The Sixteen Burdens (22 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-O
NE

P
ANCHITO
GLOWERED
AT
the procession of small children walking by. Someone probably found them cute. Not him. They passed the restaurant, dressed as little shepherds, angels, and lambs, but all he saw in his mind were Chaplins, Elsies and Grays.

The candlelight procession shuffled down Olvera Street’s cobblestone walkway, singing the same Mexican hymns they did every Christmas. Panchito flicked his finger as the little children passed, extinguishing their candles one by one. Then, feeling guilty, he called them over and had them relight their candles in the restaurant.

He tried to bury his fury in a frothy cup of
champurrado
, but even the warm, chocolatey drink didn’t soothe him.

“
Hermoso desfile
,” his grandmother said as she stood frying
buñuelos
. She was selling the sweet fritter with a cup of
champurrado
for ten cents to Las Posadas spectators.

“It’s the same thing every night for nine nights.”

“
Nos trae plata.
”

It brings in money.

“You need a vacation, Abuelita.”

Panchito chomped down on his fifth or sixth
buñuelo
, gnashing it to bits with his teeth. No matter where he tried to send his thoughts, they kept turning back to Gray and Elsie, and what they were doing. Had they found the Eye? Were they off to rescue Pickford already? Was anyone going to tell him anything?

They were locking him out because, he figured, they wanted the credit for finding the Eye.

Everyone wants to be the hero.

If any of them was suited to be a hero, it was the one with the greatest courage. Why didn’t people see that? Superman would never be replaced halfway through an adventure by some
girl
with
feelings
.

As the procession trickled to an end, three men lingered behind. They stopped in front of the restaurant. Panchito recognized the two
pachucos
from the other day: Flynn Mustache and Grant Hair. They had bottles in their hands as if they had been drinking.

The third man was dressed in a purple suit and matching hat. He was tall, in his late forties with a thick but neat mustache. He might have looked debonair had his face not been severely pock-marked. From Abuelita’s old photo albums Panchito recognized the man.

Jesús Herrera
.

This was the last remaining member of the Herrera clan, the family that had once been close to Pancho Villa but turned on him during the Revolution.

“My men tell me that you have failed to pay your fee for our protection services,” Herrera said. “An oversight, I’m sure.”

He stepped into the tiny restaurant and looked around.

“You’ll pay double, for this month and every month thereafter. And there will be no unpleasantness.”

“I’ll pay you double alright,” Panchito said, balling his hands into fists. “First my right, then my left.”

Herrera took notice of the oil paintings on the wall—the only mementos Abuelita had taken as they escaped Mexico. He cocked his head at the portrait of Panchito’s half-siblings, painted before he was born.

“I know these people,” he said.

“You betrayed these people,” Panchito said.

Herrera looked at the portrait on the other wall, the one of Pancho Villa himself. It was subtle, but Panchito saw the man take half a step back.

“Who are you?” Herrera asked.

Panchito stepped right up to him, his face only at the height of the man’s chest.

“I am José Doroteo Arango Alameda. Heir of José Doroteo Arango Arámbula—the man you knew as Pancho Villa. The man you killed.”

Herrera glanced at his men and nodded slightly.

“Pancho Villa killed my entire family,” Herrera said. “He deserved to die.”

Grant pulled out something from his pocket. Matches. He lit a piece of cloth stuck in Flynn’s bottle. They weren’t drinks; they were gasoline bombs. He was about to light his own bottle as well. Panchito had to act, fast.

He stepped in-between Grant and Herrera. He thrust Grant as hard as he could, recoiling hard against Herrera and knocking himself and the ringleader to the ground. Grant smashed against the stove and the unlit gas bomb shattered, spraying gas everywhere. The stove, which had a pot of
champurrado
warming on it, burst into flames. Grant’s suit lit up like a Chinese firework.

“
Dios mío!
” his grandmother shrieked. “
Cuidado!
”

Flynn had Abuelita by the arm, but his grip loosened when he saw his friend in flames.

