Estelle scrabbled hard as the airplane once more started to drift forward, and she lurched toward the approaching horizontal stabilizer with the sole thought of putting distance between herself and the aircraft. But her body refused to obey, and she dropped to all fours again, unable to move the anchor of the boy on the handcuffs.
The Cessna’s engine pitch didn’t change, and the airplane continued its slow amble diagonally across the runway. The stabilizer passed over her head. She grabbed at Hector’s right wrist as he threw an ineffectual punch at her. It should have been easy to throw him facedown, twisting his left arm hard behind him. But she couldn’t move, and instead her body sank to the asphalt despite her best efforts. She heard running footsteps and vehicles approaching. Hector stopped his struggle, and lying together in a heap, they both watched the Cessna cross the runway, lurching as its nose wheel dug into the soft gravel on the other side. As soon as the mains ran off the pavement, the airplane slowed. Its prop burst through a thick, stout bush, sending an eruption of plant matter, dirt, and rocks in all directions. Finally the plane stopped, engine burbling in idle, prop windmilling. Estelle could see only a small portion of Manolo Tapia’s slumped body in the cockpit.
The boy cursed in Spanish, crying at the same time. But he was trapped, and knew it.
Estelle felt the cuffs released from her wrist. It was Jackie Taber’s quiet voice that she heard next. “Be smart now,” the deputy said to Hector. “It’s over.”
It felt good to relax and let her face touch the warm asphalt. She could see a line of police vehicles swerving onto the runway, pulling past the Mustang. Moving as little as possible, she looked west and saw the tall, powerful figure of Sheriff Robert Torrez. He walked quickly through the runty vegetation that grew south of the runway, the scoped rifle cradled in his left arm, right hand relaxed on the stock near the trigger. He circled the airplane warily, then disappeared behind it.
“Tapia has a handgun,” Estelle tried to say, but the words came out as little more than a whispered burble.
“You just hold still,” someone said. The aircraft engine ran rough and then died, the propeller ticking to a stop.
Estelle pushed herself up, astounded at the weight of her own body. “I’m okay. Really,” she said. Other hands took custody of Hector Ocate, and Jackie knelt close to Estelle. “I’m okay,” Estelle said again.
“Sure you are,” Taber said gently. She barked instructions into her handheld radio, and in a moment Torrez loomed over Estelle, face grim. “He’s dead,” he said.
“Ay,” Estelle murmured. She tried to take a breath. “That’s too bad.” She tasted copper, an odd, pervasive sensation that was as much a smell as a taste. She knew the first round from the Beretta had caught her flush on the vest, and she tried to turn her head so that she could look down at the single small tear just below the third button of her tan blouse. “Bruised me pretty good,” she managed to say.
More faces and hands appeared and she found she had difficulty keeping them in focus. Jackie Taber leaned close, a hand on either side of Estelle’s face. “I want you to lie back a little,” she said. “We have help on the way.”
“Shit,” Estelle heard Sheriff Torrez say. “Where’s that comin’ from?”
In her fog, Estelle found the question absurdly funny. Help came from Posadas, Robert. Where else? The asphalt was warm on her back, and it felt good to lie quietly. “I’m okay,” she said again, but the faces and voices ignored her.
“Like that,” she heard Jackie say, and when shade fell across her face, she opened her eyes and saw Leona Spears. The county manager’s large hands took over from the deputy’s.
“We’ll get you fixed up,” Leona said.
“I don’t need fixing,” Estelle said. What might have been a weak chuckle erupted in a single violent cough. She struggled against the lack of air.
“Get them down here now,” Torrez shouted, and off in the distance, toward the end of the runway, Estelle heard more sirens. “Use this,” he said, apparently to Jackie. She felt hands fussing with her blouse, her vest, her belt.
“Disrobed with an audience,” she whispered, and then the world shifted out of focus and light.
