by Reinke, Sara
“Get down,” he’d said to Pilar, and because she sensed them too, along with her father’s sudden, bright fear, she’d quickly scuttled for cover beneath the desk. Seconds later, Pepe had arrived, the tires on his tricked-out late-model Chevy Malibu screeching as he’d stopped, leaving burned imprints on the pavement. Headlights and high beams had punched through the belly of the garage, impaling Enrique in stark, bright glow.
She’d been able to watch through a small seam in the metal backing of the desk as three men stepped out of the car—Pepe, Miguel Torres and Tomás Lovato. They were all tall, strapping, muscular and mean, and against the trio, her father had seemed suddenly very small and vulnerable to her.
“Qué onda, viejo?” Pepe had called out, his voice deceptively light and affable. What’s up, old man?
“No me chingues,” Enrique had shot back, fists bared. Depending on the translation, he could have meant Get out of here just as easily as Don’t fuck with me.
Either way, Pepe and his crew hadn’t listened.
As she watched, eyes wide with horror, her father had fought with the other Nahual. He may have been older than they were, but he was still strong and quick, and after he landed several solid blows, she’d held out a fleeting, momentary hope that he could fend them off, drive them back. But then Pepe had drawn a pistol while Enrique had been busy trading punches with Miguel. Pilar had screamed when Pepe fired, and as Enrique had crashed to the floor, she’d scrambled out from her hiding place.
“Papi, no!” she’d cried.
The bullet hadn’t killed Enrique, not immediately—that would come moments later, when Pepe had delivered another shot, this time in the back of his head—but it had crippled him, leaving him helpless. She’d tried to defend him; with all her might, she’d tried to fight off Pepe and his gang. Imbued with el cambio, she was stronger than any human man, but Nahual women weren’t taught to fight. She hadn’t known how at the time and had been quickly overpowered.
“Hola,” Elías said as she squatted in front of him on the stage.
“Qué onda, guapito?” she asked, pretending to smile, forcing herself to act nonchalant, like nothing was wrong and they were no more than complete strangers. What’s up, handsome?
She held out the strap of her bikini bottom expectantly. Without averting his gaze from her face, he slid a dollar bill, folded lengthwise, beneath.
“Por ti,” he said. For you.
With another smile, she stood again, then dismissed him by wheeling smartly about on her heel and prancing back toward the opposite end of the stage. She thought he’d leave, but when she turned around again, she found him still standing there, watching her. She froze again, blinking at him, her heart pounding beneath her breasts, her breath hiccupping in mounting alarm.
“There were three of them,” she’d told him that horrific night in the garage. “They were all dressed the same. Black tank tops and jeans, biker boots. They had tattoos on their chests, their arms.”
All three of them had shared one tattoo in particular; the face of the crucified Christ looking up in despair as blood trickled down his forehead, gouged by his crown of thorns. It symbolized a common Los Pandilleros marker, the phrase Sólo Dios puede juzgarme, or Only God can judge me. Each of them had worn this inked into his breast, just above his heart.
I’ll never forget that, she thought as she forced herself to move again, to walk back down the catwalk. She glanced up at the Pussy Lounge, where Chita still danced for Pepe and his friends.
“Hablas inglés?” Elías asked as she folded her legs beneath her again.
This time, she offered no pretenses of a smile as he slid another bill beneath her waistband. “Not a word,” she answered reflexively, and immediately wanted to clap her hand over her mouth. Brilliant, she thought, biting back a groan. Way to go, dumb ass.
He studied her for a long moment, his head slightly cocked. She didn’t need telepathy to see the wheels turning in his mind. “Would you come and dance for me?”
She stood again, heart still racing, wanting only to hide—from him, from the world—in the dressing room for the rest of her shift. “I told you. No hablo inglés.”
The song ended as she hurried away, and grateful for the escape, she retreated into the dressing room. On the night of the murder, she hadn’t told Elías that she’d recognized her father’s killers. Nor had she admitted this in any of the subsequent interviews she’d had in follow up with the Bayshore police. Sometimes Elías had been present during these, but other times it had only been Pilar alone in a small interrogation room with an overweight, middle-aged detective named Mueller who was apparently in charge of her father’s case.