Panchito braced himself against a wall; he thrust Flynn into a fountain in the center of the walkway behind him. The man tripped on the edge of the fountain and dropped his gas bomb. The flame sizzled out in the pool of water.

“
Ve por ayuda
!” Panchito shouted to his grandmother. She hobbled off to find help.

In the kitchen, the flames licked up Grant’s jacket until it reached his greasy hair, which exploded into flames so that he looked like a human matchstick. He stumbled out into the dining room, head ablaze; Panchito thrust him into the fountain where the water doused his flames. His hair was almost completely gone.

Guess you’ll save money on pomade.

Herrera stood and reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a fancy gun with an ivory pistol grip.

“You’re definitely your father’s son,” he said. “He could do strange things too. Things that made him dangerous.”

Panchito braced himself against a wall and thrust Herrera toward the far end of the restaurant. The man flew into the portrait of Pancho Villa, suspended a foot above the ground.

“Tell me how you did it,” Panchito said, holding him there. “How you got my father’s own men to betray him.”

Herrera struggled to breathe under the pressure of Panchito’s push.

“I remember you now,” Herrera said. “Bouncing on your father’s knee at my sister’s wedding.”

A flash of memory struck Panchito, sudden as a lightning bolt. He saw an adobe courtyard with bright pink bougainvillea. He heard laughter and the tinkling of ice cubes in glasses. Tables. Music. A woman in white. He felt strong hands enveloping his body, and an up-and-down motion, like riding on a horse. He saw big, calloused hands holding him.

I remember my father.

Could it really be a memory? Panchito would have only been a baby, not much more than a year old. And yet it seemed so real. In his memory he tried to crane his head, to turn and see his father’s face, but he couldn’t.

“You’re just like him,” Herrera wheezed. “Too powerful.”

Fury shot through Panchito. It was unfair that Herrera should have memories of his father when the man had robbed Panchito of them. There were so many questions Panchito had for his father, so many answers that had been extinguished by Herrera’s bullet.

He focused pressure on Herrera’s heart. The man yelped in agony.

“You may have killed my father, but you’ll die knowing you were killed by a Villa,” Panchito said.

He thrust. Herrera cried out.

“Chito, no!”

Arms encircled Panchito and tackled him to the ground. Across the room Herrera fell to the floor and gasped for breath.

Panchito looked up. Gray.

“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” Gray said.

“I won’t regret it,” Panchito said.

“But maybe you’ll regret letting your grandmother’s restaurant burn down.”

Panchito looked up at the kitchen, which was halfway consumed by the flames. He hadn’t realized how dark with smoke the air had become.

“You got an extinguisher?” Gray asked.

Panchito shook his head.

“Over here!”

He bounded out to the fountain in the center of the walkway. Gray dragged the
pachucos
out of it. The water was so formless Panchito didn’t think he’d be able to move it. He had to!

Panchito held out both hands wide and thrust toward a single point in the pool. At first the water erupted into a fine mist, but Panchito adjusted his stance until he got a solid funnel of water. It sprayed wildly into the restaurant. Panchito tried to control and focus it, angling it as best he could though the small service window going into the kitchen. The fire hissed and sizzled and finally went out.

Smoke and steam billowed and they waited until most of it cleared out. Everything was drenched. The kitchen was a blackened hole. The dining room was soggy and tables had been overturned. Both portraits were ruined.

And Herrera was gone.

“This is your fault!” Panchito said to Gray. “You’re trying to keep me from doing anything.”

“You woulda regretted it,” Gray said.

“Says who?”

Panchito felt the barrel of a gun against the side of his head.

“Says me,” Herrera said. “Hands up.”

Panchito and Gray lifted their hands. Herrera backed away, but kept the gun pointed at Panchito.

“I apologize for the needless destruction of your establishment,” Herrera said. “Tell the police it was an accident and I’ll gladly pay for the repairs.”

He took two more steps backward.

“You’re not going to kill me?” Panchito said.

