NIGHT CRUISING (15 page)

Riaro was talking, his
words rapid-fire, unintelligible to Cruise whose Spanish was not
strong enough to allow him to follow the emotional outburst from his
victim. The cafe tables were abandoned. Chairs lay on their backs,
beer bottles overturned and dripping their contents onto the rough
concrete. Molly hung back with her hands over her mouth, little
whimpering sounds coming from her.

He felt it now. That
icy cold aura that settled from his head over his shoulders, gripping
his mighty chest with a vise, invading his loins, tightening the
muscles of his legs.

He reached behind his
head and felt beneath his hair for the knife. Riaro knew about that.
They all knew about Cruise's knife and where he kept it. The Mexican
reacted instantly, dancing away down the street as if on a bed of
blue-white coals, babbling something in Spanish about
another
chance, didn't mean it, would repay Ramirez if given reprieve from
the Avenging Angel tonight
. But there would be no reprieve and
Riaro knew the rules on that.

Once you betrayed
Ramirez you paid the ultimate price.

Cruise had the small
weapon in the open. The handle was hidden in the palm of his hand.
Just the short, razor-sharp blade protruded from his fist. He heard
Molly gasp, but the sound was on the periphery of his senses. It was
overwhelmed and drowned, her frightened sound, by Riaro's retreating
dance steps ringing on the street, and by his heavy breathing, and
his useless patter seeking mercy.

"Come to me,"
Cruise said more to himself than to Riaro. "
Come. To. Me
."

Riaro made a break for
it, running for all he was worth away and down the suddenly deserted
street. Cruise easily caught up with him, his legs being longer, his
strides more powerful. Riaro turned to the assault just as Cruise
closed on him, not many yards from the cafe. Cruise's knife hand shot
out and cut Riaro from his shoulder blade to his gut. His shirt
flapped open in the melee, and blood flowed over his belt. Cruise
knocked the switchblade from his hand with a blow to that arm, and
the knife clattered onto the street.

A car came toward them,
speared them in its headlights. It halted, idling in the center of
the street, outlining the fight as on an eerie stage.

Riaro swung with his
fists and Cruise's knife went up and under his flailing arms, in
close, an embrace of enemies. Cruise sank the small weapon into soft
stomach, lifted upward with force, pierced a lung, and drove toward
the heart. Riaro came off his feet with the lunge, fell back from the
invading steel. Cruise stepped back, his fist sucked from Riaro's gut
with a sickening slurping sound that hung in his ears long after it
had ended.

Riaro fell onto his
back, eyes already glazed. A hole gaped in his midsection pumping
blood and intestines. The lights from the car held steady on the
scene, making the blood look black as oil as it coursed from the dead
man onto the street.

Cruise stood with the
knife in his bloody fist. He looked at it, shivered, and sighed.

All he could think
about was getting to a place where he could have water run over his
body to cleanse him of this filth. But there was something yet he
must do. He waved in agitation at the stopped car. It backed up and
made a U-turn in the center of the street, the driver gunning the
engine and squealing the tires to gain traction as it roared away.

In the resultant
darkness, stars pirouetted before Cruise's eyes. He moved forward
until he could make out Riaro's sprawled body. He stooped and felt in
his pockets. Withdrew his wallet. Took a thick wad of American money,
threw the few pesos on the still body. When Cruise stood again and
glanced at Molly, he saw she had slumped into one of the cafe chairs,
her face in her hands. A few of the earlier patrons of the cafe
wandered out, but didn't linger. They scurried down the sidewalks in
both directions, anywhere away from the gringo, Cruise Lavanic, the
hired killer Ramirez visited upon the wicked.

Molly probably hadn't
seen him rob the dead man, Cruise decided. If she did, he didn't
care. He had a story and a reason for that too, if she demanded it.
But why would she question him when he'd just saved her from a
scumbag ready to ravage her?

He stuffed the money
into his front pocket. He stepped over the curb. He stood a moment
looking down at Molly's bowed head. He resisted an urge to pat her
with his bloody hand, reassure her the way a parent would reassure a
mourning child. "I'll be back out in a minute," he told her
instead.

