Blood of My Brother

by James Lepore

  “No, mi amado.”

  Jay walked over to Jose, who was lying on his back at Isabel’s feet. The younger Feria was alive, breathing raspily through his mouth, his black eyes open and staring with hatred at Jay. Jay’s shot had gone through Jose’s body, coming out above his heart, where a trickle of blood was beginning to darken his snowy white shirt.

  “Buenos días, Jose,” said Isabel, keeping the gun—Jose’s nine-millimeter automatic pistol—pointed at him.

  “This one’s alive, too,” said Jay, who had rolled Edgardo onto his back.

  Isabel’s bullet had hit Edgardo squarely in the chest, and his shirt front was covered entirely in blood. His eyes, as dark and reptilian as his brother’s, were open, but were losing their focus.

  “Do they speak English?” Jay asked.

  “Yes. Herman required them to learn.”

  “I’m going to kill them.”

  “J ay.”

  “Yes?”

  “I will help you.”

  “No.”

  “Edgardo,” said Jay, kneeling on the ground next to the body. “I am going to kill you. I am taking your life for the life of my friend, who you killed in Miami, first crushing his manhood. Do you remember him?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Jay placed the barrel of his gun against Edgardo’s crotch and pulled the trigger. The elder brother’s body jumped as if jolted by electricity. Then Jay put the gun’s muzzle into Edgardo’s mouth, saying, “Hasta la vista, Edgardo,” before pulling the trigger, spilling the Mexican’s brains and fractured skull pieces onto the ground beneath what was once his head.

  “Step back,” Jay said to Isabel as he approached Jose, kneeling before him in the same intimate position in which he had faced and killed Edgardo.

  Later, Jay would think of the religious nature of what had transpired in the shadow of the ancient cistern—the kneeling, the purification in blood, the joining forever of his life with the lives and deaths of the Feria brothers. Now though, he was focussed on one thing and one thing only.

  “Buenos días,” he said, leaning close, his voice low, looking into Jose’s eyes, half closed, but still angry and alert.

  “You killed my friend, Jose, and crushed his cojones, and now I will do the same to you. You can hear me, I see. Can you speak?”

  For an answer Jose opened his mouth and lifted his chest, but could make no sound other than the death rattle in his throat. He glared at Jay, but the fire in his eyes quickly turned to terror as Jay placed the barrel of the gun to his penis and slowly squeezed the trigger. Then he pointed the gun at the bridge of Jose’s nose, an inch away, looked with hatred, and peace, into the Mexican’s eyes, and fired.

  “Hasta la vista to both of you motherfuckers,” Jay said, getting up and flipping the safety back on on his gun.

  52.

  7:00 PM, December 25, 2004, Puerto Angel

  In the house, Jay first reloaded his revolver, then cleaned and bandaged Isabel’s wound, which was nasty, but not too deep. “Don’t fall asleep,” he said, and then went out to assess the death scene in the backyard. Acting quickly, but deliberately, he removed thirty-five hundred dollars in cash from money clips in the Feria brothers’ pockets, along with the keys to the SUV, which he drove around to the back. He then lifted the Mexicans into the big car’s spacious rear compartment. He was about to toss their automatic pistols in after them, but decided at the last second to hold on to them. He splashed water on the blood stains already drying in the last heat of the day, then, using a hoe he found near the back door, he did his best to rake the gravel and the hard-packed, dusty earth of the yard into a semblance of its former self. The SUV he parked next to the jeep under the trees in the old well clearing.

  Back in the house, he stoked the stove to a full blaze, then stripped and threw his blood-stained T-shirt and shorts into the fire, first using the clean parts of the shirt to wipe off the blood that had soaked through onto his chest from grappling with the dead bodies. Isabel watched as he then took a clean shirt from his knapsack, soaked it with water, and wiped the last of the blood from his hands and arms; his muscles supple, his body tall and beautiful as he stood before her in the small room now infused with pale twilight. He dressed in his extra khaki shorts and his last T-shirt, then poured coffee—heating on the stove top—for himself and Isabel.

