The House of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  I do it, and Rayo follows us down a darker beat-up street, the buildings here smaller and set even closer to each other. Charlie has me take a right at the first corner and then go right again at the next one, which brings us back toward the intersection with the green-sign place. I switch off the headlights and slow down. Charlie figures they’ll have a lookout posted, so we’ll leave the cars at the corner up ahead and go down the hold house street on foot. Sneak our way up to wherever the Caddy is, try to spot the lookout before he spots us, take him out quiet. If he sees us first, well . . . we’ll play it as it comes.

  It seems awfully catch-as-catch-can to me. But that’s pretty much been our planning style and I don’t have anything better to suggest.

  As we advance slowly toward the corner, we spot an alleyway on our left and Charlie says, “Stop!” I hit the brakes and Chino bonks his head on the dash and the Jeep’s tires scrunch behind us as Rayo stops just short of hitting us.

  “Jesus, guys!” she says, her voice coming from Charlie’s phone in the console.

  A white late-model pickup with a camper shell mounted on the bed is parked halfway down the alley in the hazy glow of a distant lamppost. One of those big GMC Sierras.

  “In this neighborhood, it’s gotta be theirs,” I say.

  “And that’s the house, right there,” Charlie says. “One-two-three-four, fifth one down.”

  He has me move up closer to the corner and next to the building and shut off the engine, then takes up the phone and tells Rayo to park the Jeep in the alley to block the Sierra, then position herself back here on the street.

  “Got it,” she says, and wheels into the alleyway.

  She’s back in a jiff and gets behind the end of the alley wall. “Now what?” she says out of Charlie’s phone.

  “We’re going around to the front, you’re covering the rear,” Charlie tells her. “Stay out here and stay low. Anybody but us or Jess comes out the back, be ready to pop them.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  Up at the intersection, the smoky clunker that had been behind her makes a right turn and heads away from us, lost in its own smoke. Then a silver Cherokee crosses to the hold house block.

  “Another one, you think?” I say.

  “Maybe the guy who’s come to collect,” Charlie says. “The Espanto dude.” He continues staring at the intersection, and I know what he’s thinking. We’re here, and hope Jessie is, too. But if they intend to let her go, then we’re doing the worst thing possible. Then again, we’re here because we don’t trust them to let her go. We have to act. And if it goes to hell . . . we’ll have to live with it.

  “Let’s do it,” Charlie says.

  I pat Chino on the head and say, Don’t go anywhere, buddy, you hear?

  We get out of the car and check the Berettas for chamber rounds, then head up to the corner in the murky drizzle, moving fast and keeping to the deeper shadows. It’s gotten colder.

  45 — JESSIE

  She still has no notion of why they’ve brought her down here, and her dread enlarges by the minute.

  There’s the sound of a car pulling into the driveway and a brief flash of its lights against the living room window drape. A moment later, Belmonte and Rubio come rushing through the front door, large bulging bags hung on their shoulders. Espanto directs them to put them on the dining table.

  Belmonte gawks at her in recognition. They have spoken only once, for maybe a minute, when Luz introduced them at the wedding rehearsal. He looks as if he wants to say something to her but has no idea what. His attempt at a smile is pathetic.

  Stand over there, Espanto tells him, indicating the hallway entrance.

  Belmonte does it. If he’s noticed the carpet-wrapped body in the living room, he shows no sign of it. I have brought all of the ransom as Mr. X said to do, he says. I have done everything exactly as—

  Be silent, sir, Espanto says.

  All the ransom? Jessie’s puzzled. Luz said Rubio told them half the money would be paid here and the rest at the other hold house.

  Espanto unzips a bag and digs a hand into it, pulls out a packet of bills and riffles them, then replaces the money. Rubio zips up the bag and shoulders it while Espanto checks another one, then Rubio picks up that one too and goes through the kitchen and out the back door while Espanto checks the last two bags. Then Rubio comes back and gets them and takes them out too.

  Espanto checks his watch and smiles at Belmonte. You are no doubt eager to see your people, he says.

  Yes, yes, Belmonte says. Please.

