Steve Martini - The Arraignment

I squint into the glasses to make him out. He turns his body away from me just as I focus, awkwardly closing the door with one hand. I notice there is no arm coming out of the other sleeve of his shirt.

When he turns around again I realize why. His arm is bandaged up against his body, shoring up the broken ribs I gave Hector Saldado when I hit him with the tire iron.

“ Are you sure?” says Adam.

“In the flesh,” I tell him. “I was watching the sharp edge of the razor most of the time, but I’m not likely to forget that face anytime soon.”

Adam takes a look and I hand my field glasses to Julio, who focuses on him and watches, then hands the glasses back to me. “He lose an arm?” he says.

“In a manner of speaking.” I watch as Saldado steps down from the plywood platform, wrestles a cigarette one-handed from a pack in his shirt pocket, then lights it with a lighter from that same pocket.

Then he ambles to one of the vehicles out front, a large van with back doors open, and calls two of the guards to come over.

He gives them directions, pointing inside the van. One of them gets in, while the other one, his rifle slung over his shoulder, tries to pull something out of the back. He’s not having an easy time.

Saldado calls several more of them from behind the trailer. Six of them finally muscle the thing out of the van.

“You see that?” says Adam.

“Yeah.”

Whatever it is, is about six or seven feet long, wrapped in a cotton bed sheet that has twine tied around it. The six men stagger under the load. They lift it up onto the platform in front of the trailer, and then through the door inside.

“What do you think it is?” Adam lowers the glasses from his eyes and looks at me.

“I don’t know.”

A few seconds later, Saldado comes out of the trailer, gets in the van, and drives off, headed for the dirt road on the other side of the property.

“Well we’ve confirmed one thing. The brothers were involved with your man, Espinoza,” says Adam.

“I’d like to know what that thing was they were carrying.”

“We could try and take a closer look.”

“How?”

Adam talks with Julio who in turn speaks in Spanish with the other man. He motions off toward the other road with his hand. When Julio comes back he says: “You can get much closer to the trailer from the other road. He says there are some larger windows in the back, a sliding door. They walked in yesterday, and with field glasses they could see people inside.”

Adam thinks about it. “You want to try?”

“Why not?”

Fifteen minutes later we’ve collected ourselves, cooling down in the air-conditioned cars, back out on the highway. We backtrack less than a mile and turn off on another dirt track toward the sea. Julio says something into the handheld as we drive. A minute or so later, I look back through the rear window and realize that the other two cars in our caravan have suddenly disappeared.

“Don’t worry,” says Adam. “Julio’s people know what they’re doing.”

“Yeah, they be gettin’ the fuckin’ artillery out,” says Herman. “Case we get our asses caught.” Herman doesn’t like what we’re doing. “Ya want I get you the bullet-proof vest from the back,” he says. “Da one wit da bull’s-eye got all the holes in it.”

“Herman, cut it out,” says Adam.

“Yessir.” But when I look in the rearview mirror, Herman is still smiling, winks at me, chipped tooth looking like a broken picket on a fence.

“It will be all right,” says Julio. “If they stop us, I will tell them that you want to talk business. That you are down here looking for property for a resort. I will also let them know that we have people out on the road,” he holds up the walkie-talkie, “other cars. They are not likely to do anything. They would have no way of knowing what they are confronting.”

Adam smiles at me. “This is why you hire people.”

The Surburban rumbles down the road, bouncing over washouts from the last hurricane. Suddenly Herman hits the brakes, skidding tires throwing up dust. He’s turning the wheel, trying desperately to avoid plowing into the pickup that is parked across the road. We end up off the side, with the nose of our car in the jungle undergrowth.

“Man on the road,” says Herman. One hand is off the steering wheel; when it comes back up, it’s clutching Herman’s big stainless forty-five automatic.

“Herman. Put the gun away,” says Adam. “Julio.”

Without another word Julio is out of the car, slamming the door behind him, his hands out in front of him, showing anyone who is looking that they are empty. He holds them above his shoulders, spouting Spanish a mile a minute.

The dust begins to settle and I see a man, faded running shoes, dark pants, and a yellow shirt. He is pointing a rifle at Julio’s chest. Another one pops out of the jungle on the other side of the road. When I turn, two more are coming out of the bushes right next to our car, one of them with an AK alternately pointing at my window and then sweeping the back of Herman’s head.

Fortunately Herman has reholstered the forty-five, both hands now on the steering wheel.

“Everybody stay cool,” says Adam.

The conversation seems to go on for a long time. Julio with his hands up, the other guy with his rifle pointed. After what seems like an eternity, Julio makes a tentative move with one hand toward his belt. He reaches very slowly down and lifts his walkie-talkie out of its carrying case. He holds it up so the other guy can see that this is not a weapon, then talks into it, the other man watching and listening. Finally, the other man nods, waving the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of travel.

Adam takes a deep breath. “Well at least it looks like they’re not going to shoot us here.”

Julio comes back to the car and gets inside, his face shimmering with sweat. “It’s all right.” He is breathing heavily, wiping his face with a handkerchief from his pocket. “I have been told that we are to follow him.”

The pickup pulls back and clears the road.

Herman starts backing out of the bushes, tires sliding on green vegetation, pulls back onto the road, and drives past the truck.

We slow down for a second, just long enough for another vehicle, a beat-up rusted-out Toyota pickup, to pull out in front. Two men are riding shotgun in the back, rifles laid across their laps pointed in our direction. They are sitting up on the side wall, one hand on the rifle’s grip, finger in the trigger well, while they hold on with the other hand and the truck bounces along the road.

“What did he say?” says Adam.

“Private property,” says Julio.

“All that talk for two words?” says Herman.

“Yeah, well. Next time you can do the talking.”

“You did fine,” says Adam. “You kept us alive. Better than your friend pulling out his goddamned gun.” Adam pats Julio on the shoulder.

He kept us from getting our asses shot off, and Adam knows it.

A few seconds later, we pull into the sunlight, a big open area. From here the clearing is much larger than it appeared from the jungle road up above. Herman and the driver in front instinctively swing off to the left in a wide arc that ends up skidding to a stop in front of the trailer.

“Un momento.” Julio is out of the car before it can stop, his hands in the air again, talking to the man in the yellow shirt, who has climbed out of the passenger seat of the Toyota. The two gunmen from the back jump out and train their weapons on our vehicle. They are soon joined by three more who seem to materialize from out of nowhere. One of these, the closest to the window on my side of the car, is pimple-faced, a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old.