It had a 2-foot-long tail and a body the size of a large cat. As James looked at it he saw that there were two more of them sunning themselves on rocks about 10 feet away, their heads erect, alert for danger.
Moving ever so slowly, never taking his eyes off the nearest big lizard, James carefully picked up the pistol. He raised it and gently eased back the hammer, anxious that it didn’t move too quickly and snap into place with a loud click. He levelled the sights at the lizard, which had eyes in the side of its head, giving it a very wide field of vision.
James released the safety catch, holding the heavy gun as steady as he could.
He held his breath, closed one eye and squeezed. The trigger was stiff and needed more strength than he had counted on. He squeezed harder… harder…
The bang was incredibly loud and the gun jumped in James’s hand. For a moment he was stunned, his ears ringing and the muscles in his arm tingling.
There was no sign of any of the three lizards. He must have missed.
He stood up and went over to where the one he had shot at had been lying and looked around.
He spotted the mottled black and grey body lying behind a rock.
Its head was missing, and though James looked for it he never found it.
He picked the lizard up. It was warm and dry and its legs were still twitching slightly.
He reckoned that Precious would be pretty squeamish about eating it and he didn’t want to make it any harder for her than he could, so he took out his knife, slit its belly open and gutted it on the rocks. He then cut off its feet with their long rattly claws and most of its tail.
Precious ran up, just as he was impaling the thing on a long straight stick.
‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘I heard a shot.’
‘It’s all right,’ said James. ‘It was only me. I was shooting our breakfast.’
‘You’ve got a gun?’
James shrugged. ‘I took it off the Mexican officer.’
‘You’ve had it all this time?’
‘Precious,’ said James indignantly, ‘what would have happened if I’d tried to use it? I’d have ended up as dead as this lizard.’
Precious was about to say something else when she looked at the iguana for the first time and made a horrified face.
‘I hope you don’t expect me to eat that,’ she said, backing away and putting a hand to her mouth.
‘Suit yourself,’ said James and he picked up the lizard and the prickly pear and set off back to their camp.
After her swim Precious had stoked the fire with some large pieces of wood and got a good hot blaze going so she could dry her clothes, and now the logs were glowing red hot.
James sat down and held the skewered lizard over the flames, ignoring the protests from Precious. As the heat got to it, the skin bubbled, cracked and darkened. James had to keep turning it so that all sides were evenly done.
Soon a pleasant smell of roasting meat wafted around the crater. James’s mouth began to water, and he noticed the hungry look return to Precious’s face. She shuffled nearer and sat down next to him.
Once the lizard was done, he peeled off the crisp skin with his knife and cut the animal up into pieces. It looked like any plate of meat now, and when he tasted it, it was not unlike a tough chicken. It felt good to have some warm meat inside him.
In the end Precious couldn’t resist it. She gingerly picked up a scrap, popped it in her mouth, screwed up her eyes and chewed it. She relaxed. Took a larger chunk of flesh. Soon she was tucking in with gusto.
She ate greedily, meat juices dribbling down her chin. Squatting on her haunches she looked like a wild animal. All the carefully arranged curls and waves had fallen from her hair the make-up had long since been scrubbed from her skin.
James smiled. She was changing, toughening up, growing up. She was starting to understand that many of the things that she thought were important were not important at all.
In no time the meat had gone – all that was left was a pile of thin bones and burnt skin. James browned the nopalitos over the hot embers and cut them into slices. They were quite tasty, if a little slimy.
Afterwards, they lay back on the grass, contented, and for a brief moment they forgot all about their troubles.
But the moment soon passed. A cloud plunged the crater into shadow and Precious shivered.
‘I suppose we should get going,’ she said, remembering all they had to do today if they were to get to JJ in Vera Cruz.
‘We better had,’ said James, licking his greasy fingers and rolling on to his feet.
They doused the fire, filled the canteen with fresh water and began the long slog back down the hillside to the road.
