Night Vision

TWELVE

Just beyond a sign that read Immokalee 22 miles, Harris Squires locked the gate to his hunting camp behind him, then banged the truck into four-wheel drive, telling himself, Shoot the girl in the back of the head. Stop thinking. Get it over with.

After what he’d just heard on the radio, about cops finding human bones in the dead alligator’s belly, he had no choice but to do it.

And he would.

It was almost noon on Wednesday. The craziness of the previous night-the alligator, the flashing police lights-seemed like a month ago, which might have had something to do with the pint of Cuervo Gold Squires had killed on the ride. Mixed with Red Bull and a Snickers bar, he should have had a good buzz going. But instead his brain felt raw and skittish.

Beneath his seat, in the hidden compartment, Squires had the. 357 Ruger Blackhawk revolver in a canvas bag that was also packed full of cash money.

The gun was the long-barreled model, chrome with black grips. The cartridges were as thick as his pinkie finger. They were hollow points that would blow the back side out of a watermelon after neatly piercing its rind.

An unsettling image of the girl’s head came into Squires’s mind of how her face would look after the bullet exited. Skin without a shell and lots of blood. But this wasn’t pretend, there was no going back. Fifi may have missed her chance to kill him, but that fat toad had found a way to totally screw up his life.

Squires had felt dizzy as the radio announcer’s voice drilled the details through his skull. Then he’d felt physically sick, a nauseating panic deep in his chest that made him want to jump out of the truck and run screaming into the cypress shadows that lay ahead.

The bones had to belong to the chula Frankie had killed. The one he had bundled into a garbage bag, weighting the body with wire and cement before dragging it to the lake. Squires kept telling himself that, even though he knew there was a chance that the gator had eaten a different dead girl months earlier. The Mexican girl from his sex dream-if the sex dream was real. Which could prove to cops that he was the murderer, not Frankie.

If it had really happened.

It was a dream, Squires told himself now, because that’s what he wanted to believe. I didn’t do anything wrong. Or I would remember dragging a body to Fifi’s pen. The Mexican girl probably ran off while I was asleep.

That made Squires feel a little better. That goddamn Frankie was entirely to blame for this mess. Her with her love for kinky sex, the way she got off on using and abusing Mexican girls. It was some kind of sick power trip… or maybe Frankie’s way of punishing younger, prettier women for the saggy way her own body was aging.

Squires realized that he had never allowed himself to acknowledge just how dangerous the woman was. If he did, then he’d have to admit to himself that the dead chula he had sunk at Red Citrus probably wasn’t the first girl Frankie had killed. There might be at least two others, maybe more.

It was just a guess, Squires couldn’t prove it because, until they had trucked Fifi out of the hunting camp, Frankie had handled all her personal chula problems on her own.

Frankie might be getting up there in years, but that woman was still big and strong as hell. She could have stuck a dead chula under each arm and carried the bodies down to Fifi’s pen, no problem.

That’s why Harris Squires had stayed out of the woman’s way and didn’t ask questions. In his mind, if he ignored the shit Frankie did, it was like it never happened. Plus, on the rare night when a girl disappeared, he was always so screwed up on tequila, grass and crank that it all seemed blurry and unreal, anyway. Sort of like his sex fantasy dream…

Until now. Everything in Squires’s life had changed as of last night, and this morning. Now he’d probably go to jail-even the electric chair-because of all the sick and nasty shit Frankie had done.

Tula had been listening to the radio, too, and paid close attention to how the giant man beside her reacted. She saw Squires’s face mottle, then go pale. It was a rancid color, like the faces of sunbaked corpses she had seen on village streets as a child. That caused her to think of her father, the way he had been murdered, and Tula had placed her hand on the giant’s hand, her first instinct a desire to comfort Squires rather than abandon him to the misery of his own fear.

Tula had felt real fear before. Not the common everyday sort that everyone feels but the variety of fear that sweeps people over the abyss, then sucks them downward. It was while sitting in a tree near the convent, reliving her father’s death, that she had experienced a wave of panic so dark that Tula felt as if her heart might explode. Immersed in the memory of what she had witnessed, of what she had lost, it was then, her brain numb with fear, that Tula heard the Maiden’s voice for the first time.

That moment had changed everything.

