Thin Air Part 30

Chapter 42.

I said, "Lisa, it's Spenser."

She said, "Get away from me." And her voice was almost a growl.

I said, "Frank sent me. I'm here to take you out."

Chollo turned the light so it shone on my face and we stood soundless for a moment while the house creaked and moaned and the gunfire popped and rippled around us.

Then she said, "Jesus G.o.d!" And I heard the pipe clatter to the floor.

Chollo turned the light back and she was walking toward me, trying to see more clearly.

"Frank's friend?" she said. "You were at the wedding. You and Susan."

"That's me," I said. "This is my friend Chollo."

"Oh my G.o.d," she said. "Oh my G.o.d. Where's Frank? Is Frank all right?"

"He's all right. We'll take you to him."

"Oh my G.o.d," she said.

And then she was in front of me and I put my arms around her and she pressed against me and began to shake.

Chollo said, "We better be moving on."

I turned her toward the door and put my left arm around her. As we moved out of the room, I took the Browning out and held it in my right hand and c.o.c.ked it. A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling and I felt the floor s.h.i.+ft beneath my feet the way the deck of a boat s.h.i.+fts as the boat heels on a wave. At the head of the stairs, Chollo stopped. I heard him say, "Whoops."

About halfway up the stairs we were starting down was Deleon, a short automatic in his hand, and behind him Ramon Gonzalez and five or six others. Chollo screamed at them in rapid Spanish and started down the stairs. I pushed Lisa ahead of me and came down after her. Deleon paused and Chollo screamed at him again in Spanish and the men behind him turned and ran.

"The house is collapsing, we're saving Lisa," Chollo said very rapidly to me.

"Lisa," Deleon shouted. Chollo said something urgent and Deleon turned as Chollo reached him.

"Bring Lisa this way," he said. And headed down the stairs. Water was flooding down the stairwell walls now, thick with mud, rank with its pa.s.sage through the decaying superstructure of the old house. The stairs began to heave a little as we went down them, and the floor in the front hallway, slippery with muddy water, was buckling beneath us. Several of Deleon's men wrenched at the front door. It was jammed by the tilt of the building. Above us I could hear rafters, floor joists snapping. Deleon reached the front door, threw the men aside and tugged on it. It still wouldn't give. The men scattered frantically. I stepped up beside Deleon and got hold of the door, my left hand over his on the k.n.o.b, and we yanked it open. One of the hinges ripped loose as we did it, and the door hung crazily inward. Everyone tried to go through it at once. Deleon turned and shoved his men aside. In a panic one of them tried to squeeze by him and Deleon shot him in the forehead. Then he turned and braced his back against the surging crowd and said "Lisa," and I shoved her past him, ahead of me out the front door and into the rain. Chollo was behind me and Deleon behind him. Somewhere in the darkness car headlights came on and the street was blinding bright, glistening in the suddenly silvery rain. Behind us more of Deleon's men poured out of the building, as more timbers tore with a wrenching splinter. The left corner, where Lisa had been a few moments ago, collapsed slowly, like an elephant dying, and as it broke up it fell faster until it came down with a roar. At the naked end of the building, one piece of plywood, hanging by a single nail, swayed back and forth above the rubble where plaster dust rose thickly in the wet air.

"When you spring someone," Chollo said, "you spring someone."

The crowd of confused gunmen crowded around us, squinting into the bright headlights. The firing had stopped. Lisa stood pressed against me, and as Deleon came toward us, she pressed in hard behind me.

"Lisa," Deleon said.

She moved behind me. I turned a little, keeping myself between him and her.

"Get away from her," Deleon said.

He moved to go around me. I could feel Lisa's hands clutching at the back of my jacket. From the corner of my eye, I saw Chollo step a little away from us to improve his angle, the big automatic hanging loosely by his side. Deleon got the inhuman flicker in his eyes again. He put a hand on my left shoulder and tried to spin me out of the way. I didn't spin. He was startled. He pushed harder. Still I was in his way. He brought his right hand up with the short automatic in it.

Chollo said, "Spenser."

