Burning Midnight (28 page)

She shook her head, an eminently sad gesture that reminded me of Zorborón just before he'd ordered Nolo Suiz to wring a rooster's neck. They were the same person, chained to a set of values created by themselves. “All this for a better world.”

“Worse has been done for less. Zorborón out of the picture,
El Hermano
too, the Maldados and Zapatistas neutralized; they hanged John Brown for insurrection, but he's a hero to the anti-slavery movement. If I were you I'd retain Rafael Buho. He's a good lawyer, just unscrupulous enough to know how to put virtue to good use. By the time he's finished you'll look like Delia of Detroit, the patron saint of immigrants and hopeless cases.”

“I never wanted that. If I were successful and no one remembered me, that would be all right. A lot of good has come from bad. Christ knew that. Whether the good was good enough is up to Him to decide.”

The world kept turning, as it will. Little pieces of something clinked musically on the roof, like a chandelier shedding its pendants; freezing rain. The police cruisers would need to slow down on icy corners.

“He was dead when I got there,” she said, “Siete was. Anyway, he wasn't breathing.”

I wasn't either. I hadn't realized I'd stopped until that moment. I took care of it with a long intake followed by a gust of pent-up air. But I kept my eyes on that bag.

“It didn't matter,” she said. “I was pretty sure I'd find him passed out; that was his natural state near the end. If Guerrera was there, or anyone else, I'd have called it off and tried again later. As the angel of Mexicantown I didn't need an excuse to visit anywhere in the neighborhood. I might even save a soul, and who's to know what I was carrying in my bag?” Her hand came out of it wrapped around a pistol no larger than a novelty cigarette lighter.

Size didn't matter: the same .25 caliber had been enough for Zorborón. A professional would have ditched it, but murder is almost always committed by amateurs, and who would have frisked her?

“Don't bother to get up,” she said. “I'm no lady.”

I sat gripping the arms of the rocking chair while she gathered her legs and pushed herself to her feet.

“Make yourself at home—please. Count to ten slowly before you leave. I'll be counting on the other side of the door.”

“Pure pulp,” I said, “and from a saint. There must be something better in the New Testament.”

“Try quoting it in Mexicantown. See how far you get.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. Where does the angel of Mexicantown go when she's on the run?”

“Call it animal instinct. I'm not a martyr, no matter what you might think.”

I tightened my grip to steady the rocker and rose.

The little square pistol followed me. “Don't get up, I said.”

“I'm not Zorborón or Siete, Delia. So far everything you've done you did for what you saw as right. Why be inconsistent now?” I held out my hand for the gun.

She was bolted to the floor, the semiautomatic grafted to her hand. With her clothes and face smudged she looked like a grown-up Little Orphan Annie, if Annie had wandered into
Dick Tracy.

I kept my right hand where it was, palm up. That was my gun hand; but the Smith & Wesson was behind my right hip bone. I might as well have checked it at the bus station. The first time I needed it, really needed it, it was out of reach.

I was watching the hand holding the pistol, not the woman who belonged to the hand. Against the advice of TV detectives I ignored her face, her eyes. She wasn't gripping the trigger with her eyes. I was watching when the rubber covering her index finger creased at the joint, applying pressure to the trigger.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

Despite its larger size, a .25 doesn't pack the same punch as a .22; it all has to do with percussion and velocity. Aiming is mostly a matter of luck because of the lightness of the frame and a design intended more for easy concealment than target shooting. Any ballistics expert will tell you your chances are better standing still and taking the bullet in the body than making a rash move that might put it in your eye or nick a major artery.

Any ballistics expert, that is, who has never faced one in the hand of a killer who's struck twice and hasn't anything to lose.

I lunged toward the weapon, grasping at her wrist to jerk it up; but I chose the wrong leg to propel me, the bad one, and lost a tenth of a second I couldn't afford. A slug needs a lot less than that at close range. I was six inches short for the time. A lifetime.

