The Rules of Wolfe E-Book

James Carlos Blake

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: The Wolfe Family
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 381

Beschreibung

Longlisted for the 2015 CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award Eddie Gato Wolfe is a young, impetuous member of the Wolfe family of Texas gunrunners that goes back generations. Increasingly unfulfilled by his minor role in family operations and eager to set out on his own, Eddie crosses the border to work security for a major Mexican drug cartel led by the ruthless La Navaja. Eddie falls for a mysterious woman named Miranda, whom he learns too late is the property of an intimate member of La Navaja's organization. When they're discovered, the violent upshot forces Eddie and Miranda to run for their lives, fleeing into the deadly Sonora Desert in hope of crossing the border to safety. But La Navaja's reach is far and his lust for revenge insatiable. If La Navaja's men don't kill Eddie and Miranda, the brutal desert just may. Their only hope: help from the family that Eddie abandoned. At once a riveting thriller and an inside look at the blood-drenched Mexican drug trade, The Rules of Wolfe is another classic crime novel from a writer Entertainment Weekly calls 'one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life.'

Leseprobe

THE RULES OF WOLFE

Eddie Gato Wolfe is a young, impetuous member of the Wolfe family of Texas gun-runners that goes back generations. Increasingly unfulfilled by his minor role in family operations and eager to set out on his own, Eddie crosses the border to work security for a major Mexican drug cartel led by the ruthless La Navaja.

Eddie falls for a mysterious woman named Miranda, whom he learns too late is the property of an intimate member of La Navaja’s organization. When they’re discovered, the violent upshot forces Eddie and Miranda to run for their lives, fleeing into the deadly Sonora Desert in hope of crossing the border to safety. But La Navaja’s reach is far and his lust for revenge insatiable. If La Navaja’s men don’t kill Eddie and Miranda, the brutal desert just may. Their only hope: help from the family that Eddie abandoned.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Carlos Blake is one of the America’s most highly regarded living authors of historical crime fiction. Born in Mexico, his family moved regularly when he was a child, living in various towns along the border and coast before finally settling in Texas when he was six. After a stint in the army, Blake attended the University of South Florida and received a Master’s degree from Bowling Green State University, both universities where he would later teach. In 1997 he left teaching to write full-time.

Praise for James Carlos Blake andThe Rules of Wolfe

‘Nobody writes about blood and guts better than James Carlos Blake’

– Washington Post

James Carlos Blake writes with the muscularity of great pulp novels and the grace of a dancer - from the edge of an America that is forever frontier

– James Sallis

‘Blake’s prose is muscular, his dialogue and details are keenly observed… one hell of a ride’

– Booklist

‘Blake’s customary zest for life and death makes his latest modern historical thriller violent, sexy and exciting’

– Kirkus Reviews

‘Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic’

– Publishers Weekly

‘One of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life’

– Entertainment Weekly

‘James Carlos Blake is a formidable writer [and] a deft stylist, welding the language with power and authority’

– Tucson Weekly

‘James Carlos Blake is of the Cormac McCarthy/Sam Peckinpah school of storytelling: Make it bloody as hell, but make it beautiful’

– Dallas Morning News

‘One of the most original writers in America today’

– Chicago Sun-Times

‘An epic chase’

– Men’s Journal

‘Riveting’

– Latinidad

‘This sand-blasted odyssey is quick, bloody and beautiful with prose as eloquent and unexpected as a cactus flower’

– Madison County Herald

Other Works by James Carlos Blake

Novels

Country of the Bad Wolfes

The Killings of Stanley Ketchel

Handsome Harry

Under the Skin

A World of Thieves

Wildwood Boys

Red Grass River

In the Rouge Blood

The Friends of Pancho Villa

The Pistoleer

Collection

Borderlands

In memory of

JUAN CANO BLAKE

You’re going to have things to repent, boy… . That’s one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.

—Ernest Hemingway, “The Last Good Country”

… unknowing youth, savage with health and armed to the teeth with time.

—Philip Roth, Exit Ghost

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.

—Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

PROLOGUE

Rudy and Frank

Eddie Gato pleaded with us to take him on that run last winter but we said no. We’d been having the same argument with him for months. So had others in the family. He said we didn’t have to let anybody else know—we could keep it between us. Frank told him that’s not how we do things, not among ourselves, and if he didn’t know that by now he still had things to learn.

