Ramón wasn’t sure whether his mother had been right about a curse, or if he’d just grown to live up to her expectations, but he had always felt the coldness she’d sensed in him. His wife might also have agreed, especially on the night she died. And right now, with murder on the brain, he was feeling downright arctic.
He locked the door behind him and walked down the stairs to the garage’s main floor, where the Town Car waited. It would start out just like any other night on the job, but beyond that, his life would undergo one very large tectonic shift. Once inside the car, he pulled out the Derringer and placed it inside the folded newspaper that always sat on the seat beside him.
The Madam was waiting out front for him, dressed for either a funeral or a chilly autumn night in a black pantsuit and a matching peacoat. The light from the mostly full moon made her skin look like bleached bone. He parked beside the curb, got out and held open the door to let her in.
“Good evening, Madam,” he said.
Her smile was thin and cold, like her. Ramón wondered how any man could fuck her without feeling like they were putting it to a corpse. “It will be a better evening when we retrieve what’s mine, Ramón.” She slid into the car, and he closed the door.
Once he was back behind the wheel, she tapped the back of his seat.“Make it snappy, by the way. Traffic should be light, and even if we’re pulled over, I have no doubt I can get us out of it. So just go.”
Ramón nodded and put the car in gear. “Yes, Madam. In fact, I know a shortcut.”
“Even better.”
He prayed to whatever God answered the pleas of murdering ex-thugs (ex? You can’t be serious right now, old man) she wouldn’t ask where they were going once she realized he was heading in the complete opposite direction of the Ballas estate. The jig wouldn’t become completely obvious for a bit yet, but soon, the city would be on the wrong side of the car, and the Madam was no dummy.
“That son of a bitch Ballas. After so many years of business, I can’t believe he would pull something like this with me.”
Ramón looked in the rearview mirror to see her picking at the leather gloves she was wearing. He hoped she would keep talking.
“I just want you to know I’m sorry about all this, Madam.”
“So many girls,” she went on, ignoring him as she usually did when he was driving and she was thinking aloud. “When I think of all the money I made over the years from Ballas alone . . . I could have retired somewhere far enough away that no one would ever find me. I could have become someone else.”
Ramón swallowed, his grip on the wheel tightening. He suddenly felt very paranoid, like the jig was up, but he said nothing for fear his voice would shake. And that would get her attention.
“I’ve been saving most of that money, you know. Not for a retirement, but for investment. Maybe that makes me a fool. Certainly a masochist, given everything I’ve had to deal with over the years. But I’m not ready to be done with Ballas yet. I need more from him. Now this little . . . wrinkle has to happen, just as I’m about to consider making my move.” Ramón heard the smack of leather punching leather.
He was curious what her investment plans were, exactly, and why she needed so much money to do it. But it didn’t much matter. In twenty minutes, any plan the Madam had would be rendered null and void by the heat he was packing in the folded newspaper by his side. He only hoped he would be able to do what was necessary when the time came.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
They rode in silence for a little while, and then the Madam spoke again. “You know, Ramón, maybe you’re right. Maybe it will be okay.”
Ramón’s stomach burned. It was the first time she’d ever directly addressed him during one of her car rants. He heard her leaning forward, just as Nina had the night before. What was it about the sound of squeaking leather that made him think of secrets and conspiracies? Did he even have to ask?
“Pull over, Ramón,” she said.
Shit! It was over. Just like that. He wasn’t sure how she had caught on to him so quickly, but the Madam was not stupid. He’d known that for a very long time. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as his mouth went dry.
“Why do you want me to pull over, Madam?” he asked. This time, he did sound scared. He detected the telltale quiver in his voice, and he was sure she heard it, too.
What you afraid for, old man? You got the gun!
Didn’t matter. He was sure if he tried to wrestle it out of the newspaper, it would get tangled up in something invisible, like his own bad luck. Likely, she had a gun of her own pointed into the back of his seat.
“Don’t question me, Ramón. Do it. Now.”
Blinking back the sweat now stinging his eyes, he guided the car to the side of the sparsely busy highway. Once he put it into park, the Madam got out of the car and opened the front passenger door. Sliding aside the folded newspaper like it was so much trash, and nearly making Ramón cry out in the process, she closed the door against the sound of traffic and wind. He noticed with some relief that her hands were empty, and the knot in his gut loosened just a tad. But the Madam herself was a weapon, and he knew from the stories and accounts he’d witnessed himself of her brutality with the girls at the Willow over the years that she was the kind of woman who liked using her hands.
And if she tries, you know what to do.
“There, this is much better,” she said. “Now we can talk face to face. I don’t like doing business with the back of a man’s head, unless I’m pegging him.” Her grin was cat-like as she let that horrendous visual sink in for him.
“O-okay,” he croaked.
“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
He nudged his hand closer to the rolled up newspaper, keeping his eyes on hers. “No, Madam.”
“It’s okay. I know you are. You should be. I wouldn’t be doing my job if you weren’t. But you’ve been good to me and this family, and I think it’s time you and I take our relationship up to the next level. I think maybe we should become partners of sorts. What do you say?”
