Blood of Paradise

by David Corbett

  “They’re gonna shoot the car—it’s not armored?”

  “You’ve got Humvees and APCs tooling around without armor in Iraq—think anybody’s gonna pay the freight to plate up a Mercedes down here?”

  Strock shook his head, tore off a chunk of pan dulce, and dunked it in his coffee. “The world is illusion.”

  “To live is to suffer. Pass the pie.”

  “What’s the backup plan? If I don’t get all four guys in time, what then?”

  “There is no backup plan. You’re it, buddy.”

  Strock grimaced, chewing, chasing his swallow with a sip of coffee. He thought for a moment, then said, “Not to sound like a broken record, but have you checked in at all with Clara and the little girl?”

  Malvasio thought better of remarking on Strock’s odd obsession, remembering the tiff from the day before. “As a matter of fact, I did. Kid was hopping around like a monkey, Clara tickled to beat Jesus. We should all be so happy.”

  “I dreamed about them last night,” Strock said.

  My God, Malvasio thought. He checked his watch, five till seven. “I thought you said you had trouble sleeping.”

  “I did. It wasn’t a fun night. Except this one dream, which was, I dunno, very vivid.” Strock rubbed at his flaming eyes. “Not that I can make sense of it. You know dreams. We were at the little house on the beach except it wasn’t that house, it was different, bigger. Not the one the hurricane ripped to shreds, either, but kinda like that, I suppose. Houses mean something in dreams, I heard that somewhere. Constancia was bigger, too, almost a teenager. She was like a little Clara, same face and body, different hair. Sorta blondish, like my girl. Anyway, they showed me a part of the house where the roof was gone, and we looked up at the sky and the clouds were amazing, so close you could touch them. Then Clara said—she spoke English, that’s another weird thing—she said the fish would be plentiful now. Something about the weather, I dunno, and then it was night and there was this moonlit river like a Hallmark card and another house and I can’t remember anything else. Except the way it felt. You said they were happy? My dream, it felt that way too.” He shrugged. “Bitch of a night, but I woke up happy.”

  Malvasio resisted the impulse to glance at his watch again. “Anybody who says they can make sense of dreams is lying.”

  “Yeah. But like I said, it was almost more a feeling than a dream.” Strock licked his fingers and turned to look out through the hole in the wall toward Villas de Miramonte. “Ah, Christ. Already?”

  Malvasio crouched to look over Strock’s shoulder and saw the white van moving slowly up the cul-de-sac. It pulled in front of Osorio’s and parked.

  Strock lay down, fit the weapon to his shoulder, and peered through the scope. The bag of kitty litter rested under his left arm like a pillow and it rustled as he settled in. “Not to quibble with your plan, but it’d be easier to take out the driver first, given how he’s parked. That way there’s no cutoff, the car gets away. I deal with the other three as they appear.”

  Malvasio leaned closer, hovering over Strock’s back. “Yeah, but if the van doesn’t move into position, there’s no guarantee the other three come out.” He reached for the pistol in his waistband. When he had the weapon clear, he placed the silencer flush with the base of Strock’s skull and fired twice.

  Strock’s head and shoulders slumped forward, his body went limp. As quick as that, Malvasio thought. Thing’s done before it even starts.

  He shoved the gun back in his pants, pulled the gloves from his pocket, and tugged them on. Only got yourself to blame, Phil. Said it was your way or no way, you’d call it in if you didn’t like the smell of things. Well, I don’t like it any better than you, but who says we had a choice? If it means anything, of all the ways I saw this going down, I wanted this one least.

  The day before, as he’d racked his brain trying to figure out how to do this, he’d realized that the gremlin in the machine was the timing of it. To make it all work, he would’ve had to devise a way for the little girl to show up as though he hadn’t known where she was all along. If he’d had a week or even a few days to mock up a search, pretend he’d hunted high and low—then bingo, looky here—he could’ve wrapped this up beautifully for all concerned. Well, Clara would’ve suffered. She’d bonded with the kid to the point it was almost eerie, but he could’ve found her an orphan. Hell, the judge’s finca was crawling with them. But such thoughts were fantasy. Time. There just hadn’t been time. In a moment of desperation, he’d considered simply ripping the kid from Clara’s arms, coming here to Villas de Miramonte, and dropping her like a foundling near the security gate. But he’d remembered that undertone in Hector’s voice, the suspicion lurking in the silences. The girl shows up that quick, he’d thought, no matter how or why, he’ll see through the ruse. No such thing as parting friends, not in that crowd. Not with what I know.

