A Fighting Chance

by Sand, A. J.

  I make an urgent gesture at her. “The guy from the front desk is downstairs arguing with Carmen. I think he called the police. And whether they’re the good ones or not, I don’t want to sit in a police station and try to explain why I’m so beat up and have stab wounds, and why you have broken fingers.” I ease the door open just as footsteps barrel up the stairs. I don’t even bother to look. Drew runs toward me, and we both slam the door shut . My tired muscles tense up and I fight to suppress the fiery fear lashing my lungs and inching me toward a panic attack.

  Soft knocks vibrate our backs. “Please…open…” Carmen whispers in desperation. “I can help you. I know the girl with you is hurt. Her hand looks bad.”

  “Are the police coming?”

  “Please, just open,” she repeats, sounding as panicked as we are.

  “What if the man is out there, too? What if she’s trying to set us up?” Drew asks, and it’s a good point, something I’m considering, too. Maybe they’ll try to hold us here until the cops arrive. A hotel in a city like this probably has a gun at the front desk.

  “Please. While he’s waiting outside. Come, I’ll show you the back way…” she urges, knocking still. Drew goes to the window and hauls the curtains open, but makes a disappointed groan when she faces me.

  “There are bars on them.” Fucking shit. We can’t stand against the door all night. We’re out of options, so I draw it open slowly.

  Carmen’s out there alone, anxiously shifting her weight between her feet. “He saw the blood on you. He thinks maybe somebody bad will come looking for you. He doesn’t like trouble,” she explains as we follow her down the steps. “Go through the kitchen. There’s a door to the veranda. I unlocked it for you.”

  “Where can we go from there?” I ask.

  “Oh, shit,” Drew says, and Carmen and I see what has her attention. Swirling red and blue lights penetrate the room, and Carmen drags us into a closet under the staircase marked “Employees Only.” She shuts the door behind all three of us and shoves us behind hanging housekeeping uniforms. The room suddenly awakens with voices, and footsteps traipse across the floor.

  “He gives the cops free rooms to spend time with their lady friends, so they come when he calls,” she explains. “But I think I can get them into the kitchen. I’ll put on a pot of coffee. They like my coffee. I’ll tell them you’re sleeping and there’s no rush. But you’ll have to go out the front now.”

  I nod. “Go where?”

  “There’s a church. Two blocks straight ahead. It’s locked but there’s a garden in the back, away from the street. If you can wait an hour, I can put you in the guesthouse I sometimes use when I have to work overnight. But only for a few hours. You’ll have to leave by dawn.”

  “Okay, thank you. We will if we need to. But, Carmen, I need you to call this number,” I say before I recite it. “Tell her where we’re going to be…and tell her Jesse says she better not ever ask about her debt again.”

  She repeats the number out loud over and over. “Okay. Here goes. Please be very quiet.” She steps out of the closet, clutching a bag that was on the shelf over our heads. “Oh! Hello!” she says nervously to an unknown person. The door rocks back hard against the jamb, and Drew and I both jump but manage to control any startled outbursts. “I always forget when I put my bag in here. Sometimes the guests steal when you leave things out.” Carmen switches to Spanish and for a moment, I wonder if she’s double-crossing us, but there’s a sudden boom of laughter and the footsteps fade as they move to our right.

  I squeeze Drew’s shoulder. “If someone opens this door, I’m going to tackle them. And then you run, okay?”

  “Maybe they’ll just talk to us and leave, Jess.” She aims a tired, irritated look at me, but the doubt in her tone outweighs the meaning in the words. She knows that’s completely bullshit.

  “Maybe they’re friends of Carlos. Maybe they’ll recognize us. Maybe they’re great cops, but they’ll radio this call in to someone who’s not. Maybe they’ll hold us at a station in suspicion of something, and the asshat cops who do security at the illegal fights will take care of us. I don’t know. The thing is, we have no idea, Drew, and I’m not taking the chance. If someone comes, you get out.”

  “So then…you’ll be killed? Haven’t we fucking lost enough today?” she fires at me, irritation and sadness heavy in her expression. She turns away. Too bad, the irritation rubbed off.

