Kitabı oku: «The Girl with the Golden Gun», sayfa 3
As she walked toward the door, she heard Chito’s shrill, raised yelps. Then Chito’s knife whizzed past her and hit the exact center of the door.
She gasped. Just like that—she could have had a blade in the back of her neck and been dead.
A slop bucket hit the wall, splashing its foul contents. Chito screamed that he wanted her punished.
“It is not for you to punish my woman.” Another bucket was knocked over, increasing the sewerlike stench. “I will punish her myself.”
Mia flinched.
“She knows too much. It’s dangerous. She tried to escape in Marco’s plane. We can’t trust her.”
“I never trust her before,” Tavio said. “So—she try to escape? So what? She is a gringa. A nobody.”
“Don’t be so sure. A traitor helped her. She will betray us. I can feel it. In my gut.”
“Let me do the thinking. With my brain.”
“You are married to my sister. This woman…”
“She has nothing to do with my marriage. Your sister is still my wife.”
“The men snicker behind your back. They say it is sick the way you follow her around like a lovesick dog. Like you have no balls, mano.”
“I will prove to you and to her that I have balls—tonight. I will take her. You can stand outside in the hall and listen to her screams. But first, I will teach you a lesson.”
She heard fists, blows, a life-and-death scuffle. Chairs were overturned. A body hit the ground. When gunshots exploded, and metal pinged, Mia pulled the knife out of the door and then ran all the way to her second-story bedroom. She went to her bathroom.
Setting the knife down, she stared at the wild woman in the mirror. Her face was still flushed from having gotten so overheated in the airplane and from her struggles with Chito. Her own sweat had plastered her hair to her skull. Not that she cared.
She was too afraid. If Chito came instead of Tavio, she would either stab him or herself. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her ever again.
Too upset to shower, she ran a shaky hand through her hair. The wet tangles just fell back in her eyes. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought against her rising fear.
For a long time she stood there, paralyzed. Finally Negra came up and rubbed her leg. Then the cat began to purr. Picking the animal up she returned to her bedroom and sat down on the bed where she began to stroke the cat’s soft fur. Doing so restored her a little. If only she knew where Julio lived, she would try to find him and warn him and tell him that he must flee.
For a while Negra endured her affection. Then as if sensing her nervousness, the independent creature sprang to the floor and curled up to sleep on a little rug under a chair. A door slammed downstairs and she heard Tavio shout to his men.
Feeling only slightly relieved, she placed the knife under her pillow and waited. As the awful seconds ticked by, Mia began to feel dull and hopeless. She could do nothing but sit here and wait.
Hours later, when Tavio still hadn’t come upstairs, she finally drove herself to get up from the bed and shower. As she toweled off, she was surprised that such a little thing had made her feel better. After she dressed, she paced back and forth at the end of her bed, her heart racing every time she heard Tavio or one of his men shout angrily below.
She should go to bed and yet she was afraid of the bed and what it might mean tonight. As she stared at the melon-colored adobe walls that imprisoned her, they seemed to close in on her more than ever. She wanted to run, but she knew that behind those high, thick, adobe walls, Tavio Morales’s immense, adobe mansion was a veritable fortress. An army of gunmen patrolled the rancho and airstrips in trucks and SUVs.
A natural spring with cold, icy water bubbled up from the ground not far from the stables, so there was a sure source of water. Tall cottonwood trees grew around the sparkling pool.
Beyond Tavio’s private army, every Mexican peasant, poor men like Ramiro, in the desert belonged to Tavio, as well. If one of their children was sick, Tavio paid for the doctor, buying their undying loyalty.
“They are my ears and eyes,” he’d told her. “I love them. And they love me. I protect them, and they protect me. I very important man here. I am much loved.” He’d smiled as if that thought pleased him. “If you try to escape, my little friends will tell me. If anyone try to help you, they will tell me, and I kill him.”
Remembering Ramiro watching her again, she bit her lips. Worrying about Julio, she went to the barred window. She had to get away or go mad. She had to.
Since the ranch house was located on a slight rise above the desert floor, Mia’s plush room with its heavy furniture and red-velvet spread and draperies had a view of the Chihuahua Desert and Tavio’s airstrip. She’d spent long hours watching the dusty two-lane road that led across the parched earth to the airstrips. Sometimes she’d watched huge dirt devils race across the barren, beige moonscape, and always she had wished she were free to whirl away.
