by Lynn Shurr
SIXTEEN
Sitting on a lawn chair in front of his modern adobe as nice as ones he’d seen up around Santa Fe, whole developments full of them, Bijou sucked on a bottle of Dos Equis beer and checked his bank account on the iPhone he’d bought with the proceeds of his last purloined kilo of cocaine. Handy gadget, but it told him Joe Dean hadn’t put the ransom money in his account yet and here it was, Thursday. He would though. The big deal quarterback could wipe his ass with hundred dollar bills if he wanted.
Besides, everyone knew nothing meant more to the head Sinner than his children, any children really. Didn’t his team and his fans all call him Daddy Joe now? Even Tommy used that term a lot when talking about the man who raised him, not his real father. He’d heard enough about his cousin’s work with sick kids to make him puke. Bijou remembered how Joe Dean had pleaded on the TV for Cassie’s return, but in the end that cunt simply ran away from the man who fathered her child.
On the fourth of the six-pack of beer, Bijou thought fondly of Cassie’s coltish legs wrapped around his waist when they did it. She had freckles all over and twat hair the same color red as what she had on her head when not dyed to escape detection. Not much in the way of tits back then, but her breasts ballooned when she got knocked up. For a while he’d enjoyed them until her belly grew to the same size and made sex a chore.
Fool bitch if she really thought he wouldn’t come back for her the next day after he’d lost her for a night in a poker game to three other men. Hell, he couldn’t lose his truck, so easily stolen from Joe Dean’s ranch exactly like the girl, because they needed it to get to Mexico. All she had to do was spread her legs until the gamblers at the motel got tired of her and left. With that big belly full of baby, not likely they’d linger. But no, Cassie went whining to Nell and Joe, save me, save me from big, bad Bijou, and paid them off for her rescue by giving them his son.
Where had that redheaded little flea gone? Xochi, a year younger and already quite the spitfire, pushed him around. The boy needed to grow some cojones. He raised his daughter to be tough. Good bet Nell made Tommy share his toys and be nice to his baby sisters even when they deserved a boot in the butt. A woman needed to be put in her place every now and again.
“Pilar!” he shouted. “Supper about ready? Where are the kids?”
With flour on her hands, his wife came to the doorway. What a pair of tits she owned, and she made a pretty good tortilla, too. Cassie couldn’t cook worth a damn back then, always needed to buy her dinner.
“Soon supper be ready. The kids playing around Senor Gonzales’ place.” Pilar gestured down the road and flecked her bright red dress with specks of flour.
“They better not break any of his pottery or that fat slob will be coming here wanting money for the trash he sells to tourists like the last time Xochi broke a chimenea.”
“I tell them be careful.” Her face grew somber, maybe remembering the last time Xochi cost her father money and got the belt for it.
“Go on inside and get cracking. A man gets hungry after training horses all day.”
She did as ordered. This time of the day the sinking sun cast enough shadow on this side of the house for a man to enjoy. The temperature hovered around seventy-five, not stinking hot like it would be in summer. Not a bad life right now, but about to get a whole lot better. Bijou checked his bank account again. Nope, still lacking a two-million dollar deposit. Joe Dean better not be playing any games because he could do stuff to Tommy, bad stuff like sell him to the same bordello where he’d found Pilar. A red-haired white boy would bring in good money from the fudge packers and bone smokers.
Or maybe he’d take Tommy along to Brazil and raise him right. He had a certain fondness for the boy, his own flesh and blood. Train him up to be a bull rider. He’d put the kid up on one of the lesser thoroughbreds and let him ride around the practice track. The child had a good seat already. He could make a jockey if those long Billodeaux legs didn’t grow out, but bull riding would be Bijou’s first choice.
If Joe didn’t come through with the cash, and soon, maybe he’d sell that personal sack of cocaine he’d recently topped off from the last haul and shoved under the back seat of the truck. No sense in covering it with horse shit until he must. Should bring enough to get all four of them to another continent. He’d never given up his parental rights to Tommy, so let Joe Dean try and get him back from a foreign place where Bijou had friends with money. If that failed, he imagined it would be easy to get lost in a country big as Brazil. He if changed his mind about keeping Tommy, Rio had plenty of places offering kinky sex of all kinds, he guessed.
