The Water Knife (38 page)

A
ngel was with his mother again. She was making tamales, taking corn husks and cornmeal, wrapping them around red shreds of pork. In the background an old track of Don Omar played, and she was laughing, smiling as she worked, moving to the music, and he was watching, peering over the counter.

“Get a chair,” she said. “You can’t see from down there.”

He climbed up beside her.

She showed him how to wrap the cornmeal. He called it corn sushi, and she laughed at that and hugged him. They made corn sushi together while she teased him that maybe he should learn Japanese and go into business if he liked sushi so much, and he’d felt close to her while they waited for his sisters to come home from school.

He remembered the heat coming from the pot where she steamed all the tamales together. He could remember the tile of the counter, could remember everything about it, the smell and the red apron she wore…

He was sad because he knew it was only a memory, and she was dead, and Mexico with her, and so were Aya and Selena, and so was Papa. But it was okay, he decided. At least he could be with Mama now. He was safe, and he could smell corn in the air and feel the scald of the steam. Could smell the ingredients burning. Could smell the smoke.

Mama was looking at him strangely. He realized that he was burning.

His whole body was burning hot.

Mama kept saying, “We need to get you to a doctor.”

Angel wanted to tell her it was okay. Everything died. She was dead, after all, so why should she worry about him? But she was praying
to the Virgin to protect him, and he tried to explain again that there really wasn’t anything left to save, that he and the Virgin and Jesus had all made the split a long, long time ago, but she was still down on her knees beside him, praying—

“Wake up. Come on. Wake up.”

She was kissing him, breathing; Angel gasped. He tried to sit up. Fell back with pain ripping through him.

Lucy sat back on her heels, sweaty and smudged, pretty journo looking down on him, his own personal saint.

Not a bad way to wake up.

Except he hurt. God damn he hurt. He couldn’t move an inch without hurting, and a man was kneeling beside him, holding a needle.

“Well, he’s not dead yet,” the man joked.

“Hold on,” Lucy said, gripping Angel’s hand.

He wanted to tell her that she was hurting his hand with how tight she was squeezing, but the man slid a needle into Angel’s skin.

Angel went under.

T
he
sicario
was sitting beside him. They were both sitting on little plastic chairs, keeping company with the body of the man the
sicario
had killed. Angel knew the
sicario
was a bad man, and that he was in terrible danger from him, but the man seemed to like Angel’s presence, and Angel didn’t dare run.

The
sicario
had a bottle of mezcal in his hand, and he used it to gesture at the victim he’d just gunned down. “That’s how I’m going,” the
sicario
said. “Live by the sword, die by the sword, you know?” He looked at Angel seriously. “Remember that,
mijo
. We live by the sword, and we die by the sword. Make a meal of lead, and lead makes a meal of you.”

Angel knew the man was Angel’s father, under the skin. The
sicario
was his real father. Not the cop who Angel had fled north with years ago and who had promised that everything would be okay, and that he wasn’t someone the narcos would care about. The man who had lost his whole family because he didn’t know how to sniff the wind and understand when it had turned against him.

The
sicario
was Angel’s real father. This assassin saw the world without delusion.

“I’m going to die by the sword, too, but you don’t have to,” the
sicario
said. “You go up to El Norte. Make another try. No more of this eating by lead.”

“But what about Mama and Aya?”

“You don’t get to take anyone with you,
¿entiendes
?” He shook the bottle warningly. “Either that, or you stay here, and you live by the sword and you die by the sword. So you go north and live clean. Down here it’s too hot for you.”

“But I don’t live by the sword.”

He laughed. “Don’t you worry about that,
mijo
. You will.”

He leaned over with his mezcal bottle and starting jabbing Angel’s body with its mouth. And everywhere the bottle touched, miraculous holes opened in Angel’s flesh. Blood spilled out. Angel stared down at his bullet holes. He wasn’t scared. The wounds hurt, but they seemed right to him. As if he’d always been meant to have them.

“I got holes in me,” he murmured.

The
sicario
took a swig of mezcal and laughed. “So get your woman to sew them up.”

“She is sewing me up.”

“Not that woman.” The
sicario
looked exasperated. “The one who put them there in the first place!” He drank from the bottle, then jabbed it into Angel again, giving him another bullet hole. “You really are too stupid to live. Stupido. Dumbo.” Two more jabs. Two more bullet holes.

“Your Spanish is bad.”

The
sicario
laughed. “You been away so long, how would you know?” He grinned at Angel. “You want some advice,
mijo
? Don’t piss off
las mujeres
. ‘It is better to live in a wasteland, than with an angry woman.’ You know that saying? Deep
verdad
there,
mijo
. Don’t matter if it’s Mexico or Chihuahua Cartel or up there in El Norte. A pissed-off woman will cut off your balls and leave you singing like a sparrow.”

“But I’m not married.”

The
sicario
smiled knowingly. “All the little gangsters who run around on their girls say that.” He held up an admonishing finger. “But the girls, they know. They know what you’re up to. Even if they don’t say anything, they know. Look what happened to me!” He gestured
at his body, and Angel saw that the man, too, was riven with bullet holes.

