26: A Focal Point of Hope
Thorin detested Juarez’s alleys. It was here that his iron grip on the city was at its most tenuous, where slimy things could wriggle through his fingers and slip into the darkness, all teeth and malice and venom. The alleys had always been a world apart from the sunny calles and plazas that defined his realm, and now that he’d been crowned Jefe he felt almost like an ambassador in a hostile nation. He would’ve been more comfortable with a few esbirros backing him up, but even the most loyal men talked, and it would behoove him to keep this particular conversation as discreet as possible.
And for all their many faults, discretion was one thing the alleys did very, very well.
The man Thorin had come to see squatted on a dingy throne built of castoff wood and upholstered with old carpets. He was a round, toadish man, though his corpulence masked a hefty payload of muscle. As a member of the triumvirate, Thorin had heard rumors about this man that beggared belief. Yet a single look at him had made the worst of them seem all too plausible—and a few brief interactions during those heady years erased what little doubt remained. He fixed Thorin with a look that lacked the deference to which the Jefe had grown accustomed—that teetered, if he was being honest, just on the right side of amused contempt.
“Why Jefe, it’s an honor to once again bask in your presence.”
Thorin swallowed the invective that lunged instinctively to his lips at this slight. This isn’t your city, he reminded himself. It is your city’s shadow. Tread carefully, for there are things lurking here you’re best not to awaken. He hoisted his lips into a smile.
“The pleasure is all mine, Krell. Though as you probably guessed, it’s not pleasure that brings me into your abode, but business.”
“Oh? And what business might that be?”
“I have a task for you. There’s a certain individual who requires your attention.”
“You’re telling me there’s someone the Jefe of Juarez can’t handle on his own?”
Thorin kept his face taut and pretended not to notice the slight. “The situation is… delicate. Best if my hands aren’t seen in the matter. Are you a follower of the fights in the Iron Circle?”
Krell buffed his nails against his linen vest. “I catch the odd bout here or there.”
“Then perhaps you’ve noticed a young marcada making waves in the ring. Goes by the name of Selena.”
“Marcada, hein? Who’s her keeper?”
“Eric Todd.”
Krell inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Todd’s touchy about the way his girls get treated, and he’s got quite a bit of muscle on his side. I mess with his goods, I could find myself in a bit of trouble.”
“Here’s the good news: Todd and the girl are on the outs. He’s rescinded his protection of her.”
“Right,” Krell snorted. “I suppose he’ll let me drop a load in his private latrine, too, since he’s feeling so generous.”
“It’s true. Ask his body man if you don’t believe me. Why do you think he’s letting her fight in the Circle? She’s a wild little bitch, more trouble than she’s worth, so he’s wringing what he can out of her and be damned with the rest. Meanwhile, she’s got half the pea brains in this city thinking she’s the second coming of La Santa. It’s disruptive, it’s dangerous, and I want it stopped. Now is that up your alley, or isn’t it?”
Krell ran his tongue along the front of his teeth. “Yeah, I think I can accommodate you, Jefe. You leave everything to old Krell.”
“I’m pleased to hear it. I’ve got your retainer here. I’ll have a man bring the rest once the job is done.” Thorin handed Krell a stack of pesos. Krell hefted it, setting the coins to clinking, and stuffed them it in his vest pocket.
“Pleasure doing business, Jefe. Don’t you worry that kingly little head of yours. I’ll see to it that everything’s sorted.”
Thorin resisted the urge to shudder until he was around the corner and out of view. He relented, submitting to the shiver that rose from tailbone to neck. Dealing with Krell left a gritty aftertaste, but it was a necessary discomfort. In a city like Juarez, no leader could ever rest assured in their ongoing power. Those who did soon lost it—and their heads as well, more often than not. Thorin had seen the deadly flaw in such complacency firsthand—It was, in fact, the reason he was sole Jefe now and not merely one of three—and he had no intention of succumbing to the same error. But while there were always factions to manage, resentments to quash, rivals to assuage or enslave or slaughter as nuance dictated, it was, more than anyone else, the La Santa cult that gave him pause. It festered in every corner of his city, a mold that no amount of bleach or sunlight could eradicate. He could smash its altars and execute its priestesses, but more would always appear in their place. It was a grass-roots movement, amorphous and leaderless, and that made a targeted strike against it all but impossible.
