One for Our Baby

by John Sandrolini

  I started to get that sinking feeling.

  Drac cold-stared me, but I looked right past him at Helen. She gazed into my eyes for reassurance, and I returned all I had, but the truth was we were in no-man’s-land until she was across that open fifteen feet between us.

  Moving forward, I raised my hand upward to reach out for hers. Helen stood there, taut and frightened, but just a few feet away. We were that close.

  And then I saw it.

  A glimmer of light winked from an object above me, not in the bell tower but on the church wall. My eyes followed it to the spot, locking on the form of a man kneeling down on the left-hand balcony. They went wide with shock when they focused on the rifle in his hands.

  There was no time to formulate ideas about whose side he was on or what his intentions were. Whoever the hell he was, he was leaning forward with a weapon curled up under his chin—and he was pointing it down at us.

  Everything shifted to stop-action, nanoseconds flickering by in frozen frames, my mind processing every movement at high speed.

  I heard myself shouting, “Get down!” as I lunged forward, my left hand reaching for the butt of my pistol, my eyes darting toward Helen’s.

  I dropped down onto a knee as my weapon cleared my shoulder, my arm swinging forward. Helen’s mouth dropped open in slow motion as my weapon planed past her face and rose over her head, her eyes bedazzled flecks of jade.

  Bravo’s men saw me and went for their guns, but they were far too late. By the time they reached their weapons, I was already in firing position.

  The shooter was almost two hundred feet away—a miracle pistol shot—but an easy one for a high-powered rifle. I came on with gun drawn, Bravo’s pawns falling away like frightened deer, leaving Helen and Drac alone and in the open.

  I caught another flash of metal off the rifle scope as the shooter fixed his target.

  The powder puff piñata gyrated suddenly into my field of vision, swung aloft on its pole by the dancing man just a few yards away. He was oblivious to his peril, but his pig was perfectly positioned in the sniper’s field of fire.

  Steadying my hand, I did the only thing I could: I sacrificed the pig.

  My first shot blew a leg off into the night. The second struck square in the bacon, the piñata disintegrating like a star shell, a carnation-colored mist showering the plaza with hundreds of pieces of candy and gum and papier-mâché shrapnel.

  The report of rifle fire came ripping through the air a millisecond later.

  The music jerked to a halt. Someone behind me shrieked, “Gustavo … Dios mio!” I spun toward the sound.

  The lead mariachi, who had just poured his heart into the grand finish of “El Rey,” was standing at stage’s edge, his giant hat blown off his head. His face was contorted in a demonic mask, marred by the stream of blood coursing from the hole in his forehead. He stood up perfectly straight as if to bow, paused ever so slightly, and then plunged into the crowd below.

  One long second of stunned calm followed.

  It all went to shit after that.

  78

  I lunged toward Helen as pandemonium erupted, panicked and screaming people stampeding in all directions. Drac, grinning, checked my path, his weapon pointed down at me.

  I flung the moneybag at him and dove away as he fired, a hot rush of air whizzing past my ear. Drac thrust out his hand to block the satchel, releasing Helen’s arm in the process. She grabbed his gun hand and leaped away, spinning him off balance into the open center of the plaza.

  A brace of rifle shots zinged down upon us from above. Drac took one in the neck.

  The little man jerked forward with a violent spasm. He looked at me for a second in bewilderment, his hand reaching toward his shredded artery. Then he bared his fangs one final time and dropped, corkscrewing down on top of me while I was scrambling to my feet.

  We went down together in a bleeding heap, Drac sprawling over me crosswise and pinning me to the street. I rolled quickly and kicked away at his body, the blood from the holes in his neck staining my clothes and the cobblestones sangria red.

  I got up into a crouch and scanned the crowd at waist level, looking for Helen as rampaging villagers scampered all around me. I turned and a fleeing man flattened me with a knee to the chest, sending my pistol spinning through the air as I tumbled backward onto my can.

  I sat up, shook off a few stars, then spotted Helen in the crowd screaming, two of Bravo’s men pulling her away toward the car.

