Aside from the little girl, a trio of boys peered out from the glassless windows of an abandoned home where they’d been playing. An older man with a long white beard, hunched over with age, lurked in an alley, his jaw working as he chewed something. One of the dogs in the street started barking. It then lowered on its haunches and growled at Staryles.
Staryles shot the dog.
The sound echoed off the ruined buildings and rolled into the jungle beyond.
Staryles pointed the weapon back at William, who raised his arms.
He’d known this was coming, all along.
He’d even dreamt it.
“¡Oye!” someone shouted. A pair of men walked down the road, bare-chested, tattooed. Hard-looking guys, late teens, early twenties. It was tough to tell with all the mud, but it looked like Nike Cortes sneakers on their feet.
Mara Salvatrucha.
“Oye, por qué estás acquí — what do you think you’re doing h—”
Staryles spun and fired. The shot clipped one man and spun him like a top. The other sprinted away, pulled a gun and returned fire.
Staryles ducked and ran off the road.
William ran, too, grabbing up the little girl who’d been following the chicken. He placed her in an alley out of harm’s way and ran to the next street.
More gunfire reverberated off the buildings.
Staryles stepped onto the same street, blasting away in the direction he’d come, towards the gang members. Then he turned for William and shot at him.
The bullets smashed through a plank awning beside William’s head. He braced against the spray of splintered wood and dropped to the mud, crawling back toward the alley.
Staryles came after him, but there was another barrage of fire. The assassin sprawled forward and splatted into the mud, losing the grip on his gun.
He’d been hit.
He lay unmoving in the street. William peered from the alley as three more gang members came running.
They slowed when they saw Staryles. They kicked his gun away and turned him over. One of them made hand gestures in the air, telling the others to sweep the sides of the street.
They spread out, like soldiers, running bent over, holding semi-automatic rifles.
William ducked back into the alley. They were coming for him.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
William crawled through the mud and through an open doorway. The roofless building was abandoned. He scrambled to his feet, weaving his way through crumbled brick and out the back door.
Dogs barked in the streets. No human voices.
He continued along a broken sidewalk, picking up speed, then down another narrow alley, hurtling bags of trash and dead rats as he ran.
An overgrown field promised cover. William moved through the tall grass, insects darting, everything hot as an oven.
An abandoned structure stood four stories tall beyond the field. At first he thought it was an apartment building but a sign read: Rivas Centro Comerical. It had been some kind of shopping mall. The many square windows were black.
William climbed the stairs to the top floor. Keeping low, he ran to a window overlooking the sprawling slum, and watched for anyone approaching.
He pulled out his new cellular and was about to dial. He stared at it for a moment, and then put it away.
No signal.
Never any damned signal.
The air was cooler inside the dark structure. He kept an eye out the window as the gang members followed his trail, their dark shapes slicing the tall grass as they closed in. He heard the scrape of their footfalls as they entered the building, ascended the stairs. There were a dozen of them by now, maybe more.
They would check every room.
He sank away from the window, defeated. He had a few seconds to notice the leftover items in the room — a set of metal shelves tipped onto the ground, a few empty boxes, a coffee mug with a broken handle that read “Not Mexican” on the side of it.
He was bleeding. Dark blood oozed from a fresh wound — Jason Staryles had gut-shot him. The trail of blood led up from the stairwell, through the door, dime-sized drops on the stained concrete floor, to where he sat.
Someone neared, cautiously, up the stairs, their shadow slipping over a wall.
He imagined it was Hanna. She’d discovered that he’d gone out for groceries and had followed him into the slum.
Or maybe she’d become worried and left with Julio as her body guard.
Or maybe she’d contacted the military police and they’d blazed a trail into the slum, looking for him.
He’d always liked Hanna, from the first moment he’d met her.
He closed his eyes as he pictured her, standing on the shores of the Caribbean, her skin diving mask and fins in her hands.
When the figure emerged from the stairs, he imagined Hanna smiling, coming to him. With that gleam in her eyes.
The young gang member — fifteen or sixteen years old — met William’s gaze. The teenager stiffened, pointed the rifle at William. He came slowly into the room.
William rested against the chipped and rotting wall, breathing shallow. The gang member lowered his face to the rifle and aimed down the gunsight as he crept closer.
Rene Sterling was found, William thought. She’d never been missing in the first place. Instead, she’d chosen a life doing what she thought was for the best, aiding victims of Honduran violence. Helping them to heal, providing amnesty and anonymity should they seek justice.