Except now, it seemed, a figurehead was emerging. A focal point of hope which, if snuffed out, would undermine the doctrine that gave life to the savage little tribe. Relinquishing Selena to Todd had started to seem like a terrible mistake, but now he wondered if it hadn’t been a brilliant—if admittedly inadvertent—piece of strategy.
Thorin stepped out of the alley into the afternoon sunlight. He inhaled, taking in the mingling odor of horseshit and alkali dust, sweat, and frying masa—smells that were superficially nasty, but in their distinct combination formed a bouquet Thorin found quite pleasant. They pleased him because they were his, as everything in this world of light and frenetic order was his. And it would stay his for a long time to come. Krell would see to that.
Part IV: Sisterhood
27: Only Meat
The grate stank of offal. No rain had fallen for weeks, and the city’s reservoirs had begun to show signs of drought. The flow of water that normally surged through the channel had become a sluggish trickle—too little to wash away the detritus of Marcus’s grim craft, but enough to lend the leavings a soggy pungency. The resulting odor was half outhouse and half abattoir, a hideous alloy that had itself become a kind of torture preceding execution. Bad enough to die by an executioner’s blade; worse still to do it atop a channel of filth.
Such thoughts occupied Marcus’s mind as he went about the mechanical excision of life, the extraction of all that makes a man from the temple of meat that housed him. They were ugly and morbid thoughts, but they took him away from a place that was uglier still, and he’d grown better at following them farther and farther afield.
“Just one more today, Marcus,” said Thorin.
“Yes, Jefe.” Even as he spoke, Marcus was already drifting away, his gaze darting through the bars on the abattoir’s windows and into the city beyond. He hovered above the streets and alleys of his childhood, the dusty plazas where he gamboled with his friends while the pensionados sat beneath awnings on the boardwalk, their wrinkle-creased faces like maps to the forgotten cities of their youth.
A single word yanked him from his revery: “Marcus?”
He stood, epee in hand, and watched a pair of esbirros drag Emilio to the stone grate. Chains hung from manacles on each arm, the left clasped around his wrist, the right notched higher to avoid slipping free over the stump of his severed right hand. His eyes glowed a feverish red, the skin around them puffy and sore. A bruise spread from cheek to chin, the ghost of a giant fist visible in its discolorations.
“Emilio?” Marcus whispered. “What happened?”
“Caught thieving,” answered Thorin, his voice dripping with mock gravity. “It is a difficult thing, to pickpocket with only one hand. But our Emilio is nothing if not ambitious. Is that not so, Emilio?”
Emilio turned his head toward Thorin. He didn’t seem to make out the meaning of the Jefe’s words, but merely followed the source of sound. The esbirros tugged on his chains, jerking him to attention. His gaze drifted about the room before settling on Marcus. Comprehension resurfaced.
Marcus took Emilio’s remain
ing hand. His skin was damp and clammy.
“He needs a doctor, Jefe,” Marcus pleaded. “He is not well. “Please, let me have him treated, and we can discuss the punishment for his crime.”
“His punishment is already underway,” said Thorin. “And he’ll need no doctor in a few minutes’ time.”
The epee nearly slipped from Marcus’s hand. His fingers fumbled for purchase and clasped tight around the pommel. The weapon felt suddenly foreign in his hands. He looked to Thorin, his face naked with pleading.
“I can’t do this, Jefe. Please. Anyone else. Not him.”
“You have to, Marcus,” said Emilio. His words came out barely louder than a whisper, yet speaking them seemed to cause him pain. He grimaced, coughed, and spat a wad of bloody matter onto the tile floor. “Otherwise he’ll make it worse. So much worse.”