She’d watched the birds, the vultures, hawks and the eagles with special envy because they could fly. In her other life, she had taken freedom for granted.
If I’m ever free again, I will treasure every single moment.
She had to get out of here.
“Oh, Shanghai…” She called to him, willing him to think of her, willing him to care, willing him to come.
Had she gone mad? Maybe she had if she believed Shanghai could hear her thoughts or that he would be moved by them.
She picked up her brush and sat down on her bed to work with her hair. Despite the thick adobe walls and floors, she heard telephones ring and more doors slam downstairs. She heard men come and go. When heavy boots stomped up the stairs, she cringed.
Tavio’s door opened and slammed.
The noise downstairs continued. Much was going on tonight. Trucks roared up to the compound. Planes took off and landed.
After a long time, most of the activity stopped, but still she listened to the silence, almost fearing it more, because soon Tavio would finish whatever he was doing in his own bedroom and come.
Finally she grew so weary, she lay down. At some point she must’ve fallen asleep because footsteps in the hall awakened her. When her door opened, her hand went to her throat. She sprang up, her heart pounding.
“Are you all right?” Delia whispered across the darkness.
“Delia! It’s only you. Come in! I’m so glad to see you! Turn on the light!”
“I know you are in that plane all day. I worry about you.”
Delia lit the lamp, and Mia forgot her own fears when she saw that Delia was limping. The poor girl had a cut lip and two black eyes that were swollen nearly shut. Her hands shook.
“Did Chito beat you again?”
Delia hung her head. “Tavio, he very scared and angry. The Cessna you hide in—it not return. He is afraid, it no going to. He is afraid for Marco. He ask everybody who hide you. Even me.”
Delia sat down beside her, and Mia clutched her hand, finding strength in her kindness.
“Everybody scared. Many rumors. Tavio, he think one of us betray him. He walk back and forth on the balcony outside his bedroom like a big wild cat. He listen for Marco’s airplane motor. He smoke too much. The crack make him mean tonight. Meaner than Chito even. He accuse everybody of giving information to the gringos. I ask him if he want more tequila, and he jump at me, his eyes burning me. He so crazy he scare me just by looking at me. I don’t go near him. Be careful when he come.”
Mia shuddered. “What about Chito?”
Delia shrugged. “So—they fight each other. Over you, no? It is not the first time they fight over a woman. Then Chito, he hit me. Now he feel better.”
Mia went to her and hugged her. Then she led her to the bathroom and gently washed her face with soap and water.
There were shouts from below. Her eyes large and fearful, Delia pulled away and rushed to the door.
“Stay with me a little while,” Mia pleaded, not wanting Delia to suffer more abuse.
“I have much work. The men, they are hungry…. You hear them….”
“I will teach you to read. Like before.”
Delia’s eyes lit up for the briefest moment, and then her face became dull again. She was very intelligent, but her family hadn’t been able to send her to school for more than a single year. As long as she was with Chito, she would have a life of dreary servitude and abuse.
“All right. For a little while,” Delia said.
When Delia handed Mia the cartoon page from the last newspaper Tavio had given her, Mia forced a tight smile. They sat down on the bed. Pulling the sheets over themselves, Delia began to read.
The gloomy atmosphere from down below seeped into the bedroom. Mia was glad that they had some occupation to distract them.
In between Delia’s nervous, halting words in Spanish and Mia’s gentle corrections, Mia heard the rising wind outside but no plane engine. In the passing of the next half hour, she began to feel Delia’s severely repressed uneasiness. The girl stumbled over words she’d read easily only yesterday. The men had grown silent downstairs, and again Mia’s own fears escalated at the thought of Tavio coming. But still they continued to read the cartoons until Tavio’s bedroom door banged again. When they heard his heavy-booted footsteps in the hall, Delia stopped.
Then Tavio burst into her bedroom, flipped his cell phone shut and stared at them with wild, unseeing eyes.
“Marco’s dead,” he said.
Delia gave a cry. Newspapers slipped to the floor, and she ran from the room.
