Nothing Short of Dying (7 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
e were in a newly acquired vehicle and headed on a looping route north, away from the junkyard, then back east toward Rifle via the large, looming hills of the Hogback. I was in the driver's seat, Chopo on the passenger side. We passed by hobby ranches, with their token horses and cows, then into narrow canyons filled with both luxury and ramshackle cabins. Chopo's car was too big a target, so we'd borrowed a run-of-the-mill white Jeep Cherokee from César's lot. We left just before the sirens of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances caught up with us at the junkyard.

“Sorry about your truck, man,” Chopo said, finally breaking the strained silence.

He'd found the truck burning. Hot metal warping and popping, flames ten feet in the air—and the heat coming off it was enough to keep even Chopo from getting too close. He located the two overstuffed, backpack-type packs and the little bag hidden away from the truck, and it took almost all of his immense strength to drag them back to the Jeep. I wondered how Allie had managed to move them.

“It wasn't much of a truck,” I said. I was more remorseful about the things inside it: almost all of my new, warm gear,
the accessories for my retirement plan. I would guess that other people feel the same sense of loss when their houses go up in flames, or the stock market drops and they lose money in their 401(k).

“You got enough junk in those bags,
cabrón
?” Chopo asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Thanks for that. No sign of Allie?”

“None. That white boy who ratted us out said Jefe's guys took her, right?”

“That's what he said. I hoped he was lying.”

“Hombre ain't gonna lie when he's bleeding out on the ground.”

“You saw that, huh?”

Chopo nodded. “You can be a cold
pendejo
sometimes.”

I shrugged. “I've got two
women depending on me.” Inside, though, I wondered if every time I took it that far I gave up a little piece of who I was.

We rolled into Rifle on a network of small, gravel back roads. We had an address but no idea where it was. I found myself wishing I had Allie's fancy phone with that map gizmo, and then I remembered taking a phone off the dead kid who'd given me the address. I fished it out of my pocket and saw that it was one of the newer models. “Hey, Chopo,” I said, handing him the phone. “You know how to bring up a map on one of these things?”

Chopo smiled. “It's called an app, Barr.” He started pushing buttons. “Okay,” he said a minute later. “I got Fir Court. Keep going straight, then take your next right.” He kept directing me until we were on a county road that ran north of Jefe's neighborhood. The road ran east and west directly below a hill to the south. Fir Court and a bunch of other tree-named streets were on top of the hill. A gully ran straight south across from a dilapidated ranch house and would run
directly underneath Jefe's backyard, if the address the kid had given me was correct.

It was almost full dark now, the streetlights looking like halos on the top of the hill. We backed next to the run-down ranch house and killed the headlights. The hill between us and Fir Court was covered with tall sagebrush and a few dying cottonwoods in the gully. The ranch house, the hill, and the gully were the only open land left in the area that hadn't been gobbled up by developers or smacked into modernity with renovations.

Chopo stayed in the Jeep while I used the failing light and dark shadows as cover to quietly check the house. No cars. No animals. The fences were all down and the last tracks in the dirt drive were those of deer and a few kids on bikes. A sign hung in one of the cracked windows, and I read it before going back to the Jeep.

“Anyone home?” Chopo asked.

“All clear.”

“How you know?”

“Well, I checked the tracks, listened for any noise, and used a couple of skills I picked up in the wild.”

Chopo rolled his eyes.

“That,” I said, “and the sign in the window says the building is condemned and is the property of the town of Rifle.”

Chopo smiled. “You gonna make a run at Jefe, huh?”

“Through his daughter,” I said, getting out of the Jeep.

“How we gonna do this?”

“I figure we coax the daughter out of the house and one of us grabs her. The other covers from somewhere on that hill over there with a rifle. We bring her back here and call for a switch.”

“You think it'll work?”

“Probably not. But that's all I can come up with.”

“It's kidnapping, you know. . . . Just saying.”

“Yeah, but they started it.” How many of history's stupid acts had been justified with
that
explanation?