  They are upstairs in fine spirits and will be delighted to see you, Espanto says. Needless to say, they are quite ready to leave. We’ll go to them in a minute.

  Jessie can’t suppress her excitement. Does he mean it? Are they all going to be released?

  A vehicle door slams shut in the alley and Rubio returns and stands at the kitchen entrance, within easy reach of her.

  This way, sir, Espanto says to Belmonte, gesturing for him to precede him into the hallway. As Espanto starts to follow, Jessie sees him take something out of his coat pocket and hold it behind his leg. A blade appears from it like magic.

  They go in the hall and she hears a grunt. A low groan. A heavy thump.

  Her fear returns like a hand at her throat.

  Espanto comes back from the hall, adjusting his jacket. There’s the sound of another vehicle arriving in front of the house.

  Rubio takes out his pistol and goes to the window next to the door. He fingers the curtain aside a bit. “Ya llegó Galán,” he says.

  The vehicle’s engine shuts off. Rubio opens the door and stands aside and a man in a pristine white suit and fedora enters. He is tall, of resolute aspect, and Jessie knows that here’s the chief of the bunch.

  He peers into the hallway, then looks at Espanto and says, Did he bring it all?

  He did, Espanto says with a smile. Four full bags. It’s in the backseat of the Sierra.

  Galán nods. Then he gestures at the body on the floor. “Quién es?”

  The Apache, Espanto says. He tried to kill the blonde here, but Rubio stepped in and that’s the result. My fault. He was a crazy bastard and I should’ve seen it and shouldn’t have hired him.

  Galán gives Jessie an appraising stare, then looks at Rubio, who turns up his palms and says, He gave me no choice, chief.

  The fault is mine, Galán says. I should not have approved the hire. Gallo on lookout?

  Yes, Espanto says. He hasn’t seen the gringos or he’d have called me.

  The gringos? Jessie thinks. . . . Charlie? She begins to understand why she’s down here. Why she’s been set apart.

  They may have turned off before this street. I couldn’t see, Galán says. But it’s just the two of them. Maybe they lost Belmonte and are searching for his car. Maybe they’re going around the block to come from the other end of the street, try to outfox the lookout.

  He glances into the hallway again. But first things first, he says. Then goes into the hall, Espanto following.

  She knows without question what they’re going to do, but she cannot find the voice to remonstrate. To plead for them, beg for them. For Luz and Susi, Aldo, José. She can only think, Oh, dear Jesus, no, please no.

  Rubio leans on the wall and studies the palm of his hand.

  In less than a minute comes the first gun blast. Followed by incipient screams cut off by more shots, very close together. Then four more, evenly spaced, and the house goes quiet again.

  She feels hollowed, incapable of coherent thought.

  There’s a burst of gunfire somewhere out in front of the house. Rubio draws his pistol and rushes to the window, squats beside it as feet come thumping down the stairs. He carefully pushes the curtain open a few inches to take a peek—and a gunshot pops a glass pane and the rear portion of his head disintegrates in a red sp
ray and he falls back wide-eyed dead with a small black hole above an eyebrow. Jessie slides off the chair and huddles on the floor.

  Galán and Espanto and Cabrito run in from the hallway, crouched low. Espanto yanks out the cord of the crookneck lamp, dimming the room to the candlelight of the shrine and the glow from the kitchen door.

  Hold them till we honk for you, Galán says to Cabrito, then come running.

  “Bueno, jefe!” Cabrito says, and positions himself behind the end of the sofa and facing the front door.

  Galán pulls Jessie up by the hair and shoves her into the kitchen ahead of him, Espanto already at the back door, easing it open. The Sierra stands not four feet away. With an arm around her from behind, Galán holds Jessie tightly to him, his pistol to her head, and presses her forward to the threshold.

  A brown Jeep SUV stands a few feet behind the pickup. It looks unattended but he can’t be sure.

  “Oye, gringos!” he calls out. You see who I have? You shoot at us, I shoot her!

  There’s a smash of glass in the other room and a volley of gunfire and he says to Espanto, Go!