Ramón gaped. He’d been expecting her to confront him about the money he stole, but now . . . No, don’t let your guard down. She could still be roping you in for something, old man. She’s like a spider sitting in the middle of a web just waiting for the flies to come to her. “Partners? How so?”
“Ballas pays in cash every time. Isn’t that odd?”
Of course, it was odd. No one paid cash for anything anymore, let alone a half-million dollars for a hooker. Or a million.
“Sure,” he said.
“You think he keeps all that money in his house? He doesn’t really seem the banking type.”
Ramón shrugged. “It’s possible.” He knew where she was going with this, but he continued to let her lead the conversation. It was better that way.
“I had some people in higher places look into him awhile ago. He hasn’t done anything public or business related in well over a decade. No stock trades, nothing. His fortune was all in a blind trust of some sort until he withdrew everything one day, and there hasn’t been a peep from him since. Most people think he’s dead, though there hasn’t been any official note made of it. He owns the deed to his estate and the property taxes are all paid up.”
“Doesn’t he have any friends or family who can vouch for him?”
“Well, I’m sure you know the ordeal with his disappeared wife. She may still be out there somewhere, though after twenty years I doubt it. That’s the last really official mention of him anywhere.”
“He probably killed her,” Ramón said.
The Madam waved her hand. “Doesn’t matter, and if he did, all the better. That way there is no one who could lay claim to that money. We’re going up there, but getting the girl back is inconsequential at this point. For all I know he accidentally killed her during whatever nutty ritual he performs on them. I’m mildly displeased with that, but even angrier at his blatant disregard for providing me additional compensation
in this transaction. I plan to address that issue, and then put the sorry son of a bitch out of his misery for good. The effects of these visits on my girls are becoming a bit of a liability, as you might imagine. At some point, Victor will start asking about some of the girls who’ve gone missing. They can’t all be runaways and suicides.”
Ramón stared at her. The casual way in which she spoke about the girls who came out of the Ballas house was chilling. They weren’t just a little bruised and upset. They were bleeding, mutilated, and catatonic. And they didn’t just “go missing” either.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked.
“Not I. We. This is a partnership, remember?”
Ramón knew better than that. The Madam’s idea of a partnership was someone being her willing slave. It was essentially what they had now. “What do you want me to do?”
“I have a gun in my purse. You shoot the son of a bitch, then we raid the house to find his stash. Knowing him, he probably has the shit stuffed in the walls and mattresses. Either way, I don’t think anyone will hear the gunshot. We’ll have time to hunt. We won’t have to stage a robbery, because it will actually be one.”
Ramón noticed she hadn’t mentioned how they would divide the spoils. “How does it get split up? The money?”
“Well, I suppose it depends on how much we find. But I’m willing to cut you twenty percent.”
Twenty? She ain’t even going to tell you it’s rainin’ when she pisses on you, old man. She’s just gonna keep on pissin’ and hope you like how warm it feels.
“That ain’t a lot. We’re talking about murder here.”
Her face seemed to morph into hard white stone, and he inched his hand a little closer to the roll of newspaper holding his only ticket to freedom at this point. “Don’t play coy with me, Ramón. Don’t forget I know who you are. Who you really are. You should be as acquainted with killing a person as you are with the length of your cock.” She looked him up and down, eyes calculating every inch of him. He knew what she was going to say next. The certainty of it made him sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t stop her. “Or maybe it would be easier if he was a woman. Maybe we should hold a séance and ask your wife what she has to say about that.”
“Shut up! Don’t you ever talk about her again, bruja!”
His outburst made her lean back a little, but she didn’t look afraid. He wanted her to be. He wanted her to be terrified at his rage, enough to be distracted while he grabbed the gun from the newspaper, but she’d probably seen much worse in her line of work. If she was scared, she had one hell of a poker face.
“There there, little perro. Don’t get all frothy. I’m just trying to properly motivate you. Save your rage for Ballas. Now, tell me again everything you saw this morning so we know how to go in and handle this thing.”
“Like I already told you, it wasn’t that much different than before. I walked in, but there was no girl, just the money and a note. I grabbed the cases and got out of there.”
The Madam grew colder, stiller, like the haunted idol of a lost civilization, and Ramón knew he’d just made a tiny but very fatal mistake. “I’m sorry, but did you just say cases? As in more than one?”
There was no time to do anything now but act. Fumbling for the newspaper and the Derringer hidden inside it, he prayed his gunslinging muscles weren’t too rusty. In the same instance, the Madam was reaching back for her purse, but even if the pistol had somehow become entangled, as Ramón had envisioned it might, he still would have beaten her to the punch.
He aimed the pistol at her and cocked it. The Madam, again no dummy and probably no stranger to the sound of guns, halted in her tracks. A wild thought flew through his mind that the thing would misfire when he pulled the trigger. It hadn’t been fired in over ten years. The shells, custom loaded and unpredictable in the best of times, were just as old if not older. The odds weren’t as much in his favor as he would have wanted, but she didn’t have to know that.
