13 Under the Wire

by Gil Reavill

  “It’s unseemly,” Victor Loushane had said. “She should be here, and she should be in mourning.”

  “Back in the bosom of the family,” Brock had added.

  “What the hell is she doing down there?” Victor wanted to know.

  Right now, Caroline wasn’t doing much of anything apart from working on a joint the size of a human finger, stuffing lines of cocaine up her nose and sucking down generous samplings of Mexico’s national cocktail. Remington noticed that in deference to her little sister’s death Caroline was wearing black, the bottom half of a Versace Intimo bikini, or “blinkini,” as Val described it—as in blink and you’ll miss it.

  She told Remington that she had “sunburned her nerpage” the previous afternoon and couldn’t stand to be anything but topless for the moment.

  “Join me,” Caroline suggested. “Haul ’em out.”

  The poor thing was a mess, but she was a hot mess.

  “Doesn’t my girl have the cutest chin?” Val took Caroline’s jaw in his hand and wagged her head back and forth. She grinned at him.

  “I just read that they can’t figure out why the human chin exists.” Remington gagged back her true feelings. “There’s no evolutionary reason for it.”

  “It evolved for the sake of cuteness,” Val said. “It’s survival of the cutest.”

  Val kissed Caroline’s chin, and Remington moaned. “Jesus, have pity on me, you two.”

  Ellis wasn’t with them. Directed by his father, he had stayed at home. Remington thus had no buffer between her and the abrasive couplehood of Val and Caroline. She didn’t really know what she was doing there. Well, she knew, but she didn’t want to admit that knowledge to herself. Every resolve to be quit of the Loushanes turned out to be useless. The family was like a pit of quicksand.

  Remington explained the confusion surrounding the E.D.L. initials on Simon’s Investigaciones Especiales invoice. The matter had involved a drug investigation, she told them, not Evelyn Loushane’s death.

  “Such a tragic waste,” Caroline said. “Poor baby Simon. Drugs can lead you onto dark paths, you know?”

  She took a deep hit off the cigar-size joint she held in her hand. She waved it in Remington’s direction. “Here, take this—you’ve got some catching up to do, girl.”

  Remington declined. “So there’s really no reason for us…” She trailed off. No reason to pursue the César Montenegro connection. No reason to be in Tijuana. No reason for Caroline not to go back to Wildermanse and take her rightful place among a grieving family. But, looking at the state Caroline was in, there was also no reason to apply reason to her situation.

  The evening got away from Remington. She still declined the offers of weed and coke—rooster and parrot, in the words of the narcocorrido—but started doing shooters of mescal, matching Val and Caroline shot for shot. Far away to the north, the San Diego skyline glittered through the haze. Occasional gunfire sounded from the colonias nearer at hand. Wedding celebrations, probably.

  They were supposed to eat—the chef made them grilled cheese—but the food lay untouched. Val kept announcing plans. They would head down to el centro and go out dancing—there was a club he knew. They would drive the hundred-plus miles to L.A. and kidnap Ellis. They would stay in and have a threesome. No one moved to do any of the above. The shots of mescal just kept on coming.

  At some fathomless moment during the night, and in an abrupt, jolting transition, Remington found herself in the front seat of the Lexus SUV, Caroline in her lap, a drunken Val at the wheel of the big truck.

  They plunged through the nighttime streets. Where were they going? Remington had lost the thread. Caroline evidently thought they were headed to a disco, but Val steered through the hills. They saw a midget walking beside the roadway, swinging his arms extravagantly and singing at the top of his lungs. At an intersection, a collection of American frat boys in tuxedos pushed a stretch limousine toward a Pemex station.

  “We should help them,” Caroline said. “They need help.”

  Val drove on. On a back back street he slowed to a stop. Remington’s alcohol-befuddled mind allowed her a glimpse of recognition. This was…She had been here before….

  The compound of César Montenegro Sepúlveda, the director of Investigaciones Especiales, Ltd.

  “Wait, what…?”

