The Innocents

by Richard Barre

  Wil was aware of the rain only as a vague presence on Jennette Contreras’s roof, its sound lost in the pounding of his pulse and the dumping of bureau drawers onto her overturned mattress. Her bedroom was a mess but a controlled one; with no trace of blood, old or new, in the shed, he needed another Saint Christopher medal, the knife. Something tangible.

  One more bureau left. He pulled out a drawer, emptied it, found nothing to speak of.

  Lisa’s not beeping him since Guerra’s was becoming worrisome. It was after six now and dark: probably she’d given up on him coming and was stuck at the reception. Still it wasn’t the plan, and possible scenarios squirmed in his head like snakes let loose from a basket.

  Middle drawer: more slips, bras, lace panties—blue this time. Bottom drawer: white satin robe, carefully folded. He shook it out, wadded it up, and threw it at the wall in frustration, heard something hit. Something more substantial than satin.

  It was sewn into an inner pocket of the robe, the space inside the prongs just large enough to slip over his held-together fingers. The bracelet was tarnished almost beyond recognition as silver; he had to wet his finger and rub hard to bring out the name enscripted on the flat part.

  Anita.

  He was going to do it anyway, take his chances with Mo, knowing how Mo would react to the break-in and his meager evidence, when the phone rang. He wavered, decided, picked it up, listened. There was music and a faint sound like someone moaning, a voice robbed of its dignity and composure that sent icicles through him.

  “Ah,” Lenny Guerra said. “So glad we caught you in.”

  For seconds Wil said nothing, concentrating instead on the background voice, which had gathered itself into small familiar gasps. Then he said, “I’ve seen what’s in the garage, Lenny. It’s over. Tell me where your sister took the baby and maybe we can deal.”

  “I have a message for you from a loved one, Mr. Hardesty.”

  Lisa screamed then: agonized, unremitting pain and terror, the sound of a baby bird in a cat’s jaws. Wil shut his eyes, opened them. The room blurred momentarily, and he fought for air.

  “Vise-grips are such useful tools,” Guerra said. “Did you know a knuckle makes a sound just like a walnut cracking?”

  “Pain for pain, Guerra. I swear it.”

  “The ring finger next, I think.” Lisa’s groan went soprano.

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  “Already you’re giving up?” Disappointment in Guerra’s tone. “I must tell you about another snitch we worked on once, uncooperative, not like your wife. She’s told me a great deal. I appear to have underestimated you, Mr. Hardesty.”

  Wil wiped away sweat as the room steadied.

  “You made a terrible mess in my kitchen,” Guerra said.

  “What do you want?” His voice was someone else’s.

  “From you? I want you to join us at my house. Make up for the party we had to miss. You’ll come unescorted, of course, or she’s dead. That is a promise.”

  “Let me talk to my wife.”

  “By all means.”

  There was a muffled bump, then, “Wil—? He found the Polaroid things in my desk. Stupid of me—” She sounded weak and sick and hurting.

  “I’ll be there, Leese. Can you make it?”

  “Think so—”

  “Good girl. He won’t hurt you anymore.”

  “Wil? Did you tell Jennette Contreras I was Japanese? It’s how they knew for sure, he said—”

  The truth of it was like a jolt of high voltage, searing his ability to feel, leaving only his brain to recall his slip at the Niños office, playing it over and over in his mind like a shorted-out doll voice. “My wife is Japanese, wife is Japanese, wife is—”

  Guerra broke the connection.

  Wil replaced the receiver and put his hands over his ears, his self-righteous admonishment of Paul loud in them now as well. Then, strangely, he was conscious of the rain.

  Jennette Contreras sat behind the tinted windows of her car in a shadowed section of the parking lot. Over the steady beat of the rain, she could hear thin snatches of music and people laughing—salt-in-the-wound sounds. Earlier she’d seen them exit the church in their fancy clothes, put up umbrellas, start across the lawn for the shelter of the reception tent.

  Then he’d come out. Tall and straight in the black cassock he’d changed into, gray hair haloed by the glow from inside, sparks only she had the gift to see emanating from his fingertips into the darkness. Despite the rain, he paused a moment to look around, then raised his face to the sky. Then, as though reluctant to enter the realm of mere mortals, he descended the steps and strode powerfully toward the tent.

