Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

Ignacio Montellano stepped toward her and smiled. “Hey, I thought I told you to call me Nacho. All my friends do.”

  Camaro didn’t respond. She gripped the bag from the jail in one hand.

  Ignacio’s smile faltered. “You do remember me, don’t you? Otherwise my feelings are gonna be hurt.”

  “I remember you. It’s been a while.”

  “It has. So let’s take a ride and we can get all caught up.”

  “I can walk.”

  “It’s a long way back to your place, if you’re still living in Allapattah. And I know you are, so don’t argue.”

  Camaro looked past Ignacio. There was a large parking lot, mostly empty, and a dusty street with auto and tool shops squatting under the rising sun. An airplane’s engine noise carried over high chain-link fences topped with curling barbed wire. They were somewhere west of where she needed to be, and she wasn’t sure of the way.

  “How about it, Camaro?”

  “Okay, fine.”

  He opened the passenger door for her, and closed it, too. Once he was behind the wheel, he stoked the engine and turned the AC to max. Dawn lit the sky like a burning brand, and there were no clouds. It had been close to a hundred every day for the past week. July in Miami.

  Ignacio fastened his seat belt, watched until Camaro fastened hers. Only then did he put the car in gear. “I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” he said.

  “I’m wondering where my bike is.”

  “Impound. I can keep you from going in front of a judge, but you still have to pay to get your ride back. Sorry.”

  Camaro tore open the plastic bag from the jail. She checked her wallet, stuffed it into her back pocket. A small roll of bills was intact. She hiked up the cuff of her pant leg, clipped the karambit to the inside of her boot. “I guess I owe you,” she said.

  “I don’t keep track of things like that.”

  She looked at the detective. He was heavyset and fiftyish, but not old. His hair was still dark, though it had receded a healthy distance. Even his beard had no stray white hairs. As she watched, he fished a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. They drove directly into the sun.

  “I suppose it’s been about a year,” Ignacio continued.

  “About that.”

  “Been keeping busy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, good. How’s the charter-boat business? Still paying the bills?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have anything to say except thank you.”

  “Thank you is good. I can live with that. I didn’t expect much better. It’s not like we’re buddies or anything. I only kept you out of prison when you killed all those guys.” His expression remained neutral, eyes on the road, hands at ten and two.

  “What do you want?” Camaro asked.

  “Me? Nothing. I’ve been keeping Camaro Espinoza on my radar since then, that’s all. If your name comes up, people know to give me a call. This morning I got a call. DUI? I had to have a look.”

  “Nothing to see.”

  Ignacio shrugged. “I suppose not. Though we’re sitting here now and I gotta say, you smell like you fell in a bathtub full of booze.”

  She didn’t answer. She sat back in her seat. Ignacio took the main street away from the jail, six lanes with a concrete island in the middle. The neighborhood shuddered with every arrival and departure from Miami International. Palm trees were a stab at making the cement desert into something resembling the better Miami, the sexy Miami, but there was nothing but business here.

  “So you were drinking,” Ignacio said. There was no question.

  “I was.”

  “And then you got on that Harley of yours, figuring you’d make it all the way home to sleep it off?”

  Camaro was silent.

  “Seems dangerous,” Ignacio said. “And you’re such a careful girl.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Only that I figured you’d want to steer clear of any kind of trouble until everybody in Miami forgot who Camaro Espinoza is. That’s the safest way to go. You make yourself noticeable, somebody might come poking around. They might wonder where you came from, or where you’re going. They might wonder if you ever killed anybody. And why.”

  “You know why,” Camaro said.

  “I do. Now I keep an eye out.”

  Camaro let the miles slip by. She had a better idea of where they were. Soon they’d be in her neighborhood, where people kept small homes and families and worked hard for basic needs and simple pleasures. She thought she’d disappeared there, and there was no one left to know her name.

