Thin Air Part 29

Chapter 39.

The sun was still somewhere out over the Atlantic, east of the city, when Chollo and I parked in front of Deleon's tenement fortress and sat silently in the car. But it could have been somewhere over the Russian steppes for all the difference it made below. The rain clouds were thick and dark and low and hid the sun entirely. We didn't talk. Everything worth saying had been said. I was clean shaven and well breakfasted, wearing a good cologne and armed to the teeth. I had a black leather sap in my right hip pocket, a Browning 9mm automatic on my hip, and a Smith & Wesson.38 revolver in a shoulder holster. Two-gun Spenser, more deadly than an evening with Madonna.

It was a hard, steady rain that drenched down like a vengeance on the sagging slums. In the tenement complex across the street, the rain had overwhelmed the roof gutters and the dirty rain water was running down the warped clapboard sides of the buildings. I'd sat in a car and waited in a lot of slums. Most people in the crime business spent a lot of time in slums. I'd always thought that there was something Shakespearean in the conceit of crime nourished by deprivation, depravity fattening on impoverishment. The slums hadn't changed much in the years that I had been sitting in them. This one was an Hispanic slum. But that only changed the language spoken. It didn't change the slum. Slums were immutable. The ethnicities changed, but the squalor and sadness and desperation remained as constant as the movement of the stars. Finally it was probably less the poverty that bred crime than the sour stench of racism that hung over anyplace where people are separated out by kind. Since I'd been on this case I'd smelled the smell of it and heard the talk of it.

"They have no discipline... they'd sell the badge for drugs... spic this and Cha Cha that."

I'd heard it all my life and smelled it all my life and never liked it and never understood it. n.o.body, however, had hired me to solve the American dilemma. Right now I was supposed to get Lisa St. Claire away from an Hispanic guy in a barrio, and, being an equal opportunity kind of guy, I was prepared to shoot him if I had to. Probably the easiest and most efficient approach was to hate everybody. Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson?

I watched the rain soaking into the dry rot below, maybe stirring a few dull roots, bringing not life but more dry rot. I thought about Lisa St. Claire and what it must be like for her, deep inside this decaying monolith. She had no way to know we were this close.

She would know Belson would be looking for her, but she would have no way to know if he was succeeding. I looked at Chollo in the car beside me. He was sitting low in the seat, his arms folded on his chest, his eyes half closed. He'd probably encountered everything Deleon had encountered, and he hadn't turned out much better, probably. He was a bad guy, but if he told you something you could believe him. He said he'd kill you, he'd kill you. He said he wouldn't, he wouldn't. You could trust his word. Which was more than could be said about a lot of people who weren't supposed to be bad guys. Besides, he was my bad guy.

"You called him?" I said to Chollo.

"Si."

"He knows I'm coming?"

"Si."

"He know who Broz was?"

"Seemed to. 'Course he may figure he's supposed to know who Broz is and he's styling."

"Doesn't matter which," I said. "Santiago's in place?"

"Si."

I looked at my watch.

"We got half an hour," I said.

"You trust Santiago?" Chollo said.

"Absolutely not," I said. "But it's in his best interest to help us."

"And besides, we got no one else," Chollo said.

"That too," I said.

Chollo took a 9mm Glock from under his arm and checked the load and put it back. He took a S & W.357 revolver off his belt, made sure the cylinder was full, snapped it back in place, and returned it.

"I always like a revolver for backup," he said. "Not so much fire power, but you can count on it to shoot."

"That thing will shoot through a cement wall," I said.

"Si."

We got out of the car into the hard rain. I had on a leather jacket and my Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap. I turned the collar up on the jacket and jammed the cap down lower on my forehead. We walked across the wet street where the rain was puddling in the potholes to Deleon's door that I'd spent so much time looking at and it opened before we knocked. He was a fat guy with a grayish beard, wearing a Patriots hat, a maroon shirt, a brown leather vest, and carrying an M1 carbine. He didn't say anything as we walked past him into the gray, mildew-smelling hallway. A sagging staircase started halfway down the hall and rose along the right-hand wall. The fat guy said something in Spanish and opened a door at the foot of the stairs. Chollo and I walked in, the door closed behind us, and there was Luis Deleon.