In the distance, a black Cadillac Escalade left the rancho where he worked. No telling who drove with the heavily tinted windows. Most likely the boss coming into town for some recreation, but the big vehicle slowed as it approached his home and turned in to park next to the truck. Bijou got up and sauntered toward the opening doors. One of the trio of bodyguards got out and held the door for Esteban Miro.
“Hola, Jefe,” Bijou said cordially. “Can I interest you in a beer?”
“No, gracias. I would be more interested in my missing cocaine.”
Miro snapped his fingers. A diamond ring with a stone the size of quail egg gave off a blinding flash. Bijou always admired that ring and with two million in his account could afford one soon, but first to bullshit his way out of trouble. One of the three bodyguards pinned his arms. His beer bottle fell and disgorged its amber contents into the soil. The smell of hops and malt and flop sweat rose into the air.
Another henchman placed a cigarette in a short gold holder, lit it, and put it in Miro’s mouth. Not a good sign. El Jefe liked to set afire the homes of persons who mildly displeased him.
“Don’t know what you mean, boss.” Bijou bent his legs in order not to tower over Miro. His height always irritated the guy; they usually talked sitting down. His employer looked like any other greaser, brown and slick-haired, short and a bit bandy-legged, but inside the innocuous body that could belong to any day laborer dwelt a true hard case. The word merciless came to mind as he tried to look the man in his blank, ebony eyes.
“I have received a call from one of my buyers most displeased about short weights in his deliveries. I tell you this in English so you understand every word, no?”
“Sure, I appreciate that, Jefe, but I got nothing to do with it.” Bijou managed a gold-toothed grin of confidence in his innocence.
“Search the house.” Miro took a few puffs from the cigarette and handed the holder over to his main man who carried it carefully inside the adobe and took a second goon with him.
First came the sounds of glass breaking and wooden furniture splintering, then Pilar’s screams, followed by the sizzling scent of a kitchen fire wafting from the open door. Still shrieking, his wife ran into the yard. The bodyguards continued to trash the house until the smoke thickened to the point of driving them out into the fresh air.
“Nada,” the head bodyguard said.
“Kill them.”
“Now, you can’t condemn a guy without any proof, Jefe, and my wife, she ain’t done nothing. Why, I’m sure she’d be pleased to entertain you over at your place, anything you want. She ain’t forgotten her old tricks, have you, honey?” Bijou sank a little lower, sagging against his captor, hoping to use his dead weight to fight free, but the boss could afford to hire the biggest, most muscular and ruthless men south of the border. The goon simply jerked him upright again.
“Anything, anything,” Pilar offered, distraught and desperate. Her eyes scanned the road toward the Gonzales place.
“Look here in my pocket. Use my phone to check my bank account. Not much in there, but I expect a large inheritance soon. Though I ain’t cheated you, boss, it’s all yours if you let us go. I only need enough money to get out of your sight if you don’t trust me no more.” Moisture beaded on Bijou’s brow. For a moment, he hoped for a reprieve when the guard frisked him for the iPhone, but the bully boy simply put it in hi
s own pocket.
Miro showed no interest. “La nina, where is she? I don’t like to leave orphans behind for the church to raise. Then, the nuns expect me to make big donations.”
Pilar pleaded in Spanish for the life of her child. The ebony eyes of Esteban Miro did not blink as if they were lidless like those of a snake. He held out his hand for the golden holder and sucked the remains of the cigarette down to the ash which he flicked in Bijou’s face.
“We find her and the cocaine later.”
Another snap of the finger and the last thing Bijou saw was the flash of the ring he coveted. Pilar spied her daughter’s slight form among the acre of giant pots down the road and quickly turned her eyes away lest she betray her child. Xochi stayed safe in her thoughts and unvoiced prayer as the bullet entered her heart with a quiet pop from the silenced gun.
“A waste of a beautiful woman, Jefe,” her slayer said with regret. “We might have kept her for a while.”
