The House of Wolfe (27 page)

Rubio produces flex-cuffs from his jacket and cuffs all three of the women, hands in front. Espanto goes to the door and gathers the men about him and speaks to them in a whisper. Then he and Rubio and Gallo depart, leaving Cabrito to watch the captives.

Cabrito seats himself by the lamp and takes his pistol from its holster and holds it on his lap.

You must stay on your cots, he says, or I must shoot you. Those are my orders.

He is not smiling.

40 — BELMONTE

He makes his way west through an expanse of mini ranch estates set in rolling hills. A light wind slings wispy rain across the road. He has not traveled this route before, and he marvels at this stretch of pastoral terrain so near the central city. Ahead of him on the winding road is a silver Porsche coupe, and at wide intervals behind him a couple of light-colored sedans and a dark sport utility vehicle of some sort. Though he was told he would be followed, he has no interest in which vehicle might be his shadow. He will very soon be trading the money in the car trunk for his sons and his nephew. Nothing else matters.

The road debouches from the hills into a dingy business district, merging with a broad westward avenue marked by traffic lights at every intersection. He comes to an intersection dominated by a cut-rate shopping plaza with a street-side billboard listing its resident businesses, including the Cuates Locos Café. Two lights beyond the plaza is a block of warehouses, and he circles it as Galán had instructed—an instruction whose purpose he did not understand but did not question, and that Galán had not explained was to make it simpler for the men following him to spot any other tails. Belmonte is unmindful of the green car that tracks him all the way around the block, or, on his return to the main avenue, of the brown Jeep SUV that pulls out of a corner gas station and melds into traffic behind the Focus. Two blocks farther on, he turns south on a four-lane road that will take him most of the remaining way to the neighborhood of the payoff site.

41 — GALÁN

Parked near an exit of a small lot fronting a row of weathered stores along the southbound road, Galán sees Belmonte's yellow Cadillac go by. And a few seconds later, Chino's green Focus.

With three men in it.

He catches only a glimpse of them but notes that two are in the front seats, one in the back. Gunning the Cherokee to the lot exit, he thinks that maybe it wasn't Chino's car, but as he idles at the exit in wait of a break in the passing traffic, he doesn't spot another green Focus. An opening presents itself and he wheels into the right lane.

Why a third guy?
Who?
If some exigency has required this change in plan, he's irked that Espanto hasn't apprised him of it. But maybe Espanto doesn't know about it either. Maybe Chino and Chato are acting on their own initiative for some good reason, and for some equally good reason haven't told Espanto yet. Maybe.

He gets out his phone but refrains from calling Espanto before he gets a closer look at the men in the Focus. He jockeys his way up the two southbound lanes. Luck is with him and he makes it through every green light the Focus does. He has caught up to Chino's car when they are both stopped by a red light, Galán in the right lane, the Focus in the left, and he puts on a pair of plain-glass spectacles, a simple but effective guise. There is yet enough light for him to distinguish between the three hatless men in the car. Chino is in the front passenger seat, bent forward as if tying a shoelace, but he doesn't straighten up and is obviously affixed in that position. Chato is not among them. The other two men are strangers to him. White guys. There are of course a great many Mexican Caucasians in the capital and on the city and federal police forces, but Galán is very familiar with Mexican cops and can spot one at a distance, and neither of these men has the manner or mien of them. They're Americans. The bearded one in the back looks his way, but Galán is holding the phone to his ear and feigning anger, working his mouth as if in shouts and making broad hand gestures, a bespectacled businessman consumed with his own troubles and not in the least interested in the immediate world around him.

Gringo cops? he wonders. Private operatives? Why would they . . . ?

The American girl . . . why else? Her rich relatives here in the capital. Family named Wolfe. He recalls file information—American lineage, society people, philanthropists, financial interests in all sorts of ventures. How would they know she'd been taken? . . . Sosa? The rich trust nobody, especially each other. Maybe Sosa didn't trust the Americans to reimburse him for their girl's ransom after the fact. Maybe he told them of the snatch and demanded her half-million-dollar share beforehand, and maybe they paid him—why would they not?—but maybe, too, somebody among them decided to send these hirelings to do whatever they could to retrieve her, and while they were at it, maybe recover their money too. Could they be that stupid? Maybe so.

