The House of Wolfe (12 page)

I got her, he says. Get back to the house.

He listens, then looks at Jessie. Really? he says. Well . . . it's another thing she'll pay for.

He puts away the phone and goes to the rear of the truck. She hears him rummaging in its bed. After a minute he reappears at the door and opens it and tells her to get out and stand facing him. She steps down, her balance largely recovered though her knees are still tenuous.

He holds her by an arm and says, All right?

She nods, fixing her gaze on the holstered pistol under his coat.

Don't even think of it, girl, he says. You'll get hurt worse.

He's got a wide roll of black electrical tape and he binds her wrists together in front of her with snug around-and-over loops of tape, and then winds a few loops over her upper arms and around her waist, securing her arms to her sides. He tears the roll free and lobs it into the truck bed.

He helps her back onto the cab seat and closes her door and goes around and gets in and cranks up the engine. Then makes a U-turn and heads slowly down the street.

Who taught you to fight?

She stays silent.

When I ask you something, answer me.

Nobody, she says, staring ahead.

Liar. I was just told you beat the shit out of the Apache. That's very funny, although you shouldn't have done it.

Apache, she thinks. Of course.

12 — JESSIE

He parks the truck in front of the house and leaves the motor running and comes around to her side and helps her out. The dogs next door have resumed their commotion.

The pain in her chest and stomach is such that she's hardly aware of the soreness of her feet. The Durango is parked behind the Suburban along the front of the yard.

As the blond assists her to the house, two men come out the front door and one of them starts toward them, carrying a large tool chest. She doesn't see the Apache. The man with the toolbox passes by without word or glance. She hears a truck door open and shut behind them and the old pickup rattles away.

The other man is still on the porch, sipping from a bottle of beer. The hook-nosed man who collected their phones and valuables. He grins at her and says, Hey, wildcat, glad to have you back.

She looks away.

You can take the cuffs off the women now, the blond tells him. But first shut those dogs up.

The hooknose nods and heads for the wall.

Jessie stumbles on the porch's bottom step, but the blond steadies her, then helps her up the other steps and through the door. The living room is dimly lighted by a crookneck lamp at one end of a worn sofa, and, at the other end, by a shrine of glimmering candles around a three-foot statuette of a black-robed Santa Muerte, a sequined mantilla atop her grinning skull, a scythe in one hand. The Mother of Death, worshipped by outcasts of every sort, and the patron saint of Mexican gangsters. There's a redolence of fried chiles and other spices, of maize tortillas, pintos, cooked tomatoes. On the table of the adjoining dining room is a black-and-white television no one is watching, its volume barely audible. Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando are in Old West costumes and conversing in dubbed Spanish. Adjacent to the dining room is a kitchen at whose door stands a dark bony woman holding a wooden stirring spoon.

Jessie hears a
thonk
and pained yelping, then three more
thonks
in succession and the dogs are silent.

The blond man steers Jessie toward a hallway entrance, then draws her aside to let a girl pass by, a large pail of water in each hand. At first glance, Jessie thinks the girl is winking at her, then realizes she has a squint eye.

Come on, the blond says, and leads her into the dim hallway. At its far end is a staircase, the dark form of a man sitting on its bottom step. She supposes the others are being held upstairs and she's being taken to join them. But midway down the hall the blond opens a door on the right and says, In here.

The shadowy figure at the staircase stands up and the blond says, Wait there. Then he guides Jessie into the room.

It's a small, spare bedroom lit by a bedside lamp. Her first notion is that they're all being put into separate rooms. From the outside, the house hadn't seemed that big, but she supposes it might be, if all the rooms are this small. Then she thinks of a likelier reason he's brought her to a room with a bed.

She starts at the touch of the blond's hands on her back. He carefully removes the tape binding her arms to her sides and sticks the tape to the rail headboard.

She feels a tentative relief. He wouldn't have to untape her arms to rape her. She offers her hands to him so he can free them too, but he doesn't.

Do you need to use the bathroom?

What? she says. No.

You're sure?

No. I mean, no, I don't have to. Why do—?

Lie down, he says.

Her alarm renews. She tries to read his eyes in the low light.