Chapter Thirty-four
Three times Estelle drifted up toward the surface, and her mind linked the moments together and remembered them as an incomprehensible mix of light and sound. When she finally distinguished her husband’s voice, she couldn’t remember if she had already had conversations with him.
“Can you hear me now?” he asked.
She might have said something, or only thought a reply. He continued to talk to her, quiet and insistent, and the flow of sound gave her a point of focus and comfort. She allowed time to march on, drifting in and out. Oddly, it was a single sound somewhere outside her room—a dropped clipboard, perhaps a clanged mop bucket—that started her into consciousness. It felt as if someone had lowered a concrete slab onto her body.
For a time, she lay absolutely immobile, except for her eyes. She could move those without effort or pain, and she took advantage of that, counting the ceiling tiles, examining the way they were cut and trimmed around the electrical conduits that fed the machines that tended her. She concentrated on the simple task of bringing all the sharp edges into focus. The earlier events that had brought her to this place remained indistinct and confused.
Francis Guzman moved back into view at the right side of the bed. At the same time, she became aware of a thin, bony hand that firmly clamped her left hand. She tried to turn her head and was greeted by a sharp stab of pain whose epicenter erupted in her right armpit, coursing down her arms and up through her shoulder, finding its way to her neck and then down the other side.
“Don’t do that,” Francis said, and he leaned closer so she could see him without being tempted to shift position. She looked into his dark brown eyes and saw nothing hidden there. “Your mom is here. She’s going to make sure you do what you’re told.” He straightened up, adjusted something, and bent back down, watching her closely. “Is that better?”
“Drugs are wonderful things,” she whispered as she felt the odd buzz of the morphine drip.
“Oh, sí, they are. Lie quiet and let them do the work.”
“Where’s Mamá?” The tiny hand that held hers didn’t feel attached to anything, but it squeezed again.
“She’s sitting right beside your bed, querida. Don’t be moving around, now.”
She heard a chair and cautiously shifted her eyes. Her mother’s tiny form moved into view, so short and bent that her shoulders were even with the bed.
“You can rest now,” Teresa Reyes said, the command absolute.
Tricks of time blended things together again, and when she was able to focus on her husband’s face once more, her vision had cleared another click, like sitting behind an optometrist’s gadget as he spun the little pinhole wheels and asked, “Which is better, this…or this?”
“I need to talk to Bobby,” Estelle said, or thought she said. Her husband leaned close again.
“There’s a whole crowd of people who want to see you, querida. They’re all going to have to wait.”
“Padrino?”
“Of course.”
“You’ll tell them for me that they all need to go home?”
“Sure. Maybe you can have some company tomorrow. Maybe Thursday.”
That made no sense. She searched his face. “What time is it?”
“A little after three.”
She closed one eye in an expression of skepticism, careful not to move anything else. “Come on, oso.”
He grinned and looked at his watch. “Three-oh-five a.m. This is Tuesday. You’re in Presbyterian in Albuquerque.”
“Ay.” None of that computed. There had been no passage of time in her world. Just an instant ago, her face had rested on the asphalt of the gas company’s airstrip…sometime early Sunday afternoon. She could still feel the warmth of the pavement, the sharp bite of the little pebbles against
her cheek.
“Tell me,” she said.
He bent down close, brushing her cheek with his lips. “Tell you what?”
The thought was easy to consider, but for a moment the words wouldn’t form. Eventually she whispered, “Am I going to die?”
The grip of the bony little hand was ferocious, but her mother said nothing. “No,” her physician–husband said. “No, you’re not. The docs here did a first-rate job of putting you all back together. You’re going to hurt a lot, querida. But you’ll be okay.”
“Just okay?”
“You’ll be fine.”
“You’re not lying to me?”
He looked askance, and his touch on her right hand was light but insistent. “When did I ever do that?”
“I’m sorry. What happened? I need to know.”
“The first bullet hit your vest and gave you a nice bruise. The second one missed the vest.”
“Tell me.”