  “If you’re wondering what I want for helping you, the answer is nothing,” Ignacio said. “I’m not that kind of cop. And I won’t ask if we can be pals, because I don’t think you really want one. Won’t stop me from trying. I only wanted to tell you to keep on the straight and narrow from here on out. There comes a day I don’t catch trouble before it finds you…”

  “I don’t see why you’d care.”

  “Maybe I don’t like to see good people make bad choices.”

  They rode together in silence after that, the only sounds the rushing of the air conditioner’s compressor over the car’s engine. Ignacio never looked her way. He was careful to check his blind spots and use his indicators. He never broke the limit.

  When they rolled down Camaro’s street, she was ready to get out. The atmosphere inside the car was too chilly, and she could think of nothing to say she wouldn’t rather keep to herself. He stopped in front of her one-bedroom rental, blocking the driveway and the red crew-cab pickup truck in the carport. He put on his hazard lights and shifted into park. “Home again,” he said.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  “My pleasure. Let me give you my card. If you need someone to be your designated driver, I can help.”

  Camaro watched him produce the card like a magic trick. One moment his hand was empty, and the next the card was there. She didn’t take it. “I’ll do all right on my own.”

  “I only give one pass for DUI. After that, I’m inclined to let things play out.”

  She sighed and took the card. “Happy?”

  Ignacio smiled. “Very.”

  Warm air rushed in when she opened her door. Camaro got out. She heard him call her name. She leaned back inside. “Yeah?”

  “If you ever feel like you’re gonna hurt somebody, maybe give me a call then, too, all right? I hear one of your neighbors got a pretty nasty beatdown after putting hands on his kid.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “Remember me.”

  Camaro put the card in her pocket. “I’ll remember.”

  “Okay. See you around.”

  She slammed the door and stood on the curb until Ignacio pulled away. She saw him wave over his shoulder. She didn’t wave back.

  “Yeah, see you.”

  He turned the corner and was gone.

  Chapter Three

  THE GYM SMELLED of sweat and heat and straining muscles. It was loud inside, but not because of music. No music played in Miguel Anuria’s place. It was a camp for toil and work and pain, and while fighting might have seemed like a dance, there was no dancing to be had.

  Camaro went down hard on her back inside the five-faced cage in the center of the space. The woman sparring with her came rushing in. She scrambled to get inside Camaro’s guard. Camaro caught one of her legs between her own and spoiled the attack. They rolled together, each trying to advance position. The woman put her hand on Camaro’s chin to lever her away. Camaro clubbed two blows into the woman’s headgear to still her.

  The woman’s name was Laura Ogarrio. She was ten years younger than Camaro and slighter. As they tangled on the mat, the coiled muscles of Laura’s arms and legs belied her size. They rolled again, this time with Laura on top and Camaro underneath.

  Miguel shouted from outside the cage, “Laura, get your leg free! Use your knee and slip her guard. ¡Esc
úchame!”

  Camaro felt the younger woman moving against her. Laura barred her chin with an elbow, dug in with a knee, and struggled to pull her leg from Camaro’s trap. Camaro bore down, then released abruptly. Laura fell over her, both knees going to the ground. Immediately Camaro hooked the back of a leg, rolled up with an arm behind the woman’s neck. Her hands locked together. Laura had nowhere to go.

  “Damn it, sobrina,” Miguel called. “She’s going to put you in the choke! You got to find some leverage, girl.”

  Laura panted against Camaro’s chest. Camaro’s breath came in short, choppy bursts. They’d grappled for most of two minutes, an interval timer outside the cage silently counting off the seconds until the horn. They’d done two rounds of three minutes previously, standing and on the ground, and both were slick with sweat.

  In this position, Camaro couldn’t close the choke to end it. She felt Laura tense for a breakaway move. Camaro allowed her hook to loosen. Instantly they rolled, Laura surging on the canvas. Camaro held on until she felt the younger woman slip into position. She locked in again, the guillotine choke tighter than before. At this angle she was able to leverage the pressure with Laura’s body weight, her grip the fulcrum.

