Thin Air Part 24

"Not bad," I said. "They don't know me, why don't I go in with you?"

Chollo shook his head.

"No gringos," Chollo said. "On the first visit. Except to drive the car, and maybe shoot a little. n.o.body will talk to me if I come in with a gringo."

"Gee," I said. "That sounds kind of racially insensitive to me."

Chollo grinned. "Si, senor," he said.

"What if they insist on a phone call to del Rio?"

"I have already spoken to Mr. del Rio," Chollo said. "He is prepared to support my story."

"So, you're not making this up as you go along," I said.

"No. I do that only when I have to."

"Which is often," I said.

Chollo nodded. "Which is often."

He opened the door on his side, and put one foot out.

"Don't get cute in there," I said. "I don't want the woman to get hurt."

"I shall be as sly as a Yucatan tree toad," Chollo said.

"Are they really sly?" I said.

"I don't know, I just made it up," Chollo said.

He got out of the car and turned up the collar of his jacket as he walked across the street, squinting against the grit that the wind was tossing. He went up the steps of the tenement and talked to the guard. The guard listened and talked and listened and talked. Then he turned and went in. Chollo waited in the doorway, shielded from the wind. In a little while the door opened and the guard came back out. With him was the slim guy with braids. The three of them talked for several minutes. Then Chollo and the guy with braids went back inside and the guard remained.

The slim young woman in the pink sweatshirt came into her room with one of the men she'd seen guarding her door. The woman was carrying a small plastic shopping bag. She pointed toward the chair.

"You want me to sit in the chair?" she said.

The woman pointed toward the chair again. There was a quality of triumph in her bearing.

"Why? Why do you want me to sit in the chair?" Lisa said.

The woman shrugged and said something to the man in Spanish. Each of them took hold of an arm and they forced her backwards and sat her on the chair. While the man held Lisa in the chair, the woman took some clothesline from the plastic bag and tied Lisa's hands to the chair behind her and squatted and tied her ankles to the chair legs. In each case she yanked at the ropes and tied them too tight.

"Why, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Why are you tying me up?" Lisa said. "Don't, please, don't tie me up. Please! I don't want to be tied. Please, you're hurting me!"

The woman said something in Spanish to her and laughed. She took some gray duct tape from her bag and forced it against Lisa's mouth angrily and taped it shut, wrapping the tape an extra vengeful turn around Lisa's head. She stood back in front of Lisa and looked at her tied to the chair and laughed and put her hand on her own crotch and said something angrily to Lisa in Spanish. The man stepped to her side and said something. She gestured him away. He spoke to her again more forcefully, and she shrugged and took a portable radio out of her plastic bag and put it on the table near Lisa, turned it on, and turned the volume up. It was a Spanish language station. Salsa music filled the room. The woman folded the plastic bag and put it on the table beside the radio. She stopped again in front of Lisa and stared at her, as if she savored Lisa's helplessness. Then she put her hand under Lisa's chin and raised Lisa's face and spat in it. The man spoke to her sharply and the woman laughed and she and the man left the room. Lisa could hear the door lock behind them. She felt the claustrophobic panic begin to seep through her. The woman's spittle trickled down her cheek. She struggled frantically for a moment. There was no give in the rope: Calm, she thought. Calm. I got through it before. Why did they do it? I can't get out anyway. The door's locked and there's a guard. Why tie me up? Why gag me? No one can hear me. Is he someplace? Taking pictures? What the h.e.l.l is the radio for? To drown out noise? How can I make noise? You couldn't hear me five feet away with my mouth taped... There's someone in the building. She felt a sudden stab of excitement. That's it, there's someone here. She started again to struggle with the ropes. But she was helpless. The woman had tied her feet to the legs of the chair in such a way that her feet were off the floor. She had no leverage. The knots were hard. She couldn't get free. She couldn't make noise. Calm, she thought. Calm. Calm. When they're gone he'll cut you loose. He'll come back. Why was that woman so cruel? Luis will come back and untie me. He'll protect me. She sat perfectly still and focused on her breath going in and out. And in a while she was calm. She was uncomfortable. The ropes were too tight. But she was not in actual pain. How quickly we learn to settle for less, she thought. Getting control of herself was her first triumph since he'd taken her. Maybe not the last one, she thought. She relaxed herself into the ropes and the chair, making her body go slack, letting her head drop. Breathing quietly. She realized that Luis was beginning to seem her protector, that she looked forward to his return. She remembered her iron pipe hidden under her mattress. She thought about it. It was like a treasure to savor. I won't always be tied up, she thought, as she sat helpless and relaxed. I won't always be tied up.