“Revenge must be swift and complete, Miguel, and loyalty absolute,” Miro answered. “I think I would rather have the red-haired boy tonight. Find him for me, and the cocaine. Kill the girl.” Flanked by two bodyguards, the boss walked to the black car with the heavily tinted windows and ordered his driver to return to the picture-perfect ranch in the distance.
Miguel rifled the truck keys from Bijou’s pocket. At least, the side shot to the head did not leave too messy a corpse though he had some blowback on his shirt. He flicked off what he could, unlocked the truck and found the evidence all too easily under the back seat of the double cab. The cocaine would not go anywhere while he searched for the children. Using Bijou’s very nice phone, Miguel called in the location of the stolen drugs and asked for a couple of men to come get the truck and him. Then, he tossed the keys onto the front seat, and leading with his prominent Mayan nose, set out at a lope for the field full of pottery. Where else would a child hide?
Tommy tagged Xochi on the shoulder. “You’re it,” he said. Usually she hid way better than this, often curling into a small ball inside a chimenea or overturning one of Mr. Gonzales’ big urns in order to escape detection. Xochi, peering out from behind a tall chimney decorated with Aztec symbols, did not move, not even when Macho jumped up on her bare legs and licked her knees.
“Not now, Rojito.”
“Don’t call me that! Only Corazon is allowed to use that baby name, I told you. You never do what I ask you. You’re just jealous because Papi let me ride the thoroughbred and you only got to watch. Either you’re it, or we’re done playing, Xochi. I’m hungry anyhow.”
“Tomas, our house is on fire.”
“Yikes, we’d better get home and help put it out.”
“Too late. Mama and Papi are dead. See that man, he comes to kill us.”
Then, he noticed the form in the bright red dress crumpled in the yard and his father’s body, half his head blown away, laying near a brown beer bottle in the sandy soil. The cactus and thorn bushes seemed to be sucking up the pools of blood like badly needed water. A big man, pale-skinned for a Mexican, headed their way with a long-barreled pistol by his side.
“Mama said, ‘If bad men come, you must run and hide, Xochi’.”
“I think your Mama was right. Let’s get out of here.”
“And go where? He see us run.”
“Quick, stay low and run to the other side of the shop. I got an idea from when I was looking for you.”
For once, Xochi cooperated with him. Mr. Gonzales paid no attention as they crept past. He waited on two gray-haired American tourists, a pot-bellied man and a thin, age-spotted stick of a woman, the kind that came from the U.S. to buy cheap, glazed clay pots for their gardens. Intent on accepting their American Express card, the proprietor did not notice the children climb into the rear of a dusty pickup truck with Texas plates and hoist a puppy with them. Two huge, thick-walled containers of deep blue edged with brown filled the bed. Tommy helped Xochi shinny into one of them and handed her Macho.
“Keep him safe and quiet for me.”
He braced himself on the side of the other pot and used the lip to pull himself up and over. Kicking practice had made his legs a lot stronger, and a good thing, too. Tommy settled into his hiding place. Moments later, the driver slammed the tailgate shut and revved the engine. With the windows of the cab rolled down, he could hear every word the couple said.
“Harvey, don’t pull out too fast. I don’t want my pots chipped. Drive nice and slow to the border, you hear.”
“Yes, Dolores, but it seems to me we could have gotten the same pots at Lowe’s, the price of gas being what it is.”
“Not for twice this amount of money. Mr. Gonzales always gives me the best deals. Wouldn’t have been such a bad trip if the air-conditioner hadn’t run out of coolant halfway here. Then you had to go and eat that chicken burrito and beans for lunch and get a touch of Montezuma’s revenge. I told you to stick to the fish tacos.”
“All the more reason to drive faster, my dear.”
“Well, at least I got my Mexican vanilla and that special Coca-Cola you like in the bottles before you got the runs.”
Inside his urn, Tommy snickered. The sound amplified in the small space.
“Are you laughing at me, Harve?”
“Never, dearest. Only farting.”
Behind them, the noise of pottery shattering and Mr. Gonzales shouting shivered in the warm air. “Good Lord, Harve! Look back there. We’re in the middle of one of those Mexican drug wars. No wonder he can afford to sell so cheap. Pedro must deal on the side.”
