Death Rattle

by Alex Gilly

  Without warning, Soto reached into the box. Finn’s heart skipped a beat when he pulled out the hide.

  “This hide is way too small for a snake this size.”

  “It’s just for traveling. She lives in a much bigger space, with a bigger hide.”

  Finn couldn’t believe the way Soto had just reached into the box with his bare hand. If Soto turned over the hide, he would see the wire. Finn’s weapon was all the way back in his truck, under the seat. Klein was a minute’s drive away. A man could die inside of a minute. He had the word corridor on the tip of his tongue.

  Soto held the hide in his left hand and looked back in the box.

  “No water, either?” He handed the hide to Finn, then went to a gym bag sitting atop a cooking oil drum, unzipped it, and pulled out a bottle of water. He filled a cap with water and put it in the box. Again, the White Queen didn’t react. She seemed to be in some kind of torpor. Finn decided to risk it; he reached in and put back the hide, careful not to make any sudden movements. His hand brushed against the White Queen. She felt cold and slick.

  He slowly removed his hand, released his breath, and said, “Water would’ve spilled during the drive. Have you got the money?”

  Soto went back to his gym bag. He held it open and shone the flashlight inside; Finn saw bundles of cash.

  Finn took the bag and nodded. “You need anything else, you just let me know, you understand? Snakes, lizards, a crocodile, I can get it for you, all right?”

  Soto banged on the side of the truck. The tailgate lift lowered, revealing the silhouettes of the two guys, the one with the flashlight and the guy with the wand. As his eyes adjusted, Finn noticed a third guy. Then he saw another vehicle parked behind his truck.

  An F-350 dual cab.

  He heard something behind him and turned. Before he could see what it was, he took a hard hit to his right temple, and everything went black.

  * * *

  Mona lay on her bed in her room at the Eden Inn and dialed Finn again. Still no answer. She had a bad feeling. She knew he wasn’t on patrol, and it was too late for an AA meeting. She left another message, telling him to call her.

  It was the Fourth of July. She had spent the day working on the case with Joaquin and Natalie. When she’d asked Joaquin what he thought their chances were, he’d said, “Fifty-fifty.”

  She flung her phone down on the bed and scanned the ceiling. The ceiling was still vile. A thick layer of dust was visible on the top side of the ceiling fan’s blades. The next day, she was putting Michael Marvin on the stand. It was supposed to be the keystone of her case. She would present him to the jury as the embodiment of personal greed, corporate callousness, and political indifference. She had thoroughly prepared for it. But now she felt like she didn’t stand a chance. Over dinner at a booth at Paradise Karaoke, she’d told Joaquin and Natalie that she felt she’d lost the jury and would never win them back. She could already hear Morrison Scott’s cross-examination in this solidly red district. This man is a friend of the president; he employs dozens of folks in this town; he lives in Washington, for goodness’ sake. You honestly expect us to believe he’s responsible for the death of this young woman out here in the California desert? Mona couldn’t remember feeling so defeated. She wished Finn would answer his phone.

  Restless, she hauled herself up on her crutches and started searching around for distractions. She considered the fruit basket on top of the minibar. Then she opened the fridge and considered a tiny bottle of vodka beckoning from its door. Mona vacillated for a moment, then decided vodka wouldn’t mix well with the OxyContin she was taking. She shut the fridge door, grabbed an apple from the basket, and hobbled back to the bed. She took a bite; the apple was good—firm and sweet. Searching for the TV remote, she opened the bedside drawer and found the remote sitting on top of the Gideons’ Bible.

  Mona clasped the apple between her teeth and flipped open the Bible at random. She had only a flimsy grasp of scripture. Her parents had raised her Catholic, but the last time she could remember opening a Bible was during the preparatory classes she had been obliged to take for her confirmation at the age of fourteen. She read a random passage: “God said to Adam, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’”

  Mona munched on her apple and read on. “The serpent said to Eve, ‘You will certainly not die … when you eat from the tree. Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.’”

