South by Southeast (43 page)

The scent was like hot asphalt from a road construction site. But also a vague rot, like the Everglades swamp. Or a morgue.

This would be the killing place.

Esocbar grunted, and suddenly the cage pitched toward him. Another grunt, and the cage slid again. He was pulling her closer to the van door. He was strong.

“I'll let you out of this livestock pen,” he said, “but you must walk. If you don't walk, if you struggle, I'll be forced to hurt you. You know what I can do.”

April tried to say “Okay,” hoping he could see her nodding. Walking meant open space and opportunities. If she could walk, maybe she could run. She didn't want to die in a cage.

Please don't let this be a trick, God.

“Be still. I'll put on your shoes,” Escobar said.

April tried to be still, but she couldn't help flinching and trying to pull away when she felt Escobar's hand on her right ankle; he caught her and held on with his viselike grip. April had worn flats, not heels, so the shoe slid on easily. With her left foot, her leg gave
another spasm as she tried to pull back, but he held her in place. His strength seemed effortless.

A quick
snap,
and he freed her ankles from their binds.

“Was that so bad?”

April shook her head. “Unh unh,” she said, trying to tell him what he wanted to hear. But it
was
so bad. She fought back her gag reflex, sure she was about to vomit. If she threw up with her mouth covered, she might choke.

“Tranquilo,”
Escobar said. “Stay calm. The pillowcase comes off next.”

April went still and silent again, rigid with combined fear and anticipation.
Yes!
The blindness was horrifying. If she could see, she would feel more in control.
Thank you, God.
Escobar might whisper sweet lies to her until the moment he killed her, but she was grateful for his lies. He had given her the shoes without hurting her. Untied her ankles. Maybe he would take off the pillowcase, too. Maybe the gag would be next.

Suddenly, the fabric whipped away, scratching the bridge of her nose, and her nostrils filled with unfiltered air. The odor was worse without the pillowcase, but the light and freshness of the air made up for that. April sucked in the air through her nostrils. Her throat unclamped itself, and the sick feeling passed.

Her face was turned away from Escobar's voice. She didn't have to see him yet.

“Better?” Escobar said.

April nodded, looking toward the van's empty passenger seat. She saw the thick wooden handle of some kind of large tool on the seat, so she looked at the floor of the van instead. Was that for her? She didn't want the sick feeling to come back.

“Now you're going to very slowly and carefully slide yourself out of the pen until you're standing beside me,” Escobar said.

April nodded.

“Look at me.” For the first time, the monster in him spoke to
her. The anger in Escobar's voice was so thick and deep that April felt faint. She quickly brought her eyes to him.

Escobar's face filled her vision.

He was nothing to look at. His thick-framed round glasses were trendy, a film director's. His jowls weren't as tight as the rest of his face. He was in his fifties. He looked as if he hadn't shaved in a few days. The hair on his scalp was trimmed away except for dark fuzz. He didn't look big. He didn't look small. He looked like no one and nothing.

Escobar was still wearing the same blue sweater vest he'd worn when he was the old man in the wheelchair. April felt a wave of shame and sadness for how easily she'd been fooled—and after Ten had tried so hard to warn her! For the first time, April thought about her parents. Her brothers, Kevin and Jason. They would spend the rest of their lives haunted by what was happening to her. They would never recover.

“We both have to remember one thing, April,” Escobar said to her, his monster growling at the edge of his voice. He stared earnestly, not blinking. “You chose him. You chose whoring filth. Maybe you felt sorry for him, thought you could change him. I tried the same path with Rosa. But you're responsible for this, so embrace it. Face it,
chica
. Give this night meaning.”

April could only stare, frozen. Escobar's lip curled with his disappointment in her before he stepped back. “You look like the others, with those big cartoony eyes,” he said. “All right, come out. Walk with me. Tennyson might already be here.”

He smiled when he said Tennyson's name, and the monster seemed to be gone. She felt her face trying to mimic his smile, but April had lost her joy at the idea of Tennyson coming for her. That was what Escobar wanted.

If he would take off her gag, she would tell him she would do anything if he let her go. She would do anything if he would spare them.

“Move,” the monster's voice said.

April scurried to back herself out of the cage; her legs were confused about how to support her, nearly crumpling her to the ground. Escobar caught her forearm to keep her standing, holding tight. This time, his grip had lost its patience. The first pain.

Escobar slammed the van door closed and pinned her to the rear door with a palm across her chest. Her arms, behind her, were pressed awkwardly against a hard door handle, but she couldn't move to relieve the pressure. He had no anger in his face, but he couldn't help hurting her. Of course he would hurt her. April did not cry out. She would not, she decided. She wouldn't let Escobar reduce her to a wreck for Ten to see. April tried to raise her neck to her full height, fighting the parts of her body that wanted to cower.

Even when she saw the gun, she stood tall. The muzzle was barely a foot from her, pointing toward her chin. Instead of the small handgun Escobar had used to capture her at the supermarket, he had a shotgun. April remembered the thick-handled tool she'd seen in the truck. Escobar had brought an arsenal for them.

“If you struggle, I shoot you,” Escobar said. “If you make noise, I shoot you. If you run, I shoot you.
Punto
. If I have to shoot you, I disappear again, and my life goes on. I'll find Chela next. Shooting you makes no difference to me. Am I clear?”