“Any of these guys look familiar to you?” Mueller had asked her on one such occasion. Elías had been in the room this time but had stood quietly in the corner, letting Mueller run the show. He’d merely watched Pilar from this unobtrusive vantage, his dark eyes pinned on her, his face a gentle but otherwise unreadable mask.
Mueller had opened a manila file folder on the table between them, showing her a series of at least a dozen color mug shots that had been taped inside—a photographic line-up. All of them were young Hispanic men with tattoos visible in the closely cropped frames. She immediately recognized Pepe, Miguel Torres and Tomás Lovato from among them but pressed her lips together and shook her head. “No, sir,” she’d mumbled.
“Take your time,” Mueller had pressed, after having exchanged glances with Elías. Nodding once to indicate the photos, he’d added, “Look at them closely. Do you see the men who attacked your father that night?”
Again, she’d shaken her head, and although Mueller sighed, a put-upon sort of sound as he’d snapped the folder shut and snatched it impatiently back in hand, Elías had only studied her.
Because he knows, she thought as she slammed the dressing room door closed behind her. She’d been able to read his mind, see this plainly at the forefront of his thoughts. He knew that Pepe was involved. Maybe not Miguel Torres and Tomás Lovato, not for sure anyway, but it had been his suggestion to Mueller that they try to photo line-up. And while Mueller had been frustrated by her unwillingness to talk, Elías had been puzzled, even concerned, by it.
When she glanced at her dressing table, she realized she’d left all her money scattered there and bit back a groan. “Brilliant,” she muttered again.
Gathering up the loose bills, she reached for the pair she’d only just received while out on stage. She pulled them out, then blinked in surprise. She’d been expecting singles. That was the typical stage tip. If you were lucky, you could snag a five or maybe a ten from a complete stranger; anything higher, and it usually came from a particularly enamored regular.
Elías Velasco had given her two fifty-dollar bills.
“What the…?” Pilar whispered with a frown.
The dressing room door leading from the bar burst open wide and a pair of dancers came stumbling in together, arm in arm, both visibly drunk—despite the fact that it wasn’t even one o’clock in the afternoon. They laughed and giggled as they wobbled forward on their high heels. When they caught sight of Pilar, they both went momentarily silent. Then, falling together and laughing again, they staggered past and she realized again how stupid she’d been to leave her money sitting out. Anyone could have wandered back here and helped themselves.
After stacking the money haphazardly together in small piles, she stuffed it back beneath her G-string waist. She hadn’t removed her costume top on stage, and shrugged an ivory silk robe over her shoulders, lashing it loosely around her waist. Hating herself but knowing she had no choice, she returned to the dance floor, where she fully expected to be summoned yet again to the Salón Tipeja for Pepe’s lurid amusement.
To her surprise, however, she found that Pepe remained otherwise preoccupied with Chita. She was dancing for him again, his hands splayed across her ass, his eyes riveted on her breasts.
Better you than me, Pilar thought. Then she paused, catching sight o
f Elías. The left side of the club was lined with restaurant-style booths, and he sat at one in the far corner, alone.
For a moment, Pilar considered ignoring him—and the fact that she believed he’d accidentally given her a hundred-dollar tip. But instead, she hesitated, seeing him again in her mind on the night of Enrique’s murder. He’d been kind to her. Later he’d been kind to her during her police interviews, patient and sympathetic.
“You can talk to me,” he’d told her once when Mueller had left the room. It was the same day as the photo line-up, and he’d stepped away from his corner to come and squat beside her chair, lowering himself to her eye level and resting his elbows on the table.
Pilar had longed to trust him. But she hadn’t, because along with so many other traditions and methods, the Nahual had their own means of justice. She’d trusted that Valien and the rest of her corillo would make sure Pepe and his friends were made to answer by that ancient, brutal code.