  If time was the gremlin, though, Jude was its sidekick, him and the old man, Axel Stumblefog. All they had to do was admit the obvious, give up, go away. But no, they had to blunder into what they didn’t understand to accomplish the impossible. Like the upright Americans they were.

  And that was the sum of it, he thought. Nothing else to say. You tried, they jinxed it, and there was no time to make it right.

  He dragged Strock’s body away from the weapon and tucked it into the corner. Both rounds had exited through the mouth and blood drained out. The eyelids had slid down to half-mast and Malvasio closed them the rest of the way. Sleep now, he thought. Or head off to wherever it is restless, bitter drunk souls go. Back to Indiana, for all I know. Send me a postcard.

  Using a T-shirt of Strock’s for a rag, he wiped away the blood on the rifle, making sure in particular the scope and trigger were clean. He searched Strock’s things, looking for surprises, found none. The cell phone’s outgoing calls were limited to his test of 9-1-1 two days earlier, the hopeless ass. The incoming numbers included Malvasio’s, and though he’d be ditching that particular phone soon, there was no point being sloppy.

  Strock’s wallet contained a picture of the little girl, Chelsea. She was three maybe, but no telling how old the picture was. Straw-colored hair, milky skin, the kind of smile kids figure out early, playing the grown-ups. I’ll send her some money, he thought, and tucked the picture back where he’d found it.

  He flipped the mattress to avoid lying in blood and found a shank lying there, made from a sharpened piece of wood, a rag for a handle. The crudeness of the thing only made it more startling as he realized, That was meant for me. He kept staring at it as though it might spring to life, tell him things. He thought: Phil, you sly, untrusting fuck. That’s how close we come sometimes. Shaking himself out of his daze, he settled in, lay prone, and arranged his business, nestling his elbow into the bag of kitty litter and fitting the rifle’s stock snug against his shoulder as he squinted through the scope. The front doorway of Consuela Rojas’s house sprang to life within the crosshairs. Two hundred thirty yards, the man had said. The scope was already zeroed in. Remember your cold shot’s gonna land high right a quarter of an inch.

  Osorio ambled to the door, dressed in a clean white shirt, crisp slacks. The pain in his hands was bad today—they shook, and he’d nicked himself shaving. The bloody scrap of tissue still clung to his cheek. He opened the door, expecting to greet a man. What he found instead was a jumpy, bug-eyed clown in coveralls.

  Sleeper forced his way in, pushed Osorio against the wall, a hand across the old man’s mouth as he stabbed his chest, over and over, a dozen times then a dozen more, his hand a blur as the blade punctured both lungs. No air, no screams. The bright white shirt was a tangle of blood by the time Sleeper was through. He pushed the old man aside and the wispy-haired fool dropped in a shudder to the floor. The look in his eyes, begging with fright, as a raspy wheeze rose faintly from his throat, the blood bubbling up. He was drowning in it.

  Sleeper said, “Saludemos la Patria, jodido.” Hail the motherland, fucker. He wiped his bla
de on the old man’s pants.

  Malvasio flipped open his cell. “Tell me.”

  “One down,” Sleeper said. “How things look up there?”

  Malvasio glanced over his shoulder at the body, remembering another time Strock had looked that serene, minus the blood. He’d been sleeping off a bender in the back of his squad car, parked behind the infamous Green Bunny on the south side, of all places. Malvasio had rousted him, tapping his nightstick against the window glass, thinking it was a miracle some burner hadn’t taken him out while he was lying there.

  “We’re good,” he told Sleeper. “Ready when you are.”