  Espanto bolts to the Sierra and scrabbles into it. Galán sticks the pistol in his waistband and propels Jessie toward the truck by the back of her sweatshirt and the seat of her pants and heaves her into the cab and clambers in after her. As Espanto revs the engine and starts blaring the horn, Galán makes sure the back door is unlocked for Cabrito and grins at the bags of money on the seat.

  Cabrito staggers to the kitchen doorway, his gun dangling in his hand, his face bloody and distorted—and two pistol shots knock him into the jamb.

  Galán yells, Go! and the Sierra roars away as Cabrito hits the floor.

  Galán tells Espanto to take a left at the third alley ahead. It’s a narrow turn and Espanto has to brake hard. The Sierra scrapes the alley wall and loses the right side mirror, and they’re speeding on.

  Before making the turn, Espanto caught a side-mirror look at two men getting into the Jeep. They’re coming, he says.

  Good, says Galán. Because I know where they’re going.

  46 — RAYO

  She watches Charlie and Rudy slip around the corner to the hold house street, then gives her attention to the alley. As soon as she ran back after putting the Jeep in there, she realized she had made a mistake, but couldn’t bring herself to tell Charlie. She should have parked a little farther back from the camper shell Sierra. Where the Jeep stands, it blocks her view of the back door.

  It now comes to mind that the bastards might come out of there with hostages for protection. Charlie didn’t say what to do in that case. What if JJ’s one? What if they take them in the Sierra and haul ass? Got this end of the alley blocked with the Jeep, yeah, and it’s a cul-de-sac at the far end, but when she parked in there she saw cross alleys up ahead. They can cut out through one of those. The Jeep’s in good position to give chase, but on a night like this, all you’ll see of them is their taillights. They get into heavy traffic, you can easily lose them, and JJ. Unless . . .

  She looks around, sees no one, and dashes up to the Jeep. The drapes are closed on the upper-story windows, but somebody might open them at any time and see her, so she has to be quick about this. She peeks around the front of the Jeep at the closed back door—which she’s sure opens to a kitchen as in most of these old houses—then scoots over to the Sierra, which she now sees is equipped with black glass. She has an impulse to try the driver’s door, see what the cab might be holding. The keys maybe? But what if there’s an alarm? Forget it. Standing near the back end of the camper shell, hidden from the doorway, she takes out the Ruger and with a clout of the barrel breaks the truck’s left taillight cover. Then brushes the red plastic shards under the truck with her foot. Won’t be as hard to tail them in traffic now, if it comes to that.

  She’s scanning the alley for a position with a clear view of the back door when there’s a pistol shot upstairs, followed by screams cut off almost immediately by several shots fired in rapid sequence, and then four distinct reports.

  She stands rooted. There’s a short clatter of pistol fire on the other side of the house.

  What to do? Stay here? Run around to the street to help Rudy and Charlie?

  There’s a single gunshot out front. Then silence again.

  She can’t leave. What if the fuckers come out this way?

  She squats low among the trash bins on the driver’s side of the Sierra, prepared to shoot whoever comes around to get behind the wheel.

  A voice calls out from the back door for the gringos to see who he’s got, and if they shoot at him he’ll shoot her.

  He’s addressing gringos, so her must be JJ, Rayo thinks . . . and God damn it, they are taking her . . . and if you shoot the driver when he comes around, they’ll kill—

  There’s a sound of breaking glass in the house and a barrage of gunfire and somebody yells, Go!

  She’s holding the Ruger ready and hoping the driver doesn’t see her so she doesn’t have to shoot. Then the truck starts up and the horn starts blaring and she realizes they all got in on the other side and they’re about to take JJ away.

  Do something! she thinks.

  She jams the pistol in her jeans and scoots in a crouch to the rear of the Sierra and gets on the recess in the middle of the step bumper, grabbing tight with both hands to the tailgate latch just below the camper shell’s back window. At which moment two shots sound in the kitchen and the Sierra lunges forward with a roar.

  Speeding away, she sees a body lying in the door . . . and then Charlie and Rudy are there, gaping at her with their guns pointed, then sprinting to the Jeep.