Marcus tightened his grip on the epee. His lungs burned with every exhaled breath. He locked eyes with Thorin and struck.
The blade sang a high silver note and clattered to the floor. Marcus dove forward and caught Emilio’s head before it could touch the abattoir’s filthy grate. It was the quickest blow he’d ever delivered. There was no time for fear, no time for pain. As a final gift, it was a sad and ugly one, but it was all he had to give. He clutched the head to his chest and felt the fading heat of his forehead, the dwindling thump of blood in his temples, the final butterfly flutterings of his eyelashes against his wrists. The stochastic firings of a nervous system in shutdown, mindless and empty, but he cherished every one of them. He found himself stroking Emilio’s hair gently and stopped, thinking this disrespectful.
Not waiting to be dismissed, Marcus took Emilio’s head and left the abattoir. He expected Thorin to shout him down, or perhaps even order the esbirros to thrash him for his impertinence. The Jefe did neither. He watched Marcus’s slouching gait with wry amusement, though when Marcus turned to address him, he caught a flicker of fear behind Thorin’s haughty mask.
“May I take the body, Jefe, to bury it with his people?” The words came out in flat affect, the way a child reads aloud from a book he doesn’t understand. Thorin slipped his indifference back into place, smoothing out the cracks where unease had shown through.
“What difference is it to me what you do with it? It’s only meat.”
“As are we all,” said Marcus.
Thorin smiled. “Not yet.”
Marcus scooped up the body and carried it over one shoulder, cradling the head to his side with the opposite arm. He worked quickly, eager to leave the abattoir but also to escape from Thorin’s sight before the Jefe noticed the incongruous smile playing on his own lips.
“No, Jefe,” he whispered to himself. “Not yet.”
28: A Powerful Charm
“You’re crazy,” said Mary.
“What makes you say that?” Selena replied. She tried glancing up at Mary’s face to see if her expression matched her tone—flippant, but with a hard edge of sincerity underneath—but the angle was wrong, and she could see nothing but a vague flash of motion now and then when Mary worked the roots nearest her forehead.
The two of them sat in the women’s barracks, Mary on her bed, Selena on the floor in front of her. Selena’s hair had grown over the course of her captivity, and an off-hand complaint within Mary’s hearing had spurred her on to unexpected fervor.
“Let me do a close braid,” she’d pleaded. “I used to do ‘em for the Montenegro girls. It’s the perfect hair for a fighter. There’ll be nothing left to grab onto.”
Selena’s solution had always been to chop it short with whatever sharp implement was handy, but Mary seemed eager, and it was as good an opportunity as any to ask for her help. Plus, she genuinely liked the girl—something in her loquacious banter fit a notch in Selena’s personality.
She took up her position on the floor and waited as Mary’s deft fingers wove her hair into flat rows. The occasional twinge would make her grimace as a rogue strand grew taut at the root, but the process was otherwise painless and actually oddly pleasant. They soon had the barracks to themselves, and Selena seized on the opportunity.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor,” she’d said.
“Shoot.”
“I have to talk with Grace Delgado, and I need you to translate for me.”
Mary’s fingers stopped their acrobatics. “Why? What’s she got to say that’s worth hearing?”
With that, Selena told her the plan. Sharing it was a risk, but it was one she felt she needed to take. Mary’s disdain for Grace was such that Selena needed a good reason to get her to act as intermediary—and with her in that role, she couldn’t exactly keep her out of the loop anyway. Things would be different if she spoke Mejise, but the few phrases she’d learned were grossly insufficient, and in the end, she simply needed to trust her friend. Now, having laid things out plainly, Selena had to find a way to bring Mary around.
“You’re talking about overthrowing the Jefe,” Mary whispered. “Talk like that could get a person killed. And not in a quick clean way, either. That shit would be messy. Like bleach the cobbles and throw the remains to the pigs kind of messy. You know how they treat runaway marcados? Well, that’s a slap on the wrist next to what you’re looking at.”
“I don’t need anybody overthrown. I just need a couple days of chaos.”
