Hell to Pay

by Dick Wybrow

  The only light was glimmering off a candelabra in the center of the table.

  "Pablo?" someone called out, and both of them crouched low. Anza looked at her hands and saw she was shaking. She gripped them together as if worried the rattling bones in her hands would give them away.

  Again came the voice from the room with the television. "Pablo?"

  They waited a full minute, not moving. They heard a slight chuckle then one a little louder. Silvio was again lost in whatever show he was watching.

  Uncle Jerry let out a long exhale, and a dribble of sweat rolled off his chin onto the floor.

  Anza finally saw the pair of eyes staring at them. She stood back to her full height, leaned forward, and squinted toward the window. Outside, a set of hedges behind him, the Actor gave them a small wave. She rolled her eyes and put her hand to her heart, pressing it with a tiny fist for a moment. Then she tapped Uncle Jerry and pointed toward the window.

  When he saw their friend, his face lit, and he gave their man outside a thumbs-up. The Actor shook his head slowly with a very tiny smile on his lips. He returned an exaggerated version of the same gesture.

  Anza pointed behind them, to where the light was coming from, and back at the Actor. With two fingers on her left hand, she pointed at her own eyes. Then with her right, at the man at the window then back toward the light.

  He nodded. Got it.

  Uncle Jerry had been checking the cupboards under the island, searching for a knife rack. He expected to see one of those wooden things people bought late at night when they'd had a lot to drink. They used to have one commercial where they could cut a can and then cut a tomato.

  But who would cut a goddamn can with a knife? A goddamn can!

  "Whoops, sorry," he muttered to Anza, who nearly jumped.

  She mouthed, What?

  He then shook his head quickly, bits of sweat shooting off his matted hair.

  She continued to search the cupboards below, which was difficult because moving the would-be-clanging metal was a definite no-no. If there was a block of knives behind a double-boiler, they would never see it.

  What was that called again? Something Japanese. The can-and-tomato cutting knives.

  Then another thought came to mind. Sure, the fuckhead dope dealer was a fuckhead dope dealer, but if he were any kinda good daddy, he wouldn't have the knives within reach of little Pablo. They wouldn't be in drawers or down below the island where a little boy could get to them. He stood up and found the highest cupboard, just to the left of the large metal fridge that could double as a meat locker.

  Behind him, Anza twisted slightly and put her hand on the fridge to stand.

  She looked back at the perfect dining room, and something small moved in her chest. She wanted that. Not the dining set. Okay, sure, she wanted the dining set, but more importantly, she wanted what would sit around the dining set.

  More than ever, she realized she missed her husband, Dan. When their mission was all over, it was time to go home. She had to get over his new position—and new complexion—because, more than anything, she knew what she wanted. A family with Dan.

  The very tiny smile was on her lips when she casually looked to the window. Anza cocked her head because, being that the Actor was supposed to be all clandestine and secret-like, there was no way he should be jumping up and down, waving his arms. He would totally get seen that way.

  Behind her, she heard Uncle Jerry open another cupboard door. Then he whispered, "Bingo."

  That was when the light clicked on.

  Silvio was standing, not in the hallway that had been bathed in light but on the other side, and he was pointing a pistol at them.

  He said slowly, "Get away from my Ginsu."

  Uncle Jerry snapped his fingers and said, "Shit. Yep, that was it. Ginsu."

  The drug lord took a small step forward, just to the edge of the kitchen tile, and began to chuckle.

  "I don't know how you did it, Uncle Jerry," he said. "But you are not, as reported, dead and spread across three miles of a Central American mountain."

  "Uh, I was. That happened," the old man said. "I got… better."

  Silvio could only laugh. "You are the craziest fucking person I have ever known. And I have known some serious crazies. Got better!" He laughed harder, half bending at the waist with the pistol still trained on them. "Thank god you're in the kitchen," he said, still laughing.

  "Why?"

  "Because." He lifted the gun higher, putting his finger on the trigger. "I'm going to spread you all over the Mexican tile, easier to clean up. And from that, you will not get better."