  “You gotta slip it, Laura. Slip it! Slip it!”

  Laura struggled. Her movements fell apart, no longer considered or disciplined. She jerked against Camaro’s grip, but found no way out. Camaro cranked the younger woman’s neck until she felt it pop. Laura tapped Camaro on the side.

  Camaro let go. Laura collapsed onto the cage floor. The interval timer sounded. The round was over but the match was done. Laura plucked out her mouth guard and lay on her back, lungs sobbing for air. Camaro was no different. She felt sore all over, and there was fresh pain in her right arm, still bothering her months after getting free of a cast.

  Miguel unlocked the cage. He stood over the both of them with his hands on his hips. “I’ve seen better from both of you,” he said.

  Camaro spoke around her mouth guard. She was too tired to take it out. “She’s quick. Strong.”

  “You’re quick and strong. She’s young and doesn’t know all the tricks yet. What’s your excuse?”

  Camaro put a sweaty arm over her eyes. “Send me to the old folks’ home,” she said.

  “Thirty-three ain’t old!”

  “It feels like it.”

  “Then you need to change how you feel. Get up and get showered. Somebody else needs the cage.”

  It was a minute before Camaro felt ready to rise. She rolled onto her knees. Around the perimeter of the cage, men and women watched her. Miguel had Laura on a stool and bent close to talk with her. Laura looked as though she was crying. She was the daughter of Miguel’s brother-in-law.

  A few heads nodded as Camaro left the cage. She stripped off her head protection and dropped it on a chair. She took a towel from a stack by the wall, mopped her face and neck.

  “Excuse me?”

  The woman had unruly black curly hair barely held in place by a strip of elastic cloth. She was skinny but had the widening hips of someone who spent a lot of time sitting down. Camaro thought she couldn’t yet be thirty. The woman smiled, but the smile instantly faded.

  “Yes?” Camaro asked.

  “Are you…Camaro?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The woman put out a hand. She had unpainted nails, but they were carefully manicured. “I’m Faith. They told me to talk to you.”

  Camaro didn’t shake her hand. She glanced around the room. No one looked their way. She examined Faith more closely. Faith wore no makeup and didn’t spend much time in the sun. Everything about her said “office,” and everything about her placed her outside the confines of Miguel Anuria’s gym.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Camaro asked.

  Faith dropped her hand. “Oh! I talked to Miguel and to, uh, Rey? I think that’s his name. He does the beginner classes.”

  “Rey told you to talk to me?”

  Another smile struggled to form. “I asked who the toughest broad in the joint was, and he said it was you.”

  “That’s great,” Camaro said. “I have to go.”

  Faith moved to intercept her. “I watched you spar with that other girl. She’s good, but you’re better. I’ve only been taking classes for, like, two weeks, but I think I can tell who’s the best at this.”

  Camaro stopped. “Is this your first fight gym?” she asked Faith.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, rule one is you don’t come to the gym to make small talk. You come here to roll. So I’m glad you like it and I’m glad you think I’m good, but I don’t really need this right now. I’m tired and I’m sweaty and I want to shower and go home.”

  “Wait,” Faith said.

  “Listen—”

  “No, wait. I’m sorry. I don’t know the protocol or anything. Can I…talk to you for a little bit?”

  “I’m going to the showers.”

  “I can stay here for you.”

  “Then I’m gonna leave.”

  “We could talk next time.”

  Camaro shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  She turned her back on Faith and walked away. Faith didn’t call after her.

  Chapter Four

  SHE WAITED IN her car in front of the gym for Camaro to come out, but Camaro never appeared. Faith Glazer realized too late that there must have been a second exit somewhere, and Camaro was long gone. Faith had to drive from Miami Beach to her apartment north of the Crossings, thirty miles away. Traffic was heavy. It took her over an hour to make it home.

