Sand Dollars (23 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Sand Dollars
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Tijuana at night is like center ring of a gigantic circus. Wild patterns of neon, fluorescent, and incandescent lights cover every building on the main streets, money traps, designed to ensnare American dollars from across the line. From nightclubs to whorehouses, elegant restaurants to street vendors, anything is available for a fee, a fee considerably lower than could be found a few hundred yards to the north.
My stomach rumbled. It had been at least twelve hours since I'd eaten. Pungent food smells greeted me as I passed the street vendors and the restaurants, kick-starting an appetite and a hunger I hadn't recognized. Now it would have to wait.
I was going into battle. From my days in Vietnam, when the commanders offered steak and eggs before patrol, I'd eschewed the traditional meal before battle. I'd seen what happened to men with stomachs filled with food after a bullet sliced through the membranes. I'd always waited until I returned, even if it meant going hungry for days. The thought was that if I didn't return, I wouldn't need the meal, anyway.
If the Tijuana police were looking for me, they didn't show it. I passed two of their blue-and-white squad cars, the Range Rover receiving no more than a curious glance. Of course, I was headed into Mexico. The guards at the border, the ones watching those leaving the country, would be certain to have the description of the cop killer, alert to my departure.
The report had to be the work of the woman. Cagey like a fox, she missed few options. To Elena I was a loose end, something to be tied up before closing out the operation. If
she could use me as a smoke screen for de la Peña's death, so much the better. I had to admire, even if I was on the receiving end of her vicious construct.
I transited the city without incident, not even getting a second glance from the police officers I passed. Esparza didn't call. Whether it was because the Range Rover's car phone wasn't compatible with the Tijuana cellular system or because he refused to converse with a suspected cop killer, I had no idea.
The first toll booth south of Tijuana is below the bullring, near the ocean. The attendant took my American money without pause, offering valid coin in change. The soldiers, ever present yet thankfully not vigilant, ignored me. I drove on.
In an hour I passed Baja Dunes, abandoned like a bad habit at a Baptist convention. As I drove by the empty sales office, my headlights exposed more tracks leading back into the dunes, toward the lagoon.
I turned off the paved road and drove down the sandy lane to the base of the mountain, parked the Range Rover under the same scrub tree, locked up and got out. I might never come back to it, regardless of how the night ended. The rich man's Jeep was a good, solid machine. It had served me well. Paul Peters must have hated leaving it. Just as he must have hated leaving his company, his houses, and his wife.
When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I started up the hill, fingering the Buck folding knife I always carried. That and my brain were my only weapons. Often it's been that way. In a life filled with opportunities for violence, I usually rejected the customary carrying of a gun. Oh, sure, I own one. I used to have more before they were swallowed by a hurricane along with the rest of my possessions.
I'd always figured I could sense when a gun was needed and kept it where I could get to it. This time was different. I was in an alien nation without authorization, and maybe a price on my head. I was in a country that regarded the private ownership of firearms, and particularly the old .45 ACP, the gun I favored, as an especially heinous crime, punishable by
forty years in one of their penal institutions. With a charge for murder lodged against me, the man shot with a .45, I didn't want to risk having the gun with me if I were stopped.
I could have gone to the
Olympia
and retrieved the pistol, but I rejected that for a number of reasons. If the boat was under surveillance, I'd have other explanations to make to the law. The gun is registered to me anyway, easily traced back to its owner. If there was shooting to be done down here this night, I didn't want anything traced back to me.
I had the knife. That was enough. With the knife, and a little luck, I could get all the guns I needed.
I hoped a gun wouldn't be necessary. If I thought Elena's gang would give up the search and go away, I'd wait them out and pick up the money after they'd gone. That was the plan. The little voice inside my head mocked me, telling me it was a fool's game, echoing Thomas's sentiments. Elena and the boys had killed too many people to give up easily. They'd look, keep looking, find the tracks, and dig up the money. Then I'd have to stop them.
It didn't have to be that way, but that's the way I knew it was going to go. Unconsciously, I opened the Buck knife and felt its blade. Sharp enough to shave with, over thirty years old, it was one of the oldest Bucks made, the blade manufactured from the original case-hardened stainless steel that could cut half-inch bolts. The company changed the formula sometime in the seventies, went to a softer steel to meet consumer demand. Too many people complained the old knives took too long to sharpen. True. That was true. It did take a long time and a lot of sweat and skill to get one of the old Buck blades sharp, but once it had an edge, it kept it.
My Buck's been with me all my adult life, from Vietnam to Grenada, and after, traveling the world from Europe to Hong Kong. Its blade is short enough even the FAA thinks it isn't lethal. I fly with it, cross borders with it in my pocket, hand it to guards at security checks and have them cheerfully hand it back. Nobody gets upset over a pocketknife. It's an American tradition. But I'd killed with it before: dogs and snakes as well as people. I'm always armed.
