The House of Wolfe (25 page)

Chong's eyes are
this
big after hearing about the tool kit—and maybe, too, the name “Jaguaros.” Tumaro pulls him to his feet and runs a pair of flex-cuffs under his belt buckle and fastens them on his wrists, then hauls him over to one of the SUVs and puts him in the backseat. Charlie gets in with him, and Tumaro and another guy get in the front.

The other guys and I head for the other vehicle. The kid's no longer at the wheel of the micro, but the windows are jammed with faces. One of them brings a phone up to his ear and I scowl and point my forefinger at him, my thumb cocked like a pistol hammer, and he ducks below the window. The other faces look down at him and laugh.

As we head back up the road, we pass the kid driver, walking backward along the muddy shoulder with his collar turned up and his thumb out. His pockets packed with Yankee dollars. His microbus-driving career done with.

We're halfway back to the Wolfe building when the Jaguaro riding shotgun gets a phone call. He listens a minute, then says, “Muy bien, jefe,” and puts up the phone. He tells the other Jaguaro and me that the call was from Tumaro up ahead, who said he'd just received a report that Mateo's been shot and is in emergency surgery. He and “la muchacha,” as the Jaguaro refers to Rayo, got into a gunfight with the guy tailing Sosa. The tail's dead. Rigo's at the hospital and will join us at the Jiménez building as soon as he can.

Is the girl all right? I ask.

The Jaguaro shrugs and says, He didn't say.

33 — JESSIE

She'd meant to wait about half an hour before returning to the bathroom, but now isn't sure if it's been that long yet or much longer.

She's been picturing the bathroom window. Studying its structure in her head. Imagining how she might work her way out of it feetfirst. She can do it, she knows she can.
If
the sash can bear her weight.

Another worry is that Cabrito or Gallo might draw open the drapes. Anyone at those windows who looks to the left would be able to see her going out. But except for now and then parting the drapes just enough to check the weather, they've left them closed. Probably on the theory that the more confused their prisoners are about what time of day it is, the more tractable they are.

Her whole body aches, but to hell with it. Pain is only pain. A short while ago Luz had gently waked her from her feigned doze and asked if she was hungry. She was ravenous but didn't eat much—half a cheese sandwich, part of a small bag of corn chips, a few sips of orange soda. She feels stronger for having eaten the small bit she did, but didn't want to burden her stomach for the work ahead. Cabrito had shaken Aldo by the shoulder and asked if he wanted to eat, but Aldo only groaned and Cabrito flapped a dismissive hand at him. Luz now seems almost as downcast as Susi, and Jessie's glad of their disinclination to converse.

The food had been brought up by the dark bony woman she had seen at the kitchen door last night. After setting the sandwiches on the high table at the wall and the sodas in the Styrofoam cooler, the woman went over to the men at their card game and said something to Gallo. He made a face of irritation and went out into the hall with her, taking his hand of cards with him. As soon as Gallo was out of the room, Cabrito sneaked a look at the next few cards at the top of deck. He saw Jessie watching him and winked at her and she looked away. Then Gallo came back in and they resumed the game.

With your permission, Jessie says to Gallo in a small voice and with a look of affliction. I really have to use the toilet again. I shouldn't have eaten anything.

That reminds me of a joke, Cabrito says. There was this American woman who went into a Mexican restaurant and asked—

Never mind that, Gallo says to him, and tells Jessie to go ahead.

When the bathroom door shuts, Gallo says he'll be right back and heads for the hallway, taking his cards with him. Cabrito calls after him, Remember it's
my
play. As soon as Gallo's gone, he again peeks at the upper cards in the remaining deck and selects two of them and places them at the top. In less than a minute Gallo returns and sits down and Cabrito asks what's going on. Nothing, Gallo says, make your play. Oh, I see, Cabrito says . . . big fucking secret. Well, that's fine with me. He casts away two cards, takes two off the top of the deck and slips them into his fanned hand, says, “Woo-hoo!” and lays down the cards in a spread. Gallo says, “Carajo!” and tosses in his hand. He turns to Luz and Susi and asks them if Cabrito rearranged the deck while he was gone. The women say they weren't watching.