Don't make me repeat myself.

She sits on the edge of the bed and says, What are you going to do to me?

Nothing. Lie down.

She does. He pulls her bound hands over her head and uses the removed tape to secure them to a headboard rail.

Why do this? she says. I can't run away again, not from in here. Leave my hands taped if you want, but . . . please, you don't have to tie me to the bed.

It's as if he doesn't hear her. He tests the firmness of her bonds and is satisfied. Then goes out into the hall, leaving the door open.

She tries to free her hands from the headboard rail, twisting this way and that, trying to push herself backward and effect some slack in her arms, but her contortions serve only to tighten the tape around her wrists. Her frustration churns in her chest, burns her eyes.

The blond returns and sees the disheveled bedcover and shakes his head. A man comes in behind him and closes the door.

The ponytailed man called Apache.

Her skin tightens. One side of his face is darkly swollen, its eye half-closed, its ear a raw mass. His lips look like small blue jellyfish, his nose bloated. There's no white at all in his eyes.

The blond takes out a switchblade and opens it and cuts her dress straps and puts away the knife. Without uncovering her breasts he slides his hand under her and unhooks her strapless bra and pulls it off her and drapes it over the headboard.

She feels tears forming and angrily blinks them back.
Don't
, she commands herself. Don't you dare fucking cry. Don't say anything. They'll hear it in your voice, how much they scare you. Don't give them the satisfaction, do not.

Catalina, she thinks.
Catalina
.

You harmed this man, the blond says to her, and he believes you owe him compensation. Unfortunately for you, you also caused
me
distraction and extra work. Had you been successful in your escape, I may have been severely punished for it, and I certainly would have seemed a fool. Like I can't hold on to a prisoner—a woman prisoner, worse yet. What you've done must be punished. Don't make a fuss about it. All you'll do is frighten the other women. Nothing's going to happen to them because neither of them tried to run away or kicked anybody in the face. The truth is, you're getting off very easy. Your only punishment is to be fucked by somebody you don't have any choice about. So what? We all have to do things with people we have no choice about. Think of it as just another dick.

She's stupefied with disbelief. Charged with dread.

Just don't hurt her, he tells the Apache.

She did this, man, the Apache says, indicating his face. She
owes
me.

That's why you can have her and that's plenty enough payback. Just don't hurt her.

The Apache's damaged mouth warps in a grotesque sneer.

Understand? The blond says. He unholsters the Glock.

Or what, you'll
shoot
me? Bullshit.

You hurt her, I'll bust you on the head so hard you'll never remember your name.

The Apache attempts another distorted sneer and returns his attention to her.

Understand? the blond says.

Yeah, yeah, Apache mutters, his eyes on her.

Say it.

I got it, man.

The blond goes to a ladder-back chair in the corner and sits down and crosses his legs and holds the pistol on his lap.

What're you doing? the Apache says.

Get to it or get out, the blond says.

Fuck you, the Apache snorts. Think I won't if you watch? Watch all you want. Jack off. What do I care?

She watches in terrified outrage as he takes off his pants and undershorts at the same time. He's already hard.

She wants to plead that he please please please not do this, but she remembers the look in her Aunt Catalina's eyes and the sound of her voice when she'd recounted some of the things
she
had survived. It was Catalina who had told her never to beg for mercy, never. Eat shit if you must, she had said—that proud woman who rarely spoke a coarse word—but there's no greater shame than to beg for mercy. You can always wash shit from your mouth, she had said, but begging for mercy will leave a vile shame on your tongue you can never get rid of.

She bites her lip and glares at the Apache as he looms over her, his grin distorted. He tugs the dress down her body and over her feet and drops it on the floor. He pinches her nipple and she twists and kicks at him, striking him on the thigh and just missing his erection.

He snarls,
Cunt!
and punches her leg and she cries out.

Don't
hit her! the blond says, springing from the chair. Then points a finger at Jessie.
You!
Any more of that shit and I'll
let
him hurt you.

He returns to the chair.