Frank’s my big brother. Eddie’s our cousin and was all of nineteen years old.

“I’ve got everything it takes for this business,” Eddie said, “and you guys know that.”

He did have what it takes, no question about it, and I understood his frustration. But that wasn’t the point. For the umpteenth time, I told him if he really wanted to work with us all he had to do was hold to the rule.

“That’s another three years,” Eddie said.

“That’s how it works,” Frank said, stroking his mustache the way he does when he’s tired of arguing.

“Fuck the rule,” Eddie said, and headed for the door, muttering something under his breath that sounded very much like “And both you too.”

I said, “What was that?” But he kept going and didn’t quite slam the door behind him.

Frank was right. The kid had things to learn.

We’re a large family, we Wolfes. About half of us live in Cameron County, Texas, and most of the rest in Mexico City. Our Mexico City kin own a couple of investment firms and are partners in one of the country’s largest banks. They’re also among the capital’s social elite, but because several of them have “Jaguaro” as their first or second name, they get a lot of ribbing from their friends about being connected to the shadowy organization called Los Jaguaros, reputed to be a major supplier of arms to some of the criminal cartels. The Mexican Wolfes accept this friendly teasing with good humor and the often expressed wish that their own business might someday be as profitable as the Jaguaros’ is said to be.

The truth is, they are Los Jaguaros, and we Texas Wolfes not only provide much of their supply, we now and then deliver it to their buyers. It was their guns Frank and I were carrying on that January run Eddie had begged to go on.

The load was three cases of HK-nine pistols and two of M-4 carbines. The buyer was a Tuxpan outfit called Los Cuernos, a small bunch reputed to be in league with the Gulf cartel. It was the first time the Jaguaros had sold to Los Cuernos, and they stressed that point to us in warning to be extra careful. But we always are, whether we’re delivering to somebody for the first time or the tenth. We know our business.

The transfer was set for midnight at coordinates a half mile offshore and around twelve miles north of Tampico. The Cuernos had been instructed to get there before us, in a shrimp boat with its nets deployed and three green lights strung vertically from the bow stem. We were in a small trawler rig of false Mexican registry. It had a modified hull for shallow draft and greater speed, and a pair of Hemi engines that could pull your head back when you hit the throttles.

I was at the wheel and Frank was scanning forward with the big 180×70s, looking for the green lights as we drew near the rendezvous spot. A cool offshore breeze carried the tangy smells of the estuaries. The sky encrusted with stars. An amber crescent moon low over the black mainland. The shrimper should have been in sight by then but the only vessel we could see was a tanker on the horizon.

We didn’t like the feel of things, and I brought us to a stop a half mile shy of the transfer point. We each had a Browning nine in our waistband, and the wheelhouse locker held a pair of modified 12-gauge pumps holding buckshot loads. With the engines idling we bobbed on the easy swells while Frank kept panning southward with the big glasses.

Then came the faint growl of an engine cranking up near the dark shoreline. And then the unmistakable rumble of it heading our way.

“Speedboat,” Frank said. “It’s a rip.”

He switched off the running lights and I spun the wheel to starboard and gunned the Hemis. The acceleration leaned us rearward as the prow rose and we sped toward the barrier of rocky islands forming the outer rim of a lagoon. Frank checked the GPS and shouted a bearing for the nearest inlet. They were running without lights too and we still couldn’t see them against the southward coast, but we knew they were trying to cut us off. They could’ve done it easy if the transfer point had been farther out or we’d made the mistake of getting closer to them before stopping. But then, if we’d done that, they would’ve nailed us out there. They were cowboys. Come fast and hard and shooting, take you out quick.

I had to slow down for the inlet, and my gut tightened at the roar of them closing on us. They were near enough now for us to see it was one of those open military speedsters but we couldn’t tell how many guys were in it.

As I steered into the passage, they cut back on their engine and opened up with automatic rifles, the rounds smacking against the wheelhouse, popping through its glass. Then we were in the lagoon and out of their view, and the question now was whether they knew the place as well as we did.

The lagoon is full of shadowy palm hammocks, but the main channel’s open to the sky and I could see well enough to hold to it. We snaked around the hammocks and went past two branching narrower channels before I turned into the next one. I cut off the engines and we bumped to a halt against a mangrove root in the darkness of the overhanging palms.

