The Ways of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  The man points to the nearest of the two doors.

  Quino signals Cacho to cover the couple, and he and Axel go to the bedroom door. They stand to one side of it, pistols ready. Quino slowly works the doorknob, then pushes the door open and crouches into it in a sidewise move, pistol raised and ready.

  Who’s there? a husky voice asks.

  Mother of God, Quino murmurs. He stands up and they go in and close the door.

  Gallo is in a wheelchair in a corner, skeletal but for a small potbelly, his gray hair thin and scraggly, his gray face noseless and turned toward them. Gallo’s eyes are closed, the lids strangely sunken, and then Axel understands that there aren’t any eyes under them. They’ve been removed. As have both legs at the knee, and one arm at the elbow. And the digits of his remaining hand except for the thumb and forefinger. Colostomy bags are attached to both sides of the chair. The room reeks.

  Gallo’s sudden laugh is a half-screech, the man’s open mouth revealing a total absence of teeth. Getting a first look, eh? he says. I can always tell … and there’s two of you.

  At first sight, Axel hadn’t thought this creature could be the man he’d known as Duro, but it’s his voice. Raspier than before, but his voice. It’s him. He lowers his pistol and goes over to Gallo and says in English, “Are you Duro Cisneros?”

  Gallo lifts his face to him, the nasal bores large and black and rimmed with mucus. “You speak English … like a gringo,” he says in English. “Who are you?”

  “Axel Smith. I was a partner with Duro Cisneros on a robbery back in 1984. In Dallas. Me and Billy Jones.”

  The man’s head tilts sideways as if he’s pondering, searching his memory. Then his toothless mouth opens in what may be an attempt at a smile. “Yes! … Smith and Jones! Dallas! … You’re … the college guy!” There is a breathless aspect to his speech.

  Axel trades a glance with Quino. “That’s right,” he says to Gallo, “the college guy. And you said you were Duro Cisneros.”

  “I have been many people…. The college guy! Yes … We hit a jewelry store … but not for jewels.”

  “It was bonds.”

  “Oh, man, yeah … Long time ago! A good take but went to hell … in a fucking parking lot…. And you, you went down and … oh shit … we had to leave you, get out fast…. And they got you. Was on the TV, the papers…. They lock you up long?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, yes, I see, yes…. Now you are here to … settle things, no?” Duro emits another screechy laugh and gestures at himself with his two-fingered hand. “Well, my friend … there is not much left of me for you to punish … not much to cut off, even a dick…. But what the hell, you can still kill me, eh? It’s like they left … the best part for you. The best … satisfaction.” Gallo leans forward as if preparing to depart the chair, his breath coming faster. “So take your … vengeance, college guy…. Do it.”

  “Tell me about Billy,” Axel says. “What happened to him? You know if he’s alive?”

  Duro leans back in the chair and expels a hard breath. “That cocksucker,” he hisses.

  “What about him? When was the last time you saw him?” The laugh again.

  “The last time? Oh … five or six hours after … the last time I saw you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ah. You want to know … what happened…. I will tell you if … you make a promise to me.”

  “What?”

  “Kill me after…. Immediately. Kill me.”

  “All right.”

  “Yes? … You promise this to me?”

  “Yes. Now tell me.”

  In his laborious, gasping manner, Duro tells him that he and Billy fled the parking lot in the Mustang with the cops on their ass. There was shooting and he was hit in the back of the shoulder. They lost the cops but the wound hurt like hell and he couldn’t drive much farther and they anyway had to get rid of the Mustang. They ditched it a couple of blocks from a little plaza where Billy stole a car and they headed for San Antonio. Duro had a friend there who could get him a doctor and put them up for a while. They kept expecting to see flashing lights behind them any minute, maybe even a roadblock up ahead, but no, nothing. Couldn’t believe their luck. They pulled in at a rest stop and parked way the hell at the end of the lot where Billy could check the wound without attracting attention. The bleeding wasn’t very bad but the bullet had hit bone and it hurt like a sonofabitch. Duro bit into a rolled handkerchief to keep from screaming and nearly passed out from the pain as Billy used his T-shirt to bandage the shoulder, but it was a good wrap and they drove on. They were almost to San Antonio when Billy said they should make sure Duro’s friend was at home and let him know they’re coming so he’d stay there till they arrived. They pulled in at a rest stop just a few miles north of the San Antonio loop road and Billy put a jacket over Duro’s shoulders to hide the wound and gave him coins for the call and he went in to use a pay phone.

