Lifeblood

by Penny Rudolph

They walked around a clay donkey hitched to a cart made of slats of every color Crayola had ever put in a box. The donkey wore a serape and a necklace of bows.

  They reached a small square and Rachel gazed at a sign that read, Bienvenidos A La Placita Olvera. “This place almost feels like a foreign country.”

  “In a way, it sort of is,” Gabe said. “But don’t let it fool you. This is a total set-up for the tourista.”

  “I don’t think I care. It would be impossible to be sad here.”

  Gabe pointed to a relatively small white building on the opposite side of the street. Two bells hung in a short tower on one side, a palm tree framed the other side. They crossed and went inside, where a grotto made of rocks was fronted by a mass of brilliant flowers and a long red leather kneeling bench. Flames flickered on dozens of candles, some in brightly decorated tall glasses, some small in plain glass.

  “Is there someone you’d like to light a candle for?” Gabe asked.

  Soledad didn’t wait. She opened her hand, which was still clutching the change from the five-dollar bill Gabe had given her. Extracting three singles, she pushed them through the slot on top of a small metal tube, picked up three small votive candles from along the side wall of rock, and handed one to each of the adults. Then she picked up a lighted candle, lit the one she had kept for herself, set it down at the edge of the flickering flames, knelt on the bench, and closed her eyes.

  As Rachel and Gabe followed suit, it gave Rachel a pleasant, but almost eerie, feeling. She wondered what her Jewish mother, dead several years now, would think of having a Catholic candle lit to her memory at a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration.

  On the street again, they passed a display of shocking-pink guitars. Rachel eyed them doubtfully. “People don’t really buy those, do they?”

  “Maybe someone from Texas,” Gabe guffawed. “I’m sorry. I hope you weren’t born in Texas.”

  “Nope. California native,” Rachel said.

  “Well, through the centuries, Texas has tried more than once to take over New Mexico, so we natives of that state occasionally think unkind thoughts of Texans.”

  They passed a shop with leather goods literally spilling out the door. Patch leather suitcases, Mexican huaraches, tooled belts and handbags. Rachel wanted to take a look.

  Soledad tapped Rachel’s arm and gestured toward a table piled high with round loaves of bread.

  “Hungry?” Rachel asked.

  The girl gave a small, solemn nod.

  “Can you wait a minute? I need to find someplace quiet to make a phone call.”

  “Tell you what,” Gabe said. “The little lady and I will buy some bread and maybe find some burritos and meet you back at the fountain in, say, twenty minutes. That should give you time to peek in the leather shop, too. I saw the amorous glances you were casting over there.”

  “Okay,” Rachel said, and watched them wend their way through the crowd, Soledad hanging onto Gabe’s hand. “Don’t let her go,” she called after Gabe. “She could get lost.”

  They looked back and waved. She wasn’t sure they had heard.

  The three of them had passed a big, double-deck, blue fountain twice. Was it in the plaza? She couldn’t remember for sure, but the whole area wasn’t that large.

  The sound of slightly off-pitch mariachi music came from one direction, a sad sort of ballad came from another. She pulled her cell phone from her handbag and looked around. Was there any place quiet enough to make a call?

  She followed a narrow walk between two buildings and found herself in what appeared to be an alley. This might do.

  She dialed the hospital and asked if Hank was able to have visitors yet.

  “Mr. Sullivan has been discharged.”

  Rachel felt like her breath had been knocked from her. “Discharged?”

  “That is correct.”

  “When?”

  “Let’s see….It looks like right before noon.”

  Rachel clicked off the phone.

  How could he have left the hospital? His car was in her parking garage, not anywhere near the hospital in Pasadena. It was a godsend that he was well enough to leave the hospital, but why hadn’t he called? Had he not got all the messages she’d left? Why hadn’t he called her to come pick him up? She had been home all morning. Surely he wouldn’t take a taxi. Who else would have picked him up?