No matter what happened to Tula in the future, the girl felt a serene confidence that fear of that magnitude could never overwhelm her again. The scars from that night were like armor. Thanks to the Maiden, Tula believed she was now immune.

“You should breathe into your belly,” she had told Squires as he switched off the radio. “It sometimes helps.”

After studying the man’s face for a moment, she had added, “God is with you if you need Him. Ask and He’ll come into your heart. The goodness that was in you as a child is still alive inside you. Just ask God and He’ll help you.”

When the girl touched him, Squires had yanked his hand away, drawing it back to slap Tula, but something stopped him.

“Just shut your damn mouth-” he said, biting off the sentence. “Don’t you say another word to me. Understand? Not another damn word or you’ll be sorry!”

Squires found the girl’s calm demeanor infuriating, and he almost did slap her when she replied, “There is no sin so terrible that God won’t forgive you. Two nights ago, when I watched you at the lake, I knew what was in the bag that you put into the water. I knew it was the body of a dead person. But, even so, I prayed for you.”

Squires could barely speak, he was so incredulous, but managed to ask, “You admit that you saw me?”

“Of course,” Tula replied, and then repeated a familiar phrase: “I would rather die than to do something I know to be a sin. I will never lie to you. It’s an oath I have made to… to someone important. On the radio, the man said the bones they found were probably from a woman’s hand. Because of the ring she wore. Why would you murder a young woman?”

Squires couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She would rather die than tell a lie? Jesus Christ, the girl was begging for it.

“I didn’t kill her!” Squires yelled, leaning toward Tula. “You hear me? I didn’t goddamn kill her! All I did was get rid of the body! So why did you have to be there, snooping around?”

Tula said to him calmly, “Why do you use such terrible words-taking God’s name in vain? That’s a sin. I won’t listen to you anymore if you use profanity.”

Squires pushed his face toward the girl, his eyes glassy as he bellowed, “Kiss my goddamn ass! Do you realize what this means, you idiot? Why’d you have to be there watching? Now I got no goddamn choice! Do you even understand what I’m telling you?”

As Tula began to answer, the man drew his hand back again to slap her and roared, “I’m warning you for the last time! Shut your mouth!”

Tula could see that Squires was crazy with anger, and she sensed that he was on the brink of an emotional explosion. The man appeared near tears.

When she tried to comfort Squires, though, by patting his knee, it only caused him to moan in frustration, then swear at her, using a word Tula had never heard before but she assumed was profane.

By then, they were at the gate.

Now Squires was wrestling the truck over a rutted trail that tracked for a half mile through pine flats, cypress and myrtle to where an RV and his steroid cookshack were anchored with hurricane stakes, the building hidden beneath trees near a cypress pond that looked cool and inviting to Tula.

Focusing on the cypress trees helped keep Tula from weeping- that’s how badly she felt for the man. She was also beginning to feel frightened for herself. During the hours since they had left the trailer park, the Maiden had not come into Tula’s head to speak with her or to calm her.

Tula knew that the Maiden would not abandon her. There was no possibility of that. But where was the Girl of Lorraine now when Tula sensed so much danger?

I must find a tree, Tula thought. If I can sit peacefully in a tree and breathe into my belly, the Maiden will return and tell me what I should do.

Tula could think of only one reason why the Maiden would order her to travel with this giant, angry man who might also be a murderer. It was the Maiden’s way of providing Tula with a vehicle and a driver to go in search of her mother. Tula had became convinced of this when she saw the sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES. But how could she make Squires understand that the Maiden wanted him to help with the search?

Yes, Tula needed guidance. It seemed unlikely that the man would react kindly if she asked to be left alone in a tree. Not until he calmed down a little-then, perhaps, Tula could reason with him, and possibly even win him over as a friend.

So instead of asking to be allowed to walk into the cypress grove, Tula said, “Why have we come here? You should eat some food, it’s no wonder your body is trembling. We haven’t eaten all morning. And I have to use the bathroom.”

Squires had pulled into the shade of a tree near a medium-sized trailer, white with green trim, its paint fading. Unlike the trailers at Red Citrus, this trailer was also a motor vehicle, with tires jacked off the ground on blocks and a windshield covered with shiny aluminum material. There were also a couple of wooden structures that looked homemade, one of them with locked shutters and a heavy door.