Chopo nodded. He seemed reconciled to all my schemes being kind of crazy-ass. “So how we gonna get her out of the house?”

I thought for a moment. “I could figure out which car in the driveway is hers and set off the alarm?”

Chopo shook his head. “She might just use the fob, and who knows if she even
has
a car.” I didn't know what a fob was—there was
so much
about technology I
didn't know now that I was back—but I decided not to say anything. “So you got a better idea, Mr. Criminal Mastermind?”

Chopo thought for a second, then said, “We'll use that kid's phone.” He pulled out the phone with the map app. “The kid said he was the daughter's boyfriend, right? So we'll just send her a text from his phone, tell her to secretly meet him out in the backyard.”

A
text
?
I hated texting.

Chopo saw my reluctance. “Jesus, Barr—you're like a brother from another planet. People send text messages from their phone.”

“I know that, I just don't do it. Show me,” I said.

He shook his head and gave me a quick refresher class.

Chopo volunteered to make the snatch while I covered him with my rifle, so I went into my gun bag and debated for a second whether to use my big gun—the .375 H&H—or my .22. The H&H was for shooting large African game—or a particularly hard-to-stop human—so I selected the lighter weapon. After zipping up the case, I strung my binoculars around my neck. Then I picked up the kid's phone and looked at Chopo. He shoved his pistol in his waistband.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded.

We crossed the road and headed into the gully, moving low and quiet. I stopped about fifty yards from the target house near a pair of large sagebrush. “I'll be here,” I whispered.

Chopo nodded, then continued slowly up the hill until he was at the foot of Jeff's privacy fence. I settled down onto the ground, lying prone with the rifle nestled tightly against my shoulder. Through the scope I watched Chopo pull his pistol. The crickets chirped loudly in my ear; far away I heard someone's sprinkler come on. Without taking my eye off the crosshairs, I slowly pulled out the phone and pressed Send, firing off the text I'd written earlier. I waited a couple minutes and pressed call and was rewarded when I saw Chopo stir against the fence.

As hoped, Jeff's daughter had come out into the backyard. I didn't have any contingency plans if she hadn't.

The rest happened in a blur. Chopo was up and over the fence, the back gate crashing open, the lock splintering off with a massive kick, and then he was running down the hill, a thin white girl thrown over his shoulder. He loped, lugging his prisoner down a serpentine course through the brush toward me.

Two large men in sweats burst out of the gate in pursuit. I watched them through the scope, saw them raise carbine rifles, so I fired three quick shots. One man immediately went down to his knees, red spraying from his chest, so I centered the crosshairs on the second. I pulled the trigger three more times right after a few shots rang from his rifle. He fell onto his face and rolled down the hill in a writhing heap. By then Chopo was past me, the girl kicking and squirming on his shoulder. I watched the gate a little longer, and when no one else came out, I hopped up and followed Chopo into the darkness.

As we moved through the head-high cut in the dirt at the bottom of the gulch, I wondered what the hell I was thinking. I was ramping this up too fast, escalating it to the point of no return. This wasn't the Congo or Chile or even Mexico. This was kidnapping and possibly murder in the eyes of the law. In
my
eyes, though, it was retribution and a means to an end. So I stayed low in the gulch and scrambled to catch up with Chopo, noticing the lights of Jefe's neighbors come on one by one.

Chopo took the girl into the abandoned ranch house. I followed them in and laid my rifle on the old kitchen table. The windows were dirty enough to be opaque, and the place smelled of mildew and mouse droppings. The only light came from Chopo's penlight. The girl sat in a rickety chair, her mouth and hands bound in duct tape. I couldn't look at her.

“We can't stay here,” I said. “Neighbors are calling the cops. Jeff's probably calling in reinforcements.”

Chopo nodded. “I know a
chica
, runs a safe house here for some of the guys out of Mexico.”

“Let's go, then.” I finally looked at the girl, her brown eyes wide and starting to tear up. She couldn't have been older than sixteen. I tried to smile at her. “Listen, kid. We're not going to hurt you. I need you for a trade. Your daddy has a friend of mine. When I get her back, you go home safe and sound. Okay? Nod if you understand.” She jerked her head up and down, her shoulders slumped.