  Like a thousand times before, after the initial pain subsided, she thought about what life with him would have been like.

  Thunder and lightning. Fire in the sugarcane.

  Babies they’d been then, but fast learners. Then her aunt: a sin, the meddling bitch called it when she’d found out. Conspiring with Monsignor Padilla to have Martin shipped off to the seminary in Baltimore and her married afterward to that imbecile Fredo. Were it not for her aunt, Martin DeSantis would have renounced his precious calling.

  Jennette lit a cigarillo, let the smoke curl past her eyes, and pondered what Martin had accomplished, the price of it, and who paid. Dark windows reflected the answer: She’d paid. With her life. Martin himself had said it: Where there is one injustice, there is no justice. He’d been stolen from her. Martin had been hers, and to hell with humanity.

  The smoke from the cigarillo was making her eyes water. She cracked the window to let in air. The work was his sole passion now; all she would ever have was the memory of the mangroves, she knew that. Fed by deprivation and her one taste of him.

  Jennette watched the first of the guests leave the tent and hurry toward their cars. Engines started, lights flashed on. At least she would see him tonight; at least there still was something she could do.

  In the backseat of the Toyota, the baby stirred in drugged sleep.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Rain bent the camphor tree branches, swirled under the streetlights, danced and sheeted on the pavement. It ran off the shake roof of the big Craftsman as Wil pulled into the driveway and under the portico. Drawn curtains glowed upstairs; he could hear Guerra’s big sound system playing. He got out of the car, thumbed the safety off the .45, and held it down at his thigh.

  The front door was unlocked.

  He slipped inside, scanned it from a crouch. The living and dining areas were dark except for miniscule greens and reds on the stereo panel. The furnishings were lumpy shapes. Light came from the stairwell. He was halfway there, remembering the old surf admonishment about never turning your back on the ocean, when Guerra’s voice came from behind him.

  “Drop the gun, please, Mr. Hardesty.”

  Wil froze, estimating Guerra’s location and his chances to turn and fire.

  “I am a very good shot. And you are a very large target.”

  The voice was from over his left shoulder and down low. Lousy odds.

  “It would be a shame to come all this way and not see your wife.”

  Wil backed off the hammer, set the .45 down on the carpet. He sensed a shape rising from behind a chair, heard footsteps, smelled citrus cologne, felt the touch of a silencer at his spine.

  Guerra bent down and picked up the .45. “Up the stairs and to your left, please.”

  “The cops are waiting for my signal, Lenny. If they don’t get it, you can blame yourself for what happens here.”

  “The very cops who are protecting me from you? Who’ll sympathize with my having to shoot to defend myself and Julio from an armed intruder? I think not, Mr. Hardesty. Now move, please.”

  At the head of the stairs they turned left opposite the bedrooms, down the hall through paneled doors to a second living area with a fire going in the stone hearth. In the room was a wet bar, notched wooden beams, sconced lighting, gray leather couches and, around an inlaid game table,
Windsor chairs.

  It was to one of these that Lisa was bound with two-inch duct tape. A strip of it circled her head and covered her eyes; another had been put over her mouth. Her face was blotched and puffy as though having been struck. Drying blood patterned her blouse and the two swollen fingers on her right hand that bore ridged imprints.

  On the table was a pair of vise-grips and a chain saw.

  Wil felt a fluttering inside, as though something with wings and claws was trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. The air in the room was suddenly gone. He went to her, smoothed what hair he could off her face, kissed it, saw a tear roll from a gap in the tape. He tried removing the strip from her mouth, stopped when he saw how it hurt.

  “I’m here, Leese,” he said softly. “Can you breathe all right?”

  She nodded.

  “You son of a bitch.” Turning to face Guerra.

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” Guerra said.

  “She needs a doctor. At least let me free her broken hand.”

  “Later,” Guerra said. He wore an embroidered silk jacket over black trousers, held a matte-finish automatic with a silencer as long as the slide. His gray eyes went to Wil’s stitches. “You seem to have had an accident, Mr. Hardesty.”

