Angel Baby: A Novel (13 page)

“Take the dirt road ahead and then proceed until I tell you to stop,” he says.

The driver makes the turn, bumps down off the pavement, and continues on the road, which winds along the floor of a steep, rocky canyon the color of old bones. Thacker follows, leaning forward to peer through the billows of dust that come and go between them. When both vehicles are out of sight of the highway, he says “Halt right here” into the mike, and they ease to a stop, his truck twenty feet behind the car.

The canyon funnels the breeze into a larcenous wind that snatches up anything not rooted and drags it away. A tumbleweed glances off the truck’s fender and spins in place for a second before regaining its momentum and rolling on toward Mexico. The way Thacker looks at it, this thing is already three-quarters done and going off with no problems. All that’s left is to take the money. He steps out of the truck and removes his P2000 from its holster. Murph warned him the girl is carrying a gun, so he stands behind his door and shouts, “Hands where I can see them, both of you!”

The guy and girl comply immediately, thrusting their arms out their respective windows, and Thacker pulls a black balaclava over his head and charges the BMW. Moving quickly up the driver’s side, he points his pistol at the guy’s face.

“Yo, yo, yo,” the guy says. “Wrong car, man, wrong car.” He’s some kind of surfer. Blond hair, suntan.

“Hand over the money,” Thacker says. “The backpack.”

“There’s no money. We’re tourists, coming from Ensenada.”

Thacker fires a shot across the hood of the Beamer, low enough that Surfer Joe can see the flash and feel the heat on his cheek. Then he lines up on the guy’s head again.

“That’s the last round I’m gonna waste,” he says.

“Please,” the girl says. She’s cute. Real cute.

“In the trunk,” the driver says.

Jerónimo passes through the same booth the BMW did. The inspector checks his passport and waves him on, not even glancing at the broken window. When he’s a safe distance away, Jerónimo takes the Smith & Wesson from under his thigh, where he had it ready in case he needed it, and places it on the passenger seat.

There are no other vehicles between him and the BMW now. The big rig was routed to the truck inspection area before they crossed, and the car, the Honda, pulled into the first gas station on the U.S. side. The BMW is making its way slowly up the hill, and Jerónimo gives it plenty of line. He’ll make his move when they’re farther from the border and all its cops. But not too far. He’s decided he has to kill the white boy in order to keep things simple. That means stopping them before they reach a populated area, somewhere out here in no-man’s-land.

A white Dodge Ram swings into the road in front of him, blocking his view of the Beamer. He finds that if he moves into the other lane a little bit, he can still see it just fine. It’s noisy inside the Explorer with the broken window. The air coming in whirls around in back and makes a kind of roar. There’s also a new rattle. The kids’ rocks must have knocked something loose. Jerónimo takes a drink of water, steering with his knees while opening the jug. It’s warm as piss.

The truck speeds up and pulls away. Jerónimo jukes into the other lane and sees that it’s right on the BMW’s rear bumper, and, if his eyes aren’t fooling him, it’s flashing police lights. Garbled words from a loudspeaker fly past, and both vehicles slow down. Jerónimo eases up on the gas, too, maintaining his distance. He needs to let what’s going to happen happen so he can figure out what to do next.

The car veers off the pavement and onto a dirt road, followed by the truck. Jerónimo quickly loses both vehicles in a fog of dust. This hide-and-seek stuff doesn’t add up. Cops aren’t usually so cagey. He turns onto the road himself and creeps forward. It leads into a narrow canyon, one wall of which is deep in shadow, the other too bright. The BMW and the truck are already out of sight around a bend. He rolls down his window and inches along, watching and listening for any sign of them.

Another blown-out loudspeaker command and a plume of dust let him know he’s close. He comes to a stop, gets out of the truck, and proceeds on foot, keeping to the shadowy side of the canyon. His gun hand is sweaty, the Smith & Wesson seemingly giving off its own heat. The BMW and the Dodge soon come into view parked about seventy-five feet ahead. Spotting a boulder that overlooks the vehicles, Jerónimo climbs the wall to take cover behind it. He presses his shoulder into the rock and cranes his neck to see what’s going on down below.

A fat man in a Border Patrol uniform and ski mask is pointing a pistol at the driver of the car. The driver, the white boy, gets out and walks to the rear of the Beamer, hands on his head. When he gets there, he unlocks and opens the trunk. The fat man gestures with his gun, and the white boy reaches in and removes a backpack.