She was crying, great
hiccuping cries, as if her heart were broken.

Cruise pushed inside
the cantina and went behind the bar to the sink. There he washed his
hands, his knife, and lifting his hair, replaced it on the Velcro
patch. A few idlers watched darkly from corners, but looked elsewhere
when Cruise glanced their direction. "Don't fuck with Ramirez.
When are you jerks gonna learn?" he asked.

Outside again, he took
Molly's arm and lifted her to her feet. He guided her to the hotel,
said nothing in the elevator to the fourth floor where their rooms
were. In her room, he placed her on the bed. He moved to the bathroom
and closed the door, stripped from the bloody clothes, and stepped
beneath cold water. Cleansed, he slipped on his slacks, left his
blood-soaked shirt on the floor, and went barefoot to where Molly lay
on the bed. He sat in the chair nearby.

The sliver of moon rode
past the top of the hotel window and he waited. While Molly cried, he
waited. While his heart slowed to a gentle and contented rhythm...He
waited.

Cruise let the moon
move past the top of the window before he approached Molly. She had
stopped crying. Silence hung like a heavy veil between them. He
leaned over the bed. Touched her shoulder. Slowly she lifted her head
from where she had it cradled in her arms against the coverlet. "I
want to go back to Texas," she said in a small voice.

"We're going.
We'll leave tomorrow."

"Good." She
began to turn her face away.

"I want you to
come with me somewhere, it won't take long."

"Now?"

"Please."

Molly raised herself
wearily to the side of the bed. Cruise moved back. "I'll go to
my room for a clean shirt. Wait for me at the elevator."

He gathered his shoes
and socks, his bloodied shirt, and left the room. Minutes later he
joined Molly. She stood looking at the carpet, avoiding his eyes.

"Where are we
going?" she asked. ..I don't feel well. I'm tired." She
sounded grouchy the way a weary child began acting out of sorts when
it has not had enough rest. The pretenses between them were falling
away. All the walls disappearing.

"I know, but this
won't take long, I promise." In the lobby he guided her out the
door, down the steps of the hotel, and along the sidewalk. Most
inhabitants had gone to bed, few cantinas were open, many of the
lights doused in the shops and houses. It was the deepest part of the
night, the time when even the cats had ceased their caterwauling and
the ravenous dogs their garbage poaching.

"Cruise...?"

"Go ahead,"
he said. "Get it off your chest. you'll feel better."

That small
encouragement was all she needed. "Didn't it bother you at all?
How could you just ...?"

"Kill someone?"

"Yes."

"He would have
taken you off to some filthy place and done unspeakable things to
you." He paused, let that thought sink in. "He pulled a
knife first."

"What was he
saying to you in Spanish?"

"I don't remember
now."

He was leading her away
from the town center past storage buildings and loading docks toward
the edge of the dry desert. He saw the familiar black spindly trees
dying of thirst, their skeletal arms thrust into the sky. They threw
long moon shadows into the arroyos. Humped anthills dotted the sandy
earth as if the land had erupted with an infectious disease. Low
clumps of cacti spread their flat, spiked limbs along the ground like
clawed alien sea creatures crawling along the floor of an ocean.

Cruise knew his way. He
often visited this desolate spot he intended to show her.

"Where are we? Why
are we leaving town? Cruise?"

"Take it easy.
It's just a place I want to show you."

"What kind of
place?"

"A cemetery."

Molly halted so
abruptly that Cruise was a yard past her before he also stopped. He
looked back, let out an exasperated breath. She was so much trouble.
The damn kids were always so much trouble. "What's the matter?"
As if he didn't know. Everyone got spooked around graves.

"A cemetery? You
want to take me to a graveyard? Now, in the middle of the night,
after... after you...after that man..?"

"Look, Molly,
nothing's going to happen to you, okay?

Didn't I just prove
that back in town? I didn't let that bastard haul you off, did I? I
think you ought to trust me."

"But, Cruise, why
a cemetery? I'm so tired. I just saw a man killed right before my
eyes, don't you understand?"