  Juice from the apple trickled from the corner of Mona’s mouth. She wiped it with the back of her hand. She thought, had she been in Eve’s position, she would’ve done exactly the same thing. “Your eyes will be opened”? Yes, please. Eve hadn’t capitulated to temptation, thought Mona; she had seized the knowledge that was being denied her. The snake had spoken truth to power. No one had taught Mona that in school.

  Mona put down the Bible and tried Finn again. She sent him an irate text. Then she switched on the TV and scrolled through the program listings. She was glad to see that the motel carried Spanish language channels. She searched for the telenovela she was currently invested in, Flores Amarillas. The title was a reference to a famous Spanish mondegreen, a misheard lyric: flores amarillas became flores a Maria.

  It made her think of Carmen.

  Flores Amarillas.

  Flores a Maria.

  She remembered Maws’s last words.

  Lawyer is lost.

  An idea occurred to Mona, one so enormous that it sent an electric current surging through her nervous system.

  She dropped the remote and reached for her phone.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  FINN woke to the stench of vomit. He realized it was his own. He could feel it down the side of his face. It was pitch-black. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His hands and feet were bound with what felt like zip ties. He heard the warning beep of the hydraulic lift close and realized he was on the floor in the back of the truck. The truck started moving. His head throbbed.

  The truck tilted, and Finn surmised they were going up a slope—probably onto an on-ramp. A moment later, the truck leveled out, and he heard the driver shift into top gear. It felt like they were traveling at highway speed.

  Finn tried to make out his surroundings, but there was no point; he was in total darkness. To stay sane, he started counting breaths. It was a mindfulness exercise he’d learned from his AA sponsor.

  Finn counted, and counted, and counted. His mind settled. An hour passed. Finally, he heard the driver gearing down, and then the truck slowed to a stop. A moment later, he heard the beeping sound that indicated the truck was backing up. Then the engine cut out, and the truck stopped rattling. He heard more beeping: the lift coming down, letting in light. Flashlight guy and wand guy appeared. Flashlight guy grabbed Finn’s ankles. Wand guy grabbed his wrists. They weren’t so polite anymore. They carried him out like a side of meat.

  Finn immediately recognized where they were: the AmeriCo warehouse in Anaheim.

  The two goons carried Finn into the center of the warehouse and sat him down on a chair set up on its own in the middle of the room on some black-and-yellow forklift markings on the concrete floor. LED lights high above filled the place with pasty light.

  The two goons started walking away. Finn asked where they were going. One of them turned around, walked back to Finn, and punched him in the jaw—a big, heavy hook that knocked Finn off the chair to the floor and left him with a throbbing pain in his head. The goon picked Finn up, put him back on the chair, then walked off without answering the question. Finn’s head throbbed. He closed his eyes. He heard steps. He opened his eyes. Then he closed them again and laughed. “You didn’t need to dress up,” he said.

  Klein was wearing his dress uniform. His shoes were polished to a military gleam.

  “It’s my birthday,” he said. “They’re giving me my retirement dinner tonight.”


  He stopped in front of Finn, sighed, and shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ, Finn. Why’d you have to be so good? First, you intercept the go-fast in the corridor, so I take you off the water. Then I send you to AMOC to get you out of the way, and you find the goddamned corridor. You’re the best damn marine interdiction agent I’ve ever seen, Finn. The best I’ve ever seen. That’s what makes this so”—Klein paused as if searching for the appropriate word—“so regrettable. The agency needs men like you. Like us. Now more than ever. I mean, look who’s coming up behind us. Kids like Leela Santos, God rest her soul, staring at a screen all day? Figueroa, who can’t step off a dock without throwing up? This younger generation, they’re too soft. They can’t defend the line like you and I did, Finn.”

  Finn shook his head. “Figueroa never filed a complaint,” he said.

  “Can you imagine that bonehead writing a complaint to the OIG? I’d be surprised if he can spell his own name.”

  “There was never any investigation.”