  Sipping coffee, Jude tugged the curtain aside to glance out the dining room window. A white van he hadn’t seen before sat parked in front of a house across the street, three doors down. There was lettering on the side panel, it belonged to a house painter. He called Consuela from the kitchen. “Remind me.” He pointed. “Who lives there?”

  Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she smiled acidly. “Ah. Osorio. The old chambroso.” Gossip.

  “I’d like his number if you have it.”

  Consuela went to check while Jude dialed the number on the van. He reached an answering machine, the taped voice garbled but clearly a man’s, identifying himself as Joaquín Mojica. That checked. Jude left a message asking for a quick callback, he wanted to confirm a job on Senda Numero 6 in the Villas de Miramonte. Consuela returned with the phone book, pointing to the name and number for a Pedro Osorio. Jude dialed and the phone rang and rang, no answer. He hung up, checked the number, confirmed he’d gotten it right, and redialed. Same as before, no matter how long he let it ring.

  “What’s the number of the security gate up front?”

  Consuela looked at him as though that were the oddest question. “I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never—”

  “It’s okay,” Jude said, cutting her short. Out the window he watched as the Mercedes appeared, turning the corner into the cul-de-sac. Jude had the number on speed dial and he thumbed the two-number code. Carlos picked up.

  Malvasio drew a bead on the driver’s side of the tinted windshield as the Mercedes passed the van outside Osorio’s. Suddenly the car jerked to a stop, something was wrong and he knew he couldn’t wait. He squeezed the trigger, reminding himself, a quarter-inch high right. The weapon fired, its report muffled by the silencer—a tinny, grating, hollow sound—followed by the ping of the cartridge onto the floor. The recoil felt no worse than a nudge and he almost gave in to a fleeting urge to look up, but then remembered Strock’s words: Stay married to the weapon. Through the scope he watched the windshield shatter, a spiderweb pattern the size of a saucer. Not quite where I wanted, he thought. Calm down. He fired two more shots in quick succession, the windshield shattered further. The car began to drift backward.

  As soon as he saw the windshield fissure, Jude pushed Consuela down and pulled the curtains. “Stay away from the windows!” He ran to the front door, checked the lock, and threw the chain—it wouldn’t keep out a rumor. To Consuela he said, “Go upstairs with Oscar and his mother. Put the vests on and lock the door.”

  Axel scrambled down the stairs, stopping at the landing midway as Consuela climbed toward him. “Get the pistol I gave you,” Jude said, running to his duffel to dig out the extra clips he’d loaded, stuffing one in each pocket. He told Eileen, rushing in from the back garden, “Shut the screen door and latch it. Leave the glass door open, get the shotgun. Make sure it’s loaded.” He pitched a box of nine-shot to her. “Here’s backup.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “No more questions. Just do as I say and shoot anything coming over that wall.”

  He put his shoulder to the sofa and pushed it over to the sliding door for Eileen to use as a barricade. When Axel reappeared, Jude tossed him his last two spare clips and told him to stay on the stair. He could provide cover fire for Eileen from there or come down to help Jude if need be.

  Jude redialed Carlos’s number, whispering, “Pick up, come on, pick up.” No answer. Crawling to the front window, he lifted the edge of the curtain to peek out. The Mercedes’s tinted windshield was shattered, three shots, and the car was coasting slowly backward up the cul-de-sac, aiming crooked. Carlos was hurt or dead. Then four guys in white coveralls boiled out of the van near the old gossip’s house, charging forward. They were armed.

  As Malvasio watched the magnified images scrambling through his crosshairs, he felt an odd psychological bond with the weapon in his grip and suffered a fleeting impulse to shoot all four mareros dead: Sleeper, Chucho, Magui, Toto. The way he’d told Strock it would go. End this thing. It would be quixotic, strange, inexplicable, fun. A sudden lightness of spirit came over him, a sense that all things were possible.

  Then gravity returned. Do that, he thought, what was the point of killing Phil? The question evoked an odd discomfort, which he decided was regret. Besides, he told himself, you cross the likes of Hector Torres, Wenceslao Sola, the judge, the colonel, you better have a safe haven. He’d been slack in that regard, an unwise oversight, but the plan had been constantly in flux. More to the point, where did he honestly think he could run?