“You just need to concentrate on resting and healing, querida.”
“Tell me. Every gory detail.”
“What’s the benefit of that?” the physician asked. “There’s time for that later.”
“Now is fine. I have nothing to do.”
“Caramba,” her husband sighed. “A 9mm slug found a way past the edge of your vest just under your right arm, right at the back of your armpit. You must have been twisting away somehow.”
“I need to know,” she whispered. For a moment he didn’t move, then he gently touched her forehead. “I’ll be right back.” In less than a minute he returned with a large X-ray sheet. He held it horizontally over her face so she could study it without moving, the ghostly images floating against the ceiling tile.
“Clouds,” she said. She’d seen enough X-rays to know what should or shouldn’t be there. She could see small fragments where the bullet had punched two ribs, the clouds of hemorrhage along the bullet’s path, and more fragments where the slug had busted out through the ribs in front.
“Nasty.” He lowered the X-ray. “Like I said, my guess is that you were pivoting away. Do you remember that?”
“I don’t remember any of it.”
Francis regarded the sheet of film. “Well, it hit you right where your vest wasn’t,” he said. “The path was across and down a bit. Some lung damage, some liver damage. Busted ribs coming and going.” He looked at her affectionately. “You’re a mess.”
He put the X-ray somewhere out of her sight, then returned and rested his right hand on hers. He touched a strand of hair away from her eyes. She concentrated on reading his expression and concluded that he was telling her the truth.
“Ay, that’s nothing, then,” she said.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “What were they always saying in the old movies? Just a flesh wound.”
“But I’ll be okay?”
“Yes, you will. They spent seven hours patching your insides together to make sure of that.”
“Ay. I’ll be a little bit ugly, then.”
He grinned. “A few dramatic touches, maybe. You’ll have a long scar that follows the body contour, more or less.”
“You didn’t do the surgery?”
“No, but you had a team of the best.”
“Not if you didn’t do it.” She squeezed his hand. “Tell me about Manolo Tapia.”
“He’s dead.”
She remembered the image of Sheriff Torrez walking across the prairie, rifle in hand. “Bobby?”
“One long-range shot, I’m told. He took it the instant that he was sure you were clear of the airplane.”
Ten seconds sooner would have been nice, she thought, and then dismissed that. Robert Torrez would have entertained exactly the same thought, she was sure, and no one needed to dwell on it.
“Hector?”
“INS has him in their custody now.”
“Okay.” She closed her eyes, and felt the drug-induced fog move a step closer. “Los dos?”
“We’re all enjoying a big-city vacation,” Francis said. “They’ll be in to pester you in a little bit. But not right away.”
“Soon, though. I need to see them soon.”
“Sure. Soon. Francisco wants to bring in his new practice keyboard so he can play you his latest creation.”
“Practice keyboard?”
“Padrino has been keeping them busy. Apparently they found this wonderful gadget at a music store. It allows fingering and it’s got the touch of working keys, but doesn’t make any noise. Thunk, thunk.”
“The best medicine,” she said.
“He wants another recital, of course,” Francis said with a laugh. “He’s working on his own composition for it. That’s what he wants to play for you, so the sooner you heal, the better, because the kid is impatient.” He let his left hand rest motionless on her forehead. “But we gotta give all those tiny little sutures time to do their thing.”
She gripped her mother’s hand with her left, and his with the right. Just that simple muscle twitch woke up the demons, and she said nothing for a long time, waiting for the war to reach an uneasy peace.
“I’ll wait right here,” she whispered.
Chapter Thirty-five
A major triumph came when Estelle could turn her head enough to find the window—without bracing for the blinding stab of pain that lurked somewhere in the cavern under her right shoulder. The blinds were drawn, but she could see edges of bright light drawn around the periphery. Her room was quiet. She vaguely remembered being transferred to this room, the transfer from the rolling bed to this one the most memorable event. When that had happened, she wasn’t entirely sure.