We figured that if they were familiar with the lagoon they’d play it smart, post a guy at the inlet we came through and patrol the other cuts along the outer bank where we might slip out. We had a plan for that.

But they came in after us. Rumbling slowly up the main channel. Cowboys. Afraid of nothing.

Frank took an angle-head flashlight out of the locker and clipped it to his belt, then handed me a flare gun and one of the Mossbergs. We could’ve laughed out loud and they wouldn’t have heard us over their engine. We hustled out of the boat, crabs scuttling over our boots, some crunching underfoot, and took positions about twenty feet apart on higher ground from which we could see the main channel. I crouched beside a palm that curved sideways and gave me a clear view of the overhead sky.

We heard the boat getting closer. Then its dark form appeared around the channel bend.

When it came abreast of me, not ten yards away, I pointed the flare gun straight up and fired, the discharge muffled by the loudness of the motor.

The flare was set with a quick fuse and burst into a white incandescence about forty feet up, starkly illuminating the five of them, instinctively gaping up at the blinding light—and we started blasting, holding down our triggers after our first shot and pumping the slides as fast as we could in a rapid-fire volley. At such close range in an open boat, they had no chance at all, the buckshot tearing them apart, blowing away portions of them, removing most of the head of the guy at the wheel—who fell against the throttle so that the speedboat roared and veered into the opposite bank and rose straight up and almost completely out of the water before keeling over and crashing back into the channel with a terrific splash and crackling of steam.

They didn’t get off a round. It was over before the oscillating parachute flare descended into a palm, gave a few more sputters, and died. And the darkness closed around us again.

Frank turned on the flashlight, holding it out to the side in one hand, his pistol in the other. His beam found each of them in turn, all in awkward sprawls and none moving or making a sound. I set the Mossberg aside and went down the bank and took out the Browning and held it over my head as I waded across the chest-high channel, then slogged out and slipped the pistol back into my pants. Frank held the light on the body nearest to me and I started searching pockets.

The third guy I tried had the money. A wad of American currency that on later count would total exactly what they were supposed to pay us. So why the cross? Their boss put them up to it? They take it on themselves to try to impress him by stealing the load? They sell him out? Who the hell knows? It didn’t matter to us. This was a Mexican bunch, the Jaguaros’ concern. We’d tell them what happened and they’d take it from there.

Then a voice croaked, “Mátame … por amor de Dios.”

Frank’s light flicked over to a guy on his back at the bottom of the bank slope, his legs in the water. One of the two I hadn’t searched. Most of his side had been ripped away and the flashlight exposed a wreckage of ribs and viscera. Unbelievable what a body can survive even for a little while. He wasn’t much more than a boy, seventeen, eighteen. A boy who’d been all set to kill us.

“Por favor … los jaibos. Me van … a comer.”

He was right. You could hear the rustling and clickings of the crabs on the move in the dark. Converging on the fresh bounty. They’d start eating him while he was still alive.

I took out the Browning and cocked it and held the muzzle a few inches from his forehead. His eyes rolled up to regard it. And I fired.

I would’ve done it in any case. When you make a deal you stick to it. Rock-hard rule. You don’t renege, you don’t sell out. You hold up your end and expect the other party to do the same. If the other party doesn’t, you’re entitled to deal with every man of it as you see fit in order to set things right.

No—you’re more than entitled. You’re obligated. Or the rule would mean nothing.

As always after a job that takes us anywhere near Tampico, we spent the next few days there. A pleasant laid-back town, excellent for recouping one’s mellow. We dined well on the local cuisine, danced with lots of girls to the tierra caliente music in the plazas, did some cantina crawling. All in all enjoyed ourselves plenty.

At some point it occurred to us that this was the first time we’d ever had any real trouble on a Tampico run. And that Eddie Gato of course would’ve loved it.

Then we got back home and heard all about the family fight and that Eddie was long gone.

SONORA

FRIDAY

1

Eddie

Eddie Gato Wolfe watches the plume of dust rise from the distant shimmer of ground heat and begin to come his way like some badland apparition. He cannot account for his ominous impression of it. He is not given to apprehensive fancies and anyway knows that the dust is from a motor caravan bringing the Boss’s people. Even so, you should never disregard a foreboding of threat—a presentiment, intuition, hunch, call it what you will. It’s a rule. But then his family has many rules, and although some of them are more deeply rooted in him than he knows, there is one he has refused to abide by. That is why he is here on this late summer afternoon, in this desert watchtower of Rancho del Sol, at such far remove from home.