  “That’s how stupid I was … how stupid the pain had made me,” Duro says. “I go inside to make the call and … leave him in the car.”

  “And he took off,” Axel says.

  “Of course! I come out, he’s gone…. I walked around the parking lot again and again … looking for the car. Gone…. Bonds in the briefcase, briefcase under the seat. Fucker got it all…. Felt like the biggest asshole in the world. How stupid the pain had made me! … But if I had insisted … he go in with me when I called … he could have shot me there in the car. Got rid of my body somehow, someplace…. He was going to win either way…. All I could do was call my friend again … tell him to come for me.”

  “You ever hear from Billy again? Hear anything about him?”

  “Nothing. For a long time I asked … about him here and there…. I asked other robbers, described him…. Nothing. Not a whisper…. Have no idea what happened to that … queer son of a bitch. I should have known better … than to trust a faggot.”

  “What’re you talking about? He was no faggot.”

  “Fuck he wasn’t.”

  “Bullshit, I knew the guy.”

  “Yeah? Well, let me … tell you something I know…. Two nights before the Dallas thing, him and me … we got pretty drunk at an eastside cantina … start talking about women…. First time we got laid, first blow job … all that, right? … I tell him the best kiss I ever got was from Mariana Rivera…. I was fourteen. First French kiss…. And he says best kiss he ever got … was from Rocky. … Had his head on the table, eyes closed … talking all slurry like in his sleep. Said he loved Rocky…. Well, I never heard of no girl named Rocky, but hey, there’s all kinds of odd names … so I figured that was his girl…. But then he mumbles something about ‘not enough money for him, or … get enough money for him,’ some shit like that…. ‘Him.’ Said it clear enough, ‘him.’ … Then it was like he suddenly realized what he’s saying … and he sat up and shut his mouth. Didn’t mention any of it again…. Me neither … I mean, what the hell, a man can’t help what … stiffens his dick…. All that really mattered was the job in two days and … him doing his part. But … don’t tell me he wasn’t queer…. In love with a guy named Rocky … best kiss of his life…. Shit!”

  But Axel’s not listening to him now.

  Rocky, he thinks. Of course.

  “Let’s go,” he says to Quino, and starts for the door.

  Your promise! Duro cries.

  Axel turns and looks at the maimed and sightless remnant of Duro Cisneros. The sorry bastard got no more than he deserved. But still, enough is enough. He shoots him in the heart—the suppressed gunshot sounding like a light door slam—and Duro rebounds off the chair and pitches free of it.

  They’re back on the road and heading for home, Quino at the wheel again.

  Feels pretty good, eh? he says to Axel in the shotgun seat. Worked out for both of you. He’s for sure a hell of a lot better off, and you squared it for keeps. Too bad he couldn’t give you anything on the Billy guy.

  Wish I’d seen him, Cach
o says. Pretty bad off, huh?

  Almost nothing left of him but a voice, a few stumps, and bags of piss and shit, Quino says.

  Jesus, Rico says. Sounds like a hospital garbage disposal.

  The ranch is in sight when Axel says, “I need to borrow a vehicle. I have to go to Matamoros.”

  “Matamoros?” Quino says. “When?”

  “Today. This afternoon. There’s something I need to see about. Won’t take long, but hard to say just how long. Might be back before dawn, might take a couple of days.”

  “What’s going on, man? The garbage disposal say something I missed?”

  “Tell you about it when I get back.”

  “If it’s gonna be dicey, we’ll go along for backup.”

  “Don’t need backup, I need a vehicle.”

  “At least let me go with you,” Cacho says.

  “Thanks, kid, but no.”

  “You’re sure?” Quino says.

