The doorman was between them and the exit and, as Alex and Renee moved with the crowd, he eased along blocking their escape route.
Suddenly the heat of the couch reached a critical temperature and the whole thing burst into a crackling ball of flame. Those in back of the mob felt the heat. It was enough. With a wild scream they surged forward.
Alex and Renee started to follow and at that monument Manuel lurched down the stairs, suitcase in one hand, bloody knife in the other.
Manuel stopped, suddenly, realizing his luck. The opportunity was his to silence these witnesses against him. Silence the witness. The woman was still worth something.
Licking his lips, he advanced on the American keeping the knife in a constant motion to the left. Making a deadly little circle of steel in the air that was impossible to parry at the last moment when he finally lunged.
Manuel was an experienced knife fighter. The steel felt good in his hand. Of course, the suitcase hampered him but he wasn't going to put it down.
Carefully he advanced on Alex while Renee stood back, paralyzed by fright.
Alex searched his memory for remnants of his army training in unarmed combat. But that was a long time ago.
Manuel lunged and he leaped back, well clear of the knife, but Alex realized he was being backed into a corner. Desperately he looked for a way around the menacing knife, a way to stay clear. But Manuel was to wily, too smooth for that.
He lunged again and Alex felt something slice sharply across his arm. It stung when he pulled away a second too late.
"Manuel!"
Fran burst into the room screaming for the Mexican. She ran up to him oblivious of Alex and Renee. Her face was contorted with agony.
"Manuel," she cried. "Give me a shot, please, Manuel!"
The Mexican tried to shove her away with the suitcase as he advanced on Alex. But Fran slipped past it to grab at him.
He tried to shake free and started to turn, his knife poised to stab the frantic blonde, only Alex jumped out at him Manuel swiveled to meet the new challenge.
Fran was tearing at his pockets. Cigarettes and coins scattered on the floor around his feet. He tried to shake her loose again.
She cried out in triumph, holding the needle and the bottle. Trembling, the girl shoved the sharp tip into the membrane-covered bottle opening, drawing hack on the plunger until the hypodermic was full of a clear, colorless fluid.
Renee had moved up beside her.
Snatching the needle out of Fran's hands, she buried the point in Manuel's back and shoved the plunger an the way home in one smooth movement.
Manuel felt the sharp prick of the needle, not really aware of what it was that jolted him. The tip missed a vein, but slowly a numbness started spreading through his back. Euphoria overtook his muscles and left them slack and nerveless.
His knife began to weigh a ton, and gradually his hand sank lower and lower.
The gringo was moving away from him, in slow-motion, stepping around him. Desperately Manuel lunged. Rut the silver blade, alive now with the reflection of the roaring flames, went around the Americano. Manuel tried to saw at him, unsteadily, but his lunge carried him against the burning mush and wall.
He stared, fascinated, as the bright yellow flame crawled up the arm of his coat and leaped playfully at his face. He turned his head. The Americano was getting away.
Ignoring the lively little tonguelets that seemed to multiply by the dozens on his clothes, Manuel staggered after the Americano and the two women. He still dragged the suitcase, an inferno of red and yellow flame now.
His hand, plunged inside the flame to hold the handle, was wonderfully cool. Dully, Manuel wondered about that. It was one of those miracles his mother told him about. Si! That was it. A miracle in the house of angles.
Alex, dragging the two women out, hardly making a stir in the crowd that had gathered to watch the fire.
They were too busy watching something else. A man stumbled out after them, engulfed in flame. His hair was a torch, flames waved from his clothes. One hand held a suitcase that was nothing more than a ball of flame and the other held the silver glitter of a knife. Someone moaned, "My God!"
He stumbled and fell. Two sailors ran toward him in the sudden hush. One kicked the suitcase away from the blackened, shriveled claw that had once been a hand. The other threw dirt over the purple blistered flesh and ash-black cloth.
Another sailor, wearing the insignia of a hospital corpsman, knelt by the fallen Mexican's side.
"Is he alive?" someone asked.
The corpsman nodded. "I don't see how. But he's alive. The shock alone…"
In the distance the wail of ambulances and the clang of the fire-bell could be heard approaching.
Renee looked at Manuel's seared face, the hand that was burned meat, and turned away in horror, burying her face against Alex's shoulder.
Even Fran, suffering withdrawal, seemed sobered by the sight.
Alex knew the moment wouldn't last. Hurriedly, he bundled the girls away, before the police showed up and started asking questions.
After he got them dressed in his hotel room, there was only one detour before they reached the border.
They stopped the cab driver at a sleazy drug store and Alex went in and negotiated with the clerk for what seemed hours. When he came out he carefully divided the small box of capsules into two portions and gave each of the women one pile.
He helped them swallow the pills, despite their trembling hands, and prayed that he wasn't giving them a fatal dosage. It wasn't heroin by a long shot. But he hoped the substitute would hold them together until they got through customs.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The following days were the most difficult. Alex wanted to put the women in the hospital, but Renee wouldn't allow it.
Deathly pale, she had him take the two of them high into the mountains where they rented a lonely mountain cabin. And then she had him take the distributor rotor out of the car and hide it.
The first day was bad. Fran and Renee both turned gray. Their skin was damp, clammy. Alex worried they were going to die, but Renee begged him to hang on.
"I've got to do something, Renee!" He ground his knuckles into the wood frame of the bed. "I can't stand to see you like this."
Renee stared up at the open rafters of the cabin. A few feet away she heard Fran's voice whimpering in agony. Renee had told Alex to tie Fran to the bed because she seemed crazed by her longing for the heroin that she couldn't get anymore.
We're all going crazy, Renee thought. We've got to do something or none of us will last.
In her mind, Renee recreated the events of the last few day – days that seemed like years. And the idea came to her.
"Get a rope," she whispered hoarsely to Alex.
He stared at her as if she were crazy.
"Get it!"
Blindly he followed her directions.
Under her urging he tied one of her ankles tightly to the heavy bed leg. Then he threw one end of a long rope over an open beam and tied it to her other ankle.
"Pull it up!" she ordered.
Alex hesitated.
"Pull it up," she pleaded. "For me, Alex. For us. You've got to do it!"
Straining he pulled, hauling one of her legs in the air. When it was straight out from her body he stopped.
"Keep pulling," she begged.
Sweat was pouring down his face, but not from the exercise.
She wouldn't let him stop until he was straining to pull her legs from her sockets. One was held to the floor and the other pointing straight up in the air. Perspiration beaded Renee's forehead, but she ordered him to tie the rope.