“You made a mistake,” she told him now, stopping beside his booth. It occurred to her that he smelled good, more than just the spicy hint of his cologne. She was aware of the fragrance of his blood, sweeter to her than that of any other human she’d ever encountered, more appealing for that reason. She swallowed hard, having started to unconsciously salivate.
He glanced up as he polished off the last of a bottle of Modelo Especial. “I thought you didn’t speak English.”
Pilar ripped the pair of bills out of her panties and thrust them at him.
“You made a mistake,” she said again. “These are fifty-dollar bills.”
His eyes cut from her face to her outstretched hand, then back again. “So they are.”
“You gave them to me,” she said, annoyed. “On stage a few minutes ago.” When he didn’t say anything, simply looked at her, mildly curious, she snapped, “Look, will you just take them already? I didn’t have to give them back, you know. I’m trying to do you a favor.”
Because he was probably married, and while wives could easily overlook a couple of twenties here and there, a hundred dollars in one sitting was a sum that would be missed. Especially on a cop’s salary, she thought.
She didn’t see a ring on his finger, but that didn’t mean a thing. Married men came into Melaza all the time having slipped their wedding bands into coat pockets or glove compartments, as if they had a whore’s chance in a cathedral of fooling anyone other than themselves.
“I don’t want them back,” Elías said, glancing past her shoulder as a cocktail waitress approached. Raising his hips from the seat, he reached for his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened the billfold, thumbed out a hundred spot from what looked to be good-sized wad—which gave Pilar immediate pause.
Dropping it onto the table, he nodded once to the waitress to indicate that he wanted another bottle of beer.
“Would you like something?” he asked, cutting his eyes to Pilar.
Focusing on the money she’d seen in his wallet—and the fact that he hadn’t placed her so far—Pilar forced a smile. “Sure, guapito,” she said, feigning nonchalant brightness into her tone as she slid onto the bench opposite him. “I’ll have a double shot of Bloodhorse.”
As the waitress walked away and Pilar slid into the bench facing Elías, he said, “That’s a pretty stout drink.”
“I like them like I like my men,” she replied, a well-practiced, well-implemented line. “Strong and stiff.”
He smirked, then shook his head. “My name’s Elías,” he said, offering her his hand. “What’s yours?”
“Destiny.” She accepted the shake, doing her best to feign an innocent expression.
His brow cocked again. “What’s your real name?”
Without breaking her brittle smile, she said, “None of your business.”
He laughed. “Tell me something, then, None of Your Business. Are you trying to get me killed?” When she blinked at him, her saccharine smile faltering in bewilderment, he nodded once, directing her gaze toward Pepe and his Pussy Lounge. “You’re Pepe Cervantes’s girl, right?”
She bristled. “I’m nobody’s girl.”
He nodded once. “Fair enough,” he said. “So when I get you to dance for me, he’s not going to send one of his pandilla over here to pop a cap in my ass or something?”
“Who says I’m going to dance for you?”
Elías opened his wallet again. “I do.” He slipped another Benjamin from his billfold and let it drop to the table.
Pilar swung her legs around from beneath the table, meaning to leave. “Ni borracho,” she said. Forget it.
He put another C-note down on the table.
“You’re crazy.”
“Will you dance for me?” he returned, brows raised expectantly.
“You can talk to me,” he’d told her that day at the Bayshore police headquarters. And despite what had happened to her, the litany of indescribable horrors she’d experienced and seen—despite the fact that she felt sure she could never talk to or trust anyone, let alone a man, again—she found herself longing to, almost giving in. Almost.
Which was why, she supposed, she felt momentary disappointment to realize he was no different than any other man in the club, or the world for that matter—seeing her only as a piece of ass.
“Sure, guapito.” Reaching across the table, Pilar hooked the money and dragged it over to her. “Whatever you say.”
She danced for him to a slow-moving, grinding kind of song, having first beckoned him to move out from the booth bench and into a nearby vacant chair to better face her. She unfettered the sash of her robe, then let it fall in lank folds from her shoulders. Stepping back, she cupped her hands over her bikini top, playing with her breasts beneath, watching him as he watched her, mesmerized.