His face stiff with injured dignity, Cabrito says, How can you think such a thing? We're
partners,
man.

Jessie moves fast. She opens the sash and chins herself up onto the sill as before and looks out and sees that the trash bin remains in place directly below. The rain's still a drizzle but the air's colder now. She braces herself with her left arm and reaches up with her right to grip the top of the sash near its outward end, praying for the solidity of its hinges and the firmness of its wood. She pulls down hard on it, testing it. The top hinge makes a wee creak but holds.

Pulling on the sash, she raises herself a little higher, then whips her left arm up to grab the top of the window frame, a narrow projection of maybe two inches but enough for a strong fingerhold. She moves her feet up the wall, one over the other, her upper body leaning farther back and her knees bending until they're pressed to her chest and her feet are almost at the sill and she's balled up tight but for her outstretched arms holding her in place, her aching fingers clutching the top of the window frame.

She eases one foot and then the other through the window until the backs of her knees are on the sill, then works her thighs forward, her legs dangling in the cold rain, then wriggles her butt up onto the sill. It's a close fit but there's enough clearance. She moves both hands to the right side of the window frame and grips it tight, and bit by bit, with a series of grunting jerking twists, turns rightward, her hips bumping and scraping the sides of the window frame, her legs bobbing in a sidewise dangle that pains her lower back. Then her trousers snag on some rough projection of the upper frame, holding her in place, and she has a moment of panic in which she pictures the bastards coming in and finding her stuck like this and laughing at her. She keeps jerking to her right until the khaki slips loose and she's able to wrestle herself onto her abdomen, shifting her hands to either side of her waist on the sill. The sill presses hard into her belly and she has an impulse to throw up but fights it back. Her legs now hang straight down and her toes bump the wall. As she wriggles farther out the window, she feels the heavier pull of her legs. She grits her teeth as her ribs grate over the sill, and then her breasts feel like they're being skinned by it as the sweatshirt bunches up above them. Then the bunched shirt slips off the sill and for a terrifying instant she's falling—then jolts to a halt. Hanging by her arms outside the window in the misty rain.

Yes!

She puts her feet to the wall and pushes herself outward on them so she can look down between her legs and see the bin below. Even though she's closer to it now, it looks farther away than before.

Do it! she thinks—and lets go of the sill.

Her heart and stomach rise as she drops, legs together and arms straight up in effort to not hit them on the edge of the bin. Her feet drive though the mushy cardboard and the instinct of her dance training keeps her knees half-loose and she hits the bottom of the bin with a momentum that compresses her to a squat and rebounds her against the side of the bin with the bad wheel, and the bin tips over.

For a moment she lies there, burrowed in the soggy cardboard, inhaling the stink of the bin. Then she carefully tests her legs and arms and marvels that she's unhurt.

You're
out
of there! Move!

She shoves at the enveloping cardboard and crawls out of the bin, almost laughing aloud in her elation. She grins up into the gentle patter of cold rain, then gets to her feet and looks over at the back door and sees Rubio standing there, smiling at her, his hands crossed in front of him, a pistol in one.

The dark bony woman is looking at her over his shoulder. At her hip are the kids who moved the bin.

Oh God
damn
, Jessie thinks.

I would have made a very large bet that you'd break your ass and we'd have to carry you in, Rubio says. Gag you to keep the screams from irritating us too much. Go ahead and run and let's see if I can shoot you in the leg. I'm such a bad shot, though, I might hit you in the back instead. Maybe the head.

She gives a thought to running for it, but stands fast. He grins and beckons her. Slips the gun into his pants. Steps aside for her to enter.

The door is to the kitchen. As Jessie goes in, the dark woman and the kids back away. With Rubio behind her, she passes into the adjoining dining room where the squint-eyed girl sits before a bowl of pared and cored apples, seasoning them with sugar and cinnamon and watching a telenovela on the old black-and-white TV. She gives Jessie a commiserative glance.