“Mind if I drive a little faster, my love?”
“Chipped pots be damned. Get us out of here!”
The ride got rougher then. Tommy prayed the urns wouldn’t break, they rattled so. He’d have bruises for sure. Macho barked then stopped suddenly. The people in the truck didn’t appear to notice. The vehicle veered suddenly, nearly toppling his pot.
“Hell damn, Harve, the driver of that red van thinks he owns the road. Louisiana plates. It figures. Well, he’ll get his when he drives into that firefight.”
Red van, could the daddy who raised him be coming to the rescue? Tommy was sorely tempted to rock his container over and stand up in the back of the truck to see, but he recalled the advice Knox Polk gave him when him and Dean played paintball. Stay low and don’t give a good target. Not likely Daddy Joe would come here for him when Bijou sent a card saying he’d be home by Sunday. No, best to lay low until they reached the border.
SEVENTEEN
Nothing but delays and frustration since the rescue party arrived exhausted in Laredo. Everyone agreed they should get some rest and food before going into Mexico. Joe wanted to plow ahead, but outvoted, they’d gotten rooms and slept half of Thursday away just wasting time. Knox said they’d best go in fed and refreshed, so he tried to wait patiently while the Rev wolfed down a huge enchilada platter for lunch. Then, the ranch manager insisted on taking a case of bottled water along, so they’d had to stop for that.
Joe hadn’t counted on this being spring vacation for some colleges. Despite warnings not to play in Mexico, scantily clad coeds with tramp stamps on their backsides and young men in ripped jeans and snarky T-shirts clogged the border crossing. Why were the guards so slow, checking every car? Hell, the students would try to bring weed back into the States, not take it to Mexico.
When their turn finally came, despite all the licenses that cost two-hundred dollars each, their van got pulled aside. Their group got hauled inside while the authorities contacted the manager of the hunting rancho who had provided the documents. That man had gone out hunting peccaries of course. So they sat sharing the guacamole made in a blender by a woman who had tried to bring back a crate of uninspected avocados and wanted to get her money’s worth out of them. Joe paid for bags of tortilla chips from the vending machines—his treat. Snacking passed the time until the game manager returned the call and cleared them with the guards. Unfortunately, he also made clear their identity. Be
fore they could leave, a line formed for autographs. Cassie fumed, but Knox simply sat back and enjoyed more guacamole as the Sinners passed scraps of paper from Joe, to Connor, to the Rev, to Howdy to satisfy their fans.
Good they’d filled up on chips because dinnertime arrived before their crew crossed into Mexico, and Joe had no intention of stopping until he found Tommy. He paused for directions to Bijou’s house and place of employment, then drove on, nearly being forced off the road by two near-sighted geezers in an old truck driving right down the center of the lane. Texans always thought they owned the right of way. He hoped those two big jugs in the back cracked on the return to their damned enormous state. Way they were driving, it was a good possibility.
“Slow down, Joe. We have trouble ahead. A house down there is on fire, and someone is shooting up a pottery shop.” Knox removed the rifle by his side from its case and prepared it for use.
A rotund Hispanic man had his hands in the air. A steady stream of words issued from his fat lips under a thin mustache. Joe brought the van to a stop in the shelter of a lone shade tree and pressed the button to slide the windows down. Knox got out and took up a post behind the tree’s trunk.
“Anybody know what he’s saying?”
Silence, then Howdy spoke. “He’s asking the man not to kill him. Says he doesn’t know where the children are.”
“Impressive,” the Rev said.
“Not so much. High school and college Spanish and a lot of spring breaks spent down here. We had a hired man who spoke the lingo, too. Do you figure the shooter is looking for Tommy?
“I don’t believe you said lingo,” Cassie sneered.
“We don’t need the snark now, Cass,” Joe reprimanded. “We need to find Tommy.”
She sobered instantly. “Yes, sorry. Do you think he really means Tommy?”
The muscular man with the Mayan face put a pistol with a silencer under the potter’s wobbling jaw, and then that timeless face shattered like an ancient artifact used for target practice.