  Twack-twack-twack!

  Two heads swiveled toward the front window, where the Actor was pounding with an open palm. He raised his hand, finger pointed at the drug dealer, thumb in the air. Silvio hesitated but then twisted and shot toward the glass.

  He missed. A lamp near the window exploded.

  Anza had never shifted her gaze to the window, never taken her eyes off the prick with the stupid hair and stupid mustache holding the stupid gun, and the moment he turned, she gripped the refrigerator door handle she'd been holding, yanked it open hard, the bottles clanging as they violently shifted in their shelves, and the heavy metal door first collided with the pistol then with the man holding it.

  The gun went flying across the room, knocking over the metal candelabra.

  Silvio was down on the ground, half out of it and moaning slightly.

  Quickly, Uncle Jerry reached for the biggest knife he could find. Anza looked to the window and saw the Actor holding up a small rectangular cube the size of a cigarette box and pointing back to the garage.

  He squeezed it, and the garage door began to lift.

  "Quickly!" she shouted. "Get his thumb!"

  Silvio's eyes went wide, and he growled, leaping back to his feet and running into the next room. The dining room.

  "The gun is in there!" Anza shouted and pulled on Uncle Jerry to leave. Both turned and sprinted out of the kitchen and down the long hallway.

  Out on the driveway, Uncle Jerry spun back to find Anza was missing. The very next moment, Anza came running from the black void of the garage, holding up a set of keys.

  Pointing at the SUV, she shouted, "Get in!"

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sally was on her knees, swaying slightly but refusing to fall down.

  Digger stood over her, holding the shotgun by its muzzle. He muttered something under his breath, laughed, and hit her again with the butt of the weapon. She hadn't even put her hands up to block the blow. Nor had she gone for her pistols, which were both still in their holsters, their tips drawing small circles in the dirt and sand every time she swayed.

  "Where's he gone, mate?" the man in the strange cowboy hat asked, the weapon in his hand making low sweeps in front of her. He grinned when he saw her eyes flicker down toward her pistols. "Ah, please do. I don't have any orders to put slugs in you but will do so gladly. Just gimme a reason."

  Sally spit blood onto his black shirt. "I know you," she said, breathing unevenly. "You don't need any reason. You're a cruel putz, you know that?"

  Again, Digger laughed, then he waggled a finger on the hand that was still wrapped around the shotgun. "Ah, come on, then. Home office don't like it when we put each other down willy-nilly—neither of them. We get targets, we take 'em out. But open war—"

  "I don't care," Sally said, chuckling, "about any of Hell Inc.'s so-called rules. Rules are just permission for one group to do what they want to another, written down with tiny numbers and clauses and subclauses. But in the end, it's just a recipe someone pulled outta thin air to cook up a big ol' fuck-you pie."

  Digger brought the shotgun's wooden butt down on Sally's head, but it only skimmed the side of it. She winced when it hit her shoulder, but she never lost the small smile on her lips.

  "Where's he gone?"

  "How would I know? We left the little twerp back in Cozumel," she said, spitting out something tiny an
d yellow. "Could be anywhere by now."

  Digger looked to the men around him, five of them, scrunched up his face, and let out a throaty breath. "The Actor?" he asked. "I don't give two shits about him. That dumbass is going exactly where Hood wants him to!" Digger kicked dirt into Sally's face. "Where'd Rasputin take my bike?"

  "Little shit took off," she said, spitting out grit. "Why don't you let me go, and I'll go find 'em for ya?"

  The man in the scrunched black hat laughed and kicked another boot of dirt at her.

  Digger leaned in close, and from where I was, high up above them, behind an outcropping of rock, I only caught a few of their words.

  Sure, I should have left. I didn't even like Sally, if for no other reason than she was trying to kill my friend. By anyone's standards, someone trying to make a friend dead made them an enemy. However, I'd lived my life going on gut instincts. Usually, it really, really screwed me up. Sometimes, it payed off. I hoped this time it was the rarer outcome, the latter of those two.