  Before I could react, more rifle shots came down from the balcony and a pawn got hit in the chest, his hands flying up uselessly as he fell across the hood of the limo.

  The other pawns were firing wildly toward the balcony and the fountain. Several shots hit close in, skipping off the bricks around me and ricocheting back into the air.

  A runner behind me got hit, staggered sideways several steps, and clipped the low wall, collapsing backward into the water with a sploosh.

  A hundred things were happening at once and all of them were bad. Gunmen were shooting, terrorized people were fleeing, a village was bleeding—a mariachi was dead. My men were nowhere in sight and I was unarmed, under fire, and unprotected.

  The only safe spot I could see was the fountain. In a flash, I spun around, coiled up, and then flung myself through the air, splashing down like a ditched bomber in the cold water behind the two-foot brick wall. My momentum carried me against the far side of the curving interior edge. Spinning on the plaster bottom, I reversed direction and lunged forward, crashing up against the tiled inside wall face-first.

  I broke the surface, wiped the water from my eyes, and took a hurried look around. To my left, the runner lay partially submerged, a swirling red film coloring the turbulent water around her body. Vito was next to her, his head against her raised thigh, squeezing off shots between her legs toward the balcony.

  There we were, two fish in a giant bowl, with a single waterlogged pistol between us to hold back a sniper and two cars full of pissed-off gunsels. I wondered why we weren’t getting any cover from Tony and the gorilla.

  The squeal of rubber on brick shrieked through the air as the first of Bravo’s cars shot forward, spun around, and raced out of the plaza. I caught a blur of Helen’s face underneath a gunman as the limo zoomed by.

  The second car followed, then banged a hard U, and pulled up abeam the church, a sheet of fire blazing from its right side as automatic weapons cut loose against the house of God.

  Bullets gouged a track up the wall, pranging off the wrought-iron balcony and shredding the plaster beyond. The shooter just disappeared in a haze of pulverized stucco, his limbs flopping out as he flew backward against the wall, the rifle cartwheeling from his hands then pinballing down between the rails to a teetering balance on the edge of the wooden flooring.

  The dying man slid sideways, painting a red smear on the wall behind him. Then he twisted around, collapsing faceup on the railing, arms opened wide. The rifle fell a second later, dropping onto the cobblestones below with an empty clack.

  The second car tore out into the night, leaving me, Vito, and a few stunned survivors a chance to regroup.

  The plaza was nearly empty, the only immediate sound the wailing of a woman slumped over the mariachi’s body and a few random cries for help. Along the streets that led in, cars were peeling off into the night, villagers trying desperately to leap onto running boards as the cars whipped past.

  I stood up, then clambered out of my liquid foxhole, water pouring off me and sloshing onto the bricks below. I signaled Vito to stay back, then crept forward. The shooting had stopped, but I crouched low, making several sweeps of the area before reaching out to pick up my pistol.

  I looked down at Drac, who lay dead in the street staring up at the cold moon above. One of his hands reached out into the night, his fingers curling like the tines of a rake. He should’ve stuck to herding goats.

  I was still working off adrenaline. I knew that Helen was gone with Bravo’s men,
but I couldn’t process the totality of this latest disaster. I still had to get myself, my men, and the money out of town before the Federales arrived.

  The money. Oh shit. My heart sank even lower.

  “Vito,” I yelled, “you see the money anywhere?”

  “No,” he replied, rising up and stepping out of the fountain that was still gushing red water into the air.

  I stood there, soaking and drained, fighting off the first shudders of the cool night air, my warm gun shaking in my hand. “Great. We lost the money, too. FUBAR—all the way down the line. You see the gorilla or Tony anywhere?”

  He wiped his face, shook his arms hard, flicking water free. “I don’t see nobody, Joe.”

  I spun a three sixty. “And where the hell is Lino?”

  “Dunno,” he said, “maybe stuck in traffic trying to get to us.”