“You see what my woman did?” the
sicario
said. “And now they all sing songs about this
puta
. It was supposed to be my
corrido
, but they gave it to her, and I get, what? A couple verses, and then the bitch does this to me.”

He leaned over, gesturing sharply with his bottle. “And that part in the song where I beat her till she spit blood? Not true! I swear it on my mother. Sure, maybe I got around a little on her. But I never beat her hard.” He shook his head seriously. “All that was lies for her song.”

Angel laughed at his excuses. “It’s a good thing you aren’t up north. Women up there, they don’t put up with all that shit.”

The
sicario
looked exasperated. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,
mijo
! Don’t cheat on northern women. They will fuck you up.”

Angel looked at him, confused. “But I only just met her.”

The
sicario
raised his hands heavenward, exasperated.

“He’s too stupid to live, Skinny Mother. I try to tell him, but I’ve seen
cholobis
who got more brains. Lemme just shoot him. It’ll be better for all of us.”

A
ngel woke with a gasp.

Lucy leaned over him, her hand gentle on his brow. His body felt as if it had been run over by a train, leaving nothing but bruised and shredded meat.

He was in a half-finished plywood room with exposed studs. A sack of saline hung from a nail in the wall. Beside it Britney Spears stared out at him from a crinkled poster, Botoxed and toothless, promising Granny Time.

He was roasting in the heat. He tried to throw off the sheet but just found his own sweat-slick skin. Bullet hole puckers and new sutures. A history of all his mistakes.

Someone had been digging in his chest and guts. New stitches pinched his flesh. He remembered years ago, lifting his shirt to Catherine Case, the first time they’d met. Saying he wasn’t afraid of bullets. Showing off his scars.

Got a few more now
.

He tried to get up, but it was too difficult. He fell back, trembling.

Lucy laid a gentle hand on his chest. “Take it easy. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

He tried to speak, finally managed to croak, “
Agua
.” It was too hard to say more.
“Por—”

English
.

“Please,” he whispered. “Water.”

“All I’ve got is Clearsacs.”

“ ’Sgood.”

She held a bag and straw to his lips, but she took the bag away before he could really get a good drink.

“No more?” he asked.

“As soon as all the organ grafts finish regrowing, you can drink all you want.”

Angel wanted to argue, but he was too tired, and from the sound of her, she wouldn’t bend anyway.

“How long…I been out?”

“A week.”

He nodded. Let his eyes close. Memories of dreams plucked at him. The
sicario
poking him full of bullet holes, grinning maliciously. That evil man and his mezcal bottle, all pissed off about women and loyalty.

Angel opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling, thinking on debts and betrayals. Assassins and old
corridos
. Songs of violence and revenge. He was alive. A surprise, that. And Lucy was sitting beside him. The woman who’d gotten him shot.

“So,” he whispered, “you kill me…then you…” He swallowed, his throat sticking with dryness. “Then you save me?”

Lucy laughed self-consciously. “Guess so.”

“You’re…” He swallowed again. “You some kind of fucked-up bitch, you know that?”

To his surprise, Lucy laughed harder. And then he started to laugh too, a painful wheezing that hurt so much that he almost stopped breathing, except that it felt so good to be able to laugh at all.

He reached out to her. “You’re about…the best thing I ever woke up to.”

“Even when you’re all shot up?”

“Especially then.”

They regarded each other. Lucy was the one who broke eye contact.

“I didn’t want to be part of it,” she said. She stood abruptly and began collecting syringes and saline bags and disinfectant packs from around where he lay. Suddenly busy. Avoiding looking at him.

“Part of what?”

“This,” she said, still tidying, still not looking. “Phoenix.” She made a wave of her hand. “I used to think I could just cover this place, and it wouldn’t affect me. And then all of a sudden I’m sucked in, and I’m part of it. Part of the lies. The betrayals.” A quick embarrassed glance at Angel. “The murders. I’m part of it. And I didn’t even see it coming.”

“They went after your family,” he said. “That’s powerful pressure.”

“I thought I was immune.” She laughed bitterly. “I thought I knew this place, and now it turns out that I’m just as wet as when I came down here on my first assignment. I thought I was better than these people, and it turns out I’m the same as all of them.”

“Everybody breaks,” Angel said. “You find the right weak spot, everybody breaks.”

“You’d know.”

“It’s what I do.” He reached out to her. Hurting. “Come here a sec.”

She looked like a cornered animal, wishing for anything other than to be close to him, but she came closer anyway. Knelt beside him.

He reached out and took her hand. “Under the right pressure, everyone breaks. You beat someone enough, they talk. You threaten someone enough, they move. You scare someone enough, they sign.”

“That’s not who I am.”

Angel gripped her hand tighter. “Nobody would care if you let me die. Might even make you a hero.” He twined his fingers in hers. “I owe you.”

“No. You don’t.” She didn’t meet his gaze.

He didn’t bother arguing the point.

Lucy might measure the weight of his debt against her own guilt, but Angel didn’t blame her for the betrayal. You didn’t judge people
for caving under pressure; you judged them for those few times when they were lucky enough to have any choice at all.

Lucy had saved him when she could have walked away. If she still felt guilt for her betrayals, well, that was her code. Angel had his own, and his code said that betrayals happened all the time, for small reasons and large.