“Kill you! Why would I kill someone so valuable to me?”

Two more steps backward.

“When you’re ready, come pay me a visit,” Herrera said. “I have a job for you.”

Panchito tried to spit in his direction but it spattered on his own clothes.

“I’d never work for your gang,” he said. “And I’d never, ever work for the man who killed my father.”

Herrera stepped farther backward, until he was at a safe distance from Panchito.

“You keep getting hung up on that issue,” Herrera said. “I became the most feared man in Mexico after your father died. It launched my career. Most people won’t even look me in the eye because I’m the man who killed the infamous Pancho Villa.”

Herrera pocketed his gun.

“The problem is, I didn’t.”

And with that he was gone.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
WO

T
HE
SMELL
OF
sizzling chorizo woke Gray up. It was a welcome change from the stench of smoke and burnt grease that had taken up residence in his nostrils. He opened his eyes and saw Panchito’s hunched grandmother moving deftly through the kitchen, conducting a symphony of pots and pans.

Gray sat up from the living room floor of Abuelita’s one-bedroom apartment. She had a decorating style something akin to a church rummage sale. The shelves and tables were loaded with paintings of the Virgin Mary, statues of Saint
This
and Saint
That
, and enough crucifixes to slay a vampire army. Whatever Abuelita prayed for, the real miracle was how she kept all that clutter clean.

Panchito lay on the couch, snoring with the same vigor he had employed throughout the night. It appeared to be his normal sleeping spot. Before last night, Gray hadn’t given any thought to Panchito’s life or his living conditions. Panchito had never complained about the cracks in the walls, the chipped and faded furniture, or the creatures that scurried across the floor the moment the lights went out. Gray was raised without a family, but at least he had a bed to sleep in.

“Eat, skinny.”

Abuelita saw Gray had risen. She pointed at him and then at the small dining table. He stood up, his undershirt and tuxedo pants wrinkled, and sat down at the table. The spread consisted of huevos rancheros, chilaquiles, refried beans, rice, and sweet pastries. It was more food than Gray usually had during the Christmas banquet at the boys home.

“Sorry about your restaurant,” Gray said, pointing downstairs.

The woman shrugged, and he wasn’t sure if she had understood him or not.

Gray was halfway through the second plate Abuelita had forced upon him when Panchito awoke and took a spot at the table. He loaded up a plate.

“This is why I’m fat.”

They were the first words Panchito had spoken to Gray since last night. He had been angry about the fire, and about Herrera, and he had chosen to take it all out on Gray.

“You were right, you know,” Panchito said.

“Huh?”

“I would have regretted it,” Panchito said, “if I had…pushed any harder on Herrera.”

Gray recalled the fury in Panchito’s eyes as he was squishing Herrera like a bug under his thumb. There was pure destruction in that stare, a vortex of hate that Panchito seemed barely able to control.

“That’s a line you don’t wanna cross,” Gray said. “There’s no going back after that.”

Panchito shook his head. Gray clearly didn’t understand.

“I would have regretted it because he wasn’t the one who killed my father,” Panchito said. “Next time I have to be careful. Next time I have to be absolutely sure.”

Somewhere, deep in those eyes, that fire still burned unchecked. Gray wondered if Chaplin had made a mistake by bringing the two of them together, accelerating Panchito’s talent so quickly.

“Maybe there’s a better way,” Gray said.

“Like what?”

Gray shrugged.

“I dunno. Maybe the bravest thing isn’t killing the bad guy. Maybe the bravest thing is forgiving him.”

Panchito stuck half a sausage in his mouth and chomped on it while he considered that.

“No. That doesn’t sound right.”

After breakfast, Panchito found some old clothes for Gray that were too short in the leg and too wide in the waist. Gray had caught him up on everything that had transpired the previous evening.

“So now what are you doing?” Panchito asked. “Are you going to get the Eye?”

Panchito had put an emphasis on the
you
. But Gray had already made a decision. Without Chaplin and Fairbanks, he felt adrift. He wanted to believe he could handle anything on his own, but this felt too big, too important.