  “They thought you were alone,” Jay said.

  “Yes, they wanted the papers. I told them they were hidden out back. Jay?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ve never felt better.”

  Looking at him seated across from her on a crude kitchen chair, his long, dark hair—still damp with perspiration—swept back from his face, his brow clear, his eyes calm and penetrating, Isabel had no doubt he was telling the truth.

  “What will we do?”

  “If Hector doesn’t come soon, we’ll leave, try to find that airfield in the mountains. Here, take this,” he continued, handing Isabel one of the Ferias’ automatics. “Put it in your purse.”

  As Isabel was putting the gun away, they heard the sound of a car coming down the dirt road from the highway. Going to the window, reaching for his gun, Jay saw Hector’s pickup pull up and park out front; then Hector emerging, alone, carrying a large, brown paper bag.

  “Isabel,” Hector said, once inside, surveying the scene, seeing Isabel’s bandaged head, the blazing fire in the stove. “Senor.”

  “Hector,” said Isabel.

  “Hector,” said Jay.

  “Are you well, Isabel?” Hector asked.

  “Yes, Hector. I fell. Desmañado, no?”

  “No,” Hector replied, allowing a slight smile to cross his face, placing the bag on the floor. “I have brought you water, and food.”

  “Thank you,” said Jay. “We will bring it with us. We must leave immediately. Is the roadblock still up?”

  “Yes. And soldiers have been in the village as well.”

  “We have a second car now, which we have to remove from here, and get rid of. Can you help us? Is there someplace nearby we can put this car?”

  “Are you going into the mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will go with you, and show you a place to put the car.”

  “Just tell me Hector. I will find it.”

  “No. It is easier if I show you, and I will tell you about the mountain road . . . senor.”

  “Yes.”

  “The house of the sisters has burned down, and the Vista del Mar.”

  Jay turned to look at Isabel, and then back to Hector, his dark eyes flat, his face the inscrutable mask that all peasants show to the civilized world.

  “I am sorry, Hector,” he said. “Tell Miss Clara that we will send money.”

  They formed a three-car caravan, their headlights off, Hector in the lead in his truck, followed by Isabel in the jeep, and Jay in the SUV, creeping along the shoulder of the highway, and then turning right onto the dry, pebbly riverbed, which ascended gradually for about a mile before coming to an abrupt end in a small canyon that must have once been a waterfall. At the mouth of the canyon, Hector turned left and headed across an accumulation of pebbles and broken stones that ran along the foot of a hill for another half mile. Even in the moonlight, this path, such as it was, would have been difficult to locate, and follow, and Jay was happy that he had not flatly refused Hector’s offer, as he had been thinking of doing.

  At the end of this long scree, they came onto a dirt road that continued to hug the side of the hill as it brought them steadily higher. After negotiating a sharp curve to the right, Hector pulled over, and Isabel and Jay did the same. They emerged from their vehicles, and Hector led them across the roadbed to the edge of the cliff, crudely marked off with rocks of various sizes. Straight down was a drop of some two hundred feet to a ravine covered with a thick growth of brush and small trees, probably nurtured by a stream that trickled on the canyon floor. In the distance was the coast, marked dramatically
by Zipolite’s wide white beach. The surf crashing wildly, bathed in moonlight, dotted with campfires, it was a sight to take your breath away, even if you were about to dump a car loaded with two dead bodies and run for your life.

  Within minutes, the SUV was at the bottom of the ravine, under the trees. Before shoving it over the edge, Jay had put down the two front windows, so that whatever creatures lived in the area could feast for a day or two. Jay shook Hector’s hand, and Isabel hugged him and whispered something in his ear, and then he was gone, his taillights disappearing around the curve. The sound of the truck’s engine receded until Jay and Isabel were left, in silence, to contemplate the fifty mile ride ahead of them on an uncharted road through the Sierra Madre mountains, which towered all around them in forbidding darkness.

  53.