“It’s twenty minutes after six,” her mother’s voice said. Estelle felt the tiny hand on hers again. “And you know, it’s Saturday. You’re getting to be a real lazybones.”
“Maybe that’s my true calling,” Estelle said. Her voice was soft and husky, little more than a whisper after the assault of the various tubes and drugs. She shifted her feet with care. From the waist up, she felt wooden. “Can you open the blinds a little?”
“I don’t know.” Teresa Reyes made her way to the window, taking her time to maneuver her walker. Estelle watched her mother’s tiny figure, aching for her as one gnarled, arthritic hand reached out in slow motion to find the pull strings for the window blinds. “Maybe we’ll ask one of the nurses. They’ll be along any time now.” She persisted until she found the right combination. Light blasted into the room.
Estelle flinched, and the sudden motion brought reminders. She turned away, and saw for the first time that another hospital bed shared the room. It was lower, and she recognized one of her mother’s wraps lying at the foot. “You’ve slept here,” she said, but it came out as a gurgle, and she carefully cleared her throat and repeated herself.
“What do you think I would do?” Teresa said. She turned from the window. “One of those doctors says that you have to get out of bed today sometime. They’re not going to let you rest, you know.” That was exactly what she wanted to do, and understood the conflict of opinions that irked her aging mother. Teresa was old school—rest until the bad humors all went away, perhaps driven off by sheer boredom. Modern surgery’s method of convalescence often was the opposite: “Up and at ’em, you slacker.”
“That’ll be memorable,” Estelle said. “I feel like my insides will fall out if I move too fast.” A week gone. Just like that. Like turning a clock ahead in the spring. The hour is gone as if it had never been.
“Then move slowly, hija.” Teresa chuckled. “Take a lesson from this old lady.” She reached out a hand to the lower bed beside Estelle’s, guiding herself to a slow-motion landing on the edge.
Estelle’s eyes ached from the bright light, and she lifted her left arm, hoses and all, and rested her forearm across her eyes.
“You want it closed now?”
“No. It’s fine.” She turned her head without moving her arm and peered across the room. On a small table, a single vase overflowed with two
dozen deep-red roses, the only bouquet in the room. “Those are pretty. I can smell them from here.”
“I sent all the others to geriatrics,” her mother said, sitting with both hands on the walker. “I couldn’t breathe, there were so many.” One hand lifted in a dismissive wave, but she smiled at her daughter impishly. “Some of those old people, though. They like a little bouquet now and then.”
“Thank you. Who are the roses from?”
“You want to read the card?”
Fogged as she was, Estelle still was amused by her mother, who deftly avoided the question. “Sure. Or you can read it to me if you like.”
“I don’t think so. You just wait.” Something as simple as crossing the room, picking up an envelope, and delivering it was a major undertaking for Teresa Reyes. “You’re going to have a crowd today,” she added. “They moved you out of that ICU place, where no one could visit.”
“I want to see everybody,” Estelle said. “All these drugs are funny. I can remember that I had company, but I don’t remember what anybody said.”
“Not much to miss,” Teresa said. She reached the bouquet and stopped, collecting some energy. “They all talk too much.”
“I want los dos to be here,” Estelle said.
“They’ve been in and out all week. Right now, Padrino has them out to breakfast,” Teresa said. “These are interesting.” She regarded the roses critically. “I’ve never seen ones so dark.”
“I can’t stand the suspense,” Estelle said as Teresa laboriously removed the envelope from the bouquet.
“This is sealed,” she announced.
“Ah, maybe we’re not supposed to open it, then.”
Teresa sniffed. “You open it, mija. That will give you something to do.” She walkered back across the room and placed the envelope in Estelle’s right hand. For a moment, she didn’t release her grip on the paper. Instead she leaned as close to her daughter’s bed as she could, looking deep into her eyes. She reached out and placed her left hand on Estelle’s forehead.
Final Payment Page 27