The Spoiler (37 page)

“Listen, I shouldn't be talking to you,” she said. “I never planned on meeting you anyway. Just take the money Brunner gave you. Go. Leave town. Write the story or don't. It doesn't matter. If you run, I'm safe, I got rid of you like they wanted. If you write the story—if you do it right—then they won't dare touch me. I'll be all right.”

“Don't kid yourself,” Lofton said.

“I think you're wrong. One way or the other—”

“One way or the other they'll control you forever. I'll meet you as soon as I'm done and help you get out.”

Amanti looked at the ground. “Listen, don't play saint. Get out of town.”

“Oh, but I am a saint.” He pulled Amanti through the crowd, to the top of the stands. There were more sirens in the streets, smoke plumes rising over the Flats. He whirled her around and grabbed her by the collar.

“Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

She held her lips open, slightly, and seemed to look at him but not to see him, like a face inside a photograph, one that you study for a long time. The people nearby muttered to themselves. They saw how he held her collar in his fist, and they backed away.

“I was supposed to set you up,” Amanti said. “Brunner and Kelley arranged everything just like I told you the other night, only they had no intention of letting me meet you. They were going to have you killed.”

“At Barena's?” Lofton asked.

“No, I was supposed to tell you to meet me at the old railroad depot at eight o'clock, about an hour ago. I told you the wrong place and the wrong time. I did it on purpose.”

Lofton let go of her collar. He could see flames, bright and orange, leaping up over the factory district, down toward American Paper. There was screaming and whooping in the streets.

“Don't you understand? When they found out how much you knew, how much I had told you, they figured a way out—to set you up. I was supposed to tell you to meet me, that we would leave town together. As far as Brunner and Kelley know, I did everything they asked. It's not my fault if you decided not to meet me, if, on your own, you take the money and run.”

“Why didn't you let me in on this?”

“I couldn't take the chance. I didn't want them to think that I was deliberately fouling their plans.” Amanti paused and looked out over the city toward the flames. “I had no idea they were going to start the fires again so soon.”

“Are you sure you don't want to get out of here—just to escape, leave them all behind?”

“Write your story, or don't, it's up to you. I did what I could,” she said. “Now I have to watch out for myself. The rest is yours.”

She twisted away into the crowd. He started to follow but saw the security agent waiting, watching her descend the stairs. Lofton ducked away, behind the concession stand. Amanti and Kelley were together now, arm in arm. Brunner approached them, smiling. He closed his fingers around Gina's other arm.

Lofton hurried to the exit. On the way he passed the Chicken's trailer. Through the trailer window he caught a glimpse of the young man, half in his suit, half out, the costume head on the chair beside him. The man's head was glistening with sweat, Lofton noticed, and his cheeks were wet and shining.

The streets were always unpredictable, sometimes quiet, stretching out long and empty, the buildings seemingly deserted; other times whole blocks were seething, people rushing back and forth, shouting at one another, pushing, shoving. Now the air overhead was filled with smoke, the engines crying, wailing, whistling, and the sky was lit by the crazy glare of American Paper burning at the bottom of the hill, across the canal. People left their tenements to watch, to get close enough to see the reflection of the fire in the water, and kids ran up High Street, pulling alarms, smashing glass, grabbing cassette decks, cameras, anything from the shattered display windows. Lofton turned down the railroad tracks and hurried toward the river. In the tenements beyond High Street, more fires had broken out, set—Lofton guessed—by looters to create distractions, to keep the police busy, or simply for the fun of it.

He followed the trestle across the canal. He stood where the Penn Central tracks ended, not far from the river, near the bridge where he had found himself earlier that day. A large rusted turbine lay in the weeds nearby. The breaking glass, the alarms—all seemed distant now, like something in a dream, except for the fact that he could turn his head and see the smoke and glare of American Paper. The lights of the river houses shone pale and yellow from the other side of the Connecticut. People must be watching from their back porches, Lofton thought, and he imagined Brunner's wife, her blue robe shimmering as she worked her way through the willows to the riverbank. When he asked himself why he wanted to catch up with the Latinos, he could find no answer. He wanted to see the story through to the end, that was all. The kid at the ballpark had told him he had seen the Latinos kill someone in one of the underground tunnels; Amanti had said that Brunner and Kelley had planned out Lofton's own death, down near the old depot. These were the two stories he'd been tracing all along—Brunner's intrigues on one hand; the gang warfare on the other—and now at last he was approaching the place where the stories converged. The tunnels were somewhere nearby, down near the railroad tracks and the canals.