We grabbed our stuff, led the girl out, and put her in the backseat, then we threw our gear in the back. We drove slowly away, following back roads again until we arrived at a trailer park full of low-riders and short-bed pickups with tinted windows. Chopo hopped out and went up onto the porch of one of the trailers. He pounded on the thin wooden
door until a very large, round, brown woman in a floral-print housedress emerged. She and Chopo talked for a few seconds, and then she waved us into the house. As I got out, the woman shut off her porch light to hide us in the darkness.

“Not a sound, kid,” I whispered into the girl's ear as I led her up to the house. “This will all be over soon.” She nodded, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

The woman met us at the door, putting her large, flabby arm around the girl's shoulders. She had a round face, with fleshy jowls rolling over her collar, and her smile seemed warm. Her eyes, though, were deadly serious and blazed with matronly concern.

“I'm sorry about this, ma'am, really,” I said. “Thank you for taking us in on short notice. You can watch her for the night?”

“Yes,” she said, her husky voice filling the house. “It is nothing. I like visitors. You're welcome to stay in one of the rooms. I will keep the girl in the other. My son Julio will move your car to somewhere safe, and if you need it, he'll bring it back. Julio!”

A thin boy, maybe seventeen, ran into the room. He had a chunk of plastic in his hands, headphones around his neck. His mom yelled at him in rapid Spanish and he rushed out the door. “I'll take her now. You two stay and talk here.” She led the girl down a narrow hall away from the kitchen, her massive arm draped over the girl's shoulders like a cellulite shawl. Talking quietly and in an endearing, earnest way, she said, “It's okay, dear, this is just some stupid men's thing. They don't know any better. I'm going to put you in a special room.” Her voice faded as she walked away. “It'll be locked, but you'll have everything you need. . . .”

Chopo and I sat down at the small wooden kitchen table. The trailer was well worn, with paint missing in the usual
spots, but clean and taken care of. Everything in the kitchen was recently washed, the dishes were all put away, and the table was bare. A fluffy yellow cat came out from somewhere and rubbed against my leg, purring loudly. I reached down to pet it as I asked Chopo, “Who is she?”

“The cat? I don't know. The lady, her name is Nita. She's an aunt of a friend. She helps hide people, sometimes us guys from the crews, sometimes whole families from Immigration. She's very good at it.”

I nodded. Julio came back in then and sat down on the single couch in the living room across from a big-screen TV. He picked up a controller and started to play a video game, oblivious to us sitting in the kitchen. Nita came out shortly afterward, closing a door and locking it quietly.

“She is very scared but I talked to her and she'll be okay. You want me to cook something? You boys look hungry.”

I was going to say yes. I'd taken my hat off and hung it on the back of the chair. But Chopo said, “No thanks.”

“Okay, let me know. Your room will be the first on the left down the hall. You need to smoke, go out the back in the yard, okay? You need anything out of your car, tell me, and Julio will get it, okay?”

We both nodded and she went into the living room, plopped next to her son on the sofa, picked up a magazine, and started flipping pages. I stood up and zipped up my jacket, gestured to the door.

Outside, Chopo asked, “You only want Alvis, right?” He lit his cigarette and took a deep drag.

“Right. We'll make the trade, then I'm going to have to find him another way. But I'll find him. I
have
to. He has my sister.”

“Then I can have Jefe.”

It wasn't a question.

“All yours,” I said. “I won't get any leads from him now.” I really wanted a cigarette, so I allowed myself one. Just one. Tomorrow I'd quit.

“They killed César, man. Add that to the list of shit they've done since they took the game from Alejandro, and the war is on.”

“I understand. Just let me get Allie back first, okay? Then you can do whatever.”

“That
chica
means something to you, doesn't she?”

She did, of course. But I hadn't thought of her in the way Chopo was insinuating. Well, maybe I'd
kind
of thought of her in that way. I mean, sometimes I found myself looking at her and it was hard to turn away.