She took a shower and scrubbed herself clean. When she got out, she washed her bruised face in cold water. Then she put on one of the silly robes he'd provided and walked back into her prison bedroom.

He had left without speaking to her. There had been a knock on the door and some words in Spanish. Luis had replied softly, and then remained sitting for a moment, staring at the floor between his legs, before he had dragged himself to his feet, like an old man, and adjusted his clothing. He had gone to the bathroom and washed and toweled dry. Then he'd come back and gone out of the door without ever looking at her. He was bent slightly as if his ribs hurt. He walked as if there were no strength in him.

She gathered up the torn clothing and bundled them and put them out of sight behind one of the theater flats. The monitors were dark. They had played continuously for so long that their absence was thunderous. She sat on the bed. She felt trembly. Her breathing was still hard, and it was difficult to swallow. She was frightened at what she'd done, and determined to do it again if she had to. At the center she was unyielding, and the fact of that center made her feel stronger than she had ever felt. At the same time she was terrified at what she might have set in action.

Poor Luis! she thought. Sitting at home in front of the television, he had invented just the kind of Donna Reed mother a lonely little boy would invent. And when she left him, in his anger and his loss he had invented her replacement, Lisa St. Claire, aka Angela Richard, wh.o.r.e turned fairy princess. And then his replacement had, in her turn, left him for another man, and all the anger and all the frantic yearning and unreturned love and desperate need had caved in on him. He could never get us untangled. She thought of the austere French woman in Beverly Hills who had saved her life. Dr. St. Claire, whose name she had taken when she came back east and started over. You'd be proud of the way I got this one figured.

She heard the key in the lock and the door to her room opened and the quiet young Hispanic woman came in carrying some clothes. She placed them on the bed and left without a word. Lisa leaned forward slowly to look at the clothes. They were hers. The ones she'd worn when he took her. Each item laundered and ironed and neatly folded. She stared at the clean clothes, and then looked at the dark and silent television monitors around the room. It means something, she thought, as she put on her own clothes. The feel of them, her clothes, made the hard center of her expand a little. The sound of muddy water trickling down the walls behind the stage flats was the only thing she heard.

Chapter 40.

Deleon was standing at the front window, dressed all in black, his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the rain. There was no light in the room and only the gray light of the rain-soaked day filtering in through the windows. Silhouetted against the window, Deleon looked a half a foot taller than I am, angular and strong, with big hands and thick wrists. He was wearing some kind of black vaquero outfit, with a short jacket and tight pants tucked into high boots. There were silver b.u.t.tons on the cuffs of the jacket. A ma.s.sive dark mahogany desk filled the far end of the room, facing the door, with a window behind it where the rain flooded down the gla.s.s in a steady shimmer. On the desk was a flat-crowned black cowboy hat. Behind the desk was a high-backed swivel chair. The floor was bare. There was some kind of brownish floral paper on the walls, which was patterned with the irregular rusty outline of water leaks past. The outside walls were sandbagged to the sill level of the windows. Along the left-hand wall, a patchy blue velvet sofa squatted unevenly. One of its ornate claw and ball legs had been replaced with a couple of bricks. On the sofa was a scrawny little geek with two braids, who had to be Ramon Gonzalez, Deleon's number-two man, the shooter. He sat sprawled out with one leg up on the sofa, in the posture of indolence. It was a state he might pretend to, but one he'd never achieved. You could tell right away that it was a pose. He'd never been relaxed in his life and he wasn't now. He had a small goatee and his eyes had the seven-mile stare that you see in some hop heads and some gunnies who really love their work. This guy appeared to be both. His left hand lay along the back of the sofa and his fingers were drumming softly on the splotchy velvet. He wore a gray hooded sweatshirt and black jeans. Around his waist was a tooled leather belt with two holsters, which were part of the belt. In the holsters were a pair of pearl-handled nines. I wouldn't know where to buy such a belt if I were ever to want one, which I would not.

