Stone faced Mexican men watched from the front of a pool hall as we passed. With my hand in the pocket of my jacket, I felt the reassuring diamond cut wood grip of my snubby. A.38 won’t stop a bear, but it will make most men think twice about pushing their luck with you. Were we being set up? Oh hell yes, but the only way to find out by who was to let the little punk play out his hand and hope we were holding enough cards to take the pot when he did.
“I knew you’d want to see this.” Porfiro, a middle-aged cop, held several jobs. The first was to protect the gringos who fed the local economy, the second, to protect the locals from the gringos and each other. His third and best paying job was to keep Santiago informed, and his people out of jail. This job allowed his wife to have a nice house on Gringo Hill, not inside the gate, but Gringo Hill nonetheless, it also afforded his daughter college tuition in Mexico City.
He and Santiago were behind a crime scene tape, the flashlight in Porfiro’s hand illuminated a blood-soaked body. Red slashes had been sliced up and down and the dead man’s clothes hung in tatters. It was as if he had been attacked by a thousand razor-toothed animals. The light’s beam rested on the corpse’s chest, where a blood spattered tarot card had been placed.
“The last thing I need is this getting out.” Santiago knelt and carefully plucked the card from the dead man. “Pimps act afraid and their girls stop obeying, this happens and the order breaks down. Order breaks down and dinero stops flowing. You can see this would be bad for us both?”
“Si claro,” Porfiro said. Whatever was happening between Santiago and this pimp killer was none of his concern. It had nothing to do with the people he had sworn to protect. And if by some strange chance Santiago went down, it would be days before another stepped into his place. And the other would need a willing police officer.
The color drained from Peter’s face as we turned down a dark alley, his lips were white from the effort to keep from running his mouth. The meager light from the street was left behind, the skinny walkway smelled of piss and rot. Reaching out, I grabbed Teyo from behind, clamping a hand over his mouth, I pressed the.38 up under his chin.
“Squeak, mouse boy, give me an excuse to splatter you,” I whispered. He struggled briefly. “Game’s over,” I pressed the short barrel deeper into his soft flesh. “Who the fuck are you taking us to?” He mumbled into my hand, his wide eyes glittering in the dim light.
“He can’t answer with your hand over his mouth,” Peter said.
“Did I say you could speak?”
“No, but…”
“Then shut the fuck up, Petey. If I let this boy talk, he’s going to lie to me, and then do you know what I’m going to have to do? No? I’ll tell you, he lies and I’m going to have to blow the back of his head off. And I’m wearing my favorite jeans. Do you want to clean his brains off them, Petey?”
Peter didn’t answer. My guess is at that moment he didn’t know who he feared more, this punk street rat or me. “Ok, tip boy,” I said, turning my full attention back to my prey, “that day you knew was coming since you squirmed out of your mother’s womb is here. You believe in god?”
He moved his head up and down against the revolver.
“That’s good, but I doubt you’ll be meeting him. You haven’t been a good boy, have you? No, you’ll be headed the other direction. Now you have one, and only one shot at delaying an early retirement. Would you like not to die?”
Again he nodded.
“Then don’t lie to me. One chance, that’s it, no do overs, no I’m sorry. Lie and I pop a cap. Got it?” Slowly I lifted my hand from his mouth. As he started to speak, I clamped it back down. “No, the truth.” It was an easy guess that he would lie, I had to override any tricky thoughts running in his brain with fear.
“I don’t know their name, swear to god,” he said when I finally let him speak. “They gave me a hundred dollars to deliver you to them.”
“Goodbye.” I shoved up on the revolver with sudden force, snapping his head back into the brick alley wall. From the wild look on his face, I was sure he thought he had been shot. When his eyes refocused, all slyness was gone.
“I don’t know their names, these Russians, they want whoever has been looking for them. They say they pay big for you. I swear I didn’t think they would hurt you, you’re my amigo, I not let them hurt you.”