Squires switched off the engine and said to Tula, “Get out of the truck and shut up. I don’t want to hear nothing else out of you. Just do what I tell you to do. We’re going for a walk.”

There was something strange about the man’s voice now. It was a flat monotone, all of the emotion gone out of it. Tula could smell the alcohol on his breath, but his eyes looked dead, not drunken.

“Walk where?” she asked, trying to be conversational. “It’s very pretty here. There are trees down by the water that look good for climbing. And lots of birds-egrets with white feathers, I think. Do you see them up there?”

The man’s face colored, but he got himself under control before saying, “I’m going to tell you one more time and I want you to listen. No more talking. You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear, so shut up and follow me. That’s exactly where we’re going, to look at all the pretty birds.”

“But I need a bathroom,” Tula insisted as she watched Squires lift the driver’s seat and then open what appeared to be a hatch in the floor. He removed a canvas bag that was heavy, judging from the way he handled it.

Squires turned and began walking toward the cypress pond where Tula could see white birds suspended like flowers among the gray limbs, some on nests in the high branches.

“Get moving,” he said without looking at the girl. “And I’m warning you-I don’t want to hear another goddamn word out of you.”

Tula got out of the truck and realized that her legs were shaking. Staying calm when the man was angry had not been easy, but this different voice, so flat and dead, was scaring her. She walked around the back of the truck, wondering if she should risk telling the man that her bladder was so full that she feared wetting herself. But Tula stopped after only a few words when her voice broke, afraid that she would start crying.

The Maiden had never cried, even when tortured by her tormentors. Even as flames had consumed her, the brave saint had not wept, but, instead, had called out the name of her Savior.

“Jesus,” Tula whispered now, her right hand clutching her amulets, as she followed Squires toward the trees. “Please protect and keep me, Jesus,” she said in Mayan, and continued repeating the phrase as they walked along the edge of a pond that was cooled by cypress shadows and moss. The giant kept walking, far into the tree shadows, so far that Tula’s abdomen began to cramp because of the pressure in her bladder.

Finally, Squires stopped beside a tree at the edge of the pond, where water black as oil was flecked with leaves, white-feather down and long-legged insects that skated on the surface beneath cooing birds. For a time, the man stood with his back to her, and Tula realized that he was taking something from the canvas bag.

“Turn around and look at the water,” Squires said to her in the same flat dead voice. “Do it now.”

“Can I please go to the bathroom first?” Tula asked the man, frightened but also angry at herself because tears had begun streaming down her face.

Squires was looking over his shoulder at her. “No. Just do what I tell you to do. This won’t take long. Turn your back to me and look at the water. Hurry up.”

Tula could see that Squires had something in his hand. She got a look at it when she pivoted toward the pond.

It was a large gun, silver with chrome.

Tula had seen many guns during the fighting in the mountains, but she had never seen a gun so shiny before. The metal was hypnotic, it was so bright, which scared her.

Tula’s chest shuddered, and she couldn’t help herself. Urine dribbled down her leg as she began crying, but silently, keeping her weakness to herself as she sensed the giant walk up behind her, the gun in his hand that was soon a silver reflection on the black water, the man on the surface huge, the size of a tree.

“Get down on your knees, child,” said a voice in Tula’s head, and Tula obeyed instantly, overwhelmed with relief, because it wasn’t a man’s voice. It was the Maiden. The Maiden had returned to her in her moment of need, and Tula knew everything would be okay now.

Get down on your knees, the Maiden counseled, and pray.

Behind Tula, as she whispered a prayer, the giant stood in silence. A minute passed. Then two minutes, then three.

In the water’s reflection, Tula could see that Squires was pointing the pistol only inches from the back of her head. Occasionally, he would lower it, but then he would raise the pistol again. But Tula was no longer frightened.

Once again, she felt a serene immunity from fear. The amulets she clutched in her hand provided strength. What happened would happen. She was with God and she was content. The Maiden would not allow her to suffer pain, and, ultimately, Tula would be reunited with her mother, her father and family again, which was something the girl wanted more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.

Be at peace, child. I am with you always, the Maiden said, speaking as softly as the muted light inside the girl’s head.

For another minute, Tula waited, her head bowed. She felt so confident and content that she decided to help the man along by saying, “If this is what you must do, then I forgive you. If it is God’s will, then you are doing the right thing. Don’t be afraid.”

