David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

The second camera he fitted with a flash and a 35-105 zoom, setting it for autofocus and hanging it from his neck. If he ended up close to anybody he’d let go with that, using a fill flash to make sure he got a decent exposure. The third camera, fitted with a standard 55 and a second flash, he left in the bag in case one of the other two jammed.

He settled back to wait. Over time the rain stiffened, the wind picked up. His legs cramped from the cold and he chafed his wet clothing for warmth. The wound at his temple inflicted by Frank started throbbing again. Eventually he withdrew Shel’s letter from inside his coat pocket and fingered it. He reached inside the envelope, felt the hand-worn paper, recalled the spidery handwriting, not needing light to see it. He pictured her not as he’d seen her last, brutalized by Frank, but as he’d known her long ago, when life still seemed tinged with luck- saw her in a denim shirt and painter pants, sitting barefoot on the porch of a rented beach house near Santa Barbara, wind in her hair, staring out across the ocean with a beer bottle lodged between her legs. The West Texas drawl. The tomboy wisecracks.

He pictured her suddenly appearing then, real as the moon. She stuck her head in beneath the sagging wet tarp and said, Don’t. Not for me. Live, you idiot.

Cesar reached the cross-county highway and turned east toward the interstate, where he veered south. He got off at the final exit before the Carquinez Bridge and headed for a cluster of run-down apartment buildings overlooking the Maritime Academy.

“Where are we going?” Shel asked, her voice so weak she barely heard it herself.

Cesar parked at the end of a cul-de-sac. An empty field sat beyond the apartment complex, dotted with sickly trees, where a hulking figure in a hooded sweatshirt walked two mottled pit bulls through the trash, weeds and broken glass. The pits swaggered through the debris, noses down, ears erect, moving with a gait as close to a pimp roll as a dog could manage.

“Who lives here?” Shel asked. A whisper.

The craving had intensified, the result of no more boosters of whatever it was the doctor had given her. The withdrawal created an aching body sickness that, combined with the throbbing pain in her head, redoubled the weakness in her legs. She lacked faith she could duplicate the efforts to walk she’d managed back at the house. At the same time she knew Cesar would never let her sit out here alone. He’d lost a lot of blood, almost fainting at the wheel twice. In the end he used rage to fuel his will, wagging his gun, calling her names. Once or twice she’d thought he’d finally decided to be done with the bother and was pulling to the side of the road, ready to kill them both.

Breathing through his mouth, Cesar checked his bloody arm, then removed Pepe’s severed hand from its resting place above the dash and stowed it beneath the seat. Murmuring inaudibly to himself, he got out, the cloth of his jacket and trousers sticking to the bloody upholstery, then came around, opened the passenger-side door and dragged her across the seat.

“You can walk,” he hissed. “You know you can.”

Propelling herself from one filthy car to the next, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, she hobbled beside him as they passed an abandoned Datsun with SHIT HAPPENS finger-written in the grime on its windshield. Shit doesn’t just happen, she thought, pulling herself along. It hunts you down. The row of cars ended, and without anything to push against, she fell. Cesar just kept moving, pointing toward one of the apartment buildings as he dragged her up and along. At such moments she found it was true, she could walk. The way a dying woman walks.

Cesar led her to the breezeway of the apartment building nearest the cliff. Vato graffiti snarled across the wall. The stairway was steep and stank of piss. A shaft of dust angled down through a grime-smeared skylight. Their steps rang out on the metal stairs as they climbed to the top, by which time her head was spinning. Surfaces rippled at the edges. The floor swayed. With one hand on the wall, the other around Cesar, she made it to the end of the hall. He knocked at one of two facing doors then tried the knob.

The door, unlocked, eased open.

“Primo,” Cesar called. No one answered.

A guttering haze beckoned from within, created by candles burned down to the quick. The entry gave way to a dark hallway, down which successive doorways glowed with the same twitching light.

“Something’s wrong,” Shel said, looking at a table awash in melted candle wax.

“It’s weird,” Cesar agreed. He glanced around a corner into the first empty room. “I’ve never been here when there wasn’t somebody hanging out. Hidalgo’s junkie pals. The chicks who come up to boost spikes, raid his stash cans.” In the next doorway, another flickering ooze of candle wax greeted their stare. “He’s a nod, he knows a dozen other nods, and on any given day, half of them are here.” He shuddered. “Never seen the place this quiet, even when everybody’s swacked.”

He walked stiffly from pain and dizziness, turning his whole body to look inside each room. Shel staggered behind, using the wall for support and mesmerized by the Rorschach of smeary bloodstains across the back of his jacket and trousers. Finally, at the end of the hallway, they peered into the last room and came upon a near-naked youth, sprawled across a bare mattress with a tangled sheet kicked onto the floor. The young man had indio features and a body turned gaunt from excess. Dressed only in socks and underwear, he rubbed his arms, eyes glazed as he stared at the ceiling with an impersonal smile.

“Primo,” Cesar said. “Hidalgo.”

Hidalgo lowered his glance from the ceiling, his eyes milky as he tried to focus on the figures in the doorway. Dried saliva clung to his lips which moved but no sound came out.

“I don’t think he can hear you,” Shel said. “He always like this?”

“No. Which is why nobody stuck around, is my guess.”

With an air of wanton grace Hidalgo finally recognized Cesar. He lifted his hand, his lips cracking into an oblivious smile as his fingers twitched. He was waving hello. Leaving Shel propped in the doorway, Cesar tramped over to a soiled pile of clothing balled up in the corner and searched the pockets, finding a small bindle of wax paper. He also discovered a modest wad of bills, which he pocketed as Hidalgo’s head fell back onto the mattress with a heaving, oblivious moan and his eyes closed.

Returning to Shel, Cesar showed her the bindle and said, “You may need this. You want it now or later?”

Shel felt ashamed at how conflicted she felt. The craving already had her by the throat, not because of the pain.

“Later,” she said, swallowing.

Cesar put the bindle in his pocket. “Maybe there’s some thread in the kitchen, a needle.”

“For what?”

“My arm,” he shouted, instantly furious, as though she should know. “Stitch it up.”

In the kitchen he found some rum. He removed his jacket. Much more gingerly, he removed his shirt. The sleeve came away like a sheath of skin and he screamed through his teeth. Blood seethed from the wound again. He rinsed it in the sink, wiping away the dried blood and the seared flesh, and discovered that the bullet had gone straight through. There’d be no need to dig it out. This seemed a good sign, despite the fact he had no strength in the arm. The rim of the muscle hung in shreds.

“All we have to do is clean it up and sew it closed, both sides,” he said. “Find a towel.”

She tried to get up from her chair but her legs collapsed beneath her. He pulled his gun out from under his belt and slammed the butt against the counter. “I’ve had enough of this,” he shouted. “When the mood hits, you walk. Do it. Now.”