Standing by the table is the Apache.

Well, look who's here, my favorite sweetie, he says, showing his wrecked grin. He grabs his crotch, just below the Glock tucked in his pants, and says, Would you like some more, my love?

The sight of him infuses her with such terrified hatred that her only thought is to distract and strike, as Charlie taught her. She looks off to the side of him as if at someone behind him and tilts her head at Apache, and as he starts to turn to see who's there, she steps forward and kicks at his balls with all the force she can muster.

Her unshod foot catches him only partly on the mark, and the Apache yells,
Bitch!
and grabs her by the neck with both hands and slams her down on the table, the squint-eyed girl shrieking and jumping away. He leans his weight down hard on Jessie's throat, throttling her, and she's bucking and kicking, her eyes feeling about to burst, his hands like stone under her frenzied clawings. The television and bowl of apples crash to the floor. Then Rubio has one arm around the Apache's neck and the other around his chest and is tugging him back, shouting for him to let her go, and she's dragged halfway off the table by the hands locked at her neck. When the Apache hunches forward to try to get free of Rubio, she thrusts a thumb into his eye and he screams and releases her and she slumps to the floor as he backpedals and rams Rubio into a wall, bringing down a cascade of glassware from a shelf and breaking free of his hold. The Apache stumbles forward and pulls his pistol as he turns, but Rubio pulls his sooner and fires two shuddering blasts, spattering handfuls of the man's head on the wall. The Apache falls onto the table and crumples to the floor.

Jessie pulls herself up onto a chair, breathing as though unpracticed at it, unable to swallow. The Apache lies supine, a puddle of blood widening under his head, one eye ruined by her thumb, the other obliterated by a bullet. There's a small black hole in one cheek. The girl and the woman and the two kids are gone.

Jesus Christ
, someone says, and she turns to see Gallo standing there, gun in hand, staring down at Apache.

“Se volvío loco,” Rubio says, and tells him what happened.

Oh, man, Gallo says. What's Espanto gonna say?

What the hell
can
he say except it's a good thing I killed this lunatic before he killed me or . . . this one here. He gestures toward Jessie without looking at her.

Lunatic
, Jessie thinks. Right. And you, you bastard,
you
let that lunatic . . . do what he did.

As if he's heard her thoughts, Rubio turns and meets her eyes for a second and then looks away. He picks up the Apache's gun.

Gonna call him? Gallo asks.

Espanto? What for? He'll know soon enough.

What if
he
calls?

Yeah, sure, Rubio says. If he calls, I'll tell him.

Gallo shrugs and puts away his pistol and takes out his phone. Cabrito's holding a gun on them up there, he says, ready to shoot them. We thought maybe it was a rescue try. He touches a phone key, listens, then says, Everything's all right. . . . I'll tell you when I go back up.

Well, whatever Espanto might want to do with him, Rubio says, let's have him wrapped up.

He tells Jessie that if she moves from the chair, he'll hurt her, and asks if she understands.

Yes, she says.

Say it.

I understand, she says. It pains her throat to speak, and though she can swallow again, each effort feels like a gulp of broken glass.

Fifteen minutes later the Apache's body, rolled up in a blanket and secured tightly with cord, lies neatly at the base of a living room wall, only his shod feet exposed. As she watched them roll him up, her chief feeling was regret that she wasn't the one who shot him. The squint-eyed girl and the bony woman, having returned from wherever they'd fled, are cleaning the kitchen floor. The broken TV has been removed.

Rubio takes Jessie back upstairs. Cabrito gives her a small smile and says, The daredevil, once again. Never surrender, eh?

José lies on his side, looking at her, but shuts his eyes when she looks back. There's an odor of urine and she suspects the boy has wet himself rather than ask to go to the bathroom and have somebody hold his dick.

Luz and Susi gawk at her as if she's a stranger.

