I caught up with Marco and we walked together, side by side.
Every ten yards or so there was a cross painted on the wall of the tunnel. The color and shape of the cross was like the ones I’d seen drawn with chalk on the money I took from Sergeant Bullard’s safe.
“What’s with the crosses?” I asked.
“The cross is a symbol of dying for sin. A few of my customers die every day, and sometimes my employees do too, as you well know. We’re all part of the same big family, in a way. We collectively agree that having what we want is worth dying for. As do you. Under different circumstances you could have been my business partner.”
“What you’re doing destroys people’s lives. I’ll never be part of that.”
“You already are. Either indirectly or directly you’ve caused the deaths of six people in my organization and put two others in the hospital. They were willing to die for what they believe in, and you’re willing to die to prove you can’t be bought or scared off. That’s your sin, Delorean. You think you’re better than me, my people, my customers, even the police. You could have called the authorities down on me but you didn’t, because you think no one else is worthy of your trust. Now that you’ve killed a few times, you think you’ve become a law unto yourself.”
“I think you’re insane,” I said. “There’s no collective family of drug-sellers and drug-buyers. You and your thugs spend your days trying to get more poison into people’s bodies to enslave them to you. The fact that you’ve attached the symbol of the cross to that doesn’t change what you do.”
“I don’t need a lecture from you, Delorean. Your girlfriend told me that you killed your first man when you were twelve years old. If you stay alive long enough, you’ll have more notches on your belt than Lavar does. Maybe you already do.”
“You beat that out of her, did you?”
“No. The first time she tried my product she told me that. Among other things.”
We’d reached the end of the tunnel, where a pair of large wooden doors blocked the passage. A huge wrought iron slider prevented anyone coming through from the other side. Marco stopped walking and turned to face me.
“We don’t hold a gun to people’s heads to make them buy our product. In fact, the first few samples are free. My customers say it makes them happier than they’ve ever been before. For a few dollars a day they feel better than they’ve ever felt before. Does that seem like enslavement to you? And I want you to think about this: I’m keeping my half of the bargain we made. I’m letting you and your girl go. When I tell someone I’m going to do something, I do it. Can you say that about yourself? I doubt it. Your opinion doesn’t matter to me very much, Delorean, and we’ve reached the end of our journey together.”
Marco put his hand on the wrought iron slider.
“Your girlfriend is at one of the far tables. She’s good with her hands, so I put her to work as a cutter and packager. The people who work here do it by choice and they like it, Delorean. They can sample the product as much as they want, as long as they keep working. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t recognize you at first. She is already… very attached to the product. I’ll leave the tunnel open and no one will stop you. But I’m warning you, take her and go. If you interfere with me again, I’ll kill you both.”
Marco pulled back the slider and opened the big door a crack. Then he turned and started back down the tunnel.
I pushed open the door into a room as wide and long as a basketball gym. It had a polished wood floor and was illuminated by industrial lights hung with chains from a white-tiled ceiling. There were several dozen women and men seated at benches, all wearing white fabric coveralls and elastic boots. Jeans, t-shirts, and dresses hung from hooks on the wall by the door, with tennis shoes and sandals scattered on the floor below the clothes. I spotted Bonnie’s riding boots at the far end of the collection of shoes.
A guard who looked young enough to be in high school leaned against the wall on my left, a machine gun held across his chest. He gave me a hard look, clicked the safety off on the machine gun, and gave me the kind of look a hawk gives a mouse before he drops from his perch and goes for the kill.
There was a box about the size of a steamer trunk at the end of each table. Workers would wait in line to access the box, scoop a portion of the white powder into a measuring cup, carefully cut off the excess and let it fall back into the box, then carry the measuring cup back to their seat. Once seated, they would empty the measuring cup onto a large cellophane square, then fold the cellophane around the drug, press the cellophane bag into a box shape using a small wooden frame, then seal the cellophane with an adhesive tab that had Marco’s cross stamped on it.
At the far end of the room, I saw Bonnie hunched over a table. She was attaching an adhesive label into a sealed packet.
I turned to Lavar. “Why are they wearing the surgery gowns?” I asked.
“So they can’t steal anything or contaminate anything. They got to change back into their own clothes before they can leave the room.”
I went to Bonnie. She didn’t seem to recognize me, and when I tried to draw her away from her table, she resisted. I told her that Marco had ordered her to come with me. She looked sad, but nodded robotically, and I put my arm around her and led her over to her clothes.
A low booming sound echoed in the distance like a car backfiring, followed by the sharp staccato of automatic weapons fire. The young guard with the machine gun exchanged a look with Lavar. Lavar told the guard to go upstairs to see what was going on, then stepped forward and put the barrel of his pistol against the side of my head. “Put your face against the wall, NOW!”
I did as he asked, pressing my cheek against the cool, smooth wall. He pushed the gun barrel into the hollow space below my ear. “You move,” he said, “you’ll get to meet God right here.” Then he laughed.
Chapter 44
Bonnie stared at her clothes on the rack as if she were unsure of what to do with them.
