NIGHT CRUISING Page 11

  "Red hair? Pretty?"

  "And young," Cruise repeated. "She's waiting for you. At the cafe next door. You can pay me later."

  Riaro let out a great whoosh of air, relieved and now happy to have been offered first dibs on Cruise's girl.

  "No problem from her?" he asked, switching to broken English.

  "None. She knows you're coming."

  Riaro grinned. A gold incisor slick with saliva gleamed in the rainbow light from the Rockola. He gave Cruise a handshake and moved through the crowd for the door.

  Cruise waited five beats, the harsh loud tones of the mariachi music bombarding his ears, then followed Riaro. By the time he reached the outdoor cafe, Riaro and Molly

  were embroiled in a tangle of arms and legs and flying hair. Molly, panicked, yelled for someone to help her. Riaro kept grinning and trying to drag her into the street.

  Molly saw Cruise. She turned pleading eyes on him, and cried, "What's he want? He says I'm supposed to go with him to the hotel."

  Riaro turned then. He stood off the curb, in the street, hauling on Molly's thin arm. He paused, but did not let go of his prize. "This is her? Red hair? I am not mistaken?"

  "Worst mistake of your life, friend." Cruise jerked Riaro's hand from Molly's arm. She reeled back until she bumped into a woman sitting at a table behind her. The woman stood and fled with her companion.

  Riaro's grin died, but did not disappear. It hung on his face frozen in place, an unpleasant rictus. "But... but...you told me...you said...?"

  "I hope you saw your priest, Riaro."

  Understanding dawned in the Mexican's eyes. His right hand whipped a switchblade from his back pocket. It flicked open. He waved it in front of his belly, low and menacing.

  Molly screamed. Customers at the tables stood and pressed back into the cantina.

  "Ramirez sent you for me." Riaro spoke Spanish now. "It was all a lie about the girl."

  Cruise stood quietly, hands held out from his sides. He also switched to Spanish. "You cheated your employer. You stole from him--that's what he says."

  Riaro waved the knife, looked behind him at the rapidly emptying sidewalk and street. "I didn't," he claimed in a whispery, fear-laden voice. "I know better than to do that. I'm not a stupid man."

  "Yes, you are. You're the dumbest fuck in town." Cruise waited for the rage to build. Riaro wouldn't rush him yet. He had time. He concentrated on the other man's face, the gleam of the gold tooth, the movements of the knife, his unsteady, shifting stance. Most of his victims weren't able to fight back. He must handle the situation with great care and skill. This was all for Molly's benefit. He was about to save her honor, wasn't he? She would never know Riaro's death was preordained. She would think he had kept her from being molested. She'd adore him for it. He accomplished two ends at once: Molly's loyalty, Riaro's death, and enough money, if he was lucky, to see him through another week or more.

  Riaro was talking, his words rapid-fire, unintelligible to Cruise whose Spanish was not strong enough to allow him to follow the emotional outburst from his victim. The cafe tables were abandoned. Chairs lay on their backs, beer bottles overturned and dripping their contents onto the rough concrete. Molly hung back with her hands over her mouth, little whimpering sounds coming from her.

  He felt it now. That icy cold aura that settled from his head over his shoulders, gripping his mighty chest with a vise, invading his loins, tightening the muscles of his legs.

  He reached behind his head and felt beneath his hair for the knife. Riaro knew about that. They all knew about Cruise's knife and where he kept it. The Mexican reacted instantly, dancing away down the street as if on a bed of blue-white coals, babbling something in Spanish about another chance, didn't mean it, would repay Ramirez if given reprieve from the Avenging Angel tonight. But there would be no reprieve and Riaro knew the rules on that.

  Once you betrayed Ramirez you paid the ultimate price.

  Cruise had the small weapon in the open. The handle was hidden in the palm of his hand. Just the short, razor-sharp blade protruded from his fist. He heard Molly gasp, but the sound was on the periphery of his senses. It was overwhelmed and drowned, her frightened sound, by Riaro's retreating dance steps ringing on the street, and by his heavy breathing, and his useless patter seeking mercy.

