Salvation Boulevard (23 page)

Their suspension was no better than mine, and I could see that they almost lost it. The ground was getting rougher, small hillocks up ahead and a dry riverbed.

“There's a handgun and a shotgun in there. Get them both. Get them up here, but stay low. Crawl, baby, crawl. Put the back seat down so you stay flat . . . . Are you doing that?”

“Yes. I'm doing it as fast as I can.”

“Don't hurry. Do it slow and careful. We're gonna come out of this.”

“I know that,” she said. “I'm with you, Dad,” expressing full faith and trust, beyond reason.

I heard the seat go down. A moment later, my shotgun appeared between the two front seats. It's a Remington 870, the barrel cut down to fourteen inches by a smith up in Nebraska, which required a whole ton of paperwork, but it was legal. I took it with my right hand and set it on the seat. Then I reached back as she handed me my handgun, a Heckler & Koch USP compact .45. It only takes eight in the magazine, but they're big ones.

Now I was armed. What was my next move?

“Angie, get down on the floor. Between the seats.”

“I want to see,” she said.

“Get the fuck down,” I yelled at her.

She gasped, but got down.

“Sorry,” I said. I never swear at her, or even in front of her.

“That's okay,” she said.

I needed to put some distance between us—so that I'd have a moment, even half a moment, to do something. How? If I tried to turn, that would put my side to them as the distance was closing, and they could get a shot off. They hadn't shot so far. No point, bouncing the way both of us were. There was some professionalism there. Not necessarily a good thing for me.

I needed a moment in which I could get turned around so I would be facing them. Preferably with something between them and me.

There was the dry riverbed almost right in front of me. I veered left toward it. I dove into it. The ground was smoother in there, and I was able to pick up the pace.

The Explorer did the same and followed me in. Dust billowed up behind me. That was good. It had to be blinding them, maybe even slowing them down. The river's track got deeper and shallower and then deeper again. When we were in a deep spot, lots of fine earth
kicking up into a cloud behind me, I turned hard right and went up the bank. As I came over the edge, we got airborne again. This was going to cost me hundreds of dollars in shocks and who knows what and was taking a year off the Cherokee's life, and it was already a year too old.

We came down hard. I turned right, sliding and skidding, and hit the brakes. As we slid to a stop, I flung open the door, grabbed both guns, and jumped out. I got lucky. Buried in the dust cloud, they'd missed my turn, and they had to put on the brakes and make their turn after my spot.

When they came up out of the riverbed, I was leaning over the hood of my SUV, facing them, the bulk of the Jeep between us and the Remington pointed straight at them.

I fired. The gun roared like thunder. The sound rolled in waves out across the scrub in every direction. The Explorer hit a bump as I fired. It rose up so that my shot missed their front windshield, but I took out a headlight and peppered the grill. I pumped and put another round in the chamber and fired again. They were starting to turn. I got the side window and saw it shatter. I put the shotgun down on the hood and picked up the HK. I stood—there was little chance of them getting a decent shot off, careening around like they were—and held it two-handed, steady and calm, just like they taught us to at the academy, following the target for a tracking shot. I thought I put it right through the busted side window, but I couldn't tell if I hit anyone.

They were turning away. I shot off three more rounds, hoping to hit something. If not either of them, then the gas tank or a tire. But I didn't hit anything except the body of the vehicle, if that.

I cursed myself. I'd had my chance and I'd blown it.

Now they could do what I'd done. Get some distance. Get out with their vehicle between us. Maybe with rifles. Who knew what they had. Once they were on foot, they could get good, steady shots off. They could circle around and come at me from two sides. Or one could pin me down from in front, while the other got around behind me.

What had I done to my little girl?

God was with us.

They drove off. Maybe one was hurt. Or dead. Maybe they just didn't have the stomach for a firefight. Whatever the reason, they were going. If they stopped to set up an ambush, I would know it because their vehicle was kicking up a dust cloud that was visible for half a mile.