  “Next time hire a better grade of scumbag.”

  “Gangbangers—losers who work without a stake in the outcome. Even at his worst Bolo was better.”

  “Is that the gun you killed him with?”

  Guerra sighed deeply. “Poor Bolo. I could not risk his capture, and I certainly could not permit him to leave.”

  Keep him talking. Wil leaned against the table, put his hand on Lisa’s wrist, and felt for pulse. It was regular—at least she wasn’t in shock. “So you waited at the tunnel and you took him out.”

  “I had a feeling his ambush would turn out the way it did. Would we even be here if his head weren’t so hard?”

  “It was you who saved him at the border, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Back then Bolo was worth saving.” Guerra eased onto the arm of a couch. “He called me from a house he broke into after being shot. I was able to get him out, but he was never right after that. Morphine for the pain. Cocaine to function. Bolo made his own prison.”

  “Like Martin DeSantis? He’s never been free of you either, has he?”

  “Mr. Hardesty, I understand your wanting to extend this, but business calls. I want the name of the man who is paying you.”

  There it was. Juice, his bargaining chip. “Sorry,” Wil said. “Client privilege. Besides, my client knows nothing beyond Zavala.”

  “That may be true, but I can hardly take the chance, can I?”

  Lisa moved her fingers and groaned, the sound like a scream in his ears. He went to the wet bar sink, dampened a towel, began bathing her face and neck.

  “I’m curious,” Guerra said, tracking him with the gun. “What kind of a husband puts his wife in a position to be killed by a man to whom it means nothing?”

  Wil kept on with the towel but felt his chest tighten, a burning in his scalp.

  “I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me,” Guerra went on. “Knowing how your son died.”

  Wil spun around, was steps from Guerra’s throat when Guerra fired. The gun made a flat coughing noise, and the Windsor chair near Lisa’s head disintegrated. The pistol then swung back to where Wil stood, his breath coming in gasps. Lisa was rigid, the tendons in her neck taut cables.

  “Temper, Mr. Hardesty. The next one takes her head off. Now, who is paying you? Or would you rather I broke the rest of her fingers?”

  Suddenly Lisa’s head dropped to her chest and her body went slack; Wil ripped the tape off her mouth, determined she was breathing, then took off his jacket and cradled her head with it.

  “She’s fainted.”

  Guerra picked up the vise-grips. “These will bring her around.”

  “You think you can use that and still keep me off you?”

  “You seem to have a death wish, Mr. Hardesty. And little concern for your wife.”

  “Touch her and I’ll kill you. Shoot me, you get nothing. She can’t reveal the name because she doesn’t know it.”

  “Mr. Hardesty, where I put these next bullets, you will beg to tell me.”

  “Bolo supplied the kids, didn’t he? But he didn’t have the stomach to kill them. That’s your specialty, along with blackmail. Using Jennette to get at Martin. Threatening to expose him because they’re lovers. How’d you get your sister to go along—by blackmailing her, too? Or does she get a cut of what you suck out of St. Boniface?”

  Seeing the color rise in Guerra’s face, Wil kept pushing. “Why isn’t she here, anyway? The sorcerer’s apprentice have a mind of her own?”

  Guerra stepped forward and lashed the silencer across Wil’s face, the blow striking just below the cheekbone even though he turned with it. Pinpoints of light, bright fireworks; his face felt as though it was imploding into the cut. He touched blood, looked directly into the zinc eyes.

  “How does it feel to kill a child, Lenny, let alone nine? Or haven’t you done Jessica Pacheco yet?”

  A glimpse of movement at the partly open door: red pajamas, black hair, wide eyes. Guerra saw too. He backed up a step, keeping the gun on Wil’s chest. Rain peppered the glass beyond the curtain.

  “I told you to stay in your room, boy.”

  Julio said nothing. He was staring at Lisa.

  Guerra raised his voice. “Didn’t you take your pills?”

  “I still can’t sleep.”

  Wil realized he’d never heard him speak before; the words were heavily accented. “I heard things,” Julio added, making no move to retreat. His eyes still were fixed on Lisa.

