Final Payment

Chapter Thirty-four

Three times Estelle drifted up toward the surface, and her mind linked the moments together and remembered them as an incomprehensible mix of light and sound. When she finally distinguished her husband’s voice, she couldn’t remember if she had already had conversations with him.

“Can you hear me now?” he asked.

She might have said something, or only thought a reply. He continued to talk to her, quiet and insistent, and the flow of sound gave her a point of focus and comfort. She allowed time to march on, drifting in and out. Oddly, it was a single sound somewhere outside her room-a dropped clipboard, perhaps a clanged mop bucket-that started her into consciousness. It felt as if someone had lowered a concrete slab onto her body.

For a time, she lay absolutely immobile, except for her eyes. She could move those without effort or pain, and she took advantage of that, counting the ceiling tiles, examining the way they were cut and trimmed around the electrical conduits that fed the machines that tended her. She concentrated on the simple task of bringing all the sharp edges into focus. The earlier events that had brought her to this place remained indistinct and confused.

Francis Guzman moved back into view at the right side of the bed. At the same time, she became aware of a thin, bony hand that firmly clamped her left hand. She tried to turn her head and was greeted by a sharp stab of pain whose epicenter erupted in her right armpit, coursing down her arms and up through her shoulder, finding its way to her neck and then down the other side.

“Don’t do that,” Francis said, and he leaned closer so she could see him without being tempted to shift position. She looked into his dark brown eyes and saw nothing hidden there. “Your mom is here. She’s going to make sure you do what you’re told.” He straightened up, adjusted something, and bent back down, watching her closely. “Is that better?”

“Drugs are wonderful things,” she whispered as she felt the odd buzz of the morphine drip.

“Oh, sí, they are. Lie quiet and let them do the work.”

“Where’s Mamá?” The tiny hand that held hers didn’t feel attached to anything, but it squeezed again.

“She’s sitting right beside your bed, querida. Don’t be moving around, now.”

She heard a chair and cautiously shifted her eyes. Her mother’s tiny form moved into view, so short and bent that her shoulders were even with the bed.

“You can rest now,” Teresa Reyes said, the command absolute.

Tricks of time blended things together again, and when she was able to focus on her husband’s face once more, her vision had cleared another click, like sitting behind an optometrist’s gadget as he spun the little pinhole wheels and asked, “Which is better, this…or this?”

“I need to talk to Bobby,” Estelle said, or thought she said. Her husband leaned close again.

“There’s a whole crowd of people who want to see you, querida. They’re all going to have to wait.”

“Padrino?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll tell them for me that they all need to go home?”

“Sure. Maybe you can have some company tomorrow. Maybe Thursday.”

That made no sense. She searched his face. “What time is it?”

“A little after three.”

She closed one eye in an expression of skepticism, careful not to move anything else. “Come on, oso.”

He grinned and looked at his watch. “Three-oh-five a.m. This is Tuesday. You’re in Presbyterian in Albuquerque.”

“Ay.” None of that computed. There had been no passage of time in her world. Just an instant ago, her face had rested on the asphalt of the gas company’s airstrip…sometime early Sunday afternoon. She could still feel the warmth of the pavement, the sharp bite of the little pebbles against her cheek.

“Tell me,” she said.

He bent down close, brushing her cheek with his lips. “Tell you what?”

The thought was easy to consider, but for a moment the words wouldn’t form. Eventually she whispered, “Am I going to die?”

The grip of the bony little hand was ferocious, but her mother said nothing. “No,” her physician-husband said. “No, you’re not. The docs here did a first-rate job of putting you all back together. You’re going to hurt a lot, querida. But you’ll be okay.”

“Just okay?”

“You’ll be fine.”

“You’re not lying to me?”

He looked askance, and his touch on her right hand was light but insistent. “When did I ever do that?”

“I’m sorry. What happened? I need to know.”

“The first bullet hit your vest and gave you a nice bruise. The second one missed the vest.”

“Tell me.”

“You just need to concentrate on resting and healing, querida.”

“Tell me. Every gory detail.”

“What’s the benefit of that?” the physician asked. “There’s time for that later.”

“Now is fine. I have nothing to do.”

“Caramba,” her husband sighed. “A 9mm slug found a way past the edge of your vest just under your right arm, right at the back of your armpit. You must have been twisting away somehow.”

“I need to know,” she whispered. For a moment he didn’t move, then he gently touched her forehead. “I’ll be right back.” In less than a minute he returned with a large X-ray sheet. He held it horizontally over her face so she could study it without moving, the ghostly images floating against the ceiling tile.

“Clouds,” she said. She’d seen enough X-rays to know what should or shouldn’t be there. She could see small fragments where the bullet had punched two ribs, the clouds of hemorrhage along the bullet’s path, and more fragments where the slug had busted out through the ribs in front.

“Nasty.” He lowered the X-ray. “Like I said, my guess is that you were pivoting away. Do you remember that?”

“I don’t remember any of it.”

Francis regarded the sheet of film. “Well, it hit you right where your vest wasn’t,” he said. “The path was across and down a bit. Some lung damage, some liver damage. Busted ribs coming and going.” He looked at her affectionately. “You’re a mess.”

He put the X-ray somewhere out of her sight, then returned and rested his right hand on hers. He touched a strand of hair away from her eyes. She concentrated on reading his expression and concluded that he was telling her the truth.

“Ay, that’s nothing, then,” she said.

“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “What were they always saying in the old movies? Just a flesh wound.”

“But I’ll be okay?”

“Yes, you will. They spent seven hours patching your insides together to make sure of that.”

“Ay. I’ll be a little bit ugly, then.”

He grinned. “A few dramatic touches, maybe. You’ll have a long scar that follows the body contour, more or less.”

“You didn’t do the surgery?”

“No, but you had a team of the best.”

“Not if you didn’t do it.” She squeezed his hand. “Tell me about Manolo Tapia.”

“He’s dead.”

She remembered the image of Sheriff Torrez walking across the prairie, rifle in hand. “Bobby?”

“One long-range shot, I’m told. He took it the instant that he was sure you were clear of the airplane.”

Ten seconds sooner would have been nice, she thought, and then dismissed that. Robert Torrez would have entertained exactly the same thought, she was sure, and no one needed to dwell on it.

“Hector?”

“INS has him in their custody now.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes, and felt the drug-induced fog move a step closer. “Los dos?”

“We’re all enjoying a big-city vacation,” Francis said. “They’ll be in to pester you in a little bit. But not right away.”

“Soon, though. I need to see them soon.”

“Sure. Soon. Francisco wants to bring in his new practice keyboard so he can play you his latest creation.”

“Practice keyboard?”

“Padrino has been keeping them busy. Apparently they found this wonderful gadget at a music store. It allows fingering and it’s got the touch of working keys, but doesn’t make any noise. Thunk, thunk.”

“The best medicine,” she said.

“He wants another recital, of course,” Francis said with a laugh. “He’s working on his own composition for it. That’s what he wants to play for you, so the sooner you heal, the better, because the kid is impatient.” He let his left hand rest motionless on her forehead. “But we gotta give all those tiny little sutures time to do their thing.”

She gripped her mother’s hand with her left, and his with the right. Just that simple muscle twitch woke up the demons, and she said nothing for a long time, waiting for the war to reach an uneasy peace.

“I’ll wait right here,” she whispered.