The House of Wolfe (30 page)

They've shot out our headlights and now the motor quits. The shooting stops for a moment, and then there are two more shots, a second apart, and their headlights are out, too, and the only illumination on us is our taillights. Charlie breaks the one on his side and I bust the other, and we're in the blessed dark.

“Guys? You okay?
Guys
, over here!”

Rayo! She shot their lights.

We peek around the Jeep and see the Sierra standing darkly against the back glow of its taillights, both front doors open, Rayo's vague silhouette moving toward it.

“They ran off!” she calls.

We hustle over to the truck as she looks in the driver's door, saying, “JJ?” and then opens the cab back door and asks again, and then we're all at the rear of the camper, which is slanted to the right, the blown tire's wheel mired in the mud. She lifts up the shell window as I lower the bed gate and we see by the taillights' glow that Jessie's not there either.

“They went off that way,” Rayo says, pointing up ahead. “I couldn't see clearly. They had these bags, the money, I guess, I don't know. I couldn't see if she was with them, but she must be! God
damn
it!” She starts sidling in the direction the way they went. “We can catch them. Come on!”

“We
can
catch them,” I say to Charlie. “They don't know if our vehicle's dead and they have to reckon we'll drive up the road, so they'll stay way off it, close to the pit. But with Jessie and those bags, they ain't gonna set any foot-speed record, wherever they're going.”

Rayo's still moving away. “Come
on!
”

“You guys do the chase,” Charlie says. “I'll hoof it up the road in case they try to cut over to the shantytown.”

There's something in his voice besides the urgency of the moment, and he's pressing a hand to his left side and just above his belt, the side away from me. I sidestep for a better look and see a stain under his hand. “Hey man—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says in a lowered voice, glancing past me at Rayo. “Don't announce it. Can't run, but I can walk up the road.” Then loudly says, “Get going,
go!
”

“What is it?” Rayo says. Maybe she caught the thing in his voice too.

“Go!
” Charlie snaps.

We do.

A second later, the taillights go out. I hadn't thought of the silhouettes we made against them. But Charlie did.

53 — JESSIE

Galán is pulling her along by the handcuffs, holding her to the bag hung on his shoulder, Espanto beside them. When they opened fire on the Jeep, she was sure they were going to shoot her, but here she still is, and the only reason she can think of is they still see her as a bargaining chip.

The men cannot believe their tire was shot from a moving vehicle some forty yards behind them and running without headlights, but there's no other explanation and in any event it doesn't matter how it happened. They keep glancing back at the Sierra's taillights, the vague silhouettes moving about them. Then the lights vanish and the darkness is mitigated only by the pit's orange glow from their right and the ground before them is absolute blackness. The rain is in steady drizzle once again and their footing is unsure. They stumble on rocks, their feet suck through mud. Jessie's socks are sogged around her ankles and the pain of her feet is now worse. The bags weigh heavily on the men, and the engulfing fetor adds to the labor of breathing. Up ahead are what look like low black hills, their crests rosy with fire glow.

Speaking in huffing breaths, Espanto says he's sure they killed the Jeep's engine, and just as sure the gringos are coming behind them on foot. But
they're
not weighed down and are sure to catch up.

Not before we get . . . into the Mounts, Galán says, panting. We ambush them . . . throw them in the pit. . . . In the morning when . . . the trucks come . . . we ride back in one.

The Mounts! That's what she sees ahead. Hills of a sort, yes. She's seen them before, on a midsummer day during her research trip, and had been told that's what the mounds of garbage in this region of the pit are called—Los Montes—and as bad as the stink is now, it had been far worse in the summer heat, the storm of flies like some biblical plague. Along here, the rim slants slightly into the pit, and it's too dangerous for the garbage trucks to back up close enough to dump their contents into it, so they unload the garbage on the flanking ground. The daily mounds accumulate, and once a week bulldozers equipped with extrawide tracks and blades on extendable long arms are trucked up here to shove it all in.

