Chapter Fifty
So things were a little strained aboard the Buick as it glided out of the ferry’s bowels into the stark white sun of the Cabo San Lucas terminal. And got a lot more so when six state cops surrounded the car and pointed assault rifles in the windows. Primo froze into a watchful impassivity, Doc rolled his eyes upward and sighed, Dancy batted her lashes and ogled the stubby machine guns.
After a quick, cursory search and patdown, all three passengers ended up in the back seat with one trooper behind the wheel and another sitting backward in the passenger seat keeping both eyes and a large caliber revolver focused dead center on Doc’s chest. They rolled out of the terminal parking lot and immediately started climbing the steep drive to the Finisterra, a pickup full of armed cops right behind them. Nobody thought of much to say.
Dancy, sitting in the middle, shifted her thigh against Doc’s, a subtle frisk for the derringer. She felt it right where she’d seen him put it after reloading it with shells Primo had brought with him in his backpack. Doc turned to give her a very blank look. She shrugged, looked at the cops, then started fussing with her shirt, arranging to show a little more cleavage. Lock and load, Doc thought. At least there are only two this time.
The driver turned on the headlights as the Buick loafed into the deep shadows of the Finisterra garage. Two lounging cops with M-16’s snapped erect as they passed them, then pulled a barrier across the aisle to block them into a blind corner. The car stopped fifteen feet from a bare concrete wall, the driver killing the motor but leaving the headlamps on. Doc saw the M-16’s pointing through the rear window at the back of his head while the driver slid out and turned to cover him with a pistol while the lookout backed through the door, never letting his pistol leave Doc’s center of body of mass.
The driver motioned for Primo to get out and stand where the headlights illuminated the wall. Dancy came out next, taking a little bow as they placed her against the wall next to Primo. They took a lot more time and care with Doc, but he offered no resistance to four men with a dead cold drop. When all three were backed up to the wall, nailed in the spotlight, the cops backed off. Doc was focusing the flow of his adrenaline, looking for some slacking of attention just before they started to fire. Instead he heard them walking away. Behind the lights he heard car doors open and close, a motor start, a car pulling out of the garage. He waited for the shoe to drop. When it did, it belonged to Stan Russell.
He didn’t even have to speak. As soon as Doc saw his silhouette step in front of the headlights, the rifle muzzle pointed toward him, he knew who it was.
The last thing Doc wanted was for Dancy and Stan to start exchanging words. He spoke up quickly, but in a calm tone. “First let the kid go, Russell. He has nothing to do with this. He walks and we can work something out.” To Primo he said, “When I speak again start slowing moving out to your right.”
“Nah, he’s just a reporter,” Russell jeered, “No reason to worry about him.”
“He’s the only innocent one here. Let him go and we’ll cut a deal.” At the words Primo started to move extremely slowly to his right, away from Doc and Dancy.
Russell yelled, “Hey! Stop, asshole. Alto! Hardesty, tell him to stop or I shoot. And when I do I shoot everybody.”
Primo had only moved ten feet away when Russell threw the gun up to his shoulder and pointed it right at him. “I said stop or I shoot, dammit.”
Dancy had been anticipating Doc’s move, but even so it was so fast and direct it startled her. He jammed his right hand into his pocket so abruptly that it tore the panel of his trousers away. The gun had been hanging just to the right of his groin, in the least likely zone to be searched. He had it in his hand and moving up through the tatters of his pants at the same time his left hand shot out to slam into her shoulder and knock her sideways.
Russell had time to move the gun back toward Doc before he was also covered, but somehow knew better than to pull the trigger. From twelve feet away, it seemed like Doc loomed over him, two steel barrels emerging from his fist. The gun that killed Martillo and his whole gang. It was like an interception on the goal line; less than a second elapsed but the whole momentum and advantage reversed. Except he still had a powerful machine gun in his hands. He looked at Doc longingly, but didn’t dare fire. He shifted his bead back to Primo and started inching closer to the young Indian. He wasn’t sure Dancy had a lot of hostage value.
Doc’s voice was very flat and uninflected in the still air of the garage. “If you kill that boy, you die Russell, that’s all there is to it.”
“I think I’ve got a slight firepower advantage, here, Hardesty.”
Still flat as encyclopedia entry, Doc said, “Not really. It’s too late. You can’t kill me quick enough to keep me from doing you.”
Russell wavered slightly, saw Dancy inching towards him, poised like a panther, saw Doc like a snake coiled to explode. “I’m a wide receiver, Stan. I can make three yards with my head blown off and my dick nailed down. Give me the gun and you get out of this alive.”
Without even meaning to, Russell suddenly lowered the gun and skidded it across the floor towards Doc. His hands shot up and he felt the sweat and shake of deferred fear. Doc kept his derringer level but smiled, “And they say charisma is dead.”