And then as abruptly as it came to him, the spectral notion passes. The dust now looks only like dust as it carries over the sunburned stony terrain of scrub brush and cactus and skeletal trees. He chides himself for his momentary illusion and lowers the binoculars and calls down to the courtyard, Here they come!

Flores, the security chief, gives orders and his men leave off flirting with the maids and hustle to their posts. The servants make for their stations. The security men are armed with AKs, the compound guards with M-16s. In the watchtower Eddie Gato mans a .50-caliber machine gun loaded with armor-piercing rounds.

For a little over two months the only inhabitants of Rancho del Sol have been Eddie Gato and the three other resident guards, plus an old married couple that does the cooking and laundry and sundry other chores, and a gardener of indeterminate age who keeps to himself. Then four days ago the ranch received notice from Culiacán that a party of guests would be arriving on Friday. The next morning a crew of maids and other workers came from the village of Loma Baja to begin getting the place ready. Eleven miles from the rancho but a part of its property, Loma Baja is flanked by the only local parcel of ground suitable for the airstrip the Boss put there for his small jet plane, and the only bus in the village was supplied by the Boss to transport workers to the rancho. Once a community of goatherds, Loma Baja now exists for no purpose but to provide occasional labor for the rancho and to maintain the landing field and the garage alongside it that houses the Boss’s Cadillac Escalade.

On Wednesday, the dapper Flores and his security team showed up, plus a communications crew with its load of equipment. They had all flown from Culiacán to Ciudad Obregón and then driven to the rancho in six dark-windowed SUVs of various makes. Flores posted pairs of armed guards at roadside points fifteen and seven miles west of Loma Baja, and another two guards on the crude road from the village to the compound, where he at once set up a security perimeter. Then yesterday came the trucks with their large cargoes of food and spirits, plus a chef and his kitchen staff.

And now, under the swelling billows of dust, here come the guests.

Flores has informed the staff that the Boss himself has been detained by last-minute business and will not come until midday tomorrow, when he and his brother, El Segundo—the Company’s second in command—arrive in Loma Baja in the jet.

Eddie Gato is the youngest of the four rancho guards, having turned twenty in May, and he is one of the two newest, the other being twenty-two-year-old Neto Rincón. Both of them have been here four months. Javier Monte, also twenty-two, has been here ten months, and Jorge Santos, the twenty-seven-year-old guard captain, more than six years.

There is really no need for guards against thieves. The region has few inhabitants and they all know whose rancho this is and nobody would dare to steal from it even if it were left unattended and all its doors and windows open wide. But it is imperative to guard against infiltrators who may attempt to plant surveillance devices or explosives. The military. The police. Business competitors. Whoever.

The four guards work a regular rotation of eight-hour shifts in the watchtower so that every fourth day one of them has a full day off. They have ample diversion in their off-duty hours. The compound has a swimming pool, billiard tables, a library, satellite television. There are video games and a vast collection of music CDs and of DVDs ranging from the latest Hollywood movies to the best pornography on the market. There is a small gymnasium. There is a target range behind the house. The kitchen is always amply stocked and the old woman is a good cook. To satisfy their sexual urges they can go into Loma Baja and avail themselves of its handful of homely whores.

There are, however, stringent restrictions. The guards are forbidden to possess a passport, and any man found to be hiding one will be dealt with summarily. There is no telephone line to the rancho, and although there is a cell tower in the form of a flagpole displaying the national flag, guards are not permitted to have cellular phones and are prohibited from using the phones supplied to the old couple for contact with the Company, each of which is destroyed after a single call. Drug use is certainly forbidden, and the guards may not possess liquor on the property. The large bar lounge in the main house is kept locked when the Boss is away, and on his order the sole cantina in Loma Baja was years ago razed and the village told to stay dry. The guards may drink only on their day off and someplace other than the rancho and Loma Baja, and the old couple is under strict directive to report any man they suspect of being drunk or having booze on the property. On his free day, every guard in his turn usually chooses to go to Ciudad Obregón in one of the compound Jeeps. The city is seventy miles away in a straight line but almost twice that on the odometer because of the serpentine route from the compound to the state highway, a drive of more than three hours. The Hotel Rey in Obregón is available to the guards at no charge. In addition to a fine cantina, the hotel has a resident cadre of whores better-looking than those of Loma Baja—though in Eddie Gato’s estimation not by much.