"Try to keep your
voice down. Have a little respect."

Molly glanced around
the area suspiciously. "We're already in it?" She moved
closer to him. "Oh, God, we are."

He began stepping
carefully across the slightly raised mounds of sandy graves. Some of
them were ringed with rocks bleached white from the sun. He trailed
his fingertips along the tops of rough-hewn granite headstones that
leaned precariously this way and that. He heard Molly following at
his heels.

"Dead's not so
bad," he said in a quiet voice. "You're young. You don't
know. You think dying's the worst thing that could ever happen to
someone. You have to make friends with death, Molly." He dropped
his voice even lower. This is how he sometimes talked to himself, the
way he was instructing her, a confident tone because he knew what he
was talking about, a reverent one because the subject was the most
serious man ever discussed.

"If my enemy had
killed me tonight instead of me killing him. I'd be here, in this
ground, tomorrow. Before the roosters were crowing they'd have me
under six feet of dirt. But by then it wouldn't matter, Molly, not at
all. It's not dying that's frightening. It's living. It's how you
choose to live. There are so many ways to lose yourself, to sell your
soul. But once you're dead, all the choices are gone, it's over then.
Dead is peace. Life is chaos."

"Cruise, don't
talk like that. I'm scared. Let's go back."

He spun around and took
her into his arms, drew her into an embrace, held her tight. She
struggled for just a moment, then quietened so that he felt her heart
stampeding against his chest.

"Molly, there's
nothing to fear."

He felt her warm breath
through the cloth of his shirt. She hadn't moved. She breathed
through her mouth. Her heart still raged against the imprisonment,
but she was doing a fine job of suppressing all instinct to push away
or run from him. He loved her then completely, unconditionally, loved
every molecule of her, would have died in her place, would have taken
down dragons, ruined kingdoms, thrust swords through any and all
warriors to protect her.

"Sshhh," he
whispered. "Slow now. I told you there's nothing to be afraid
of. Not me. Not this place. Not the dead. Not the past because it
won't haunt you, Molly, unless you let it."

She began to tremble.
It radiated outward from inside where her heart could not pace
itself. Her small arms shook, her back, her legs, her head on the
fragile stem of her neck. He pulled her even closer, wrapped his big
arms around her slight body so that she would not fall from his
grasp.

"Sshhh. Hush.
Hush. Get hold of it. Catch that thought that's trying to run away
with you and hold it down. I brought you here so you'd understand.
You cried so hard. So long. And for what? You didn't even know him.
What if it had been me? Would you have cried that way?"

He didn't expect an
answer. She couldn't have answered had she wanted. He knew what she
must feel, must think. They were at the turning point now. If he'd
let her stay in the hotel room without trying to reach her, she'd
have been lost to him forever. Despite how the murder should have
appeared to her, she had recognized something of his real purpose;
she knew in an instinctive way that what he had done was not entirely
connected with saving her from a savaging. She had reached
conclusions he thought beyond her maturity. If she allowed it, he
could forestall a disaster: her burial in this foreign ground.

"Molly? I'm not
going to hurt you and I'm not going to let you be hurt. Do you
believe that?" His practiced lies came so easily.

They were at the
crossroads, her answer pivotal. In the next seconds what transpired
depended entirely on the girl in his arms. He would either lift his
hand to his hair and for the second time this night withdraw the
knife, or he would loosen his hold and escort her back to the hotel.
Life hung in the balance, in the eternity of time between his words
and hers. If she knew the severity of the situation she'd not just
tremble, but quake so hard she'd shake herself apart before his eyes.

"Molly? Do you
believe me?"

A night breeze ruffled
her hair. She had stopped breathing. He could still feel her heart
throbbing against his body. Must he stop its beating? Must he do away
with her so soon, oh, so soon before he had even found a way to know
her? That would be such a pity, nearly more than he could bear. Only
once before did a witness of his get to him the way Molly was now. He
had wanted time with her, a relationship however strange and warped,
however fated to end. But she had given the wrong answer to his
question. And she had died sooner than she should have or needed to.