F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (6 page)

           
 
Even now he loved to drive his shiny Cadillac
back to his native
Tijuana
and park in front of the old haunts. Pay some street
tonto
to guard the car while he went
inside and watched their eyes go wide and round as he flashed his money and
rings and bought a round for the house.

           
 
In the span of a few heartbeats the word would
get around:
Emilio's back! Emilio's back!
So that when he strolled the narrow streets the children would follow and
call his name like a deity and beg for his attention. And not far behind them
would be their mothers and older sisters, doing the same.

           
 
He loved to drive by the St. Ignatio School
where the priests and sisters had tried to beat some religion into him and make
him like all the other sheep they imprisoned in their classrooms. He loved to
stop in front of the adobe chapel and blow the horn until one of those
black-robed fools came out, then give them the dirty-digit salute and screech
away.

           
 
He knew where his mother was living—still in
the same old shack down in the Camino Verde settlement where he'd been born—but
he never visited her. They'd be ice-skating in hell before he gave that
puta
the time of day. Always putting him
down, always saying he was a good-for-nothing
puerco
just like his father. Emilio had never known his father, and
he'd spent years hating him for deserting his family. But after Emilio's last
blowup with his mother, he no longer blamed his old man for leaving.

           
 
That blowup had come when Emilio turned twenty
and took the bouncer job at The Cockscomb, the toughest, meanest, low-rent
whorehouse in
Tijuana
. His mother had kicked him out of the trailer, telling him he was going
to hell, that he was going to die before he was twenty-one. Emilio had
sauntered off and never looked back.

           
 
He proved himself at The Cockscomb. He'd been
fighting since he was a kid and he'd learned every cheap, dirty, back-alley
brawling trick there ever was, usually the hard way. He had the scars to prove
it. He was good with a knife—very good. He'd stabbed his share and had been
stabbed a few times in return. One of his opponents had died, writhing on the
floor at his feet. Emilio had felt nothing.

           
 
He started working out, popping steroids and
bulking up until his shoulders were too wide for most doorways. He had a short
fuse to begin with, and the juice trimmed it down to the nub.

           
 
But not to where he was out of control. Never
out of control. He always eased the belligerent drunken
Americanos
out to the street, but heaven help the locals who got
out of line. Emilio would beat them to a pulp and love every bloody minute of
it. Another man died from one of those beatings, but he'd deserved it. Over the
succeeding years he caused the death of three more men—two with a blade, and
one with a bullet.

           
He moved up quickly through the
Tijuana
sex world, from whorehouses, to brothels,
to chief enforcer at the renowned Blue Senorita, a high-ticket bordello and
tavern that catered almost exclusively to
Americanos.
Orosco, the owner, liked to brag that the Blue Senorita was a
"full-service whorehouse," catering to all tastes—strip shows, live
sex shows, donkey sex shows; where a man could have a woman, or another man, or
a young girl, or a young boy, or—if he had the energy and a fat enough
wallet—all four. For his first few years at the Blue Senorita Emilio had been
proud of his position—inordinately so, he now thought— but the sameness of its
nightly routine, along with the realization that he had risen as far as he
could go and that somewhere along the corridor of his years, when he'd aged and
softened and slowed, he'd be replaced by someone younger and stronger and
hungrier. Then he'd find himself out on the street with no income, no savings,
no pension. And he'd wind up one of those useless old men who hung around the
square in their cigarette-burned shirts and their pee-stained pants, sipping
from bottles of cheap wine and yammering to anybody who'd listen about their
younger days when they'd had all the money they could spend, and any women they
wanted. When they'd been
somebody
instead
of nobody.

           
 
He could see no future in
Tijuana
. Nowhere in all of
Mexico
. Perhaps
America
was the place. But maybe it was too late
for him in
America
. He would be turning thirty soon. And how would he get in? Damned if
he'd be a wetback. Not after practically managing The Blue Senorita.

           
 
The featureless corridor of his future seemed
to stretch on ahead, with no exits or side passages. Just a single door at the
far end. Emilio promised himself to keep an eye peeled for a way out of that
corridor.

           
 
Charlie Crenshaw turned out to be that way.

           
 
Emilio hadn't realized that at first. The
pudgy, brown-haired, blue-eyed boy had looked terribly young when he stumbled
into the Blue Senorita that night ten years ago. He'd been roaring drunk and
obviously under age, but he'd flashed his money and spread it generously, and
everyone had nudged each other when he bought doe-eyed Jose for an hour.

           
 
When the
maricon's
time was up, Emilio had let him out a side door and stood watching to make
sure he got good and far away from The Blue Senorita before he forgot about
him. But at the mouth of the alley the kid was jumped by three young
malos.
Emilio hesitated. Served the
little
maricon
right to be beat up
and robbed, but not on The Blue Senorita's doorstep. The local
policia
wouldn't care— Orosco paid them
plenty not to—but if the brat got killed there could be a shitstorm from the
States and that might lead to trouble from the capital.