Jerónimo feels a sting on his arm, a spreading chemical burn. He pulls away from the boulder and slaps at the pain. A big red ant is smeared across his fingers, and a hundred more scurry over his shirt. They bite him on the neck, on the chest. Swatting wildly, he loses his footing in the dry, crumbly soil, falls on his ass, and rides a small landslide down the hill and out into the open. Every time he tries to stand he triggers another slide. The fat man and the driver turn toward the clatter of shifting stones and see him flailing.

“Stay down,” the fat man shouts at him, then fires a shot that ricochets off the boulder with a metallic whine. Jerónimo sends two rounds downslope before rolling sideways toward a shallow wash. The fat man runs back to his truck and crouches behind it while the BMW driver, carrying the backpack, dashes to the open door of the car and dives inside.

By the time Jerónimo is on his belly in the creek bed, forearm propped on the bank, pistol ready, the BMW is pulling away. He and the fat man loose a volley of shots at it, breaking windows and popping a tire. The Beamer swerves and slows and drifts toward the brighter wall of the canyon, but then someone inside starts returning fire, and the car picks up speed and disappears in a taunting swirl of wind-whipped dust.

Malone isn’t thinking about the possibility of escape when he runs back to the car, he’s merely seeking cover, but then Luz yells at him to drive, and that seems like a good idea. He starts the BMW and hits the gas, and for a second it looks like they might actually get away, until the thief in the Border Patrol uniform and the Mexican who came out of nowhere open up on them. The windshield spider-webs, the car gets squirrelly, and bullets and broken glass are everywhere.

Fucking Freddy,
Malone thinks, certain this is his doing. He was a fool to fall in with the guy, and now his foolishness is going to get him killed. Luz, however, isn’t ready to give up. She pulls the .45 from the pack, gets on her knees facing backward in the passenger seat, and starts blasting away through the shattered rear window. The sound is deafening, and Malone cringes as ejected casings bounce off his bare arms and legs.

“Drive! Drive! Drive!” Luz says. Her shouts shock him into action, get his body working instead of his mind. He yanks on the steering wheel and stomps the accelerator. The engine screams like a dying rabbit, and the power steering is almost gone, but he manages to straighten out the car and head off down the road.

They limp around a curve, putting them out of range of the shooters. The car shudders and jerks, and it’s all Malone can do to keep it on course.

“This thing isn’t gonna take us much farther,” he says.

“So we run then,” Luz says. She’s still kneeling on the seat, watching out the back window.

“You don’t want to try to talk to them?”

“Is that what you think?” Luz says. “They’re here to talk?”

The oil light on the dash flashes red, and the car loses power. The canyon walls are only thirty feet high here, and not as steep as they were near the entrance. If they can make it to the top and out into the scrub, who knows? It’ll be dicey with no water, but at least they’ll have a chance.

“All right,” Malone says, hitting the brakes. “End of the line.”

He bolts from the car and starts up the east wall of the canyon. Panic supercharges him, and he’s halfway to the top before Luz even gets her door open. She climbs up after him, but, carrying the pack, has trouble making progress and keeps sliding back down.

“Wait,” she calls to Malone. “Please.”

The desperation in her voice hangs him up. He pauses on an outcropping and watches her struggle, the sun beating down on him like a judgment. Any minute now those motherfuckers are going to come around the bend, intent on finishing what they started.

Luz is on her knees now. “Please,” she says. “You can have the money. I just want to see my daughter.”

Malone considers leaving her to her fate and getting himself to safety but then imagines hearing a shot ring out behind him and knowing he might’ve saved her. He already has one soul on his conscience; he doesn’t need another.

He sidesteps down the hill, setting off cascades of rock and sand. Reaching Luz, he takes the backpack from her and pulls her to her feet.

“Hang on to my shirt,” he says, “and go as fast as you fucking can.”

She grabs the hem of his T-shirt, and they climb together. Malone takes his time, planting each foot carefully. It’s slow going, hot and dusty. He keeps thinking he hears the sound of an approaching vehicle, but when he turns to look, nothing. Luz does a good job of keeping up, rarely relying on him to pull her forward. When they near the top, she hustles past him to get there first, then offers him her hand.