  "Come to me," Cruise said more to himself than to Riaro. "Come. To. Me."

  Riaro made a break for it, running for all he was worth away and down the suddenly deserted street. Cruise easily caught up with him, his legs being longer, his strides more powerful. Riaro turned to the assault just as Cruise closed on him, not many yards from the cafe. Cruise's knife hand shot out and cut Riaro from his shoulder blade to his gut. His shirt flapped open in the melee, and blood flowed over his belt. Cruise knocked the switchblade from his hand with a blow to that arm, and the knife clattered onto the street.

  A car came toward them, speared them in its headlights. It halted, idling in the center of the street, outlining the fight as on an eerie stage.

  Riaro swung with his fists and Cruise's knife went up and under his flailing arms, in close, an embrace of enemies. Cruise sank the small weapon into soft stomach, lifted upward with force, pierced a lung, and drove toward the heart. Riaro came off his feet with the lunge, fell back from the invading steel. Cruise stepped back, his fist sucked from Riaro's gut with a sickening slurping sound that hung in his ears long after it had ended.

  Riaro fell onto his back, eyes already glazed. A hole gaped in his midsection pumping blood and intestines. The lights from the car held steady on the scene, making the blood look black as oil as it coursed from the dead man onto the street.

  Cruise stood with the knife in his bloody fist. He looked at it, shivered, and sighed.

  All he could think about was getting to a place where he could have water run over his body to cleanse him of this filth. But there was something yet he must do. He waved in agitation at the stopped car. It backed up and made a U-turn in the center of the street, the driver gunning the engine and squealing the tires to gain traction as it roared away.

  In the resultant darkness, stars pirouetted before Cruise's eyes. He moved forward until he could make out Riaro's sprawled body. He stooped and felt in his pockets. Withdrew his wallet. Took a thick wad of American money, threw the few pesos on the still body. When Cruise stood again and glanced at Molly, he saw she had slumped into one of the cafe chairs, her face in her hands. A few of the earlier patrons of the cafe wandered out, but didn't linger. They scurried down the sidewalks in both directions, anywhere away from the gringo, Cruise Lavanic, the hired killer Ramirez visited upon the wicked.

  Molly probably hadn't seen him rob the dead man, Cruise decided. If she did, he didn't care. He had a story and a reason for that too, if she demanded it. But why would she question him when he'd just saved her from a scumbag ready to ravage her?

  He stuffed the money into his front pocket. He stepped over the curb. He stood a moment looking down at Molly's bowed head. He resisted an urge to pat her with his bloody hand, reassure her the way a parent would reassure a mourning child. "I'll be back out in a minute," he told her instead.

  She was crying, great hiccuping cries, as if her heart were broken.

  Cruise pushed inside the cantina and went behind the bar to the sink. There he washed his hands, his knife, and lifting his hair, replaced it on the Velcro patch. A few idlers watched darkly from corners, but looked elsewhere when Cruise glanced their direction. "Don't fuck with Ramirez. When are you jerks gonna learn?" he asked.

  Outside again, he took Molly's arm and lifted her to her feet. He guided her to the hotel, said nothing in the elevator to the fourth floor where their rooms were. In her room, he placed her on the bed. He moved to the bathroom and closed the door, stripped from the bloody clothes, and stepped beneath cold water. Cleansed, he slipped on his slacks, left his blood-soaked shirt on the floor, and went barefoot to where Molly lay on the bed. He sat in the chair nearby.

  The sl
iver of moon rode past the top of the hotel window and he waited. While Molly cried, he waited. While his heart slowed to a gentle and contented rhythm...He waited.

  Cruise let the moon move past the top of the window before he approached Molly. She had stopped crying. Silence hung like a heavy veil between them. He leaned over the bed. Touched her shoulder. Slowly she lifted her head from where she had it cradled in her arms against the coverlet. "I want to go back to Texas," she said in a small voice.

  "We're going. We'll leave tomorrow."

  "Good." She began to turn her face away.

  "I want you to come with me somewhere, it won't take long."

  "Now?"

  "Please."

  Molly raised herself wearily to the side of the bed. Cruise moved back. "I'll go to my room for a clean shirt. Wait for me at the elevator."