  8:00 AM, December 26, 2004, Ejutla de Crespo

  “Isabel.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your head looks good.”

  “It is fine.”

  “I found a pilot.”

  Isabel smiled. “I knew you would. Where are we going?”

  “Belize City. Have you been there?”

  “Never.”

  They were parked in a thick strip of woods, on a small rise. Through the trees in front of them they could see a grassy runway, burned to a crisp brown by the sun, and beyond it, to their left, an ancient corrugated steel hangar, with Decker Aviation—Flying Lessons stenciled in peeling white paint on its roof, the i in Flying a small airplane doing a back-loop. Two single-engine props were parked in front. The one on the right, with the words, DECKER AVIATION stenciled on its fuselage, was out of commission. The one on the left, devoid of markings, would take them to Belize City.

  The tiny airfield was ringed by thick woods extending for several miles in all directions. Through the woods ran the Rio Verde, a trickle now in the dry season. On the banks of the river sat the dusty town of Ejutla de Crespo. The snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Madre del Sur encircled the entire valley. In rural Mexico, Jay was learning, you saw beauty in the distance. Close at hand, you saw dirt and misery.

  Jay reached around and pulled his knapsack from the back of the jeep. From it he retrieved a manila folder that he had found inside Bryce Powers’s Banque de Geneve file. Handing it to Isabel, he said, “This is for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a contract for an account in your name at the Bank of Geneva. Bryce opened it for you, using a power of attorney. Did you ever sign papers for him?”

  “Yes. Several times.”

  Jay was still holding the folder.

  “Take it,” he said. “In case we get separated. There’s two million dollars in it, and change.”

  Silence. And then Isabel said, “We will share it.”

  “No. It killed my friend.”

  “It is my due as a whore who fucked her father.”

  “He didn’t know, Isabel. He was just a man trying to escape from a nightmare.”

  “I seduced him.”

  “But then you loved him. At least he was loved by someone before he died. His wife was an alcoholic, his daughters are piranhas. Herman and Rafael owned his soul. You gave him his life back for a few months. There is no blame for either of you.”

  Jay, who was in the driver’s seat of the jeep, put the folder in Isabel’s lap, leaned his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes. The road through the mountains had been barely wide enough for the jeep. Every switchback promised to plummet them into the black abyss that for fifty miles was only a foot or two away. At one point, stopped by a rockfall, Jay, surrounded by utter darkness except for the glare of the jeep’s headlights, had moved some thirty boulders, ranging from fifty to a hundred pounds, out of the way, leaving his hands raw and bleeding and his entire body aching. He had taken one of Sam’s amphetamine tablets before embarking from Hector’s house, and another when they arrived at the edge of the airfield at dawn. He had been awake for forty-eight hours.

  “When do we leave?” Isabel asked.

  “Decker said to come down when we see him start the engine of the plane on the left.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “He’s American, a shitbum. Probably flies drugs in and out.”

  “How much did he want?”

  “Four thousand. I gave him two and told him I’d give him the other two when we were in the air.”

  “Why Belize City?”

  “It’s reachable on a tank of gas and it’s not Mexico.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “We have no choice.”

  54.

  9:30 AM, December 26, Southwestern Mexico

  “What are you doing?” Isabel asked. She had been resting her head against the passenger window, her eyes closed, thinking about Herman Santaria, wondering if there was any way he could track her to Belize.

  “Change of plans.”

  Jake Decker was gazing out of the window on his side as he said this, maneuvering the plane into a steep bank. This abrupt turn was what had jarred Isabel from her reverie. Jay was asleep, curled up in the small compartment behind the cockpit. As the plane straightened and began to descend, Isabel could see an airfield cut out of the top of a scrub-dotted mesa, with a winding road leading up to it from the barren desert floor a hundred feet below. At the end of the dusty runway stood four men, each with machine guns slung over their shoulders. Behind them was a black SUV and an open truck with soldiers seated in it and another soldier standing watching the plane descend. Decker was staring straight ahead now, smiling, a thin stream of spittle oozing from the corner of his mouth onto the red and gray stubble of beard that covered his jaw and chin.