IV

34 — RUDY AND CHARLIE

When we get to the Wolfe building's garage and Charlie pulls him out of the Acadia, Chong is distinctly worse for wear than when he was put in it. His bloody grimace shows a gap where his two top front teeth had been, a segment of one yet rooted to the gum. His hands are still cuffed to his belt, but now one thumb's swollen purple and visibly out of joint, and he walks in the manner of a man with acute testicular distress. Charlie's not one for torture, so it speaks to the size of his desperation about Jessie that he was able to do this to the guy.

Before I can ask, Charlie tells me there's been no further word about Mateo. Tumaro's still in the car and on the phone, trying to get an update on him, and the other three Jaguaros are off to the side, smoking and chatting. We hold Chong between us while we wait for Tumaro at the basement elevator. Charlie tells me he's been extremely forthcoming. His name is Benito Yuan but his fellows call him—big surprise—Chino. Besides ratifying what we already knew, he's told Charlie that the kidnappers are a small gang named Los Doce and that Mr. X is a guy called Galán, the only name Chino knows him by. Tumaro and the other Jaguaro in the Acadia had never heard of either Los Doce or Galán. According to Chino, Huerta was the only one of the security crew who was in on the snatch, but right after the snatch the gang got rid of him and all seven of his company's agents. I raise my brow at that, and Charlie nods and says, “That's right, cuz. Huerta could identify this Mr. X Galán guy, who didn't trust him. And even though the other security agents weren't in on the job, they found out that Huerta was, so . . . pop-pop-pop, problem disposed of. These dudes may be small time, Rudy Max, but they are not fucking around.”

After shadowing Belmonte to the bank and then back to his estate, Chino was going to meet up with the Sosa tail—somebody named Chato—at a café in a little plaza on the route to the ransom sites. A few minutes after four, Galán's segundo, a guy called Espanto, is supposed to call Chino to let him know Belmonte's on his way to the first hold house with the money. When Belmonte passes by the plaza, Chino is to shadow him over there, keeping an eye out for other tails. Espanto will be at the hold house to receive the money and will then call Sosa and tell him where to take the other half of the ransom. Then he'll call Chato to get ready to tail Sosa there.

“Saddened this old boy,” Charlie says, patting Chino on the shoulder, “when Tumaro told us the Chato guy was no longer among the living.”

Chino has sworn, however, that he doesn't know where either of the hold houses is, and that neither did the Chato guy. He knows that both places are somewhere in the west-side slums and that the plaza is on the way to both of them, but he wouldn't know where Belmonte was taking the money until Belmonte led him there. It's the way Galán wanted it. He figured that the guys tailing the ransom carriers were the ones most liable to be caught if the cops got involved, and you can't tell the cops what you don't know. Chino claims he and Chato don't even have a phone connection with anybody else in the gang except Espanto, and they're under order not to call him except in an emergency.

Charlie thinks he's lying but I don't. I can't believe the dude would choose to undergo the sort of interrogation he knows he's in for rather than tell us the truth. The guy's a bandit, not some idealistic revolutionary or freedom fighter willing to suffer for cause and comrades. Still, Charlie's calling the shots.

Tumaro finishes with his call and comes over and says Mateo's still critical and Rigo will be here soon.

And Rayo? I ask, trying to keep it casual, but he catches something in my tone and fixes me with a look.
Rayo?
he says. The
girl?
The girl is unharmed. In fact, buddy, she's the one who killed the Sosa tail. You better be real careful about making a move on
her
, man. He and Charlie trade a grin, then laugh when I give them the old hand-to-bicep “fuck you” gesture.

Tumaro uses a card key to open the elevator door and we ride down to a huge basement. Its walls are stacked with crates and cartons, the ceiling's lined with pipes and ducts.

We go to a room at the far end. Waiting for us in there is the interrogator—a dwarf whom Tumaro introduces as Rosaldo. He's puffing a cigar and returns our nods of greeting. This is the first dwarf I've ever seen close up, and in contrast to the rest of him his normal-sized head looks enormous. His features are grimly Indian. He's taken off his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves and wears a black plastic garbage bag in poncho fashion, with holes cut in it for his head and his runty arms. He's got those bag things on his feet like hospital workers wear. A neat operator. Doesn't want blood or whatever else on his clothes or shoes. Besides a coat rack and a couple of foldout chairs next to it, the only other pieces of furniture are a narrow metal table like the kind used for embalming—except this one's equipped with hold-down straps for arms and legs and head—and the table-side platform on which the dwarf is standing, plus an elevated side table holding an open satchel whose top tray holds an array of gleaming metal instruments, some spear shaped, some curved, some corkscrewed. All very sharp looking.