  “Absolutely,” Axel says. “Got it covered.”

  53

  In the early afternoon he departs the ranch in a dark green Dakota pickup with custom lighting—roof lights, front bumper lights, a tailgate light bar. The vehicle has valid plates and registration, but the owner of record is a fabrication. In the extended cab behind the front seats is a plastic cooler with bottled water and ginger ale on ice, plus some sandwiches. He wears a black T-shirt, dark jeans, black running shoes. He carries his passport on Quino’s advice to take it with him whenever he leaves the ranch. Because it’s the rainiest time of year in the delta, there’s a lightweight rain jacket back there, too, also black, with a roll of duct tape in one zippered pocket and a half-dozen flex cuffs in the other. Just in case. He is again armed with the silencer-fitted .45, is again carrying two extra magazines in the holster pouches. He cranks up the AC, then flips through the CDs in the console, finds a collection of Willie Nelson, slides it into the player, and starts tapping the wheel in time to “Nothing I Can Do About It Now.” At the border highway he turns right and heads downriver and stays just under the speed limit. The idea is to get to Matamoros right around sundown.

  It’s on account of I got no money, I know that’s why.

  He’d never have enough money to satisfy her daddy, Billy had said on the night of the graduation dance. Never enough for him.

  Well, he damn sure had some money after he split from Duro. Three quarters of a mil. At the time of the bond robbery it had been three years since the graduation dance. Raquel would still have been in college. In Austin. Would he have gone to her? And if he had, would she still have felt the same way about him? And if she did, would the money have been enough to sway daddy to let her marry him? And if it was, would they have settled somewhere near her parents, maybe even with her parents? And if they did, was Billy Capp still alive and still there? And if they lived somewhere else, was Billy still alive and still there? Lots of ifs. Lots of questions.

  But the only ones that really matter are whether he’s alive and, if so, where? The first thing to find out is whether he’s at the Calderas house, and the best way to do that is go there and see.

  Be a damn shame if he’s dead. You can’t get even with a dead man.

  But if he is there … imagine his look when you put the pistol in his face.

  He’d been to Raquel’s family home only once. Near the end of their senior year and a week before the graduation dance at which she turned down Billy’s proposal, she had hosted a pre-commencement party and invited all her friends. She’d asked Billy to be her date and he had accompanied Axel and his date, a girl named Violeta whom Raquel had introduced to him as her best friend and doubles partner on the school tennis team. The estate was fifteen miles east of Matamoros, out in “el campo,” as the countryside was called by locals. The property encompassed eight hundred acres and its south boundary abutted the border highway.

  They turned off onto a junction road that went snaking for almost a mile through stands of hardwoods and palms and wild scrub before coming to a gated entrance at a white stone wall a dozen feet high that completely encompassed the forty-acre residential grounds of the estate. The top of the wall was lined with large glass shards cemented into the masonry. The spiked, iron-barred gate stood open to the coming guests, and a brick guard hut was unoccupied. The guard hut, Raquel would inform them, dated to the estate’s original owner, an old-time cotton merchant, but her father posted an attendant there only at night.

  She had said she would be happy to show them around the estate if they arrived ahead of the other guests, so they’d made it a point to get there early, passing through the open gate and following a winding, smoothly paved lane for almost a mile through heavy stands of trees before arriving at the house, a large two-story structure with a wide verandah. She greeted them at the front steps and introduced them to her parents—her mother a lovely woman of charm and poise, her black-bearded father tall and imposing in a white linen suit, his manner courteous, his dark eyes intense as a hawk’s.

  After giving them a tour of the house she drove them around the grounds in her open Jeep, showing them the stables and corrals and horse pastures, the magnificent horses of various breeds, the scattering of oak-shaded gazebos and fountains and lily ponds, the swimming hole at the east end of the estate. Coyotes and wildcats still roamed the property outside the walls, she told them, and she had often seen deer carcasses when she’d gone hiking out there with her father. The nights abounded with owls calling to each other through the shadows of the trees. She was just a child when her father had acquired the place, and he’d bought guard dogs to patrol the walled grounds at night, but after several weeks of their crazed barkings at every animal sound or feral scent, and realizing there was little actual danger of robbers intruding onto the grounds, he’d sold them in order to grant everyone a decent night’s sleep.