  “Well, let’s get going over to him,” I replied, silently counting bodies in the street. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

  We started a double time out the west end of the plaza toward Lino and the car. After several steps, Vito said, “Look,” and pointed toward an archway in a row of shops. “It’s il scimmio.”

  Against the wall beyond the stores an unmistakably large man lay slumped down, legs bent crookedly, head down on his chest. Even from a distance we could see the blood soaking his shirt and darkening the stone beneath him.

  Vito ran over to check, but the big guy was gone for sure. He came right back and shook his head, drawing his finger across his throat with grim finality.

  So much for the gorilla. Tony probably got the same. Somebody had made us—but good. Then Vito looked at me and I looked at him, and we both began running toward the wagon.

  79

  From a hundred feet out I knew. The way Lino’s arm hung out the window, limp, fingers curled. At fifty feet I saw the blood, seeping down his arm, branching off in streaks on the car door.

  I stopped running. Vito didn’t. “Jesus Christ,” I said quietly as he blew past me toward his dead friend.

  Drawing my gun, I made several quick turns, checking for unfriendlies. No one was visible in the immediate area, but I wasn’t going to wait around for them to return. I gave Vito a few seconds, then walked slowly toward the car. He wasn’t yelling, wasn’t crying, didn’t pound on the roof of the car. He just knelt there in the dirt, hand covering his face, head shaking slowly.

  Around the plaza people were beginning to poke their heads out of the shops and from behind the stage. Some general shouting began, people congregating in small, cautious clusters.

  “Vito.”

  He didn’t respond. I placed an arm on his shoulder, leaned down. He looked up at me, eyes glazed. “Vito … we can’t stay.”

  He nodded, stood up, looked on at the dead man in the driver’s seat.

  “And we can’t take him with us.”

  He stared at me, but I saw the recognition in his face. “Okay,” he said.

  I stepped around him, pushed in the button, opened the door. Vito reached down and pulled Lino out. I tried to help him, but he brushed past me, grunting from the weight of the body. He dragged him over to a little shed near the darkened roadside and laid him down as I followed, weapon pointed straight out.

  Vito stood beside Lino, looking down in silence at his friend. His eyes were moist, but he showed no other emotion. Wordlessly, he crossed himself then turned away.

  I stepped forward and dug into my pockets for change. I found a couple of ten-peso coins and placed them over Lino’s eyes. “Safe passage, paesan,” I whispered, then turned and made for the car.

  Some of the villagers had begun moving our way. A man was pointing toward us, walking in our direction. Another man followed. I climbed in and slammed the door, disregarding the blood-slicked seat. Vito was already seated on the passenger side, pain creasing his face. The keys were still in the ignition. As I cranked the engine over, I spied an object sticking out of the dashboard, sitting low like a half-moon in the darkness. It was a Chinese throwing star. I stared at it in mute disbelief, not wanting to accept the obvious connection: the Ching Hwas were back in the game—and they were pissed.

  Down the street, men were running toward us now. Someone yelled, “Stop them!”

  I shook off my trance, ripped the shifter into low, and flattened the pedal to the floor. Vulcanized rubber smoked into the air as the spinning tires clutched at the dusty bricks below. Then they dug in and the wagon sprang forward, fishtailing wildly onto the skinny road, surging toward the open edge of town.

  It was time to bid adiós to Agua Caliente, another box checked on my guided tour of hell.

  80

  We drove out as we’d come in—in silence—water pooling slowly on the vinyl seat and running back in small streams behind me.

  Several police cars passed us moving fast, their sirens wailing—ad hoc funeral dirges dissipating slowly into the night beyond.

  I was too numb to think straight, but I knew everything was shot to pieces now. The gunman wasn’t mine and he wasn’t Mario’s, but he could’ve been Ching Hwa or Spazzo or anyone else. Whoever he was, he was dead now.

  But the whole thing was a mess; a complete and total star-spangled clusterfuck. “You got a dry cigarette, Vit?” I asked in disgust.