“Why did Marco have to get out of the plane?” Tavio whispered, more to himself than to her. “He is the pilot. He never gets out. He should have taken off again. When the DEA agents pointed their guns at him, he panicked and backed into the propeller. He…”
“Oh, no….”
At the sound of her voice, his bloodshot black eyes focused on her face as if he realized she was there for the first time. His dark scowl was terrifying.
He’d been smoking, she knew. As a result his tense, vicious, grief-stricken mood was worse.
“I want you,” he whispered.
She sat up in bed shivering. “Please…no…Not like this!”
“Like how then?” he yelled as he strode toward her. “I want. I take. I’m a beast. A big rat!” He pounded his chest. “A criminal! That’s what you think! That is why you hide all day in that plane. I know you are burning up in there, but you won’t come out. I get scared you’d rather die than be my woman, so I send Chito. He nearly rape you. I save you, and still you say no to me.”
She didn’t look at him. Even so, his burning lust and her fear lit the air between them like a fuse. She could almost feel sparks rushing toward dynamite.
Wrapping the sheet around her, she got out of bed. She was shaking so hard she could barely breathe. “Rape me then. Be like Chito. Go ahead. Take me like an animal. What are you waiting for? I’ve heard those other women scream.”
“Would it be rape?” In two more strides, he was beside her, towering over her like an angry giant.
Not that she cowered.
His rough hand slipped under her hair. “Let go of the sheet. I want to see one of those nightgowns I ordered for you.”
“I’m wearing jeans.”
“Pull the sheet down!”
She flinched and released the sheet. Even when she felt his eyes and her body heat with shame, she did not scream or struggle.
He lowered his dark head to kiss her, his mouth coming so close to hers, she felt his hot, tobacco flavored breath fanning her lips.
She shut her eyes tightly like a child forced to take medicine she feared would taste worse than poison.
Seconds ticked by as she waited for him to kiss her.
Instead of doing so he pushed her roughly away.
“I am not a snake,” he yelled, with the pain of one mortally wounded. “Who do you think you are? Who are you, Angelita? This woman who control me? Me, Tavio Morales? A princess?”
“I am Angelita.”
“Who helped you today?”
The silence was so vast between them she could almost hear the desert wind through the walls again.
He circled her throat with his hands. His touch was gentle. Even so, she sensed his deadly strength.
“Nobody…nobody…. I swear it!”
His fingers tightened. “You lie. I will find out with or without your help. If you set up my brother, I will kill you myself.”
Letting her go, he picked up a chair and hurled it. Then he stomped across the broken bits of the chair and left her room.
When his door banged, she sank back onto her bed and lay under her sheets, feeling limp and helpless, and cold, so cold, even though it was a hot night.
Too wired up to even close her eyes, she lay there, staring at the ceiling for hours.
She had to get out of here.
Finally she slipped into a fretful sleep. At first she dreamed of a little girl with brilliant blue eyes and down-soft black hair. The child was holding a rusty spade and digging in the soft, tilled flower bed in the shade near the big house.
Mia tossed her head back and forth and cried out for Shanghai. Suddenly he lay beside her. They were in Vegas. She neither touched nor kissed him even though she ached because she was waiting to see if even once, he’d make the first move. Finally he bent his dark head, and his lips caught hers at just the right angle.
The heat of his mouth made her sigh in surrender and say his name aloud again.
“You shouldn’t have come here. We can’t be together—not ever,” he said. But he kissed her again, and that one kiss turned his words into lies and was everything she’d ever wanted from him and way more.
In her dream she relived how he’d made love to her all night, so tenderly, so sweetly, and so passionately. How he’d given her countless climaxes, and still she’d begged for more.
He’d been tough loving, tender—and sexy. Oh, so sexy.
But he’d rejected her the next morning as if their night together had been nothing.
Next she was on Tavio’s yacht shivering, and Tavio was wrapping her freezing body in blankets and telling her in Spanish that she would be all right.
Her dream changed. She was sleepwalking on Tavio’s yacht. Only was it Tavio’s? She’d found pictures of a blond family buried in a drawer in the stateroom Tavio had locked her in.
In her dream her stateroom door was unlocked, and she wandered out onto the deck and made her way shakily to the stern where she saw a thick chain attached to a huge cleat. An object bobbed that was being dragged in the white frothy wake behind the boat.