  Figures loomed out of the darkness, several large men with assault rifles slung across their backs. The situation worked to sober Remington considerably.

  “Call the police,” Caroline said.

  “Those are the police,” Val said.

  Caroline rolled down the window. “May we help you?” She trilled out the words as though she were onstage.

  “Caroline…” Val said.

  “We would like to see Mister…Mister…Señor…” Caroline stumbled through the words. Then they came out in a rush. “Señor César Montenegro of Investigaciones Especiales, Ltd.”

  Again, as she had always done, she sang out the abbreviation as “ell-tee-DEE!”

  One of the hulks rapped on Val’s window with the butt of his rifle.

  Before Remington could stop her, Caroline pulled the handle on the door and swung herself out. The move put her practically face-to-face with one of the security men.

  “My, you are large,” she commented.

  Another figure, thinner, smaller and bonier than the other three, approached Caroline with what looked like a dangerous smile on his face. He was unarmed and disarming.

  “Miss would like to see Señor Montenegro?” he asked. His English was exact.

  “We have an appointment,” Caroline deadpanned. “I’m afraid we are late.”

  Remington felt that the armed men confronting them were physically licking their lips in anticipation. Legends of drunken gringas getting swallowed by Tijuana raced through her mind.

  The gorilla on Val’s left gave a sharper rap on the window. The next one would shatter it. Val opened the door and got out. There was nothing for Remington to do. She climbed down onto the pavement and stood beside Caroline.

  Señor Bony, the unarmed one with the smile, gazed at them with calculating eyes. He leaned toward one of his comrades and said something in Spanish.

  He turned back to Caroline. “Well?”

  “Well? Well, well, well.” She was swaying in place.

  “You say you have an appointment, miss. May I have a name to present to Señor Montenegro, please?”

  “Certainly,” Caroline said, the soul of noblesse oblige. “I am Caroline Loushane.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  An awkward pause. Bony tilted his head imperceptibly.

  “And, oh! My manners. This is Officer Layla Remington of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  Señor Bony gave Remington a bow. “Officer.”

  “Undercover,” said Caroline, sotto. “And that handsome young gentleman over there is Valentin Duran. And you are?”

  “Oh, unfortunately I am too insignificant to possess a name,” Señor Bony responded. With the practiced gesture of a waitstaff captain showing a group of diners to their table, he extended an arm toward the open gate of the compound.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  “We shall,” Caroline said.

  The security contingent escorted them inside the walls. They crossed a courtyard. There was much evidence of construction. Dogs prowled the grounds. Remington glanced at Val. He seemed cool and wholly unfazed. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to be conducted to a 2 A.M. meeting with an ex-chief of police-slash-strongman-slash-private-investigator in the hills of Tijuana, everyone blitzed out of their minds.

  Caroline also appeared unflappable, too coked up to be flapped. She clutched Remington’s arm, more for balance than for reassurance. “I feel safe,” she said to Remington. “All these armed men around. We should get some of them for the villa. Do you feel safe?”

  “No,” Remington said. She was getting more sober by the minute.

&nb
sp; “I hope they serve cocktails,” Caroline said.

  The rooms of the main house were decorated with an obvious stab at upscale taste. They were lit with only the dimmest of illumination. Under the circumstances, the effect was gloomy. The rifle-toting guards peeled off, leaving the trio of supplicants in the thin-white-duke hands of Señor Bony.

  They arrived at a lounge of some sort, couches and armchairs with suede cushions pulled up around two low tables. Through a set of open double doors, Remington had a glimpse of what looked like an office. Standing behind a desk was a heavyset sixty-something patrón with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache and curly, barely controlled hair.

  “Bienvenido!” he shouted. “Welcome to Investigaciones Especiales!”

  They were about to move forward when Señor Bony cut them off. “No,” he said. “Just him.”

  He guided Val toward the open doorway.

  “No, wait,” Caroline managed. “I am—”

  Bony ushered Val into the office, swept shut the double doors, then turned back to Remington and Caroline. “You will wait here,” he said.