Chapter 33.

I took out the Browning nine millimeter I was carrying and put it on the car seat beside my leg. I started the car up and let it idle, just in case we needed to leave suddenly, and then settled back against the car seat to wait. From where I sat, I could slouch down and see a man moving on the roof top of one of the tenements. He wore a red plaid shirt. From my angle it was hard to tell for sure, but he seemed to be carrying a rifle or a shotgun. The windows in the room below him were closed up with plywood. He moved away from my side of the roof and I couldn't see him anymore. The dog that had trotted by earlier returned, going in the other direction. Another dog was with him. It didn't really look like him, but it was the same kind of atavistic mongrel, middle-sized and light brown, with its tail arching over its back. The two of them turned a corner and disappeared behind the tenement complex. I looked back up at the roof. The guy with the red plaid shirt was back. This time I could see that it was in fact a long gun he carried, though I couldn't make out whether it was a rifle or a shotgun. Given the range, I was hoping for a shotgun, in case Chollo's story didn't convince anyone and they decided to shoot at me. In the distance, east of Proctor, the scattered clouds were starting to coalesce, and the distance looked dark. It would probably rain in a while. The atmosphere had the heavy feel of it, and wind from the east, off the ocean, usually brought rain with it at this time of year. Now that the dogs were gone, the street was empty. No traffic moved through the neighborhood. No ice cream trucks, no police cars, no women pushing babies in carriages with the clear plastic rain shields down. When the rain came it killed the wind. I could see it falling before it reached me. I watched it march toward me up the silent street, falling straight down, a thin, beaded curtain of it, turning the pavement dark as it came. When it hit the car, I turned the windshield wipers on intermittent, just enough so I could see if anyone was coming toward me with a gun.

The guy on the roof had disappeared, probably inside someplace or under something. If we ever had to take a run at the place it might be good to wait till it rained. Nothing happened. No one moved. Time trudged past me very slowly. I started to make a list of all the women I'd slept with in my life, trying to remember all the circ.u.mstances. I wondered if it was disloyal to Susan, and found myself thinking about whether it was or not, rather than with whom I had done what. Maybe she thought about the people she'd slept with.

How did I feel? I decided I didn't mind, unless she thought of them with longing. So I went back to remembering my s.e.x life, but I was careful not to long for anyone. The rain was harder now, too hard for intermittent. I changed it. I looked at my watch. Chollo had been in there for forty minutes.

I thought about Brenda Loring. She was a nice woman. She had great thighs. I liked her. But I loved Susan. Through the clear wiper arc on the windshield I saw Chollo come out of the tenement and walk toward the car. He seemed to be in no hurry. But he would look like he wasn't in a hurry if he was being chased by a bull. I glanced at my watch again. An hour and five minutes.

Chollo got in the car and closed the door behind him.

"How'd it go?" I said.

Chollo grinned.

"Luis embraced me when I left."

"How sweet," I said.

"You cold gringos don't understand us hot-blooded Latinos," Chollo said.

"You want to wait for your blood to cool," I said, "before you fill me in?"

"Lunch," Chollo said. "First I need lunch."

"Maybe I can find a Jack in the Box," I said.

"My native cuisine," Chollo said. "How thoughtful."

I turned on the headlights and put the car in gear and we drove away.

Images of herself tied to the chair were added to the other images on the monitors that glowed soundlessly in the dim room. He had come in with his video camera and videotaped before he cut her loose.

"It is business, querida. I am sorry it had to be this way. But I cannot trust you yet not to be crazy. Let me get some skin cream for you, where the tape was."

I can control myself, she thought. If I can do that, I can do anything.

"Who was here?" she said.

"There were important people here, Angela, they have sought me out. They want me to help them here with their business. They admire me. But why should you think about business? Your beautiful head should be thinking beautiful thoughts."

"So why didn't you want them to know about me? What are you afraid of, if they are such good friends of yours?"

"People should know of me and my business only what they need to know," Luis said. "Only what I choose for them to know."

"Who was that woman who tied me up?"

"Rosalita," he said. "She is nothing. She has always thought I belonged to her."

He paused as he spoke, watching the latest videotape.