An hour later they were sitting under a tree, ready to flag down the first vehicle that came along.
The minutes ticked by. A man on a donkey appeared and slowly walked past them, man and beast looking hot and bored. They heard a car’s engine, but it was going the wrong way. It sailed northward in a cloud of dust and fumes. They heard another car, and this one was heading in the right direction. They jumped up and waved at it, but it didn’t even slow down. The driver sat staring straight ahead.
Precious shouted after it, but it was no use. They returned to their spot under the tree and sat there in gloomy silence.
‘We could be here for days,’ said Precious, ‘and all the time Mrs Glass will be getting further away from us. We have to warn Daddy. We have to get help.’
‘I know,’ said James. ‘We must be patient. Someone will come along eventually.’
Even as he said it they heard another engine approaching from the north. A car. They stood up and stared along the road, willing it to appear. At last it came into view: it was a black Dodge sedan, travelling fast.
They weren’t going to take any chances this time. They stood in the middle of the road, waving their arms like mad and shouting for it to stop.
‘It’s slowing down,’ said Precious. ‘I think it’s going to stop.’
Sure enough, the Dodge pulled up before it got to them.
‘Looks like our prayers have been answered,’ said James.
He went over, putting on his most friendly, open face. But when the driver got out of the car, the smile froze on James’s lips.
He had last seen the man in Tres Hermanas, suspended in the air outside the Stones’ house. Their eyes had locked then, and they locked again now.
It was Manny – the youngest member of Mrs Glass’s gang.
Manny, who James had pushed out of the window.
And he was holding a gun.
Everyone stood very still.
17
Manny the Girl
Manny was sweating heavily and had a wild look in his red-rimmed eyes, which darted about as if he was watching a particularly manic fly zigzagging through the air.
He frowned at James. Then looked over to Precious and frowned harder, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He blinked. He rubbed his mouth.
‘Hah!’ he shouted finally, and slapped his leg. ‘I know you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said James. ‘How could that be?’
‘I know you,’ said Manny, slowly shaking his head. ‘And I know the girl.’ He aimed his pistol at James with a trembling hand. ‘She’s the Stone girl,’ he went on. ‘Yes. I know her. Jack Stone’s little girl. And you…’ He squinted at James. ‘I know your face. I saw it in the storm. It was you. Yes. You pushed me out the window, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ said James. ‘You’re mistaken.’
‘No, no, no, no, no…’ said Manny and he grinned. ‘Oh, I got you, now. I got you good. Where’s the other one. Where’s the shrimp?’
‘Just leave us alone,’ said Precious.
‘Oh, I should kill you,’ said Manny. ‘I should shoot you here and now.’ He groaned and clutched his head. ‘God damn,’ he said. ‘I got such a headache.’ He screwed his eyes shut, forgetting about James and Precious for a moment. When he opened th
em again, he looked calm and relaxed, all the pain gone from his face. He looked off towards the sea then back at James, not recognising him.
‘There was somebody else here,’ he said. ‘I was talking to somebody else…’
James was staring at him, open-mouthed. When Manny had turned his head, James had seen for the first time that he was badly injured. A section of his skull above his right ear had broken away and was hanging loose, still attached by a flap of hair-covered skin. As he moved, the flap swung backwards and forwards like a door opening and closing. And as it opened it revealed a glistening patch of pinkish-grey brain behind a rubbery membrane.
His shirt collar was stained with blood, but the flow had stopped and the edges of the wound were black and scabby. James was half-revolted and half-fascinated by the wagging piece of skull.
Manny peered at the gun in his hand as if he had no idea how it had got there. He stuffed it in a pocket.
‘I’m trying to get to Vera Cruz,’ he said. ‘Is this the right road?’
‘Yes,’ said James.
‘At last someone who can speak American,’ said Manny. ‘I been up and down this road. It’s the only road open.’
‘Yes,’ said James and he pointed. ‘You want Vera Cruz? It’s that way.’