  “Of course not. I just needed to get you off the water. You were about to ruin everything.”

  Finn thought of the box truck in which he had met Soto.

  “Santos…”

  “Motorcycles are so terribly dangerous, aren’t they?” said Klein with a sigh. “Such a tragedy. You think they’ll ever find the driver of the box truck that veered into her?”

  “A condo in Baja … that dual cab F-350 … how much are they paying you, Klein? To murder your colleagues?”

  “I told you already, Finn, I don’t care about the money. I’m doing this to stop the invasion. Our country is disappearing before our eyes, don’t you see that? We’re on the front line, you and me. The last line of defense. I did what I had to do. Do you know how many illegals we intercepted in the last twelve months at Long Beach Station? One hundred and twenty-nine. I turned us into the most effective border station in the country, Finn. And now they’re making me retire. They’re forcing me out. The most successful border station in the country. Can you believe that? It’s not right.”

  Klein shook his head and sighed.

  “At least when Marvin’s confirmed, he’s going to ask the president to give me the Medal of Freedom,” he said. “It’s the least they could do, if you ask me. After all I’ve done.”

  Klein looked at Finn as though an idea had just occurred to him. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to ask him to give you one, too. Posthumously, of course.”

  Finn’s mind raced. “Marvin,” he said.

  “Yes, Marvin. Imagine what this country will be like when he’s in charge. How great it will be again. Long Beach is just a trial run. He’s planning to do the same thing from coast to coast. Isn’t it beautiful? All those fucking subhuman beaners, paying the cartel to sneak them into our country, only to end up in our big, beautiful prisons.”

  Finn thought about Mona—about all she had said about Marvin. A terrifying truth was dawning on him.

  “I can tell from the look on your face that you’re beginning to see the whole picture now,” said Klein. “It’s really too bad, you know. You could’ve been part of it.”

  Klein fell into a moment of quiet reflection. Then he said, “Well, goodbye, Finn. It wouldn’t do for the guest of honor to be late to his own farewell dinner.”

  Finn braced himself. He expected Klein to put a bullet in his head.

  Instead, Klein walked away and disappeared through a door.

  Finn felt an indescribable surge of relief.

  Then he heard a forklift approaching.

  On the fork was a skid. On the skid was a drum. The driver stopped a foot from Finn, then lowered the skid to the ground. Soto stepped out from the forklift’s cabin. He fetched the White Queen’s box from a little platform behind the driver’s seat.

  Soto stood in front of Finn and stared at him for a good minute like a scavenger watching a dead animal, making sure no other creatures were moving in on its kill. Finn could feel his jaw swelling from where the goon had socked him. Soto set down the White Queen on the floor a few feet to the left of Finn’s legs. Then he walked over to the drum on the forklift—a standard, fifty-five-gallon steel drum stenciled with cooking oil. He unthreaded a bolt and removed the ring securing the drum head. He removed the head. Then he fetched a snake hook from the forklift’s cab and reached into the drum.

  Soto lifted up his hook. Coiled around it was a large, dark-gray snake with a coffin-shaped head, flicking a black forked tongue. Soto let her hang for a moment, a look of childish delight on his face. Then, with his left hand, he took hold of her tail and worked out the snake hook until she was hanging only from his hand. Soto lifted her, coiling and writhing, and held her inches from Finn’s face. Finn didn’t flinch. But he was clenching his fists, his wrists straining against the zip ties.

  “You know what this is?” said Soto.

  “A kitten?” said Finn.

  Soto didn’t smile. He placed the snake right at Finn’s feet and let go. Then he whacked his metal hook into a nearby drum, making a sound so loud Finn would’ve jumped had he not been tied up. The snake reared up the top third of its body. It darted side to side with astonishing speed. It opened its jaws, revealing white fangs set well forward against the otherwise entirely black interior of its mouth. Finn knew what it was. He stared at the drum that Soto had taken the snake from. He remembered how Mona had told him about the oily film on Carmen’s skin when she’d seen her body at the coroner’s. Finn joined the dots. He looked at Soto.