  Caroline looked confused. “What’s going on?”

  “Caroline, shut the fuck up,” Remington whispered.

  “Do you think I could get a drink?” Caroline asked Bony.

  The man disappeared without answering.

  Drunk as Remington was, she was an upright citizen compared with Caroline. She grasped her friend by the shoulders. “You have to pull it together. This scene could turn very bad very quickly. Do you want to get us both used and abused by these guys? They’re going to sell us to white slavers, for Chrissakes.”

  “That big one was kind of cute,” Caroline said. She plunked herself down on one of the suede couches.

  “Car!” Remington almost shouted the name, desperate to get the girl to take the situation seriously. Caroline merely returned a petulant pout. Then her face lit up.

  “Hello,” she said. She had spied a small refrigerator in a corner of the lounge. Opening it, she gave a little burble of satisfaction.

  “Um, beer or wine coolers, nothing hard. Do you want one? I wonder if one of these cowboys might offer a girl a toot of cocaine.”

  “Check the cupboards.”

  “Where?”

  “I wasn’t serious.”

  “When did you become such a buzzkill?”

  She flopped back down and cracked a bottled wine cooler. “Ugh. What piss this is.”

  Remington migrated to the double glass doors of the office. A set of curtains attached to the other side cut off all views of the next room. She could hear voices, indistinct and low.

  “What are they doing in there?” Caroline asked.

  “Val is trying to buy our freedom.”

  “I’m going in.” She attempted to rise.

  “Sit back down!”

  With a flip of her hand, Caroline did as she was told. An interminable stretch of time passed. Bony did not return. Except for the adjoining office, the rooms around them seemed deserted. Remington glanced over at her friend. She couldn’t believe it. Caroline looked to be nodding off.

  From the next room, a strangled shout, “¡Oye!” Then two single gunshots separated by a split second.

  “Caroline!” Remington exclaimed.

  Val burst through the doors of the office, a spray of fresh blood on the front of his shirt and splattered upward to his chin.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “What the hell happened!” Remington cried.

  “We have to get out of here.” Val shoved both of them down a hallway off the lounge.

  “What have you done to us?” Remington hissed.

  Caroline stumbled along beside them. “Ow! You’re hurting my arm!”

  She wrenched it away, but Val grabbed her again and marched them forward.

  The compound woke around them. Shouts, yowling dogs, slamming doors. But the immediate rooms they staggered through were empty.

  “What happened?” Remington demanded.

  “We get out now, now, now!” Val said.

  “Tell me!”

  “You want to die?”

  Onward they ran. Val seemed to know where he was going. He pushed them outside, into a small courtyard and down a flight of steps.

  Along the compound’s outer wall was an opening. Next to it were stacks of bricks covered with plastic sheeting and a small front-end loader. As they sprinted toward the gap, Señor Bony stepped into the courtyard behind them.

  The crack of gunshots sounded, a string of sharp explosions close together, with the air splitting apart as the rounds went wide.

  Chapter 12

  They fled. They left behind the hundred-thousand-dollar Lexus SUV and ran from the Montenegro compound into the night. They tore down the hillside toward the river, into backyards, past snarling dogs, through trash-strewn alleyways. Val pulling them forward, Caroline complaining vocally, Remington performing rearguard duty. It was hard not to imagine pursuit.

  Still panicked and breathing hard, they collapsed into the backseat of a taxi on Boulevard Cárdenas.

  Val sputtered out the name of a neighborhood in Spanish. The driver, his hair slicked back with an overabundance of pomade, looked around at the three hysterical twentysomethings crammed into his backseat.

  “You want to go there? No es bueno para los gringos.” Not good for gringos.

  Val told him to shut up and drive. He calmed Caroline down by retrieving a brass bullet of coke from somewhere on his person.

  “You were holding out!” she cried in mock anger, then greedily put her nostril to the device.

  Remington could not be pacified so easily. “What the hell!”