  “We just took off,” Isabel said.

  The men at the end of the runway had moved to the side. One of them was hailing the plane, swinging his right arm in long arcs.

  Isabel had her woven wool shoulder bag on her lap. She reached into it and pulled out the automatic pistol, a Glock 19, that Jay had given her after hiding the bodies of the Feria brothers. It doesn’t have a safety he had said, be careful when you handle it. Safety or no safety, she put the barrel against Decker’s right temple and said, “Take us back up or I will kill you.” When he did not react, she pressed the steel barrel very hard into Decker’s skull and put pressure on the trigger. “It shoots twenty rounds in a second,” she said, improvising. “We will die together. But your brains will be all over Mexico.”

  The plane was in its final descent, about fifty feet from the ground. Decker pulled back on the yoke and the plane leveled and then began to climb. Jay was still sleeping, out cold. Below, the four men on the runway had unslung their machine guns and were taking aim. The soldiers were jumping out of the truck. Bullets screamed by as Decker continued to gain altitude. Isabel heard a popping sound at the back of the plane. Turning, she saw Jay wide awake and pointing the other Feria gun at the back of Decker’s head.

  “That’s the fuel tank,” Decker said. “We have to go back and land. There’s no other place.” He was sweating profusely, his Boston Red Sox cap soaked to a rich, wet black.

  Isabel looked at the fuel gauge and saw that it was holding steady at almost full. “Keep going,” she said.

  “Those were federal troops,” Decker said. “They’re all over the place looking for you.”

  “How do you know?” Jay asked.

  “I spoke to the sheriff in Ejutla. He must have telephoned.”

  “You sold us out,” said Jay.

  “You were bringing us to our deaths,” said Isabel.

  The plane had leveled at a thousand feet, and they were about fifteen miles from the runway on the mesa heading west. Below, Isabel could see they were crossing over a dry riverbed and a two-lane, blacktopped highway that ran parallel to each other about a mile apart through scrub-covered low hills.

  “Land in the riverbed,” said Isabel, pressing the pistol against the sweat-slickened side of
Decker’s head.

  “Are you crazy?” said Decker. “I’m heading back.” He began to bank the plane. Isabel flattened the Glock in the palm of her hand and struck Decker with it on the side of his head with a force she did not know she possessed, bouncing his head off of his window and knocking him out cold. Level, she thought immediately, looking for the attitude indicator and finding it in the top center of the instrument panel. Level the aircraft. Using the yoke in front of her, she corrected the bank that Decker had initiated and leveled the plane. Keep it straight and level, she said to herself. Take a deep breath. These were the first two things Patricio had told her to do in the event she ever had to land a plane in an emergency. The third was to engage the autopilot, which she did. The fourth was to radio for help, which was out of the question. In fact, it would not be long before the Mexican Air Force was out in strength looking for them.

  “Are you flying the plane?” Jay asked.

  “I am,” Isabel answered, her eyes straight ahead, scanning the horizon and the instrument panel, especially the fuel gauge, which was not falling.

  “You’re Superman,” said Jay.

  “I took lessons when I was nineteen.”

  “Did you get as far as landing?”

  “Once.”

  “Can you? From there, I mean?”

  “Yes. The plane has dual controls. And our friend is not waking up soon. Keep your gun on him just in case.”

  Jay nudged Decker’s head with the barrel of his Glock, bumping it against the window again. The welt raised by Isabel’s blow was swelling along the scruffy ex-pat pilot’s forehead and starting to turn his right eye into a small eggplant. The other eye was closed and his head bobbed occasionally when the autopilot made a small correction.

  “Can we fly to Texas?” Jay asked.

  “No, not enough fuel.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “The riverbed. It’s bumpy, but there’s a chance we won’t be seen.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Can you pray?”

  “To whom?”

  “The Virgin of Guadalupe. She is the protectress of the Americas.”