           
 
Cursing under his breath, Emilio had pulled on
his weighted leather gloves and charged up the alley. By the time he waded into
the fight, the kid was already down and being used as a soccer ball. Emilio let
loose on the
malos.
He crushed noses,
crunched ribs, cracked jaws, shattered teeth, and broke at least one arm. He
smashed them up and left them in a bleeding, crying, gagging, choking pile
because it was his job to look out for The Blue Senorita's interests, because
he wanted to make sure these
malos
never
prowled The Blue Senorita's neighborhood again.

           
Because he
liked
it.

           
 
He dragged the unconscious kid back to the
side door and checked out his wallet. He learned his name was Charles Crenshaw
and that he was only fifteen. Fifteen! Hell to pay if he'd been kicked to death
out here. He shuffled through pictures of the boy with his parents, posed at
different ages before different homes. As the boy grew, so did the houses. The
most recent was a palace.

           
 
The little
maricon
was
rich.

           
 
And then Emilio came to a photo of the boy and
his father standing before a building with a shiny CRENSOFT sign over the
reflecting pool set in the front lawn. CrenSoft . . . Crenshaw . . . the rich
boy's father owned a company.

           
 
As he stared at the wallet, thoughts of
blackmail, and even ransom tickled Emilio's mind. But those were just quick
fixes. They would change nothing. Perhaps there was another way. . .

           
And somewhere down the long,
featureless corridor of his future, he saw a red EXIT sign begin to glow.

           
 
Emilio threw Charlie over his shoulder and
carried him back to his apartment. He placed a call to the family, told the
father where Charlie was, and said to come get him. Then he sat back and
waited.

           
 
The father arrived at dawn. He was taller than
Emilio, and about ten years older. Every move, every glance was wary and full
of suspicion. He had another man with him; Emilio later learned he was the
father's pilot. When Emilio showed him Charlie's battered, unconscious form,
the father's face went white. He rushed to the bed and shook the boy's
shoulder. When Charlie groaned and turned over, the father seemed satisfied
that he was only sleeping it off. Emilio noticed him checking to make sure his
son's watch and ring were still where they belonged.

           
When the father spoke, his voice was
tight and harsh.

           
 
"Who did this?"

           
 
"Tres
malos,"
Emilio said. His English was not very good then.

           
 
"Where are they?" the father said in
fluent Spanish.

           
 
Emilio ground a fist into his palm.
"Worse off than your son."

           
 
The father looked at him. "You helped
him? Why?"

           
 
Emilio shrugged. He'd been practicing that
shrug all night. "They would have killed him."

           
 
"Why would they do that?"

           
 
"He's an
Americano
who looks rich. Plus he's a boy who likes boys. They
figure sure, he's easy to kick over."

           
 
The father's eyes turned to ice. "And are
you a man who likes boys?"

           
Emilio laughed. "Oh, no, senor.
I like the women. If I want to play with a boy"—he patted his
crotch—"I got one right here."

           
 
The father didn't smile. He continued to stare
at Emilio. Finally he nodded, slowly. "Thank you."

           
 
Emilio helped him and the pilot carry Charlie
to the car outside, then handed Charlie's wallet to the father. The father
checked the credit cards and the bills.

           
 
"I see they didn't rob him."

           
 
"And neither did Emilio Sanchez.
Good-bye, senor."

           
 
Emilio played his riskiest card then: He
turned and walked back into his apartment building.

           
 
The father hurried after him. "Wait. You
deserve a reward of some kind. Let me write you a check."

           
 
"Not necessary. No money."

           
 
"Come on. I owe you. There's got to be
something I can do for you, something you need that I can get you."

           
 
Emilio took a deep breath and turned to face
him. This was the big moment.

           
 
"Can you get me a job in
America
, senor?"

           
 
The father looked confused. As Emilio had
figured, the rich
Americano
hadn't
counted on anything like this. He was dumbfounded. Emilio could almost read his
thoughts:
You save my son's life and all
you want in return is a job?

           
 
"I'd think that'd be the least I could
do," the father said. "How do you make your living now?"

           
Another of those rehearsed shrugs.
"I'm a bouncer at the whorehouse where your son spent much of his money
last night."

           
 
The father sighed and shook his head in
dismay. "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie," he whispered to the floor. Then
he looked back at Emilio. "That's not much of a resume."

           
 
"I know the value of silence."

           
 
The father considered this. "Okay. I'll
give you a shot. Apply for a work visa and I'll fit you into plant security.
We'll see how you work out."

           
 
"I will work out, senor. I promise."
The father kept his word, and within a matter of weeks Emilio was patrolling
CrenSoft's
Silicon
Valley
plant,
dressed in the gray uniform of a security guard. It was deadly dull, but it was
a start.