When I reached the summit, I rested and watched. Two pair of truck headlights illuminated the corner of the slab where I'd stumbled onto Peters's secret. Covered by the night and the noise made by their work, I quickly descended the mountain on the same path I'd used earlier. Once in the dunes, I scurried toward the activity, careful not to be seen or heard. I found a patch of cover across the lagoon, providing concealment and a front-row seat.
I counted eight young men as they passed in and out of the headlights. I caught the moving orange glow of a cigarette inside the cab of one of the trucks, either Chico or Elena. From the frequency of trips the burning coal made up and down, I judged that the smoker was nervous.
One of the workers shouted. The truck door opened and Elena got out. She stalked forward, anticipation and anxiety focused in one small human being. The man who had shouted made room for her, gesturing toward the hole he had dug in the sand.
She bent down and picked up a chunk of concrete, one of the many small blocks I'd broken that afternoon. She threw it down, spitting out a vicious string of Spanish, insults spoken so fast I couldn't follow. The young man backed away, stung. She continued her condemnation, striking him with her small fists. He dropped his shovel and covered his face, allowing her to strike his body. She hit him until she tired. When she stopped, he peered at her from behind his hands and she roundhoused him with a good left, catching him behind the ear, knocking him down.
Every eye was attuned to the confrontation. I used the opportunity to get closer, skirting the edge of the lagoon, so I could hear their words.
“Fool!” Elena slapped the boy as he tried to get to his feet.
“I didn't know!”
“
Estúpido!
Who did this?” She looked at the group gathered around her, searching each face. No response greeted her question. The boys didn't even shrug.
“The only one who knew is dead. Did one of you take the money?”
Eight heads shook in unison. These young men had committed multiple murder over the last several hours. Now they looked like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar, confused and hurt at the unfairness of the accusation.
“Okay,” she said. “Someone took the money. We'll look.”
Elena issued orders in Spanish and English; apparently some of the gang spoke no English and others no Spanish. Elena was fluent in both, underscoring her undisputed leadership.
The one I knew as Chico, Elena's brother, spoke to her quietly. He had an Uzi slung over his shoulder and a big flashlight in his hand. When she nodded, he took two of the others and fanned out toward the west, toward me, searching the edge of the lagoon. I noted that the other two boys were similarly armed. A second group moved out, searching the east.
Chico may have been young, and he may have been a murderous criminal, and he may have had only a fuzzy idea what to do away from his mean streets, but he wasn't stupid. Elena was on the warpath. Getting away from her was the best thing to do.
Chico was also lucky. His group started toward my position, then shifted off to the south, beginning a grid search that would box me in if I didn't move. But if I did move, I would call attention to myself, or be caught in the other group's pattern.
With Chico and his people and the other group out searching for sign, only Elena and two of the gang remained with the trucks. Elena didn't look or act as if she were armed, and the other two young men didn't have anything showing, no long guns that I could see. They could have had pistols, but it didn't matter.
I closed in. This wasn't a part of my plan, but my plan was changing, shifting to meet the threat. They had forced the issue. Content to remain in place, I could have waited all night. Now they were searching for something, a sign, a mark, a trail. I'd done a pretty good job covering my tracks, but not perfect. If they were good, or if they were lucky, they'd find them. What I needed was a diversion.
I dodged one leg of Chico's patrol, slithering over a dune before one of the gangsters walked through the hollow I had occupied. I pressed myself to the sand, Buck knife in my hand, hoping he wouldn't see my tracks and follow. After a full minute I peered over the edge of the dune. The kid was gone.
I scrambled back over the top and followed.
This kid was a gang-banger, accustomed to city sidewalks and lights, not the uneven terrain of a dark, foreign beach. Like Chico, he didn't grasp the task at hand. Unlike Chico, he wasn't lucky.
He didn't hear me as I crept up behind him; he didn't feel the blow that felled him. It was almost too easy, the way we'd done it in training.
I let him live. He'd been no threat. I could have used the knife, but I wasn't in the mood for cold-blooded murder. I took his Uzi and the two extra magazines he kept in the hip pocket of his baggies. I didn't want to deal with him again, so I took his high-top shoelaces and tied him hand and foot like a roped goat. He had a bandanna and I stuffed it in his mouth and secured that around his head. To make certain his friends didn't find him too easily, I rolled him into an arroyo and covered him with brush and branches.
Sand clogged the breech of the Uzi. They're sturdy weapons, designed for desert warfare, but I didn't want the fatal embarrassment of discovering that it had jammed. I extended the steel buttstock and locked it in place. I had other plans for this gun.