“Come on,” she says.

He pauses to catch his breath after letting her haul him up the last few feet, doubles over so the sweat dripping off his face pocks the dirt like a rare rain. But there’s no time to rest. Those guys, those guns, they’re still coming, so he and Luz set off at a dog trot across a rocky plain dotted with manzanita and sage and scrub oak, headed north, he hopes.

T
RAILING OILY BLACK SMOKE, THE GUT-SHOT
BMW
DISAPPEARS
up the canyon, and a windy silence replaces the gunfire and the howl of the dying engine. Like an animal peeking out of its den, Thacker slowly raises his head above the hood of his truck. He’s pretty sure the guy who blew the holdup as he was about to put his hands on the money is still hunkered down in the shallow, brush-choked wash across the road.

“U.S. Border Patrol,” he yells in that direction. “Toss your weapon and show me your hands.”

“Who you trying to kid?” the guy shouts back, staying under cover.

“You’re interfering with an official CBP operation,” Thacker says.

“Come over here and get me then.”

So the fucker’s going to be like that, huh? Thacker ducks behind the truck again, even though it’s murder on his knees. He pulls off the balaclava he wore during the robbery attempt and tosses it aside. There are only a couple more rounds in his gun, so he drops the nearly empty magazine and slides in a full one.

This thing has gone to hell, and he needs to make a decision: Either muck his cards and walk away or commit to seeing it through to the end, which means catching up to the BMW and doing whatever it takes to get the money. It sure would help if he knew what the joker in the bushes was up to.

He rocks back and forth a few times to get some feeling into his feet, then stands and peers over the hood.

“Let’s talk,” he shouts.

“Just get in your truck and go,” the guy in the bushes says.

“If anyone’s going, I think it’s you,” Thacker says.

“You know what I think?” the guy says. “I think you’re a thief. I think you were out to rob those people.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Thacker says, feeling the guy out.

“Because you heard something,” the guy says. “From Freddy, right?”

So he knows this Freddy character too. Thacker chuckles softly to himself. That bastard must be cutting deals left and right. A shrub clinging to the edge of the wash quivers unnaturally, and there’s a flash of color against the dull tan of the landscape, the guy’s shirt maybe. Thacker contemplates sending a few rounds that way, but if he misses, where will they be then? The sun is scorching his bald spot and the back of his neck. He wishes he had his hat.

“I’m not after the money,” the guy in the bushes says.

“Then we don’t have a problem,” Thacker says. No sense in playing dumb anymore.

“I’m after the girl,” the guy says.

“The girl? In the car?”

“Somebody wants her back in Mexico.”

Thacker sucks at his teeth, trying to work up some saliva. He’s wasting time here and giving the pair in the Beamer a big head start. If he wants a second shot at the money, he needs to get moving. So he takes a chance. Rising to his full height, he sets his pistol on the hood of the truck and lifts his hands.

“It’s too fucking hot for this,” he says. “Come on out, and let’s put our heads together.”

Nothing but the wind. An empty plastic jug bounces past, riding the gusts. Then a big, angry-looking Mexican suddenly climbs out of the ditch and steps to the edge of the road. Shaved head, mahogany skin, tattoos covering both arms and boiling up out of the neck of his T-shirt. Some shithead gangster. The guy holds his gun at his side, pointed at the ground, but a quick bend of the elbow…

“Are we gonna have a showdown or a conversation?” Thacker says.

The Mex hesitates for a second, then lays the gun in the dirt at his feet. Thacker walks around the front of the truck to stand facing him in the road.

“I’ve got water, if you want some,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

The Mex approaches slowly, each step birthing a dusty sprite that’s instantly whirled away. He’s got some Indian blood in him, and his scowl looks to have been carved out of flinty red stone. When he’s halfway across the road, Thacker opens the door of the truck to get a bottle of water. The guy sprints the last few feet and barrels into him, pinning him against the Dodge with a sweaty forearm across his throat.

“So you know, I don’t need a gun to kill you,” he says.

Thacker gestures downward with his eyes so that the Mex notices the just-sprung switchblade aimed at his belly.

“Back at you,” he says.