The Apache gets on the bed and rips away her panty and flings it aside, then pushes her legs apart and positions himself and spits into his hand. She wants to laugh at him, insult him, tell him how much fun it was to kick his ugly face and how she'd fight him again if he were man enough to unbind her, but speech fails her as he tries to insert himself and curses her tightness. She wants to vomit, to loose her bowels,
anything
to repel him with disgust, but all her effort is concentrated in clenching herself against him—a resistance suddenly breached, her teeth baring in a yowl of raging shame at his invasion, at his grunting and grunting with the guttural pleasure of impaling an enemy, his rank odor shrouding her, his exhalations hot on her face.

And despite her resolution not to cry, not to show any sign of defeat, she cannot keep the tears from coursing.

Blurring his bloody grin.

II

RUDY

13

The plane is a five-passenger business jet belonging to the Three Uncles, but it isn't ready. Something about a faulty instrument light. It's not till a couple of hours later that Charlie shakes me out of my doze in an office chair and we board the plane and take off. It's a little four-seater but we're the only passengers.

The rain has stopped but the cloud cover's still thick. As we turn southward, the lights of Brownsville and Matamoros are patchwork glimmerings. Then we're over Mexico and there's only darkness down below.

Uncle Harry Mack has seen to the clearances for us to land at an auxiliary strip at Benito Juárez International in Mexico City, where we'll be met by our cousin Rodrigo Wolfe. We've got passports and a bag of clothes. Everything else we need, the Mexican Wolfes will provide.

I can't remember the last time Charlie left home to attend to a problem personally. That's what Frank and I are for. From the time we graduated from college almost twelve years ago, we've worked as field agents for Wolfe Associates, which makes us state-licensed investigators, a handy sanction. According to the firm's job description, a field agent traces witnesses, serves subpoenas, runs background checks and so forth, and sometimes we actually do such things, though the firm contracts with a private company to do most of that. For us Wolfes, “field agent” is mostly an occupation of record we enter on our tax forms. In truth we work for Charlie Fortune, mainly as gunrunners and sometimes as “fixers” for both him and Wolfe Associates. Whenever the firm is faced with a serious difficulty that can't be resolved in a courtroom, or whenever someone fails to hold up his end of a deal with Charlie or in any way threatens a family project, we're called on to resolve the matter. To fix it, if you will. Sometimes someone who wrongs us will haul ass and go into hiding, and so we first have to find him. We always do. At present, there are two other fixers in addition to me and Frank—a cousin named Roy Wolfe, and as of six months ago when he graduated from LSU, Eddie Gato. Roy likes to work alone, while Frank and I usually work as partners, but because Eddie's new to the trade, Charlie has had him working with me since last summer.

Frank was irked at being left out of this one, but Charlie needs him to run things in his absence. Eddie Gato wanted to come too, naturally, but was already assigned to go to New Orleans tomorrow night to lend a hand to the Youngblood family. They're our relatives through marriage, and our most important arms supplier east of Texas. They're having a problem with a smuggling outfit that's been trying to poach some of our southeastern sources and is suspected of hijacking shipments meant for us. It's not so much that the Youngbloods need the help, but Charlie's been wanting Eddie to get acquainted with them and saw this as a good opportunity to send him on his first solo job.

Immediately following the call from Harry Mack, Charlie filled us in on the situation with cousin Jessie. We knew she'd gone to Mexico City a few days ago to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of a couple she's known since her college days, and she was expected to return to Brownsville the day after tomorrow. But according to Harry Mack—who received the information from Juan Jaguaro, the head of the Mexican Wolfes—she'd been kidnapped tonight, she and nine other members of the wedding party, including the bride and groom. Kidnapped late last night, to be more accurate, since it's now Monday morning. The ransom's five million, U.S., and the bridal couple's parents have agreed to pay. The transfer's set to begin at four o'clock this afternoon. The parents do not intend to tell anyone about the snatch and are unaware the Mexican Wolfes have learned of it. That's all Harry Mack knew. We'll get the details in Mexico City.