The moon was full and the transom light bright. As she leaned over the railing and stared at the thing dancing on the thick chain in the heavy seas behind the boat, trying to make sense of it, she suddenly realized it was the skeleton of a human being, and there was still some flesh on the torso.
Suddenly the skeleton turned into a giant rat and hopped onto the boat. She began to scream and scream for Shanghai to save her.
But Shanghai didn’t come. When she turned, the monster chased her straight into Octavio’s arms.
As always when she had this nightmare, she woke up screaming. And as too often was the case, Tavio was there, holding her.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said gently, pressing her against him as he sat beside her on her bed.
He was so hot, he felt like he had a fever. Even though she was still shaking, she quickly pushed away from him. Gathering the sheets to her neck, she shrank against the immense headboard.
“I’m all right. Please, just go.”
He hesitated longer than he usually did, and she knew he was remembering the lustful rage he’d been in earlier. “I still want you. No matter what you’ve done.”
“And all I want is for you to let me go.”
“Who is this Shanghai?” he growled. “Did he love you even half as much as I do?”
His question made her eyes burn.
His white smile flashed across the darkness. “No?”
Sensing she had to tell him something, she said, “He’s dead.”
“If you lie and I ever meet him, I kill him, Angelita. Maybe I kill you, too, if you don’t choose me.”
“Please, just let me go to my country. This isn’t going to work. I don’t understand your life. You could never understand mine, either. You can’t make people love you. Believe me, I know!”
“I throw my wife away for you. Already my men are laughing at me because of you. You try to run away. Some traitor help you. Maybe an informant. They say I am weak because of a woman. Me? Tavio! I have to be strong, or they will cut me to pieces and throw me to the dogs. Every day this Terence Collins, he write more bad things about me, and Federico, he publish these lies because he hate me. The DEA wants me. They put pressure on the authorities here. Do you understand? Intiende? They demand drug busts like tonight. I think Collins and Federico cause Marco to die. And maybe you know who tell them these things about me. Maybe they hate me so much they help you.”
“No. I…”
“In the desert, the weak die. I never, not in all my life, have feelings for anyone like I have for you. My wife, she do nice things for me. She nice woman. But I do not love her. Is different with you. Is fate. You are strong woman. I am strong man. I would make you my queen.”
“You’re a drug lord.”
“If I wasn’t, maybe then…you could like me a little?”
“But you are. You torture people.”
“So do the police.”
“Collins says you kill people. Many people.”
“Bad people. Children look up to me. I am a hero.”
“Maybe that’s what I hate the most.” She stared at the shadowy walls. “I hate this life and everything it means. Poor people are forced into this business.” She was thinking of Julio. “I hate the power you have over me…to keep me here. Of course, I try to run away.”
“I do not rape you.”
“Yet.”
He laughed.
“When you do, you will kill the thing inside me you like.”
“Maybe that would be for the best,” he lashed violently. “Maybe then I kill this thing inside me and I will be free.”
Feeling weary and hopeless, she shut her eyes and willed him to go. Finally she prayed, and after a while, a sense of peace washed her even in this awful place where she felt so lost and weak and helpless.
For a long time, Tavio stayed beside her. She could feel his predatory eyes on her face and body and smell the tobacco on his breath as she prayed for help, for strength, for a miracle. She didn’t dare get up and run because she feared any movement might entice him, that he was that close to the edge.
Seconds passed.
Finally the bed groaned. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, and she was alone and shivering in the darkness.
Then Shanghai’s deep voice said, “You are not alone.”
She felt his strength envelop her. For several seconds it was almost as if he held her in his arms. Her body grew warm.
Knowing he couldn’t be here even though she felt his presence so keenly, she jumped out of bed, her eyes searching the darkness.
“Shanghai?”
The only sound was Negra purring from her carpet under the chair.
Mia sank wearily back onto the bed alone and felt more crushed by her loneliness than ever.
Shanghai wasn’t here. He’d never been there for her.
The night when she’d pledged her heart and soul and body to him forever had been nothing more than a one-night stand to him. He’d left her for another rodeo the next day.
As always, she had only imagined that Shanghai cared.