  The residential grounds’ main lane ended at the rear wall, where deliveries were brought by way of a side trail to the only other entry to the residential area, a barred gate like the front one except that its spikes were longer. This gate was chained and padlocked every night and in no need of an attendant. Axel had noted the side trail she spoke of. It branched off the estate road about halfway to the front gate, well before the gate came into view.

  When they returned to the house, other guests had arrived and were being entertained by Señor and Señora Calderas. The house was lavishly appointed and the evening was loud with laughter and music and dancing. Axel had very much enjoyed his date with Violeta, who during a slow dance whispered to him, “Look how our friends are entranced by each other,” and directed his gaze to Billy and Raquel as they swayed close by. And then he’d noticed Señor Calderas off to the side and watching them too, his hawk eyes narrowed.

  54

  His timing is excellent, and he passes through Matamoros as the orange sun is setting behind him. But dead ahead, miles out over the Gulf, storm clouds are building. By the time he turns off the highway and onto the Calderas estate road, night has risen and the eastern sky is entirely black. Though there’s little likelihood a front gate guard might glimpse his headlights through all the foliage flanking the road, he cuts them off and uses only the bumper lights. And sees that the road is now flanked by small amber ground-lights along both shoulders, clearly marking the lay of its passage and making a lack of headlights or even bumper lights no problem at all. He proceeds slowly in order not to miss the entry to the side trail. The foliage is denser than it was those many years ago, but the road is in good shape and has probably been repaved more than once. He has considered that the layout of the estate may have changed a great deal over the years and the side trail may no longer exist.

  But then there it is.

  He arrives at the rear gate, ready with a story, should there be a guard there, about having taken a wrong turn and gotten lost, needing directions to get back to the highway. He would then force him to open up and kill him if he didn’t. But there’s nobody posted at the chained gate. He’s hoping to engage
with no one but Billy, but if others step in he’s ready to deal with them however necessary.

  He wheels the truck around so it’s facing back down the trail, cuts off the bumper lights and the engine, and sits there a minute, letting his night vision adjust to the encompassing darkness. Then he gets out and puts on the rain jacket and his cap. Flickers of lighting show in the distance, followed seconds later by barely audible thunder. The wind has picked up, stirring the trees, bringing the ozone odor of the storm. He scales the fence and with great care eases over the spikes, then descends its other side and stands motionless, listening, looking all about. Then withdraws the .45 and starts walking up the main lane, heading for the house.

  The lower floor lights are on. Some front windows show light, too. Most do not. There are no vehicles in sight, but he recalls a garage at the end of a long driveway on the far side of the house. A short distance past the garage had been a row of small cabins where the resident employees lived—about a dozen of them at the time Axel was here, though now there might be more or fewer. He advances through the trees to the near side of the house, then moves around to the back of it and again halts, peering all about, listening hard, hearing nothing but the wind and the trees.

  A narrow gallery runs the length of the rear of the house. He mounts its steps and goes to the rear door, prepared to jimmy the latch with his Buck knife, but is not surprised to find it unlatched. People who live within the protection of twelve-foot walls with iron-spiked gates have little cause to lock their doors. He eases inside and silently closes the door. He’s in a small sitting room, lit only by a weak glow from the dining room ahead. The dining room is lighted by a lamp atop a sideboard. Here had refreshments been offered buffet style at that long-ago party. He’s startled by the sound of muted laughter off to his right. The direction of the kitchen, as he recalls. He guesses the cook and her helpers at their ease. He’s prepared to use the tape and cuffs on them, on anybody he runs into other than Billy. But where’s the family? He goes into the main living room. The furniture is different from before, but the huge wall mirror is the same one, as is the black fighting bull’s head mounted over the fireplace. He goes up a staircase to the second floor and pauses at the weakly illumined top landing. The only sound is of windblown trees brushing against the house. It appears that only the kitchen help is at home.