The Mex lets up on his windpipe and retreats a couple of steps. He’s still scowling, but Thacker is sure enough he made his point that he takes a moment to shove the tails of his uniform shirt back into his pants and get himself squared away before leaning into the truck and bringing out the water. The Mex accepts the bottle with no change in expression and downs half of it in a series of deep gulps. Thacker drinks the rest, swishing the last bit and spitting.

“You know this road?” the Mex asks him.

“It ends in a set of railroad tracks about a mile on,” Thacker replies.

“That’s where they’ll get out and run for it,” the Mex says.

“Is that what you think’s gonna happen?”

“If the girl figures out who sent me, it is.”

“You mean Freddy?” Thacker says.

The Mex scoffs at him. “No, man, not fucking Freddy.”

Thacker squeezes the empty water bottle three times, and the sound bounces around the narrow canyon. He’s waiting for the Mex to put all the pieces together and come up with the obvious next move, but the guy continues to stand as still as a statue, eye-fucking him with his meanest jailhouse glare. They’ll never get anywhere like this.

“You know,” he says, “every second we hang here, they’re getting farther away. How about we hop in the truck and chase them down? The girl’s yours, the money’s mine.”

The Mex considers the suggestion. “And the dude, the driver?” he says. “If I take him out, are you gonna have a problem with it?”

“Should I?” Thacker says.

“Aren’t you a cop?”

For one weird instant Thacker feels as hollow as a dead steer he came upon the other day, a sun-bleached hide stretched taut over a cage of bones. The wind races through his emptiness like it did through the carcass, the moan it makes coming dangerously close to thickening into a message. He shrugs and clears his throat.

“Not today,” he says to the Mex.

The Mex smirks at this response and starts back across the road.

“I’m getting my gun,” he says.

Thacker retrieves his P2000 off the hood of the truck, then slides behind the wheel and sticks the pistol in the door’s storage well. The Mex climbs in on the passenger side and fumbles with the seat belt.

“Vamos,”
Thacker says.

He rolls down his window and notices that his side mirror is broken. The bitch got off a lucky shot, and he worries that might not be the only one, but everything sounds fine under the hood as they head down-canyon.

They creep along at 10 mph, rocks popping under the tires. The Mex sits with his gun in his lap and fingers a fresh scrape on his elbow. The canyon swings to the east, then straightens out for a bit, the sun so high now that the ravine is full of light. Thacker puts on his shades, Oakleys, a once-upon-a-time Christmas gift from his sons, before they turned against him.

They startle a few coyotes when they round another bend, send them scrabbling up the canyon wall. The landscape begins to flatten out. As Thacker recalls, the ravine isn’t much more than a sandy ditch by the time the road reaches the rail bed.

“There,” the Mex says. The BMW is stopped up ahead, angled toward the eastern wall. Thacker mashes on the brakes and reaches for his gun.

“Go easy,” the fat man says. “They could be holed up anywhere along here.”

Jerónimo gives him a look. When did
he
become the shot caller? Jerónimo teamed with him because it seemed like two guns might be better than one for now, but if this
pendejo
thinks he’s in charge, he’s got another thing coming.

To prove it, Jerónimo steps out of the truck into the heat and glare and wind and walks alone toward the car, which is about fifty yards down the road. He holds the Smith & Wesson at arm’s length in front of him, pointed at the vehicle.

“Wait, now, wait!” the fat man calls after him.

Jerónimo looks over his shoulder. The cop is out of the truck, fumbling with his hat and using his open door as cover. He raises the mic of the truck’s PA system to his lips. A loud squeal makes Jerónimo wince, then fatso’s voice is everywhere.

“You. In the silver BMW. Step out of the vehicle with your hands in the air.”

The words buzz around the canyon like angry insects, but there’s no response. Jerónimo resumes his approach to the car. He eases up to it and moves slowly alongside, from back to front, eyes alert for any movement. The
click, clack, click
of rocks tumbling down the canyon wall stops him cold. He crouches and scans the steep slope, his gaze tracking the barrel of his gun.

“You see something?” the fat man yells. He was halfway to the BMW when the rocks fell but now backtracks to the truck and his hiding place behind the door.

Jerónimo ignores him, intent on the craggy scarp. He half expects Luz or the white boy to lean over the edge and open fire. After a few seconds, though, his caution begins to embarrass him, and he stands and lowers his weapon.

“All clear?” the fat man calls.