She gripped the sheets. She was all by herself in this awful place, and if she didn’t find a way to make something happen, she’d never be free.
Julio. What would they do to that poor boy?
Three
Marco.
Tavio seethed. Instead of the bubbling springs that glimmered like black satin in the moonlight, he saw a dozen DEA agents, their guns trained on Marco’s belly as the kid helplessly backed into that whirling propeller. The image repeated itself in Tavio’s brain and was always punctuated by Marco’s final scream of agony.
His younger half brother had been a mere twenty-five. He’d been smart and loyal. Tavio had had him educated and had taught him to fly. The kid would fly in any kind of weather with any kind of load, land anywhere, day or night. He’d trusted Tavio to take care of him.
Tavio shut his eyes. He’d had such high hopes for Marco. He’d hoped that someday he’d take Chito’s place.
Tavio kept seeing Marco and that propeller and blood. So much blood.
His head began to pound. It was the crack and the tequila. He’d smoked too much and drunk too much over too many days and nights. It was making him crazy.
Collins and Federico had stirred up a storm that had led to this. Some snitch within these walls had tipped them and the DEA off. Maybe the same person had hidden Mia in Marco’s plane. Why? Did she have something to do with Marco’s murder?
Tavio felt anger coil in his gut. Slowly he set his golden gun down on a rock, and when he did, it shot blinding silver fire just as the ripples of the pool did. He blinked. His pupils were dilated. He’d been so busy organizing the runs, he hadn’t slept for three days or nights.
He squinted. The light hurt his eyes. Things were too bright and too dark. That, too, was partly because of the crack.
When Angelita was upset, she came here and stared at the reflections of the pool for hours sometimes. Was she looking at herself or the clouds when she did that? He clenched both fists. He wanted to know, damn it. He wanted to know everything about her.
Staring into the black glitter of the water failed to calm him as it did her. In fact it made him feel even more strung-out. But then he was not like her. That was their problem.
Tonight he needed more than sex from her. That was the only reason he hadn’t raped her. He needed the comfort of Angelita’s arms around him. But she didn’t want him. She couldn’t love him, and the torment of that was driving him mad.
Estela would have held him close, but he’d sent her away for Angelita. He hadn’t touched another woman because of Angelita. He’d waited for this white woman longer than he’d ever waited for a woman, even for Estela, who’d been a teenage virgin.
He could have taken Angelita anytime. Did his restraint mean nothing to her?
He still didn’t know how he’d walked out of her bedroom two times tonight. Twice!
Any other woman he would have taken repeatedly until she learned to submit to his every demand.
She wasn’t that beautiful. But she was to him. He adored her trim body, her breasts that were in perfect proportion to her body and long legs. Her red hair had natural highlights and her skin was smooth and pale like porcelain. She was as beautiful to him as a goddess. Her full, lush lips haunted his dreams. He longed to taste every inch of her. He wanted her kisses all over his skin until every cell in his body caught fire. But afterward he wanted her to hold him in the darkness and be his tender friend. He had never wanted such things from a woman.
But she was strong and mysterious. She was egotistical in the way a man was egotistical. She knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want. He wanted to know her mind, to be her friend. He wanted her to care, but she hated his rotten business too much to see him as man, who was just like any other man. Why couldn’t she see that he was trapped just like she was in this nasty life he’d created and now hated because white men like Collins and Valdez believed he was an animal?
Valdez! How he hated Valdez!
Didn’t she know he would have preferred to be a legitimate businessman as his father had been? But he’d been born a despised bastard. In fact Federico Valdez was his half brother, his father’s most honored son, who now ran the family business. Valdez was his rich, white half brother who thought Tavio was dirt.
His brilliant father, also named Federico Valdez, could trace his ancestors to the Spanish conquistadores. He had been powerful in Ciudad Juarez. He’d belonged to an old and much-respected border family that had accumulated wealth over several generations. Tavio’s Indian mother had been a maid in his house. They had fallen in love briefly. Tavio was the result.
Since his legitimate children were years older, his white father had made Tavio a pet when he’d been young, carrying him with him everywhere—to his factories, farms and offices. This had incensed his blond, American-born wife and her white sons, especially the eldest, Federico. But their father had never claimed Tavio as his son. After all, his wife and he had six legitimate, white children.