  “Come here,” Guerra said, and when the boy came within range, slapped him hard across the face.

  Julio took the blow as if he felt nothing. No hand raised to the mark, no register of pain. His gaze shifted to Guerra. “Es verdad?” he said. “Niños muertos?”

  “Go to your room. We’ll discuss it later.”

  Julio seemed sculpted. Then he shook his head slowly.

  Guerra was about to strike him again, but stopped. “Very well,” he said. “We will do this together, you can help. Down the hall, Mr. Hardesty. The second door on the right.”

  “Your guardian’s a murderer, Julio. A killer of children.”

  Guerra put his left hand on the boy’s neck. “These are bad people, they need to be taught a lesson. Now move, Mr. Hardesty, or watch her die.” The gun came level with Lisa’s eyes.

  Wil made a decision to play for time. Backing down the hall, he kept his eyes on Julio. “You don’t owe him this, you know. If you’re a witness, he’ll have to kill you, too.”

  “Julio has every reason to obey. Don’t you, boy?”

  “He’s going to shoot me to get me to tell him things. Then he’ll start again on my wife. When we’re dead, he’ll have you cut us up with the chain saw.” He couldn’t tell if the boy had heard; his look was distant, and he was swallowing rapidly.

  Guerra said, “Julio, go to my room and turn on the water.”

  “Don’t do it. Run. Call 911.”

  “Do as I say.”

  Julio brushed past, and Wil heard the sound of water rushing. Then Wil was at the doorway and through it into Guerra’s bedroom, standing on the black marble apron of the fast-filling spa.

  “Cleaner this way,” Guerra said, pulling the boy over beside him. “You were quite right to insist on this, Julio, your education comes first. And you needn’t look like that. Mr. Hardesty has caused us a great deal of trouble.”

  Wil homed in on the boy’s eyes, saw something there, with luck what he hoped: Lenny, Key West, 1949. Boys intimidated. Unspecified charges.

  “It’s all right not to care about me, but what about you? You like what he does to you, what he’s doing now? You let this happen and there’s no escape, no hope. Just more of it.”

  Julio’s shoulders sagged, and Wi
l knew he’d hit home. “Think, Julio: How long before he kills you for a ten-year-old?”

  Guerra smoothed his mustache. “You will step down, Mr. Hardesty. Boy, pay attention to where I put the first round.”

  It wasn’t much: a bleat and a grab at the arm, but Julio’s move distracted Guerra long enough for Wil to complete his lunge. He grabbed, got a grip around the silencer, and hung on. Guerra ripped off three harmless shots, Wil feeling their heat before catching Guerra with an elbow to the throat. He twisted hard; the gun clattered on the marble, then they were in the tub, a single roiling, thrashing mass that bumped and skidded off the spa’s contours. Wil freed an arm, drove punches into Guerra’s middle, but without purchase they were feeble; he felt Guerra’s jaws close to his face, fingernails clawing at his eyes. He managed to get a hand around one of the fingers then, wrench it back until it snapped. Guerra screamed, and in that instant Wil shoved his head under, knew Guerra had inhaled water from the changed nature of his struggles—fighting now for air. But the slick tub offered no leverage, and Wil banged Guerra’s head on the bottom until the man went slack.

  He got a knee then a foot under him and yanked Guerra’s head up from the water. Gasping, he push-dragged the limp form up and over the marble lip, shut off the taps, and slumped back against the bed.

  Gradually he was aware of Julio holding the gun. Pointing it at him.

  Wil extended his hand. There was a moment when he wondered which way it was going to go, and then Julio put the automatic in it.

  Wil nodded, still out of breath. “Gracias,” he said, finally.

  Julio said nothing, just fixed on the unconscious figure leaking reddish water on the marble, then sank to the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head down.

  Wil stood slowly. “My wife—she thanks you too.”

  No response.

  “What you did was right, son. Sometimes that’s not easy.”

  Wil left him there and went down the hall to the big room. With his pocket knife he carefully cut the rest of the tape off a still-out Lisa, then put her on the couch, raised her feet, wrapped bar ice in the towel, and touched it to her face. When she groaned, he laid her damaged hand on it.