Tula waited for so long in silence that she had resumed praying before the man spoke to her, “It’s what I have to do. I don’t have a damn choice, and it’s your own fault. You’ll tell the police what you saw and they’ll arrest me. Even though I didn’t kill that girl, they’ll charge me with murder. Do you understand?”

His voice wasn’t so empty of emotion now. It gave the girl hope, but she was inexplicably disappointed, too. She had felt so peaceful and free kneeling there, waiting for it to end.

Tula considered turning to look at the man but decided against it. Looking into the barrel of the silver gun might bring her fear back, and she didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to risk crying or losing control of her bladder again.

“I understand,” she said to Squires. “I’m sorry I saw what I saw. I didn’t mean to be in the tree watching you, but I was.”

Tula glanced at the water’s mirror surface and saw that Squires was leaning toward her now. Then she felt the barrel of the gun bump the back of her head as the man said, “You told me yourself you don’t lie. Even if you promised me you wouldn’t tell the cops, I wouldn’t believe you. Do you understand now why I have to do this? Unless you promise me-I mean, really promise me-and mean it.”

The man’s voice was shaking, and Tula knew he was going to pull the trigger. She closed her eyes, pressing her chin to her fingers, as she replied, “I can’t promise you, I’m sorry. If the police ask me, I will have to tell them the truth. I won’t lie to you and I won’t lie to them. It’s because of another promise I have made.”

In Tula’s ear, she heard a metallic Click-Click and she knew that the man had pulled back the revolver’s hammer. On her cheeks, she felt tears streaming, but she wasn’t afraid. She was ready for what happened next.

What happened next was, in the high cypress limbs above them, there was a squawking, cracking sound. Then the fluttering of wings as a bird tumbled from the tree canopy and thudded hard on the ground nearby. Tula looked up, surprised. Then she was on her feet and running toward it without even thinking, tucking the jade amulet and silver medallion into her T-shirt as she sprinted.

“It’s a baby egret!” she cried, kneeling over a thrashing bird that looked naked because its feathers hadn’t come in yet. “I think it broke its wing.”

Carefully, the girl cupped the fledgling in her hands, using her thumb to try to steady the bird’s weak neck. And she stood, saying over her shoulder to Squires, “That must be her mother up there. See her?”

Tula motioned to a snowy egret that was hovering overhead, its yellow feet extended as if to land, excited by the peeping noises the baby bird was making.

“Yes,” Tula said, “its wing is broken. At the convent, we took care of many sick animals. We can help this bird, I think.” Then she looked at Squires, adding, “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to go to the bathroom now.”

Then she stopped because of what she saw.

Harris Squires was sitting on the ground. He was rocking and crying, his hands locked around his knees, making a soft moaning sound in his misery. If the gun was somewhere on the ground nearby, Tula didn’t see it.

The scene was even stranger to Tula because, the way the man was sitting, slope-shouldered and huge, reminded her of a bear she had seen begging for peanuts at the zoo in Guatemala City.

The bear had struck the girl as being very sad, an animal as repulsed with itself as it was humiliated by its captivity. The scene was even stronger in Tula’s mind because her father had taken her to the zoo the day before he was murdered.

Slowly, the girl walked toward Squires. She was embarrassed for him and sad in the same way that she had felt sad for the bear. She placed the little bird a safe distance away, in case the big man moved, and then hesitated before touching her fingers to Squires’s shoulder.

Tula patted the man gently as she might have patted the bear, given a chance. And then said to him kindly, “I must go behind a tree and use the bathroom. I can’t stand it anymore. Please. But promise me something. It’s important. Promise me you won’t look. I know that you have seen me without clothes. But I don’t want a man ever to see me that way again. Do you promise?”

Rocking and sobbing, the giant nodded his head.

Tula said to Squires, “My mother had a little doll like this. She wore it pinned to her blouse. Even the same color, bright orange and green, instead of blue like most of them. They’re called worry dolls in English. At night, you tell your worries to the doll and put it under your pillow. The next morning, all your worries are gone.”

The girl sniffed the doll, knowing it couldn’t be her mother’s-not way out here, so far from where a woman could get work cleaning houses or mopping floors in a restaurant-but, then, Tula had to wonder, because the odor of raw cotton was so familiar.