  And in a way, it did pay off because what Digger was saying to the bleeding gunslinger was, if nothing else… very curious.

  This is what I heard:

  "You and I both know, war in hell is coming," Digger said. Even at a low volume, his husky voice bounced around the canyon. However, as the words reflected off the stone walls, it made them harder to make out clearly. "…and the old man failed! The chairman wants him before all hell breaks loose." Digger stood back up again then turned slowly. He raised his shotgun to Sally's head. "Tell me where he went, and you'll live."

  Sally shook him off and squared her shoulders. "You ain't gonna let me live."

  With a shrug, the man in the black hat cocked his shotgun and nodded. "You're right. I'm under contract, so that means my bullets can put you down."

  "Sally!" I screamed from the top of the rock face, sitting on Bucephalus, which roared to life. Then I held on as the bike drove straight down the side of the stone wall, its front tire lifting just as we slammed into the ground, and rocketed straight for her.

  Over the gunfire, I heard Digger shout, "Don't kill him!" as the bike and I headed straight for Sally, who spun up to one knee, reached out with her right hand, grabbed the luggage rack as we passed, and flung herself onto the seat behind me, facing the other direction.

  As the bike took a forty-five-degree cut into the opposite wall, I looked at both of my mirrors and saw that she had a pistol in each hand and was firing at the group below us.

  Digger had managed to leap behind his own motorcycle, shots exploding off it in small sparks.

  The others around him were down, bleeding to death or already dead.

  "Go, go, go!" she shouted.

  "Way ahead of you!"

  At that point, I was merely holding onto the bike as we tore a path deeper into the canyon.

  We rode at an impossible speed for at least a full minute, then we hit a dead end, and I stopped the bike. In front of us, it looked like a small camp encircled by high stone wall with a small shack, a long bar to tie up horses, and a firepit.

  I pointed to what looked like the shortest escape route. "Boo can go up the wall, so hold on—"

  "No," Sally said. "No, we need to finish this here, or he won't stop coming." With a groan, she hopped off and hobbled to a spot next to the small shack. She pulled out her pistols and got down on one knee.

  Amid the high walls of the canyon enclosure, every sound came back to me like a scolding, everything said, everything done, like each choice, no matter how insignificant, was being received, evaluated, and shot back.

  Sally checked her pistols, banging the grit out of their muzzles.

  "You going to kill him?" I asked.

  She let out a sigh then shook her head, her eyes focused on her work.

  "Why not?"

  "Can't do that, Razzie," she said, her voice weary. "Neither of us got much stake in either side winning or losing despite any evidence to the contrary, given our allegiances. That said, I expect he ain't interested in starting a war that too many folks are itching to start."

  I'd heard some of it earlier when Sally was getting a beatdown. "Both factions poised for a fight," I said. "Hell versus Hell Inc. Some final, explosive Michael Bay–style showdown."

  She nodded. "There's already a squabble, a move here, a play there, but not yet all-out war. But it's coming, and both sides are keen to get you, Rasputin, in their posse."

  "Wait. What did you say?" I took a step closer, but she ignored me. When I finally got the nerve to push her, she cut me off.

  "He's coming, so you best be ready. Probably just a minute away now."

  I'd already heard the guttural rattle of his motorcycle's engine heading our way. We had more pressing matters.

  "Your friend, Digger," I said. "Where's he from?"

  "He ain't my friend."

  "That wasn't really the question." My voice flapped back to me, thin and unsure. "He's got an accent."

  Staring down the barrel of one pistol, appearing satisfied, then looking down the next, she cast only a fleeting glance in my direction. Holstering her weapons, she stood again. Then she chuckled softly. "Everyone's got an accent, even if you can't hear it," she said. "But if you could, you'd know something about where they been. And maybe what lengths they would go to to get to where they wanna be." She walked past me. "Told ya before. He's Aussie."

  The run-down shack made from stones and rotten wood was not much bigger than a suburban garage. A few feet away from it, the firepit was a simple circular collection of darkly stained stones stacked about three high all around.

