Night Vision (37 page)

On the far wall was a window. Tiny, but big enough to wiggle through. Tula bounced over the bed to the wall, then flipped the lock, expecting the window to open easily.

It didn’t. The window frame was aluminum. Maybe it was corroded shut. Tula used all her strength, pushing with her legs, then tried cutting around the edges of the window with the paring knife.

It still wouldn’t open. As the girl stood there, breathing heavily, she could smell propane gas seeping under the door. She would have been less surprised by smoke and flames. Had the candles gone out, extinguished by the doors she had slammed? Or did the concentration of gas have to be higher before the candles would ignite it?

Tula didn’t know. She knew only that she had to escape from the trailer before Frankie came in, smelled the propane and realized that a trap had been set for her.

Next to the bed was a lamp. Tula grabbed it and swung the base of the lamp against the Plexiglas window, expecting it to shatter with the first blow. It made a sound like a gunshot, but the glass didn’t break.

Panicked because she had made so much noise, Tula began hammering at the window. Finally, it cracked, but the girl had to pull the Plexiglas out in shards, piece by piece, before the window was finally wide enough for her to crawl through.

She draped a towel over the opening so she wouldn’t cut herself, then dropped to the ground, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief to be free.

The feeling lasted only a few seconds.

As Tula got to her feet and turned toward the shack where she’d last seen Squires, a low voice from the shadows surprised her, saying, “You sneaky little slut. What did you use to break the window, a damn sledgehammer? I didn’t even have to go inside, it was so obvious.”

Frankie was standing at the corner of the RV, a towering shape silhouetted by headlights. Not smoking now but a pack of cigarettes in her hand.

Tula’s fingers moved to her back pocket, feeling the lump that was the paring knife. An edge of her mother’s photograph was sticking out, too.

“It’s because you scare me,” the girl said, trying to sound reasonable. “What I told you was true. I want to talk to you, tell you things I’ve never been able to tell anyone. But my body’s afraid because of the way you look. Why would someone as beautiful as you waste time helping someone like me?”

With her deep voice, the woman said, “Liar! The whole time, you were lying,” sounding furious but undecided as if she wanted to be proven wrong.

Tula focused her eyes on the woman’s black eyes, hand inside her back pocket, saying, “We should go inside and let me wash your blouse. I know how to get bloodstains out. Where I lived in the mountains, that was one of my jobs, washing clothes.”

In her mind, Tula was picturing Frankie pausing at the steps of the RV to light a cigarette, then opening the door.

The woman was staring back, perhaps feeling the images that Tula was projecting because, for a moment, the woman’s anger wavered. But then the woman caught herself, visibly shook her head as if to clear it and yelled, “What the hell’s
wrong
with me? You’re lying again! Don’t tell me what to do!”

Then the big woman charged at Tula, whose hand suddenly felt frozen, unable to draw the knife from her pocket, so the girl turned and ran.

Frankie sprinted after her, yelling, “Come back her, you lying brat! Just wait ’til I get my hands on you!”

For a woman her age and size, Frankie was quicker than Tula could have imagined. After only a few steps, the girl felt a jarring impact on the back of her head. Then she was on the ground, Frankie kneeling over her, using a right fist to hit the girl so hard that Tula didn’t regain full consciousness until she awoke, minutes or hours later, in the cookshack.

 

 

Woozy and dreamlike
—that’s the way Tula felt when she opened her eyes. Nauseous, too. It took the girl several seconds to organize what she was seeing as her eyes moved slowly around the room. Overhead were bars of neon light. The sound of a motor running confirmed that the generator had been started. There was a strong odor of gasoline, too.

Tula wondered about that, making the distinction between the smell of gasoline and the smell of propane, which struck her as important for some reason.

Tula lifted her head to study her body, then lay back again, eyes closed. She was tied, unable to move, her wrists taped to the legs of a heavy table. They had used short pieces of rope on her ankles, securing her legs in a way that suggested they intended to cut her jeans and shirt off next. The owl-shaped jade amulet and her Joan of Arc medallion were missing, she realized, but the girl could still feel the shape of the paring knife hidden in her back pocket. Even so, in her entire life, she had never felt so naked and defenseless.

