Ringer (11 page)

“Who is John?”

“He runs our bunkhouse, provides transportation.”

“I will ask John. Where is he?”

“He arrives after our shift, at eleven, and takes us all back to the bunkhouse for a meal and then sleep.”

“Good. I will be back here to ask John.”

“Don’t come here. We meet in front of Pedro, at eleven.”

“Many thanks. I will see you then.”

Paco wandered off to look for a bathroom. His reaction to this place was similar to his reaction to most things American: bewilderment and resignation. Could he ever understand gringos and their excesses? He wondered if South of the Border was what Americans thought Mexico was like. He had to admit that the touristy parts of Juárez were at least a little like this, once. Even so, Paco had never seen anybody but a mariachi wear a sombrero, and yet there was this grinning statue of a peon at every turn.

Even a grinning Pedro in a bathrobe and slippers. The statue was standing in front of a public restroom that had showers.

Paco bathed, and was back at the road-straddling Pedro at close to eleven.

There was an aging white Econoline van there, and some of his countrymen were slouching outside. Including the dishwashers.

“What’s going on, friends?”

“We spoke to John. Here he comes now.”

Paco turned. Bald and buck-toothed, John was a large gringo who limped across the lot from the restaurant, a foam container of coffee in his hand.

When he drew near, the dishwashers gestured to Paco and stepped back. John’s puffy red face looked down at Paco and grunted. His smile was large, but the teeth were small, and there seemed to be far too many of them. “You want work?” His Spanish was coarse, but understandable.

We’re back to subtitles:

“No, Señor John. I am on my way to New York. My countrymen here said I might be able to get a ride with you to the nearest town where I can find a bus.”

“A bus?” John laughed, but without humor.

“I can pay for the petrol it costs to get me there. I am not a hitchhiker.”

“Why don’t you want to work here? Hm?”

“I have work elsewhere.”

John patted Paco on the shoulder. “Good for you. Sure, we’ll give you a ride. Get in, boys. All of you.”

The van was packed with illegals as John pushed the wheezing Econoline to highway speeds and onto I-95. Paco thought the van was very solemn for a bunch of Mexicans, who were usually talkative. They exited in North Carolina, and John brought the van down a dirt road through the pines and into a large clearing. In the center of the clearing on a rise was a cinder-block bunkhouse flanked by fading red tobacco barns. These in turn were flanked by a few large trees and rusty threshers. Overgrown fields, colorless under the overcast, stretched away in all directions.

Paco felt eyes on him, those of his countrymen, as the van stopped next to a pile of construction debris and wood at the cinder-block bunkhouse. He looked into the rearview mirror at John. “Is town far from this place? I can walk.”

John flashed those little teeth at Paco in the mirror. “You might as well come in and have some chow with the rest of them. You have traveled far and must be hungry.” He shoved open his door and came around the side to open the van so the illegals could exit.

One by one the illegals climbed down from the van, but none would meet Paco’s eyes.

Last from the van was Paco, and as soon as his feet landed on the dusty red dirt of the driveway, John clamped a hand on the back of his neck.

“You’ll work here or you’ll go to prison, pussy.” The little teeth seemed more plentiful than ever.

The grip on Paco’s neck was intense; his vision swam and darkened. John kicked the back of his knees and pushed him to the dirt.

Paco rolled onto his back, facing the big gringo. His little red backpack had fallen by the van, the nine-millimeter automatic out of reach.

One end of a length of bristled rope was in John’s fist. The other end of the rope had a knot in it.

“You’ll work here, sleep here, eat here.”

The rope whistled through the air, and the knot caught Paco in the ribs, delivering a bolt of pain.

Then again in the thigh, then in his shoulder as Paco rolled and tried to scramble away from John’s whip. The big man lurched after him, red dust rising and stinging Paco’s eyes, the other illegals clustered by the debris pile, watching in fear.

“And if you don’t do as I say, you’ll die here, pussy!”

The knot delivered another bolt of pain to Paco’s ribs just as he rolled. The knot lodged momentarily between his side and the ground.

John cursed and yanked the rope clear, but Paco caught the rope above the knot and tried in vain to pull the bully down.