They're almost to the nearest mound when Espanto looks back and says, Here they come! Keep going and . . . I'll slow them down.

Jessie sees them. A pair of vague forms in the smoky light. When Espanto stops and turns toward them, they drop to the darker ground. He fires shots in their direction, then hurries to catch up.

Then they're into the mounds, moving through firelight and shadows, weaving around heap after heap of garbage, clanking through tin cans, crunching on Styrofoam, their feet squishing in mud and who knows what else, Jessie again fearful of gashing or puncturing a foot. They catch periodic flashes of the fire pit, its profound stink undiminished by the rain. She hears the skitterings of rats in the rubbish, the low growlings of dogs in the deeper shadows.

They arrive at a small clearing and there's the fire pit, directly before them, their view of it framed by opposing pairs of mounds near the rim. Galán tells Espanto to position himself on the rim side of the mound to the right and he'll set up on the inward side of the one to the left. Their chasers will most likely turn left just before the left-side mound, stepping into Galán's line of fire and giving Espanto a clear shot at their backs. If they come up to the pit to search the rim side of the mounds, they'll be presenting their backs to Galán. Either way, they'll have them in a crossfire.

“Muy bien,” Espanto whispers, and hurries off.

Galán takes Jessie with him.

54 — RUDY AND RAYO

One of the guys stops and turns and we drop to the mud on our bellies just as he opens fire, muzzle flashing. Then he's off again, following the other guy, and we're up and running too. With those bulky bags hanging on them, they're large shapeless forms and we can't tell which one's got Jessie and we can't risk shooting her. They disappear into what Rayo says is a bunch of garbage hills. In the pit's glow they look a little like black buttes with ember-covered crests.

We enter the hills of garbage and stop to look around, listen hard. Through the low patter of the rain, we hear a clatter of cans and head in that direction. We sprint from one mound to the next, pausing to keep a fix on the sounds of their movement, then hustling on, following their winding route. Then we come around a mound and see the fire pit right in front of us, the rim maybe forty feet away. It's a clearing of sorts, maybe a turnaround point for the garbage trucks, flanked by two mounds to either side.

It's unlikely but not out of the question that they'd lie low in the warmth of the rim until daylight. Best to check out the rim sides of both mounds. If they're there, though, they'll be facing the gap between the two mounds, ready for whoever might come to the rim for a look. I put my mouth to Rayo's ear and tell her I'm going to circle around the dark side of the mound on the right and check out the rim. She's to stay right where she is and watch both mounds.

“Got it,” she whispers.

55 — ESPANTO

It's not much of a rim. Maybe six feet wide, slight downward slope covered with gravel. Some garbage trucker risked his ass to dump a load this close. Same goes for the mound opposite. Maybe a bet between drivers, a pissing contest. He keeps the bags on his shoulders, imagining the horror of setting even one of them down and then accidentally bumping it and sending it sliding into the pit. He's crouched low, facing the opposing mound across the gap. His line of sight extends only a few feet past the inward side of the opposite slope, but that's enough to see anybody who turns in there. Excellent crossfire setup. Smart man, Galán.

56 — RUDY

It's awful dark on this side of the mound, and slow going over uncertain ground. The putrid breeze coming off the pit is a mix of warm and cold. I truly doubt there's anyone on the rim and feel like a dope for having chosen to waste time checking it out. These guys are running, not looking for a fight. If they would just let Jessie go, the whole thing would be done with. Which the assholes would've found out if they hadn't been so quick to start shooting.

I'm holding the Beretta muzzle up by my shoulder as I come around the mound and step out onto the rim and I don't see the guy until he's coming up from his crouch and whirling around toward me. If it weren't for the heavy bags hanging on him he might've had me, but the bags slow him enough for me to pop him three times, center mass, staggering him rearward, and he squeezes off a wild one as he steps back off the rim and drops out of sight.

I get on hands and knees and carefully ease up to the edge of the rim and look down at the smoking red-black talus twenty feet below. No sign of him or either bag.