His father had sent Tavio to a good private school, and school had been easy. Just like making money was easy if you got into the right business. Tavio had wanted to be rich like his father. When he’d graduated from college, he’d begged his father for a job in one of his companies, even a lowly one. Federico, who’d been running the business, hadn’t wanted him. Tavio had been hurt and furious but determined to become even richer than his father and brother. Drug running had seemed the quickest way toward realizing his dreams of being as rich and successful as the family that had spurned him.
In the beginning, like all young fools, the drug business had seemed exciting more than dangerous. He’d hired desperately poor people as his runners. They’d taken all the risks. When they’d been busted, he’d lost his shipment, but they’d gone to prison.
Poor women, too many of them to count who would do anything to feed their children, were sentenced to thirty years, which meant their children were orphans. That had meant nothing to him then. But sometimes, late at night or when peasants came to him begging him for favors, these things haunted him now.
His business had grown, sí, and soon he’d had to fight off competitors. To expand he’d entered into an ever-changing, complex relationship trafficking cocaine for the Colombians. In time he’d been forced to kill many people to maintain control of what was his. He did not enjoy killing, but it was part of doing business.
Too late, he’d learned what a vicious, deadly game he was in. When he killed, he made more enemies, and he’d had to become tougher to survive. His best men, like Chito, were those he could trust the least because they wanted to take over. The rules of his business were as simple as those the desert animals lived by. Win—or lose. Live—or die. Kill—or be killed. When you lived like that long enough, it changed you.
When he’d been young, he’d thought he’d retire with a big ranch in northern Mexico. He was now rich enough to retire, richer than he’d ever dreamed of being. But if he ever quit he would have to leave Mexico. Then many of the people he protected would die.
So what? The little people always suffered in Mexico. But as long as he was alive, certain people in the business would be nervous. Hit men would try to track him down and kill him. So, he stayed, and to stay, he had to be strong.
He hadn’t thought of leaving the business for a long time. Not until Angelita. She made him think of Paris or London or maybe a Caribbean island or South America. Never her country, America, because he was a wanted man there.
He still desired her, more than ever, even after tonight when she’d turned him away when he’d been crazed with anger and fear and desire. Even during saner periods, when he was alone, his blood would pulse as he thought of her in one of those thin nightgowns he’d bought her that had cost enough to feed a family of peasants for a year.
How much longer could he play this waiting game when his men were taking bets on how many nights it would take him?
Angelita was afraid of him. Always before he’d liked the edge fear lent to sex. It was like a spice to make a dish hotter. But not with her. He did not want her afraid. She was an intelligent creature of light and love, and he wanted her to stay that way.
He remembered going into his white father’s mansion as a small, impressionable boy. His father’s white wife had seemed like a queen.
Tavio wanted to know Angelita and for her to know the real him. He wanted her acceptance and her trust, and he had no idea why these things mattered or why she mattered. They just did. He did not want to believe she’d had anything to do with Marco’s death.
Disgusted with these thoughts, he ripped off an ostrich-skin boot and flung it on the ground. Then he yanked off his other boot. Next he whipped his leather belt out of the loops. Last of all he took off his thick gold Rolex. Without bothering to remove his jeans or shirt, he dove into the icy water and swam to the bottom to where the caves began, willing to brave the freezing spring in an attempt to kill the molten desire that was devouring him.
His head broke the surface again, and he stared at her window, which was dark now. He had never loved anybody before. He knew that now. Not enough to sacrifice everything for them. He’d admired his father. He’d longed to love him and be loved by him like little Federico had been loved, but it hadn’t happened. No matter how hard Tavio had tried, in the end his father had refused to claim him as his son. When his father had disowned him in favor of Federico, who was weak and spineless, walls had grown around his heart. He’d never intended to let anyone make him feel that needy again.
He stared at his mansion. He had so much. How could not having this one woman care about him matter?
He loved his golden gun that had been a gift from a former president and his machine guns. He loved his prized Polish-Arabians. He loved his rancho and his trucks. He loved his planes. He loved the power he had over other men. He loved the way their eyes glazed over with fear when he got a certain edge in his voice. He had loved his little brother, too.