She’d played the game long enough to know what drove customers crazy, and she went no-holds-barred. It was as if the last year’s worth of furious, vengeful passion suddenly welled up in her, not directed at Pepe, as it should have been, but against this man, the handsome young police detective whom she’d thought might be a good man like her father.
Slipping the scraps of sparkling fabric away from her breasts, she left them tantalizingly revealed. With her hands, she pushed them together, then leaned toward him, bringing her nipples so close to his face, she could feel the quickening flutter of his breath against her skin.
Why does he smell so good, goddamn it? she wondered, aggravated, because his blood remained distinctive to her, tantalizing and sweet.
“Qué piensas?” she asked with a coy but humorless smile. What do you think?
He looked up at her, meeting and holding her gaze. “Bella,” he breathed—beautiful.
Abruptly, she dropped to her knees, dragging her breasts down the front of his shirt to his groin—where she could feel a sizable bulge straining beneath the crotch of his slacks. Glancing up to make sure she had his undivided attention, she raised her index finger, pointing it up, and slid it into her mouth, then out again. Over and over, she did this, twining her tongue down to the base, positioning her hand close enough to his growing and obvious arousal for him to get the suggestion.
“Madre de Dios,” he whispered, the muscles and tendons in his neck rigid with strain, his fingers hooked fiercely into the padded vinyl seat beneath him. Next she moved her hand out of the way and dipped her face down toward his lap, stopping only a few centimeters above him. When she began to move her head up and down, he groaned through gritted teeth.
Pilar took a sadistic pleasure in tormenting him like this for another full stanza, until the fly of his slacks had tented so far outward, she was surprised his erection hadn’t burst through the zipper. She stood again without warning, then turned to present her back to him. She slipped her fingers beneath the scrap of string holding her thong in place, then toyed with it, easing it up and down, making the sequins capture flashing strobe lights from overhead and sparkle as she tauntingly flashed him the dimpled cleft of her buttocks. When she backed towa
rd him, grinding in slow-moving circles millimeters above the throbbing swell of his crotch, he groaned again, low and ragged.
“Madre de Dios,” he whispered again as she straightened her spine, still rocking her ass into him. She turned, close enough for her breasts to press against his chest, his heartbeat pounding and palpable to her through his shirt as it sent more of that unusually sweet-smelling blood surging through him. Nose to nose, she tilted her head slightly, her mouth hovering above his, as if poised to kiss.
The music ended and Pilar abruptly stepped away, leaving Elías to blink at her in bewildered surprise. “Thanks for the drink, guapito,” she told him, snatching her robe back. “And the dance.”
Without further ado, she walked away, leaving him alone.
CHAPTER TWO
Fuck me, Elías thought, his eyes closed, his head tilted back.
It was as good a sentiment as any, considering he stood facing the wall in the cramped restroom stall, bracing himself with his left hand while jerking himself off with his right. He imagined her mouth against him instead—not Destiny, the blonde-haired stripper, but Pilar Cadana, the young woman beneath the guise.
He’d been going into the strip bar for months, and not just because he was tracking Pepe Cervantes. In town for less than a year and fresh on the tail end of a rather nasty divorce, he’d found comfort in the dimly lit club and from the women he watched dancing there—none more so than Pilar. He’d recognized her from the first, much to his shock, but then that initial surprise had faded into something more visceral and needful.
Elías had a difficult time, riddled with shame and guilt, reconciling the traumatized victim with the enticing, seductive dancer. He’d seen the dazed, shell-shocked look in Pilar’s eyes on the night of her father’s death and it had broken his heart. Yet he’d been helpless but to be aroused as he’d watched her onstage.
He hadn’t worked up the nerve to approach her until that afternoon out of fear that she’d recognize him; instead, he’d satisfied himself by watching, mesmerized, from afar, fantasizing about her more up close and personal only in his mind. He didn’t know why he’d changed his mind that day. Maybe it was the artificial courage the beers had provided. Or maybe it was just that he couldn’t resist any longer. Whatever the case, it had been worth the risk. God, had it ever.