  The Sierra skids into an alley, grinding against a stone wall, almost jolting her from her perch.

  47 — RUDY AND CHARLIE

  We’ve had excellent shadow cover all the way up the street and have heard nothing other than distant barkings and the rustlings of leaves in the chill breeze. Not a soul to be seen. Not a window showing light. Places like this know when danger’s afoot, when to lay low. We’re almost to the yard of the house where Belmonte turned in—an SUV and Suburban parked in front, the Caddy in a short driveway, the porch and windows dark—when Charlie grabs my arm and we freeze. He very slowly guides me a few feet over to the deepest shadow of a large tree alongside the broken sidewalk, then puts his mouth right at my ear and whispers, Building across the street. Far corner.

  It’s dark over there, too, but there’s just enough glow from the lamppost at the far end of the block so that if you look hard you can begin to distinguish shapes and discern movement, as I do after a half minute of intent searching. Somebody’s standing at that corner of the building, the uppermost part of him slightly moving above some sort of barrier. The lookout. Shifting around a little, maybe trying to get more comfortable. I wouldn’t have spotted him on my own, but Charlie’s always had the night vision of an owl.

  We’re debating what to do, keeping our eyes on the lookout’s indistinct form, when gunshots sound in the house, a bunch close together, then four measured ones. Coups de grâce is my guess.

  “Motherfuckers!” Charlie hisses.

  The guy across the street steps out from the edge of the building, maybe as surprised by the shots as we are, maybe thinking of heading for the house. Just one step out, but it gives us a partial silhouette and Charlie says, “Smoke him.” We each fire three rounds and down he goes.

  Paralyzed, staring at the lightless sky, the rain in his eyes, Gallo is astonished by the towering arrival of his death. If only I had known, he thinks. If I had only . . .

  We hotfoot it to the Suburban and take cover behind it, ready to shoot whoever of them comes out of the house, but nobody does. But a lower corner of the porch window suddenly shows light as the drape moves aside slightly and then something blocks part of the light—a head taking a look—and I say, “Dibs,” and shoot, and the head
vanishes.

  We run to the porch without drawing fire. I’m on one side of the door, Charlie’s on the other, the side with the window. The knob’s on his side, too, and he reaches out and tries it very gingerly and it turns. He eases the door inward the tiniest bit to keep the latch from closing. “Go low,” he murmurs, and I get down on my belly right next to the door.

  Standing clear of the window, he smashes one of its panes with a snappy flick of the Beretta barrel, and somebody inside starts shooting, the bullets punching the drape through the glass, and I push the door open and see a goat-bearded guy crouched at the other end of a sofa. In the second it takes for him to see me lying prone in the doorway, a car horn starts blowing behind the house and I shoot him twice in the face, taking off part of one cheek and a chunk of his chin—and I can’t believe it when he swings his gun over and shoots back. I roll off to the side with bullets gouging the door sill and glancing off the concrete floor of the porch.

  Charlie peeks through the window, then runs into the house, and I jump up and follow and see him stop at a doorway and shoot into it twice. We hear a vehicle pulling away in the alley and we dart to the back door and hop out over the goat-beard guy, our guns up and ready to shoot the tires, and we see Rayo huddled on the white truck’s bumper. Looking back at us all big-eyed.

  She wouldn’t be there unless Jessie’s in the truck.

  “Come on!” I say, and we run to the Jeep. We were both given a key to it this morning and then Charlie gave his to Rayo but I’ve still got mine. The truck turns at a cross alley as I get us rolling, and Charlie says, “Dumbfuck cooze! Why didn’t she get off and get in with us?”

  It’s a silly question I don’t bother to answer. He knows why. Because she couldn’t be sure we’d catch them, but as long as she’s on the Sierra she’s with Jessie.

  I whip into the cross alley, banging a back fender on the stone wall, and we see them up ahead, one red taillight and one white. They’re hauling ass pretty good.

  “That busted light’s her doing, man,” I say. “Smart!” The tag light’s out too but probably their deliberate doing.