The Lord had switched sides. She didn't squeeze the trigger.

She flinched at the sudden movement, but her finger loosened—deliberately, I thought later—and I scooped the pistol out of her hand with no resistance on her end.

For a while I stood there, breathing as heavily as if I'd run a marathon, the small flat gun lying in my palm like a compass. She seemed not to be breathing at all. There was no expression on her face and nothing behind it. I watched her pupils contract as if she were on a heavy-duty drug. For a moment her arm stayed where it was, bent at the elbow with her hand gripping a phantom weapon, then slid slowly down to her side.

The physical threat was over; now came the chaser. I was looking at her face now, at the blood sliding out from under the skin in a flat sheet, and anticipated the moment when it stopped supplying oxygen to her brain. I dropped the gun into my side pocket and stepped forward in time to catch her. She was a tall woman and strong-boned; a disc jinked in my back and the tendons strained behind my knees, but I kept us both off the floor. I lowered her to the rug. She was as gray as ash. I inventoried her vital signs. They were all in place.

I took out the pistol and sniffed the barrel. It smelled like a spent match, a little stale after a couple of days. I sprang the clip. Two gone, counting the one that jacked itself into the chamber after she shot
El Tigre.
I put it back together and returned it to my pocket.

Standing there with my feet straddling her I got out my cell, dropped it, and picked it up. I cleared the screen twice before I got the number right. Now that the thing was finished I had trouble focusing on the numbers. My fingers were as nimble as hooves.

Alderdyce answered as politely as always. “What now?”

“Did I interrupt your devotions?”

“Just speak.”

“It was Sister Delia.”

“Who says?”

“She does.” I told him the rest.

“The fuck you say.”

“We already talked about it.”

“I was counting on you being wrong.”

“Me too.”

“I never thought she'd pull a gun.”

“Me too.”

“But I wouldn't think she'd miss.”

I started to say, “Me too” again, then started over. “It turned out she cares a lot more about protecting the neighborhood than herself.”

“Dumb luck.”

“The only kind I ever have, not counting bad.”

“Twenty-five, you said?”

“Yeah. One fired. My prints are all over it, but I didn't touch the shells.”

“How is she?”

“She pulled a faint. Beat me to it.”

“Ambulance?”

I looked down at her. At that moment she stirred, drawing an arm across her face. A sigh slid out. It was that moment of awakening when all was sweet and fresh; then you remembered. Her breath caught at that point of fracture. Her head came up, the eyes clear and fixed on mine. No hostility there, or fear. Nothing there at all.

“Squad car,” I said. “She doesn't like ambulances.”

“Lucky break, considering how she treats things she doesn't like. Hell,” he said then. “Now I've got to kick Guerrera. I can't make a suspect stick.”

“This one will.”

He went away for a moment. Information got exchanged almost out of earshot. Then his voice came back strong. “That was thin even for a hunch, having Charla test that bill spike.”

“Thinner than that. The lab didn't find anything on it worth reporting. I never told Delia what it was they tested. For all I know she scratched her car with a bobby pin. Who keeps track of bobby pins?”

“Only you would try lying to a nun.”

“I'm not Catholic. As far as I'm concerned it's the same as lying to the police.”

A short silence on his end, scratchy with office static. “Job's over, Walker. Give it a little time before you shove the thorn back into the lion's paw.”

As I put away the phone she started to sit up. I stepped clear, then helped her to her feet and over to the rocker. She wasn't as hard to transport when she was helping. She looked up at me, her fists closed on the chair arms. Her pupils were back and her color was normal, not counting the purple depressions like bruises under her eyes. “That was the police?”

“John Alderdyce. You know him.”

She unclasped a fist long enough to make a gesture as meaningless as what I'd said. “I heard what you said. Was it the oldest trick in the book?”

“Depends on the book. Mad?”

