He turned and started walking south. Danielle followed.
“Gael.”
He stopped, looked over his shoulder.
“You okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve had guns aimed at your head twice today.”
Gael shrugged. “Nobody pulled a trigger.”
23
James Murphy pulled open the desk drawer in his cell and removed the pen casing and the rubber band and the spring. He set them on the desk next to the bullet he’d taken from Rocha’s gun, and for a long time, stood motionless, looking down at the four items sitting in a neat row. These were the primary items he had to work with. Perhaps he could find other useful gun parts in his cell—he’d have to—but sitting before him were his barrel and his firing mechanism, assuming he could figure out a way to make them work.
He picked up the metal pen casing and the bullet. Unscrewed the two halves of the pen casing and slid the bullet into the longer half of the casing. It fit snugly, which was good, but he’d need to reinforce the barrel if he didn’t want the thing exploding in his hand. The aluminum was thin and wouldn’t handle the force of the bullet’s explosion.
He pulled open the desk drawer again, removed the pad of paper, and set it down. Stared at the blue lines running across the yellow paper. Thinking about how he could make this work. How he could turn these items into a deadly weapon. One that wouldn’t also kill him when he fired it.
After a moment, he sat down in the chair.
This is what you have to work with, James, so make it work.
He began to rip sheets of paper out of the notebook, one by one, and then to tear those sheets into thin strips. Once the notebook was empty of paper, only the cardboard backing sitting on the desk undamaged, he got to his feet, carried the pile of strips to his toilet, and dropped them into the water.
While they soaked, he went back to the desk. He bent the pen casing against the desk’s edge, working to break off the tapered end. Once he had a good bend in it, he twisted it back and forth until it snapped away. With that done, he reshaped the barrel so that the bullet’s progress wouldn’t be hindered by the bent end. He slipped the bullet into both ends of the barrel to make sure it would be able to travel through cleanly, but then decided the barrel was too short, so he broke the end of the other half as well, and screwed the two pieces together. This gave him about four inches of cylindrical aluminum to work with.
Finally he began to form a handle for his weapon from the cardboard backing of the notebook, folding it into thirds lengthwise and putting a seam into the middle of this nearly three-inch wide handle. He cradled the pen casing in its fold.
Now he had something shaped like a gun—sort of.
He walked to the toilet and began pulling out the strips of paper one by one, wrapping them around both the barrel and the handle, crossing the strips back and forth over one another so that when they dried—if they dried before he needed his weapon—they’d add strength to the whole thing and hold it together.
After about ten minutes of careful wrapping, he was done.
The weapon looked like shit and he still had to devise some sort of firing mechanism, but with a little luck, it would do what he needed it to do when he needed it done.
He set the weapon on the windowsill to dry, and while the sun shone down on it, walked to his cot and lay down.
Tomorrow he was either going to escape or die trying. Probably the latter. His plan, if it could be called that, didn’t amount to much. But if he stayed in jail, he would die anyway. Maybe not tomorrow—he thought he could fight off anyone who came after him for a while—but soon. If they kept coming after him, there’d come a time when he wasn’t ready, and they’d manage to finish him.
He’d be damned if he was going to sit around and wait for that to happen. There were things that needed doing and the only way to do them was to first get out. Rocha had to pay for what he’d done to Layla. He had turned a beautiful, happy girl into a junkie, and then he’d killed her. Maybe not in a straightforward way. But that didn’t matter. If you hand a suicide case a pistol, you’re responsible for what happens next; if you provide a junkie with junk and they overdose, you’re responsible for what happens next—especially if you’re the one who made her a junkie to begin with.
James wanted Rocha dead. Needed him dead. Needed him to pay not only for what he’d done to Layla but for what he’d done to every girl like Layla—and for every girl who’d become her in the future.
If Rocha remained alive, it would happen to someone else.
Somewhere—in Augusta or Kankakee or San Francisco—was a beautiful girl living her life oblivious to the fact that circumstances would put her in Rocha’s path and that their meeting would lead to her death.
James knew what it felt like to lose someone. He knew what it felt like to think about all the lost years. Layla had been twenty-four, at the very beginning of her life, when everything was stolen from her. She’d never meet the man she might have married and he’d never have the opportunity to meet her. The children she’d wanted would never be born, never nurse at her breast. She’d never get to feel them fall asleep in her arms, never get to kiss their soft cheeks or know what it was like to love something—to love someone—you had created. She’d never celebrate a tenth wedding anniversary—or a first. Never get to watch her husband become an old man. Never get to experience the ups and downs of life as a wife and mother. She’d never get to watch her kids leave for university and feel both sad and proud.
Rocha had killed not only Layla but in so doing had erased every moment she might have lived. Every child she might have mothered.
How many other Laylas had there been before her? How many might there be after her if James didn’t do something to stop it?
