Payne let the bat fly. Just as Rutledge pulled the trigger, the Louisville Slugger caught the tip of his shoulder. The slug smacked the mud at Payne's feet.
Rutledge grunted and dropped the gun. Payne went low, aimed for Rutledge's knees. Tackled him, shoulders square, a linebacker wrapping up a running back.
The men toppled backward, rolled over each other. A flailing of arms and elbows and knees. Both men struggled to their feet. Rutledge got his hands around Payne's neck. "You stupid shit! You could have been rich."
Payne broke Rutledge's grip and threw a left jab that caught him squarely on the nose. A snap of cartilage and a fountain of blood.
Rutledge roared. More in anger than pain. He came at Payne. They collided head-on and tumbled into the culvert, the sluice pipe dousing them from overhead. Waist deep, the water slowed their movements. Scrambling to get their footing, they each clawed their way to shore like prehistoric amphibians. Payne slipped and Rutledge got to dry land first. Diving face-first into the mud, Rutledge reached for the gun, which slipped from his wet fingers. Payne leapt onto Rutledge's back and squeezed his right arm around the man's neck. Gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Payne pulled upward, catching Rutledge in a choke hold. Rutledge spat mud, grunted, snorted an unintelligible curse, and jackknifed an elbow backward, burning Payne's right ear.
Rutledge was strong and slippery, all long muscles and hard bones and wiry gristle a dog couldn't chew. Swallowing his own blood, he lurched to his knees, dipped a shoulder, and tossed Payne off his back. Payne clambered to his feet just as Rutledge came at him. Payne shifted his weight to one leg, swiveled a hip, and used Rutledge's momentum to toss him to the ground, the gun out of reach.
Payne saw the bat on the wet ground. Scooped it up. Turned, thinking Rutledge would still be going for the gun, several yards away. Instead, the man was just an arm's length away, drawing the foot-long knife from the scabbard on his leg. Payne sidestepped a forward thrust. But a downward slash sliced him from the tip of the left shoulder halfway to the elbow. The cut long but shallow.
The movement left Rutledge off balance. Before the pain from the wound even reached Payne's brain, he latched both hands around Rutledge's wrist. Payne twisted the arm outward, Rutledge yelping with pain.
The knife fell to the wet clay.
Payne, bleeding from his left arm, threw a straight right into Rutledge's already shattered nose. Rutledge staggered backward, blood pouring from his nostrils and soaking his brushy mustache. But still, he didn't fall. He wobbled side-to-side, arms down, eyes unfocused. Payne picked up the knife and tightened his grip.
Lightning blinked in the distant sky. In Payne's mind, a flare burst with dazzling images of startling clarity. Adam, so young. Sharon, stoic in her loss. Tino, filled with life and promise. Marisol, what horrors had she known, and what dread must she feel now?
Payne sized up just where he would bury the blade. The gut? The chest? Maybe the neck. Let him drown in his own blood. He would kill the man for Adam and Tino and Sharon and Marisol. And for himself.
He would plunge the knife to its hilt, tearing tissue and ripping organs from their moorings. He would hear the steam explode from pierced lungs. He would yank out the blade, time and again, to the satisfying squish of flesh sucking at steel. He would strike a hundred times, baptizing himself in the bastard's blood.
Holding the knife in an underhand grip, Payne advanced a step. Rutledge's eyes seemed to clear, to focus on the blade.
Let him taste the fear and hear his own last breath.
A gunshot echoed off the concrete walls of the pump station.
"Freeze, Payne!"
Cardenas stood atop the levee, aiming his 9mm Glock at Payne's head, Marisol and Tino a few steps to one side.
It had all come crashing down, Payne thought, the weight of his actions pounding at him. He had tried to save Marisol but succeeded only in delivering her-and Tino and himself-to wet and lonely graves.
EIGHTY-SIX
"Toss the knife down," Cardenas ordered. "Then step away."
Fighting off dizziness, his arm bleeding, Payne obeyed. In his mind, he saw the last seconds of his life ticking away, his body buried in a levee alongside an old Chevy. Strangely calm, he accepted his own death in a way he had never accepted Adam's.
"About goddamn time you got here, Javie." Rutledge spat blood, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
"Now, there's a thank you, Tio Sim."
"Don't be so damn prickly." Rutledge picked up the. 45 and slid it into his holster. "Payne don't have the guts. If he couldn't do the pollo who killed his boy, he sure as hell couldn't do me."
"Give me back the knife," Payne said, "and we'll see."
"You had your chance. Just like with your own boy. You blew it then and you blew it now."
Payne felt a molten wave of heat flow through his chest. He could bull-rush Rutledge, knock him down, go for the gun. Then what? Get shot by Cardenas. That wouldn't help Tino or his mother.
The chief motioned with his gun. "Move on down, both of you."
Marisol and Tino angled across the levee like skiers carving their way down a slope.
"You okay, kiddo?" Payne asked, pressing his right hand against the wound on his left arm.
"I'm good, Himmy. I got mi mami. "
Payne looked toward Marisol. All this time, he felt he knew her, but he was setting eyes on her for the first time. Soaking wet. Hair tangled. Face bruised. Still a beautiful woman, with a stubborn jaw carved from stone.
"Marisol, you've got a great son. You're gonna be really proud of him."
As if the boy would grow up. As if she'd be around to see him.
"Tino has told me all about you, Mr. Payne. You are a wonderful man." A strong woman with a tender voice. "Bless you."
Something passed between them. The mother who feared for her son and the man who had watched his own son die.
"Tino's a real valiente, " Payne continued.
"Very fucking touching." Rutledge tore strips of cloth from his shirt and jammed them up his nostrils. "Take care of those two, Javie." His voice was hollow as a foghorn. "I'll handle Payne myself."
Cardenas scratched a knuckle against his chin, as if checking to see if he had shaved. "I've done a lot of shit, Sim. But I never killed anyone. Much less a woman and a boy."
"About time you got your hands dirty."
"Not this way."
"Don't fuck with me, Javie. You want to see that puta on the witness stand?"
Tino's hands balled into fists. "Don't talk that way about mi mami!"
"Hush, Tino," Marisol ordered.
"So what are you saying, Sim?" Cardenas asked. "We kill three people to keep you out of prison?"
"You're goddamn right we do."
"Problem is, you're gonna do time, anyway." Cardenas swung his 9mm toward Rutledge. "Keep your hands where I can see them, Sim."
"What the fuck?"
Stunned, Payne tried to figure out what was going on. The police chief defying the man he called "mi tio." It made no sense.
Rutledge kept his right hand perched just above the walnut grip of his holstered revolver. The men were staring each other down, two cowboys itching for a shootout. But what was the fight about?
Marisol looked at Payne, her dark eyes alert, as if asking what to do. The Marine knife lay in the mud. Adam's baseball bat nearby. But there were two men with guns. Payne chose to wait it out.
"Javie, I got plans for you," Rutledge said. "Always did, ever since you were a baby."
"I've got my own plans."
"What the hell's that mean?"
"I know about the indictments and the plea you turned down. About your will, too."
"Whitehurst?" The realization seemed to nail Rutledge to the ground with a railroad spike. "That shyster. The going gets tough, and that damn lawyer turns yellow. Hell, you both do."