The Dogs of Mexico (23 page)

She slumped in the seat. “Give me a break.”

A half hour passed, watching, taking each blind curve in silent vigilance.
 

He downshifted as the Nissan whined up through a pass. Near the crest and on the right an older flatbed truck stood on a worn strip of dirt. Directly across the road on the left, an elongated plank shack stood parallel to the road. The white Chevy was parked in front.

Robert braked, looking back over his shoulder as he slowed past and came to a stop.

Ana turned with a quick intake of breath, following his gaze. “What’re you doing?”

As before, a thin curtain of grit began to sift down in his peripheral vision. “We’re no longer running from these people,” he said.

Ana turned, her wide-eyed gaze flicking between him and the white Chevy. “What? Are you crazy?”

He eased the Nissan into reverse, backed up and stopped in the middle of the highway, looking the layout over.
 

Ana perched forward on the seat. “Robert…” she began.

He took it all in—the Chevy, the building, the two tanks of bottled gas bracketed to the far end, the trash-dump sloping off into a gorge. An old gasoline powered generator was chained to an iron bracket bolted to the wall, its one-cylinder engine put-putting, its big-wheeled belt wobbling with a
whumpa-whumpa-whump
a sound. There were no windows, just the weathered plank walls built up off the ground, open a few inches along the bottom and under the eaves for light and ventilation. A grid of chicken wire had been stretched along the foot-high elevation at the bottom to keep animals out. Other than an empty Pepsi and two empty Squirt bottles standing on a wooden box in front of the Chevy, the only decoration was a rusty Coca-Cola sign nailed to the door—all vividly clear in the high thin light with only the gossamer waves of grit filtering the view like floating metal filings.
 

He backed in alongside the Chevy and brought the Nissan to a halt.
 

“Robert!” Ana whispered hoarsely. “Are you crazy?”

“Get in behind the wheel here. Wait for me.” He patted the .45 in the console. “In case you need it.”

“This is sheer madness,” she whispered.

He took the .380 from his belt and opened the car door.

“No!” Ana clambered across the console, grabbing at his arm.

He caught her wrist and forced her grip loose. “You do what I tell you. Get on over here. Now!”

“Please don’t! I’m begging you. Please!”
 

He let go, took a deep breath, closed the door and turned toward the eatery. Above the putt-putting of the generator with its slapping belt he sensed more than heard the Nissan shift into gear behind. He glanced back to see Ana driving out onto the highway. He paused, watching as she dropped from sight over the pass.
 

Well, you’re the smart one in this crowd
, he said to himself.
Maybe they had been right in admitting me to the state hospital after all
. If so, he couldn’t care less. He refused to be chased any farther. He would have this moment—kill the two child murderers, take their car, run Ana down, get his car back, then go after Fowler. If Helmut showed up, good, he’d nail him too.

He glanced inside the Chevy in passing—Soffit’s aluminum case and his own carry-on in the rear footwell, the one he’d left in the Puerto Escondido, the cartridges in the lining.
 

A chicken slunk under the eatery’s wall by way of a large wallowed-out dirt-hole where the wire mesh was bent and useless. A dog barked inside and the chicken shot back out, flapping up a cloud of dust.
 

Robert took a deep breath, pushed the door open, then stepped inside and to the right, the .380 at arm’s length in both hands. He blinked, eyes shifting, thinking for a second that the gritty curtain was about to leave him in total darkness. But then his eyes adjusted and he realized it was the lack of light inside the eatery.
 

The two men sat at a crude wooden table on his right, eating from soup bowls, large spoons in one hand, tortillas folded in the other. They tensed in surprise, as if to make a break for it. Then, eyes fixed on the gun muzzle, they seemed to think better of it.
 

“Hands on your head!” Robert shouted.
 

He took in the dirt-floored room at a glance. In addition to three empty tables, a man in a straw hat sat alone near an old-fashioned Coca-Cola box with a cap-catcher on its side. The man was either stoically unperturbed, or too scared to move. Two barefoot Indian women had been tending pots on gas burners at the rear, and had all but disappeared, squatting behind the black-iron stove. The dog lay in a dust hole in the dirt floor, watching the slit of light under the wall for the chicken.

