The Devil's Redhead (50 page)

The newcomers changed tactics quickly. The chain gun aimed low for the gas tanks of the sitting vans. There was no hostage to kill, no money to ruin. Both sides had come to steal what the other refused to bring. The nearest of the Mexican vans exploded, blown off its wheels and caroming against the two beside it in a blur of flame and black smoke. For a moment the driver of the nearest van was visible inside the cabin, kicking at the door, then he disappeared in a billowing dark cloud.

Abatangelo covered his head with his arms as the chain gun aimed high again and rounds cut across the grass, tearing at the incinerator wall. Flecks of brick caught him in the face; he flattened, feeling for the wound. His ear was wet with blood. An explosion shook the ground, his tripod fell on top of him and when he looked up he saw a greenish-black cloud and flames engulfing a second van.

The Mexicans began heaving their jars of gasoline at the chain gun, forsaking the rags, hoping the muzzle exhaust would trigger the fumes. With the pelting of gas the chain gun finally caught fire—a small pop of flame then the ammunition went, rocking the van off the ground in the explosion, turning it thirty degrees in the road. Two men fell free. They crept along the ground screaming, flailing at themselves in an effort to put out their blazing clothes.

With the chain gun gone, a ragged cheer went up among the Mexicans, a new fervor, some men crouching to reload or claiming another gun from among the dead, others standing to pick off the unarmed men rolling afire across the gravel. A portion of the windbreak gave way like sand, chewed apart from gunfire. Acrid smoke crept low across the ground, obscuring the two sides from each other. The few vans not consumed in flame had their tires shot flat or ripped clear off their wheel rims in a smoldering shag of rubber.

Gradually the gunfire grew sporadic and men pulled back. Deserters, alone or dragging wounded friends, ran low across the grass field. Abatangelo unscrewed his camera from the tripod, turned and fired shot after shot as the men fled past the incinerator, oblivious to it and him, seeing the hurricane fence in the grassy distance beyond the lone oak tree and reaching it finally, pushing their bloody friends up the chain-link barrier and trying to pull themselves up as well. One man was left there on the sagging fence, hanging dead. On the far side the survivors hit a dead run and vanished.

Back in the gravel lane two men fired at each other point-blank, their arms and heads pulpy with blood. Beyond them the last of Felix Randall's men, wounded, staggering, fell back, limping into the water. Firing under their own vans and using the gas tank explosions as cover, they slipped away, wading through the reeds toward the marina.

Finally sirens could be heard, coming from somewhere far off, sounding small and comical. Unspent rounds went off like firecrackers in the various fires. The road was littered with dead or those who wanted to be dead, crying out or sobbing, scattered around the charred metal husks of the vehicles spewing smoke. An odor of gasoline, cordite and methyl alcohol filled the air, mixed with the stench of smoldering rubber and vinyl and flesh.

Abatangelo rose to his feet, pulling the tarp away. His knees buckled under him, his legs numb. Feeling returned to them gradually as one of the older Mexicans, sitting not fifty feet away, his legs a mash of savaged flesh and blood, put a gun to his own head and fired.

Abatangelo undid the lens cap of the camera around his neck and moved forward, dazed, sick, intent on photographing the carnage as he found it. Serve the story. Shel could not possibly be alive, not now. They'd never have brought a living hostage into this. He felt inhabited by a morbid weightlessness, as though something within him had fled, deserted him. There was nothing to be done. Nothing but go through the motions. She was dead. Accept that. Live, you idiot.

A scavenging dog appeared from the marina, skulking along the edge of the firelight and sniffing the smoke-filled air. Charred bodies littered the gravel. Except for clothing there was no telling one side from the other.

One of the men Abatangelo passed looked up, his face disfigured, a honeycomb of pellet wounds. His dark hair was matted with blood. A gold cross hung around his neck. His whole body shook and he reached out a strangely immaculate hand to clutch Abatangelo's trouser leg as the flash went off.