  All of which was academic now, the thing was in motion, the trajectory set by laws as old as time. There is no freedom of action, he thought. Choice is an illusion. We are who we are.

  Jude pressed his pistol barrel up against the picture window and fired once to shatter the glass. The report made his eardrums throb, his hearing went muddy. He ducked against the shower of jagged shards, then regained position, braced his firing hand, and took aim at the closest of the four attackers. He fired a two-shot hammer—waiting out the split-second arc of recoil before letting the second shot go—then swung to the next nearest man and repeated, ducking as return fire shattered more glass. He screamed out to Eileen, “Down! Against the wall!” his voice sounding dull, miles off, even inside his own skull.

  An even odder, more distant sound broke through the hum in his ears. A choking cry. It came from outside—he’d hit one of the men. Jude dove under the window to the other corner, rose up, spotted the man he’d apparently missed, ten yards away, and got off another two shots. The man took both rounds in his chest and promptly reached out an arm to break his fall as he sat down in the street, a dazed expression on his face as though he’d just been interrupted in the middle of a thought.

  Peering over the window ledge, Jude saw the remaining two men regroup and scurry back the way they’d come. They left their two chamacos behind, the first—a huge guy, skinhead, tats on his face—on all fours, retching up blood, the other still sitting there with that stunned look in his eyes, trying to breathe but patting around blindly for his weapon. The two who’d run reached the van and one scrambled up behind the wheel, the other hopped in back. Jude pulled a backup clip from his pocket, ready for reload, as the van lurched into reverse, backing up into the street.

  It turned sharp in his direction.

  Moving backward, the van slammed the Mercedes aside, tagging it on the rear right corner, spinning it out of the way as the taillights shattered, the van’s back doors banging open and closed from the impact. The driver was aiming straight for the house now, the transmission keening as he gained speed, the van tottering as it barreled closer. He meant to ram the house, break down the whole front wall.

  Malvasio felt oddly detached from the events below—the depersonalizing distance, the crosshatched magnification. Things would jump at the merest twitch and he’d have to settle in again, let his breath out evenly as his world narrowed down once more to its small tight circle.

  He watched Magui—trailing blood, a head wound, first to go down outside the house—scramble on his knees, trying to reach safety. Why do the big ones always prove so worthless? Toto—also bloody, stunned, sitting where he’d fallen—was at least trying, however hopelessly, to shoulder his gun. It made him strangely oblivious to what was happening behind him. The van’s back bumper knocked him flat, then the left rear tire cr
ushed him as Sleeper barreled on in reverse, steering a collision course with the house.

  Malvasio felt an odd pride in how gutsy the kid was proving. Chucho, too. Too bad no one would ever know.

  Jude was unable to get a clear shot at the van’s driver. He dove away from the front window a second before the wall exploded. The whole house rocked on its moorings amid the crash of steel against concrete and the final shattering of the window glass. He heard what he assumed were screams from upstairs and both Eileen’s and Axel’s voices shouted at him too, but the sounds barely registered, his hearing still mucked up from the gunfire. Looking back through the choking haze of dust and black exhaust, he saw the van’s chugging tailpipe, its mangled bumper, its two rear doors—one ripped back and open, the other shut tight—where the wall used to be. The van sat crooked in the mauled gap of jagged cinder block. He wondered if the wall would hold as, through the one open door, one of the two remaining attackers resumed fire.

  Jude scrambled back to the stair, took cover beyond the wall, firing around the corner till the hammer clicked. He hit the magazine release, let the spent clip drop as he pulled another from his hip pocket, and slammed the reload home.

  Malvasio watched Chucho dive from the passenger side of the van and run to the front door of the neighboring house, wielding a sledge to batter down the door. By now there’d be calls to the local police from everywhere in the neighborhood, but no one ventured outside. The Salvadorans were battle-savvy, they knew the price of getting too curious. Even the guards at the gate were staying put. Given the level of violence, the PNC would call for support from the local military garrison, and that would delay any response. There was time to finish this.