Havana Run (21 page)
“Ma-tan-za!”
Barton Deal had drifted off to sleep, he realized. He blinked awake at the sound of the crooning voice from the bed next to his and saw that the lunatic next door had somehow managed to work one hand loose from his leather restraints again. The last time, the guy had simply taken the opportunity to masturbate violently for the hour or so it took a nurse to wander in and discover what had happened. It was a little different this time.
“
Ma-tan-za
!” the man repeated and jabbed himself again with the shard of broken water pitcher he was holding in his hand. The handle was all there was left of the pitcher, really. He must have shattered the rest away by banging it against the heavy steel side table that separated their beds.
Barton Deal wondered why he hadn’t been awakened by the crash. Maybe it was the good drugs, he told himself. One benefit of the current system.
His neighbor had left himself a nice pointed edge to work with, though, Barton Deal saw. The man had traced a fine network of lines on his chest and stomach, delicate scrimshaw work that created an oozing outline of what must have been some hellish country.
Matanza
meant “killing place.” That’s what the guy seemed to be adding to his map right now.
“
Ma-tan-za
!” the guy called again, and jabbed himself just beside one nipple. A bubble of blood rose obligingly up.
Barton Deal turned his head in the other direction, to the place where there might have been others in their ward. There was a third bed, unoccupied, shoved into a corner against the far wall. In the space where a fourth bed might have been placed were two folding chairs and a small table where the guards usually sat.
One of the guards seemed to be missing just now. The other, the fat one, was asleep, his head thrown back over his chair, his snores ratcheting off the high ceiling. It sounded like two mismatched sprockets trying to mesh, Barton Deal thought, steel teeth snapping, pieces flying everywhere. The guard must have slept through the shattering of the water pitcher, too.
There was another cry from the bed to his right and Barton Deal turned in time to see the next “killing place” marked out, a dot about halfway between the man’s navel and his groin. “I’d take it easy, pal,” he said. “You’re gonna go nuts.”
The man’s head snapped up. He stared at Barton Deal as if he hadn’t been aware there was anyone else in the room. “Mmmmmmmmm,” he murmured, waving the bloody glass handle between them. “Mmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Barton Deal had another look at the restraints over there. What if the guy ran out of the room on his own map, managed to wiggle all the way loose?
He glanced next at the door to the ward. Closed, closed, closed. Time had become a rather fluid concept, and without any notion as to when the other guard had left the room, it was hard to say when he might return. Pee-pee, smoke or number two, Barton Deal wondered. If it were the latter, it could take forever.
There were no call buttons in the ward. Lunatics always using them for hangman’s nooses, he supposed. Or clogging the lines, trying to get in touch with God.
You could try screaming, but he had noticed that it didn’t cut a lot of ice in the nut hatch. He could always try just getting up to run, but there was the small matter of the manacle clamping his leg to the bedpost.
What the hell, he was thinking. He shouldn’t distract the guy from his work. With any luck maybe he’d bleed to death before he worked his way out of Camagüey Province or wherever he thought he was.
In point of fact, the guy had left off his dark stare and returned to the examination of his grisly map. There must have been something missing, because he bent and began to trace a bright, bubbling line that rippled over his ribcage and out of sight.
Nothing to soothe the savage breast like art, the old man was thinking, and that is when he saw the door to the ward swing inward. He thought it would be the hawk-faced guard, back from his sally to the crapper, but it wasn’t him at all, but doctors, doctors, come to see him, he thought, and maybe a nurse or two as well.
Big burly fellow leading the way, and if he was bothered by what was going on in the bed next door, he didn’t show it. There was a dark-haired Latin lovely following close on the big guy’s heels, and she never took her eyes off his. This was what you wanted in a health-care professional, he thought. A good-looking woman who cared about her patients. An odd expression on her face, though, or was it just that she seemed familiar?
Right behind her was a woman he knew he had never seen, one with a pale complexion and a pinched face. If you need to know something, ask her, he thought. She knew it all and it was killing her. She hadn’t seen the loony with the self-service tattoo yet either, but when she did, everyone look out.
And this last one, maybe the chief cook and bottle washer. Mr. Sawbones, everyone-else-out-of-the-way, himself. Not a brain surgeon, you could tell. Wouldn’t have the patience for it. But a no-bullshit kind of guy, clear enough to see. He liked the cut of this one’s jib. He’d seen his type before.
Not really a man so much as a boy in a man’s body, the old man was thinking. And a good boy, he thought, wondering why his vision was blurring up. Mr. Sawbones was shoving past the rest of them, headed toward him now. His mouth was moving, saying things. Things that were hard to understand.
“Dad” he thought was one of them. He could have sworn that was the word he’d heard.
She had peeled away her clothing expertly, he thought, first her own—smock, white uniform slacks, and nothing but a camisole beneath—then his. She had lingered at his pistol belt, a hand upon that weapon, another clasping his own, a wicked smile on her lips all the while.