  She clicked the phone on again and dialed his home, but got only his voice mail. She had his cell, so she couldn’t very well reach him on that.

  She was putting the phone back in her handbag, when a hand dug hard into her shoulder.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Rachel tried to turn around, but the hand was pushing her across the alley toward a narrow space between two utilitarian-looking brick buildings that might once have been factories.

  She staggered and nearly fell, then brought her arm up. Wrenching her shoulder away from the hand, she spun around.

  Two eyes stared at her through the sockets of a skull mask.

  The air was like dry ice in her throat. Her heart seemed to halt, then erupted in a violent pulsing that thudded in her ears.

  He was stocky and well muscled. She was hopelessly outmatched.

  But she couldn’t just give up.

  She rammed the side of her fist up into the throat just below the mask. He gave a gagging sound. His grip loosened. She dodged.

  Run. But where to? He was blocking the way back to the plaza and Olvera Street. She took off in the opposite direction. In two beats, she heard his feet pounding after her.

  A mugger? A rapist? Or—?

  The buildings on either side looked like old industrial structures. Probably empty. She had to keep going. No time to try doors.

  She ran a block down the alley. Looking back wasn’t necessary. She could hear the feet, and they were gaining on her.

  If she could just get to a street. Somewhere, anywhere with people. How could Olvera Street be teeming with noise and laughter and here it was bare of anything living? Except her and the man behind her.

  Rachel darted into an open space between buildings.

  Mistake! It was too cramped for all-out running. Then she got a good look at what was ahead: a dead end.

  Gasping for air, she stopped, tried to clear her head. Her brain was fiercely demanding flight but couldn’t tell her how to get away.

  Then she saw a break in the wall ahead. A door? She raced toward it. Yes, a door. She grabbed the knob. It wouldn’t turn. Locked. Of course. No one with any sense would leave a door like this unlocked.

  Was this it, then?

  She slumped against the door and desperately twisted the knob again.

  It still refused to turn.

  But under her weight the door swung inward.

  Rachel careened over the sill into darkness. There were only two windows, both high up. Large boxes were strewn across the floor, some obviously empty. A warehouse of some sort?

  She slammed the door shut, but it bounced back toward her. She tried to slam it again before seeing that the bolt was extended just enough to hit the frame and prevent it from closing. She struggled to slide the old bolt, but nothing budged. Two syncopated thumps pounded at the door from outside.

  The skeleton-head had arrived.

  She threw her weight against the door. She already knew he was built for trouble. Years ago, she had taken a few lessons in self-defense but had forgotten most of it. She might stall him a bit, but there was no way to keep him out indefinitely.

  With wild eyes, she explored the walls for another exit or something she could use as a weapon. Finding neither, she waited for the next assault on the door, then yanked it inward, toward her.

  Grunting, he stumbled over the sill as she had. But his momentum was too great. He fell.

  Rachel kicked him, tried to land another blow on his throat, but missed.

  He lunged, catching her by the hair.

  She grabbed a wad of soft flesh on the inside of his upper arm, dug her n
ails in and twisted.

  He yelped, let go of her hair, then raised his fist and came at her again, roaring like a wild beast, terrible eyes staring through the skeleton sockets.

  She brought up her knee, but the angle was bad. His roar barely hiccuped, growing instead even louder.

  He reached for her neck, but the mask was now askew and must have been blocking his vision.

  She seized his wrist and pulled it toward her. His first two fingers clawed at her. She grasped them, bent them back, hard, and heard the cracking of two knuckles.

  “Bitch!” he howled. The first sound she had of his voice other than the grunts and roars.

  “What do you want from me?” she screamed.

  “Nada,” he snarled.

  As his wrist bent, she caught sight of a tattoo on his forearm, the letters EME above an eagle with a snake.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Ha!” he grunted, reaching behind him with his other hand. “You never hear of Mexican Mafia?”

  “Yes.”