There's a sound to my left and I jerk back and whip the Beretta up . . . and there's Rayo, pistol pointed at me.

We both lower our guns and grin big.

57 — JESSIE AND GALÁN

Rather than position himself at the mound opposite Espanto's, Galán goes past it and then passes two others before crossing a fire-lit patch of ground and posting himself in the deep shadows just beyond it. This is a better spot to lay for them. If they go to the rim, Espanto will still have the edge on them. If they come this way, they will be open targets when they step into that lighted ground. If they go some other way? Fine. He'll stay here until the trucks come in the morning. Before then, Espanto will come looking and find him. And the girl will be in the pit.

He unshoulders one bag with a grunt, then tucks the pistol into his pants and switches his grip on her cuffs to his free hand and lets the other bag slide off his shoulder.

She flinches at the pistol reports—four of them, fairly close by, though she isn't sure of the direction they came from. Galán pulls his gun and grabs her to him, holding her face to his chest and rasping to her to stay quiet.

The last gunshot was from a Glock, he's sure of that, and it may have been Espanto's, though half the world now carries a Glock.

She smells his sweat and feels his heart beating under her cheek. Her cuffed hands, pressed to the side pocket of his jacket, touch on an object it holds. She knows what it is. Recalls the one Espanto used on Belmonte at the Alpha house.

Hey you! Listen!
. . .
Your partner's dead!

Rudy! she thinks. Galán's hold tightens, nearly smothering her. She eases her hands into the jacket pocket.

You hear me?
. . .
Let's make a deal!

Galán believes that Espanto is dead, but he knows the sort of deal they have in mind. Give us the money and the girl and we'll give you a bullet in the head. No, thanks, fuckhead, not today.

If I see you
, Galán yells,
if I hear you coming
. . .
I kill her!

He hears a faint
snick
, and before he can react she twists sideways and drives the blade into his stomach with both hands. In instinctive reaction, he clubs at her with the pistol, but holding her pressed to him as he is, the blow is clumsy and only partially catches her ear.
Shoot her!
he thinks. But she lets go of the knife and grabs the pistol barrel, pushing the muzzle away from her. They slip and fall in the mud, fighting for possession of the gun, she with both hands, he with one, his other arm still holding her to him. They writhe and gasp like possessed lovers and she feels the gun slipping from her grip and clamps her teeth onto his hand, biting hard on the bones of it, tasting muddy blood. He snarls and the gun slips free of them both. His bitten hand searches for it as his other holds tight to her sweatshirt, but she's able to heave herself up over him and drive her forehead hard into his mouth—then pull free and roll away, and she's on her feet and running.

Breathless with pain, he sits up, sees her fading into the deeper darkness, his hand finding the gun, but now she's gone. The switchblade is buried in him to the haft. He takes hold of it with his left hand and yanks it out, breath hissing, eyes flooding.

She's calling for someone.

You're all right, he tells himself, wiping his eyes. It's not bad, it's not bad. Doesn't feel like there's much blood. Get it cleaned, sewn up, cauterized, whatever, you'll be fine. It's only pain. Now think, man.
Think.

Phone. His phone's in the Cherokee. But even if he had it, who could he call? Who's left? There even any reception out here? Fuck it. You don't need help. Never have. You can handle this. He spits a mouthful of blood. Runs his tongue over his mashed lips.

Should have killed the bitch as soon as we were clear of the house.

Now other voices. Briefly, then silent. The gringos.

She knows he has the money. She'll tell them.

Bracing himself with the hand holding the pistol, his other hand at his wound, he manages to get to his knees in the mud, then stand, and tucks the gun into the side of his waistband. He drags the bags over to the near mound and kneels at its base and digs into the garbage with his hands, digs into the rot and stink and filth of it, digs until there's room for one bag, then for two. Then covers them over with the excavated garbage.

Wheezing with the effort, choking on the horrid stench, he throws up, nearly fainting at the twisting agony in his stomach.

He wipes at his eyes again, at the snot streaming from his nose. There, he thinks. That's better. You're all right.