  “You’re still here…” I turn her head toward me, cupping her chin. I lean in so close our noses are almost touching. “And that means I still have something to protect, and I’ll do it with my life, even at the cost of it…anytime, every time. So if being shot to death by Mexican police gives you a chance to get out alive, then that’s what it’ll have to be,” I say. “Hate me all you want. But you can only do that if you’re alive. And that’s all I care about, Drew Rebecca Hallisay. All.” Her jaw pulses under the pads of my fingers, and she tears my hand off her but stays silent. We don’t speak again, not until the smell of coffee wafts in under the door. “Okay…I think Carmen’s ready. Are you?”

  She nods haltingly and I push the closet door open as quietly as I can, keeping my ears tuned in to the conversation from the kitchen. It’s still lively and still in the kitchen. I go out first then motion for us to head for the door, and we move in quick, quiet strides, taking turns peering behind us. Carmen is good at this. I can hear her just chatting away in Spanish, laughing every few seconds. Probably at lame cop jokes—

  “Jess,” Drew says in a strained tone as she squeezes my hand. I turn and the man—Elias, as his nametag says—is sitting in the lobby and tapping on his cell phone, literally two feet away from me. Between the door and us. All three of us lock eyes, each one of us dead still. His chest heaves.

  The breath before the scream.

  “Sir…” Drew holds her hands up and moves toward him, smiling. She’s a pretty girl, but somehow I don’t think her twisted, bloated, fucked-up fingers are winning him over much, because he scrunches his nose in disgust. “Elias…we have more money.” His curiosity piques, and he closes his mouth with a snap as she draws a wad of pesos from her pocket to flash. “Just please be quiet and it’s yours.” Drew leans in to toss it onto his lap, and I lunge forward, my hand closing around his throat. I yank him right out of the chair, spin him, and put him in a chokehold, holding him flush against me. He struggles, and makes my walk to the door a bit more difficult, but at least he can’t yell.

  “I’m glad you knew where I was going with that…” she says.

  “I didn’t,” I say, laughing a little. Once outside, we stick to the shadows and move around to the side of the house. We wait there until Elias is near unconsciousness in my arms. I hate doing it but out of all the times I’ve had to do something like this, this one makes the most sense. I drop him to the grass beneath a window, and Drew and I head for the gate. I can actually see the steeple of the church Carmen was talking about. But my heart sinks as I pull Drew back inside the gate, and flatten us both against the brick wall.

  Fucking shit.

  There’s another cop in the car outside. The car’s rear bumper is just past the gate, and I can see the silhouette of the driver. His radio buzzes every few seconds, and his head shifts just as much.

  “The minute we cross the street, even if we duck down, he might see us in his side view mirror,” Drew says.

  “Well, we’ll just have to hope he’s not looking when we run.”

  The front door to the mansion hotel swings open, spilling light onto the grass. “Señor Hernandez?” a male calls out. “Elias?” He walks down the steps and goes to the edge of the house, right to the side where I left him.

  Drew grabs my arm. “What do we do?” I don’t have a fucking clue. The gate is a good distance away from the front door, so we’re still blending into the shadows. For the time being. But the minute he turns that corner and walks down a ways, he’s going to trip over Elias.

  He does something far worse.


  He changes direction and starts cutting across the grass, heading for the gate. “Shit…shit…move…” I say, rasping. We ease along the wall, timing our steps so that our pacing is faster than his, going for the corner. Drew’s shaking so much that she keeps stumbling, and every time she does, I think he’ll hear it. We make it just before the gate screeches when he walks out. The cops’ voices echo as they talk back and forth, and then a car door slams shut.

  “Maybe they’re leaving. Should we run into the house and go out the back?” Drew asks.

  I shrug but I don’t even think it really conveys how out of answers I am right now. “Maybe…I don’t know…” Fuck it. “Yeah… ready…one…two…”

  I make it just a few steps.

  Drew changes our momentum and pulls me back. I crash into her very hard, and she muffles her cries on my chest when we fall against the brick wall again, her nails burrowing into my side. Her broken fingers are between our bodies, squashed further. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Then I hear why she did it. Two sets of footsteps click up the sidewalk toward the house, and soon the door to the hotel opens and both cops go inside. Without a moment more of waiting, Drew and I run out of the gate.