  “That’s how you killed her,” he said quietly. “You used AmeriCo to get the barrel into the detention center. You put Carmen in the barrel. You put her in the barrel with the snake.”

  Soto grinned. “I told her I was going to get her out. I told her to hide in the barrel. When I closed the lid, you could barely hear her screams.”

  The grin slipped from his face. “You’re with that bitch lawyer, aren’t you? The one I left a surprise for in her car.”

  Soto used his stick to corral the black mamba toward Finn. The snake flattened its neck, hissed, and lunged. “When she is finished with you, I’ll introduce her to your wife,” said Soto. “I’ll put them in a barrel together, like I did with Carmen.”

  Finn was not a religious man in any conventional sense. He did not subscribe to a notion of evil. He did not think there existed some supernatural force that can get the better of us and make us do bad things. He did, however, feel on some gut level that the space he had ventured into, this warehouse, containing this barrel, this snake at his feet, and this man standing over him, was in some sense a forsaken place. He had known this intuitively when he had set out that day. He had left the house intending to kill a man, and that intention had led him out of the garden and into this dark wood. Finn thought, This might be the last place I see. He was fine with that. But he could not let Soto get to Mona. He had to survive, for her sake.

  “I don’t get it. Why torture Carmen?” he said. “Why not just a bullet?”

  Soto’s face wrinkled up. “The whore betrayed me. She had to pay.”

  Soto smashed the ground again with his hook, and the snake lunged again. It was swaying fast now, visibly upset, just inches from Finn’s calf. Finn remembered a tip that Butterfield had given him: if confronted with an angry, striking snake, don’t move. Well, thought Finn, he couldn’t help but follow Butterfield’s advice: his arms and legs were bound. But it occurred to him that the more relaxed he was, the less of a threat the snake would perceive him to be. If Finn exuded fear, he reasoned, the snake would sense it; if he felt anxious, the snake would know. Finn looked at the snake at his feet. The snake was angry, but it was facing Soto, not him. Soto was the one whacking the snake hook into the ground; Soto was the threat it was guarding against.

  Finn closed his eyes. He resumed his breathing exercise, breathing deliberately through his nose and exhaling gently out of his mouth, not forcing anything, just focusing on his breath. Whenever the snake’s hiss triggered a rush of adrenalin
e, Finn gently nudged his focus back to his breath. His entire body began to relax. The muscles around his eyes and jaw slackened. His neck unwound. His shoulders dropped. The muscles in his forearms loosened. Slowly, keeping his eyes closed and his focus on his breath, Finn put his palms together as though he were a penitent in prayer. He started sliding his right hand back. He did not open his eyes. He worked his right hand back, staying focused but relaxed. The goons hadn’t tightened the zip ties as far as they could go. Finn detected a millimeter, maybe two, of give between the zip tie and his skin. He started wriggling the thumb of his right hand back.

  Whenever Soto whacked the ground with his stick, trying to aggravate the snake into attacking Finn, Finn felt his muscles tense up, and he stopped his efforts and returned his focus to his breath. When his mind relaxed again, the tension slipped from his hands. Little by little, he wriggled his right thumb farther and farther back. The zip tie caught the hairs on his hand and ripped them out, but he didn’t allow himself to hold on to the pain. After twenty breaths, Finn worked the thumb of his right hand out of the zip tie. He could hear Soto still moving around, still hitting the ground with his stick. He could hear the black mamba hissing. He kept his eyes closed. The mamba on the ground was free; that was its advantage over him. Finn had eyelids; that was his advantage over the snake, which, like all snakes, could not close its eyes. By removing his own sense of sight, Finn had sharpened his sense of hearing. By listening attentively, he had surmised what was going on in the room. He knew by the proximity of its hiss and the direction it was coming from that the snake was next to his right foot. He knew from the clank of the snake hook against the concrete floor that Soto was just to the left, trying to provoke the snake to bite him.