Joseph Wambaugh - Finnegan's week

For the first time in twenty minutes, Shelby Pate spoke. He said, “Why the fuck would I make a disturbance? You intend to pay us our money, right?”

“Certainly,” Soltero said. “But there is a problem.”

Shelby looked at Abel and said, “What kinda problem?”

Soltero withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his jacket. He handed it to Abel Durazo, and said, “There are eighty fifty-dollar notes. I hope you are pleased.”

Shelby said, “ Four grand? You owe us six grand!”

Abel could smell the ox. His body odor was powerful, and when Abel’s hand brushed against Shelby’s, the ox’s hand was clammy.

Abel was terrified. He said, “Ees okay, Buey!”

“No!” Shelby said. “Fuck, no ! We got six grand comin!”

“I thought I could sell them to my contact for several dollars a pair, but I could not,” Soltero said, reasonably.

Shelby said, “And you got no profit for yourself, right?”

“Not very much,” Soltero said. “I spent most of my profit on your food tonight.”

“Okay,” Abel said. “Okay. Ees okay, Buey!”

“Sure,” Shelby said, very quietly. “Sometimes things don’t work out.”

Abel had heard that tone once before, when the ox had smashed the bottle of beer across the eyes of the bearded biker. Abel was petrified.

Then Soltero yelped! Shelby had grabbed his ponytail with his left hand and jammed the derringer against the bone behind Soltero’s right ear, saying, “Tell your pals to get outta the car or I’ll put one right between your runnin lights!”

The driver reached under his jacket, but Soltero yelled, “No!”

Then Soltero said something in Spanish that Shelby didn’t understand, and his friends opened the doors and got out slowly.

“Buey! Don’ do eet, Buey!” Abel pleaded. He was afraid to even touch the ox for fear he might pull the trigger.

“Get out, dude!” Shelby said to Abel. “You’re drivin!”

“Where?” Abel cried.

“Back to our car,” Shelby said. Then he released Soltero’s hair, but reached inside Soltero’s coat pocket, removing his wallet. Then he said, “Take that fuckin watch off!”

Soltero removed his gold wristwatch and handed it to Shelby Pate, who put it in the pocket of his leather jacket. Shelby said, “We’re gonna take Señor Soltero with us and make sure he ain’t got some hideout money. Then we’re goin home. If this’s a real Rolex maybe it’ll make up for what he owes us.”

“Crazy!” Abel whispered. “ Crazy !”

But now there was nothing Abel Durazo could do except go along. He stepped out and started to open the front door. Soltero’s men stood in the headlight beam, whispering.

Then the small one moved out of the light and came toward Abel, saying in Spanish, “The keys. I have the car keys.”

Shelby said to Soltero, “Jist relax and this’ll be over before ya …”

“ Aaaaaaahhhhhh !”

A loud sigh. It sounded to Shelby like Flaco was taking a badly needed piss. Then Abel looked in at him through the side window of the car.

His eyes were white in the moonlight. “Buey!” he cried. “Buey!” Abel’s right hand came up to the window and smeared it with blood.

Soltero hit the door handle and fell out onto the roadside. Shelby heaved himself out just before three explosions shattered the bloody glass!

Abel staggered around the car toward Shelby, clutching the steel that protruded from his belly. Then his hands relaxed and he toppled onto the road.

Shelby bellowed and stood over Soltero, who held his palms up to ward off the bullet. Soltero was silent when Shelby kept his promise and fired the derringer point-blank, right between his running lights.

Then an orange fireball exploded at Shelby from the other side of the car.… The explosion revived him.… The fireball seemed to blow him down.… He lost the derringer.… He got up and ran!

The two Mexicans screamed to each other in Spanish and Shelby heard footsteps padding after him. He kept going, running up the hillside, plunging into the mesquite, plowing through it! In a few minutes the Mexicans’ voices grew fainter.

There were two rows of houses on the hillside, and an open field off to the right. There were no streetlights on that hardpan road, not one. Shelby started for that open area but stopped in horror!

Through the darkness, strange shapes loomed up from the earth.… Crypts and gravestones … Figures moving among them … Flickering candles floating as though through the air … It was a graveyard! Shelby screamed and ran the other way.

He doubled back again and scrambled up a desolate hill, away from houses and cars, away from tombstones and flickering candles. Shelby ran into the blackness of the night, which was not nearly as terrifying as those flickering floating candles.

When Fin and Nell had left the restaurant they’d found Bobbie waiting at the mouth of the passageway. She’d described the Ford Explorer and told them she didn’t get the license number, but was sure it was a California plate. Then, with nothing further they could do, the three investigators had headed for Nell’s car in the parking lot of the Frontón .

The traffic leaving Tijuana was unusually busy for early evening. The vendors were out in force, and they walked between the traffic lanes hoping to interest the tourists in pottery, leather belts, blankets and plaster figurines.

An old woman in a shawl shuffled among the throng of vendors. She had nothing to sell. She was bony and stooped and so badly wrinkled it would be difficult to say she was a woman were it not for her shawl and long dress. On her feet she wore the remnants of a man’s shoes.

Bobbie thought of the mangy starving dog in the doorway, of how the dog had whimpered in fear. She reached into her purse and handed the old woman a twenty-dollar bill.

* * *

Shelby Pate was hopelessly lost and there was no one to light his way. No one to call him with a golden trumpet. No mother to await him on the Day of the Dead. He was exhausted, panicked, battling wave after wave of hysteria. He’d sometimes hallucinated when he’d snorted this much methamphetamine, and he thought he might be hallucinating now. He wasn’t sure that any of this was real.

He was lying on a dusty hilltop in the darkness and could hear dogs barking, and children shouting in the distance. Out in front of him he saw a road traversing a lonely ridge. A vehicle moved slowly along the road and someone was searching from the vehicle with a flashlight. He was certain it was Soltero’s men hunting him. To kill him with a knife the way they’d killed Abel Durazo. Or to belly-shoot him and let him writhe in agony.

Then he saw a silhouette of a boy coming his way out of the darkness! It was all he could do to keep from screaming! Shelby pressed his face into the earth. When he raised up the child was still there. The child moved without a light, seeming to float through the night. Then the phantom boy vanished into a small tunnel, into the darkness.

Shelby heard a voice down the hillside behind him. It sounded like the Mexican with the Zapata mustache. He got up and ran, staggered , after the boy. Toward the fearful tunnel, and whatever lay beyond!

When Shelby got close he could see that it was not a tunnel but a hole in a tall metal barrier. There was an opening chopped clear through, but he was so fat he almost couldn’t follow the small boy through the hole. He ripped his jacket and cut his hands on the rusty metal. He got stuck for a moment and began to weep, but kept wriggling, finally getting his hips through, tearing his jeans, bloodying his legs. Then Shelby got up and limped across a desolate plateau in the moonlight.