Chollo nodded at the geek. The geek looked at me with his unfocused stare, as if he might jump up at any moment and begin to pull my hair. I remained calm. Deleon kept his pose, gazing out the window. I didn't care. I was here. The rest was just stalling until Santiago kicked in. And the more he posed, the less we had to stall. Ramon Gonzalez continued to stare. Chollo stood beside me, his raincoat unb.u.t.toned, apparently indifferent to where he was and what was happening. He looked like he might nod off right there, standing upright, like a horse. Finally Deleon turned slowly from the window and looked directly at me. His face had scratches on it, and his eyes looked puffy. Along with his vaquero jacket and tight pants he had on a white silk shirt open halfway down his chest, and a bright red silk scarf knotted around his throat. He spoke to Chollo in Spanish.

"He wants to know your name, and what you are doing here."

"Speak English," I said to Deleon.

Deleon answered again in Spanish.

"He prefers to do business in his own language," Chollo said.

"So do I. And if I don't do business, no business gets done."

There was silence for a moment while Deleon digested this. Ramon Gonzalez said something and Deleon answered him.

"The geek wants to shoot you for being disrespectful," Chollo said. "But Deleon says..."

"You are my guest," Deleon answered. "I will accommodate your language."

"You are very kind," I said. "I am sorry that I speak only one."

"You represent Mr. Broz?" Deleon said.

He walked to his desk and leaned his hips against it and crossed his legs at the ankles and folded his arms across his chest, and looked magisterial. On the wall behind him to the right of the window, a trickle of dirty water wormed toward the floor. I wondered if Napoleon's quarters leaked.

"Yeah. We got no problem you doing distribution action up here for Mr. del Rio. Fact, you can have the whole Merrimack Valley, you can get it away from Freddie. All we want is to a.s.sure our interests."

"Which are?"

"Five percent."

"Gross or profit?"

I grinned.

"Gross," I said.

Deleon shook his head. "That's about my margin," he said.

"Your margin is three, four hundred percent," I said. "By the time it gets sold retail it's been stepped on half a dozen times."

"Five percent of profit," Deleon said.

Another stripe of muddy water joined the first one sluicing quietly down the walls behind Deleon. The rain rattled on the windows and rolled in translucent sheets down the gla.s.s. I shook my head.

"Five percent of gross, or no deal," I said. "That's a very reasonable figure."

Deleon stood up and put his hands on his hips. He leaned forward slightly, bending at the waist, and I could see a flicker of something frightful in his eyes. He was a pretentious clown, but he was something else too. No wonder people were careful of him.

"No deal? Who the f.u.c.k are you to tell me no deal?" he said. His voice sounded as if it were forcing its way out of a very narrow pa.s.sage.

"What the f.u.c.k you going to do about no deal? You think you say no deal, I do no deal? f.u.c.k you, you Anglo a.s.shole, and you go back and tell Joe f.u.c.king Anglo a.s.shole Broz that I decide what deal and what not deal, and he don't like it I'll kill him, and you and anyone else come up here."

Beside me Chollo began to applaud softly. "Magnifico," he said softly. "Magnifico."

Deleon shifted his glance at him for a moment. He was puzzled. Was Chollo making fun of him? Deleon wasn't used to being made fun of. He decided to take it seriously.

"You unnerstand me?" he said, standing as tall as he could. The flicker in his eyes was gone. He was back to being a pretentious jerk.

"Don't be stupid," I said. "We can shut you down easy. You think Vincent del Rio is going to go against Joe Broz in Joe's own territory? Ask Chollo here, he's del Rio's guy. Ask him what happens if you don't cut a deal with Joe."