What he had seen in Panchito had frightened him, and if turned toward Atlas and his gang, maybe it would frighten them too.

“Actually,” Gray said. “
We’re
going to get the Eye.”

Panchito’s face lit up.

“First let’s make sure D.W. Griffith knows about Mr. Chaplin,” Gray said, “Then we’ll go to Elsie’s.”

They rode the red car west to United Artists, and found a crowd of reporters clambering over themselves like ants on a sugar cube.

“Looks like word has gotten out,” Panchito said.

They pushed their way through, and no one gave them a second look.

Inside, the office had gone from feverish to full-on frantic. Phones were ringing up and down the hall, and people were running about as if German troops were about to blitzkrieg Hollywood. The poor phone operators were on the verge of hysterics.

“Mr. Griffith is unavailable right now for comment. Not today. Maybe next week.”

“Yes, production of
One Million B.C.
is proceeding as normal, as are all of our projects.”

“Mrs. Pickford is ill. She is not missing. No, that’s just a rumor. That’s completely untrue!”

They walked about upstairs and found the door with Griffith’s name on it. Gray popped his head in and found Griffith sitting at his desk, his face a deflated tire. When he saw Gray he let out a slow exhale, as if he’d sprung a leak.

The phone rang on Griffith’s desk. He picked up the receiver and then dropped it back down.

“It’s been like this since six a.m.,” he said. “Everyone wants the scoop on whether or not Charlie is a cold-blooded killer.”

“He’s a patsy,” Gray said. “Darko Atlas did it.”

“I know,” Griffith said. “Charlie called me last night from jail. He told me to kill the story before it got out, but somebody leaked it to the press.”

Gray could think of one man.

“Chief Stoker. He’s out to make Mr. Chaplin the fall guy.”

Griffith downed the last of his coffee and loosened his tie. The man who had seemed so proper and wise to Gray before, now looked more like the unemployed migrants he saw on Skid Row.

“There are rumors going around,” he said. “With Mary missing, people are starting to wonder if Charlie killed her too—maybe in some bitter fight over the future of the studio. We’ve told people that she’s simply been ill, but we can’t produce her to make a statement.”

“We’re going to try to rescue Mrs. Pickford,” Panchito said. “We’ve got the Eye.”

Some life seemed to come back to Griffith’s face.

“You’ve found it? That’s marvelous! Now what?”

“I dunno,” Gray said. “I thought you’d have some ideas.”

Griffith rubbed his eyes and sighed. He seemed so old, so fragile.

“Among the four of us who founded United Artists, I’m the only one without a special talent,” he said. “Even so, I quickly discovered that I was no less valuable. I operated the nuts and bolts of the operation while the other three looked at the big picture. My job is here, at the studio. The best I can do is keep United Artists from collapsing while we determine how to free Charlie and save Mary. You two are the ones with the special talents. You figure it out.”

“He’s got the talent,” Gray said, thumbing at Panchito. “I ain’t got nothing.”

A woman stuck her head inside Griffith’s door.

“The art director needs a budget extension for the parade float.”

Griffith looked at her with wild eyes.

“A float? I’m trying to keep this blasted studio afloat! I don’t have time for some silly flower parade. Now get.”

He shooed her away. The phone rang again. Griffith yanked the cord out from the wall.

Griffith took a deep breath and calmed himself. He then ripped off a scrap of paper and scribbled a phone number on it.

“Call Howard Hughes,” Griffith said, handing it to Gray. “If anyone would have a sense of how to use the Eye to your advantage without giving it to Atlas, it would be him. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

Gray and Panchito nodded and walked to the door.

“One more thing,” Griffith said. “I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t say it. You are walking into danger. I’m not going to prevent you from doing so, but I want to make sure you understand. You have something for which Atlas has already killed. He’ll do it again. People will get hurt. People on our side. When all is said and done, it’s almost inevitable.”

Gray stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded.

Thanks for the pep talk.