Maybe, maybe, maybe . . . what does
maybe
matter? They're here.

The light turns green. He keeps to the right lane, letting the Focus get a few cars ahead as he phones Espanto and advises him of the gringos and tells him what to do. Then places the phone in the console.

As the last of the twilight fades, the road narrows to two lanes of inferior grade, and then there are no more stoplights. There are two vehicles between him and the Focus—the forward one a small brown SUV, the other an old sedan emitting so much exhaust smoke that Galán can catch only sporadic glimpses of the vehicles ahead of it. Still, the heap is maintaining a constant distance from the others, so there is no need to pass it and risk attracting the gringos' notice.

His rearview vision, on the other hand, is quite clear. There's no one on the dark road behind him. Only a looming black sky.

42 — JESSIE

Rubio comes into the room, aspect intense.

You, he says, pointing at Jessie. Come with me.

She exchanges fearful glances with Luz and Susi, catches José's morose stare.

“Ándale, muchacha!” Rubio says, beckoning her sharply.

She goes to him and he takes her by the arm and steers her out into the hall and down the stairs.

Espanto is seated at the near end of the dining table. Rubio seats her at the other end, next to the kitchen door, leaving the flex-cuffs on her, then nods at Espanto and goes out the front door. Gallo is not present. Except for the blanket-wrapped Apache on the living room floor, there is no one else down here.

Why am I—she starts to ask, but Espanto silences her with a finger to his lips.

He consults his watch. He examines his fingernails. He hums a tune unfamiliar to her. Each time he looks at her, she cannot stop herself from turning away.

In the deep shadows of the building across the street, standing behind a chest-high stack of empty produce crates, shivering in the cold and watching for Chino's Focus and the two gringos Espanto said are in it, Gallo sees Rubio come out of the house and hide himself between the Durango and the Suburban parked end to end at the front edge of the yard.

43 — BELMONTE

Where the southbound road begins curving to the east, there is a connecting westward road on his right, and he turns onto it as Galán directed. A truck that has been trailing him makes the turn too, visible only as a pair of headlights in the risen night. That's my follower, he thinks. The rain wafts across the road in misty webs. The westward sky ahead reflects a low orange glow that on this gloomy eve can only be from one of the garbage pits Belmonte has read about. Where the fires are said never to cease burning, not even in the rain.

It is a narrow road of fractured asphalt running through low woodland and alongside a rail track flanked by abandoned warehouses and collapsed loading platforms. Here and there, junction lanes lead to clusters of small buildings visible among the trees in the glow of trash-barrel fires. He enters a wide curve and is halfway into it when a scattering of hazy streetlights comes in view not a mile ahead. The hold house neighborhood.

The road becomes the neighborhood main street, a narrow thoroughfare badly pocked and rutted, and he is forced to go slower. The street is flanked by long blocks of buckled sidewalks and run-down two-story buildings, some of their windows showing dim light. At random intervals stand decayed houses fronted with ragged trees and dirt yards. Decrepit vehicles are parked along the sidewalks, in weedy lots, in the alleys. There are few people in sight, and most of them disappear into doorways or alley shadows at his approach. He's been paying little heed to his mirrors and is surprised when he sees the pickup no longer there. Not his follower, after all.

He goes several more blocks before he sees the vaporous green lights of Chula's cantina to his right at the intersection ahead. Exactly as Mr. X described. The next street is the one—long and weakly illuminated by a far corner streetlight haloed in amber. He crosses the intersection and slows even more. Halfway down the block and on the left, an SUV and a Suburban are parked one behind the other at the side of the street. A man steps out from between the vehicles, one hand hidden behind his leg, and indicates for Belmonte to turn into the short driveway next to the SUV. As his headlights sweep over to the driveway, Belmonte sees that the man is fair-haired and clean-shaven, that junk cars jam the yard.

