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

asked him to please send her back to Mazatlán as he had said he would do. He said no. He had given her a choice and she had made it and now must live by it. But why not let her go, she asked him. He’d soon be tired of her and kick her out anyway. He said that was very possible and when that happened she could leave but not before. He had a tattooist put the little broken wings on her back. A reminder, he told her, that she could not fly away from him. More effective than the tattoos were the informants she now knew were keeping watch on her and would report to him any attempt she made to leave. A couple of weeks later he took her to a party at Rancho del Sol. It was the farthest she had ever been from home, not only in miles but in feeling. The vastness of the desert frightened her. Everything looked too far away, even the cloudless sky. There was nowhere you could hide in such emptiness. She hated the other women, who were out-and-out whores and who hated her in turn for looking down on them. It was four days of drinking and fucking except for one time when he took her to hunt quail but they spent most of the day driving out here in the scrub. She was glad to get back to Culiacán. During the next two months he came to see her at the apartment more often than before. It was as though her desire to be free of him had made him want her more. But he also seemed very ready to hurt her if she should fail to satisfy him. She had heard stories of what he had done to women who had displeased him, and she did not hesitate to grant whatever favors he asked and do so with enthusiasm. She was convinced he could smell her fear and that it increased his pleasure, a realization that made her almost as angry as she was afraid, but she was careful to conceal it. It wasn’t so much a matter of who did he think he was, to take such enjoyment in making her afraid, as who did he think she was? But of course she already knew the answer to that question, and every time she thought of it she wanted to both weep and hit something. Then a few days ago he told her to pack a bag, they were going to another party at Rancho del Sol. Without thinking, she said, Shit, and next thing she knew she was on the floor with a numb eye socket and an eye blurred with tears. Excuse me, he said, I don’t think I heard you clearly. Did you say you couldn’t wait to go? She was able to nod and he smiled and said that’s what he thought. He said it would be fun, like last time. Maybe they would go on another quail hunt. But on the morning of departure she was driven to the airport by a lackey who told her that Segundo and the Boss had been delayed and did not plan to join the rest of the party until the next day. She was glad to hear it. It meant one night of freedom at that damned ranch.
    But apparently, she says, there was a change in his plans.
    Apparently, Eddie says.
    And a minute later he says, How old are you?
    Nineteen.
    p
    They arrive at the dirt road and pick up speed and in another hour they spot the distant lights of traffic moving along the federal highway. The eastern horizon now red as a raw wound.
    5
    The Boss
    The Boss enters the malodorous room, accompanied by El Tiburón. Already present are Flores and his main security aide, Chato. They step aside as the Boss goes to his brother’s body and stands over it. He is a master of inexpressiveness, a trait that has long served his reputation as a man of cool blood whose decisions have the solid finality of a gravestone. His face gives no hint of his sorrow or his rage—or his embarrassment at his brother’s fouled trousers. He’s known countless men who shat themselves in fear or agony at the moment of death and he never before felt anything about it except occasional disgust.
    Looks like he caught her fooling with a guy, Flores says. One of the ranch guards. There was a fight, obviously, and . . . He gestures at the body. We found two casings, he says,