The dwarf flicks ashes on the floor and blows on the cigar's lit end, inspiring a bright glow. He gives Chino a smile devoid of everything a smile is supposed to convey. Prepare him, he says, his voice deep. I'd be lying if I said the son of a bitch didn't scare
me
a little.

Two guys hold Chino tight and Tumaro starts stripping him.

I told you the
truuuth!
Chino screeches, addressing Charlie, the dwarf, everybody. I
swear
it, for the love of God! I
swear
on my mother's head!

They strap him naked to the table. He's screaming he doesn't know where the captives are, that he'd tell us if he knew.

“This is bullshit,” I tell Charlie. “I'm outta here.”

He doesn't look at me as I leave.

I know how he feels. If there's any chance at all the guy knows where Jessie is, Charlie has to use whatever means necessary to get it out of him. If I thought there was the slightest possibility Chino was lying, I'd be in favor of siccing the dwarf on him too. But I don't believe anybody can fake the kind of terror I saw in his eyes. Charlie would see that too if he wasn't half-crazed with his own fear for Jessie.

I go back up to the elevator bank in the garage and see Chino's green Focus parked close by. A guy's leaning on the front fender and leafing through what looks like an oversized comic book. He tells me they tossed the car and didn't find a thing of interest—no phone, no receipts, notes, nothing. Except for the book, he says, which I see is a graphic novel about Pancho Villa.

I'd hoped Rigo would be there by now but the suite's deserted when I get up there. I pour coffee and sit on the couch and watch the pulsing map colors on the soundless TV weather show. The bright emerald green of rain still dominates the screen. I take out my phone, thinking of calling Rayo, but find the battery's just about totally drained.

Not ten minutes later Charlie comes in, looking a touch hangdog, not a face you'll often see on him. He sits down and tells me he put a stop to it before the dwarf could get started. Chino's still down there but the dwarf's gone.

“You were right,” he says. “He doesn't know where the hold houses are. He would've said so. He would've done anything to stop what the dwarf was about to do. You wouldn't believe what he was about to do.”

“Yeah, I would,” I say, and check my watch. “Tick tock, man. What are
we
gonna do?”

Our fallback hope has been that Rigo's supposition is correct, and even if we can't get to Jessie before the ransom's paid, the snatchers will let everyone go when they get the money. If that happens, we'll be glad to feel like fools for all our frantic and failed effort. But I know Charlie's thinking the same thing I am. This bunch has already killed eight guys—one of them a partner—to reduce the odds of being identified. That doesn't bode real well for the captives' release. No matter how we cut it, we now know we're not going to find Jessie before the first payoff. We don't know where the hold houses are and she could be at either one. Even if they plan to kill the captives, though, it's a fairly safe bet they'll keep the first group alive as security until the second ransom's made, and then do them all at once. All we can do is follow Belmonte to the first hold house and find out of Jessie's there. If she is, we try to get her out while the second payoff's on its way. If she's not at the first place, then the Jaguaro who tails Sosa to the second hold house can give us directions as he's on the way and we'll go there too—with no idea if we can get there ahead of the money or, even if we do, what the hell we'll do then.

“There's another hitch,” Charlie says. “Chino's guys are going to call him when Belmonte heads out with the money and tell him to get ready to tail. When they do, they either won't get a response or our schoolboy pal will answer the phone. Christ, they might've already called Chino for some reason, and if they have, they're spooked. They'll have to assume that somebody's on to them, and so they'll want to keep the whereabouts of the hostages secret. They'll have Belmonte take the money somewhere else. We'll be tailing a dead end.”

