“Eight million dollars? You’re worth eight million dollars?” Truman nodded. Hunter said, “Why are you working for Justice?”
“I was doing it before I had the money, and I loved it. I couldn’t see any reason to stop.”
“Jeeze, and I was gonna buy you lunch.”
Truman started the car. “It’s okay, I’ve got my appetite back, and I’ll just add lunch to your bill.” He touched the canvas roof. “You want me to leave the top up or put it down?”
“After that phone call? Put the top down!”
CHAPTER 12
Bobby and Anda sat close in the back seat of the limo as Godoy drove past the outskirts of Ojinaga. Bobby leaned to Anda and whispered so softly that Anda had to strain to hear over the noise of the moving car. He whispered in Tarahumara, “I will try to make it so you can escape. Watch for it, be ready.”
“No, I’m staying with you.”
“I’ll be all right if you get away. When you escape, go to Outlaw Road, ask for Mingo Cruz.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“Go to Outlaw Road.”
She whispered, “I will.”
Felipe was only able to hear faint, mostly unintelligible words. The only one he caught was the one said twice. Outlaw Road. It was a place he had heard of, but never visited. Soldiers like himself, and lawmen or respectable people did not go there, and were not welcome by its inhabitants.
The abandoned slaughterhouse sat alone on a ridgeline, like the last stained tooth in a skull. It was a squat, rectangular, ugly building. Made of cinder blocks and plaster in the thirties and last used in the early fifties, the abattoir was crumbling and dirty from years of neglect. Table-sized pieces of the once white plaster had slabbed off, revealing gray blocks underneath, and at each corner and around the main entrance were large cracks, some almost two inches wide, running from ground to roof like rivers on a map. It looked as though a strong push would collapse the entire structure. Old trash and refuse, rusted cans and discarded broken bottles lay around the base in haphazard piles and lumps. The inside rooms were similarly filthy, and the killroom showed dark stains soaked deep into the pores of the concrete floor that no amount of washing or time would ever remove. There was no spray painted graffiti because vandals had a sense of what was - and wasn’t - worth their artistic efforts.
Most of the lumber from the pens and chutes at the back of the slaughterhouse had been stolen or burned long ago. Only three corner posts and a few splintered scraps remained. A large, open maw where the chutes had herded over a million single-file animals into the killroom was relatively clean of debris.
The two vehicles circled the building and parked by the corner posts. The dark limo was in front, and Felipe Godoy and Anacleto Holguin got out first with their pistols in hand. Jesse and Johnny Barbosa exited their vehicle and walked to the back of the limo to open the rear doors. Bobby stepped out and Anda tried to scoot across and follow him through the same door, but Jesse snaked his hand inside and grabbed her by the arm, jerking her out the other side. “Uh-uh, you stay close to me,” he said.
They walked up the sloping ramp and entered the huge room. There were large holes in the high ceiling, exposing the sky and the long, metal I-beams that spanned the roof from wall to wall. Near one corner where a cracked wall leaned outward, one end of an I-beam had slipped down, tearing a long rent in the ceiling and exposing old conduit, broken wooden slats, bent rebar, twisted, stiff wires, and pieces of black asphalt from the roof surface, all hanging in a perilous, tangled mass. The end of the I-beam had scraped a pale line as it slid down the wall, finally coming to rest ten feet above the floor.
The stained concrete floor sloped to the center where a six-inch drain formed a shadowed, reeking vent to a darker place. Rusted iron straps ran along the walls, eight feet off the floor and anchored every ten feet to a thick steel pin so it left a three-inch gap between the back of the straps and the wall face. At various points were a dozen old meat hooks, their handles bent in an upside-down V so the carniceros, the butchers, could hang them on the straps and adjust the hooks for individual carcasses. They could then slide entire sides of beef along the wall. Bobby focused on the hooks and tried to figure out how to get one.
The Barbosas held on to Bobby and Anda as they stood in the room. Felipe asked, “Cleto, do you have the lock?”
Anacleto took a padlock from his pocket and walked to the large metal door behind them. As he closed it, the hinges screamed and squealed so loudly that the others shut their eyes in pain. When the door clicked shut, Anacleto hooked the padlock through the handle, securing the door from the inside. He tossed the key to Felipe, then walked to the only other door in the room and pulled it shut.
They were isolated. Sunlight came through the holes in the ceiling, and they could see blue sky through the large opening where the I-beam had pulled down the roof. The room wasn’t dim, but it felt that way. The sound of every small movement, whether shifted foot or rustle of cloth, was magnified by the bare walls.
Felipe went to a corner where something lay, and he returned holding a three-foot long piece of bamboo as thick as a shovel handle. It had been there a while and looked as hard as hickory. He walked to the hanging hooks and slid two of them away from the others, moving them to the center of the wall and placing them a foot apart.
Felipe moved to the side a few steps, dropped the bamboo stick on the floor and said, “Jesse, Johnny, hang him there.”
Anacleto held Anda while the Barbosas moved Bobby underneath the hooks. Jesse told him, “Put your hands up so we can get ‘em over the hook.”
Bobby started to raise his hands and Godoy said, “No, I mean hang him on the hooks.”
Bobby grasped the black inner tube around Johnny’s forehead and pulled it over his eyes and immediately swung his tied hands into the side of Jesse’s face. The blond wig popped off his head like a shot rubber band. Anda struggled and screamed, but Anacleto held her in a smothering bear hug. Bobby snap-kicked Johnny in the chest so hard the big man Whuffed as he staggered backward, still blinded by the bicycle inner tube over his eyes. Anda yelled at Godoy, “Leave him alone! Don’t hurt him!” She was crying and kicking Anacleto’s fat legs with her heels.
Jesse growled as he came at Bobby and the smaller man dropped to his hands and feet, sweeping one leg at Jesse’s ankles and knocking the big man’s feet out from under him. Jesse hit the concrete with a thud and Bobby was up, ready to put the boots to him when Godoy said in English, “You fight some more, I put a bullet in the girl’s stomach.”
Bobby stopped. Godoy had the pistol’s muzzle hard against Anda’s side as fat Cleto held her. He said, “You could watch her, man. Take her hours to die. You’ve seen it; you know how hard they go.” Felipe watched Bobby’s eyes dart around the room, taking everybody’s position in and weighing his chances in a fight. Felipe said, “Hey?” Bobby looked at him. “You want, I could shoot her in the spine, then let Cleto play with her. She could live days that way, maybe a week. Cleto could think up all kinds of things if he had a week, day and night. So, you choose. Hold on to yourself if you can, and she will live. Raise one hand and you will send her into hell.”
Bobby stood there, not moving. Jesse and Johnny got to their feet. Both left their headgear on the floor. Godoy said, “Now, you two idiots. Hang him on the hooks.” The brothers looked at each other, uneasy about this. Anda struggled harder, crying and sobbing, “No, No, No!”
Godoy said to the Barbosas, “I can shoot you, too, if you don’t hurry.” He meant it.