Sexile

by Lisa Lawrence

  Something did. People traded looks because there were, incredibly, footsteps over our heads, like the racket of noisy neighbors in the flat above, only this was a moving locomotive, and there wasn’t supposed to be a second floor.

  The train was curving around, and now Andrade said something fast in Portuguese to Ferreira. His boss wasn’t disturbed at all, making a brutal reply. The essence, I reckoned, was: Can’t send more men, we have this gringa to watch. Bailey might get away, but he still has to come back for her.

  People strained to look out the windows. Good. You guys look, too. Thank you—

  I whipped my elbow into the throat of the creep seated next to me. Served him right for resting his hand on my thigh. The families didn’t hear the snap, but they heard the man choking. By then I was up and past him. The guy across the seat got a kick in his belly. That left one thug sitting down with Andrade in his way, and one guy who couldn’t reach me in time.

  There was no time for them to threaten other passengers to coax me back. I had run out of the train car, didn’t stick around to hear any threats. And as I expected, the thugs forgot about the people around them and came after me. They walked—they didn’t run. There was really no place I could go, and we both knew I would risk the lives of others if I shouted for help.

  The footsteps on the train roof still caused a fuss, and a guy in a uniform went down the aisle, shouting in Portuguese—stay in our seats, or something. He barked at me for my disruptive behavior, this crazy tourist pushing past him in the aisle.

  “Ei, o que você está fazendo correndo no corredor? Volta para o seu lugar!’

  I had five seconds at most, which I wasted completely on trying to look out the window. The eleven coaches were now in a horseshoe on the tracks, and I saw one of Ferreira’s men jump off the roof of a car up ahead. Couldn’t believe it. He jumped?

  His yell sounded less like summoning courage and more like mad panic. The engine noise covered much of it, but the people staring out the windows must have seen him. And now a second thug leapt off a roof, with more determination. Jeez, I thought in astonishment. Had Graham actually fled by jumping off the train? I couldn’t see where the men landed—

  The train was slowly braking to a stop, and then as if the conductor had changed his mind, the engine started up again. The Portuguese over the PA system sounded indignant and stressed. I imagined the staff guys were radioing ahead. Get a crew to drive back along the tracks and find out what the hell happened.

  Ferreira and his thugs came through from the other train car.

  No Graham. And nowhere to go.

  Ferreira whistled and made an impatient, infuriating gesture, the kind you used to call your dog.

  “Now you alone,’ he laughed.

  I didn’t answer. I thought: I’m not alone anymore. This case started that way, but that’s not the way it will end. My man will be back in a few minutes, you creep.

  Outside the windows, the unique roundhouse for servicing the locomotives came into view, and then we pulled into the station.

  We’re all right, Graham had told me when he held me in his arms. It was after he was freed from Marinho’s house. We’re all right.

  Poor Ferreira and Andrade didn’t have a clue about the surge of confidence I felt.

  “What are you grinning for, woman?’

  “You remember what I said, gentlemen?’

  “Oh, yes!’ laughed Andrade. “You said Ferreira would wish there were still iron bars between you. Your empty threat.’

  He translated for his boss, who replied: “My men are each going to have their turn with you, and you can threaten all you like with your legs wide open.’

  I am so going to kill you, I thought.

  Most of the departing passengers made their way towards the railway museum. Ferreira’s thugs herded me elsewhere, through the main exit to a street called Hermilio Alves. As we walked, I saw this eighteenth-century stone bridge and thought maybe if I broke into a desperate sprint I could lose myself in the streets before they opened fire. Not a chance.

  Then a peculiar man in a cap and a kitchen apron strolled out of a restaurant with a pot in his hand.

  “Chivalry time,’ said Graham. In other words: Get down.

  I stepped into the road and ducked into a crouch. I heard a horn blast and tires screech as the car swerved past. That was nothing compared to the shock for the gangsters. Here was Graham in an apron, a uniform of another poor black Brazilian, his eyes down with a servile posture right until he flung the pot’s contents in a wide splash—

  I heard the sizzle.

