Ann Major - Wild Enough For Willa

“Chinga…”

The boys made vile hand gestures, such gestures having a rich obscene vocabulary all their own in Mexico. Aloud, they cursed him with a virulent stream of Mexican profanity. Then on the next breath, they sauntered jauntily across the street to cajole a fat-stomached tourist in Bermuda shorts who was smoking a cigar. Rap music pulsed from the low-slung sedan as the gringo leered at their pictures and then pulled out a fat wallet.

“Putas. Very pretty.”

Fun and games? In Mexico? Tonight?

They do anything.

It had been a while since Luke had had a woman. Sucker that he was, he’d been true to Marcie. It struck him he’d been waiting for her call and not her lawyers. His pride, his stupid pride had killed her.

I’m sorry. Why had that been so hard to say?

Sweat dripped from Luke’s brow. The heat. The damned desert heat. In July, even at night, Nuevo Laredo was like a furnace, baking him from above and below.

Why the hell hadn’t Baines done what Luke had told him? Why couldn’t he have stayed put in the good old U.S. of A.? But, no. Baines, like a lot of lawyers, had a penchant for drama. He was up ahead, leading this caravan of fools through the dense NAFTA traffic.

Little Red was not far behind.

Baines had gotten a green light when he’d crossed the border. His companions were a gorilla in a jogging suit, a small, skinny guy with greasy, black hair and a goatee, and a yellow-haired whore in red polka dots who was so pretty she made Luke’s stomach knot.

The Americans had stopped Little Red. But the paunchy-gutted idiots in their tight uniforms had let him go. When Luke got across the traffic-clogged border, which was bumper to bumper with eighteen-wheelers, he found Baines’s and Little Red’s cars two blocks from the main drag, their doors open in a dirt lot as if the occupants had scrambled out of them and taken off running. The radios had been ripped out. In another hour, the tires would be gone, too.

Beside Baines’s car, Luke had found his brother’s wallet, all the money gone and a high-heeled, red pump. Was the shoe the whore’s?

So where were they? He’d asked questions. Paid people. So far, he’d come up with zip.

Suddenly something that looked like bright red hair shimmered under blue neon a few blocks ahead. When Luke sprinted, a beggar with a mouthful of black teeth grabbed his ankle. Stumbling, he threw a fistful of pesos at the woman. Pushing himself free of her, he raced toward blue neon.

The redhead had vanished. Luke ran until he was thoroughly out of breath and thoroughly lost. When he stopped, he was on some dusty, rutted lane that wound in an indefinite course through a warren of shabby, graffiti-splashed buildings. Breathing hard, Luke rocked back on his heels.

Buildings? The houses were crude shacks made of sticks, adobe and cinder block. They leaned against one another like a row of dominoes ready to fall.

Hell on earth had to be junked cars lining a road like this. Hell was dirty, mean-looking, starving cats and dogs, half-naked kids with big brown eyes and ragged clothes. For an instant Luke was back at the pueblo. Then he stopped himself, not letting himself go there.

A lone rooster wandered in circles in the middle of the road. What was the use? Little Red could be anywhere. Luke might as well find a bar, have a tequila, the good kind, and pray for a break. But as he was scanning the houses for a familiar landmark so he could retrace his steps, a woman screamed.

Harsh slaps quieted her.

Then a gun popped, and she screamed again.

“Get off her, so I can kill myself a lawyer!”

Luke knew that voice.

The kid!

Another low-throated cry. This time Luke placed it as coming from the cinder block shack two houses down.

The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Luke’s eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.

When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.

When he was close enough, he yelled from the street. “Damn you, Little Red…you’re crazy to carry a gun into Mexico. Cops down here will lock you away. You’ll never get out.”

“This is good,” mocked his brother drunkenly. “Not before I kill me a lawyer and…and…a bastard.…You’re next—Indian.”

The door banged. Bloody fingers against his golden face, Baines staggered outside. As always he was dressed impeccably in a dark custom-made suit. His two goons, the giant in the jogging suit and the runt with the slicked-back hair, stumbled outside behind him, grabbing Baines before he fell.

“Run, you sons of bitches,” Little Red whooped, rushing after them. “Vengeance is mine.”

The three men took off running. Luke sidestepped into a black pocket between two houses. Something he’d read in one of Sanders’s reports came back to him. Little Red had starred in a dozen plays in high school.

“Corny. Prison damn sure didn’t dim your flair for cheap drama, did it, kid?” he shouted.

“Where the hell are you?” Elbowing his way into the shadows, Little Red waved his gun. “Step out where I can see you.”

“This isn’t a high school play—kid. And you ain’t Rambo. And I ain’t stupid.”

The gun swung wildly.

Luke shrank against the wall.

“Luke! You…you…coward! You bastard!”

Silence.

Then a roach scurried out of the dark past the rooster. Scrawny wings spread.

When Little Red fired, the confused rooster flapped straight at Little Red.

“Sonofabitch!” Swatting wildly at the bird, the kid dropped the gun.

Racing footsteps at the other end of the alley.

Mr. This-is-good and his goons hadn’t gotten far after all.

Little Red roared in rage, then gleefully scooped up his gun and lurched after them.

Silently, swiftly, Luke pursued them.

He got ten feet before she yelled. Then she moaned.

When nobody answered, a final hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled, broken off.

She was scared. The bastards had left her all alone in that shack.

Luke remembered the gunshots and stopped running. With acute frustration he watched Little Red’s bright red head vanish into darkness.

She could be hit. Dying.

Marcie.

“Help…” This girl’s Texas drawl was as pronounced as Marcie’s. Thus, the e was elongated.

Luke stared at the black door as if it were the gate to hell.

“Please…” Again her prominent vowels seemed endless. “P-le-e-ease…”

“Marcie?” he whispered.

No. But this girl’s faint cries held raw urgency. He drew in a savage breath and then pushed against warped wood that creaked heavily on ancient hinges.

“Help…”

He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.

A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.

The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one he’d found earlier.

He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. “Cinder-eff-ing-rella!”