"I'm sorry, chiquita, that you had to be tied."

"-No," she said, herself surprised at the strength of her voice. "No, you're not sorry. You'd like me bound and gagged for you all the time."

"What can you be saying? Did I not rush in here and untie you as soon as I could?"

"Don't be so literal. Don't you understand that the image of your feeling for me is embodied in those tapes, the picture of me bound and helpless, hauled in here on a dolly, tied and gagged when there's visitors. I'm yours in a way that offers me no choices."

"There are pictures of you and me at the beach," he said. "Pictures of you and me on stage."

"You don't want a lover, you want a slave."

"Angel, I am your slave."

He was beginning to pace again.

"Since my mother... Wait, let me show you. You've never seen my mother."

He disappeared behind one of the theatrical flats, and in a moment the image on the monitors changed. There was a picture of a young Hispanic woman. Long dark hair, high b.r.e.a.s.t.s, black tank top, white miniskirt, white boots. The camera movements were sudden and jerky. The images were slightly indistinct, and the color was odd, like a colorized movie, but she could see how much she looked like Luis.

"It is my mother," he said. "Isn't she beautiful?"

Too much makeup, Lisa thought. Hair's too big, skirt's too tight.

"She gave me the camera, an eight millimeter. She taught me how to use it."

The camera steadied and then a young boy came into the picture. He put his arm around his mother's waist. She put her arm around his shoulder, and they stood and smiled into the camera.

"And that is me, with my mother," he said.

The scene cut clumsily to another picture. The same woman, dressed differently, but no better, Lisa thought. She was sitting on the lap of a heavy-set, red-faced Anglo man in a loud sport coat. Her short skirt was high on her thighs and the man's hand rested on the inner part of her thigh above the knee.

"That is a friend of my mother's," Luis said. "My mother had many friends."

The woman in the camera smiled and gestured at the camera to stop filming. It kept on, and then stopped abruptly.

"I took all the old films and had them transferred to video, " Luis said. "That way even though she's gone I will have her still."

Chapter 34.

There was a Subway sandwich shop in a shopping center off Route 93, a little west of Proctor. I pulled in and parked in front of it. Chollo looked at the sandwich shop.

"What's this," Chollo said, "your native cuisine?"

"Good Yankee cookin'," I said.

"Get me a ham and cheese sub," Chollo said. "No hot peppers."

"No hot peppers?"

Chollo shrugged.

"Now and then," he said, "I am untrue to my heritage."

"h.e.l.l," I said. "It happens. I don't always eat potatoes."

"Cultural genocide," Chollo said.

I went into the shop and bought us a couple of sandwiches and some coffee and came back. Chollo took a sip of coffee and made a face.

"What the f.u.c.k is this?" he said.

"You must have got mine," I said and we swapped.

"You drink that?" Chollo said.

"You get used to it."

"Why would you want to?"

"You may have a point," I said. "What went on in the house?"

Chollo put his coffee into one of the holders in the middle console and began to unwrap his sandwich.

"They bought my story," Chollo said. "Deleon knew of Mr. del Rio. I told him we had talked with Freddie Santiago, but we weren't happy. Said Freddie looked kind of tired to me. Said Mr. del Rio and me thought we might need a younger guy, some fresh blood to run this end."

Chollo picked up half of his sub sandwich and took a bite. He managed not to get any on himself, and I wondered how he did it. Susan always claimed that when I ate a sub I looked like I'd fought with it. He chewed happily. I waited. The hot coffee steamed the inside of the windshield a little so that the only clear reality seemed to be here in the car, where the food was.

"Deleon liked that," Chollo said. "Got him excited. Says he's just the man for the job. Says he's got the perfect setup. So I say, lemme take a look around, see what you got here, and we take a tour."

Chollo drank some coffee. I waited.

"Three things," Chollo said. "One, Deleon's a froot loop. Two, there's a locked room with a guard outside on the second floor. It would be the corner on the second floor, where the windows are covered with plywood. Guard pretended he was just hanging around, but he was guarding. And there's a new padlock on the door. I said to Deleon, 'What's in there?' and he says it's his private quarters. Says 'I alone have the key.' Like f.u.c.king Basil Rathbone, you know? Except he's speaking Spanish with a Puerto Rican accent."

The good thing about listening instead of talking is you can eat while you do it. I was finished with my sandwich, Chollo just took his second bite.

"What's number three?" I said.