Robert’s attention remained fixed on the two men, the bigger guy in a bright orange blouse, Capri jeans, green eye shadow, lipstick, roughed cheeks. Around his neck he wore a chain threaded through the gold ring Mickey’s had worn in her navel. Robert was tempted to shoot him in the head on the spot.
 

The little guy sported cowboy boots, jeans and a dirty T-shirt.
 

Robert eased his way around the two. They watched in turn, their gazes shifting between his eyes and the gun. The big guy was Anglo, soft looking, but that could be a result of the makeup. The little guy was of mixed blood—Spanish, Indian, some Caribbean something. Wiry, a knotty face, a wispy patch of fuzz under his lower lip, arms blotched with India ink tattoos. One tattoo in particular got Robert’s attention—the signature of the Salvadoran MS-13—one of the most criminally psychotic gangs in the world.
 

The little guy dropped his spoon on the tabletop with a clatter. Robert jerked the .380 at him, knowing instinctively he was the more dangerous of the two. Taking control aggressively was ninety percent of a takedown, but the little man lifted his hands with slow deliberate arrogance, interlocking his fingers on top of his head.

The larger man raised both hands, a tortilla clutched in one, spoon in the other. A big black patent-leather purse with beaded trim lay on the table. Robert nudged the pistol toward the transvestite, keeping him aligned with the little guy on the other side. “Up!” he said sharply.
 

The big man wallowed his chair back and stood. He wore open-toed blue pumps, toes bunched, warping the shoes out of shape.
 

“Turn around,” Robert ordered.
 

The man turned, eyes rolling wetly in their sockets, watching Robert over his shoulder. He smelled of cheap floral perfume.

“Keep your hands up.” Holding the .380 close to the man’s spine, Robert patted him down for weapons. “Move around there with your friend. Come on. Hurry it up!”

When the man complied, Robert opened the purse with one hand and dumped the contents on the table—loose change, a tire-pressure gauge, makeup in a zippered case, car keys and a nine-millimeter Beretta. Robert stuck the Beretta in his belt. He put the car keys in his pocket.

“Sit,” he ordered. Then, motioning to the smaller man: “You. Up.”

As the larger man eased back onto his chair as the little guy stood quickly, knocking his chair over.
 

Robert crouched, a reflexive action, the pistol readied
. “
You want to die right here, that’s fine by me.”

“ ’Ey, you would shoot us in front of the witness, no?”

“Just blink and they’ll be dipping your brains out of the soup back there for a week. Empty your pockets. Easy.”

The guy was even smaller than Robert had thought—thin little-boy arms, tattoos interwoven with weld-like scars that Robert recognized as old cigarette burns. His teeth were bad, the blackened decay of a crystal meth user. He emptied his pockets—wallet, change, a plastic prescription bottle, a yellow-handled pocketknife. The truck driver looked on, stoic. The dog rested his head over one foreleg, watching for the chicken. One of the women at the rear stood just long enough to do a quick stir in one of the pots, eyes showing briefly over the stovetop before she dropped from sight again.

“Turn around, easy.” Robert felt the smaller man down for weapons, giving special attention to his boot tops. Satisfied, he lifted the knife from the change, put it in his pocket and stood back.
 

He nudged the gun toward the bigger man. “Outside,” he ordered. “Stay close here. Not too close!” The men followed just out of reach as Robert backed through the doorway into the yard, glancing about, squinting against the sudden light. He did a double take—
Ana—
standing behind the Nissan’s open door, one hand on the steering wheel, engine idling.
 

Robert turned, shouting at the men, “On your knees!”
 

The two exchanged looks.

The truck driver appeared in the doorway behind, looking on, stoic, still holding his bowl.

“On your knees!” Robert shouted again, tilting the gun at the two men.

They knelt. The smaller man crossed himself.

“Robert,
please!
” Ana cried.
 

Thinking Ana had gone for good, he had herded them outside, thinking he would kill them, then take their car and catch up to her. But now, the gravity of killing them was more than he expected. Not only that, here Ana was, watching everything. He had boxed himself into a corner. But then, recalling Mickey, the bullet hole in her forehead, the flies, he had to restrain himself from shooting them dead on the spot.