Lavar yelled at Bonnie loud enough to make her jump. "Hey! Sirenita! Take off your damn suit and put your clothes on. NOW!"
Then I heard another staccato sound of automatic gunfire echoing through the tunnel, followed by several booming reports that sounded like cannon fire.
Bonnie seemed to wake halfway from her trance, and pulled off her gloves and hairnet. She moved as slowly as moss swaying in a river current.
"Damn, girl. Get moving," Lavar said.
Bonnie picked up one of her riding boots with one hand. With her other hand, she reached behind her back for the bow tie that held the paper-thin surgery gown in place.
"She's wasted," Lavar hissed under his breath.
"Can't she just leave her clothes here?" I said. "What difference does it make?"
Lavar jabbed the gun barrel against my neck.
"Shut up!" he said.
"Estupido! Get over here!" Lavar yelled. Bonnie shuffled over towards Lavar. She was still reaching behind her back for the bow-tie knot on her gown.
Lavar grabbed a fistful of the fabric on the front of her gown with his free hand, and then jerked her close enough that their eyes were only inches apart.
"If you don't change your clothes in the next 30 seconds, I'll kill your boyfriend and kill you, too."
I watched as her eyes widened with recognition and her chest swelled with fury. She took a half step back, jerking away from him with revulsion and, in the process, tearing the paper-thin gown from her body. Then she screamed like a wildcat and swung the boot at his head. Lavar jerked to one side like a fighter trying to slip a punch, but the boot heel caught him square on his chin before the boot came free of Bonnie’s grip and sailed across the room. When the boot landed, it connected with the arm of one of the other drug-packing ladies as she scooped product into a measuring cup. A cloud of the powder dispersed into the air.
Lavar said "God Damn." Then Bonnie came at him hard, her hands cupped like claws, screeching like a banshee. He tried to hold her off wi
th his free hand, but she'd turned into a human tornado, raking her fingernails on his arm and clawing at his face. Lavar slapped her hands away with his free hand, got hold of one of her wrists and tried to restrain her, but she swung her other fist into his crotch.
I heard the air go out of Lavar's lungs, and he took the gun off my neck but didn't let go of Bonnie's arm. Then he swung Bonnie away from him, sending her spinning between two rows of drug-packing tables before she lost her balance and fell headfirst onto the floor. She didn’t even try to get her hands up to arrest her fall. Lavar clutched his genitals in one hand and raised the pistol with the other. He pointed the gun at Bonnie’s crumpled form.
Lavar had his back to me, and I hit him at the base of his neck with a punch harder than any I'd ever thrown. I swung through as if I were trying to connect with something about six inches beyond his spine, and his head popped back like a rag doll's when I made contact. As he staggered forward, his pistol went off with a deafening boom. The people wearing white suits dropped what they were doing and began running pell-mell for the doorway.
Lavar staggered forward but managed to hold on to the gun. He started to turn in my direction, and I took a quick step and stomp-kicked him with the flat of my foot at the base of his spine. He went down, the gun sliding away from him as he hit the floor. He got on his hands and knees, and began scrambling across the linoleum towards the pistol, but I jumped on his back before he could reach it. The two of us crashed into the legs of one of the nearest tables, rocking it onto one pair of legs before it came to rest again. Then Lavar tried to get to his feet with me riding on his back, and we crashed into the table a second time, this time tipping it over. The trunk-sized container of the drug capsized as it hit the floor, sending a cloud of powder into the air. Lavar was on his stomach beneath me then, laying face-down in several inches of Marco's powder. I tried to get a forearm under his chin, but his body convulsed and he rolled out from under me. He staggered to his feet and faced me once more.
So much of the drug had adhered to Lavar’s face that it looked like he was wearing a Japanese Kabuki mask. The only part of his skin that wasn't covered was the scar. He'd gotten the powder in his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.
The air in the room seemed to shimmer and sparkle. Lavar began to throw haymaker punches at the space between us like a bear swatting at honey bees. I charged, tackling him to the floor. I felt lightheaded from the drug I’d inhaled, but I pressed him to the ground, my vision beginning to stipple with silver pinwheels. I straddled his chest and began raining punches down on him. At first he held one hand in front of his face to try to stop the blows. Then his arm dropped to the side and he went completely still.
I felt power growing inside me as I threw the punches, each punch coming from someplace deeper and stronger than the one before. I believed that if I kept punching, eventually my fists would have the force of a wrecking ball, and Lavar’s head would come clean of his torso. I kept swinging, one-two-three-four, like I was counting off pushups on autopilot. Then my visual field began to undulate like a flag in a summer breeze. Lavar's white Kabuki mask dissolved into a sea of crimson silk, his eyes and mouth disappearing as if his head had submerged beneath blood red waves.