  ****

  Christiana meets us at the church, thank God, and Drew scolds me for waking a pregnant woman up to give us a ride. She did it gladly, and now I think she feels better about the money I gave her. She drives us straight to Majandra’s clinic in Itzacalco. It’s a small place but clean and modern, and heavily protected by four deadbolts and an alarm system, to keep out addicts looking for drugs or equipment to sell. Majandra isn’t happy when we tell her we don’t have any cash for the services, but she lets us stay at her place for a few days. And I guess because we aren’t paying up front, she doesn’t have a single ounce of sympathy in her tone when going through the damage done to me, on her portable X-ray machine. The first stab wound is pretty shallow, but the screwdriver went straight through the muscle on the second one. It didn’t hit any tendons, but I have to get stitches. The cut on my forearm is nasty but won’t need stitches. She gives me a tetanus shot and lots of antibiotics and pain meds, then puts my arm in a sling. Forty-five days is her minimum recommendation, and it’s a number that disappoints me. She splints Drew’s broken fingers, and we get double the drugs before she sends us on our way.

  Sandrine picks us up and takes us back to our hotel, but has one of her friends go in to retrieve our things and our car, in case Carlos and his friends are watching the place. With Drew driving, we follow Sandrine to a small restaurant outside of Centro Historico, and all three of us agree that it’s a good idea for Drew and me to get out of Mexico City for a while.

  “Tecolutla…in Veracruz,” Sandrine suggests as she takes a sip of hot tea. “It’s a four-hour drive, but I think the change will do you two good. Lay low.”

  “But we’re not really safe until I fight Carlos, are we?” I ask.

  “No. The guy’s messed up. You made him feel like he has something to prove. Fighting is probably all he has…you threatened to take it away, and that makes you something he has to eliminate now. I’m sure Ramón Vega will also be interested in seeing it happen because his number one fighter’s credibility is on the line. Carlos makes less money if he’s not seen as unbeatable anymore. So, you need to reschedule the match or get out of Mexico…completely,” she says bluntly. “The good news is…everyone is waiting for this to blow over, so you have time.”

  Our food order number is announced over the loud speaker. “I’ll get it,” Drew says.

  “How are you going to carry—”

  “I said I got it,” she snaps at me, pushing away from the table so forcefully that it mashes into Sandrine’s ribs. A compassionate look from Sandrine follows Drew to the pickup area, but she blinks it away.

  “Has she talked about Miguel’s death?” Sandrine asks when Drew is out of earshot.

  “No, she won’t talk to me. At all. About anything. But she called his brother and told him. We’re going to send him Miguel’s cross. He was wearing it that night.”

  “Good. I’m glad you were able to get something of his. Look, I didn’t want to say this in front of her, but the building was burned down the night after the fight. It’s gone, Jesse. Any bodies that were in there…” She trails off. “The closest firehouse is several miles away. By the time they got there, there was no building and the fire had spread.”

  “Jesus,” I say, my heart ripping in two. My gaze zooms to Drew and I wonder how I’m going to tell her that Miguel can’t even get a proper burial now. I know Drew well enough to know that she’s blaming herself for everything, and I’m afraid of what this news will do to her.

  “She gets that almost anyone in her and Miguel’s situation would have done the same thing, right? Including you. You would’ve tried to stop the fight if it were her or Miguel, too. Because I know that if it had been someone I cared about, especially knowing what Carlos had done, I would’ve driven my goddamn car through the wall to get my loved one out. Period. So would anyone else who was in that position. Most people will self-righteously say that they would’ve thought up a better idea, but it’s easy to say that from the outside. Even calling the cops would’ve resulted in getting everyone in there shot to cover up the fact that other cops were already there.

  “Look, I used to go to fights where all kinds of shit happened. Like I told you, those places are deathtraps. We all walk in there knowing that. And the guards hate letting people out. They’re assholes. That’s not the first time they’ve opened fire for no reason.”