The fat man held fast, jerking Paco toward him and thrusting a foot at his head. The boot missed its mark. John staggered forward.

Paco let go of the rope and leaped to his feet behind his attacker, hatchet in hand.

John turned in time to see the hatchet, and in time to lean away from the rusty blade an inch before his bulging eyes. His weight pivoted on his limping leg, and the fat man could not move away quickly enough to avoid Paco’s kick. It caught him in the knee, on the side, and the big man fell with a groan to the red earth.

Paco lunged into the cloud of dust, onto John’s side, and the big man shrieked and bucked. To Paco it sounded like the shriek of a whore. He slashed backhanded at the fat man’s neck with the hatchet, chopping off much of his chin instead of the jugular, so he angled the blade in on the forward thrust and drove the hatchet under John’s ear and up to the hilt behind the jaw. He felt the blade crack through the nasal cavity and give, like hacking a pumpkin.

Paco rolled off John and onto his side next to the van. Next to his little red backpack.

In the cloud of red dust before him, John staggered to his feet. There did not seem any way to open the backpack quickly enough, so Paco felt for the pistol’s grip and trigger guard.

From the red cloud John rushed toward him, the handle angled out from behind his ear, gore gushing from his nose, the little teeth swimming in blood. Paco had found the shape of the gun in the backpack, but realized he was holding the gun upside down. He pointed it anyway. He fired.

You may want to film this next part in slow motion.

Flame shot from the bag, and the slug punched John just below the navel. He was staggering forward, so the wound didn’t alter his course toward Paco. John’s hands were raised in claws, a wounded beast intent to take El Cabezador with him beyond the mortal veil of tears.

A two-by-four swept out from the red cloud and cracked John square in the temple. The fat man rolled midair, blood arcing from his nostrils into the sky, his eyes rolling up into his head. With a low moan, he thundered to earth onto his back a foot from Paco. Like a mortally wounded bear, John lay on his back—huffing, bloody, and immobile.

One of the illegals stepped from the red cloud of dust with the two-by-four. He looked down at John with a curled lip of defiance and disgust. The other illegals had also picked up lumber from the woodpile.

Paco had heard it said that there’s no more pissed-off person than a woman who has been done wrong, but he came to think otherwise as the illegals and their clubs finished off John, pounding him into the red earth long after Satan had taken his soul to its dubious reward.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

THE FORTUNE-TELLER HELENA WAS MAKING
a liverwurst on rye in the pantry behind the séance room when she heard Abbie’s heft thumping down the stairs. “Lena!”

“In here.” Helena put the French’s back in the fridge and picked up the paper plate with the sandwich on it. Who had time for washing plates?

“Lena!”

“In here, Abs.” Helena took a bite of the sandwich over the sink and chewed thoughtfully. Wasn’t the same without Miracle Whip.

You have to appreciate the contrast between this and the knife fight, am I right? Blood spewing in slow motion through the air versus the importance of Miracle Whip. There is irony in this, and they will love it at Cannes.

Abbie huffed and puffed into the séance room. “Lena, you won’t believe it.”

Helena walked through the beaded curtain and stopped, still chewing, eyebrows raised without too much genuine anticipation.

“Lena, I know who he is!”

“
Who
he?”

“The man.”

“What man?”

“Last night.”

“Oh.”

“I was just watching
The View,
and at the break, there was one of them things where the news people tell you the headlines, you know, the way they do.”

“Mmm.”

“Anyways, they have this newsflash, and Purity Grant was in court this morning about that thing with the horse.”

“
Horse
who?”

Abbie was trying to catch her breath. “’Memmer when Purity Grant stole a horse and rode through Central Park with her top off?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, she was in court this morning about that, and when she was coming out, she fainted, and they took her to the hospital.”

“Is she OK?” Yes, Miracle Whip would have made a better sandwich.

“They don’t know.”

“Was it something she ate?”

“I dunno, Lena, but—”

“Because there’s been a lot of food poisoning lately. A lot. They talk about it on the news all the time.”

“I dunno what it was, I don’t know if they know. Anyways—”

“Could have been stress. That girl takes on a lot of stress.”