The second gangster was just as easy. I found him standing near the ocean, his weapon slung. Both hands were at his crotch as he stood emptying his bladder, facing the ocean. A cold gentle breeze blew in off the sea, covering my approach.
“Hey!” I hissed.
He turned, urine still leaking, and I butt-stroked him. He collapsed and I caught him by the sling, gently lowering his body to the sand.
I'd hit him hard over the bridge of the nose, a little too hard. When I checked his vital signs, I found none. He was dead.
I shrugged. Anybody who pissed into the wind wasn't that high on the evolutionary scale, anyway.
Besides, he'd been a killer. Just because he was young didn't make a difference. The killers are getting younger every year, and less remorseful.
I checked his weapon. This one was clean. I dropped the first one I'd liberated, picked up his spare magazines, and loped off into the dunes.
Two down, six to go.
Plus Elena.
I'd never hit a woman before. Shot a few, but never hit one. Could I do it?
It didn't take much thought. I remembered Claire and the look on her face that first night, the accounting of her betrayal, her finding the courage to tell me the whole story as she knew it. I remembered the dead lawyer and his stories about Elena's voracious appetite for money, and her willingness to kill anyone or anything to get it.
Could I hit her? Could I hit a women?
Yeah. This one I could.
No problem.
Chico, the only remaining member of the southern patrol, wasn't difficult to find.
He was huffing along, shuffling his feet through the sand, so I heard him a long way off. At first I thought it was an animal in distress. Closer, when I could hear the sounds he made as he walked, I realized he was singing. Sort of. He mouthed tuneless, angry rap lyrics, miming those blasting into his ears from a micro-headset and CD player hanging on his belt. Only the rhythm betrayed its origin as music. Otherwise I would have thought him in pain.
Totally absorbed, Chico closed his eyes, planted his feet wide apart, and rendered a grand conclusion that might have impressed the late Tupac Shakur.
Until I hit him.
I took advantage of his distraction, rushed in and punched him hard over the solar plexus, about as hard as I've hit anyone in recent years, getting a lot of shoulder in the punch and considerable follow-through.
He doubled over, headphones falling to the sand.
I hit him again.
He fell over.
I made sure he was unconscious, then followed the headphone wire to the little pouch on his belt, found the CD player and turned it off, appreciating the silence once again.
A search of the little belt pouch turned up folding money, a Beretta .25 ACP automatic pistol with a full clip, an extra magazine for the pistol, Ford keys, and a plastic Baggie stuffed tight with marijuana. I tossed the pot and his Uzi into the lagoon.
He started to come to. The Beretta had a cartridge in the chamber, so I cocked it and held it to his head.
“Chico,” I hissed.
“Wha?”
“Chico! You feel this?” I pressed the gun to his temple.
“Yeah.”
“I've already killed the other two. You I need. But not very much.
Comprende?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I've got your Uzi, I've got your pistol. You and me, we're going for a ride. And you're going to be real quiet
No tengo que enseñarle, no chapas malditas. Comprende, amigo?”
“Stop with that Spanish shit, man. I speak English.”
“Then you'll understand this. You do anything that calls attention to you and me and I shoot you. I can always get another hostage. I think your sister might not shoot you. Then again, she might.”
“No.”
“You bet your life on it?”
He was silent. I took that for thought. He could have gone to sleep.
“You with me, Chico?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. We're going back to the trucks. You got some keys here. Which truck belongs?”
“The white one.”
I cuffed him across the face with the pistol, opening a gash on his cheek. He tried to raise his hand to feel the cut but I slashed the hand with the barrel. He winced when steel struck bone.
“They're both white, dickhead. Which one?”
“The one closest to the water,” he said.
I looked. Of the two, the one closest to the water was farthest from our position. Nice.
“If you're wrong,
amigo,
you're dead. Better think on it. You get me in a world of hurt, I'll scatter your shit to the wind.” For emphasis, I ground the barrel of the Beretta into the soft flesh over his temple.
“Ouch!”
“Shut up, Chico. I'll ask you once more. It's the last time, because we're going for it. Whichever truck you say, we'll take. If it's the wrong truck, it'll be a short night for you.”
“The one near,” he almost shouted. “That's mine.”
“That's what I thought. Good boy. You finally got smart.” I prodded him with the gun. He didn't take much prodding. “Take it easy. That's it. Nice and slow. I'll tell you when to run.”
He had something more in him. I knew that. Chico was a natural born killer, like Billy the Kid or Charlie Manson. He wasn't about to give up this easily, no matter how hard I hit him. In some small ways he reminded me of me.
I counted on it.
He stayed with me until we got close to the trucks, then tried to shake me.
He'd had some training.
Some
training is dangerous.