  Not water—kitchen fat. Boils at one hell of a higher temperature. The henchmen screamed. Andrade got the worst, Ferreira the least (damn it).

  By the time I turned to look, hearing the thugs in agony, there was the clatter of the stainless steel pan on the pavement and I felt Graham’s hand on my shoulder. Even as I pushed off my heels, he had his hand in mine, and we were in a full-out sprint.

  Running. The columns of the Theatro Municipal coming into view, and Graham tugged my hand to lead me into a side street. Panting hard now as Ferreira, Andrade, and the others shouted curses in Portuguese behind us. They must have been fueled by pure adrenaline, and I didn’t want to look over my shoulder to see how bad the creeps were scarred. I hoped a lot. My mind can’t just switch off, and I thought how inane it was to scream at people as if that would make them stop running away. Crack. Well, yes, bullets could change things.

  This was no good. We were in a small town where help couldn’t get to us in time and where the authorities would be hopelessly outgunned. Racing up a little street that was a mix of residential and small businesses, an old Coca-Cola sign the flag for the corner variety store. We would have to make a stand somewhere—

  “Here!’ said Graham.

  He stopped us in front of a colonial building, three stories tall, its slatted shutters looking worse for wear. It was undergoing restoration. We saw tarpaulins and a scaffold through the window, but we could see no workers. No innocents. Graham sent a powerful side-thrust kick into the door to knock it in.

  “They’ll follow,’ I said.

  “Good,’ he snapped, not meaning to sound angry with me, but his nerves were frayed as well. He ditched the cap and the apron.

  The space was larger inside than it looked from the windows.

  “Teresa, up—we’ve got to go up,’ said Graham. “Watch yourself.’

  The staircases were rotting away, and we carefully stepped up a flight, then another. As we checked out the next floor, I spotted wide gaping holes in it. Place was a death trap.

  Graham still had my hand, leading the way, stopping briefly when he didn’t trust the floorboards. A shallow, creaky balcony of faded brass and steel offered a view of São João del Rei—unfortunately not in the direction we needed at the moment. Were they coming?

  I saw bell towers and a whitewashed façade. They belonged to the town’s main attraction, São Francisco de Assisi. But I didn’t need the church and coconut trees—I wanted to see Ferreira and his men.

  “What do we do?’ I asked Graham. “They’ve got guns, and we don’t.’

  “We have a gun,’ he said, and he handed me a black pistol. “Got it from one of the jokers on the train. Nice one. SIG Sauer.’

  “I don’t keep up with the brands,’ I said as I checked the magazine. Full. Good. “How on earth did you get away anyway?’

  “Hold that thought.’ I watched him hurry down to check our enemy’s approach. In a moment, his footsteps came back up the stairs. He tripped, and I heard a crunch of splintering wood.

  “You all right?’

  “Yeah, thanks, let’s hope they hit the same step. Bastards are almost here.’

  He came over and put his arm around me, kissed my forehead. “Oh, the train, right. I just lost it at the last minute. I mean, what the hell? Attacked them in one of those areas between the cars. Managed to do an aikido thing—got Fool Number One to shoot himself. Then
I dived into a toilet and climbed out the window. They kicked it in and followed me out.’

  “So then you jumped off the train.’

  He looked at me wide-eyed. “Are you mad? I wasn’t about to jump off a train! It’s not like the movies where you see stunt men land and roll in the dirt then pop back up. We were at twenty kilometers an hour! I climbed down the side of a passenger car. Fool Number Two ran up, and I gave him a nice shove and waved bye. Now the last guy—he was really stupid. He must have seen too many Westerns. He saw his friend dive into the air and assumed he was jumping after me—so he jumped. I couldn’t believe it! Made himself into a smear along the rocks.’

  “So when we pulled into the station …’

  “I just got ahead of you and watched your progress,’ he said. “Ducked into the kitchen of that restaurant, and I wasn’t even sure what I could use. If you look like you’re supposed to be there, it’s amazing how often nobody stops you.’

  “You’re a lucky, lucky man.’

  “We’re both lucky, aren’t we?’

  Yes, we were.

  I jumped, startled, as we heard rapid Portuguese from outside, coming from the front of the building.