More water was running down the back wall of the office now. Deleon looked startled that I was still opposing him. He glanced at Chollo. Chollo shrugged.

"A matter of respect," Chollo said. "Mr. del Rio expect the same respect from Mr. Broz. Mr. Broz wanted to do business in LA."

Deleon was in a pickle. He wanted this deal. I could see the painful turning of wheels in his head.

Ramon Gonzalez said something to Deleon in Spanish. Deleon gave him a short answer.

"Mr. Gonzalez wants to know what's going on," Chollo said. "Mr. Deleon said shut up."

The first gunshots sounded outside and somewhere a window shattered. Gonzalez was on his feet, with both guns drawn. Deleon was standing erect, listening, trying to locate the source of the gunshots when more of them sounded. Chollo and I dropped to the floor.

Something crashed through the front window and a smoke bomb went off in the room. The wet wind coming through the broken window spread the smoke rapidly. The hall door opened and someone yelled in Spanish into the room.

Chollo murmured in my ear as we lay on the floor under the pall of smoke, "Says they're being attacked by Freddie Santiago."

Deleon rushed out with Gonzalez, leaving the door open behind them. The resulting draft drove most of the smoke into the corridor and we were alone, on the floor, while outside the gunfire continued. We got carefully to our feet. I could hear the sound of bullets thudding into the house.

"Freddie's people are cutting it kind of close," I said.

"Well, it is distracting Deleon," Chollo said.

"As long as it doesn't kill us in the process," I said.

"The room where she is should be right above us," Chollo said.

The slim muddy trickle that had been leaking down from the roof garden had been joined by other trickles until finally the whole wall was sheeted with dirty water that ran steadily. She stood in the center of the room in a dry area and listened to the creak and groan of the tenement as the weight of the watersoaked earth above bore down on its brittle skeleton. She was dressed in her own clothes, and it made her feel strangely herself. Clothes make the woman, she thought. She walked to the door and tried it. The k.n.o.b turned, but the padlock was in place and she couldn't get out. She shrugged. No harm trying. A piece of plaster dropped from the wet ceiling, and a short cascade of water rushed through the hole, dwindling almost at once to a steady trickle that made a continuous drip in the center of her room. This may be a good sign, she thought. His G.o.dd.a.m.ned house is starting to fall apart. The lights went out. The sudden darkness was like a physical jolt. She held herself motionless for a moment, remembering where things were, tamping down the panic that came with the blackness. She took deep breaths as she stood holding herself in, smelling the wet earth smell of the room, hearing the water trickling inside and the larger rushing sound of the rain outside.

The doorway, she thought. Like in earthquakes, the doorways are stronger. She moved slowly, hands ahead of her through the wet darkness toward the doorway. Found the wall, groped along it to her left, found the doorway, pressed herself against it, and waited silently for what would come. There was in her a kind of steely resignation that counter-poised her panic. She had endured all that had happened and had not broken. And something was going to happen. And she would not break. The attempted rape had been like a climax. Something would come of it. She didn't know what it would be and all she could do was wait and be ready.

She heard something outside that sounded like gunshots. Was it Frank? Had he come? She twisted the door k.n.o.b again knowing it was futile. She stopped and took in a deep breath and pressed herself into the shallow doorway, invisible in the drenched, reeking darkness, and said it to herself. Ready. Ready. Ready.

Chapter 41.

Gunfire started popping in the house as Deleon's troops started firing back from the sandbagged window positions. There was the occasionally heavier boom of a shotgun and occasionally the rippling bursts of a light automatic weapon. Stooping low to take advantage of the sandbags, in case Santiago's gunners lost track of what they were supposed to be doing, we moved into the hallway. A man with a handgun stuck in his belt pushed past us, carrying a clear plastic bag full of shotgun sh.e.l.ls. We moved along the interior wall, feeling the wetness where it too was soaked with muddy water.