Maybe it seemed familiar because everything else inside this man’s trailer was so foreign.

Squires had started the generator, and they were inside the RV that smelled sour and stale like the ashes of a cold cooking fire. Tula had found the doll, only an inch tall, mounted on a brooch pin in a strange room where there was a camera, lights on tripods and a bed with a strange black leather contraption hanging from the ceiling.

The doll was on a table piled with photos of naked women. The women were frozen in poses so obscene that Tula had looked away, preferring to focus on the miniature Guatemalan doll in traditional Mayan dress.

The photos were of Mexican women, judging from their features, but a few Guatemalan women, too. Tula didn’t linger over details and closed the door to the room behind her, feeling as if the ugliness of that space might follow her.

Squires was sitting in a recliner, looking dazed, eyes staring straight ahead as he drank from a pint bottle of tequila. He had found the revolver, which was now lying in his lap, and Tula sensed that he was rethinking what had happened out there in the cypress grove. She had witnessed his breakdown and he would begin hating her for it soon, the girl feared, if she didn’t get his mind on something else.

After pinning the worry doll to her T-shirt, Tula went to the kitchen, where she found cans of beans and salsa and meat but no tortillas. There was a can opener, too, and plates, and a cheap little paring knife with a bent blade, but sharp.

“You need food, that’s why you feel so tired. I’ll cook something,” Tula said to Squires as she carried a pan to the stove. A moment later, she said, “We have a gas stove at the convent, but I can’t get this one to light. Unless I’m doing it wrong.”

Squires blinked his eyes, seeming to hear her for the first time. It took a while, but he finally said, “You’re a nun?”

“Someday, when I’m older,” Tula replied. “I am going to dedicate my life to God and to helping people. My patron saint is Joan of Arc. Have you heard of her?”

After a few beats of silence, Tula added, “I am modeling my life after the Maiden. That’s what the people of France called her, the Maiden. But to her friends, she was called Jehanne.”

“The gas isn’t on,” Squires said to the girl but didn’t get up from the chair. His indifference suggested he didn’t care about food. But he did appear interested in the convent Tula had mentioned because, after several seconds of silence, he said, “You live with nuns? No men around at all, huh? That’s got to be weird. Not even to fix shit?”

“The convent is where I live and go to school. I work in the kitchen, and the garden, too. That’s how I learned to speak English and to cook using a stove.”

Tula had been twisting the dials for the burners without success. Now she was searching the walls, looking under the stove, hoping the man would take the hint and make the gas work. He needed food, not tequila, and Tula wondered-not for the first time-why so many men preferred to be drunk and stupid rather than to eat hot food.

The giant took a sip from the bottle and told her, “I was raised Catholic. I used to be, anyway. But then all that stuff about priests cornholing little boys-and the goddamn Pope knew about it ’cause he was probably screwing boys himself before he got old. Little boys are in big demand in the Catholic religion. That’s probably the problem with you. You’ve been brainwashed by all that sick Catholic bullshit. Why else would you pretend to be a boy?”

Tula wondered if Squires was trying to upset her, give himself a reason to get angry again and shoot her. So she changed the subject by saying, “I’ve been thinking of a way to solve your problem. I don’t want you to go to jail. There’s another way, I think, to keep the police from arresting you.”

That surprised the man, Tula could see it, so she added, “I believe you when you say you’re not a murderer. Just looking into your face, you couldn’t do something like that-not by yourself, you couldn’t. I don’t want to tell the police what I saw. That’s why I’ve been thinking about this problem.”

“My guardian angel,” Squires said in his flat voice, not bothering to attempt sarcasm. “I forgot. You were sent by God in case I get into trouble. Lucky me.”

He took another drink, and Tula could feel the anger building in the man.

Getting irritated herself, the girl turned away from the counter where she had the salsa open and had used the sharp paring knife to cut the meat into slices. “Listen to me!” she said, frowning at the giant. “I want to find my mother and brother. That’s all I care about. I want to go home to the mountains. If I’m home in the mountains, your policemen can’t ask me questions. That’s why I’ve been thinking of a way to help you.”

That made Squires snort, a sound close to laughter. “What do you want me to do, buy you a plane ticket?” he asked. “Drive you to the airport and wave good-bye? That easy, huh? I don’t think so, chula.”