  He whipped his fist forward and she saw the muzzle of a gun.

  “You never will again.”

  The gun bucked. She wasn’t sure whether she saw the flash of light at his fist level first, or heard the explosive pop first.

  Then the second shot came, and with it a roaring pain as her body folded up like a carpenter’s ruler and sank to the concrete floor.

  Chapter Sixty

  When Rachel came to, she was in a crumpled position in a dark, cramped space. And something seemed to be jolting it from below. Her left arm was numb. Something was wet. Very wet. Her shirt.

  Then she remembered the jarring staccato of the gunshots, the sparks of light, the rising pain.

  How badly was she hurt? There seemed to be a lot of blood. Her jaw was sticky with it. And her hair.

  She tried to turn over to see if she could see anything, some clue to where she was. Pain blazed through her arm and shoulder and her breath rasped like sandpaper in her throat.

  Something thumped under her again.

  Understanding began like a tiny pinpoint of light and grew.

  She was in the trunk of a car.

  Mr. Skeleton-head was taking her somewhere. Somewhere he could either leave her to die or finish killing her at his leisure.

  And there was nothing she could do about it.

  A pale glow near her forehead slowly penetrated her consciousness. Rachel raised her chin and stared at it. She wasn’t sure whether she was having trouble focusing her eyes, or whether there was just nothing to focus on.

  The car ran over something and she bounced off the trunk lid. A groan rose in her throat.

  Something long and heavy slid into her side.

  The driver turned a corner, sluing Rachel’s head against something hard. Here the street was smooth and she could hear the wheels skimming across the pavement beneath her.

  Awareness of the source of the pale glow came all at once: a taillight. She ran her fingers over the space where the light was coming from. It was not large, but maybe….

  She groped in the darkness behind her for the object that had slid into her. One end was angled to a small recessed cup, the other end was pointed. A tire iron. Grasping it, she scooted herself deeper into the trunk, and thrust the pointed end of the iron into the glow of light. A sharp pain stabbed through her chest, stopping her breath.

  When the pain ebbed, she saw that the metal bar had missed its target.

  Screwing her eyes shut, she willed herself to ram the bar again.

  This time something buckled as it hit.

  Slowly, agonizingly, Rachel forced herself to turn as far as she could onto her side and raised herself on her elbow. She tasted blood and realized her clenched teeth had bitten into her lower lip.

  It hurts too much. I can’t.

  But she managed the turn, and rammed the bar again. And again. From this angle her aim was better. At last the whole taillight assembly gave way, and the next blow brought the sound of heavy plastic cracking, then breaking away.

  Did the driver hear it?

  Apparently not. The car didn’t slow.

  Now she could see daylight. The lens of the taillight must have fallen out into the street. If she could just get her hand out through the hole where it had been. She hated to give up that little bit of light, but could think of no other way, no other chance.

  She eased her fingers toward the daylight.

  Something bit into her wrist. She put her hand out into the open air, hoping against hope that there was a car behind this one, that someone, somewhere, would see her hand.

  Minutes that seemed like hours passed. Rachel was wondering if she had passed out again when she heard the sound she wanted to hear more than any other—the whoop-whoop-whoop of a siren.

  Not sure whether the police car was close enough to see, not even sure it was a police car, Rachel waved her hand wildly.

  The wheels beneath her leaped into drag-race acceleration.

  An electronically amplified voice rose over the sound of the engine: “Pull over and stop. Now.”

  Mr. Skeleton-head did not slow. The car barreled on, picking up even more speed.

  The electronic voice issued more orders. The car she was in didn’t change direction or pace.

  Two claps, like lightning strikes, were followed by a loud hissing sound right beneath her head. The car began to rattle and sway, and something slapped rhythmically at the pavement as the driver finally braked.

  The stop was sudden and Rachel was thrown to the back of the trunk, her bloodied hand ripped back inside, her entire body throbbing with wave after wave of pain.