But concentrating on Stan had left him less aware of Dancy, creeping up from his left side. Suddenly she bolted forward, scooping up the gun as she moved. Russell saw her break and just about filled his pants. As Doc turned towards Dancy, now on her knees and bringing the gun to her shoulder, Russell jumped towards Primo, who tried to run, but was engulfed in a bear hug then felt himself being swung around and clamped in front of his big, agile attacker, suddenly reduced to a human shield. The only thing between a rotten guy’s guts and a betrayed wife aiming a machine gun. It suddenly occurred to Primo that a problem with Communism is that it doesn’t leave you with anybody to pray to.
“Dancy,” Doc said in a very gentle voice. “You don’t really want to do it.”
“The fuck I don’t,” she snarled, “He tried to kill us, sold me into slavery, kept me from getting laid last night. And he’s a freebie.”
“Take it from me, Slim. Don’t kill the first one.”
Dancy glanced at him, granting him a moment of attention.
“Get the taste of blood and you’ll be in the life. No turning back: not for somebody like me or you. It’s not worth it.”
“I don’t know. You know how much a divorce costs?”
“Look, he’s washed up. He’s going to prison.”
Dancy considered that, “If I thought some insensitive asshole would cornhole him every night for five years, that might square things up. But he’ll probably beat the rap. How many chances do you get to shoot your husband and get away clean?”
That was enough for Stan. He jerked Primo up bodily and tried to run out of the light, to make the corner and lose himself in the parked cars. Instantly Dancy let off a three-shot burst that would have perforated his intestines if the slugs hadn’t stitched along Primo’s intervening leg. The impact knocked Stan off balance and both men fell in a heap of flailing limbs and spurting blood.
Dancy bounced up and moved forward, pointing her rifle for the kill. But Doc was already between her and her prey, swooping in to snatch the front out of Primo’s shirt and stuff it into the femoral wound, pressing hard enough to stop the flow. Stan had gotten to his knees, staring at the gushing blood. Then he looked up and saw Dancy moving around behind Doc to get a clear killing shot.
Doc’s voice slammed like a big steel door in the closed space. “Drop the gun, Dancy! Now!”
She turned to look at him, right down both barrels. “Oh, come on, lover man. You gonna gun down your favorite playmate?”
Doc said, “I’d have to ask myself what Bogie would do if some skirt shot his partner.” But he wasn’t smiling.
Dancy, came off point and lowered the gun the floor. “Okay, okay. You’ve already made me a believer, Slash.”
Doc made it clear he was covering both of them while staunching the pulsing femoral. And he made it clear that if Primo died he’d hold both of them responsible. He called Dancy over to help with the bleeding, but caught a hint of movement from Stan and turned to look at him. Whatever he saw in his face was enough to make him slam his fist directly into the middle of it. Stan rolled over unconscious, blood blossoming out of his smashed nose. Doc was bleeding too, his knuckles cut from pieces of nose bone. He guessed that Russell was still alive, but didn’t worry about it much.
Dancy had no smart remarks for once, she was kneeling beside Primo, fumbling at the bleeding holes in the his calf, looking into his face, like a sad sleeping child. She murmured under her breath, not knowing if Doc heard her or not. “Oh man, you were so right.”
Doc guided her hands to the wad of cloth that was stopping the femoral flow, then started working on the less serious wounds in the lower leg. He pulled off his belt to hold the bandage in the thigh, then took Russell’s to splint the broken calf bone to the other leg. He glanced at the blood and wreckage in Russell’s face and said, “God help me, I do love to hit that guy.”
He slipped an arm under Primo’s shoulders, another under his knees, and stood up, carrying him to the car like a blood-soaked bundle of clothes. Laying him in the back seat as gently as he could, he turned around just in time to see Dancy looking towards Stan as she stealthily picked up the gun. He came up behind her without a sound, grabbed her throat in one hand and the gun in the other. It took only a three seconds of pressure on her carotid before she passed out.
He dumped Stan in the Buick’s big trunk, tossed Dancy on top of him, and started to close the rear door. Primo had come around, was staring right at him, his face calm, his mouth turned down at the edges. “You’ll be okay,” Doc wished out loud, “We’re going to the hospital right now.”
“No worry, Carnal,” he said.
Carnal means “brother” but more, literally “of the same flesh”, and was a word Doc had never expected to hear applied to him. He raised an eye and Primo smiled, “Look.” he said. “Our blood has mingled.”
Doc grinned in spite of his worry, “I thought you didn’t approve of mixed blood.”
“I don’t normally approve of capitalist gringo imperialist warmongers either, but these are odd times.”
Then Doc closed the door, Primo shifted his legs, and a bolt of pain caused him to pass out again.