Illegal

THIRTY-EIGHT

Payne checked out Bola's rack of balls, all cratered moonscapes. He chose a black sixteen-pounder, whose brand name had worn off over time. Trying not to inhale, he picked up a couple of mismatched bowling shoes that nearly fit. Tino grabbed an orange eleven-pound ball, and decided to bowl in his socks.

The lane was impossible, the ball hooking on the dry spots and skidding on the oil. Ignoring the scoring, Payne worked with Tino on his form. No one had ever taught the boy the four-step approach or the proper follow-through. But he was a natural. Within a few minutes, he was starting to look smooth, even if the ball hopscotched over the warped boards on the way to the pins.

As he bowled, Payne planned what he would say to El Tigre. It shouldn't be difficult, right? All he needed was a scrap of information.

Where did you take Marisol Perez, you bastard?

If Marisol was okay, there would be nothing to hide.

In the adjacent lane, a man who'd been winning his bets called over to Payne. "Ey, gringo. You want to bowl against me? Twenty dollars a frame."

An image of the Paul Newman movie The Hustler flashed through Payne's mind. Local thugs breaking his thumbs after he took their money.

"Sure," Payne said. "Let's roll."

"Himmy. Not such a good idea." Tino shook his head hard, as if trying to get water out of his ears.

The man, in a T-shirt advertising a local strip club, belly protruding over his jeans, carried his ball to their lane. Payne rolled first. If it had been a tee shot in golf, it would have hooked into the woods. The ball lunged toward the left gutter, hitting only the seven pin. The pin-boy rolled Payne's ball back, and this time he released underhanded and hard, rolling it straight for the pocket. Pins clattered, but the six skipped around the ten, leaving it standing.

"Nine pins," his opponent said. He took a strange three-step approach, threw off the wrong foot, and sent a bouncing ball on the Brooklyn side of the headpin. After a decent mix, the two-seven baby split was left standing… until the pin-boy swept out a leg and knocked them both over.

"Strike!" the man yelled. "Twenty bucks."

Payne shook his head at the brazenness of the scam and forked over a twenty. He picked up his ball for the second frame. As he settled into his stance, the ball resting comfortably just above his right hip, Tino called to him. "Himmy!"

Payne turned and saw a large man with a fleshy, pockmarked face. He wore wraparound sunglasses, and his jeans were held up by a belt with a huge buckle engraved with a tiger. Expensive cowboy boots. Soft leather-ostrich, maybe. His unbuttoned shirt revealed a chest gone to flab and a heavy gold crucifix. On his head, a thick mass of black hair was lacquered into place with shiny brilliantine.

The man gaped, his eyes darting from Tino to Payne and back again. He was expecting to meet a rich American who wanted to bring whores across the border. Instead, here was the boy he had left behind on his last crossing.

"You?" he asked, his befuddlement turning to anger. "The bastard son of a worthless whore! My nephew gives you a free ride to the U.S.A. and you come back to Mexico? You are one stupid chilito."

"Where's my mother!" Tino shouted.

"Chinga tu madre!"

"No. Fuck you!"

"Your whore mother owes me money."

"Don't talk to the boy like that." Payne still cradled the sixteen-pound ball.

El Tigre slid his sunglasses down his nose and peered at Payne. "What's your deal, gabacho?"

"I'm helping Tino find his mother. The two got separated when you botched the crossing."

"Lies!?Pinche puto pendejo baboso! "

From having been cursed at by cops, clients, and bondsmen, Payne thought he'd just been called a fucking stupid faggot asshole. "Just tell us where she is," he demanded.

"Where I took her is como se dice, un secreto profesional."

"A trade secret?" Tino sneered.

"What's your trade, kidnapping women?" Payne taunted the man.

"?Vete a la chingada!" El Tigre reached down and drew a knife from inside his left boot. Flicked his wrist, and a silver blade shot out. Held it in his left hand. A southpaw.

Quick movements for a big man, Payne noted, figuring he might need that information in a matter of seconds. Payne wished he still had Quinn's gun. Or a crowbar.

El Tigre pointed the knife at Payne's chest. "Stay out of my business, pendejo, or you will go back to the States without your liver."

"Just tell me where you left Marisol. Then I'll get out of your life."

El Tigre stepped closer, waved the knife under Payne's nose. "I swear I fuck you up."

"I'm already fucked up."

"Don't let him scare you, Himmy!"

"He doesn't," Payne lied.

"When I am done with the gabacho, " El Tigre said, looking at Tino, "I will take care of you."