“What, you think they may want to ask me to dance? They seem gay to you?”
“They want to talk, that’s all, talk.”
“Good. Take me to them and we’ll talk.” I pulled the barrel from his neck and slipped it back into my pocket. “Come on, let’s get to it.”
CHAPTER 12
We stepped out of the alley into a small courtyard formed by low apartment buildings. A dead oak stood in the center with its leafless branches reaching like skeleton arms into the night sky. No life showed in any of the apartments, the windows broken and boarded over. Trash mixed with discarded furniture and rotting garbage littered the ground.
“Fuck this, man,” Peter said, backing toward the alley. “I’m out of here.” A stocky man stepped from the shadow of a rusted refrigerator, blocking our exit. At the same moment, two others stood out of the rubble. They surrounded us, even in the dark I could make out the shape of pistols in their hands.
Shoving Teyo to the ground, I dropped and rolled left. The flash and roar of their guns filled the courtyard. But they couldn’t see me any better than I saw them. Crawling on my belly, I got twenty feet left of where they had last seen me. Feeling around, I found a discarded beer bottle. Hurling the bottle over my head, I kneeled into a firing stance. The smashing glass was followed by their muzzle flashes. I snapped off two quick shots and dropped down. Someone was yelling painful Russian curses. As I crawled behind a molting sofa, I heard a girlish shriek that I knew could only be Peter.
“Hey dolboy’eb, we have your droog,” a voice called out. “Maybe I should cut him?”
“Moses!” Peter was crying like the bitch he was. “He has a knife…” His voice was cut off by a gurgling wet yell. Jumping up, I dove over the sofa, several shots flamed, illuminating a man standing by the trunk of the dead tree. Bullets ripped into the debris around me. I fired three quick shots while running toward the oak.
I didn’t need light to know the man was dead. Two of my shots had caught him in the face. Somewhere across the courtyard, the first man I’d shot was moaning. Slipping five new slugs into my.38, I wrist-flicked the cylinder closed and ran at a crouch to the last place I’d seen Peter. To my happy surprise, no bullets followed my movement.
Above us, the clouds moved away from the moon, casting silver light down on the courtyard. Two bodies lay folded onto the ground, both bathed in blood. A dark haired, bearded man I’d never seen before had a slit almost like a second smile cut into his neck. He was quite dead. Peter lay beside him, his eyes glued to the dead man. His lips were trembling but no sound came out.
“You do this?” I asked, sure he hadn’t. Peter’s eyes slid up at me and tried to focus.
“He’s dead,” Peter mumbled.
“No shit.” A scream of Russian spun me around. Across the courtyard, someone was crouched over a second figure. Whatever was happening didn’t sound like much fun for the fellow on the bottom.
Moving toward them, I kept a bead on the crouching figure. Your enemy’s enemy isn’t always your friend. Getting within ten feet, I could see a slight young man with military cropped blonde hair, he was kneeling on the chest of a wounded Russian. Blood shone on the blade of a straight razor as it arced down, flicking a chunk off the down man’s ear. He let out a string of Russian words, but apparently not the ones his captor wanted to hear. Again the blade struck, opening the man’s nostril.
I snapped the hammer back on my.38. The sound turned the young man with the blade to face me. He had soft delicate features and cold heartless eyes. He was covered in blood. There was no doubt what had happened to Peter’s assailant.
“This is none of your conc
ern. Go home, forget you were here.” His voice was higher than I would have guessed.
“Before you fillet this Puke, I need to know where he’s holding a friend of mine.” I kept the revolver aimed at the lad’s head. The bleeding man glanced from the lad to me. He spoke to me in pleading Russian.
“He thinks you can save him,” the lad laughed.
“Tell me where the girls are,” I yelled at the bleeding man, hoping he understood English. He answered, pleading in Russian.
“What did he say?”
“He wants you to kill me.”
“Think he’ll take me to my friend if I do?”