He back-kicked where he thought my shin was, arcing his elbow backward simultaneously, aiming at my head. It was a good move, designed to cause pain and disorientation.
He fanned air.
I wasn't there, having felt him gear himself up for the move. I ducked out of the way as he reversed. When his elbow blew by me, I slammed into him, getting my forearms around his neck and squeezing, cutting off his circulation, blanking his brain. He instantly went limp. I scooped him up in a fireman carry and circled back toward the rear of the closest truck.
No one stopped us, because no one saw us. As I approached the truck, I saw the woman pacing the edge of the lagoon, nervously puffing another cigarette. The two gangsters who had stayed behind squatted in the lee of the truck's front bumper, trying to stay out of the chilling breeze, sharing a cigarette of their own. The syrupy sweet smell of marijuana wafted toward me in the cold evening air.
I needed Chico. I didn't want shooting. I wanted to divert them away from the beach. He was my ticket out. Elena wouldn't leave her brother, and she wouldn't shoot at him.
When the gang saw that one of their trucks was gone, they'd forget searching the beach for the money and chase me. Getting them away from the money was the reason for this exercise, after all. The disruption would change their plans and cause them some more pain. Once they were scattered, I could get Ed and Hatley to come down and retrieve the cash.
I edged to the driver's door, holding my breath.
I practiced a couple of times, going through it in my mind, making sure my footing was secure and my hands were where they should be, the key in my right hand. When I was comfortable with it, when my body felt as if it had performed the action a hundred times, I tossed Chico into the bed of the truck, opened the door, stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine caught.
Cool relief flooded my body, an added mixture to the heated adrenaline flowing there.
I dropped the transmission into reverse and stomped the gas. The truck shuddered and shimmied backward into the night, crashing though scrub brush and small dunes, only the back-up lights illuminating my path.
I didn't like what I saw.
The truck bounced and nearly tipped. Chico's body rolled, catching on the wall at the last moment. I corrected, fighting the wheel, and braked, bringing the truck to a stop halfway up a big dune, listing at a thirty-degree angle. I felt around in the driver's compartment and found the four-wheel-drive lever, engaged it, and put the transmission into first gear.
Experimentally, I gave the Ford some gas. The wheels spun, then caught, and the truck moved forward. I turned on the lights, looking for a way out.
The windshield exploded, bullets and bits of glass rocketing through the cab, blowing out the rear window, piercing sheet metal, impacting in the seat beside me. I didn't have time to duck. I had my head turned, looking to the right. Something hit my ear, stinging. Glass, I thought. It had to be glass. A bullet would have gone right through and I wouldn't be thinking this. I wouldn't be thinking anything at all.
I ducked, too late, and pressed the pedal all the way to the
floor, jerking the wheel to the right, sending the truck slaloming across one dune and behind another. I knew the road was somewhere ahead, but not certain how far. A second patrol searched the dunes. I was moving too fast for them to follow on foot, and they couldn't shoot at me if I kept the truck below the tops of the dunes.
It wasn't always possible. One arroyo ended and the truck churned up the end of the dune, nearly bottoming out at the crest, then fishtailed down the other side. Two or three bullets pounded the body as I hesitated, others vanishing harmlessly overhead, their passing marked by the distinctive sounds of angry bees.
A figure stepped out in front of the truck and leveled a gun, calling for me to stop. I swerved, hitting him solidly. He went down and both wheels went over him.
Suddenly the road was there, the double white sand tracks flashing in front of the truck's headlights, and then it was gone. I braked, backed up and found it again, straightened the front tires, and floored it.
Another figure aimed a long gun at the truck from the other side of the road. I ducked, but the round missed. His second shot came through the back of the cab, drilling through the fire wall, hitting something under the hood. The engine began making a screeching sound, as if it were mortally wounded. Red lights came on all over the panel, and the truck slowed perceptibly.
A third shot nicked me as it went by, numbing my right arm as it plowed into the dashboard.
Bright lights from the other truck came up over a rise behind me, moving faster, eating up the distance between us.
Something hammered the tailgate and the back of the cab. Something winked in the rearview mirror until the glass shattered, wanging off into the night. The engine chugged sluggishly, spiraling to a mechanical death. Smoke and fire licked from under the hood. Another burst of gunfire ripped into both rear tires and the truck sagged, then stopped, the fire intensifying, filling the cab with smoke, giving me some cover. I jumped out and ran into the brush along the side of the road.
Looking back toward the truck, I realized I'd made another mistake. Old Chico was having a hard ride, absorbing their bullets. I'd wanted him as a hostage to prevent shooting. Too late for that. Probably too late for Chico. His body slumped directly behind the driver's seat; it had shielded me from the incoming rounds.
Thanks, kid, I thought. You weren't good for much in this life, but in the end, you were good for something.

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