“Hold it right there, bruja.” The Madam uttered a string of curses and returned to her seat. Even with a gun pointed at her from two feet away, she didn’t look afraid. Just amused, like a dog had just rolled over and played dead in front of her.
“Well played, Ramón. You don’t have to tell me how you managed to get a gun past Victor’s men. I just want to know where my money is.”
“Even now you still think you’re in charge of the situation. Is it a sickness you got or something?”
“It’s called narcissism. But it’s also called sense. Even if you shoot me with that toy gun, I doubt it will kill me.”
He leveled the gun at her face. “At this distance, you really want to take that bet? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Give me my money. Now.”
“Telling yourself something is yours don’t make it yours. It’s finders keepers in this business.”
“Give me my fucking money, you spic fuck!” She was finally furious, nostrils flaring, eyes blazing. He didn’t answer, just continued pointing the pistol at her, his senses ratcheted up to maximum. He could have heard a fly’s wings flapping.
“You won’t get far with it, and you know that,” she said. “Our net is huge. If you cut a fart and pick your nose, we’ll know about it.”
Ramón grinned and pushed all his chips into the middle of the table. These were the moments he used to live for. The gamble, the bluff.
“I know people, too. You said it yourself, you know who I am. Who I really am. Maybe I got people all up and down the east coast and way down in Juarez just waiting to get a call from their old friend Ramón Gutierrez. You and Victor want a war on your hands? I can make that happen.”
“Your old network is just a bunch of low-level hoods. Wetback beaner scum, probably either dead or in prison.” She spat the epithets out like poisoned blow darts, but there wasn’t a whole lot of force behind them. It meant she was unsettled, too angry to tell if he was lying.
You’re about to kill another unarmed woman. Sure, she’s a monster, but it doesn’t look like you’ve changed much at all to me, old man.
“I’m leaving the Willow,” he said. “I’m done working for you. That second case of money is my severance pay.”
“Severance! You owe us, remember?”
“Not anymore, I don’t. Now get out of the car.” He had no intention of shooting her here. The mess and the damage to his ears would be enormous. There were woods just up the embankment a few feet away. He would do it there. Let her rot in a graveyard of fast food bags and plastic bottles. It was better than what she deserved.
The Madam’s jaw dropped. “Who are you to tell me to get out of my—”
He grabbed her throat, shoving her hard against the door. The metal of her hair clips clacked against the glass as she cried out for a brief second. Then he squeezed. Not hard. Just enough to scare her. He relished the way her fear and shock filled him with that old warmth, the way the sound of his house key sliding into his door lock would make him feel after a long day’s work, like there was comfort and contentment only seconds away with one turn of the key. One quick snap of neck bone. He had her. He had her! He wanted to deny that warmth, run screaming from it, but it was there. His old friend Murder, patiently waiting for him to turn back up looking for another favor.
He pressed the Derringer’s barrel against the shelf of her jaw for emphasis. “If you don’t reach down and open this car door, I’m going to squeeze your throat until you’re dead.” Just squeeze anyway. This is the cleaner way to do it. No need to use the gun.
No. He wanted her out of the car first. He didn’t want to be seen dragging a body into the trees. He was done doing the heavy lifting for these assholes.
“Okay, all right,” she croaked. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “Please let go . . . my head.”
He sighed and released his hand, but he kept the gun trained on her. She rubbed the back of her head, uttering a nervous giggle. “You gave me one hell of a bump, Ramón. I think I might get
a knot back there.”
Not like you’ll have to worry about that in a few minutes. “Open the door.”
“Yes, all right, okay. Just don’t hurt me.”
He watched one of her pale white hands reach for the door handle, but he saw a flash of silver in the other. She struck fast, like an angry cobra.
A hot sting erupted in the side of his neck, and he felt the warm trickle of blood. Then she was on him, a fury of red hair and black wool and leather, clawing at his face with one hand and grabbing at the Derringer with the other. He’d nearly dropped it in his shock at being stabbed in the neck, and would have if not for the friction of his glove. “You bitch! Get off me!”
She was growling like a crazed mountain cat. Before she could wrest the tiny pistol away, he pulled the trigger twice. The loud pops made his ears immediately ring, and he smelled the reek of discharged powder and felt the burn of tiny shot fragments burn his neck and face.
Her high-pitched gasp gave way to screams, and she fell back against the door again. One side of her face and neck was blackened with specks of shot. Her right eye was little more than a bleeding, gore-filled socket. Blood ran from her mouth in rivulets. She was lucky to still have her head. If the shells hadn’t been so old and if he’d fired point blank, she might not have. But the damage to her face was devastating, nonetheless.
“What did you do what did you do?” she screamed. Her voice sounded muffled in his temporarily—at least he hoped it was temporary—ruined ears, but he could tell the words weren’t well formed. The shot to the face shattered several of her teeth. “Oh you crazy fucking spic, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”
Using the last of his adrenaline, he grabbed her around the neck again and slammed her head against the glass twice, hard enough to crack it. He was going to have to end her here after all. But he glanced out the rearview mirror and saw a large line of traffic coming, a wash of white light from their headlamps filling the interior of the Lincoln, exposing the impending murder to all who looked.
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