Farther along the road another of the Mexicans crawled toward the water, his back smoldering. Other men lay dead in bloody grass. The sirens grew closer then stopped, suggesting a roadblock of some sort put up by Felix Randall's crew, one of whom now lay at Abatangelo's feet, curled in his own blood, clutching what remained of his stomach as pieces of his viscera slithered through his hands. He was huge, black-haired, staring up hatefully through his shock as Abatangelo armed his flash. Recalling the name and description Frank had given, he said, “You're Tully. Rick Tully,” and took the man's picture as he died.

Beyond him, engulfed in smoke, a Chicano boy of fifteen or so sat propped against the wall, just below where his compatriots had written the phrase
WOE TO THE BETRAYER
. The boy sat there mumbling, face wet with tears, his chest a blackened mass of blood and hanging flesh. Sobbing, he gestured with his hand, opening it, closing it, opening it again. Abatangelo went to the boy, knelt before him and said, “Hold on.” He placed the boy's arms across his chest to stay the blood, took his own coat off and lodged it there. By the time the police arrived and got the triage unit on the scene, the boy would be dead, he knew that, but even so, he told him, “You're gonna make it out, you understand?”

The boy convulsed from shock, eyes glazed.

“You look at me,” Abatangelo shouted. “Start counting backwards, understand? Start counting backwards by threes. Like this: one hundred, ninety-seven, ninety-four, come on …”

The boy moved his mouth but no words came. He reached out one hand and Abatangelo had to put it back. “No. No. You've got to press down, you've got to hold that there.” Shortly the boy's lips stopped moving. Blood pooled inside his mouth. The eyes stiffened. Abatangelo rose, stepped back and cursed, shouting at no one and everyone.

One of the Mexican vans remained intact. The metal was pocked with bullet holes at shoulder height. The lower rounds had taken out two tires, missing the gas tank. It sagged into the road. It occurred to him that, despite the insanity of it, Shel, or what remained of her, might actually be in there. He couldn't leave without knowing. Stumbling, he came abreast of the van, fingering the torn metal, watching his firelit shadow ripple across its coarse gray paint. He reached for the bay door handle, turned the latch and slid the door back fast on its runners.

Another boy faced him, this one younger still. He looked no more than twelve: thin dark face, all teeth and eyes. He was holding a shotgun.

“Don't,” Abatangelo said.

The boy raised the barrel anyway and Abatangelo was barely able to bat it away before the shock of flame and noise erupted, spraying white-hot bird pellet inches from his ear. The concussion knocked him back, off-balance, his ears pounding and ringing as he hit the mud hard, gravel chewing at his skin. He scrambled to his knees, all but deaf, arms raised, pleading with the boy, screaming words that sounded dull and far-off inside his own head: “Don't do it, don't shoot, don't …” The boy stared at him in an agony of terror, mouth gaping, eyes livid with tears.

Abatangelo reached for the gun barrel. It scalded his hand and he let go, howling. The boy went to aim again and Abatangelo swatted the barrel, reached for the stock and wrestled it away in one hard pull. Two-handed, he hurled the weapon out into the flame-spangled water.

He reached out his good hand. “Come,” he said. The boy recoiled in dread. Forsaking English, Abatangelo said,
“Venga. Venga!”
He looked off in the directions of the approaching sirens. He mimed running and pointed to the hurricane fence. The boy cringed, huddling against the van's far wall. No, Abatangelo thought. This ain't gonna happen. He scrambled into the van, grabbed the boy, threw him over his shoulder and jumped back out onto the gravel and started to run as the boy kicked halfheartedly, squirming. Reaching the end of the low wall, he set the boy down, shoving him in the direction of the hurricane fence. He pointed and shrieked in the boy's face: “Run!”

The boy lifted his arms, put his wrists to the side of his head, weeping. Abatangelo could see the lights of an approaching cruiser a half mile up from the marina. There was no more time. He turned and ran himself, reaching the incinerator in a half dozen lurching strides. Seeing the damage to the brick from gunfire, he marveled at his own survival. He gathered up the two other cameras, left the rest of the equipment and made off in a crouching run for the fence, heading for a spot twenty yards away from the dead man left there hanging.