“Maybe.” His young eyes held no fear.
“Climb off him, slowly.” I took a step back, and kept the barrel on his head. Gracefully, the lad rose, wiping the blood off his razor, he slipped it into the pocket of his military coat.
“Where are the girls? Translate.” The lad did as told. Russian words flew between them.
“He wants to know if you will let him live if he tells you,” the lad told me.
“Talk and I won’t kill you, don’t and I’ll leave now.” This brought on an onslaught from the bleeding man. The lad nodded taking it in. In a move so fluid and quick that I barely had time to register it, the youth whipped out the razor, swung down and opened the Russian thug’s carotid artery. Dark red spray spewed into the air.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” I yelled at the youth.
“Calle Ruiz, a dirt road twenty meters past the Tecate cut off, they’re holding four girls there,” he said, slipping the blade away. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“You didn’t need to kill him.”
“Yes, I did.” He dropped a tarot card onto the man as he bled out, turning the dirt below into red mud.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I asked the lad as he started to fade into the shadows.
“To work.”
“Calle Ruiz?”
“Yes.”
“You have a car?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re covered in blood, how far do you think you’ll get before someone spots you and calls the cops?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Look, whoever the fuck you are, you bailed out my shit here, let me help you get cleaned up. Least I can do.”
“And I should trust you, why?”
“You know I’m not working with these punks, and if I wanted to kill you, I’d just pull the trigger and be done with it.”
“Fine,” the lad said after a long thought.
Teyo had faded sometime during the battle. The little sneak might warn the Russians we were coming, but hopefully his fear had driven him underground until this war blew over. Peter was a trembling mess, but other than his nerves, he was unharmed. The lad dropped a tarot card on the dead man at our feet.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A warning,” he said.
“To who?”
“Anyone stupid enough to face me.”
Searching Peter’s pockets, I found his cell phone. I had a number for Adolpho and hoped I could convince him to take a break and come collect us. Holding the phone up to the light, I discovered there was no signal.
“Fuck fuck fucking fuck we’re fucked.” Peter was fried.
“No we’re not.” Moving back through the alley, I noticed how dark it really was. On the street, I scanned for prying eyes and roving gangsters. None appeared.
“Wait here.”
“With him?” Peter looked at the silent assassin.
“Yeah.” I walked away. At a small bar, I dropped a ten for the use of the phone. The rough boys at the bar sized me up. Wondering if I was worth the trouble of rolling. I’d like to think my street hardened looks kept them off, but truth was I probably didn’t look like I had enough on me for them to bother climbing off their bar stools.
Ten minutes later, a late model Toyota pulled up to the mouth of the alley. Adolpho’s smile faded when he saw the blood on Peter and the lad. “You want me to take you to medico?”
“The blood’s not theirs,” I told him.
“So I guess you found your Russians.”
“Something like that.”
“And this is the nina you were seeking?” He motioned to the lad. I shook my head.
“No, he’s the one did most of the cutting.”
Adolpho placed an old blanket to protect his back seat and drove us to Hotel 49. Instead of asking me any more questions, he told me about a drunk gringo who had tried to take his son into Anthony’s early that night. “He tells me the boy is eighteen, but he looks thirteen, si?” He was grinning, enjoying telling the story. “I say, maybe, but I need to see ID, now the pinche gringo gets enojado, red faced he yell, he is the boy’s father and should know his own son’s age.”
“So did you let him in?” I asked.
“What could I do, he tipped me fifty dollars,” he said with a gleeful laugh.
When he pulled up to the hotel, I asked him the fare. “Nada, is por las ninas,” he said. I didn’t insult him by pressing it. I shook his hand and promised to let him know when we had freed her. He looked like he thought that message might be a long time coming, but he didn’t say anything.