  “We’ll be all right,’ he whispered.

  “Yeah? Well, I’m scared.’

  “Don’t be,’ said Graham, but still he took the gun from my hands to check the magazine. Our eyes met, and he remembered I’d already checked it. “Don’t be scared. Be pissed off like me.’

  “ Uh-huh.’

  He handed me back the gun. “You’re up here, I’m down there.’

  “Then shouldn’t you take the gun?’

  He shook his head. “No. They’ll probably split up, but in case they don’t, I want them to think we’re unarmed. When they’re finished down there, they’ll barge upstairs and come looking for you. They won’t expect return fire.’ He headed for the staircase again.

  “Whoa, whoa, what do you mean ‘when they’re finished down there’?’

  I realized why he’d given me the gun. In case he couldn’t hold the line.

  “Graham!’ I whispered.

  But he was already at the bottom of the stairs, moving on the floor below.

  I heard the crash of the door kicked in. Ferreira needlessly barking at his men: Search everywhere.

  I couldn’t stand it. I moved as softly, silently as I could to a large hole in the floorboards. I couldn’t just hide in a corner, listening to a gun battle. I squeezed through the hole, and after a moment Graham’s arms grabbed my legs to lift me down.

  “What are you doing?’ he whispered crossly. I saw he was arming himself with a few bricks. There were more stacked in a pile by a scaffold.

  “This is nuts,’ I told him. “You and I are used to working alone. Well, this has got to be together, side by side.’

  He nodded and kissed me. We looked for hiding places.

  Two of Ferreira’s men came creeping up the first staircase, and we heard a sudden crunch of split wood and then a curse. Yep, guy hadn’t looked, and his foot had gone through the same hole in the stairs, only deeper. The two henchmen began bickering, and that was when Graham tapped my shoulder, and we ran forward.

  His moves looked ruthlessly, jaw-droppingly violent, executed with an athlete’s grace. He threw one brick, then another at the two thugs. One struck the guy on the higher stair with shattering impact, a torrent of blood erupting from his forehead, and he flew back against the plaster wall. The second brick smashed into shrapnel above his head.

  The first thug must have been killed instantly, his body falling in a rag-doll pile. The second guy cowered under the hail of brick pieces, and as he tried to move in panic, his leg was still trapped. I fired—a fixed target.

  Bang bang bang bang immediately came up through the floor, and I cried out, and Graham muttered shit, and we both hit the deck. We thought it was just response, but no, it was cover fire for another guy climbing up a scaffold on the side of the building, just the two of us here and can’t cover every direction. I pushed Graham down as I heard a noise through a plastic bubble sheet in the floor’s second room. The gun went crack, deafening my ears again as the anonymous intruder dropped. Someone else blasting away behind me—

  “Stairs,’ said Graham. I turned, felt the start of his shoulder blades against my back. He kept watch on the room as I took care of the new visitor firing and rushing up to meet us. Couldn’t even poke my head over the rail to see and return fire, and I thought fuck this and kicked the rail itself. More wood shrapnel to fly down at the enemy.

  I looked once over my shoulder and saw Graham swinging a couple of paint cans like twin maces, one smashing into the floor and making a new crater, his other swing pulling him off balance as he hurtled himself at his opponent. Andrade. Holy shit.

  Andrade. No more an advocate, now a player with a gun in his hand. One second to see the rage on the lawyer’s face, sputtering, inarticulate, half mad with his entire left cheek mottled and vividly red from the grease burn.

  As Graham hit him with the paint can, the two of them went through the crater in the floorboards.

  “Graham!’

  But I had my own problems. A shot too loud, and then a fist that sent me spinning, made me see fireworks of violet and red. Pain exploding with the sock to my left eye, and the gun went skittering away as I fell to the floor. Then there was a pressing bulk on top of me, and I smelled stale onions. Ugh. Disoriented as stubby, sausage fingers squeezed my breasts and ripped open my blouse, yanking down my bra, his right arm pinning my left wrist. Past the pain came a rush of blind, desperate panic as I sent a hammer fist into his head. No good, no good.