He remembered he still had the money with him, and he decided he'd better get rid of it for now. He put the envelope beneath a railroad tie. Then he heard footsteps. He turned. A man stood about twenty yards away, just in front of an old Dumpster. He was thin, and he wore a white T-shirt that stood out against the darkness.

“¿Quién es?”
the man said. His voice was soft. Lofton did not know whether to answer. He considered running, but he didn't think he could outrun the man. He was too close. Then Lofton glanced back and saw two more men behind him. They stood like the other one, shoulders arched, feet spread, hands loose and ready. The Latinos. He had stepped into the middle of them again.

The men walked around Lofton in a circle, always facing him, the circle growing smaller, tighter, with each revolution. They called back and forth to each other in Spanish. It was too dark for Lofton to tell if these were the same gang members he had encountered on the street.

“¿El reportero?”

“
No sé.”

“
Un pendejo mas.”

The men laughed, all except the one in the white T-shirt. He seemed to be in charge, and he did not take his eyes off Lofton. Lofton raised his arms above his head to show he had no weapons.

“I'm not looking for trouble,” he said. “I'm looking to help.”

For a moment he imagined the scene as it might look from above. The three young men circling and himself in the middle, his hands in the air, the trainyard spiraling away, the city flaming. He was frightened, but the scene was melodramatic, funny. He laughed.

“¡Vamos!
”

The men rushed him. Lofton turned one way, then the other; he felt his arms pulled back; he caught a glimpse of steel. The men pinned him to the gravel, face down; the man in the T-shirt held a knife under his throat.

“No. Don't kill him.
Es el reportero.”
The Latino went on in Spanish, explaining something to the others. Lofton coughed into the dirt.

One of the men searched him, running his hands along the inside of Lofton's thigh. Satisfied, the Latinos pulled Lofton to his feet. Up close, Lofton recognized the tall one in the white T-shirt; he had been the one who did the talking that day out on the street in front of Lofton's hotel. The other two, however, did not look familiar. They looked him up and down, amused at his clothes, at the bright orange helmet he still wore on his head; one of the men, laughing as he did so, tugged at Lofton's jersey.

“What are you doing here?” the tall one asked. Lofton stammered over an explanation. He did not want to mention the kid because he did not want them to think he had come here looking for Golden's murderers; the Latinos might not appreciate such curiosity. The young man in front of him, however, did not wait for an answer to his question. He remembered Lofton from that day on the street. “We have Mendoza,” he said proudly, self-satisfied.

“Let me talk to him,” Lofton said. “I need to do that.”

The three men led him toward the river. They took him to a concrete tunnel, built into the riverbank, that seemed to go back toward town, toward the main canal. A bleeder tunnel, he guessed, used as a safety valve if the canals got too full too quickly. He remembered what the kid, in his hysteria, had told him: how the Latinos had dragged Golden into the tunnel and beaten him, shouting as they pulled money from his pockets. Golden had always paid Mendoza before, Lofton thought, and most likely he'd been on his way to make the payoff again. Except this time the Latinos, persistent in their tracking of Mendoza, happened to have the place staked.

One man led the way, and the other two followed behind Lofton, their shoes splashing in the seepage that flowed along the bottom of the tunnel. A moaning sound came from deeper in the tunnel—voices, Lofton realized, echoing and vibrating against the old concrete. A light flickered ahead. Soon they stood with other gang members. Lofton listened as they talked in Spanish, apparently deciding what to do with him.

In another moment they'd made up their minds. They shone a flashlight in Lofton's face. Somebody grabbed him by the arm and pulled him forward. Mendoza lay at his feet. Mendoza was alive, but he was bleeding from the mouth and asking to be let go. When Lofton looked up, he saw a Latino he hadn't seen before, the gang's headman evidently, the one who had been trying to hold the gang in place since Angelo's death.