  "What is this place?" I asked.

  Sally wiped her eyes with her wrist, smearing blood and sweat around her face. "It'll be one of Digger's bolt-holes. He's got 'em all over."

  "Huh. He could put this place up on Airbnb," I said a bit distantly. "It's even got a nice little firepit."

  "Well."

  "Sure, I mean, no electricity or Wi-Fi… but a cozy little shack and a nice fire at night."

  Sally growled. "I don't mean 'well' like 'well, that's a dumb idea.' I mean it ain't a firepit. It's a well, you know, to get water. Except 'round here, they're all dried up by now."

  That time when her voice flapped back to me off the canyon walls, it came back louder than when she'd spoken. I replayed what she'd said in my mind, which gave me an idea.

  I turned to the gunslinger. "Really?"

  * * *

  Despite the imminent danger, despite the stakes—something he knew far better than any of the others—Angel found himself actually growing bored. And standing in platform heels on the side of the hangar was starting to make his back ache. He reached back and pressed his fists into the divot just above the butt of his leotard, drawing his elbows back and forth for a moment.

  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes he would hear a few cracks between his shoulder blades. Other times it just highlighted how sore his back really was. When he caught sight of himself in a shadow, he had to laugh. On the ground, the dark figure flapped its wings, unable to take flight.

  "Well, that's a bit on the nose," he whispered to himself.

  That time, though, no satisfying cracks up his spine.

  The initial adrenaline drained away, he was tired of just standing and waiting. Sure, if he were discovered hiding out and watching, the two men playing cards in the hangar would definitely take great delight in alleviating all that boredom, and not in a way he expected to live through.

  All these gormless shitheads seem to do is cheat at cards, crank terrible rock music, drink, and smoke like they're trying to get cancer… tonight!

  Once again, he looked up to the big house on the hill. For the past ten or fifteen minutes, he'd mostly seen darkness. For a while, he'd wondered if Anza and her friends had gotten cold feet, taken off, fled.

  There had been some pale-blue flickering in one window at the front of the house, but for the most part, nothing happening up there. That was what it had looked
like since he'd taken to standing in the dark next to the hangar. It didn't look like that anymore.

  * * *

  "Where the hell did you learn to drive, Anza?" the Actor yelled, bouncing around the back seat of the black SUV. Uncle Jerry was fighting with his seat belt, trying to get it to click into the buckle, but mostly holding onto it for dear life, trying not to get thrown out a window.

  "I taught myself to drive!" Anza called back.

  "Well…" the Actor said, then made an umft! noise as he briefly hit the low ceiling and thumped back onto the seat. "You had a shitty teacher!"

  "Not helping!"

  On the road leading from the house down to the hangar—not the semi-paved one that ran down to the runway, but another that traced the fence line to the back of the building—they hit another massive bump, that one the size of an animal lying in the road.

  "Did you just hit a cow?" Uncle Jerry asked after he landed and bounced hard on his seat. "Did you hit a sleeping cow? We don't hit cows! They are innocent bovine creatures of nature!"

  "Is no c-c-" she said, trying to regain control of the truck, "cow! Cows sleep standing up!"

  Uncle Jerry's eyes rolled briefly, and he gripped the seat belt tighter with his right hand as the left still tried to get it into the safety buckle. "I th-think that's horses."

  The Actor shouted from the floorboards behind them, "You hit a horse?"

  "Hold on!" Anza shouted and cranked the wheel to the left hard, then quickly to the right again. They were a mere thirty seconds from the hangar at that speed.

  The Actor got back on the seat slowly and, holding on the best he could, looked out the passenger-side window, catching sight of the hangar. The massive rollaway door holding the boss man's plane looked like the teeth of a sleeping dragon, clamped shut.

  * * *

  As the hulking SUV came barreling down the dirt road, kicking up a cloud behind it, Angel could only stare—and occasionally flinch when the thing looked like it had lost control, bumping and banging its way down the hill—with his mouth hanging open.