  I want to ask Sandrine more questions, but Drew is back with our trays precariously balanced in her arms. My food happens to be on the side with the broken fingers, and I snicker. We both got soup, gazpacho for me, and something hot for her. I think it’s all we can stomach at the moment, literally.

  “Have you heard anything about a cartel that’s chopping off fingers?” I ask, changing the subject.

  Sandrine snorts. “Really, Jesse? Could you narrow it down with a vat of acid or a beheading, maybe?” Her face falls. “Shit…sorry. That was insensitive.”

  “Talking about death doesn’t make Miguel, or any of those other people, any more or less dead, guys,” Drew mumbles. “It’s fine.”

  “Ring and pinkie on the right hand. Cauterized at the knuckle,” I explain.

  Her eyebrows shoot up. “Now you’re talking. I tend to focus on the guys who are cutting off things you can’t just walk away from but, now that you mention it, I have heard about something like that.”

  “Have you heard that they’re specifically targeting Americans? Maybe Americans who owe them money? Like gambling debts?”

  She turns contemplative. “Nothing that specific, but it’s possible. I’ve only just heard rumblings of the finger thing.”

  “Could you look into it for me?” I ask.

  Her eyebrows slide up again but she nods. “You two should be on your way. Take a break from all of this. No fights. No cartels. No nothing. Tecolutla is a beautiful place. It’s on the water and it’s quiet.” She pushes an envelope of money between us. “Don’t argue with me about this; pay me back when you beat him. Get some rest and we’ll talk soon.”

  We leave her there and Drew drives the entire way to Tecolutla. It is as amazing as Sandrine said. It’s a sleepy little beach town on the Gulf of Mexico with the kind of tranquility you just can’t get in Mexico City. But it still has the same look as the other cities we’ve seen—an active town square, a cathedral, low-rise bright-colored buildings, and lots of small shops and vendor carts along the main street. We choose one of the many hotels that line the beach, and they’re cheap, thankfully. My worry, though, is that we still need to make money, even if I’m not fighting right now. We can’t be in Mexico forever.

  We take a room that gives us a nearly panoramic view of the vast beach, which is peppered with palm trees and hugged by rocky cliffs. A line of colorful umbrellas
and makeshift shops stretches along the sand for miles. I stand on the balcony and take it all in. It’s all anyone who wants to escape could ask for but in a cruel twist, the weight of everything that’s happened so far demolishes the mental wall I’ve had up for days. The beauty outside only serves to remind me of how ugly our lives are right now. I feel Miguel’s absence so intensely that I’m gripping the railing to steady myself. I wish I had encouraged him to stay out of this after he showed us the ropes. His blood is on my hands as much as it’s on Carlos’s. And who’s next?

  Drew?

  “What were you and Sandrine talking about when I got up from the table?” When I turn around, she’s standing at the sliding glass door and pouring the room tequila—with the jacked up price—into a glass. Yup, she’s about to chug tequila. Shit, I hope she pours me a glass, too. “And don’t tell me it wasn’t anything. I read your face as well as you read mine, Jesse Chance.” She usually smiles when she goes full name on me, but her lips don’t even twitch.

  I sigh and walk toward her, forcing her back into the room. “We should sit.”

  Drew stops abruptly and downs the tequila until there’s only ice left rattling in the glass. “I already know the bad news. Miguel’s dead. He’s dead. I saw him die. I don’t need to sit.”

  “Fine. Someone burned the building down. The entire place is gone.”

  She makes a face like the tequila is still traveling to her stomach. “Was it because of the generator fuel?” I shake my head. “Did everyone make it out? I mean, there were people on the ground everywhere…not all of them were…” Her stare goes blank and she rocks backward.

  I grip her shoulder, catching her, and she won’t look at me. Tears glide down her cheeks in a silent cry, and anguish cracks right down the center of me. “Will you talk to me now?” I want to make everything that’s churning inside her—the guilt, the pain, and the wondering how she got herself into this fucked-up situation—go quiet. And I know I can’t do that, only time can, but I want to hold her and let her know that it’s okay to cry. She did it for me so many times all those years ago. Shit, she’d done it a few days ago.