Eddie and Neto were informed of the rules before they accepted the job, and when they arrived, they and their baggage were searched and the guard captain Jorge Santos advised them to take the rules very seriously. A guard under the influence of drugs or alcohol was an intolerable threat to security. The two guys they were replacing had been dismissed because the old couple had smelled liquor on them and made a phone call. The next day four security men arrived from Obregón and searched the guards’ quarters and found a bottle under a mattress. The guards admitted they’d sometimes take a drink in the room but swore neither of them had ever been drunk on the rancho or in the village. The man in charge only shrugged and he and another man took the guards away. The other two security men stayed behind to fill in for them until permanent replacements were sent. But because the Boss believed that ranch guards should be willing volunteers and would not have anyone assigned there who did not want the job, it was nearly three weeks before Eddie and Neto were selected as the replacements.

Neto said he thought the two guards deserved to lose their jobs but it galled him that the old couple had snitched. He said the guards should have told them they’d break their neck if they ever ratted on them.

Jorge Santos said it would be foolish to threaten the old ones. Like us, they must do as told, he said. And anyway, who do you think they are more afraid of, us or the Boss?

He told Eddie and Neto a story about one of the Boss’s nieces and a Company lawyer who was also an old friend. The niece and the lawyer went on a date one night to a notorious nightclub and both got very drunk. While they were dancing she stripped to her underwear as the crowd cheered her on and she ended up sucking the lawyer’s cock on the dance floor in front of everyone. When word of the incident reached the Boss the next day, he was embarrassed and extremely displeased. The lawyer was having lunch with some friends when he excused himself to go to the men’s room and that was the last anyone saw of him. It was rumored that he had been slowly towed behind a boat in the Sea of Cortéz until the sharks were finished with him. Others said his punishment was in truth not so severe, that he’d only had his dick cut off and was sent to a small Company office in the Yucatán for the rest of his life. As for the girl, it was said she had been placed in a ratty whorehouse in Los Mochis and anybody could have her for ten pesos. She was there for several months and became infected with an awful disease and then was removed to a convent hospital somewhere where she has since spent her days cleaning up shit and vomit.

My point, Jorge said, is this. If the Boss will punish one of his friends that way for displeasing him, if he’ll punish a niece that way, how do you think he would punish the old couple? Punish you?

Eddie Gato asked what became of the fired guards. Jorge said he had heard they were taken to Flores, who told them that because they liked to drink he was going to treat them to all the liquor they could hold. He had them stripped naked and drowned in barrels of rum. The barrels were then sealed with clear glass tops so you could see the men’s upturned faces, their bulging eyes and bared teeth. The barrels were said to be in the courtyard of the Boss’s Culiacán offices where everyone who comes and goes can have a good look. A sign on the barrels says “Drink Responsibly.”

It is easy to understand why there are so few willing to be a rancho guard. Almost the only ones who volunteer for the job are young recruits ready to do anything—live in the desert, forgo liquor and phone communication, make do with unattractive whores—just to be part of the Company. But the Boss understands how hard it can be for a man to live in such isolate conditions for very long, and he permits reassignment to any guard who wants it after a year at the rancho. A guard who likes the job can keep it as long as he wishes, but it seems to Eddie that only a man of reclusive nature and minimal appetites could ever choose to stay here longer than the requisite year.

Like the other guards, Eddie is not a heavy drinker, so the booze restriction is no burden. But unlike the others, he receives no pleasure at all from the village whores and very little from those of the Hotel Rey. Their lack of allure has limited his satisfaction to that of scratching an itch. He keenly misses the sort of girls he has enjoyed since he was thirteen. None of them less than very pretty and all of them sweetly clean. He misses the fun of sexual banter, of seducing and being seduced. But this job was the only ready entry into the sort of life he desires and he took it with the certainty that he could bear its privations until he earned a transfer to a better post. A smuggling crew is his ambition. If he can’t have that at first, well, the job of an enforcer or a bodyguard or collector will suit him too. Even chauffeur to a chief will suffice, if that is the only position open. Any such duty would not only be more exciting than this one but also get him closer to a smuggling branch of the Company. And of course would offer him more interesting cities than Obregón. Larger cities, with their greater numbers of pretty women.