April nodded.
Chela!
April had not thought about Chela, had not fathomed that Escobar would know her name. April wouldn't be able to yell out a warning to Tennyson, and Escobar would shoot Ten. Probably both of them. She was foolish not to try to run and get on with dying. That was better than pretending she believed she could survive. Or did she believe?

Ten was all they had. He was all
he
had.

“Come,” Escobar said, tugging her arm. “Walk.”

As April walked a pace in front of Escobar, feeling his gun at her back, the night came into bright focus. Neon shone through treetops. Garbage cans were marked
HANCOCK PARK.
The paved
pathway where they walked was so well lighted that April was shocked at Escobar's boldness. Despite the trees, they were near a busy street, Wilshire Boulevard. She heard the steady, swishing burr of traffic. The street was close enough to hear music playing through an open car window,
boom-boom-boom
. Trees and shrubbery hid them from sight, but she guessed they couldn't be more than thirty or forty yards from witnesses.

Escobar would not take off her gag, then. He couldn't risk letting her scream.

Tears stung, but April blinked them back. She knew exactly where she was. She might have walked this path when her brother Jason dragged her to the museum when he came to visit two summers ago.

Suddenly, April understood the smell.

Understood all of it.

Escobar had chosen the tar pits for the theater value. An epic set piece.

He planned to bury them both.

MY FATHER TOOK
me to the La Brea Tar Pits when I was a kid, maybe more than once. That irony crossed my mind while I was riding in the cab on Wilshire, staring out at the carnival of lights on Miracle Mile. Dad hadn't been one to think about field trips outside of our neighborhood library branch, but something about the tar pits and the remains scientists were unearthing there inspired him to want to bring me.

The La Brea Tar Pits are an excavation site in the most unlikely place—nestled in the urban heart of L.A., bordered by Hancock Park and one of its busiest streets on Museum Row. While time marched on, the tar pits remained, spitting up bygone creatures lulled to their deaths by the water above the deadly tar.

Saber-toothed tigers. Mastodons. A mammoth. The bones and stories were on display at the museum, dating back at least thirty thousand years. A place like that makes you feel small, like a blip in time. I remember standing beside my father while a tour guide explained that the only human remains researchers had found there had been a teenage girl discovered in 1914, buried and forgotten for ten thousand years. The story had scared me, and I'd tried to reach for my
father's hand, but he pulled his hand away, telling me I was too old for that nonsense.

April might already be beneath the tar, history repeating. Drowned.

In that cab, I saw my dad like a vision, a man my age, in his forties, sun gleaming off his forehead, my own smile mirrored on his face. I could see him as if time had carried us back.

But I couldn't see April. Whenever my thoughts tried to drift to April, my stomach clenched, and my mind fled somewhere else. She was already becoming a dead hole to me, an awful discovery I was about to make.

If April was alive, it was only because Escobar wanted to use her to make me suffer. He was ready for me, and he would try to hurt her while I watched. I would have to do whatever I could to free her, which meant trying to bargain with Escobar for her life. But he probably would try to kill us both. He might do better than try.

The night ahead was a blur of waiting pain.

I had decided against trying to find a weapon. Escobar hadn't given me time, and I thought I might have a better chance of bargaining with him if I came unarmed, allowing him to have control. If Marsha was right, Escobar would feel conflicted about killing April. If I were lucky, I would be the only one of us to die.

I checked the time on my phone: ten minutes to midnight.

“Speed it up,” I told the cabbie, dropping one of my twenties onto the front seat.

We had at least two miles to go, and he slowed for yellow lights instead of gunning through. We'd hit pockets of stalling traffic in the middle of the night, typical for L.A. I wanted to jump out of the cab and run on foot, but even a slow cab would get me there faster.

“Gotta follow the law, man,” the cabbie said. “Can't get another ticket, or I'm done. I don't mess with CHP.”

Even his Southern-tinged speech was languid; no part of him
was in a hurry. If I hadn't been so certain that April was already dead, I might have clocked him and thrown him from the moving car. I might have slit that stranger's throat to try to save her, if I believed I had to.

He turned on his radio, where a political news station played. All of the names were meaningless. The words were meaningless. I was floating above the world, waiting to crash back down.

“Where you from?” The cabbie might have asked me more than once, but I hadn't heard him the first time.

“Here. Born and raised.”

“You're lucky, man. I'm from Georgia,” he said. “I love it here, but I wish I'd stayed closer to grits and sweet tea. Just something special about home—know what I mean?”

I shook my head. “You live and you die. Nothing special about any of it.”

He glanced at me in his rearview mirror, probably to judge if I was a robber or a lunatic. Then he looked back to the road. He gave up on talking to me.

I thought about a quick call to Chela, but we had said everything that needed saying. I had nothing left to do, except one last thing.

At the next red light, I couldn't sit still. It was ten minutes until midnight. We were at least half a mile from the tar pits, maybe more, but I needed motion to feel that I was doing anything for April. I dropped the rest of my money on the cabbie's seat before I climbed out of the car. “Wish me luck,” I said.
Pray for me,
I wanted to say.

“God will make a way!” the cabbie called behind me. “What's your name?”

“Tennyson!” I called back.

I had someone's prayer, even if he was a stranger. He would speak my name.

I ran toward April with all my might.