“I doubt he’ll appreciate the difference if he catches you.”
“It’s a risk I need to take. As long as things stay static, I’m stuck here. Besides, the fault lines are already there. I’m just … deepening them a little bit.”
Mary sighed. “What does it even matter what you’re trying to do? It’s not going to work in the first place anyway. Delgado was deposed. Sure, she was a visible member of Los Hombres Sencillos, but she’s a marcada now. You really think she can help you?”
“We can help each other,” she said, expressing more confidence than she felt. The fact was, she wouldn’t know where Grace stood until she spoke with her, and she wouldn’t be able to manage that unless Mary agreed to help her. “So will you do it?”
Mary shook her head. “Let’s get a drink. I need to think about this some more.” Her fingers made a final flourish and dropped from Selena’s hair. “We’re done here anyway. Check it out.”
Rolling the kinks from her shoulders, Selena peered into the polished looking glass mounted to the wall near the room’s communal wash basin. Her hair, previously frizzled, now clung to her skull in tidy rows running from her forehead to the nape of her neck, their procession marked by the tiny moguls raised by Mary’s deft braid work. She gave an experimental tug at one row and found, even with her fingernails, she couldn’t get purchase.
“I like it,” she said, and was surprised to realize she was telling the truth. Mary threw her hands up in mock triumph. Selena grinned. She longed to get a definite answer about her plan, but Mary’s jubilation was infectious. Besides, she knew better than to push too hard.
They left the barracks and headed for a nearby plaza, Mary leading the way. Selena suppressed the impulse to bring up her request on the walk, contenting herself to listen to Mary’s rambling, desultory monologue—a soliloquy she had sustained, with interruptions, since the first time she and Selena met. Normally she found such verbosity irritating, but in Mary’s case, it was oddly soothing. It reminded her of the radio serials her parents ostensibly listened to in Jericho—though actually playing to thwart the angel ears embedded behind the walls of their apartment, they maintained a comforting rhythm that drifted easily in and out of Selena’s notice, a buffer of sound to be savored between more important tasks.
At the mouth of a plaza, they passed a fetish vendor, who beckoned them forward with fingers like twists of rawhide. Bones and pelts dangled from bits of wire suspended from an aluminum crossbeam. Stirred by the wind, they played a tuneless calliope as they clonked against one another. The vendor, an old woman with a profound hump and a sore by her left nostril, set
tled into easy banter with Mary, who fingered the merchandise and responded to the vendor’s queries with arched eyebrows and quips of Mejise. Selena assumed Mary was simply humoring the lady, but after a minute’s consideration she bought a string of snake skulls and affixed it to her wrist, where it hung alongside several other bands of assorted baubles.
The vendor turned her attention to Selena for the first time, likely hoping for another sale. Her eyes widened and the patter she’d prepared evaporated from her lips, unspoken. She bowed low and, murmuring something in Mejise, presented Selena with a pendant on a gossamer thread. Selena raised a hand, palm out, in a gesture of polite decline. Undeterred, the vendor hobbled around her stall and, extending her rumpled and meager height to the utmost, tied the string around Selena’s neck. She tottered back and gave a satisfied nod, as if appraising a recently completed bit of craftsmanship.
“Gracias,” Selena mumbled, and left, unsure what else to say. Mary followed a few steps behind her.
Out of eyeshot from the vendor, Selena stopped to examine her gift. The string was fine and supple, its thin filament nearly translucent—not the coarse weave of hair or grass fiber she’d expected, but something almost like silk. The pendant it held was small but sumptuously detailed, a sunburst of ocher jags encircling a yellowish orb. Closer inspection revealed the fringe to be scorpions claws set in a bronze hub, at the center of which lay a mayfly suspended in amber. Mary whistled appreciatively.
“That’s a powerful charm. You could move mountains with that thing, I bet. Bein’ La Santa’s envoy has its perks.”
“I’m not anyone’s envoy.”
“Try telling that to the old lady.”
Iron Circle Page 17