Jerónimo tosses off a wave in his direction and inspects the BMW more closely. Two tires are flat and a couple of windows are shot out. Fluid the color of blood has leaked from the engine and run in a thin stream down the road to puddle around a fist-size stone, stranding a big green beetle.

Inside the car, blue bits of broken safety glass sparkle like spilled gems. Jerónimo picks up a spent shell casing and sniffs it. The gunpowder smell reminds him of the Fourth of July when he was a kid. Piccolo Petes, Crackling Cactuses, War Drum Fountains.

The fat man rolls up in his truck and leaves the engine running when he hops out. He takes the casing from Jerónimo and bounces it in his palm. “A .45,” he says. “They aren’t messing around.” He bends to peer inside the car. “The money?”

“They must’ve taken it with them,” Jerónimo says.

“Well, shit,” the fat man says. “Looks like we’re gonna have to work a little harder then.”

He lowers himself to one knee next to the driver’s-side door and peers intently at the ground, sifting sand through his fingers.

“Let me see the bottom of your shoe,” he says to Jerónimo.

Jerónimo lifts his foot, shows him the sole of his prison-issue sneaker. The fat man nods and stands with a grunt, then walks to the other side of the car. He kneels again, head down like he’s praying, and, after a few seconds of concentration, reaches out and draws a circle in the dirt.

“Some decent prints here,” he says. He stands and looks at the canyon wall from under the bill of his cap. “As far as I can tell, they went straight up.”

Jerónimo tucks the Smith & Wesson into his waistband. If they climbed, he’s climbing. He walks to the wall and begins picking his way up the steep slope.

“Where you going?” the fat man says.

“After them,” Jerónimo says.

“That’s great, but listen for a second.”

“They’re getting away.”

“One second, okay?”

Jerónimo looks down at the fat man, who walks over to stand at the base of the cliff.

“How’s this sound,” he says. “You go up and see what you can see, and I’ll make sure they didn’t come back down to the road farther along.”

“Do what you want,” Jerónimo says.

“You got a phone?”

“Why?”

The fat man pulls his phone from his pocket. “Give me the number, and I’ll call if I see anything.”

Jerónimo’s first instinct is to tell the
cabrón
to go on and get the fuck out of here, but there’s actually some sense to his plan, it being a way to be in two places at once, so he steadies himself on the wall and fumbles for the phone El Príncipe gave him.

“It’s new,” he calls down to the fat man. “I don’t know the number.”

“Call me then,” the fat man says and slowly recites his digits so Jerónimo can key them in. When the dude’s phone rings, he holds it up and says, “We’re good to go.”

Jerónimo resumes his climb as the truck drives away. It’s harder than it looked like it was going to be. A rock he’s using as a handhold pulls free from the wall, almost toppling him, and seemingly stable ledges crumble when he puts his weight on them so that he slips down the slope until some sturdier outcropping stops his slide.
Climb, you motherfucker,
he whispers to himself.
Climb, climb, climb.

When he finally gets to the top, there’s sand in his shoes, in his teeth, in his ears. He wipes the sweat out of his eyes with his T-shirt and blinks at the brittle dun-drab sweep laid out before him. Boulders; stubby, twisted oaks; dry grass. Buzzards circle in the bleached sky, and a snagged, shredded shirt flutters on a barbed-wire fence.

Inspired by the fat man, Jerónimo crouches to look for prints, but the ground is too hard to hold an impression. Luz and the white boy could be anywhere out here, or they could have already found an escape route and be on their way to L.A. He surveys the area once more, a shading hand across his brow, then digs in his pocket for the address he got from Luz’s mother, makes sure it’s still there.

His phone rings as he picks his way down the wall, descending into the canyon again.

“Nothing over this way,” the fat man says.

“Nothing here either,” Jerónimo says.

“I’m on my way back,” the fat man says. “I’ll pick you up.”

Jerónimo doesn’t wait for him. When he reaches bottom, he walks back up the road to the Explorer, the neck of his T-shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth to keep out the blowing dust. This dead end has taken up too much of the day. The most important thing now is to beat Luz to her aunt’s house. He’s not exactly sure what he’ll do when he gets there, but he has money and a gun, and that’s a good start.

The fat man pulls up behind him and taps the horn. “Get in,” he yells out the window.

It’s tough fighting the wind, and the Explorer is still a half mile away, so Jerónimo drops back and climbs into the truck.