Could this really be happening?

Yes ... it was as real as the blood Tula could now taste in her mouth. The girl strained against the tape again. The table moved a little, but her legs were spread between a stationary counter. Freeing herself was impossible, so she lay back to think, her mind still putting it all together.

Frankie and the Mexican with gold teeth were standing nearby but not looking at her. The woman was concentrating on a camera mounted on a tripod, angry about something—impatient with the camera, Tula decided. Then Frankie spoke to Victorino, muttering, “I told you the battery was in wrong. Stupid wetbacks, if it’s anything more complicated than a knife, you can’t deal with it.”

A moment later, though, the woman swore, and said, “This battery’s no good—probably because of the way you did it. In the RV, I’ve got a camera bag full of shit. Send one of your pals to go get it.”

Tula’s brain was fogged, but mentioning the RV was of interest to her. She had just escaped from the RV, she remembered, where she had left the stove valves open to fill the trailer with propane.

Slowly, the girl’s attention shifted to Victorino, who was wearing surgical gloves for some reason. The gloves and the man’s wrists were stained with blood. He was glaring at Frankie with dead, drunken eyes, and seemed too preoccupied to respond.

It was because of what a second Mexican had just said to Victorino. Even before Tula had opened her eyes, she had heard the man speaking Spanish, but her mind had not translated his words yet his phrases lingered. What the man had said was important for a reason, Tula was sure of it, yet her brain had yet to unravel his meaning.

Poli
—she had heard him use the word.
Poli
was Mexican slang, the equivalent of “cop.” If so, then it
was
important. But why had the man mentioned police? Tula strained to recall. She squeezed her eyes closed, her brain scanning for details.

Yes . . . it was coming back to her. The man had said something that sounded like
The cop said don’t hurt the girl. They’re coming in.
Words close to that. “The girl” referred to her. It had to . . . didn’t it?
Don’t hurt the girl.
It suggested to Tula that the police were coming to save her.

Tula wanted to believe it, but what was happening around her was so surreal that she didn’t trust her judgment. Hope was such a tenuous, flimsy thing, after the photograph she had found in the RV, after what she was now experiencing.

The Mexican who had mentioned police was standing in the doorway, holding a radio. He sounded worried. “We dumped all the gas just like you said. Why don’t we torch the place now and go?”

Gasoline ... it explained the odor, which Tula filed away as the man, getting very serious, added, “The redheaded witch, she doesn’t understand a word of what we’re saying, right? So leave her here with the girl. Get the woman’s fingerprints on your box cutter and let the cops arrest her for jelly boy. Hell, maybe they’ll think they got into a fight or something. Cut jelly boy free, too—he’s not going anywhere. You know, a steroids war. Let the cops figure it out.”

The man was referring to Harris Squires. Tula had momentarily forgotten about the giant, but events were flooding back now. But arrest the woman for what? What had happened to Harris?

Confused, her mind working in slow motion, Tula moved her eyes to where the Mexican was looking. He was staring at something to her left. But to see, she would have to move her head and risk alerting Frankie that she was conscious.

Into the girl’s mind, the Maiden spoke, saying,
Be fearless. You were born to do this! I have not forsaken you!

To hear Jehanne’s voice at such a moment caused the girl’s eyes to flood with tears. Because she was crying when she turned her head, she was unable at first to decipher what she was seeing. A massive pale shape was lying next to her. Tula squinted tears away, and the shape acquired detail. Even then, it took her several seconds to understand what she was seeing.

It was Harris Squires. After what they had done to the man, Tula didn’t want to believe it was actually the giant. His body appeared shrunken, deflated. Harris was naked, legs tied wide, just as they had tied her legs. His chest was peppered with shotgun BBs, his ivory skin patched with blood.

Beneath the giant’s hips, the blood had pooled like oil. Tula didn’t want to look any closer but she forced herself. Her brother was the only male she had ever seen naked, so it took the girl a moment to understand what had happened

Victorino had mutilated the giant.

Tula grimaced and turned away, comforted only by the fact that Squires was unconscious, no longer in pain, and also that he was still breathing.