I heard someone calling my name in a dreamy, musical way. Telling me to stop. Telling me to stop again. Then something grabbed my right arm and pulled me off of Lavar before dragging me over to where Bonnie lay on the floor. I sat on the floor beside her, watching vacantly as Bonnie was first wrapped in a faded print dress, and then lifted in a fireman’s carry on the shoulder of a blond-haired woman who resembled a ninja fireplug. Then the fireplug-woman reached down and pulled me to my feet.
“C’mon, Superman,” she said. “You put a beating on Lex Luthor. Party’s over.”
We stepped around crumpled, crimson-stained forms in the tunnel, on the stairs, in the warehouse. The acrid smell of burnt gunpowder was heavy in the air. Outside the warehouse half a dozen men and women in white cloth stood shivering in the cold. It looked like a surgical team had just stepped outside for a smoke break.
One of the women came over to the car as Sandy lay Bonnie down in the back seat of the Ford.
“Hey,” the lady said. “Should we go back to work now?”
“There’s no boss any more,” Sandy said. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”
Sandy helped me get into the passenger seat and then went behind the car to come around to the driver’s seat.
The lady in the surgery suit came over to the driver’s window.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she asked.
“Run for it,” Sandy said. “I’m setting you free.”
NEXT CHAPTER
The next day I was sitting in a hospital chair beside Bonnie’s bed. This chair had orange vinyl covering, brown plastic armrests with most of the wood pattern worn off, chrome legs, and a seat cushion that had been flattened by a thousand other worried hospital visitors before I sat on it. I was grateful to be alive, though. Sandy had checked Bonnie into the hospital, kept me under observation at her own house until I came down from my exposure to Marco’s drugs, and then tossed me the keys to my car.
“Go see Bonnie at the hospital,” Sandy had told me. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
“What are we going to do about Marco?” I asked.
“Eric will be back soon. Let’s wait until he gets here before we push the button down, okay?”
“I’m not going to look over my shoulder the rest of my life,” I said.
“Understood, bubba. Me neither.”
I’d driven over to the hospital and sat all night in the chair beside Bonnie’s bed.
Bonnie’s arm hung limply over the edge of the mattress. She still had the nail polish on that she’d applied when we were together in Cannon Beach. I held her fingers in my hand, waiting for her to turn back into the person she used to be.
Finally I’d asked one of the nurses why Bonnie didn’t wake up.
The nurse shrugged. “Could be several things: accumulated stress, lack of sleep, the MDMA and coke in her body, the concussion. Her vital signs actually look good. Don’t give up on her, okay? She’s going to need you when she snaps out of it.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be around.”
Chapter 45
That night I went to the El Paso airport. I’d gotten the address of Marco’s hangar from the list of properties that Eric had given Sandy, and the hangar wasn’t hard to find. I left the car in a parking lot within walking distance of the hangar but outside the airport grounds. I strolled over to the exit gate closest to the hangar, ducked under the retractable arm that kept people like me from driving onto the airport grounds, and shuffled over to the hangar as if I belonged there.
The hangar was tall and wide, with giant double-doors locked with a new padlock that had a shackle on it nearly as thick as my thumb. I wasn’t there to steal the plane, though. I just wanted to get a look at it. I walked around the hangar and found a steel door built into the side of the hangar. The only lock on the door was built into the doorknob, and I was able to slide the blade of a screwdriver into the crack between the door and the doorframe to force the latch back into the doorknob. It took a couple of minutes, but I gradually forced back enough of the latch that it came free of the strike plate and the door opened. I found the light switch just inside the door and turned it on.
Marco’s airplane gleamed in the hangar lights. He’d had it painted gloss black with a red cross emblazoned on the vertical stabilizer. The paint job turned a beautiful piece of machinery into a billboard advertising the owner’s wealth, power, and brand.
There was a set of metal stairs on wheels at the back of the hangar that could be rolled over to the aircraft for reaching an engine or getting onto the wings. I pushed the stairs to the front of the left wing surface and climbed up to where I could reach the gas tank fill panel. I pushed the button on the fill panel and it popped open on a hinged spring, exposing the fuel noz
zle. I hesitated, but only for a moment. I rested my backpack on the wing surface and got out the plastic funnel and the small gardening shovel I’d brought. Then I inserted the funnel in the fuel nozzle and began scooping sand. When I’d scooped about five pounds of sand into the funnel, I closed the fill panel, wiped the surface clean with a rag, and moved on to the other side of the plane. Once I’d finished, I rolled the stairs back over to where I’d found them, shut off the lights in the hangar, and let myself out.
Chapter 46
The following afternoon, I took the twisting road from El Paso towards the base of the Wyler Aerial tramway. The pavement snaked back and forth, affording impressive views of El Paso as it climbed the side of Franklin Mountain before terminating at a parking lot where people board the tram. The parking lot was nearly empty when I arrived. I paid eight dollars for a ticket and got onto one of the small orange tramway cars for a solo ride to the top. As the car ascended, I looked back towards El Paso, where I’d first met Bonnie and where she now lay unconscious in a hospital bed. I wondered how long she’d sleep, whether she’d be okay when she awoke, and whether she’d be able to forgive me for involving her in my war with Marco’s people.