I slapped the gun aside with my left hand and hit him solidly on the beezer with a straight overhand right. Blood spurted from his nose, he stepped backwards and sat suddenly down on the glistening street, in the glare of the headlights. The gun fell from his hand and I kicked it out of sight toward the cars into the darkness. I had my Browning out and c.o.c.ked by the time Chollo shot Ramon Gonzalez. Gonzalez spun full around, took three running steps toward the collapsing house, and fell face forward, his arms out ahead of him. His two pearl-handled pistols skittered along the wet asphalt and banged against the curb. For a moment there was no sound but the echoing silence that always comes after gunfire. The troops were confused. They didn't know what side we were on. Were we rescuing Lisa from the building or from them? Their fortress was collapsing, their chief pistolero had just been shot by a guy come to deal with the boss, and the boss had just got knocked on his keister by an Anglo who had come with the guy who was supposed to make the deal. Beyond the headlights their ritual enemy had gathered and they were exposed to his rifles with no cover. I was in front of Lisa, and Chollo, moving so lightly his feet seemed to reach down toward the ground, had moved behind us to face the crowd from that direction.

With his hands pressed against his nose and the blood running between his fingers, Deleon screamed "No disparen. La mujer. No disparen."

Behind me Chollo translated softly, "Don't shoot the woman."

Deleon felt around on the ground for his gun, didn't find it, and got to his feet, trying to stop the blood with his left hand.

"This is not your husband," he said to Lisa.

Lisa pressed closer against my back.

"No," she said, "a friend."

With a loud, wrenching crash another piece of the tenement collapsed in on itself, cascading mud and water down through the mounting rubble, damping the cloud of plaster dust that tried to rise.

"We're taking her out," I said. "No one wants her hurt."

"You are not from Joseph Broz," Deleon said slowly. Like his troops, it had all come to him too quickly. He was trying to sort it out.

"No."

"And Mister del Rio?"

"Mister del Rio don't give a f.u.c.k about you, Luis," Chollo said. "Excuse me, ma'am."

Deleon nodded slowly. He was now holding his left sleeve against his nose and having some luck slowing the blood. He looked at me as if he was starting to get it. Behind him I saw the women and children come out from one of the alleys beyond the next tenement. They crouched in the street, the children pressed in close to the women. Several of the men stood in front of them the way buffalo bulls circle the calves.

"It was a trick to get in."

"Yes."

"To get Lisa."

"Yes. Now we're going to walk away from here, past those cars."

"No."

"Yeah. We got her. We got you if we want to. Freddie Santiago is out there with fifty men. You got no place to take cover, no place to run. You start and everyone dies. It'll be a bloodbath."

"You would leave me?" he said to Lisa.

"You'll have to kill me to keep me."

"And if I let you go?"

"We walk, you walk," I said.

"And Freddie Santiago?"

I raised my voice. "Senor Santiago," I said.

From the darkness beyond the headlights, Santiago's voice said, "I am here."

"The deal is we walk, they walk."

"I do not care about los campesinos," Santiago's voice said. "But Luis comes out with you."

"Peasants," Chollo translated quietly.

There was a murmur among los campesinos, the specifics of which were unclear but the general thrust of which was disapproval.

"That wasn't our deal," I said.

"You were going to take him out for me," Santiago's voice said.

"I didn't need to," I said. "The house fell in instead."

"I still want him taken out," Santiago's voice said. "You are the one who is changing the deal."

"I don't like the deal," I said.

"You are in no position to like it or not like it, Mr. Spenser," Santiago's voice said. "Either he comes with you, or we simply cut everyone down, you and the woman included."

Most of Deleon's troops had backed away from the confrontation by now and gathered in front of the women and children. Some of the children were crying. I had the Browning steady on Deleon's stomach. He looked at Lisa, then he looked at the trapped huddle of men, women, and children near the alley mouth. Fish in a barrel. Finally he turned his head back and stared at me for a minute. I stared back and we both knew what the deal was going to have to be. Deleon's gaze s.h.i.+fted to Lisa.

"I was going to let you go," he said. She didn't answer.

"It is why I had your clothes brought to you."

She said nothing. He kept his eyes on her for a long time.

From the darkness Santiago's voice spoke again. "Are you coming or not? I have waited a long time to catch Luis Deleon. I don't wish to wait any longer."