I opened the back door, asking Angie, who was lying on the floor, “Are you alright?”

“I'm okay,” she said.

“You can get up. They're gone.”

She gathered herself up and stepped out of the car.

“You're sure you're alright?” I asked.

She nodded. And looked perfectly fine. She looked at me with a small kind of smile, then said, “And, Dad . . . ”

“What?”

“I won't tell Mom.”

I started to laugh. It wasn't that funny, but the laughter came up from in the middle of my chest. I tried to hold it in because, after all, this had been
serious.
But I couldn't. Then her smile burst into full bloom, and she started laughing and giggling too. We laughed harder and harder. I laughed so hard that I had to lean against the car and hold my stomach. Angie was laughing just as hard, tears coming
into her eyes. The laughter kept coming and coming until I made it stop just so I could breathe.

I put my arms around her and held her close. “I love you, Angie,” I said. “I love you so, so much.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”

There we were with my arms around her completely, holding her as close as I could, with her arms around me, her head against my chest. We were like that for awhile when she said, “Dad, that was awesome. That was totally awesome.”

“You peeked,” I said. Then I said sternly, “I told you to stay on the floor. You could have been killed. Angie . . . ”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “But it was totally awesome.”

“Alright,” I said. “And I won't tell Mom.”

Inside Kavanaugh Golf Club Estates, which is a gated community with very high security and its own patrols, there's a large home—almost a compound because it has two cottages—with its own walls, its own gate, high-tech surveillance cameras on all corners, and its own security team.

It belongs to Jorge Guzman de Vaca.

I'd come to make a deal with the devil.

I needed something desperately: safe haven for my daughter. And I couldn't trust any of the saints.

Such deals are the stuff of legend. All the stories are the same. The human wants some material thing; the devil wants his soul. Make no mistake, I'd trade anything for my daughter's life. But the contest would be to see if I could negotiate a better deal. Then both of us would watch out, because as the stories tell, there's always a twist in the contract's tail.

 

After we'd gotten into the estates and then past Guzman's own security, he came to the door himself, and, holding it open, he said, “Carl, my friend, welcome. Please come in. Wonderful surprise, you coming to see me. And who is this young lady?”

Angie was completely wide-eyed. More agog at the mansion and the man than she'd been in the chase and the gunfight.

“My daughter, Angie,” I said.

“Welcome to my house,” he said to her and offered his hand. “My name is Jorge. And if there is anything you would like, please, it would be my pleasure. Come in, come in,” he said, leading the way. The house was Spanish—Mexican—in the grand style. He led us through the high-ceilinged foyer into the living room. That was higher still—two stories high with a balustraded balcony that ran around three sides. I guessed that the bedrooms were up there. The fourth wall was mostly glass with arches and columns. A second set of columns and arches outside created a covered walkway that kept the sun from shining directly into the house. The windows looked out onto courtyard with a pool and an artificial waterfall, landscaped—just like the front of the house was—with flowering desert plants and lush, trailing bougainvillea.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

He understood that I meant not in front of Angie. He smiled and said, “Give me a moment.” He went over to Angie and told her, “Look around if you like. In these cabinets here,” he opened them, “there is an immense collection of music CDs. Maybe you will see things you like. I will be right back. Sit anywhere. Do what you like.”

When Jorge was gone, Angie came close to me and said, “What is this place?”

“He's a man I know,” I said, trying to figure out how to explain it all and failing as she looked at me, waiting for the rest.

Fortunately, Jorge returned. He was with an older woman, maybe twenty, twenty-five years older than he himself was. Her clothes were expensive and dignified, a thin gold chain and gold cross around her neck, and the glitter of a diamond in each ear. “Carl, I would like you to meet my mother, Luisa.”

“How do you do,” I said.

“Is my pleasure,” she said, with the Mexican accent that Jorge had worked so hard to erase in himself. “Welcome to our home.”

“And this is his daughter, Angie.”