As he's telling me all this, I remember Chino's phone. I take it out and check a couple of items on it, then pass it to Charlie. “Courtesy of our schoolboy pal.”

“
This
the phone the kid took?”

“The very one. Slipped it to me when we took off after Chino.”

He grins at it. “You know what? We should've hired the little bastard. Take him back to Texas.”

I tell him there's nothing on its phone mail. I just checked. And no calls on the log since Belmonte left the bank. A half dozen calls before that, all outgoing, all to the same number. No calls that could've spooked them.

“Unless they've tried to call the other one, the Chato guy,” Charlie says.

I think about that a second. “No, they haven't called him, either,” I say. “If they had and didn't get an answer, they would've—”

“Called Chino, you're right,” he says. “But his phone doesn't show a record of it. We're cool there. So far, anyway.”

We figure the thing to do is take Chino to the café with us and have him answer the phone when his guy calls. Play it like all is well, keep the Doce guys from spooking—if they haven't been spooked by something else by then. When Belmonte comes by the plaza, we tail him in the Focus. Chino's guys probably know the car, and that might give us an edge of some kind. Or not.

It's a sorry-ass plan and we know it, but the hour's late and the clock's ticking and it's the best we can come up with.

We've just decided all this when Rigo and Rayo arrive. Rigo tells us Mateo's in critical condition but in an excellent hospital endowed by the Wolfe family. There's blood on Rayo's jacket and she sees me staring at it and says it's Mateo's. In her quick but thorough way she recounts the chase out on the hills and the gunfight that put two bullets in Mateo's stomach and one in his leg. When she tells of shooting the guy and then tending Mateo as well as she could until help came, her expression is much like the one she had after backflipping off the palm tree trunk. There's a certain pride in it. I guess my own face is showing more than I realize, because when she looks at me she cuts her eyes away and it's the first hint of blush I've ever seen on her.

Charlie and Rigo either don't catch it or choose to ignore it.

Charlie gives them a summary account of our capture of Chino and what we've learned from him. Rigo agrees the only thing we can do is tail Belmonte, and he approves of how we intend to do it. But because Galán just might, for whatever reason, have Belmonte take the money somewhere else or have him go to the hold house by a different route, Rigo will have somebody follow Belmonte as soon as he leaves his house. If Belmonte goes a different way than the plaza route, the tail can let us know and put us on to him.

I'll
do it, Rayo says. Then gives Rigo an abashed look and says, I mean . . . I'd like to have the job, Uncle, if you think I can handle it.

For a few long seconds, Rigo just stares at her. I have to think he's considering how she's proved herself today. Maybe saved his little brother's life.

Very well, he says. And you'll do
exactly
as these two tell you.

She lights up. “Yes, of course,” she says. “Claro que sí.”

Rigo also wants to have a crew of Jaguaros in another vehicle tracking us on a GPS and a parallel route, but Charlie nixes the idea.

“We'll have two vehicles tailing and that's enough,” Charlie says. “Any more than that just increases the odds of getting spotted. Chino said there's four guys at the hold house, plus the Espanto guy who's going to collect the money. Rudy and I”—he cuts a look at Rayo—“the three of us can handle five.”

Rigo doesn't like it. He says Charlie's being foolish not using more men.

“Look, cousin,” Charlie says. “If it goes to hell and . . . they kill her, I don't want to be blaming you guys for any part of it.”

“Charlie, for Christ's sake,” Rigo says.

“It has to be on
us
,” Charlie says.

“And me,” Rayo says. “She's my sister.”

We look at her.

“Practically,” she says.

Rigo expels a hard breath and flicks up his hands in resignation. “Okay, Charlie, whatever you wish,” he says. “Jessica's from your side of the house. It's your decision.”

By twenty after three, we're at a back table in the Cuates Locos Café, Chino seated between me and Charlie and carefully spooning tepid chicken soup into his broken-toothed mouth, his grip on the spoon awkward for his busted thumb. His phone is on the table. The Focus is parked out front, a roll of duct tape in the console between the front seats, Chino's Glock under the driver's seat. Never hurts to have a spare weapon.