When the girl opened her eyes again, Frankie was standing over her, staring down. The woman smiled and said, “Well, well, well! My sleeping cutie is finally awake.”

Then, turning to Victorino, she asked, “What are you two yapping about? What’s wrong?”

Victorino was ripping off the rubber gloves, suddenly in a hurry, as he asked the Mexican man in Spanish, “Where’s my Tec-9? Chapo’s got the other one—is he ready? Goddamn it, he should’ve been in contact! We got to be ready for anything anytime!”

The Mexican took a boxy-looking gun from the bag on his shoulder and handed it to Victorinio, saying, “It bothers me that we haven’t heard a word from Calavero or Dedos, either. Dedos, he’s probably passed out. But Calavero, if the cops grabbed him—”

Victorino interrupted, “That’s what I’m
telling
you,” as he ejected the magazine from the weapon, checked it, then slammed it back. “Shit,” he said, “for all we know, it’s not the cops. It’s some
La Mara
bangers from Immokalee. Why would cops call and warn us they’re coming? You know, Guatemalan punks talking English because they figure we’re so rich, we got lazy and stupid.”

In Guatemala City, Tula had heard of the street gang,
Mara Salvatrucha
.
La Mara
, for short, or MS-13. It was a murderous gang, always at war with Mexican gangs. She lay back, taking in details, as the V-man asked Frankie, “You and jelly boy ever do any business with
La Mara
? Maybe that’s who it is.”

Frankie got taller on her toes again as Victorino slipped by her, the woman yelling, “What kinda shit are you trying to pull now? I don’t know anyone named
La Mara
! You and your greasers found the money,
didn’t you
? Now you’re feeding me some bullshit excuse about why you have to run.”

Holding the box cutter in his hand, the V-man leaned over Squires for a moment, then pushed the razor toward Frankie, saying, “Cut his hands and legs free. Someone finds him, we want them to wonder what happened.”

Tula remembered what the Mexican had said about fingerprints. Frankie took the knife in her right hand and, for a moment, Tula thought the woman was going to stab the blade at Victorino. The man took a step back, thinking the same thing, which was when the Mexican warned Frankie from the doorway, saying, “Don’t even think about it,
puta
. It’ll be like shooting balloons at the fair. Like back when I was a kid.”

The Mexican was pointing a pistol at Frankie, holding the weapon steady until the woman muttered, “A couple of big tough wetbacks, that’s what you are,” then dropped the razor, too unconcerned to watch where it landed.

Tula was watching, though. She kept her eyes on the razor even as Frankie collected her cigarettes and pushed past the Mexican, outside, pausing only to tell Victorino, “I need a drink. Either of you disappear while I’m getting it, I’ll have
your
nuts!”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she was walking toward the RV, hips swinging. Tula could see the woman plainly through the open door. The girl focused her eyes on the back of Frankie’s head, then pictured the woman on the RV steps. Tula was telegraphing images, thinking over and over,
Light a cigarette . . . Light a cigarette.

Tula could also see Victorino standing in the doorway, the weapon in both hands, his concentration intense. Maybe he hadn’t heard the woman’s insult. No . . . he’d heard, because as his eyes swept the darkness he called after the redhead, “You can burn in hell, for all I care—” but then stopped abruptly and crouched.

A second passed, then another, before he whispered to the Mexican, “Hey—there’s a vehicle coming down the road. See it? No lights, but it’s headed this way. How the hell they get past Calavero and Dedos?”

The Mexican started to say, “Our two guys—maybe that’s who it is. See them through the window?” then stopped talking as he watched the truck fishtail, then drift into a slow spin.

Now on his knees, the V-man was yelling, “Shit—that’s our Dodge! Those aren’t cops. They stole our goddamn truck!”

Beside him, the Mexican tried to mention Calavero and Dedos again but was interrupted by two consecutive gunshots,
WHAP-WHAP!
very close.

Victorino ducked his head back, hissing, “Shit, they firing on us, man! Shooting at us from our own truck!” Then he took a quick look out the door and decided, “We’ve got to get to jelly boy’s truck. Four-wheel drive, we can drive through the goddamn swamp if we need to.”