Still, before he can get a transfer he must endure eight more months at the rancho, and the boredom of the job already weighs on him. He no longer even wears his watch, having no desire to remind himself how slowly time is passing.

The Boss

“Rancho” is too thin a term for this retreat at the foot of the western slope of the Sierra Madre. It is a renovated hacienda, an expansive property whose walled compound contains several courtyards and a sprawling main house of two stories with dozens of small suites. The estate’s most exceptional feature is the cold-water stream running down to it from the mountains, so that even in this lower reach of the Sonoran Desert the courtyard trees and gardens are lush and the swimming pool is always full. The summer days are of course very hot, but under the looming sierra the rancho nights are often cool even during the dog days.

The Boss—whom the news media have made widely known as La Navaja but to his people is always and simply the Boss—loves the seclusion here. Loves the clear dry air of such contrast to the mugginess of Culiacán. Loves the black night’s trove of stars and its howls of wolves. He has been heard to rue that his business keeps him from visiting the rancho more often than every few months and only for three or four days at a time. But for all his professed love of the place, his intimates know he could never be at home anywhere other than Culiacán, where he was born and has lived all his life and whose every street and alleyway he is familiar with. Where he gained early fame as the foremost assassin in the state of Sinaloa.

It is a secure haven, this rancho, impossible for anyone to approach, even in the dark, without distant detection. Should he receive warning of an imminent attack, the Boss is certain he can get to the village airfield ahead of the raiders and into the sky and gone. In the event he was somehow cut off from the airstrip, he and his brother would resort to a covert ground route to make their getaway. El Segundo had found it on their last visit when he and a favored girl went out in a Jeep one morning to hunt quail. He came across it behind a low escarpment south of the compound where nobody ever had cause to go except to hunt and he was the only one who ever did. It had once been a donkey track out of the mountains and was not much wider than the Jeep. Curious to see where it led, he followed the rugged route through scrubland and outcrops. It took well over an hour to go twenty-plus miles—the girl bored and unable to nap in her seat for the Jeep’s constant jouncing. The trail finally connected with a dirt road, an old mining run, long unused and badly weathered. But he could drive a little faster on it and it lay mostly straight and an hour later he was merging onto the federal highway heading north to Ciudad Obregón and thirty minutes after that was there.

Eddie

In a raise of dust, the motor caravan comes wheeling through the outsized open gates and into the main courtyard. A black SUV in the lead, followed by a white Lincoln and a half dozen other luxury cars, another black SUV bringing up the rear. All vehicle glass bulletproofed and tinted to obscurity. The rock and rap and narco-corrido music booming within the cars is audible even to Eddie Gato up in the tower.

They park one behind the other in the shade of the palm trees around the circular fountain centered on a statue of a mermaid pouring water from a conch shell. The engines shut off and the music stops and the passengers alight amid much laughter. A few favored chiefs emerge from the Lincoln, underbosses of various sectors of the Company, the men dressed as if for golfing. Eddie easily spots El Tiburón, the Company’s number three man, who keeps his hair cut short to better exhibit the scarred and earless right side of his head. Lesser captains have come in two of the other cars.

The rest of the cars carry only women, young and attractive without exception, their light summer dresses exposing much skin. Servants begin unloading luggage from the car trunks and one of the SUVs.

Eddie scans the guests in vain search of a certain one, and he feels a keen disappointment.

But then there she is. The last to exit the cars. Big sunglasses. Little yellow dress showing lean brown legs. Gleaming black braid to the small of her back.

Miranda.

2

Eddie and Miranda

This is the second party held at the rancho since Eddie Gato has been here, and he has been looking forward to it, notwithstanding that it is only for the invited guests. Even in their off-duty hours the rancho guards and security men are excluded from the fun.

The last party was in late May and spanned four days. Delivery trucks coming and going, the air thick with the aromas of roasting meats. The evenings boisterous with music and gaiety and shrieks from the windows of the upper floor where most of the bedroom suites are. There were periodic shooting contests in the patio behind the bar lounge. The indoor lights and courtyard lamps blazed through the nights.

It had been Eddie Gato’s first look at the Boss, little more than a glimpse as the man and his entourage passed by him in one of the narrow galleries that ran the length of the building walls facing the courtyard. The Boss was tall for a mestizo and walked with an athletic litheness, his dark eyes taking in everything, including Eddie when their glances met for an instant. The man was said to be in his forties but Eddie thought he looked younger. He’d heard that the Boss’s brother had come too, but if Eddie saw him he did so without knowing who he was.