  Once parked, she snared her gym bag from the backseat and put it on her lap. She found her purse inside, and inside the purse a canister of pepper spray. She slung the bag over her right shoulder and got out of the car with her keys in her left hand, the canister in her right. She looked in a full circle around the parking lot before locking the car doors and stepping out into the middle of the street, well away from the other parked cars, ready for the walk to her apartment.

  Faith knew the approaches to her apartment from every direction, and the exposure from the adjoining street. A six-foot iron fence enclosed the complex, but it ran parallel to a road with open curbs for parking, so there were always different cars directly outside the barricade. Pedestrians could look through. The bars of the fence were close enough together even a child couldn’t pass between them, but visibility was still perfect from as far as a hundred feet away.

  A large bush grew by her front door. She came in at an angle and found no one hiding behind it. Taking a last look behind her, she committed to the door, unlocked it, hustled inside, and secured it behind her. She had a dead bolt and a chain lock. Both of these were set before she looked through the peephole to see the empty doorstep and sidewalk beyond.

  She didn’t turn on her lights, and moved from room to room in the dark. The windows in her living room provided a clear view of the street, but the blinds were shut. Faith lifted a slat to peer outside. Only a few of the cars beyond the fence were familiar to her. Some belonged to boyfriends and girlfriends of people in her building. Others could have belonged to anyone.

  She passed from the front room down a short hall to the bedroom. Vertical blinds concealed a sliding glass door barred with a heavy length of pipe. Faith hadn’t trusted the simple, lightweight bar the door had come with. She looked out here, too. Her patio was enclosed by a square of privacy fencing, the space only four by three. No one was there. A single, rusting lawn chair sat alone.

  When there had been no movement, and no sound in the apartment save the whisper of the air conditioner starting on a timer, Faith turned on the lights. She put her keys in a bowl by the front door, peered out through the peephole one more time, and went to the bathroom with the pepper spray still in her hand.

  The pepper spray was never far from her. She slept with it beside the bed, and when she took her meals in the small dining area she stood it near the plate as though it were a salt shaker
. While she showered, she kept the door to the bathroom locked and the clothes hamper propped against it.

  Faith was sore all over, and it had been the same every time she came back from the fighting gym. Miguel’s was not the kind of place where people learned cardio boxing, but a real gym where real fighters came to do their hardest work. It was what she had looked for before asking about lessons. She had absorbed everything she could from the place in the two weeks she’d gone there.

  She wrapped a towel around her head and a robe around her body and went into the cool bedroom. Her bed was always made. She sat with her back against the headboard, clicking through channels on the television.

  Someone rapped on the front door and rang the bell. Faith froze in place, the remote control in her hand.

  She grabbed the pepper spray from the nightstand. When the doorbell rang again, she clutched the remote control so tightly the plastic squeaked. A single tremor became a cascade, and she shook all over.

  “Faith?”

  “Andrea,” Faith said out loud. Where there had been ice before, liquid heat flowed. She breathed deeply.

  Faith went to the door and checked the peephole. Andrea Marcus stood outside. She had something in her hands. Faith willed her heartbeat to slow as she undid the locks and opened the door.

  Andrea brightened when she saw Faith. They were unalike in appearance, Andrea blonde and long-limbed, with the tight muscles of a runner. She would have no trouble in a place like Miguel’s. She held a small cardboard box. “Oh, hi, you are home. I saw your car, so I figured…Were you in the shower?”

  “The—?” Faith touched the towel on her head and blushed. “Oh, no, I…Is everything all right?”

  “This got delivered to my door by mistake. I wanted to make sure you got it.”

  Andrea handed over the package. Faith weighed the box in her hands. It was solid, heavier than its size suggested. “Thanks. I don’t remember ordering anything.”

  “Maybe it’s a present.”

  “Maybe. Hey, I’d ask you to come in, but I’m kind of not dressed, you know?”

  Andrea waved her off. “No problem. We’ll get together some other time. Don’t work too hard, okay?”