The House of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  Unless they can’t.

  All right, listen, he tells Espanto. We’ll proceed as planned, except that I’ll call Belmonte and tell him to take the entire ransom to the Alpha house. I’ll tell him everyone at both houses will be released on its delivery, though of course we can’t do that, not now.

  I agree, Espanto says. What of Sosa and the wives?

  They know nothing of consequence. We can leave them to mourn.

  Understood, Espanto says, and starts up the Sierra.

  When I let you know Belmonte’s on the way, have both Chino and Chato follow him, Galán says. Let Rubio know you’re coming but don’t tell him of the changes. You and I will attend to that.

  You’re going?

  I won’t place on you or the others the burden of what must be done. But I want everyone there when I arrive, so I’ll wait along the route till Chino and Chato pass by and then fall in behind them.

  Very well, chief, see you there, Espanto says, wheeling out of the parking lot.

  Galán has no concern that the police might want to question Jorge Envordo, the owner of record of the Alpha house. Jorge Envordo does not exist. Galán bought the house for a pittance under that name expressly for use in this operation. And just in case they might have to do what now must be done.

  Espanto phones Rubio to say he’s en route, and asks if all is in order.

  Rubio hesitates. Well . . .

  What? says Espanto.

  The Apache. He went crazy. Tried to strangle the American girl. I tried to stop him but he went for a gun and I had to shoot him. He’s dead. We packed him up and he’s ready for riddance wherever. And listen, man, before that, he pounded one of the wedding guys and he’s practically in a coma. I’m telling you God’s truth. The fucker went crazy. Gallo and Cabrito can tell you. He was—

  All right, Espanto says, recalling his uneasy intuition about the Apache. I can believe it. You did what you had to. I’ll be there soon.

  Rubio is relieved. As well as a little puzzled.

  Espanto did not ask if the girl had been hurt bad. Nor seemed upset about the unconscious guy.

  What the hell. . . . Good.

  37 — GALÁN

  Galán is on the beltway when he phones Belmonte, whose fearful surprise at receiving the early call is evinced in his voice. But he is elated to learn that Mr. X is so pleased with how ably he and Sosa have carried out his instructions that he sees no need to prolong the process and has decided to accept the full ransom in a single payment and free all the captives on its receipt. Galán tells him to go to the payoff site alone and that he will be followed all the way there. He is to take the Cadillac, which will make him easier to keep in sight.

  The instructions he gives Belmonte are few and simple, so too the directions to the hold house. Should you at any point get confused, Galán says, call me on the special phone.

  Belmonte thanks him, but says the directions are not complicated and he’s certain he will have no trouble finding the house.

  Very good, Galán says. Go now, and drive carefully. It’s getting dark.

  He then calls Espanto to tell him Belmonte is on the way and gives him one further instruction.

  38 — RUDY AND CHARLIE

  Chino’s phone buzzes on the table. The three of us swap looks. It’s a little early for the call Chino expects.

  Charlie gestures for him to answer it and says, Don’t fuck up.

  Chino holds the instrument so that Charlie can have his ear at it too. “Dígame,” he says, and listens. Then says, Yes he is. He got here before me. He listens again, and says, Yes, sure, Espanto, I understand, me and Chato both. . . . Yes. Yes, we’ll get ready right now. . . . What? . . . He gives Charlie a sidewise look and says, I sound like that because I’ve got a fucking cold. Been coming on since yesterday and now the damn thing—

  He listens. Yes, all right, he says. See you there.

  He presses the Off button and Charlie takes the phone from him and puts it in his pocket, saying, Well done, my little friend.

  He tells me Belmonte’s already on the way and that both Chino and Chato are to tail him, but the Espanto guy didn’t explain why they had made that change in plan.

  39 — JESSIE

  She senses a higher tension among the captors, a keener excitement. Cabrito is now armed. He left the room for a few minutes and when he returned he was carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster, a Glock like his pals. Gallo is pacing along the windowed wall, periodically pushing a drape aside for a peek out.

  They all hear the arrival of a vehicle in the alley below. Gallo parts the drape a little. “Aquí’ ’stá Espanto,” he says.

  Espanto. Jessie recalls the name. He’s the guy whose reaction to the Apache’s death Gallo was concerned about. Must be the head man.

  Is it the ransom? Luz asks.

  Keep quiet, Gallo says.

  José sits up and puts his feet on the floor but looks at no one.

  Minutes pass. Jessie supposes the Espanto guy’s getting an earful from Rubio about the Apache. Maybe about her, too.

  Now there are footsteps in the hallway, and then the two men enter the room. The Espanto one carries himself like an athlete. Brush mustache, short-spiked hair. Hard-faced handsome.

  He goes over to Aldo and tweaks his ear between his index finger and thumb. Aldo whines softly and his face pinches in pain but he doesn’t awaken.

  You see? Rubio says. That’s how it’s been. He reacts but he doesn’t come to.

  Espanto sniffs the air and looks at José. “Ay, chico,” he says. Have you no shame?

  The boy keeps his eyes on his own feet.

  Espanto looks at the women. And holds his stare on Jessie. He goes to her cot and smiles down at her.

  You are Jessica? he says, the j sounding almost like y.

  Yes, she says. It’s no surprise he knows her name but it unnerves her to hear him say it.

  He gestures toward Rubio and says, My associate tells me you are an escape artist. Maybe we should call you Houdini. No . . . Houdina.

  I don’t think so, Jessie says. I’m obviously not as good as he was. Jesus, girl, she thinks, shut up!

  Yes, well, maybe with more practice. Only, no more practice with us, eh?

  No, she says.

  He winks at her. Then says, Listen, everyone, your stay with us is almost over. Just be patient a little longer. Think of the many good things awaiting you in your lives. However, for the brief remainder of your time with us, you ladies must be handcuffed once again. I apologize for the discomfort.

  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-si
de 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.”