“Anyways, they show her ambulance arriving at the hospital—”

“You can get sick just being at a hospital.
Germs
.”

“—and they show a picture of her father.”

“I somehow feel sorry for that tramp. Rich people, they think they have it so good, but then you see this.”

Abbie groaned as she settled into a chair at the crystal ball. The chair groaned back. “Her
father,
Lena.”

“Hm?”

“That’s him.”

“
Who
him?”

“Aren’t you listening?
Him
him. From last night.”

Helena stopped chewing and swallowed. “That was Purity Grant’s father?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Lena. Robert Tyson Grant. He’s a gazillionaire. And his stepdaughter is Purity Grant, the one who’s in trouble all over the place.”

“You’re shitting me. Really?”

“Lena, would I run all the way down here like this in the middle of
The View
to tell you this if I was lying?”

“You sure?”

“Poztiv.”

Helena sank into her chair at the dark crystal ball. “You
sure
?”

“
Poz-
tiv.”

Helena shot a suspicious glance at her liverwurst sandwich and set the paper plate on the table. “He’s very rich.”

“Gazillionaire.”

“A gazillionaire with a curse. Who’s his girlfriend?”

“Whadda I know about a girlfriend? They didn’t mention anything about that. Purity Grant fainted, not the girlfriend. They got no reason to mention the girlfriend.”

The front door tinkled, and there was a rush of air. “Hello?”

Abbie and Helena stood and went to work, parting the beads out into the foyer where Dixie, in a smart turquoise pantsuit, stood anxiously.

Abbie clasped Helena’s hands. “Thank you so much, Helena, you are so gifted, and have helped me so much, how can I ever repay you for all you’ve done for me and my family?”

Helena dished up her long-suffering smile, the one that betrayed sacrifice as its own reward. “Go, and be happy.”

Abbie burst into tears of joy and pushed through the front door onto the street. Helena turned her eyes to Dixie, parting the curtain into the séance room. “Please, enter.”

They eased down on either side of the table, and Helena moved her sandwich under it. “You have come about Robert. You are worried about him.” Inasmuch as she came alone, Helena could only imagine Dixie wanted to know something about her boyfriend Robert Tyson Grant, who was probably acting strangely.

Dixie’s lips parted, her eyes alight with wonder. True, Dixie had aimed to find out about the ring from me later that evening, and also to soften my loyalties, find some wiggle room, perhaps get me to kill Purity for money instead. Some women know the incredible power they hold over men, and Dixie was certainly one of them. Yet it occurred to her that the more information she had the better. So she had returned to Helena.

“How did you know that, Helena?”

“I feel this thing.” The fortune-teller tapped her heart and squinted. “Is it that you want to know about his business? About Purity?”

“You do just
know
things, don’t you?”

With the tip of her toe, Helena activated a switch under the carpet, and eerie violin music began to play softly, the room getting slightly darker, and the crystal ball glowing almost imperceptibly.

“It is my gift, and my curse.” The palmist held a hand over the crystal ball, and it got brighter and blue, smoke swirling within. “To see, our minds must be one. Hold my hand and look deeply into the ball. Deeply!”

“I need to know more, Helena. Yes, about Robert. About Robert’s past.”

Sparkles appeared in the orb, the light inside flickering.

“Deeper! Look deeper!”

Dixie felt Helena’s grip tighten and saw her eyes roll up into her head, just the whites showing. Lips trembling, the palmist hissed, “The ring!”

Heart pounding, Dixie’s watery eyes gazed into the orb. “Yes, tell me about the ring!”

“The past is very distant, and holds many secrets. Secrets! They have lives, these secrets! Spirits! Something happened. Robert got the ring many years ago, under mysterious circumstances, I am trying to see … look deeper! Deeper!”

“I’m looking as deep as I can!”

“A thief! I see a thief!”

“Someone is going to steal the ring?”

“Deception!”

“What? Who is the thief? Who deceived who?”

“Look deeper, child! Deeper!” Helena was of course fishing for some sort of hint. “Robert will not tell you about the ring. He does not want you to know. He doesn’t want you to know because of the deception!” All very obvious, of course. He would have told her about the ring otherwise, and a deception can be almost anything.