“There’s an aluminum case in their car,” he said. “Get it and my bag.” He pitched the Chevy’s keys to her. She fumbled them in her nervousness, but quickly recovered and unlocked their car.

“There’s a gun here,” she said, standing back.

“Good. Put it in our car.”

“No… You get it.”
 

“Get that goddamn gun!” he shouted. “Put it in the car!”

She hesitated, then piled Soffit’s aluminum case and Robert’s carry-on in with the other luggage. With visible distaste she lifted a machine-pistol from the rear floor and put it in the Nissan.
 

Robert took the Chevy’s keys from her and stuffed them in his pocket. He sighted the .380 on the larger man.

The man threw his hands up. “No! Wait—”

“Robert! No!”

In the same moment he became aware of a taxi van slowing, turning in alongside the Chevy—a whole van full of Anglos staring through the windows.
 

The .380 bucked on the end of his arm, twice in quick succession. The big man pitched backward, arms flailing, his blue pumps kicking as if riding a bicycle. The little guy fell to his knees, shoulders hunched, blackened teeth bared in a quivering grimace as the gun muzzle swept past and fired again. Both front tires sank on the Chevy, air whistling out in a cloud of dust, the resounding gunshots echoing through the mountains. Chickens squawked and flapped off down the slope into the brush. The dog scrambled from under the wall, barked once and stood looking confused.

Passengers in the van stared stupefied as the taxi squealed out backward, gunned hard onto the pavement and up the highway, disappearing over the pass.
 

Robert took quick aim at the front tire on the truck across the road. The tire went with a
bang
, blowing off a heavy warp of retread. The trucker in the doorway slowly lowered his bowl.

The two men huddled trembling on the ground as Robert pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and handed it to Ana. “Take two hundred bucks and give it to that guy,” he said.

Wordless, the trucker accepted the money, nodded to Robert, tipped his hat to Ana. But she was already hurrying to the car, scrambling into the front passenger seat.
 

Robert eased around to the driver’s door, got in behind the wheel, shoved the car in gear and squealed out onto the pavement.

In the rearview mirror he glimpsed the smaller man scrambling to his feet, diving into the Chevy. Robert almost ran off the road as the little guy popped the trunk, dashed behind the car and dragged out a second machine-pistol.

26

Pursuit

“G
ET DOWN! GET DOWN!”
Robert floored the accelerator. The machine-pistol made a stuttered corn-popping noise. Bullets hammered the trees and kicked up dust alongside the pavement.

Robert grabbed Ana’s shirtfront and jerked her forward. She slid off into the footwell and balled up in a knot, arms covering her head. Robert hunkered down, squinting over the top arc of the steering wheel. The rear window frosted over, spurting chunks of safety glass. Stuffing flew from Ana’s headrest. The Nissan dropped over the crest of the pass. The shooting stopped. Robert realized he was still in third gear. He shifted to fourth and tried to straighten the car, but the rear end was swinging back and forth, bumping up and down.

“Oh, shit…”

Ana stared up at him, eyes ringed white with fear.
 

The car bumped and thumped, the rear end sway-banging side to side. He braked around a switchback, slipping sideways, the flat tire slapping against the rear fender. Halfway down the long winding descent, the tire wobbled off the rim and went over the cliff trailing smoke. The wheel rim whined on the asphalt, vibrating through the chassis. Robert glanced at the speedometer: Thirty kilometers per hour.

At the bottom of the mountain, he pulled over and they got out. Ana leaned against the car, hand over her heart, breathing hard. His own hands were shaky.
 

He stared at the rear wheel rim. The spare was packed with money—and how would that work?
 

“Listen,” Ana whispered. “What’s that?”

A
whump-whump-whump
sounded from up the mountain behind.
 

On an outcurve above, he saw the white Chevy wobbling around a switchback, coming down the mountain toward them.
 

“What the— Get in! Get in!”

The front-wheel drive threw gravel and squealed out onto the blacktop. The rear whipped side to side, the rim shrieking over the pavement.