“Disappointed. Talk around the neighborhood is Delia knows the street. I used a paper clip,” she said. “One of the big ones. I don't know what I did with it afterward. Threw it away, probably. If I'd paid attention I wouldn't have fallen for that stunt.”

“Plenty more where that came from.”

She looked down at her hands and seemed to realize for the first time she was still wearing the filthy gloves. She stripped them off. They made a nasty sound, like someone being scalped. She let them fall to the floor in a heap, flexed her fingers where they stuck out of the bandages. The gauze looked clean. “What's next?”

“A drink, if you've got one.”

“I meant for me.”

“So did I.”

“Tequila. In the wardrobe.”

“Tequila, seriously?”

“What did you expect here? I survive on the barter system. You never know what you can get in a trade. Medical supplies, for instance.”

“Liquor counts.”

The bottle of Cuervo Gold stood in a corner behind dresses and slacks on hangers. It was nearly full. I looked around. “Glasses?”

She shook her head. “Dixie cups in the bathroom down the hall. The landlady keeps a nice antiseptic house.”

I didn't want to leave her. “Any strong opinions about drinking straight from the bottle?”

“You know my strong opinions.”

I uncapped it and handed it to her. “No circus like with Molina,” I said. “No TV cameras, at least not tonight. No one's going to look good in the headlines on this one.”

She looked at the bottle as if she'd never held it before, then tilted it up; coughed a little, made a face, and swigged again. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, leaving a black streak across the lower half of her face. She saw the mess then. “Let a lady spruce up for her perp walk?”

“There a window in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.” I gave her my handkerchief.

“There's a hand mirror on the dresser.”

I found it on the chipped marble top, an antique in a yellowed celluloid frame with a fat handle, the initials C.S. on the back. For the first time I wondered what Delia's name was before she joined the Order. She wet a corner of the handkerchief with tequila and scrubbed at the streaks on her face. She combed her short hair with her fingers, gave me back the mirror and handkerchief, and passed over the bottle. “Gift from a neighbor,” she said. “He thinks Cana was Cancún and Jesus turned the Gulf of Mexico into tequila.”

“Who told him that?” I tossed aside the hanky and drank. It tasted no better than the last time I'd tried it, but taste wasn't the object. Just for the hell of it I looked at myself in the hand mirror. Some stains don't wipe off.

“It might have been me,” she said. “The Church doesn't swing the weight here it does back home, not with the second generation. A kid who can't pick out Israel on a map needs a connection he can understand. How long will I be in prison?”

“Ask Buho. When I recommended him I meant it.”

“I know him, too. Another vulture.”

“You know everybody. Don't knock vultures. I'm sort of related to them.”

“We were talking about prison.”

“You were talking about prison. You may never see the inside of one. Whether you even stand trial may not have anything to do with whether you plead guilty.”

“You mean I'm incompetent.”

“I'd never call you that.”

“Crazy.”

“Sister, you're buggier than a Salvation Army mattress.”

“That's cruel. Even if I did point a gun at you.”

“You firebombed two places, committed one murder and may have committed a second, in order to save the neighborhood you set on fire. You tell me.”

“How can I, if I'm crazy?”

“Yeah, that's a poser.”

“Amos?”

“Still here.”

“I couldn't shoot you.”

“I know.”

“Did you know before?”

“Sure.”

“You're lying. I can always tell when someone's lying.”

“You can take the nun out of the Church.” I wet my lips. They were dryer than usual for early spring. “You almost took me out with Siete.”

She paled again, and I thought she was going to pull another faint. But at least this time I wouldn't have to catch her.

She didn't. “I never intended anyone else to get hurt. I overcompensated after the last time, left too much air in the bottle. Making this one took twice as long because of my hands. If I'd thought—”

“You didn't. I said you were buggy. Anyway it takes three times to make a pro.”

“Who says?”

“I just did. I say a lot of things trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Maybe it takes more. Maybe there's no set number; formulas are for math. It's the only true science. But most amateurs never make it past three.”