Evidently, the parents believe they have no choice but to trust the kidnappers. That's their prerogative. We choose not to. We're tolerant and liberty loving, as I've said, but we're not free with our trust except with each other, and even then we can sometimes be chary. It could be that the snatchers truly intend to release the captives on receipt of the money. It works out like that more often than it doesn't. But we know of too many kidnappings in which the ransom was paid in full and in exactly the manner dictated and without any violation of the agreement with the kidnappers, and the captives were killed anyway. Mainly for the age-old reason that the dead don't tell tales. Even if the perpetrators don't plan on doing away with the captives when they get paid off, they might get riled or panicked about something for whatever reason and decide to kill one for effect. To make a point of their seriousness. In such a case, the likely victim would be the captive who's most expendable. The only one of the bunch not related to either bride or groom. Meaning Jessie.

It's a possibility we can't risk.

Find her before the money changes hands—and move fast to get her out. That's our plan in a nutshell.

By tonight we'll know how it went.

As we make our descent, the cloud-blurred lights of Mexico City materialize. It's almost dawn but the overcast is well entrenched and the pilot says the prediction is for rain all day. I managed a catnap but I can tell that Charlie didn't even try to sleep.

I've been to a number of places in northern Mexico, but this is my first time in the capital. Some might find that odd, considering the large family we have here, but that's how it is. The Three Uncles have all come here at one time or another, but I don't think any of them have been here in ages. Other than Charlie Fortune, who comes down once or twice a year to see the Jaguaros about things that neither he nor they will discuss in any way but face-to-face, Jessie's the only Texas Wolfe who's been in Mexico City in recent years, so far as I know. The Mexican Wolfes are the same way about Texas. The only one of them who's visited us in years is our cousin Rayo Luna. We're all under the same roof and in business together, but the two sides of the family generally tend to keep to their own side of the house.

The Beechcraft lands smoothly and taxis to a small building where a mustached man in a dark suit stands waiting by a door. We debark into a light wind threaded with the scent of rain. The man comes over and welcomes us, saying, “Bienvenidos a México, primos!” He introduces himself to me as my cousin Rodrigo Álvaro Wolfe but says to call him Rigo. We shake hands and embrace each other tight in a backslapping abrazo, then he and Charlie do the same. Charlie has met with him a number of times before and thinks highly of him. They're about the same age, and as operations chief of the Jaguaros, Rodrigo is Charlie's Mexican Wolfe counterpart. He has a degree in economics from UCLA and is as fluent in English as any of us. Like Charlie, he reports only to the heads of his family—his father, Plutarco, and his uncle, Juan Jaguaro, who is Plutarco's big brother and the top man.

“Let's get the customs bullshit over with,” Rigo says. “Then we'll talk in the car.”

Over the generations, the Mexican side of the family has prospered even more than ours. They own two investment firms and are part owners of two banks. They own data processing companies. They have controlling interest in a shipping line. They're established in Mexico City society and are prominent philanthropists who have endowed a number of education foundations and research institutes. And under the guise of Los Jaguaros, they've long been buying arms from us and selling them all over Mexico. Like us, they don't deal in guns only for the money or because they believe strongly in the right of self-defense and in ownership of the means to exercise it. They do it because, like us, they believe in greater allegiance to our own rules than those of governments owned by powerful interests who play the public for fools. It's a matter of self-respect as much as anything else.

Although the Jaguaros have received very little attention in contrast to the major crime cartels, they haven't wholly escaped public notice. As periodically described by the news media, they're the most covert criminal organization in the country, and some reports call them a cartel of their own. No one can say when their name first became known. Their home territory is rumored to be the capital itself but no one has ever proved it. The number of members in the organization is anyone's guess, and so far as journalistic investigators have been able to determine, not a single member of the Jaguaros is known by name to any government agency. The only thing the federal authorities know about them is that they traffic solely in the sale of firearms, but on a scale that makes them the largest arms dealer in Mexico.

Some news outlets, however—their editors in the pay of shadowy intermediaries of the Jaguaros—have expressed chronic doubts that a Jaguaro organization even exists. They've repeatedly conjectured that the Jaguaros are nothing more than the fabrication of federal officials, one more ploy to distract the public from the government's failure to stem the arms flow into Mexico or curb the spreading violence of the real cartels, and maybe even—as some of the bolder tabloids have insinuated—to cover up their collusion with those cartels. Some apprehended members of various crime gangs have told police that the Jaguaros certainly do exist and that their organizations have many times bought guns from them. The same skeptical media sources have dismissed these claims as a clever tactic to keep secret the cartels' true suppliers.