Adhering to Mr. X's instructions, Belmonte opens the trunk with the interior switch and turns off the engine, then gets out and hurries around to the rear of the car, the light rain cold on his face. The blond man is already there and hanging a bag of money on each shoulder. Belmonte takes up the other two bags and the man shuts the trunk and shoves him toward the dark front porch, saying, Inside,
go!

44 — RUDY AND CHARLIE

The old pickup between us and Belmonte follows him west off the southbound road, twenty-five or thirty yards behind him. We're staying the same distance from the truck, and Rayo's about half that far behind us. We're keeping open-phone contact with her, and she reports that there are two vehicles fifty or sixty yards back of her. Some old junker trailing a cloud of heavy smoke just ahead of something larger. There's no traffic at all coming from the other way.

We've got Chino cuffed to the seat frame, which forces him to sit bent way forward and a little to his left. Now Charlie gags and blindfolds him with duct tape. Not real comfy for the dude but it works for us.

We're a block behind the pickup and two behind the Caddy when we enter the derelict neighborhood. The truck soon turns off, but we hold our distance from Belmonte. Rayo moves up closer to us and reports that the smoky car is three blocks back of her. Here and there we spot a lone car or truck plodding along, but otherwise there's an eerie dearth of traffic, even for a rainy night.

A few streets farther on, Belmonte passes a corner place with a sign bordered in misty green lights and he slows down on the next street. We're still more than a block from the green-sign intersection when we see a guy step out into Belmonte's headlights, and the Caddy stops. Then it turns off the street and out of our sight.

“That's it!” Charlie says. “Hang a left
here
.”

I do it, and Rayo follows us down a darker beat-up street, the buildings here smaller and set even closer to each other. Charlie has me take a right at the first corner and then go right again at the next one, which brings us back toward the intersection with the green-sign place. I switch off the headlights and slow down. Charlie figures they'll have a lookout posted, so we'll leave the cars at the corner up ahead and go down the hold house street on foot. Sneak our way up to wherever the Caddy is, try to spot the lookout before he spots us, take him out quiet. If he sees us first, well . . . we'll play it as it comes.

It seems awfully catch-as-catch-can to me. But that's pretty much been our planning style and I don't have anything better to suggest.

As we advance slowly toward the corner, we spot an alleyway on our left and Charlie says, “Stop!” I hit the brakes and Chino bonks his head on the dash and the Jeep's tires scrunch behind us as Rayo stops just short of hitting us.

“Jesus, guys!” she says, her voice coming from Charlie's phone in the console.

A white late-model pickup with a camper shell mounted on the bed is parked halfway down the alley in the hazy glow of a distant lamppost. One of those big GMC Sierras.

“In this neighborhood, it's gotta be theirs,” I say.

“And
that's
the house, right there,” Charlie says. “One-two-three-four, fifth one down.”

He has me move up closer to the corner and next to the building and shut off the engine, then takes up the phone and tells Rayo to park the Jeep in the alley to block the Sierra, then position herself back here on the street.

“Got it,” she says, and wheels into the alleyway.

She's back in a jiff and gets behind the end of the alley wall. “Now what?” she says out of Charlie's phone.

“We're going around to the front, you're covering the rear,” Charlie tells her. “Stay out here and stay low. Anybody but us or Jess comes out the back, be ready to pop them.”

“Okay,” she says.

Up at the intersection, the smoky clunker that had been behind her makes a right turn and heads away from us, lost in its own smoke. Then a silver Cherokee crosses to the hold house block.

“Another one, you think?” I say.

“Maybe the guy who's come to collect,” Charlie says. “The Espanto dude.” He continues staring at the intersection, and I know what he's thinking. We're
here
, and hope Jessie is, too. But if they intend to let her go, then we're doing the worst thing possible. Then again, we're here because we don't trust them to let her go. We have to act. And if it goes to hell . . . we'll have to live with it.

“Let's do it,” Charlie says.

I pat Chino on the head and say, Don't go anywhere, buddy, you hear?