The Devil's Redhead (48 page)

As Abatangelo drove back to the marina, the mist created a slick, oily veneer across the asphalt. It sent a chill through the air, too, and he warded off intimations of death as he peered past the wipers and the rain-streaked windshield at the road. He considered stopping at a liquor store, a pint for warmth, but decided drink would only make him moodier. Get any more depressed, he thought, and you'll start singing.

When he got to the marina he drove through slowly. The boats sat high and dark in the rising tide, hulls bumping faintly against the sagging pier. No dogs barked as the car drifted past, nor was anyone about to scowl at his presence. It made him wonder if a little forewarning had gone around. He came abreast of the sawhorses he'd seen that afternoon and spotted what he wanted among the debris.

Turning off the ignition he sat awhile, listening. Steam purled off the hood. A wind chime made of sawed-off bottles rattled dully in the rain. He opened the door, navigated the mud troughs in the road, and gathered up a paint-spattered tarpaulin. Scudding back to the car he folded it into his trunk.

Wiping his hands on the upholstery, he drove on to the wall and looked out across the funnels of tall damp grass caught in his headlights. With the rain he'd leave a visible trail, so he'd have to go in from the back.

He drove down to where the access road turned back toward the highway and parked deep in a tree-high thicket of oleander. Opening the trunk he moved the tarp aside and opened his canvas camera bag. He wished he had a clearer idea of what might actually happen. As it was, he'd just drag everything out to the incinerator and improvise. Anything was possible, a shoot-out, a wank fest, a lot of rough talk followed by business as usual. His hands shook. He put the car jack in the camera bag then zipped it closed, hefted it from the trunk and started back, the tarp folded beneath his arm.

His shoes skated along the grass and mud, and by the time he made it to the lone oak tree looming above the grass, he was soaked to the skin. He took a moment in the shelter of the tree to get his bearings, then headed in across the field, keeping to the fence line until he was right behind the incinerator, then made straight for it from the rear, taking long strides to leave as few marks as possible in the sodden grass.

Once inside the incinerator shelter he knelt down, threw the tarp over the top and took out the jack. Assembled and at full height it pushed the tarp up just slightly, enough for a window. He loaded each of the cameras with 3200 black-and-white, feeling the leader onto the sprockets in the darkness. Removing the lens from one camera, he screwed the Passive Light Intensifier onto the camera body, then fit the lens onto the end of the PLI. He set up the tripod and adjusted its height, securing the camera onto it, then looking out through the viewer at the shimmering green phantoms, the grainy, vaguely 3-D effect. He could make out individual bricks in the windbreak. Beyond it the water resembled a stretch of whitish, undulating sand. The vertical and horizontal hatch marks of the sight met in a central circle which he focused straight ahead at a point ten yards beyond the nearest stretch of wall.

The second camera he fitted with a flash and a 35-105 zoom, setting it for autofocus and hanging it from his neck. If he ended up close to anybody he'd let go with that, using a fill flash to make sure he got a decent exposure. The third camera, fitted with a standard 55 and a second flash, he left in the bag in case one of the other two jammed.

He settled back to wait. Over time the rain stiffened, the wind picked up. His legs cramped from the cold and he chafed his wet clothing for warmth. The wound at his temple inflicted by Frank started throbbing again. Eventually he withdrew Shel's letter from inside his coat pocket and fingered it. He reached inside the envelope, felt the hand-worn paper, recalled the spidery handwriting, not needing light to see it. He pictured her not as he'd seen her last, brutalized by Frank, but as he'd known her long ago, when life still seemed tinged with luck—saw her in a denim shirt and painter pants, sitting barefoot on the porch of a rented beach house near Santa Barbara, wind in her hair, staring out across the ocean with a beer bottle lodged between her legs. The West Texas drawl. The tomboy wisecracks.

He pictured her suddenly appearing then, real as the moon. She stuck her head in beneath the sagging wet tarp and said, Don't. Not for me. Live, you idiot.

Cesar reached the cross-county highway and turned east toward the interstate, where he veered south. He got off at the final exit before the Carquinez Bridge and headed for a cluster of run-down apartment buildings overlooking the Maritime Academy.

“Where are we going?” Shel asked, her voice so weak she barely heard it herself.

Cesar parked at the end of a cul-de-sac. An empty field sat beyond the apartment complex, dotted with sickly trees, where a hulking figure in a hooded sweatshirt walked two mottled pit bulls through the trash, weeds and broken glass. The pits swaggered through the debris, noses down, ears erect, moving with a gait as close to a pimp roll as a dog could manage.

“Who lives here?” Shel asked. A whisper.

The craving had intensified, the result of no more boosters of whatever it was the doctor had given her. The withdrawal created an aching body sickness that, combined with the throbbing pain in her head, redoubled the weakness in her legs. She lacked faith she could duplicate the efforts to walk she'd managed back at the house. At the same time she knew Cesar would never let her sit out here alone. He'd lost a lot of blood, almost fainting at the wheel twice. In the end he used rage to fuel his will, wagging his gun, calling her names. Once or twice she'd thought he'd finally decided to be done with the bother and was pulling to the side of the road, ready to kill them both.

Breathing through his mouth, Cesar checked his bloody arm, then removed Pepe's severed hand from its resting place above the dash and stowed it beneath the seat. Murmuring inaudibly to himself, he got out, the cloth of his jacket and trousers sticking to the bloody upholstery, then came around, opened the passenger-side door and dragged her across the seat.

“You can walk,” he hissed. “You know you can.”

Propelling herself from one filthy car to the next, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, she hobbled beside him as they passed an abandoned Datsun with
SHIT HAPPENS
finger-written in the grime on its windshield. Shit doesn't just happen, she thought, pulling herself along. It hunts you down. The row of cars ended, and without anything to push against, she fell. Cesar just kept moving, pointing toward one of the apartment buildings as he dragged her up and along. At such moments she found it was true, she could walk. The way a dying woman walks.