Thinking about this made him think too, about what he’d done in Afghanistan. While he’d been there, he’d only thought about doing the job with which he’d been tasked. He’d felt separate from his actions, numb to them. But now, every trigger pull carried with it a burden. The burden of knowing that in taking eleven lives, he might have also destroyed countless others. At the time, he’d only thought about the immediate consequences. He was killing one person to save dozens of others. But the consequences of each trigger pull didn’t stop when the bullet hit. The consequences—like ripples from a lakeside stone throw—would travel outward for years.
Now that he’d lost someone he loved, he understood that.
After this, he was finished. He’d never pick up a gun again.
If he weren’t a hypocrite he might even let this go. But he wasn’t strong enough to leave it be. He couldn’t allow his sister’s death to go unavenged. If that meant he was a hypocrite, then that’s what it meant. He could live more peacefully with that than he could with the knowledge that his sister’s killer still walked the streets.
He’d do this—he’d find justice for his sister—and then he’d walk away from violence forever.
But then he thought about the lives he’d saved, the men still breathing because he’d done what he’d done; the consequences of their deaths would have been felt for years as well.
So had he done more good than harm?
He wanted to believe he had, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t know.
He got to his feet and checked the gun. It was drying well, the strips of paper forming a hard shell around his weapon. He flipped it over so the sunlight could dry the other side and then lay down once more. Stared at the ceiling for a while and finally closed his eyes. He tried to think of nothing—tried to calm the TV static in his soul.
But images of Layla kept flashing through his mind, and with them came all of the related emotions, a contradictory tangle of them that nothing could unknot.
* * *
Once the weapon had dried as much as it was going to—once the sun had set—James took it from the windowsill and carried it back to his desk. He sat down and looked at both the rubber band and the spring res
ting on its metal surface. Thought about how to make a firing mechanism from them. For a long time he did nothing but sit there and stare, moving the two pieces—the rubber band and the spring—around in his mind, trying to figure out this puzzle. Finally, he decided he needed another part. A firing pin.
He got to his feet and turned in slow circles, taking in his surroundings, thinking about what he needed to make his weapon fire.
Toilet. Basin. Desk. Chair. Cot.
Toilet. Basin. Desk. Chair. Cot.
Toilet. Basin.
He walked to the basin and looked at the faucet. In the back of it was a narrow threaded pin used to control the drain stopper. He tried to unscrew it as he’d done when repairing faucets at home, but this one was soldered in place, so he jerked it left and right until he heard the crack of the alloy binding break. He pulled the pin from the faucet and walked back to his desk. Sat down. Put the pin on the desk’s surface, about a half inch sticking over the edge, and forced it down with his thumb. The metal dug into the pad, the end breaking through the skin, but still he pushed on it, grunting, until it formed a right angle.
With that done, he went about attaching the makeshift firing pin to his gun. He unwound half of the spring and wrapped it around the gun handle, sliding the straight end of the pin into the half that remained intact. Finally, he broke the rubber band and tied it around the cardboard handle of the gun and the pin. He thumbed back the pin—the threading providing just enough traction for his thumb to hold onto it—let it go, and watched as the bent end snapped into the back of his barrel. If he had extra ammunition, he might test the gun to make sure it worked, but it was probably best that he didn’t; he doubted the thing would survive more than a single round.
If it survived even that.
24
Gael Morales drove Danielle and Monica back to Rocha’s estate, the trunk loaded with clothes both women had purchased. Monica, busy shopping, hadn’t even noticed Danielle’s absence from the store; they’d have her to corroborate their story—which was that there was no goddamn story, thank you very much.
Still, he was nervous as he drove.
They were acting as though everything was normal—operating under the assumption that Diego hadn’t told Rocha what he’d learned—but they wouldn’t know until they reached the estate whether they were correct. Gael might be driving them toward death.
He cracked his window, put a cigarette between his lips, and lit it. Took a deep drag. Exhaled a stream of smoke that twisted and curled toward the window before breaking apart on the hot wind.
Twice today he’d had a gun aimed at his head and one of those times he’d come very close to being killed. Despite having been brought up Catholic—maybe because he’d been brought up Catholic—he wasn’t a religious man. He went to Sarah’s Protestant church on holidays, but that was a social decision rather than a spiritual one. He thought God might exist, but had only doubt for heaven and hell. Still, he found it impossible to separate who he was while alive from who he’d be when dead. Which meant that he thought of himself in darkness, aware of the darkness, unable to ever see or touch or smell Sarah again.
Today he’d come very close to that reality. Thinking about it made his chest feel tight.
He forced down all the thoughts and feelings currently swirling through his head and heart, pushed them down, locked them away, and pulled the BMW up to the estate’s wrought-iron gate. He punched in the key code. The gate swung open slowly and he guided the car up the cobblestone drive, past the fountain, and into the garage, where he brought it to a stop.
He killed the engine and then sat there, staring through the windshield at nothing, hands gripping the steering wheel. He was afraid to get out of the car, afraid to walk into the house. But he had to do it, and when he did, he had to act like everything was normal. So he told himself that everything was normal. Gael Castillo Jimenez might have had a gun pressed against his head, might have come within seconds of death, but he was Gael Morales.