  Barely able to breathe, she heard the driver’s door open and the sound of feet running fast and hard. More than two feet.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Soledad had let go of Gabe’s hand and run toward the plaza to bring Rachel a burrito she had chosen herself. Gabe called after her, but she was too excited to stop.

  She was at the far end of the plaza trying to look into the face of every passerby who might be Rachel when she heard the noise. Soledad knew immediately what the sound was. She had heard more than a few shots fired back home in Mexico, and seen the blood that followed. Knives were more common, but there was always someone in town with a gun.

  Face full of wariness, she tried to see where the sound might have come from. It was close enough to hear, but not nearby. A couple of kids followed by three adults came running toward her. “Gunshots,” someone yelled. The word echoed, gaining momentum, up and down Olvera Street.

  Swept up in the crowd running away from the sound of the shots, she tried to look for Rachel and for Gabe, but she was too short to see anything but chests and armpits. She tried to stop and wait, stop and think, but the crowd would have none of that and kept pushing her along. She could do nothing to hang onto the burrito or the marionette and the thrashing bodies swept both away.

  Soledad stumbled and fell against a heavy-set woman.

  “Perdón,” the girl said, but the woman only scowled and kept moving.

  The mass of people finally began to thin out and head in different directions. She leaned against the side of a building and tried to examine the tide of humanity as it passed. She stood there for a long time.

  If only she had come here in a car, she could maybe find that. She began walking along Cesár Chavez trying to retrace the path of the taxi they had arrived in.

  She kept going, hoping to see something familiar. When she came to the freeway, she recognized that and followed the street past it, then turned left at the first stoplight. But nothing else looked familiar. If only she had paid more attention.

  “Are you lost?” A car slowed, a window rolled down.

  Soledad shook her head uncertainly. Policía. The face looked kind, but she didn’t like police. Maybe they were different here, but at home they could be rough and mean and one stayed out of their way.

  Then her mind shook loose the perfect solution.
There were a few scattered pedestrians. Soledad chose an old black woman hobbling along the sidewalk with a walking stick.

  “Hospital?” she said. “Por favor. Dónde esta hospital?”

  The woman frowned at her, but it was a thoughtful frown, not a forbidding one.

  Soledad remembered the English words and pronunciation. “Where-is-hospital?”

  “Are you ill, child?”

  The girl shook her head vigorously, then said slowly. “I want hospital.” English words came better to her when she wasn’t nervous.

  “Well, the closest one is Jefferson.”

  Soledad nodded her head as vigorously as she had shaken it.

  “Two stop lights.” The woman pointed behind her. “You understand stop light?” She pointed at the one on the corner where they stood.

  “Yes.”

  The woman held up two fingers. “Two stop lights. Then go that way.” She pointed north. “Keep walking. You will come to it.”

  “Gracias. Thank you,” the girl said and began running. She did not actually want to go to the hospital, but she knew if she could find Jefferson, she could find Rachel’s garage from there.

  999

  Rachel had no idea how much time had passed when she opened her eyes again.

  She blinked and glanced around the small, plain room trying to remember where she was and why. It looked like a hospital room. Her bed was narrow and railings had been raised on both sides. A couple of rectangular steel instruments, looking a little like robots in some space movie, stood just out of reach. There was a window, but she was too far from it to see much outside.

  The walls once were yellow, but the paint was dull with age. The light from a ceiling fixture wasn’t bright and only succeeded in making things uglier. She lay there half conscious for a long time.

  When her brain finally rid itself of sleep, a rush of dread went through her. Was this part of Jefferson’s secret black-market-organ wing?

  Someone was sitting quietly on a chair in the shadows next to a closed door. He crossed his legs and folded his arms over his chest. The look on his face was one of patience. It bore the knowledge that he had been there for a long time, and would be there a good deal longer. Dan Morris.

  She tilted her head toward him and now realized there was a tube at her nose and various other tubes elsewhere.