Isabella was her guide, a woman intent on steering the lawyers and police towards more effective methods of prosecution.
He doubted it would be sweeping reform. He knew the violence was only getting worse. But, it was a start. He was glad to have been a part of it.
The gang member slowly lowered the gun from his eye. There was shouting from the other rooms of the abandoned mall.
The kid’s eyes shone in the shadowy space as he watched William. Then he turned his head and called out. “¡Oye! ¡Algo aquí!”
He kept the rifle hip-level, tip aimed at William.
William listened to the voices and footsteps echoing up the stairs. He closed his eyes before the rest of gang appeared, preferring instead to keep envisioning Hanna, her long hair touched by the sun, her genuine smile and sparkling, intelligent eyes.
EPILOGUE
Hanna was with Catarino in his office when he took the phone call, a grave look spreading on his face. The sun had set outside — they’d spent the bulk of the day on paperwork and phone calls. They’d managed, at least, to free up the chairs.
“That was Freddy Mayes,” Catarino said, putting down the phone. “There was a shooting not far from Isabella’s.” He got up from his desk and stepped toward her. “Hanna, I’m so sorry . . .”
Hanna just sat in the chair, feeling numb. She listened as Catarino explained what they believed happened — William had run some errands for Isabella and encountered Mara Salvatrucha while on his way.
“They also found another body, an American. They don’t know who it is yet.”
“Jason Staryles,” Hanna said quietly. She’d pulled the assassin out of the shed beside Calabash Bay so he didn’t cook to death in the heat. He’d been beaten to a pulp. But he’d recovered, rallied, and come after them. William must have known. That was the only explanation why he’d wandered off, on foot, into the heart of gang territory.
Maybe not the only reason.
No, maybe not. William hadn’t been the same for two years, and he’d been getting worse by the day. He’d already carried heavy burdens when she’d met him as Brendan Healy. He’d fought with himself. He’d been unravelling.
She cared about him nevertheless. His death was a shock. It was a devastation.
Yet she also felt relieved. Not just for herself, but for him. His suffering was over. And whether he’d accepted it or not, he’d made an impact. She had to believe that some part of William — of Brendan — had known it. That he’d done the only thing a person coul
d really do, and that was to play their part on the right side of things. Change was slow, painful, and rife with recidivism. It was tempting to give up.
She was tempted, now, as she sat beside Catarino’s desk near an enduring mountain of paperwork, facing an uphill climb, to just crawl into her own shell.
But she couldn’t.
***
Later that night, Isabella and the young women cooked up an outstanding dinner. They blasted music throughout the house. Julio showed off his dance moves, reminding Hanna of a circus bear on a beach ball. She found herself laughing. Even Catarino swung his hips, and danced around Isabella’s wheelchair.
As the festivities wound down, Hanna went outside to sit on the curb. Rene found her there. They listened to the sounds of the street and watched the starred sky. After a while, Hanna turned in for the night.
She wanted to wake up fresh tomorrow, ready to go.
She lay awake for a long time, but when sleep finally came, she rested deeply and didn’t stir until morning, didn’t dream.
The sun was shining, burning in the windows, sunlight cascading into the kitchen. A pot of coffee brewed on Isabella’s stove. Hanna ate her breakfast and drank the coffee, then headed into the city with Julio, into downtown San Pedro Sula.
William’s body was at the morgue, and Catarino met her there. Mayes was there, too, his eyes shining with unexpected sympathy. He handed her a note found in William’s pocket. She’d read it later.
The mortician removed the evidence sheet over William’s face, and Hanna gazed down, at last overcome with emotion. Catarino took her arm and she quickly pulled herself together.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
She bent over William and gave him a kiss. Then she whispered into his ear, “I love you.”
The End
T J Brearton
7 February 2016 — 8 December 2016
Elizabethtown, NY
Acknowledgements
It takes a village. This book would not have been possible without the wisdom and insights of Jasper Joffe, Geoffrey “Bone” Pierce, David Press, Ann Clement, Lee Clark Smith, Bob Sirrine, and John Ramirez. Thank you to my sister, Jennifer Bulkley, whose passion for justice spawned the initial idea. And thanks to my well-traveled wife, Dava Clement-Brearton, who inspired the Honduran setting. The colorful details are to her credit, any inaccuracies or embellishments are my own.
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