  He let go of my arm to grab a fistful of my hair, to yank my head up and try to knock it down onto the floor again, smash my head in. Raking him with my nails, and still no effect. Tried to bust the elbow joint on the arm clawing at my trouser buttons, and Come on, come on, get him off me, get him, get him—

  “No, you don’t, you fucking, no, you don’t—’

  In absolute terror now as he laughed like the sick gargoyle he was, and instead of pushing his face into mine to kiss me, he bit me through the cotton of my blouse. This psychopath who had raped before was trying now, and I screamed with the bite pain, and it was a bloody ruse, his hands managing to yank my trousers off my buttocks, taking my underwear with them, and don’t feel denial, don’t feel shock, just kill him, kill this rabid fucking—

  I had both hands free. Couldn’t get to his eyes or his nose; he was tucking his head down. Hitting his head did nothing with that thick skull. I brought my hands in a clapping motion—two great pendulum sweeps into his ears. Boom. One of the oldest tricks in the book. It hurts. A lot.

  Ferreira shot backwards and off me, reeling with the pain, both his hands holding his ears like Quasimodo had suddenly lost his deafness. Good, you bastard, I hope it hurts.

  I rolled and yanked my trousers up, and as he made a new transformation from pain to outrage, I had one of my own. I put a side-thrust kick into his gut.

  The concussive blow dropped him to his hands and knees. I ran up and did a snap kick to his jaw that knocked him off his legs. As he gathered himself up, he found a hammer and threw it at me. Ducked that. If he’d been smart, he would have hung on to it, not that I was going to let him use it.

  I could tell the kick to his gut had done some internal damage, but he was a bull of a man, bringing up a last-ditch boxing guard and trying a few feints. That was fine by me.

  I broke his leg with the next kick.

  “You feel fear now, you son of a bitch?’

  I think he understood me. Panting, I went over and picked up the gun where it had landed. I was on autopilot as I raised the barrel and adjusted the distance, not taking any chances with how many bullets were left in the magazine.

  No. I’m lying. I wasn’t that coldly efficient. I paused to listen to sibilant pleadings I couldn’t understand.

  I wish I could be ashamed, but I’m not. I thoroughly enj
oyed Ferreira begging for his life before I pulled the trigger. Luis. Matilde. Beatriz…Rest in peace, all of you.

  I checked my shoulder. His teeth had left marks but hadn’t broken the skin. I adjusted my bra, closed the single button left on my blouse, and only now realized how quiet it was. Move, girl.

  “Graham!’

  He was trying to reach me, almost at the top of the stairs, holding his stomach, a new gun in the other hand.

  “Oh, God, you’re shot!’

  “No, no,’ he wheezed and plonked down on the top stair. “Kind of a belly flop when we went through that hole.’

  I didn’t need to ask about Andrade. Dead. Graham told me later it had been a furious grapple after they had crashed to the floor, both of them wounded, until Graham got a punch into his windpipe. He looked weakly over at the corpse of Ferreira.

  “We should get out of here,’ he said.

  “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.’

  He lifted my chin with two fingers. “You, too. That’s one hell of a shiner.’

  I stuck out my bottom lip and made a face like a petulant, sulking child.

  “Hey, you’re still beautiful,’ he said.

  “No, it’s not that. They spoiled my choo-choo ride.’

  “Don’t worry. We need to ride it again.’

  “We do?’

  “Course we do. We left the car back in Tiradentes.’

  AFTERPLAY

  They x-rayed Graham at the hospital and found he had suffered a couple of bruises to his ribs, which was bad enough. I did the driving back to Rio, hiding my eyes behind a pair of black sunglasses so no one assumed I was a battered spouse.

  Hodd was surprisingly accommodating—almost bordering on human. He didn’t balk when I told him it wasn’t good enough to have my bank accounts unfrozen and the flags taken off my legitimate passport. If he had any decency, he’d get my expenses to Paris and to Rio reimbursed, plus a healthy compensation for the ordeal of being a fugitive. Done, done, and done. My tax deals for Helena and myself were also reinstated, but I had my doubts those promises might ever be kept. We would see.