“Hello,” Angie said respectfully.

“That's a lovely name,” Luisa said. “Is it short of Angelina? Angelique ?”

“No, it's just Angie,” my daughter said.

“From the song,” I said. “The Rolling Stones.”

“Oh, Mick Jagger,” Luisa said with lively eyes. “I love that song. When I was young, it would make me cry. What a wonderful name,” she said to Angie. “Much better than those other ones.”

My daughter, who'd been mildly burdened by her name and the explanation that went with it, especially to most of her own generation who had barely a clue about the greatest rock band in the world, was quite taken with this response.

“Why don't you and I go into the kitchen and get you a Coca-Cola or whatever you want, and maybe some food. We have our own cook,” she confided. “For when I get lazy.”

They walked out together.

“She's very kind,” I said to Jorge, though I wondered, as she had raised Jorge and his younger brother, who was a stone cold killer. On the other side of the scale, their youngest brother was a heart surgeon. There were very fat dossiers on Jorge in every law-enforcement agency in the Southwest.

“Yes, thank you. I think so,” he said.

He led the way out to the courtyard. As we went through the glass doors, he touched a switch and music began to play from the outdoor speakers. “Ahh,” he said with some pleasure when he heard what came on, “
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
” He led me to an elegant cast iron table with matching chairs near the waterfall. It was a lovely effect. Also, the splashing, combined with the piano and strings, would shred any attempt at audio surveillance.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“If it is in my power, it is yours.”

“I'll get straight to the point,” I said. He gave me a nod that said that was good. “Someone tried to kill me half an hour ago. With Angie in the car. I don't know if there are more of them out there, or if they're waiting for me at home. I need a place for her to stay.”

“What about yourself?” he asked.

“Yes, I wouldn't want to leave her alone very long. But someplace I could leave her and go out and not be worrying every minute, is it safe?”

“We have the two cottages. One is for staff,” he said, by which he meant his bodyguards. There were four of them, two on and two off, twenty-four/seven. That would put an armed guard, and a small fortress, around my daughter.

As for her being safe from him, I also knew from all those dossiers and the thousands of hours of surveillance that his public posture of respecting women was pretty genuine. His sins were all of the venal kind, not the carnal. Unless you counted the mistress that he kept in very respectable style in her own small home at the other end of the estate. They'd been together fifteen years, and she'd be about forty now. On those occasions where he'd been observed straying from her, it was always with adult women. He was a proper and careful man who only committed crimes for profit. Once there was money on the table, of course, there was little that he wouldn't do.

“The other was for my mother, but since my wife passed away, she's moved in here. It has a telephone, cable, whatever you need. For how long do you think this will be? No, no, it doesn't matter. As long as you need.”

“Maybe just a few hours, maybe a day, two at the most. If it's more than that, I'll find some other solution.”

Again he nodded, agreeably. “We'll get you keys, tell the guards. You can come and go as you please.”

“Wait,” I said. “I want to be clear about this. I don't want to owe you anything.”

He sat back and showed me, with restraint, his other face. His business face. His crime face, if you will. I knew perfectly well that he assumed that if he helped me now, he would own me forever. If that was the deal, I would take my chances out on the street.

“So, I'm going to pay you up front,” I said.

He looked skeptical. Very skeptical. And cold as a snake.

“Your cousin, Domingo.”

“Yes?” he said.

Domingo was doing mandatory life as a three-time loser. Both Domingo and Jorge knew that he'd been set up. But what they didn't know was how lazy and sloppy the cops had been. Another tidbit from Rafe Halderson in his giggle with glee days, before he took the last, hard fall. What a hoot it had been that they'd done it with ten ounces of mannitol and baking soda and a lab tech who generally found it easier to certify that a seizure was anything the cops said it was rather than bother to cook it and put it through his chemistry set. An independent test would be a Harry Potter magic key that unlocked the fortress of stone. “I don't know the technicalities of how you would do it—” I began.