"?Chingalo!" Tino shot back.

Just as El Tigre started to say something to Tino, Payne flipped the bowling ball underhanded. It plopped heavily on the soft leather toes of El Tigre's left boot. He yelped and hopped sideways but… shit!.. did not drop the knife.

Payne took a step toward the man. Then ducked, El Tigre on one foot, sweeping the air with a roundhouse swipe of the knife.

Payne came up from under, dug a short left into the man's gut, catching some ribs, missing the solar plexus.

El Tigre winced, staggered back a step, but kept the knife chest high.

Payne stood stone still, waited for the man to lunge with the knife. Didn't have to wait long. El Tigre stabbed the air, Payne batted the arm away by blocking an elbow, then throwing a straight left at the chin.

The punch was off, grazing El Tigre's cheek and sliding into his oily hair. But the second half of Payne's combination was just perfect. A right hook straight into the man's solar plexus.

A whoosh of air. El Tigre bent over to catch his breath.

"Hit him again, Himmy!" Tino urged, fists raised as if shadow-boxing.

Payne locked both hands and brought them up, straight under the man's chin. Solid contact, knuckles on jaw. A crunch, and a yelp of pain, and El Tigre spit out a gold tooth. Payne grabbed him, two hands on a wrist, twisted the arm behind the man's back, kicked a leg out, and propelled him facedown onto the floor.

He straddled El Tigre's back, grabbed the heavy gold chain, and tightened it into a garotte. The chain bit into the man's neck, drawing blood. El Tigre bucked like a rodeo horse, but Payne held on as the man turned blue.

"?Donde!" Payne yelled. "Where's Marisol Perez?"

The man threw an elbow backward, missing Payne's head.

Payne tightened the chain. "Did you hurt her? Did you!"

"?Chingate!" The curse bubbling out of El Tigre's throat.

"Where is she!"

"Make him tell!" Tino yelled when they got no answer.

Grabbing a handful of slick hair, Payne rammed El Tigre's face into the filthy wooden floor. Still gripping the chain with his other hand, Payne lifted the man's head, slammed it again. Blood spurted from El Tigre's nose. One more time, Payne smashed him into a floorboard, leaving behind a gold-capped tooth impaled in the wood.

"What'd you do to her!" Payne yelled.

Tears squeezed from the man's eyes. Blood pooled on the floor.

"Where is she! Where's Marisol Perez?"

El Tigre tried to talk, and Payne loosened the chain.

It took a few seconds of sputtering and spittle. " No se. Not my business. I just drop off the pollos. Someone else cooks them."

"Where'd you drop her?"

The big man coughed up a spray of misting blood. "At Wanda La Ballena's."

"Wanda the Whale?" Tino said.

"Big gabacha. Enormes chichis. "

"What's her real name?" Payne said.

"No se."

"Where's her stash house?"

"Some cabins outside a desert town north of the border."

"What town?"

El Tigre rambled in Spanish, Payne picking up most of it. A few miles west of Plaster City. A little turd of a town. Ocotillo. Sugarloaf Lodge. A dung heap next to the railroad tracks.

Payne heard a shout in Spanish from behind the bar. The bartender pointing a gun and yelling something Payne couldn't understand, though he was fairly sure it wasn't an invitation to happy hour.

Payne slid off El Tigre. "C'mon, Tino!"

The bartender, gun in hand, hustled toward them. They were cut off from the front door.

"This way." Payne pointed down the lane. They sprinted along the gutter, toward the pins, Payne in his borrowed bowling shoes, Tino in his socks. Jimmy dived at the last moment, sliding straight at the headpin, covering his head with his hands. The clattering was so loud that Payne thought the bartender had fired his gun, but it was just the pins, smashing into one another. He left a seven pin standing, but Tino came behind him and cleared it out.

"?Semipleno!" the pin-boy declared from his perch, awarding a spare.

"Where's the back door?" Payne yelled.

The pin-boy pointed into the darkness behind the lanes.

Jimmy and Tino ran that way. When they reached the alley, Stingray was sitting at the wheel of an old blue Mustang convertible that could use a paint job. The engine was throbbing, a full-throated roar of rolling thunder, Stingray giving it gas, showing off.

Payne threw open the door and yanked Stingray out. Tino hopped over the passenger door, and Payne banged his bad knee on the steering wheel sliding in. He threw the gearshift into first, popped the clutch, and floored the accelerator. The Mustang fishtailed and belched a cloud of oily smoke.

Payne could barely hear his own voice over the racket as he yelled to Tino, "Which way is north, kiddo?"