“Let him go!” He went another couple of steps.
The guy tried to raise himself on an elbow. One of the men shoved him down.
“Mikey.” The guy sounded far away.
Mike took another step and stood his ground. “Let him go. Now!” No one made a move. “Comprende?” Mike yelled at them.
One of the men stood and Mike saw that he held something close against his thigh. He thought it was a gun. He froze. The man lifted his hand, and enough light from the carport caught it that Mike saw the blade clearly. Holding the knife at waist level, the man came toward him. He spoke hard, rapid Spanish and gestured with his free hand. He was telling Mike to go, no doubt about it, and when he thrust the knife forward and picked up his speed, Mike turned and ran back to the cab. He vaguely heard the guy on the ground calling, “Mikey, Mikey,” so far away now. Mike gunned the engine. The car slid a little on the dusty street and covered four blocks before a thought crossed his mind. He slammed on the brakes at Canal Boulevard.
His heart was pounding, his throat almost closed. He stared at the cab’s radio, not a blip from it all night. It went in and out; his cell phone was useless. He was alone, completely alone, an entirely new way of being alone, and he made a choice.
He took a deep breath as he stepped out of the taxi. He went around to the trunk. Wrapped in old rags, the gun sat deep in the wheel well beside the spare. Mike unwrapped it, put the rags back in the wheel well, and replaced the cover. He got in the taxi and drove to the Argonne alley.
The four men in the alley all turned when Mike drove up. He didn’t see his passenger. He killed the engine and pocketed the keys as he got out of the cab. He held the gun pointed at the men. As he walked toward them, he asked where the other man was. He got close enough to see that the men were standing around a pool of blood that had soaked into the crust covering the alley.
“What did you do to him?” he demanded.
They were mute, staring at him, maybe afraid of his gun, maybe not. He could see their hands, empty, no knife showing.
“Where’s the man?” Mike repeated.
“El hombre,” one of them said.
“That’s right, el hombre. Dónde está el hombre?”
They all shrugged. One of them said something in Spanish Mike didn’t understand.
“Do you speak English? Doesn’t anyone speak English? Habla inglés?”
They stood there.
“Come on,” Mike said, “You have to know something. Did he walk away? Did you kill him?” He thought a moment. “Muerto? Hombre muerto?”
This got them very agitated. They spoke among themselves, too fast for Mike to understand anything other than a word here and there — hombre, casa, pistola.
“Hey!” Mike waved the gun and took a step toward them, but he didn’t want to get so close that they could jump him. They stopped talking and looked at him. He looked back. Hard. He didn’t know what to do. If he stared them down, maybe they’d think he was dangerous, not desperate.
What seemed like a long time went by. Mike finally said, “If you killed him, I’ll kill you.” He hadn’t known what he was going to say, but in that moment he thought he had it in him to shoot every one of them.
The tallest one spread his hands. “No,” he said, “we don’t kill him.”
“Then where is he?” The man dropped his hands. Anger began to rise in Mike. “You speak enough English to know the word ‘kill.’ How about this? You don’t tell where he is, I’ll kill you.”
The Mexican spread his hands again, his gesture of supplication. “Not so much English.”
“Bullshit! Where did he go, you creeps?” With his free hand he pointed down the alley. “That way?” None of them looked. “That way?” The opposite direction. “That way?” He pointed at the house. “La casa?”
“Sí.” The tall man nodded vigorously, “La casa.”
“Buncha dumb Mexicans,” Mike muttered.
He started toward the house, moving sideways so he could see them. On his way, he picked up a Coleman lantern that sat on an ice chest and walked around a high wood fence that leaned on the carport.
The back door of the house had been removed. When Mike held up the lantern, he could see straight through the gutted downstairs and out the front door, which stood wide open. The house wasn’t large, and a quick walk through the lower floor did not reveal a body or his passenger bleeding to death from a stab wound.
The stairway was by the far wall near the front door. As Mike looked at it, he knew he’d been duped, sent into the house on a fool’s errand. He tore through the house as he felt for his car keys. He arrived in the alley in time to see the last Mexican pull his foot into the cab and close the door. The vehicle roared off and Mike ran down the alley to Filmore Street. It was already a block away, but he stood in the middle of the street and shot twice at it. It fishtailed and he thought he’d hit it, but if anything, it moved away faster.
He pulled his keys out of his pocket and pressed the red alarm button, knowing it wouldn’t work. The remote needed a new battery.
Mike stuck the gun in the back of his pants and walked back to the house in a silence more oppressive than the blackness of the night. He retrieved the lantern, glad for the warmth of its light and the slight hissing sound it made.
The Mexicans had cleared out the carport. The ice chest was gone and not a tool or piece of clothing was left, only a few rags hanging on the Page fence that separated it from the carport next door. Mike stood there, the lantern at his side, as if gathering his energy for the long walk ahead.
His whole body jerked when he heard the rustling in the weeds across the alley.
“Mikey, hey, Mikey.” His fare emerged from behind a dead shrub and limped across to the carport. Mike held up the lantern expecting to see him covered with blood. Instead, he saw sheetrock dust and dirt, maybe a smear of blood on his dark blue jacket, and the evidence of hiding in a weed patch. He held one arm tight against his rib cage. “I was over on Argonne when I heard the shooting. I knew you’d come back, Mikey, I knew you’d come back with the gun.” He grinned.
How could he know it? Mike himself didn’t know it. He wanted to knock the grin off him. He didn’t even know why he felt so hostile. “Your face is a mess,” he said.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t much to begin with.” He was grinning again.
“I thought they’d stabbed you.”
The guy frowned. “They had a knife?”
“I saw a knife.”
“Glad I didn’t see it.”
“Looks like you lost a lot of blood.” Mike walked over to the stain.
“My nose,” the guy said. “Bled like a son of a bitch. I think it scared them.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “They stopped kicking me.” He glanced down the alley where the cab had been. “So what, you leave the keys in the car?”
“Hot-wired.”
He laughed, a short one, and clutched his arm tighter against his side. “Fuckin’ spics. They can do anything.” He tilted his head and looked at Mike, amused. “What I don’t get — you had a gun on ’em, right?”
“I went in the house looking for you, moron.”
He did his high-pitched laugh, keeping it in his throat to avoid hurting his ribs, and the night air sent it out, a sound to make the worst scoundrel’s skin crawl. He grimaced when he forgot his hurt leg, doing a little hop on his good one.
“You’re a bucket of cheer for a guy who just got the crap beat out of him.”
He rubbed at an eye, as though drying it, but touched the open cut on his cheekbone and winced. “Yeah, well, Mikey, what you gonna do? I tried to talk them into staying, but they weren’t buying it this time.”