  “It’s—he was—” Val stammered. “Simon’s thing—the invoice—it wasn’t about a drug bust. It was about the mother after all.”

  “I want to know what happened,” Remington said fiercely. “What kind of trouble are we in?”

  “Bad. Bad.” Val put his finger to her lips, indicating the driver. “Later.”

  “No! Give it to me now!” Val struggled with her, covering her mouth, shushing her. Remington stopped resisting and he took his hand away.

  “Did you shoot him?” she asked in a whisper. “Did you goddamn kill Montenegro, Val?”

  “We argued. He was going to kill me. I took his gun away and shot him. I had to.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Caroline surfaced from her snuffling inhalation of white powder, crumbs still clinging to one of her nostrils. “Oh, that’s better now,” she said.

  The colonia where the driver deposited them—pushing them out, refusing to go any farther—gave up nightmare images to the three interlopers who dared to trespass into its hell. The mountainous city garbage dump was nearby and sent forth an ungodly stench. A group of feral children, eyes vacant and faces crusted with the flecked remnants of glue-sniffing, fell in behind them. Remington was reminded of wolves on the trail of injured prey.

  The kids whistled to one another. Other recruits emerged from the shadows.

  “Val,” she warned.

  “It’s all right.” He extracted a pistol from beneath his shirt and waved it at the kids. The stalkers lagged back twenty yards but didn’t disappear.

  Remington again tried to confront Val. “That’s Montenegro’s weapon? Or did you have it on you the whole time?”

  He didn’t answer. He guided them to a decrepit hovel, leaving Remington and Caroline standing in front of it while he engaged in a furious conversation with a haggard, incredibly ragged individual. After a moment, pesos changed hands. Val opened the door of the hovel and pushed them inside.

  An ugly-smelling, low-ceilinged room, a lone battery-powered light, a single bed with a crap mattress. “What a dump,” Caroline exclaimed, still high enough to pull off channeling Bette Davis.

  Val maneuvered them both to sit on the bed. He knelt before them. One after the other, he stroked their cheeks.

 
“Let’s go to the villa,” Caroline said. “Why are we here?”

  “We are in deep, deep trouble,” Val responded. “César Montenegro is a very powerful man.”

  “Then why did you shoot him?” she asked.

  Val shushed her. “I’ve got to— Listen, we have to leave, get out of the country, now, right now, tonight. They will find us and kill us if we stay.”

  “Let’s go to the villa,” Caroline insisted.

  “Car, honey, do not keep saying that.” Val petted her face again. “We can’t go to villa.”

  “Then I want to go home.”

  Remington broke in. “We can’t do that, either, can we, Val? Because they’ll be looking for us at all the border crossings.”

  “I can’t— I have to leave you here for fifteen minutes, half an hour. Get in bed. Get some sleep if you can.”

  The advice caused Caroline to emit a derisive “As if!”

  “We’re screwed,” Val said. “We are so totally screwed. If we’re going to get through this, we all have to be…” He searched for the word. “Excellent.”

  “I’m excellent,” Caroline said.

  “You are, baby.” Val rose to his feet. “Stay here. Don’t open the door to anyone.”

  “Leave us the pistol,” Remington said.

  He hesitated but finally gave it up. Caroline reached for the gun. Remington batted her hand away and took it for herself.

  Caroline reached out to Val. “Don’t go.”

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t open the door. And—and don’t shoot me when I come back.”

  “Where are you going?” Caroline asked.

  “I have to—” Val started to say, but broke off. Then he was gone.

  Sleep was, of course, out of the question. Remington put Caroline to bed and then sat next to her in the only chair in the place, a sagging artifact that threatened to fall apart at any moment. She thought of a Winston Churchill line that Chuck Tester liked to quote, something about there being nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result. She didn’t feel exhilarated. She felt sick to her stomach.

  Caroline wanted to talk. She was high and started in on a recounting of the night’s events.

  Remington told her to hush up. “I want to listen to the rats in the walls,” she said.