by Ward, Robert
“ ‘Cause none of us are angels, Jack, and if I waited to help somebody who deserved it, I’d end up being as big a shit-heel as Buddy. And I can’t live with that.”
Jack didn’t say anything but heard the lock on his other foot click open and felt something click open in his heart as well.
Charlotte opened the door slowly and peered down the dimly lit hallway.
“It’s all right,” she said.
“The guard?”
She opened the door a crack wider, and Jack saw Cutty Marbella sitting in a chair next to the door. His head rested sleepily on his chest. He made a slight snoring sound. Quickly, she shut the door again.
“What did you do to him?”
“He said he was thirsty, so I fixed him a cuba libre. Five ounces of one-fifty-one dark rum, one ounce Coke, and nine Tuinals. I think he’s gonna have a bad headache.”
Jack managed a laugh and felt as if his face had cracked.
“Jesus, I’m glad you’re on my side.”
He groaned and felt a sharp pain in his right ribs.
“Can you make it?” she said.
“I’m fine. We need to get a car. You could drive, and I’ll roll up in the trunk.”
“Forget it,” she whispered. “The parking lot is all the way across the compound, and they’ve got guards every ten feet. There’s only one way outta here, and I’m not sure I can carry you.”
“I’d bet on you,” Jack said. “But we don’t have to find out, ‘cause I can make it.”
“I hope so,” she said. “ ‘Cause our only shot is the tunnel. The entrance is in a building just to the east of us. There’s an alley, and usually there’s two big and very ugly guards stationed there.”
“Only two,” Jack said. “Against you and me? That’s not even fair.” But he coughed, and an electric pain shot through his chest and back.
“What I’m worried about is who’s waiting for us on the other end,” she said.
“I know what you mean. I’d give my pension for a gun,” Jack said.
“After they review this case, you aren’t going to have a pension,” she said. “But take this one anyway.”
She reached into her coat and pulled out Jack’s Glock. He smiled in astonishment, as he felt the cool grip in his palm.
“I owe you one.”
“You owe me a hell of a lot more than one,” she said.
Jack sucked in his breath and shuffled forward into the hallway. It wasn’t going to be easy. Somewhere between the Coke party and the cigar Wingate had put out on his cheek, he had also put a few dents in his right kneecap. In fact, he doubted if he had a right kneecap.
“You keep up that pace, and we’re both gonna look uglier than you do now,” Charlotte Rae said.
Jack wanted to say something sharp back to her, but all the funny stuff had drained out of him a few seconds ago, and suddenly he felt as if he were carrying a safe. She helped support him as they worked their way down the gray hallway, toward a black iron door that seemed to recede with every step. He felt his lungs screaming from the effects of the cayenne pepper, and he was afraid he’d black out.
When they finally came to the door, he leaned on it and gasped for air.
“Hang in, baby,” she said.
“Lead me to the next event,” Jack coughed, sagging on the wall.
Suddenly, from behind them they heard a scraping sound. Both of them jumped, and Jack turned and saw Marbella fall off his chair and sprawl on the floor.
“At least he won’t hurt himself by falling on his gun,” Charlotte Rae said.
She reached into her coat and took out Marbella’s Walther PPK.
“I knew you had a maternal side,” Jack said.
Outside was chocolate dark, the moon receding behind some huge cotton clouds. They shuffled along, hugging an adobe wall, until they came to an alley twenty feet away.
“Our handy little pool table’s maybe fifty yards down. The guards have the key. But I don’t think they’re going to let us use it.”
She looked at Jack expectantly. “So what do we do now?”
Jack leaned on the wall, panting. “Hell if I know,” he said. “Great,” she said. “The man with all the ideas.”
“All right. All right. I just got an idea, you’re gonna love it.”
“What is it?”
“Here’s what you do. You walk down there by the doorway like a lap dancer in a Motley Crue video, and when the guards come out to try and fuck you, you kill ‘em.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe I should have left you tied up. Look, Jack, I can’t just kill ‘em.”
“Why not? Don’t tell me you’ve developed a sudden aversion to violence?”
“No, Jack. It’s the noise. I shoot ‘em, we bring down the whole camp on us.”
Jack managed a smile.
“You didn’t even bring a silencer with you?” he said. “What kinda rescue is this anyway?”
“You could always go back, love.”
“No, this will have to do,” Jack said. “Okay, see if you can divert their attention, while I come in from the rear.”
“Try not to collapse,” she said. “ ‘Cause I’ve seen both of the guys, and they aren’t my type.”
Then she patted his cheek and started forward.
Jack felt another wave of dizziness come over him and sucked in his breath.
Painfully, he moved along. He sent up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t pass out. His hand coiled around the pistol grip.
Charlotte slinked past the door, using a walk that would have charmed a cobra out of a basket.
Nothing happened.
From his vantage point, Jack watched Charlotte Rae look into the door. She gave a sexy little cough—”a-ha-hem”—and stood there in the squalid yellow light, looking wanton and sex starved.
Still nothing happened. Jack swallowed. What was happening here? Gay Latino guards?
