Chapter 118
“WHAT IS THIS?” Chief Fox demanded, holding up an arm to block the light glaring into his bleary red eyes. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The state police commandant squinted into the light and demanded angrily, “Do you have any idea who the fuck we are?”
“Sí,” Cruz said. “We know who you are.”
“No,” Gomez insisted. “Do you really know who we are? And what will happen to you if you don’t release us?”
“His brother-in-law is a very powerful man,” Chief Fox said. “Listen to him, my friends. You don’t want to do this. We pay our dues. We are protected.”
“By who?” Cruz asked.
“De la Vega,” Fox said, almost boasting. “Antonio de la Vega.”
I felt a hand on my forearm, looked over at Cordova. We were behind the spotlights, still wearing our skeleton masks. He whispered in my ear, “De la Vega drug cartel. One bad hombre. Reclusive. Doesn’t like attention.”
“Even better,” I said, leaned over, repeated to Justine what Cordova had just told me, and finished with: “Have at them.”
Justine brought a chair with her. She sat opposite the men, pulled off her mask.
Commandant Gomez recognized her, first incredulous but then filled with drunken rancor. “You will never leave México alive.”
“What is your relationship to Adelita Gomez, Commandant?” she asked.
The state police commandant’s head retreated toward his shoulders several inches, like a turtle drawing into its shell or a snake about to strike. “I don’t know no one by that name.”
“You don’t know Adelita?” Justine said, looking at him with great skepticism. “The Harlows’ nanny? From Guadalajara?”
“No,” Gomez said. “Never heard of this girl.”
Fox shook his head. “Guadalajara is a big place.”
I took that as my cue, turned and made a cutting motion across my throat, and saw a red light blink back in the shadows. Cordova took the commandant’s pistol from Cruz and ran the mechanism as he stepped out into the light, still wearing the long duster and the skeleton mask.
“Get a better memory, se?ores, or I shoot you,” he said in English. “Not to kill, but to wound.”
They looked uncertain, but then Gomez started to say, “I don’t—”
Cordova aimed at the front of the commandant’s left boot and fired. Gomez screamed, tried to get up, and fell to the floor, writhing in pain, grabbing at his boot, and screeching in Spanish.
“You’re next, Chief,” Cordova promised Fox above Gomez’s agony. “But I think I’ll aim higher with you. What do you want? The shin? Or the kneecap?”
The police chief had started to perspire. The sweat ran in rivulets down his face. “Por favor,” he began.
“Tell us something about Adelita,” Justine said.
Cordova ran the muzzle of the gun up the police chief’s right shin, across his kneecap and thigh, aimed it at his groin.
“You would not do such a thing!” Fox cried in horror.
“Try me,” Cordova said.
Fox looked down at Commandant Gomez, still writhing on the floor, his screams reduced to moans. Fox looked back to Justine. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
Cordova tucked the gun inside the duster. I threw a thumbs-up into the darkness, seeing that red light blink again.
“Tell me about Adelita,” Justine said.
“Adelita,” Chief Fox said. “She is Raoúl’s niece.”
“You son of a fucking pig!” Gomez yelled at him.
“Where is she?”
“Keep your mouth shut or you will die horribly, Arturo,” Gomez grunted.
“What makes you think you’re both not going to die horribly?” Cordova said. “Where is she?”
Commandant Gomez struggled up to his chair. “Take me to a doctor, maybe I tell you.”
“Where is Adelita Gomez?” Justine demanded again.
Chief Fox glanced at the blood seeping from his friend’s boot, said, “Recovering, I think.”
“From what?” Justine asked.
“Plastic surgery,” Commandant Gomez hissed, his face screwing up in rage. “After what the Harlows did to her, our beautiful Adelita could not stand the sight of her own beautiful face anymore.”