The Miranda girl had also been among the guests, though Eddie did not notice her until the third day, when for the first time since the party began he had the 8 AM to 4 PM shift in the tower. Neto had told him of the treat he had in store. The tower offered a clear view of the swimming pool courtyard, where some of the girls would sunbathe topless in the morning.

He had been in the tower nearly an hour when a group of them appeared in the pool courtyard, all of them in short robes and big hats and sunglasses. The sun had cleared the mountains and the air was already warm. The compound was in a brief period of quiet and you could hear the crooning of doves. At poolside the girls took off their robes and draped them over the lounge chairs and from their bags withdrew lotions and cigarettes and magazines and MP3 players with earphone attachments. They wore thong bikinis and they all but one took off their tops. They applied lotion to their legs and bellies and breasts and by turns to each other’s backs and buttocks. Some lay faceup and some facedown and Eddie kept looking from one to another to another and wished he had more eyes.

The girls seemed oblivious of him. From time to time one looked his way but it was as though he were invisible, and his strenuous smiles were to no effect. And he knew better than to use the binoculars. The day before, one of the girls had glanced up at the tower to see Neto glassing them and she gave him the finger and yelled for him to go fuck his hand. The others laughed. Neto backed away from their line of sight for a while before easing up to the parapet again to peek some more but without the glasses. They evidently did not mind being admired but drew the line at binoculars. From this distance Eddie couldn’t hear them talking but at times caught low ripples of their laughter.

The sun was well up and the heat still rising when they started to gather their things and head back indoors. The music had once again cranked up in the house and it carried over the compound on outdoor speakers. The last of the girls to leave had kept herself somewhat apart from the others and their conversations. She was the only one who had not removed her top, and so at first received the least of Eddie’s attention, though he’d noticed a little pair of indistinct red tattoos on her back, one on each shoulder blade. Now he was wondering what her breasts looked like uncovered. They weren’t large but seemed well formed. She put on her robe and left it unbelted and put on her hat and slung her bag on her shoulder. Then adjusted her sunglasses and looked up at the sky. Then turned her gaze toward him.

His reaction was impulsive. He snatched off his hat so she could clearly see his face and he formed his hand into a pistol and pointed his index finger at her and flicked his thumb as he silently mouthed, Pow. She grinned whitely in the shadow of her hat brim and slapped a hand to her breast as if shot. Then turned and sauntered away.

Eddie leaned over the parapet to keep her in sight all the way to the end of the courtyard. She was almost to the house when she paused at a row of shrubs in bloom with large yellow flowers. She fingered a flower and leaned down to smell it. The gardener came around the corner with his wheelbarrow of tools and nodded a greeting as he maneuvered past her. She spoke and he stopped, and she spoke again and gestured at the flowers. They conversed for a moment and he tipped his hat and she went into the gallery and out of Eddie’s sight.

Neto had told him to expect a second entertainment around mid-afternoon when some of the girls would return for a dip in the pool. And some did, though fewer than in the morning, and absent the one he’d flirted with. There were a handful of men with them this time, guys who had slept off their hangovers and were ready to resume the fun.

This time the girls got completely naked. Their crotches were shaved bare or pubic hair neatly trimmed to fuzzy patches, a cosmetic option Eddie Gato had not seen in the flesh since Jackie Marie’s little auburn arrowhead. But the men kept their swim briefs on even when they joined the girls in the pool for splashing horseplay.

Neto showed up for his shift a half hour early in hope that some of the girls would still be poolside, and he was delighted by the antics taking place. “Madre bendita,” he sighed. Why can’t one girl in the village—or even at the Hotel Rey—look like any of those down there? Were there many this morning?

More than now, Eddie said. I wonder when they sleep.

The old woman said they don’t drink very much, not like the men. They don’t get hungover. And they know how to take naps. Like cats, she said.

The frolickers were in the pool only a short time before getting back out, the girls teasing some of the men for their obvious hard-ons and yipping as the men plucked at their breasts and bottoms. They all put on their robes and hurried off into the house to continue their good time upstairs.

Despite his youth, Eddie Gato has great confidence with women and believes he knows a thing or two about them. He sets great store on humor’s value as a lubricant to carnal cavort. Show him a woman who laughs at a playful come-on and he’ll show you one who is readily amenable to sexual adventure. Which was why, after her reaction to his pantomimed shooting of her at the previous party, the girl with the red tattoos had remained in his mind. The party girls were the best-looking women he had seen in many months and he was heady with the conviction that he could have his way with Miss Tattoos.