“
Es el hombre del fuego
. The arsonist,” the leader said, pointing at Mendoza. “He's paid by the Mafia.”

Lofton laughed, his quick chortle. It was a funny idea. The Mafia. People liked to think there was a group of men behind the corruption in the world, overweight thugs in movie suits, and that you could shoot a few, put a few in jail, and solve everything. The truth was that the Mafia was not a single group of people or an organization, at least not anymore, so much as it was a system, a method of operation, one that a lot of people used.

“How do you know it's the Mafia?”

“That's what he says.”

They kicked Mendoza in the legs.

“¿Quién te pagó?”

They kicked him again.

“¿Quién te mandó?”

“The Mafia.”

“See.” The young man turned to Lofton. “They're burning our town. Go ahead, ask him what you want. When you're finished, get out, write it for the paper.”

Lofton knelt over Mendoza. Then he turned to the Latinos. “All right. But tell me, what do you plan on doing when you're finished beating on him? It won't do any good to kill him.”

The Latinos did not answer. The tunnel was silent, the only noise Mendoza's sharp, irregular breathing.

“You know what they're going to do,” Mendoza hissed. “One of your people was here earlier. A white man. Ask what they have done to him. Ask.”

The Latinos stood quietly. One man turned a flashlight on Mendoza, so Mendoza's eyes shone in the darkness, small, yellow, like a candle flame about to go out.

“Ask,” Mendoza said again, his voice still hissing, still defiant.

Lofton hesitated. He thought of the ballpark kid trembling in this tunnel while the Latinos collared Golden. “
I have one more errand to run for Brunner; then I'm finished.”
He imagined the man's screams. He thought of Golden's wife in the wheelchair. He did not like thinking that Golden was dead.

Mendoza breathed heavily. The Latinos were silent, watching, waiting. They could still turn against me, Lofton thought, and a simple idea occurred to him, one that he'd had before but that seemed more important now: The Latinos were fighting for vengeance, for blood. Nothing he said would persuade these men to let Mendoza go. Whatever ideals Angelo had expressed, those were shattered now. Down here, below the city—just as above, in City Hall—what was good, what was evil, the line between them was all murky. If the Latinos had killed Golden, Lofton didn't want to hear about it, not here, not now. Because if the Latinos guessed that he suspected they were murderers, then they might not let him go.

Mendoza raised his head. The Latino's leader shot out a command in Spanish. One of the men kicked Mendoza in the stomach.

The tunnel was silent again except for Mendoza's gasping, trying to regain his breath in the dank air. Lofton could feel the Latinos behind him. Mendoza rolled over. He peered at Lofton, struggled to regain his focus. He looked around him in the dark, and for the first time he seemed afraid, like a child waking up from a bad dream. He reached a hand toward Lofton.

“I'll tell you everything, just get me out of here. Get me away from them. To the police. I'll tell you everything.”

Mendoza held on to Lofton's shirt pocket. Lofton looked back at the Latinos. The leader said nothing, he did not move his head, there was no sign of assent.

“All right,” Lofton lied. “You'll be safe.”

Mendoza's eyes flickered back and forth. For a moment they held a flash of the same defiance.

“
Mentiroso,”
he scoffed. “You're a liar.” He let out a loud laugh. A Latino kicked him in the face.

Mendoza moaned and rolled over again. Blood came from his nose, his mouth, his teeth. Slowly he struggled up to his elbows.

“Gutierrez,” Lofton asked. “Who killed him?”

Mendoza smiled; there was no focus in his eyes. “One of my men, he told me not to come get the money by myself. He had a bad feeling. But I wanted the money in my own hands. I made a mistake.”

“Do you know who Golden was working for? Who paid him the money he gave you?” Lofton felt the Latinos bristle at the mention of Golden's name, but he shot out the questions, trying to get answers while Mendoza was still coherent. He knew, of course, that Brunner was behind it all, but he wanted to hear it from Mendoza, to have some confirmation besides his own and the papers that had been taken away from him when the police found him on the side of the road. Mendoza, though, was quiet again, his eyes vacant.