Then, in a lightning move, two figures tumbled out of the doorway, flashing claws, fists. They were all over her knocking her to the ground, screaming, pulling her hair, ripping her clothes.
Behind them came the two guards, smoking, drinking shots of tequila, laughing wildly.
Charlotte Rae tried to get up, but the two women beat her down again and screamed in Spanish:
“You puta! You have come on the wrong ground, gringa bitch!”
“We will teach you to try and take our men!”
Jack’s mouth dropped in disbelief. It seemed that the two guards were already engaged with two hookers. Now the guards slammed each other on the back, watching their crazy, drunken concubines rip the rival “hooker” to shreds.
“Don’t kill her,” the fat guard with the sleepy eyes said. “She looks pretty good.”
“She won’t in a minute, Luis, you pig,” the big red-haired hooker said.
She raised her hand in the air to strike Charlotte Rae, when Jack raised the pistol. “Playtime’s over, ladies.”
The fatter of the guards went for his gun, and Jack hit him across the back of the head. He fell with a thud. He aimed the pistol at the second guard. “Hand over the gun, friend.”
The two whores climbed off Charlotte Rae. Now they were docile, their eyes terrified.
“All three of you, inside,” Jack said.
The three of them backed into the door, with perplexed looks on their faces.
Jack pulled Charlotte Rae to her feet. She had a few scrapes on her face, and her blouse was torn, but other than that she seemed fine.
“Great little idea you had,” she said.
“Well, I was right about one thing,” he said. “You sure caused a sensation. Here, take the gun and hold it on these three, while I drag el gordo inside.”
She took the gun a little too quickly.
“No shooting,” Jack said, as he grabbed the guard’s chubby wrists.
Inside the guard shack, Jack handcuffed all four of them to the door, bound their feet with telephone wire, and gagged them w
ith their own stockings.
“We have to find the key to the goddamn pool table,” he said.
But Charlotte was already ahead of him. She held it up, smiling.
“It’s here, right in the desk. I’ve seen Buddy put it in here before.”
“Beautiful. Let’s go.”
They started through the warehouse toward the back cellar steps, hurrying by boxes and boxes of crates marked Tampico Furniture.
Then they found the steps and descended to the false recreation room.
A few minutes later, they stood in front of the pool table, and Charlotte Rae stuck the key into the switch and turned it to the right. The pool table immediately rose on its hydraulic lifters nearly to the ceiling, then docked off to the right, two feet off of the floor.
“Right outta the movies,” Jack said, in admiration.
“Yeah, the B-movies,” Charlotte Rae said. “Buddy’s favorite old TV series was Time Tunnel. Tell you the truth, there’s a lotta ways you can smuggle drugs that aren’t as mysterioso as this, but I think Buddy just likes the sci-fi quality of it all.”
“I can understand that,” Jack said. “I kind of like it myself.”
“I’ll like it when we get out of it. Let’s go.”
“How do we turn on the escalator?” Jack said.
“We don’t,” she said. “It broke yesterday, and they’re not finished fixing it yet. We’re walking.”
Though the tunnel was four feet wide it was only five-feet high, causing Jack and Charlotte Rae to scurry hunched like dwarfs through the dark passage.
Jack went first and held tight to her hand.
“Christ, if we could only turn the lights on. Or even light a match.”
“We can’t risk it,” Jack said. “They might see them at the other end. How far is it?”
“About a mile. Christ, I hate the dark. When I was a kid, if you acted human, laughed, had to pee in church, the priests would lock you in the cellar, all night, with the goddamn rats and the bugs.”
“This was in the famous orphanage?” Jack said, cryptically. “Yes, it was,” Charlotte Rae said. “That part happens to be the truth.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “Well, when we get out of here, maybe you can draw me a picture of your life, and highlight the nonfictional details.”
“You first,” Charlotte Rae said. Then she stopped and squeezed his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you to know something.”
“All right.”
“A lot of what I told you … the stuff about my mother and how I met Buddy … that was all true. Something else too. The bruises I showed you. They weren’t makeup. Buddy’s got a bad temper when he loses at gambling. And he always loses. Morales owns the casinos at Tahoe where Buddy gambles. Buddy owes millions of dollars, Jack. Then he started stealing a little of the coke and the heroin and selling it on his own to pay Morales off. Morales found out, and he was going to kill Buddy … and me too.”
“Why you?”
“Because that’s the kind of animal he is. I was with Buddy, so I had to go. He had the guns to our heads more than once, Jack. Then, he suggested this scheme, a way we could pay up our debts and get clean.”
“Trick and then kill the DEA agent who killed his friend?”
She stopped walking, and Jack heard her lean against the wall and sigh.
“Jack, I swear I didn’t know anything about what they were going to do with you. Besides, they told me stories about you. You and Zampas.”
“Like what?”
“That you were both dirty. That you were intent on destroying us only because you had cut your own deal with the Asians.”
“Your competitors in the heroin trade. You believed that?”
Suddenly, she began to cry, and Jack held on to her in the dark.
“I don’t know, Jack. I was so scared I didn’t know what to believe. I knew about the kind of things they did to people who stole. I didn’t sleep for weeks. I got most of these bruises from Buddy then. He was terrified of them, and he took it out on me.”