"Time," I said to Deleon.

Still looking at Lisa he called out in Spanish to the men and women now packed into the mouth of the alley. Chollo, as the troops had drifted toward the alley, had come around to face them and now stood beside me.

"He says he's going with Santiago," Chollo translated. "Says no shooting."

I nodded. Deleon straightened and adjusted his costume. The open silk s.h.i.+rt was dark with the blood from his nose, and some of the blood had dried on his face.

"It was not just craziness," he said to Lisa. "I always loved you."

"It doesn't matter," Lisa said.

Deleon nodded. He started to say something, then he stopped. I think his eyes began to tear. He turned quickly away.

"We could make a fight," Chollo said.

"And lose," I said.

"There are worse things," Chollo said.

"We're here to rescue Lisa," I said.

"Sure," Chollo said.

Deleon looked up at the dark sky for a moment, the rain hitting his face, then he began to walk toward the cars. We followed him at a distance of maybe thirty feet, Lisa between us, her right hand in mine, the Browning in my right. On the other side of her, I could hear Chollo's breath. His lips were barely parted and the air hushed over them. Chollo had his gun upright, the barrel laid against his right cheek. He was so concentrated in the moment that he moved like some sort of hunting animal as we walked toward the darkness beyond the headlights.

Deleon stopped again, just at the front b.u.mper of one of the cars. The rain was pelting down, soaking pinkish into the dried blood on his s.h.i.+rt front. He looked back at Lisa.

"I would have let you go," he said and stepped into the darkness beyond the cars.

Behind us a kind of sigh came from the San Juan Hill people crowded into the alley as he disappeared. Then silence. Then the sharp snap of a handgun and then nothing at all.

Lisa said, "My G.o.d."

I put my left arm around Lisa and we walked in past the cars. As our eyes adjusted, we saw a crowd of armed men. Chollo had moved ahead of us now, pus.h.i.+ng through them. On the ground, facedown with the rain beating on its back, was the corpse of Luis Deleon. Chollo glanced at it briefly and moved on to where our car was parked. Freddie Santiago stood next to the body, wearing a Burberry trench coat and a soft hat covered by one of those clear plastic rain protectors. I heard Lisa's breath catch.

"No need to look," I said to her.

"I can look."

We stopped. Lisa took a step away from me and stared down at the body. The rain had plastered her hair to her head and soaked her tee s.h.i.+rt. n.o.body spoke.

"The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Lisa said finally, her voice shaky, and turned away, and leaned against my left side. I put my arm around her again.

"I guess you've got Proctor," I said to Santiago.

"And you have the girl," he said. "It's been a pleasure doing business."

Chollo had gotten into the car and left the back door open. I heard him start the motor.

"Not for me," I said and walked with Lisa to the car and got in and took her home.

Driving south toward Boston, the car was heading straight into the rain, and it flooded against the winds.h.i.+eld. The dancer drove. She was in back with the big man. In the car she pulled away from his arm. It was protective, but it was encircling as well and she could not stand to be contained even that much. They spoke. But nothing they said seemed to penetrate the crystalline stillness she was inside of. There was a conversation on the car phone. The heavy wet sound of traffic hummed in the background as they drove. Then the dark highway got brighter and they were inside of 128. Then the rain stopped and the winds.h.i.+eld cleared. They rolled through the suburbs, where the lighted windows showed along the highway and people were living reasonable lives. The highway elevated and soon they were in the city back of the north station and then they were on the central artery. Soon they pulled in under the canopy of a hospital and she was out of the car and in the lobby. There were policemen there, some she remembered knowing. Elevator, people in the corridor, white dresses, white coats, a room where Frank sat up in the bed, clean shaven with his hair combed. She stopped inside the door. There were people in the room. The big man said something. The people lingered. He said something again, harder, and people left the room. The big man went with them. Alone. She walked slowly to the bed and looked down at her husband. He spoke. She spoke. She felt tears behind her eyes. She sat on the bed beside him and he put out his right arm and she slowly sank inside it and pressed her face against his chest and closed her eyes and saw nothing else. Later she would wonder if she'd hurt him, pressing so hard against his chest. But if she did, he didn't say so, and his arm around her held firm.

Chapter 43.