  He fished through the glovebox, pulled out a pack, shook one out and lit it, then handed it to me. He gave me a long, deep stare as he did, his eyes going from the throwing star to mine. Neither of us spoke; there wasn’t any need.

  I took a deep drag on the coffin nail, shivered a little from the cold, and pushed myself back into the seat, my mind spinning at 5,000 rpm but the clutch not engaging.

  * * *

  As the traffic thinned out, Vito asked, “Where we gonna go, Joe?”

  “Lemme think. We can’t stop by the Bahia, but I’m gonna need to talk to Frank and you’re gonna need to talk to Roselli. I can’t ask you to do anything else here. Bravo’s going to have us measured for boxes if we stay.”

  “What about Tony?” Vito asked.

  “We’ll see him at the Resurrection.”

  He shot me a look.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s up there on that rail in front of that church, Vit. Who else could’ve gotten that close to the gorilla—and slit him like that? He’s either in with the Chinese gang that did this or died at their hands. And if it wasn’t him, he’s on his own anyhow. There’s no meet-up scheduled and no time for dicking around. We can’t afford to be here when the sun comes up.”

  We both knew we weren’t going to make it across the border, not now, not in that station wagon. We’d have to score some other means of transportation to get out.

  But there was only going to be one guy leaving. There was no way I was going to desert Helen. Whatever else she’d done, she’d saved my life at the Hotel Cortés. I couldn’t leave her to die in that house, not without me alongside her.

  81

  We parked in an alley a few blocks into Ensenada, near what looked to be a cathouse. At a time like that, you go with your gut.

  I poked my head in the door and asked the madam where I could find a pay phone. She gave me the full eyeful—how could I blame her standing there in my soaking clothes and matted hair? But her pink rayon muumuu and purple eye shadow were damn little better. The woman had a private joke with herself, then she smiled and told me there was a phone at the small plaza a block down, next to a peso horse ride for kids. We shared one of those looks, then I thanked her and ducked out.

  I decided to leave the car where it was but walked back to let Vito know where I was headed. Then I walked off alone to call Frank. It was gonna be ugly.

  I made my way through the shadows to the little plaza a block away. The plastic horse was in the near corner, a white charger with some kick left in him despite having a foreleg snapped off. Pegasus he wasn’t, but his face had a certain sneering defiance that resonated.

  The phone booth was just beyond. It was tired and unlit, but the hinged doo
r folded easily when I pushed it in. I made a slow survey of the whole plaza before sliding halfway in, having already met my monthly quota for telephone ambushes. Then I placed an international call to a number I’d memorized long ago. George picked up on the third ring, said Frank was anxious to speak with me. I took a few deep breaths while I waited for him to come on the line. It felt like waiting to tell your father you’d been arrested.

  “Joseph, what news?” he asked, voice rising in anticipation.

  “It’s not good, Frank. We got ambushed. Helen’s still with Bravo.”

  “Jeee-zusssss …”

  “Yeah. People are dead. Couple of Bravo’s, couple of ours, some civilians. Somebody tore the roof off the night.” My words sounded slow and tired and flat in the wooden booth.

  “And Helen?”

  “She was okay last I saw her. They dragged her away when the shooting began.”

  “Oh, is this thing ever a fucking nightmare. Every turn is worse.”

  “There’s more.”

  “More?”

  “Yeah. We lost the money. Bravo got it.”

  Long silence, deep exhalation, then, “And the locusts?”

  “Come again?”

  “The locusts, Joe, the horde of locusts. ’Cuz you got everything else to make this a fucking biblical tragedy. I mean it is epic. Ep-ic!”

  I closed my eyes, let out some air of my own. “I’m sending Roselli’s guy home within the hour. His buddy and one of the couriers bought it, another’s missing, but Vito’s still here with me.”

  “Don’t do that, pal. Right now he’s a dead man. He may just as well stay down there with you.”

  I pulled away the receiver, gave it a crossways stare. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The money. The money you guys lost—it’s Roselli’s, the mob’s. That guy shows up without it and he won’t even make it home for supper.”