  He gathered his shoes and socks, his bloodied shirt, and left the room. Minutes later he joined Molly. She stood looking at the carpet, avoiding his eyes.

  "Where are we going?" she asked. ..I don't feel well. I'm tired." She sounded grouchy the way a weary child began acting out of sorts when it has not had enough rest. The pretenses between them were falling away. All the walls disappearing.

  "I know, but this won't take long, I promise." In the lobby he guided her out the door, down the steps of the hotel, and along the sidewalk. Most inhabitants had gone to bed, few cantinas were open, many of the lights doused in the shops and houses. It was the deepest part of the night, the time when even the cats had ceased their caterwauling and the ravenous dogs their garbage poaching.

  "Cruise...?"

  "Go ahead," he said. "Get it off your chest. you'll feel better."

  That small encouragement was all she needed. "Didn't it bother you at all? How could you just ...?"

  "Kill someone?"

  "Yes."

  "He would have taken you off to some filthy place and done unspeakable things to you." He paused, let that thought sink in. "He pulled a knife first."

  "What was he saying to you in Spanish?"

  "I don't remember now."

  He was leading her away from the town center past storage buildings and loading docks toward the edge of the dry desert. He saw the familiar black spindly trees dying of thirst, their skeletal arms thrust into the sky. They threw long moon shadows into the arroyos. Humped anthills dotted the sandy earth as if the land had erupted with an infectious disease. Low clumps of cacti spread their flat, spiked limbs along the ground like clawed alien sea creatures crawling along the floor of an ocean.

  Cruise knew his way. He often visited this desolate spot he intended to show her.

  "Where are we? Why are we leaving town? Cruise?"

  "Take it easy. It's just a place I want to show you."

  "What kind of place?"

  "A cemetery."

  Molly halted so abruptly that Cruise was a yard past her before he also stopped. He looked back, let out an exasperated breath. She was so much trouble. The damn kids were always so much trouble. "What's the matter?" As if he didn't know. Everyone got spooked around graves.

  "A cemetery? You want to take me to a graveyard? Now, in the middle of the night, after... after you...after that man..?"

  "Look, Molly, nothing's going to happen to you, okay?

  Didn't I just prove that back in town? I didn't let that bastard haul you off, did I? I think you ought to trust me."

  "But, Cruise, why a cemetery? I'm so tired. I just saw a man killed right before my eyes, don't you understand?"

  "Try to keep your voice down. Have a little respect."

  Molly glanced around the area suspiciously. "We're already in it?" She moved closer to him. "Oh, God, we are."

  He began stepping carefully across the slightly raised mounds of sandy graves. Some of them were ringed with rocks bleached white from the sun. He trailed his fingertips along the tops of rough-hewn granite headstones that leaned precariously this way and that. He heard Molly following at his heels.

  "Dead's not so bad," he said in a quiet voice. "You're young. You don't know. You think dying's the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. You have to make friends with death, Molly." He dropped his voice even lower. This is how he sometimes talked to himself, the way he was instructing her, a confident tone because he knew what he was talking about, a reverent one because the subject was the most serious man ever discussed.

  "If my enemy had killed me tonight instead of me killing him. I'd be here, in this ground, tomorrow. Before the roosters were crowing they'd have me under six feet of dirt. But by then it wouldn't matter, Molly, not at all. It's not dying that's frightening. It's living. It's how you choose to live. There are so many ways to lose yourself, to sell your soul. But once you're dead, all the choices are gone, it's over then. Dead is peace. Life is chaos."

  "Cruise, don't talk like that. I'm scared. Let's go back."

  He spun around and took her into his arms, drew her into an embrace, held her tight. She struggled for just a moment, then quietened so that he felt her heart stampeding against his chest.

  "Molly, there's nothing to fear."

  He felt her warm breath through the cloth of his shirt. She hadn't moved. She breathed through her mouth. Her heart still raged against the imprisonment, but she was doing a fine job of suppressing all instinct to push away or run from him. He loved her then completely, unconditionally, loved every molecule of her, would have died in her place, would have taken down dragons, ruined kingdoms, thrust swords through any and all warriors to protect her.