‘It sure is good to meet a friend all this way out here,’ said Manny.
James turned to Precious with a questioning look.
‘We can show you the way,’ she said.
‘Sure?’ said Manny. ‘Get in.’
As Precious passed James on her way to the car he gave her another look.
‘It’s a ride, at least,’ she muttered. She was right – it was transport, even if the driver did seem to have scrambled his brain. It was dangerous, very dangerous, but this might be their only chance of getting to Vera Cruz.
When Precious got a glimpse of Manny’s wound, however, she clamped a hand over her mouth and tried not to gag. She backed away from the car in horror.
Manny glared at the two of them, the madness coming back into his eyes.
‘Get in,’ he snapped and they obeyed.
James climbed into the front seat next to Manny and Precious got in the back. Before setting off, Manny gave them the once-over.
‘I know you from somewhere,’ he said, putting the gun in his lap and releasing the brake.
‘We’re your friends,’ said James. ‘Remember?’
‘Sure,’ said Manny and he gave a happy smile. ‘We’re all friends. We’re family. Yeah. Mama’s gonna be so pleased when she sees us. I’m gonna tell her all about what’s happened. She’ll laugh. She always laughs. Makes everything A-Ok. Man, that was some storm back there, wasn’t it? You shoulda seen me. I think I hit my head something bad. I don’t remember most of it. Woke up in the bushes. Didn’t know where I was. They left me behind. Can you believe that? That witch left me to die back there. Well, I don’t give up that easy. I walked and walked. Couldn’t walk no more. Borrowed a car.’
James noticed a small hole in the windscreen. He touched it.
‘Yeah,’ said Manny, and he laughed. A crazy high-pitched laugh, almost like a scream. ‘That was me. Mama’s little boy. Shot a hole right through the windshield. Bam! Driver didn’t want to stop. Now, don’t you think that was rude? I need a car and he won’t stop. Well, he’s stopped now. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. He’s one dead Mexican.’
Manny suddenly stamped on the brake, snatched up the gun and held it to James’s head. ‘I know you,’ he said, cocking the hammer. ‘You’re the rat who pushed me out that window. Oh, mama, you’re gonna wish you never did that…’
James could see the confusion in his eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of an animal rather than a human, and he knew he would have to treat Manny like a wild dog.
‘I’m gonna blast your brains out,’ said Manny, pressing the gun barrel painfully into James’s forehead.
‘No,’ said James calmly and firmly, and Manny frowned. ‘Put the gun away, Manny,’ James went on, as soothingly as possible. ‘You don’t need to shoot me. I’m your friend, remember? You don’t need to shoot me.’
Manny struggled to stop his mind from wandering. Tears filled his lower lids.
‘I’m so mixed up,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody inside my head, whispering and whispering, and sometimes they shout, they shout so loud I can’t think. Oh, Geecries, you don’t know what it’s like.’
‘It’s not me you want to shoot,’ said James. ‘It’s Mrs Glass, remember? She left you behind, Manny. She left you for dead.’
‘Mrs Glass?’ Manny was thoughtful, turning the name over in his damaged mind. At last he gave a long sigh of relief and wiped away the tear that was crawling down his cheek. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Glass. That’s it. We’ll find her. Don’t you worry.’
‘Let’s drive,’ said James. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘Yeah…’ Manny started the car up again and they set off.
James noticed that as long as he was driving Manny could concentrate and hold his thoughts together. So James got him to talk about himself, to stop him from thinking about who his passengers were and what had happened at the Stones’ house,
It all came out in a jumble, as his memory jumped about from one incident to another, but James managed to piece together a rough picture of Manny’s grim little life. His father had been a small-time thief in New York who had spent most of Manny’s childhood in prison. He had finally died of blood poisoning from an infected stab wound he’d earnt in a street brawl when Manny was ten. Manny had followed in his father’s footsteps. He’d been a pickpocket, a numbers runner, a lookout for the gangs, a housebreaker and, then, when he was old enough, he’d graduated to bootlegging and, armed with a rifle, had gone on beer runs up into Canada and back.