The truth is that not even the other cartels know who the Jaguaros are. They know the Jaguaros work out of the capital, yes, and they know how to make contact with them to arrange an arms purchase, certainly. But to this day, none of the outfits has any inkling that the Jaguaros are connected to the estimable Wolfe family of Mexico City.

14

A white Tahoe picks us up in front of the terminal. The smell of the coming rain has grown stronger. In better weather the sun would be up now, but the cloud cover is so thick I don't even know in which direction the sun might be. Rigo takes the shotgun seat and Charlie and I sit in back. Despite the overcast, the driver wears dark wraparounds. Wood-faced dude. He nods when Rigo introduces him as Chuy.

Even at this early hour the traffic into the city is already something to reckon with, but Chuy navigates it with ease. According to Charlie, you haven't really risked your ass until you've tried driving in Mexico City.

Sitting half-turned toward us, Rigo asks how much we know about the snatch.

“Only what Harry Mack got from Juan Jaguaro,” Charlie says, and gives him the spare rundown.

Rigo then gives us the full account, which he says originated with his cousin—and ours—Rayo Luna, though he doesn't say how she came by the information. The key points are that the kidnapped party's being held in two groups at different sites, each group to be ransomed in turn, then all the captives released at the same time, and that the guy who claims to be running the show calls himself Mr. X.

“Number of perps unknown,” Rigo says. “But no question it's an inside job involving the Huerta guy, the security chief working for Belmonte. What we don't know is if Huerta's the only security guy involved or if some of his men are in it too. It's a small company, seven agents, all of them on duty at the reception, but we haven't found any of them. Could be the whole outfit's in on it. He's got two secretaries, both single, both live alone. We've braced them, told them we were federal cops, grilled them good. Neither one seems to know anything. Got them under house arrest, man posted with them so they can't contact anybody. We tossed the office but found nothing.

“What do you have on the Mr. X dude?” Charlie says.

“Nothing but what the parents said. Came across as a cool customer. Smooth talker, they said, educated.”

“Cartel?” Charlie says.

“Don't think so,” Rigo says. “They'd be breaking an agreement the big guys have about Mexico City. The cartel honchos have to live somewhere, too, after all. A lot of them have homes here, their families. The understanding is it's okay to talk business here but not
do
business here, and for damn sure not make war here. Some of their cowboys might get in a dustup now and then but it doesn't happen often, and it's always some personal deal, not war. The big guys don't want undue attention here. They don't want to alarm the good citizens or the tourists or hurt the city's business. The government will deny it till doomsday, but word has it that as long as the resident big boys don't make trouble in the capital, the feds will leave them alone in the capital.”

“So you figure small-time locals for the grab,” Charlie says.

“Who else?” Rigo says. “God knows how many kidnap gangs there are in Mexico City. Hell, man, snatcher gangs have made the bodyguard business a boom industry in this town. The thing is, most of their grabs are middle-classers who can't afford a ransom like—”

“Smalltimers fuck up,” Charlie interrupts. “They're reckless. The people they grab tend to get hurt, even killed, sometimes by accident, sometimes not. That's what
I
know about small-time snatcher gangs. It's riskier to Jess if it
is
a small-time bunch.”

“Normally I'd agree with you, cuz. But these Mr. X guys, they grab
ten
richies at once,
and
, according to the parents, without hurting anybody. Pretty smooth, no? The parents treated politely, taken to meet Mr. X so he can explain the deal in person instead of by phone or a letter. He has them driven home. Cool. Reassuring. They're smart, these guys, they're not greedy. They could tag these people for more than five mil but they don't. They figure the families can pony up the five faster than, say, even ten.
And
they figure that two and a half mil from two banks is easier and faster than five mil from one. I think speed's their thing. The faster it moves, the less chance of cops coming into it, of anything going wrong. My money's on a small and highly competent bunch that's looking to move up in status and knows there's no percentage in harming the hostages. They get the money, they'll let them go.”