It wasn't till he reached the fence that he realized the boy was behind him. Panting, they stood there together as the cruiser reached the marina's far end. Abatangelo made a stirrup with his hands, fitting the burned one under the other, gestured with his head and shouted, “Up.” The boy inserted his foot, Abatangelo snarled from the pain but heaved him upward and the boy latched on to the fence top, brought his leg over and dropped on the far side. He did not flee. His eyes still dripping tears, he gestured with his hands for Abatangelo to follow. Abatangelo wrapped his camera straps around his neck and scaled up after.

Once he dropped clear on the other side, the boy grabbed his sleeve, but Abatangelo, raising his hand, said,
“Momento.”
Knees bent, he hurried down the fence line to the man left dead. Legs dangling on the far side, torso impaled on the top, his head gazed down lifelessly at the side from which freedom had beckoned. Abatangelo knew this was the shot he had to take, the one that defined the whole insane business. He checked the camera; he had two frames left. He crouched down, armed the flash and shot twice, the lens pointing straight upward. The flash erupted like lightning, illuminating the vacant eyes, the horrific maw. The film rewound in a humming whirl. Abatangelo rose, stepped back and collided with the boy.

“Roberto,” the boy whispered, staring up at the body.

The highway was thick with police cruisers wailing toward the marina. Abatangelo wound his way along back roads, weaving through the wooded hills to the south of the strait, beyond the refineries and the Delta Highway. The boy rode beside him silently, staring out the window, hands folded in his lap. They reached downtown Martinez fifteen minutes shy of five o'clock. Given winter light, sunrise remained an hour off. Streetlights flashed in the misty predawn dark. The streets were empty.

Abatangelo pulled to a stop and finally took a moment to wrap a handkerchief around his scalded hand. Taking heart from the fact no blistering had appeared, he reached across the seat for the glove compartment. He pulled out the plasticine envelope containing his pictures of Shel. Producing one, he held it up for the boy and said,
“Dónde?”
Where?

The boy looked lost, sitting there chewing his hand in the intermittent light-and-dark of the flashing overhead streetlight. His brow furrowed, he looked from the picture to Abatangelo and back again. He shrugged and shook his head.

“Try,” Abatangelo said, pushing the picture closer to the boy's face. Licking his lips, the boy studied the image closely. He shook his head again.

“Do you know her?” He fished his memory for the Spanish word for “know,” then ended up just pointing to her image and saying,
“Sí?”

The boy continued shaking his head. Abatangelo wasn't sure he'd ever stopped.

“Okay,” he said gently, surrendering. “All right.”

The boy looked out at the empty corner, the bus terminal to one side, a shabby park to the other. Abatangelo had no idea how close to home the boy was, or how he'd get back. Wondering how he should convey that he'd drive the boy wherever he needed to go, he reached up with his burned hand, wrapped in his handkerchief, and dabbed at the side of his own face. Blood still seeped from the wound inflicted by the splintered brick sent flying in ricochet by the chain gun. This, added to his other wounds, made him look vaguely menacing, he supposed. What could be more menacing, after all, than a man lucky to be alive?

The boy turned around and stared at him. In time, licking his lips again, the boy said,
“Gracias.”

Abatangelo smiled, inspecting the handkerchief for pus.
“De nada.”
He fished for the words to say he was sorry about his friend, but his memory refused to oblige so he said it in English. The boy blinked, glanced sidelong at him, then looked out the window again.

“Cómo está?”
Abatangelo ventured.

The boy chuckled bitterly.
“Escantado de la vida,”
he said, gesturing with a mocking wave of his hand.

Abatangelo studied the boy more closely. Terror lingered in his eyes, he couldn't sit still. How long, Abatangelo wondered, before the macho lust for revenge appears. He wanted to tell the boy, Take a tip from me: Don't. Remember what happened tonight, all of it, the false promises, the bravado, the sloganeering, the butchery. Take it to your grave. He wanted to reach across the car, grab the boy, connect eyes and tell him: Remember your friend, left to die, impaled on a fence. Don't avenge him. Grieve for him.