“When we found this, Humberto, Pepe, know what they said? ‘Shel- what, like the oil company? A real gusher. Ready to drill.’ ” He withdrew his hand. “Laughed like fucking idiots.”
The sound of another motor came from down the gravel road. A flatbed truck hurtled past the squatter camp down the long line of eucalyptus trees. It arrived in a swirl of black exhaust. Two men rode in the cabin, two more stood in back. As it pulled up behind the Mercedes, Shel spotted within the wood slat framing of the flatbed two bathtubs- the old-fashioned kind, deep, with claw feet. Beside them were several bags of cement.
Cesar put his hand gently under her arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get a little further away.”
He lifted her off her perch on the rock and guided her to an oak tree twenty yards from the house. Still barefoot, she walked on her heels, trying to avoid the brown spiny leaves scattered across the yard. When they got to the tree he leaned her up against the trunk, checking to be sure the flatbed couldn’t be seen from there.
Two, she thought. One bathtub for Snuff. The other for Dayball. They’d dump the bodies in, fill the tubs with cement, let it dry, then take them out by boat into the strait, or the deep channel of the Sacramento, wait till dark then drop them over the side, never to be found. Not three, she thought, two. They’re not going to kill you. Not yet.
A gust of wind rustled the oak branches. A flurry of tiny brittle leaves swirled to the ground.
“Such a weird tree,” Cesar said, trying to make conversation. “Come winter, it never loses all its leaves. But it never keeps them, either.”
Shel offered him the photograph. “You can have this back,” she said.
He looked at it in her hand, puzzled, then finally took it. Glancing at the picture and then at her, he said, “Almost didn’t know it was you.”
He was referring to the bruises and cuts on her face. “I’ve looked better,” she admitted.
“Who did that to you?”
“Guess.”
Cesar shook his head in disgust and put the picture back in his pocket. “Fucking loser,” he said. “Anybody could have seen that.”
“Except you and me,” she remarked. “We went to town and lost our seat.”
He chuckled acidly, started to say something then checked himself.
“What else did you find in his car besides my picture?”
“Nothing,” Cesar said. “At least, nothing that would have tipped us off we were going to get fucked.”
“But you were suspicious.”
“It’s the nature of the business. And anyway, we owed the Arevalo family a shot at revenge. They were begging for it. Seemed like a good chance to feel out how far this Felix Randall would take things.”
“You found out.”
Cesar reached down, picked up a small smooth stone and hurled it into the weeds along the irrigation ditch.
“Now it’s his turn,” he said, “to get educated.”
“Is that what Snuff and Dayball are for? Part of the education process?”
Cesar rubbed his face, chafing the skin against the morning chill. “What nobody seemed to understand is that we wouldn’t just send one car out to that junkyard. Me and the idiots, Humberto and Pepe, and two other chavos, we were waiting out on the road. We hear the gunfire go off, I told Humberto, ‘Go, drive, get in there.’ Asshole. Fucking froze.” Cesar shook his head and spat. “Not that it matters. I’m the asshole now.”
“I know how that feels,” she said.
He looked at her, struggling against the kinship she suggested. “Anyway, from the road it sounds like a fucking war, then out pops this Lincoln, fishtails, boom, south, tearing like hell. We took off after it. About a mile, we catch up. Shot out one of the tires. Thing slid into the cattails. Guy driving staggered out and opened fire, so we nailed the motherfucker, boom, dead. Snuffito, he just sat there in the passenger seat, pissing himself. Whining like a puppy. Laid out on the backseat was some guy trying to stuff his stomach back inside his body.”
Shel assumed this was Lyle. Or Hack. She tried to picture it. Then she tried not to. “What happened to him?” she asked quietly.
“What do you think?” He seemed wounded by her tone. “You can say a prayer for him.”
“Yeah. I’ll do that.”
“It took us a while, but Snuffito came around. Big-time.”
“Don’t gloat about that,” Shel said. “It’s beneath you.”
She thought for a moment she detected a slight blush rising in his face.
“I wasn’t gloating,” he said. “That’s how we learned about the house, where we found you. From Snuff.”
“And Dayball?”
“There’s a place Snuff and his brothers deliver money, it’s a front, some plumbing repair outfit in Rio Vista. That’s what he told us. We put a bandista on it- ”
“Bandista?”
“Gang,” he said. “Guy from a gang. New recruit. We put him on this place in Rio Vista, Dayball showed up early this morning.”
Shel looked off toward the northerly hills. They were low and smooth and lush with windblown grass.
“What’s my part in this?”
Cesar picked up another stone, hurling it in almost the exact same place as the last.
“You get traded for Frank,” he said.
She couldn’t help herself, she laughed. “You’re not serious. To accomplish what?”
“Whatever we fucking choose.” He looked away uneasily. “To be honest, the plan’s changed since we picked up Dayball.” He shook his head, shrugged. “Fucking coward. We barely had him in the car before he was telling us everything, anything, begging, trying to work an angle. It was pathetic.”
Shel understood his contempt, at the same time envying Dayball’s having an angle to play. Not that it seemed to be doing him much good.
“So now,” she said. “What’s the plan now?”
Cesar picked up another stone, but instead of tossing it he merely bobbed it in his hand. “That Dayball, very chatty guy. We know enough now to take it to Señor Felix but good. Run him out of here. But you know, knowledge is power. The men who call the shots, they see an opportunity here. So they’re sending somebody back to the plumbing shop in Rio Vista, where we snagged Dayball, they’re gonna leave a message for Felix. He hands up Frank to us, we hand you back to him. Show him. See? We’re not so bad. We’re human beings. Then we talk terms.”
“That’s nuts,” Shel said. She could hardly draw a breath, so it came out sounding like a laugh.
“He goes along, or he goes down, man by fucking man.”
“You don’t know Felix. He’ll never go for that.”
“Too bad.”
For me, she thought, turning away. Too bad for me. Voices erupted from the far side of the house. Shel recognized one of them as belonging to Humberto, or Pepe. One of the big ones. They were out in the open now, out of the cellar, calling to the men in the truck. She heard something drop hard onto the back of the flatbed amid the banter of men at work.
“You hand me back to Felix,” Shel confided, “I’m dead.” Cesar wouldn’t look at her. He knows, she thought. Of course he does. On the far side of the house, the truck started up and began backing around to head out again. “I was supposed to make sure Frank could deliver. That was my side of the bargain, or else they’d just kill him as is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cesar said softly. “Dayball told us that, too. That’s what makes you valuable.”
“To who?”
The flatbed headed out the gravel road, returning the way it had come, leaving behind another cloud of black exhaust. The truck’s back end was covered now with a large sheet of canvas roped down tight.
“Felix put a price on your head,” Cesar told her. “You disappeared last night. Frank fucked up, the trap they laid turned to shit. Felix figured somehow, some way, you’d been in on the whole thing. He’d put the word out, you get brought to him. Well, okay, we’ll do that. He brings Frank to us, so we can finish what the Arevalo brothers wanted. One for the other. A sign of good faith. He pays his weekly dues, everybody goes back to business.”