cap. She listens hard for any sound from the van, but all she hears is the patter of the rain, a passing vehicle on the road above. She’s lost sight of Mateo.

  Nearing the van, she smells gasoline. She’s afraid and won’t deny it. She was taught as a child there’s no bravery in pretense of fearlessness, only a dangerous self-deception.

  When she gets to the rear of the van’s exposed underside she’s uncertain how to proceed. Mateo didn’t say. Should she climb up on the upturned side and take a look in the driver’s window? She both wants to and she doesn’t. The smell of gasoline is now very strong. She’s heard of capsized cars whose spilled fuel spread to an ignition wire and boom.

  She eases past the front wheels and scouts the area beyond the van. And there’s Mateo. Partly showing himself among the trees, his position fore of the van but downhill of it and farther away than she’d expected.

  He’s seen her, too, and gestures for her to circle back to the other end of van. She raises a fist shoulder-high in acknowledgment, and he starts moving to another cluster of trees.