She’d approached while he was smoking—he’d been certain she would, eventually—had met his own gaze brazenly, asked for a cigarette, brushed his hand as she accepted his light, allowed herself to stand too close as they lingered at the end of the dimly lit hallway. In moments, it had unfolded as he had known it would.
After all, his was an important position, and he had discovered its aphrodisiacal powers long ago. As to whether women were excited by his authority or were simply too fearful not to submit, he neither knew nor cared. What was important was the bliss itself. And there had been a great deal of that over the years. An apparently inexhaustible supply.
There seemed little doubt about what had drawn this vixen to him, however. She’d raised her cigarette in such a way, had touched it to her lips, her tongue, had watched him all the while…
In moments, smoking had been forgotten, there had been a moment’s frenzied embrace, and she had led him to this unused room, this unused bed.
Most glorious of all had been her body’s gradual coming into view, bronzed and robust, just as he’d envisioned it.
Voluptuous
, he thought, as she positioned herself above him. But not one ounce of unnecessary flesh beyond that. Perfect, he thought, as she settled silkily down upon him. Absolutely perfect.
Of course, a fool might have taken her for overweight, he thought, as she began to move. But it would have been an illusion cast by the mounding of those magnificent breasts on an otherwise slender body. They had burst from beneath her smock, erupted from the filmy fabric of her undergarment, tumbled free to surpass all his imaginings.
And she had so eagerly pulled him to her, buried him between those wondrous mounds.
Madre de Dios
.
Dark aureoles the size of saucers, budded nipples erupting at their centers like berries from dreams. He’d suckled there like a man found dying in the desert.
Would suckle more, he thought, pulling her down to him as she groaned and twisted atop him. She held fast to the rails of the bed as she writhed and bucked, and it occurred to him just how perfect such a bed was for these purposes. Good for sickness, too, certainly. But just as useful to keep from being flung off the present course. He felt her pubic bone grind against his—a cruel blow that only excited him the more—heard a sigh from somewhere that was as thrilling as a sob.
He clutched the rails of the bed himself and thrust up, yearning for more violent collision, when he heard the cry from down the hall. Curses, he thought, and in an unfamiliar tongue. He stopped, his hands frozen on the bedrails, understanding finally it was the raspy voice of the one he’d been brought to guard.
“Hallelujah! The gang’s all here. Sonofabitch. Come the cavalry to the rescue!”
None of the words were clear to him, but the import was. He tried to swing his legs out from under the writhing woman atop him, but if she had heard the commotion outside, there was no sign.
“My god, my god,” she moaned. “It is a monster. It is magnificent. Give me, give me, give me more.” Her head was thrown back, her hands clamped to the bedrails in a death’s grip.
He rose on one arm and drove the flat of his hand against her breastbone. She flew backward like a doll.
More shouts sounded from the ward he’d deserted. And there came the sounds of a clattering tray.
He swung his feet to the cool tiles of the floor and groped in the dim light for his trousers. There was no time for anything more.
He’d begun to understand some things by now, and the notion that it was his undeniable power that had swept this woman from her own post and to this bed was undergoing great revision, moment by fleeting moment. She had lured him to this place, he thought, and the thought was enough to enrage him.
Once the truth had dawned, he did not hesitate an instant. There was no need to hesitate. Whatever he did could not be questioned, no matter the magnitude of the deed. It never had been; it never would be. One instant’s business here, then out into the hallway to see what came next. And what was Hector’s part in all this, he wondered, a partner so stupid he would rather sleep or eat than fornicate.
He turned to her with his pistol raised, one knee braced at the side of the bed. He aimed between those perfect breasts, and squeezed. He was astonished when nothing happened. The pistol required the slightest touch. It was a fact he knew quite well.
He squeezed again, but still no explosion came. It was his surprise and agitation that kept him from realizing for so long.
He saw it all in a flash, though, in his mind’s eye, one of her wretched hands upon his member, the other on the pistol.
The safety
, you idiot,
she’s thrown the safety on
.
He glanced down at the weapon dumbly, his finger fumbling for the catch. Anger and confusion were being slowly eroded by some new emotion, but not rapidly enough.
He should have had the foresight to fear this woman, he was thinking as he glanced back up. It had taken only seconds to understand, but seconds could sometimes take too long.
He heard the whisking sound of the scalpel blade as it passed on by his ear, but that was too late as well. In the next moment he felt the searing sensation and a sudden rush of something warm and liquid pouring down his throat.
He had thrown off the safety, had meant to pull the trigger of his weapon by this time, but whether he had or not was impossible to tell. He was on his hands and knees on the hospital bed now.
He was coughing and retching, great heaves that shook his body and which he had no power to contain.
And with every heave came a great warm splash about his hands and knees. He felt his head droop between his shoulders. His trousers were bunched about his knees. His member drooped like a forlorn stalk. And there was a deep, dark pool that had formed in the cavity of the bed below.
A woman by the bed stood calmly dressing, a surreal rewinding of a film he’d helped to make. She stared at him without expression, then shrugged into her smock and turned to go.