The problem was the lack of time to work his way with her. The Boss was hosting a big dinner for all his guests that evening and the party was due to break up the next day. But there would be another party in another two or three months. Eddie figured that if he moved fast he could at least prepare the groundwork with her for the next time.

That evening he went to the gardener’s quarters. The man was plainly nervous at this visit from a guard, and Eddie had to assure him that he wasn’t in any trouble, that he only wanted to know about the girl who had spoken to him in the courtyard. What’d she say to you? Eddie asked. The gardener told him she wanted to know what the flowers were named. She had never seen such flowers and thought they were very beautiful. She was delighted to know they were called delicias. She said it was a perfect name for them.

At noon the next day, as servants were carrying suitcases to the cars and while the Boss and his men had a parting drink together in the bar lounge, Eddie Gato stood in a dim recess near the bottom of the stairway the girls would use to come down from their wing of suites. The M-16 slung on a shoulder would identify him as a guard to any security man who might take note of him.

Then the girls were descending the stairs in a chattering flock and heading off along the gallery toward the main courtyard. He was hoping that she would again trail behind the rest of them. And she did, coming down the steps in no hurry at all, a little swing to her hips as if in time to some tune in her head. Hair in a ponytail and again the big sunglasses. A green strap dress bared her brown shoulders but covered the tattoos on her back. A canvas tote bag dangled from her shoulder.

He stepped out from the wall, one hand behind him, and said, “Buenos días, señorita.”

She turned in a slow whirl like a dance step. Then saw she’d been hailed by a guard and her mouth tightened in irritation. “Y tu qué quieres?” she said.

He pushed back his hat. Remember me? he said. He pointed his index finger at her and clicked his thumb.

Ah yes, of course, she said. “El asesino en la torre.” She showed a small smile. I see you have a rifle this time. Do you intend to shoot me more seriously?

Up close her face was even more striking than he’d thought, even with the sunglasses masking her eyes. Her lips were full and without paint and he imagined himself gently biting the lower one.

Well … what is it? You have a message for me or what?

A message, yes, he said. The message is that I feel very guilty for shooting you and I beg your forgiveness. I wish to give you a token of apology.

Her face stiffened.

He brought his hand out from behind his back to present a posy of yellow flowers. I saw them in a courtyard, he said, and for some reason they made me think of you. They’re called delicias.

What the hell are you doing, kid?

His ears warmed. He didn’t care for being called kid by a girl who didn’t look any older than he was. As I said, I am apologizing for shooting you.

Her head tilted as something behind him caught her notice, and he turned and saw a pair of security men walking toward the courtyard gate. But the men did not look Eddie’s way and then were gone.

He extended the flowers to her. I promise not to shoot you again.

You are very foolish.

How sad that you think my apology foolish. And my promise.

He stepped closer, the flowers now almost touching her breasts. She sighed in exasperation as if at an importunate child, then plucked one of the flowers from the bunch and put it in her tote. Thank you.

As she started to turn away, he said, One thing more.

“Ahora qué?”

What is your name?

She stared at him.

You have a name, no?

She pulled her glasses down a little to give him a searching look over them, her eyes darkly bright. Then slipped the shades back up and said, “Miranda.”

“Yo soy Eduardo.”

“Adiós, Eduardo.”

She walked off with lean hips swaying. And then without slowing made another graceful twirl—a full-circle spin—to glance at him once more, and then her back was to him again and he watched her all the way to the gate.

The whirl-around was the clincher. When they take a look back they’re interested. And when they make such an obvious show of it, well, they’re ready for anything.

Next time, Miranda baby, he thought.

During the following weeks Eddie had often thought of her. His plan was to approach her again and say the right things and make the right moves and get her to slip away from the party at the first opportunity when he was off duty. They would meet someplace—his room, the pool bathhouse, he had various trysting spots in mind—and he would damn well make up for what he’d been missing these past months.

But what if she wasn’t with the party next time? Jorge Santos and Javier had said they’d seen some of the same girls at different parties, but they saw most girls only once and there were new ones every time. If she didn’t come, he would have to start from scratch with some other girl and might again be thwarted by the lack of time.