James Grippando - When Darkness Falls

“Who came?” said Jack.

There was no reply.

“Falcon?” said Jack. “Who came? Who are you talking about?”

The silence on the other end of the line was suddenly more profound, and Jack realized that no response was coming. The call was over. Falcon was gone. Jack closed his flip phone and laid it on the table in front of him. He stared at it for a moment, trying to comprehend the exchange that had just ended.

Paulo said, “Not exactly according to plan, was it?”

“No,” said Jack, looking off to the middle distance. “At least not our plan.”

F alcon shoved the cell phone in his pocket and resumed pacing. In his years of homelessness, he often went for long walks along the river, up Miami Avenue, and down Biscayne Boulevard. Confinement to a tiny, closed-in motel room made him feel like a caged animal. Walking helped him to clear his head, settle the confusion, and silence the voices. Swyteck had laid a huge mind-blower on him. On the streets, he could have walked all the way to Fort Lauderdale and back just processing this one.

The money was gone. It disappeared.

The money. The Disappeared. The play on words brought a bemused expression to his face.

“You want to share the good news with the rest of us?” said Theo.

Falcon turned and saw his reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door. He did look like someone who had just received good news. But it was no one else’s business. “Speak when you’re spoken to,” he said.

“That girl still needs a doctor,” said Theo.

“Shut up! Don’t you think I know that? Of course she needs a doctor.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“What do you want me to do? The doctor isn’t here.”

“Then let her go to one.”

“We can’t.”

“Sure you can,” said Theo. “Just open the door. I’ll carry her out into the parking lot only as far as you say, and then I’ll come back inside.”

“Sure you will.”

“You have my permission to shoot me in the back if I try anything funny.”

Falcon was pacing again, furiously this time. The last telephone conversation with Swyteck had brought a long-awaited clarity to his thoughts, and then Mr. Big Mouth had to mention the girl again and scramble everything. It wasn’t his fault that she needed a doctor. It wasn’t his fault that the doctor wasn’t around. There was only so much he could do, only so much abuse he could stand, only so much self-loathing he could inflict.

“What do you want from me?” he shouted, but he didn’t wait for Theo or anyone else to reply. Demons that he’d kept locked deep inside were taking control and forcing their way to the surface like a volcanic eruption. He went to the wall and started kicking it with the force of a soccer star. “Why…the hell…did you…have…to be…pregnant?” he said, a swift kick to the wall marking each break in his sentence. He didn’t even notice the horror on the hostages’ faces, didn’t hear the girl shouting that he had it all wrong, that neither she nor her injured friend was pregnant. It was as if the hostages were no longer in the motel room, as if Falcon himself were in another place, another time. In his mind’s eye, he was seeing other faces, ones that had haunted him for over a quarter-century.

“FASTER!” SHOUTED EL OSO. He was in the backseat of the car with the expectant mother, prisoner 309. She was flat on her back, belly protruding, knees bent, her feet squirming in El Oso’s lap. She was wearing a loose-fitting cotton dress, but it was hiked up to her hips, all sense of modesty abandoned.

“You must drive faster!” she cried.

“Two more minutes,” said the driver.

She let out a shriek that belonged in the torture chamber. That kind of noise coming from a man on the grill was something that El Oso heard every day, all just a part of the job. The same sound coming from a woman in labor affected him in ways that he had never anticipated.

“I have to push,” she said.

“No, you can’t!”

She started breathing loudly through her mouth, in and out, trying to build a rhythm and control the pain. Her face was flushed red and glistening with sweat. Her legs quivered, and her eyes bulged as if ready to pop from her head. Every pothole in the bumpy road elicited another grimace of pain. “I really have to push.”

“Not yet!” said El Oso.

She rolled from her back onto her left side and drew her knees up, assuming more of a fetal position. It seemed to help slightly.

“This is the turn,” said the driver.

“Just hold on a few more minutes,” El Oso told the woman.

The car squealed around the corner. Gravel flew as they turned off a paved highway and continued down a long, narrow alley. It was almost midnight, and with no streetlights in the alley, they sped like a freight train through a long, dark tunnel. The car suddenly screeched to a halt. The driver jumped out and opened the rear door. He grabbed the woman by the armpits, and El Oso took her by the legs. Together, they carried her to a metal fire escape at the rear of a rundown apartment building. In their haste, they knocked over a trash can, which sent a pack of rats scurrying toward the gutters. Up the rickety metal stairs they climbed, all the way to the third floor.

“Where are you taking me?” the woman said in a voice tight with pain.

Neither man replied as they reached the top of the fire escape. They were standing at the rear entrance to an apartment. A light shone through the kitchen window, but the door was closed and made of solid wood. El Oso was still holding the woman’s legs with both hands, so he knocked on the door by kicking it so hard and with such urgency that the steel toe of his military boot splintered the lower panel. “We’re here, let us in!” he shouted.

The deadbolt turned, and the door opened a few inches. El Oso immediately pushed against it, practically pulling the pregnant woman and the driver across the threshold. The old woman who had unlocked the door was suddenly pinned behind it, her back to the wall. Before she could speak, El Oso shouted, “Look the other way, woman!”

She complied without protest, averting her eyes from the pregnant woman as the men carried her inside. “Take her to the back bedroom,” she told the men.

El Oso and the other man carried her through the kitchen and down the dimly lit hall to the bedroom. She seemed to be getting heavier with each step, and the men were so exhausted that they dropped her onto the mattress.

“Please, get this baby out of me!” she cried.

The older woman was still waiting in the kitchen. “Are you ready for me?” she asked.

“Wait!” said El Oso. He took a black cloth from his pocket and put it over the prisoner’s head. She resisted and tried to pull it off, but El Oso grabbed her by the wrists. “The hood stays on, or you and your baby die.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please, let’s just do this!”

El Oso called into the next room. “We’re ready!”

The midwife rushed through the open doorway and went straight to the prisoner. Everything she needed for the delivery was arranged neatly on a table beside the bed. “Let’s get those underpants off,” she said.

The men lifted her hips, and the midwife slid the underpants down the woman’s legs. They were soaking wet with fluid from her broken membrane. “She’s ready to push,” said the midwife.

“No kidding!” the woman cried, her voice only slightly muffled beneath the black hood.

“How far apart are your contractions?”

“I don’t know. Not very long. Hurry, please. I can hardly breathe with this stupid hood over my head!”