She sobbed deeply, and Jack stroked her hair.
“It’s all right,” he said. “But we’ve got to keep moving.”
Slowly, she straightened up, and they began to trudge again through the damp darkness.
“Where will Buddy go now?” Jack said.
“I don’t know. You were never supposed to survive, so he could just go back to his old life. Now I guess he’ll split the country.”
“If Morales doesn’t kill him first.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He might. Buddy’s no use to him anymore, and he could hurt him if he makes a deal with the government.”
They moved on through the gloom. She held on to his hand tightly, and Jack felt that although he was pulling her along, it was she who was giving him the strength to deny his own pain.
“The thing I still don’t understand is how they knew who I was,” he said. “Did they ever tell you that?”
“No. You think they tell me those kind of things? I could get whacked out just for asking. The only thing I know about this whole deal is that it became more urgent for Morales to get his revenge right away because he got sick.”
“How sick?”
“Cancer. It was bad last year, though they’ve got it in remission now. Buddy was praying he’d die so we wouldn’t have to go through with this whole scam.”
“That does explain a few things,” Jack said. “A man gets sick like that, he’ll take more chances. But that still doesn’t explain how he knew who I was.”
“Pardon me, Jack, but why is that such a mystery? Look, you killed that guy Benvenides in Arizona, I know that much.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So that’s how they must have found out. I mean wasn’t it on TV or in the papers?”
“That’s just the point,” Jack said, feeling his way along the tunnel wall. “It wasn’t reported by the press. We managed to keep my cover clean. All anyone said on either the television or in the newspapers was that a Colombian was found shot dead in a motel and that it was suspected that he had been involved in a drug dispute. End of story.”
They kept walking silently, then Jack turned to her.
“Jesus, have I been looking in the wrong place. It’s Michaels. It’s got to be.”
“Michaels? Who’s that?”
“My fellow agent,” Jack said in a voice thick with bitterness. “He’s an assistant director. He warned me about coming down here before I left. He could be on Morales’s payroll and had an attack of conscience. Yeah, that fits because he was drunk and maudlin the night he warned me.”
Jack felt his hatred of Michaels reach a new level. Of course, it made perfect sense. Michaels must have known what would happen to Jack once he got to Mexico. He even mentioned Zapata, which must have been some oblique reference to Morales. But if that was the case, why did he warn him? Jack really didn’t believe it was because Michaels had a conscience attack. No, he thought, as his hand raked over some slime on the tunnel wall, it was more likely that Michaels warned him because he was afraid that something like this might happen. Rather than die in Mexico, Jack would survive and come back and tear his face off.
Which, if Jack had anything to say about it, was precisely what was going to happen.
“There it is, Jack. Just up there.”
Jack looked up and saw the light in the distance.
“What are we going to find?”
“A ladder. It comes up in the back part of the warehouse.”
“Why no escalator?”
“They haven’t put it in yet.”
“What about workers, guards?”
“No workers at this hour of the night. Guards, probably. There could be a lot of them.”
“You got a clip in your gun?”
“I’m like a Girl Scout. I come prepared.”
“I remember.”
“I hope you do. Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“I
f I don’t make it, it’s been nice.”
“Forget that kind of talk. We’re gonna make it. You ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
“We get up, we get out, we get a car, and we cruise. Pretty soon we’re in Los Angeles drinking a margarita, watching a sunset.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is. Come on, I’m thirsty.”
It was the tallest ladder Jack had ever seen, at least seventy-five feet straight up. At the top there was a cast-iron trapdoor, and as he climbed, the Glock in his right hand, it occurred to him that the door could be locked.
And if it was, they were finished. It was that simple. They had no way to blow the door open, and there was no going back to the Mexican side.
Below him, Charlotte Rae had the same idea.
“If it’s locked, Jack, we could always knock and tell them we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Jack climbed higher, looked down once, and felt a dizziness overtake him so quickly that he had to grasp the handrail.
Finally he came to the top, only inches away from freedom.
He reached up and touched the door, lightly, and gave a silent prayer that it would be unlocked and that the guards wouldn’t be nearby.
Slowly, trying to be quiet, he pushed. The door opened easily into blessed darkness, and Jack quickly pulled himself up and out.
He looked around the darkened warehouse, his eyes slowly adjusting to the level of light. He half expected to see a great number of trucks ready to move out, but they hadn’t arrived yet.
And where were the guards? Perhaps outside, which gave them half a chance.
He reached down and pulled Charlotte Rae through the trapdoor.
“The outside door’s over there,” she whispered, pointing across the huge, dark room.
“Get down low and move like a snake,” Jack said.
“That comes natural, honey,” she said.
They started across the floor, Jack holding the Glock in front of him.
Light filtered in from outside, illuminating the walls of boxes that towered over them. Jack looked around and saw crates marked “Rattan Chairs.” Was this the real stuff or the hollowed-out furniture filled with the new Colombian white heroin? No way to stop and find out now.
Keeping low, they had made it halfway across the room, when they came to a great empty space in the center.