‘I wanted more, though,’ he explained. ‘I wanted my own gang. I wanted to be remembered for something. To make a name for myself. Wasn’t going to happen in New York. The whole town was carved up by the big gangs and the local political machines. There wasn’t room for a new face. But out of town, in the Midwest, in Kansas and Nebraska, Michigan and Ohio, things were starting to happen. Guys were making names for themselves as bank robbers – Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, not just guys, gals as well, like Ma Barker. Yeah, that was the place to be, and that was where I went. You probably heard of me. Manny the Girl!’
Manny laughed and looked round at James. ‘Manny the Girl. That’s what they call me. On account of how I dress up as a girl to pull bank jobs. I make a very pretty girl…’
James looked at Manny’s soft, unlined face. He could just about imagine him disguised as a girl, but it was not a pretty picture.
‘What I do is this,’ Manny went on. ‘I go in the bank, flutter my eyelashes at them dumb tellers and get them on the back foot, then I pull my gun from my purse and clean the place out. Works every time. Change my outfit in the car and the stupid coppers bust their guts searching for a female bank robber. The newspapers are crazy for me. They call me the Black Widow, or Deadly Nightshade, the Poison Blonde. The pros, though, they know who I am. They all know my name: Manny the Girl. But it’s getting tougher’n tougher, let me tell you. The banks are on the look-out for me. They’re suspicious of every woman that steps inside their doors. So I got my brother Louis helping me out, now.’
As Manny got excited in the telling of his story, his driving slipped out of control. He was swerving crazily down the road, switching sides, driving sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right.
‘Slow down, Manny,’ said James. ‘We don’t need to go so fast.’
‘Yeah,’ said Manny, and he laughed. ‘For a moment there I thought we was running from a job. Thought the cops were on our tail. Could hear the sirens and everything.’
James saw that the car was stuffed with banknotes. He didn’t know where Manny had got all the money from, but he guessed that he had stolen it somewhere along the way. He doubted that Ma
nny would even be able to remember. His memory of recent events was shot to pieces, but distant events seemed clear and sharp in his mind, as if they had happened only yesterday.
‘What about Mrs Glass?’ said James. ‘How long have you been with her?’
‘This is my first job with her,’ said Manny. ‘Strabo’s the only one of us she’s worked with before. We was in Texas, me an’ Louis. We’d turned over a bank in San Antone and it had got messy. There was a lot of shooting. I slipped over the border to Monterrey. Was hanging out there till the heat died down a little, keeping my ears to the ground. Met up with a half-deaf safe-buster called Whatzat. He told me about some broad who was looking for muscle. You couldn’t rightly say in the end whether we found her or she found us, but there she was, with a Jap and a dwarf, talking big bucks and an easy job down on the Gulf coast. Still can’t believe she lit out on me, Whatzat too. Ran off and left me to rot in Tres Hermanas. Well, I ain’t gonna stop until I find her, and when I do, whooo, boy, you watch the fireworks! If she thinks she ain’t gonna give me my cut, she’s got another think coming. If she thinks… if she thinks… Well, damn her to hell. Where is she?’
James could tell that Manny was about to have one of his fits, unless he could head him off.
‘It’s all right, Manny’ he said. ‘Where would you go if you were her?’
‘Only one place,’ said Manny. ‘Vera Cruz. Take a boat out of this stinking country.’
‘Exactly,’ said James. ‘That’s where you’ll find her. That’s where we’re going. Remember? We just need to get to Vera Cruz. We don’t need a change of plan.’
‘Yeah,’ said Manny, and he sniggered. ‘I knew all along. See. She can’t fool me. Manny the Girl don’t take things lying down. Yeah, Manny the Girl, that’s what they call me, on account of my disguise…’