Cesar led her to the breezeway of the apartment building nearest the cliff.
Vato
graffiti snarled across the wall. The stairway was steep and stank of piss. A shaft of dust angled down through a grime-smeared skylight. Their steps rang out on the metal stairs as they climbed to the top, by which time her head was spinning. Surfaces rippled at the edges. The floor swayed. With one hand on the wall, the other around Cesar, she made it to the end of the hall. He knocked at one of two facing doors then tried the knob.

The door, unlocked, eased open.

“Primo,”
Cesar called. No one answered.

A guttering haze beckoned from within, created by candles burned down to the quick. The entry gave way to a dark hallway, down which successive doorways glowed with the same twitching light.

“Something's wrong,” Shel said, looking at a table awash in melted candle wax.

“It's weird,” Cesar agreed. He glanced around a corner into the first empty room. “I've never been here when there wasn't somebody hanging out. Hidalgo's junkie pals. The chicks who come up to boost spikes, raid his stash cans.” In the next doorway, another flickering ooze of candle wax greeted their stare. “He's a nod, he knows a dozen other nods, and on any given day, half of them are here.” He shuddered. “Never seen the place this quiet, even when everybody's swacked.”

He walked stiffly from pain and dizziness, turning his whole body to look inside each room. Shel staggered behind, using the wall for support and mesmerized by the Rorschach of smeary bloodstains across the back of his jacket and trousers. Finally, at the end of the hallway, they peered into the last room and came upon a near-naked youth, sprawled across a bare mattress with a tangled sheet kicked onto the floor. The young man had indio features and a body turned gaunt from excess. Dressed only in socks and underwear, he rubbed his arms, eyes glazed as he stared at the ceiling with an impersonal smile.

“Primo,”
Cesar said. “Hidalgo.”

Hidalgo lowered his glance from the ceiling, his eyes milky as he tried to focus on the figures in the doorway. Dried saliva clung to his lips which moved but no sound came out.

“I don't think he can hear you,” Shel said. “He always like this?”

“No. Which is why nobody stuck around, is my guess.”

With an air of wanton grace Hidalgo finally recognized Cesar. He lifted his hand, his lips cracking into an oblivious smile as his fingers twitched. He was waving hello. Leaving Shel propped in the doorway, Cesar tramped over to a soiled pile of clothing balled up in the corner and searched the pockets, finding a small bindle of wax paper. He also discovered a modest wad of bills, which he pocketed as Hidalgo's head fell back onto the mattress with a heaving, oblivious moan and his eyes closed.

Returning to Shel, Cesar showed her the bindle and said, “You may need this. You want it now or later?”

Shel felt ashamed at how conflicted she felt. The craving already had her by the throat, not because of the pain.

“Later,” she said, swallowing.

Cesar put the bindle in his pocket. “Maybe there's some thread in the kitchen, a needle.”

“For what?”

“My arm,” he shouted, instantly furious, as though she should know. “Stitch it up.”

In the kitchen he found some rum. He removed his jacket. Much more gingerly, he removed his shirt. The sleeve came away like a sheath of skin and he screamed through his teeth. Blood seethed from the wound again. He rinsed it in the sink, wiping away the dried blood and the seared flesh, and discovered that the bullet had gone straight through. There'd be no need to dig it out. This seemed a good sign, despite the fact he had no strength in the arm. The rim of the muscle hung in shreds.

“All we have to do is clean it up and sew it closed, both sides,” he said. “Find a towel.”

She tried to get up from her chair but her legs collapsed beneath her. He pulled his gun out from under his belt and slammed the butt against the counter. “I've had enough of this,” he shouted. “When the mood hits, you walk. Do it. Now.”

She drew herself up using the chair and the table, then lunged across the kitchen to the cabinets. She reached them on her knees, pulled herself up, sucking air, and searched drawers until a towel appeared. She had no idea if it was clean.

“Here.” She held it out for him to take.

The floor was sticky and there was a smell of mildew brewing in the sink. Cesar snagged the towel, dried his arm, and said, “Come over and sew up the holes.”

“I was never much at girl stuff,” she began, but he aimed the gun at her.

“I can't, I can't,”
he said, in a mocking whine.

“You can't just darn it up like a sweater.”

“Do it.”

He kicked a chair across the room for her and, using it like a walker, she forced herself around the room, pulling open the drawers she hadn't already checked. One drawer seemed the catch-all: In a tangled heap lay buttons, matchbooks, a church key, dice, string, safety pins, pennies, rubber bands, candles, a shoelace, gum—and a spool of black thread with a single needle.

She worked her way back to the table, sat down and wet the thread with her tongue. Her hands shook. He told her to hurry, pressing the towel to his arm to keep the wound clean and stay the blood. Finally, she had the needle threaded and told him to bare the wound. He drew the towel away and she gagged. The flesh was black and mangled. Muscle and bone gaped through the tear.

“You need a doctor,” she said.

He slammed the gun butt down again, this time on the table. “What I need is you to do what I tell you. Stop telling me why you can't.”

She took a moment to regain control of her hands. Once they stopped trembling, she started with the wound on the upper side of the arm, where the skin was softer. She set about looping the thread through his skin, aiming the needle tip at a shallow angle, having no idea if she was doing it right or wrong. Her hands grew sticky with his blood. Cesar drank from the rum bottle, he cursed, he bit his fist. The thread broke twice, his skin ripped where the thread tried to hold and the whole thing fell apart. He savaged her with obscenities then told her to try the underside, where the skin was thicker. That was when the needle broke. He jumped up, screaming. He pulled back the hammer of his pistol and pressed the barrel to her head.