He exhaled a heavy sigh.
Pushed open the car door.
* * *
Rocha was sitting on one of the couches in the living room, a bikinied girl on either side of him, his feet kicked up on the coffee table. He held a bottle of beer on his lap, loosely gripped in his right hand. When Gael, Danielle, and Monica stepped through the front door and onto the marble-floored foyer—the girls each carrying a large bag of clothes—he turned his head to look at them.
“How’d it go?”
“About as enjoyable as the Bataan Death March.”
Rocha laughed. “Well, it’s over now.”
Gael pulled out his wallet and slid the man’s credit card from a leather pocket. It was wrapped in a receipt. He walked both items over to Rocha and held them out to him. “Girls spent about ninety-eight hundred pesos.”
Alejandro waved away the proffered card. “Hold onto it. You’ll be using it again. But I’ll take the receipt.”
Gael handed him the paper and slipped the card back into his wallet. “Anything else you need from me today?”
“Nope. But I might need you to drive the girls to the airport the day after tomorrow.”
“No problem. Just let me know when.”
“I will.”
“If there isn’t anything else…”
“Go to the bar, hit the whorehouse, go home. You’re on your time now.”
“Thanks.”
Gael turned back to the front door and stepped through it. Walked to his Honda, put on his helmet, and kicked the bike to life. Rode through the fading sunlight to his apartment building. Made his way up the steps and keyed open the front door. Shut the front door behind him and locked it.
His face remained expressionless throughout all of this, but as soon as the dead bolt set with a thwack, he put his back against the door, slid down to the floor, and cried. There was no sound, but tears flowed down his cheeks as the pent-up emotions resulting from today’s events poured out of him. After less than five minutes, it was over. He pulled up the front of his shirt and wiped at his cheeks. Lit a Camel. Got to his feet.
His face was once more expressionless.
25
George Rankin drove east toward Juarez. Diego Blanco, directly behind him, and Francis Waters, on the passenger side, sat handcuffed in the back of his car. The blur of the desert streaked by in the fading light of the low sun sinking behind them. The gray strip of road ahead cut a curved path through the orange sand like an asphalt river.
“You can’t take me across the border,” Blanco said. “I’m a Mexican citizen. Unless you have the paperwork in order, this is kidnapping.”
“I have no intention of taking you across the border. Not today.”
“What do you intend to do then?”
George glanced in his rearview mirror. Blanco looked back at him with bloodshot eyes, his mouth an angrily penned line.
“What I should do,” George said, “is put a bullet through your head. That’s what you do with a rabid dog, isn’t it?”
“I have three daughters waiting for me at home.”
“I know you do. I know everything about you. But you tried to murder my friend and partner. The second you did that, you gave up any expectation of sympathy.”
“What about my daughters? They’ve never hurt anybody.”
“You should have thought about your daughters before you took up this line of work.”
“I did. That’s why I’m in this line of work. To feed and clothe them.”
“I know plumbers who somehow manage to buy groceries.”
“The youngest is only seven.”
“So what—you want me to let you go?”
“I know that’s not going to happen. As you said, I tried to kill your friend and partner.”
“Then why are we talking?”
“Because I believe you’re a good man doing what he thinks is best. A good man won’t leave little girls to fend for themselves. If you aren’t arresting me, and I know you a
ren’t, they’ll have nobody to help them. Nobody will know what happened to me. I want you to make sure they’re okay.”
“What about their mother?”
“She can’t even take care of herself.”
“The wreckage you leave behind isn’t my problem.”
But listening to Diego talk about his daughters made him think of Meghan, his own daughter. He and Sheryl had been divorced for ten years now, which meant for a decade he’d seen Meghan at most every other weekend. He’d watched her grow up, but not like present fathers do. Her progress toward adulthood wasn’t fluid in his mind. He’d missed so much of it. He saw it more like a photo album or a flip book or a badly animated cartoon that seemed to have frames missing. Twenty-six weekends a year at the most—usually closer to fifteen—piecing together an entire existence. In the last ten years, he probably hadn’t spent more than 365 days with his daughter: a year in a decade.
Diego wouldn’t even have that. The man wasn’t being arrested tonight but he’d end up going to prison and it wouldn’t be for weeks or months. The man was looking at decades. The youngest of his daughters might be in her late thirties before he stepped on ground outside a prison compound.
George glanced again in the rearview mirror and saw Diego’s face contort with sadness. He lowered his head, putting it between his knees, and made short gasping noises. Perhaps he’d been thinking the same thoughts George had. Only his perspective was different. He wasn’t looking at the situation from the outside. He was the one who’d pay.
Unfortunately, that meant his daughters would pay as well.
The man shifted in his seat. Something thumped against the floorboard. Something else thumped against the left back door.
George glanced over his shoulder in time to see Diego pulling his feet through the handcuffs so that his arms were in front of him. He sat up. There was no sadness on his face now, only visible violence. His eyes were cruel and determined. He threw his arms over George’s head and pulled back, choking him with the chain of the handcuffs.
The Breakout Page 17
