The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake Read Free Book Online

You stupid bastards snatched an empty purse, she told them. She was so scared she couldn’t stop talking and she was afraid they would hurt her to shut her up but they ignored her as if they were deaf. They took her far out of town to a house with a view of the sea. Segundo was there, though she didn’t yet know who he was. He politely introduced himself as Enrique—she would later come to know that he was called Rico by his brother and close friends, Segundo by everyone else. He said he was the brother of La Navaja and asked if she had ever heard of that man. Of course she had. Like everyone, she had heard a great deal about the Sinaloa criminal organization and its leader. Had heard of their gun battles with other gangs and the police and even the army. Had heard of the horrific things they did. Heads left in bags at the doors of police stations. Bodies hung from overpasses. Charred corpses along country roads. Atrocities of every sort that had become so commonplace they were no longer shocking, only something to take precautions against, like the flu. And here was the brother of the chief of that organization of murderers. She was scared, naturally, but scared mostly in that strange way like at a movie about monsters or ghosts. Scared but also kind of excited, she can’t explain it. One of the men handed him the switchblade he’d taken from her, and Segundo snicked it open and smiled and then closed it and gave it to her and she put it in her pocket. He told her he’d seen her near the market a few days before and thought she was very beautiful. He said he wanted her for his girlfriend. He said she would have her own apartment with a big television in a nice colonia in Culiacán. He would take her to wonderful parties. She would dine on the best food and drink. She would have pretty dresses, jewelry. She would have a life most women can only dream of. He said he could see she was afraid, maybe too frightened to refuse him, but he promised he would not harm her if she turned him down. He would be disappointed, yes, but he would send her back to her miserable life if that was what she chose. His exact words—“tu vida miserable.” He said he knew how hard it must be for her to believe this was happening and she probably needed some time to think about it, and so she should do that while he made a phone call in the patio.
    She lights another cigarette. On the CD player a norteño band sings of a bold contrabandista idolized by the common folk for his bravery and violent defiance of the law.
    Imagine my life, she says. Then tells Eddie she was born and raised in Mazatlán in a loud portside barrio that always stank of fish and rage and meanness. A neighborhood of derelict apartments where every night you heard cursings, shriekings, wailings. As a child she many times saw men brawl in the streets and once was witness to a fight with knives that left both men dead on the sidewalk like mounds of bloody rags. She saw a man beat his wife to death with a hammer in an apartment hallway. She saw a woman flung from a rooftop and her head burst on the street like a melon. But her father was a big man, strong, a good fighter, and other men were afraid of him, you could see it in their faces. Her father made her feel protected, her and her one-year-elder sister Felicia and their mother, who was very pretty and always getting looks from men. He worked on a fishing boat and often spoke of getting a house of their own in a better part of the city, but he loved to gamble and was not good at it and they could never afford to move out of that awful place. She was almost fourteen when he drowned at sea. Then life became truly hard. Her mother had no money, no family or friends she could ask for help. She worked at a cannery for a while and earned barely enough to support them. Then there was an accident with a machine and she lost the thumb and part of the first finger of her right hand and nearly died