The lad tightened when I pushed the dresser against the door. Before I could explain about the lack of a good lock, the razor was out and swinging at my face. I caught the arm inches from lacerating my cheek. A boot shot up and connected square on my nads. I dropped to my knees, fighting to keep the puke down. I rolled onto my side as a second kick sailed past my head. This little punk was fixing to kick my ass.
“What the fuck is your damage?” I yelled, ripping the.38 out of my pocket.
“To take me, it will have to be dead.” Again the blade swung up.
“I don’t want to do shit to you. Now put the razor down before I forget we’re on the same side and blow a hole in your face.”
“You want to fuck me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I suddenly started laughing, all the adrenaline and general bad craziness of the night had hit critical mass. He wasn’t a he, he was a she, and she wanted to slice me up out of some Diana driven man hatred. The laughter made my balls hurt worse but I couldn’t stop. She looked down like I had gone mad, and maybe she was right.
“Look, as beautiful as you look bathed in blood and all, you just aren’t my type.” I lowered the.38. “I go for something a little less… deadly in my lady friends.” The blade was still hovering up above her head, ready to strike. “Screw it, slit my throat or take a shower, choice is yours.”
Rolling over slowly, I crawled on all fours over to the bed and hoisted myself up onto it. When I was able to see the room, she was gone and the bathroom door was shut. She had moved as silent as any cat, she dealt out a mean knife, if it wasn’t for her wanting to kill all men, she might just be my type after all.
The worst of the nausea had passed by the time she came out. With the blood gone and lights on, it was clear she was a woman. A thin scar ran from below her left ear to the corner of her lips. Wrapped in a towel it was clear she was missing her right breast. A jagged spider web of scars spread up from the towel and into her neck line. They were all old scars, pale and slightly raised lines of some distant trauma. She had an athlete’s build, all muscle and sinew, if she had an ounce of body fat it wasn’t apparent.
“My clean clothes are in a locker at the train station,” she said.
“And?” I smiled at her stupidly.
“I can’t go like this.”
“True.”
“Do you have anything I can put on?” she said quietly. It was obvious she had difficulty asking for anything, and I wasn’t about to make it easier on her.
“So first you make sure I’ll never be able to have children, and then you want to borrow my clothes? That about right?”
“You locked me in. What did you expect?”
“Not to get my balls kicked in was on the list, thought maybe you’d get a sho
wer and then tell me what your part in this game is.”
“What game?”
“Hide, seek and destroy the Russian mob. Your accent, Russian right?”
“Ukraine.” Her arms were across her chest, and her face was free from emotion. I made a note not to ever play poker with her.
“You want these?” I pulled a pair of chinos and a tee shirt from my duffle. She reached for them but I yanked them back. “No, answers first, then clothes.”
Setting her jaw, she turned and started to pull the dresser from blocking the door. She was clearly willing to walk out into the streets of Ensenada dressed only in a towel rather than be pushed into answering my question.
“Fuck it.” I tossed her the pants and shirt. Without a thank you or even a grunt of gratitude, she slipped into the bathroom and got dressed. Pulling a web belt off her blood stained pants, she cinched up my huge chinos and dropped the razor into her pocket.
“Any chance we can talk like civilized people, without one of us getting cut to shreds?” I asked with a loose smile.
She leaned against the dresser, keeping a good distance between us.
“If I’m such a dirt bag, why am I risking my life to help some little Russian girl I never met?”
“People lie all the time.”
“They sure do. Time to roll the dice and hope I don’t come up snake eyes, or walk out the door.”
She dug a pack of Mexican smokes out of her coat. Striking a kitchen match, she inhaled a lung full of nasty smelling tobacco. Letting the blue gray smoke roll out over her thin lips, she spoke so softly I had to strain to hear her words, “If you betray me. I will kill you.”
“Sounds fair. You going to fill me in on what you’re doing down here?”
“No.”
“Right. Do you have a name?”
“Mikayla.” That was it, no last name. After a few more lame tries, I stopped asking questions that she wouldn’t answer.
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