The sliver of light that fell into the room illuminated the pool above which he hovered briefly, a bright glint in an otherwise dark place. This fountain that fed it seemed impossible to stop, he thought. And then it abruptly did.
He stared at the pool for a moment, a man so greedy he had grown two mouths. And finally he dove, facedown.
“Could you hear the shot?” the young woman who had joined them asked Angelica. Her dark-skinned brow was furrowed in concern.
“A little,” Angelica said. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter now.”
The doors to the big elevator were closing behind them. They’d sedated Barton Deal before they’d moved him to the gurney, but he was still flailing in his restraints.
“Remember San Juan Hill,” he said, clutching at John Deal’s arm. “Carry a big goddamned stick.”
“Take it easy,” Deal said, a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Just try to rest for now.” Maybe Dr. Aponte should have given more sedative. In the next moment, the old man’s eyes closed and his grip relaxed from fierce to firm.
“I pressed the pillow over his hand,” the young woman said. “It was all that I could do.”
“You did much more,” Angelica told the young woman.
The woman shook her head. “He was a pig,” she said. “He would have killed me without a thought.”
Deal watched the numbers tick off on the elevator. Dr. Aponte had inserted her key into the emergency lock. The car would bypass calls from any other floor, even the normal lobby stop. Emergency Receiving was situated on the basement level. The opposite set of doors would open, they’d rush their patient to a waiting ambulance.
Four more floors, then fifty giant steps to freedom, he thought. He and Angelica had met Aponte in the emergency waiting room what seemed like ages earlier. He’d marked every stride from the swinging doors to the elevator.
Four, then three, then two clicked off the elevator’s gauge. All of them watched the numbers fall. They passed the lobby with a ping, and Deal felt himself tense as the heavy car began to slow.
There came a hydraulic sigh as the car shuddered into place, then a slight sucking sound as the doors slid slowly open. There was a man in a dark suit standing at the gradually widening opening. He seemed to be thinking about something else as the scene in the car unfolded before him. His distraction might have saved their lives.
“Machado,” Angelica breathed. Dr. Aponte’s face was ashen.
Machado’s face had undergone several transformations in the few moments the elevator doors were open. As his gaze locked onto the form of Barton Deal, puzzlement was giving way to concern.
He glanced at the younger Deal’s name tag and mumbled something in Russian. “He wants to know where you are taking the patient,” Dr. Aponte said.
Machado’s expression had found its way to outright suspicion. He was reaching for something inside his jacket when Deal strode forward and caught him by his tie. “Why don’t you join us, comrade,” Deal said, jerking him inside the car.
“Close the doors,” he called to Miguel, as he drove his fist into the side of Machado’s jaw.
The man went down and Deal kicked the hand that had emerged with a pistol upheld. The gun flew away, clattering across the steel floor like a metal crab. Angelica bent for the weapon, but it skittered out a gap in the closing doors.
Machado rolled over catlike, came up on his hands and knees, and a slender, spring-loaded knife appeared in his hands from somewhere. He rose up slowly, his eyes on Deal, muttering something in Spanish.
“He says you are under arrest,” Angelica said. “He says to put up your hands and submit.”
Deal nodded, staring at the waving knife. “Submit to what?” he said to Angelica, edging away. Miguel was pinned in a corner behind the gurney. Neither he nor Angelica was armed.
Machado gave Angelica a warning look and rattled off something else. “He says to turn around and place your hands against the side of the car.”
Deal had missed the Spanish, but he could read the glitter in the man’s eyes. “Tell him he can go fuck his mother,” Deal said.
Whatever she said made Machado blink before he came in. The hesitation was enough for Deal to dodge the swipe of the knife. The blade clattered against the steel side of the car, but Machado managed to hang on.
He was moving in again, eyes dancing now, all pretense of arrest out the window. “Maybe open those doors again, Miguel,” Deal called, edging away from the blade. He heard Angelica echo the command.
Machado wasn’t waiting, though. He strode forward, the knife swinging back, poised for a low strike this time—
disembowelment
, Deal was thinking…
…when he saw a flash of something at Machado’s back, and the man stagger sideways with a groan. He was swatting at something at the side of his head, like a man bothered by a stinging insect.
Dr. Aponte danced away from the aimless slashing of Machado’s blade, her eyes fixed on the gleaming hypodermic that she’d jammed in his ear. Machado hesitated, trying to get his feet steady beneath him, a glare of hatred directed her way.
It seemed as if he might be about to make a charge for her, and Deal readied himself for a tackle. Then Machado seemed to wilt like a blow-up doll suddenly relieved of his air. He collapsed without a word, his head bouncing off the wall of the elevator car, then settling to the floor.
Deal felt a draft at his back and turned to see that the doors of the car were open again. A doctor with a stethoscope dangling around his neck stood staring at a pistol that he held gingerly in his hands. A female nurse stood by, equally amazed.
Deal reached to pluck the pistol from the doctor’s hands with one hand and with the other pointed at Machado’s inert form. “This man needs help,” he said to the thunder-struck doctor. Then he motioned the others out the door.