The staircase was empty, everyone was hunkered down at a gun port by now. I wondered where the women and children were. Probably in the central yard where the bullets wouldn't reach them. As we went up, I could hear the building groaning like a ship in a storm. The walls of the stairwell were wet, and the remnant of stairwell carpet was soaking as we walked on it. Above us I heard the sound of wood twisting.

"It's the G.o.dd.a.m.ned roof garden," I said to Chollo.

"The roof garden?"

"Yeah. It's been raining for three days. All the dirt on the roof. It's soaked full of water. The house is caving in under the weight."

"That makes it nice," Chollo said.

At the top of the stairs we turned left and back past the stairwell toward the front room. In the corner of the hallway, where the right wall joined the front wall, a man was crouched by the window, staying low, trying to see what was happening. He looked up at us as we came down the corridor, and frowned. We didn't look familiar. His hand went under his coat. Chollo said something in Spanish and jerked his thumb at the stairwell behind us. The guard had his gun out now, a big, stainless-steel Colt.45. He looked past us down the corridor where Chollo had pointed, and I hit him just above his right ear with the sap. He grunted and dropped the gun and staggered against the wall. I hit him again, same place, and he sighed and slid down the wall and lay still on the floor. The water running down the walls was already beginning to soak into his shirt.

"What'd you say?" I asked Chollo.

"I said, 'Luis wants you right away,"' Chollo answered.

There was a gun in his hand now, but otherwise he looked as relaxed as he had when I thought he was falling asleep in front of Deleon. I looked at the door to Lisa's room. It was padlocked. I stepped back against the far wall, feeling the wetness soak through the back of my pants where the leather jacket didn't protect it, then I lunged a kick at the door and heard the hasp screws tear in the door. I stepped back and did it again and the hasp tore loose and the door flew open. The room was completely dark. Chollo produced a small flashlight and shone it into the darkness and there was Lisa St. Claire in jeans and a tee shirt, holding an iron bar like a baseball bat, her eyes wide and startled like a deer caught in the headlights.

The gunfire sounds increased. In the wet darkness she heard someone at the door. She turned to face the door when it burst open. The light outside the door was dim, but it was too strong after the pitch darkness of her room. She squinted, trying to adjust. She could see someone in the doorway, two someones-a big man, very broad, and a slimmer man with balletic movements. Both of them had guns. Everywhere water dripped from the ceiling and slithered down the walls. He spoke. She backed into the room a little, crouching. Maybe she could get past them as they came in to get her. She spoke, without knowing what she said. Her voice sounded to her like the snarl of an animal. He spoke again. She knew him. He was Frank's friend. He'd been at the wedding with his girlfriend. She spoke without hearing herself. He spoke to her and she didn't hear him. Her world was no longer one of discourse. She felt his arm around her. She went with him, the dancer man ahead of them. The house creaked as they moved through it. The sounds of stress in the house were nearly continuous. The walls were slick with water. Holding onto the banister with her free hand, because the stairs were slippery with rain water, she went down with him. Her heart pounded. She struggled to control herself. Calm, she thought. Ready. I'm not out yet. On the stairs Luis was there. She shrank in upon herself. Words in Spanish. Then they were in the hall. Jostled. Gunshot. Out into the rain-wet, bright-black night street. Rain smell. Headlights. Silence before her. The house groaning behind her. The big man's arm still tight around her. Headlights. Her breath shallow. She felt a ripple of agoraphobic fear. She could barely breathe. Calm. Ready. She felt the rain in her face. The armed men clumped around her. The big man continued to hold his arm around her. The street seemed vast and unstructured, the figures across the street seemed remote and unreal. The buildings next door seemed distant. She felt a little dizzy, as if the earth were unstable and things might suddenly turn upside down. Luis was talking to the big man. I have to be calm, she thought. Behind her she heard the thud of something, plaster maybe, sodden with water, falling to the floor. A timber somewhere in the house gave way with a twisting screech. I have to be ready.