  "Sshhh," he whispered. "Slow now. I told you there's nothing to be afraid of. Not me. Not this place. Not the dead. Not the past because it won't haunt you, Molly, unless you let it."

  She began to tremble. It radiated outward from inside where her heart could not pace itself. Her small arms shook, her back, her legs, her head on the fragile stem of her neck. He pulled her even closer, wrapped his big arms around her slight body so that she would not fall from his grasp.

  "Sshhh. Hush. Hush. Get hold of it. Catch that thought that's trying to run away with you and hold it down. I brought you here so you'd understand. You cried so hard. So long. And for what? You didn't even know him. What if it had been me? Would you have cried that way?"

  He didn't expect an answer. She couldn't have answered had she wanted. He knew what she must feel, must think. They were at the turning point now. If he'd let her stay in the hotel room without trying to reach her, she'd have been lost to him forever. Despite how the murder should have appeared to her, she had recognized something of his real purpose; she knew in an instinctive way that what he had done was not entirely connected with saving her from a savaging. She had reached conclusions he thought beyond her maturity. If she allowed it, he could forestall a disaster: her burial in this foreign ground.

  "Molly? I'm not going to hurt you and I'm not going to let you be hurt. Do you believe that?" His practiced lies came so easily.

  They were at the crossroads, her answer pivotal. In the next seconds what transpired depended entirely on the girl in his arms. He would either lift his hand to his hair and for the second time this night withdraw the knife, or he would loosen his hold and escort her back to the hotel. Life hung in the balance, in the eternity of time between his words and hers. If she knew the severity of the situation she'd not just tremble, but quake so hard she'd shake herself apart before his eyes.

  "Molly? Do you believe me?"

  A night breeze ruffled her hair. She had stopped breathing. He could still feel her heart throbbing against his body. Must he stop its beating? Must he do away with her so soon, oh, so soon before he had even found a way to know her? That would be such a pity, nearly more than he could bear. Only once before did a witness of his get to him the way Molly was now. He had wanted time with her, a relationship however strange and warped, however fated to end. But she had given the wrong answer to his question. And she had died sooner than she should have or needed to.

  Molly let out her breat
h. She inhaled. She said, "Yesss."

  Cruise smiled into the dark beyond the top of her head. He could feel the dead all around them sleeping in their graves, giving up a collective sigh. They would not be asked to welcome a new member among them tonight. Not until tomorrow when the family of Riaro brought him in a plain wooden casket and lowered his cold body into their company would they be disturbed in their slumber.

  "Let's go back." He let her go, turned her from the cemetery, and pushed her gently on a path between the graves back the way they had come. She did not talk again on the walk to the hotel. He let it be. She'd passed his test and he was well pleased. He must not push his luck. It was jubilation enough that she'd just saved her own life.

  "Get some sleep," he said at her door.

  He stood in the hallway and stared down the corridor at a window opening onto the silver lightening of the morning sky. He felt a chill that raised goose bumps along his arms. It wasn't the night that should frighten people so much. It was those scorching, blinding sunny hours where everything was laid bare to the eye.

  It had been a long night. He meant to sleep it off. If he didn't wake up for eighteen hours he wouldn't be a bit surprised.

  In his own room he slipped off his shoes, took his belt from the loops of his slacks, and fell onto the bed without drawing back the covers. He couldn't sleep yet. His mind turned over the kill the way a farmer with a shovel turns over rich earth for spring planting. Down one row, up another until an entire patch of ground has been tilled.

  His thoughts took him down the street, into the conversation with Riaro beside the Rockola, down the street again after his prey, then up close, tight shot of Riaro's look of betrayal, his comprehension of his dilemma, his sprint for freedom.

  The fight. The suction of Cruise's fist as he withdrew it from Riaro's torso. The fall. The quick death. The blood...

  #

  Molly stood shivering in the dark just inside the door of her room. She listened breathlessly for Cruise to leave. Bands of moonlight marched across the floor from the far window--a ladder of yellow beckoning her to climb it, to escape by it.