Tula felt the Maiden flow into her head, giving instructions, which is why she calmed herself before crossing the room, where she placed her hand on the giant’s curly blond head. “You may not believe it, but it’s true,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here unless God wanted me to help you. He loves you. He wants you to come back to Him. You can believe me or not believe me, but you can’t deny the goodness that’s in your heart.”

The girl didn’t say it, but her recent words came into Harris Squires’s mind. Do you remember the goodness that was in you as a child?

The girl patted the man’s head as he stared down into the tequila bottle. Tula could feel Squires’s brain fighting her, but she continued, “The Maiden has told me how to help you. We must go to Immokalee and ask the people there about my mother and my brother. I have two aunts and an uncle somewhere, too. When we find them, I want you to come home with us to the mountains. In your truck, you can drive us.”

Tula looked around the room, seeing the stained walls, the carpet, a peanut can filled with cigarette butts, sensing in the next room the obscene photos staring up at the ceiling tiles.

She said, “This place has sin and ugliness all around. It’s no wonder you’re unhappy. You should leave this dirty life behind while you still can. You would like the mountains. We live closer to God in the mountains. It is cool there, even in summer, and the rains will begin soon. You can stay a week or a month. Maybe you will like it and want to build a home. The police won’t find you if we leave Florida. They can’t ask me questions.”

“Drive you clear to Mexico?” Squires said like it was a stupid idea. But at least he was thinking about it. Tula could see that his mind was working it through.

“Guatemala, not Mexico,” Tula corrected him. “It’s much more beautiful than Mexico. And the villages aren’t so dirty. Most of them, anyway.”

Yes, Squires was giving the idea some consideration because he asked, “Where’s Guatemala? Is it farther than Mexico? Mexico’s a hell of a long way.”

“I’m not sure of the exact distance,” Tula said, coming as close to lying as she could allow herself.

“But it’s farther than Mexico, that’s what you’re telling me.”

Tula replied, “What does distance matter when there are roads and you own a truck? You can drive the whole way. Or take a train, once we’re across the border. I hear the coaches are nice. I’ve never been inside a train, but I rode on the top of boxcars from Chiapas to San Luis Potosi. Three different train lines, I had to board.”

“You’re shitting me. You climbed up and rode on the top of a train when it was moving? Christ, what do those things do, fifty, sixty miles an hour?”

Tula replied, “One night, an old man told me we were traveling almost three hundred miles an hour, but I think he was drunk. It’s the way even adults travel if they want to come north. Sometimes, riding on top of the train was nice. We could pick green mangoes if the trees were close enough, and it only rained once.

“In Chiapas, though, it was dangerous. There are a lot of Mexican gangs there that wear bandannas and tattoos. At three stops, they robbed some of the men. And I think they attacked two girls who were on one of the cars behind me.”

Tula started to add that she hadn’t seen it happen, but she had heard the girls screaming. Her voice caught, and she couldn’t continue with the story.

Mentioning gangs and tattoos reminded Squires that the police weren’t the only ones looking for him. Laziro Victorino would be cruising Red Citrus the moment he heard about the alligator with a dead girl’s bones in its belly. Victorino was a little guy, but he was all muscle and attitude, a scary little shit who enjoyed killing people. Cutting them up with that box cutter of his or shooting them behind the ear and feeding them to his dogs.

Squires had heard the stories and he had seen a couple of the V-man’s snuff films. The teardrop tattoo beneath the dude’s eye was so weird it was scary.

What Squires hoped was that Victorino would run into Frankie, who might well kick the shit out of that vicious little wetback. Or vice versa. Either way, it was okay with Squires. He hoped he never saw either one of them again in his life. He was sick of the whole goddamn business.

A question formed in Squires’s head as he reviewed his predicament: Why the hell did he have to stay in Florida?

The answer was simple: He couldn’t think of a single goddamn reason.

Not the way things were now. Almost everyone he knew was an asshole or a drug dealer or a crackhead killer like the V-man. The girl, Tula, was a weirdo Jesus freak, but she had hit the nail on the head when it came to the life he was living. It was a dirty life. It made him feel dirty-Squires could admit that to himself now that he was on the run from a murder rap. So why not make a change before it was too late? Maybe going to Mexico wasn’t such a bad idea.

He said to the girl, “I drove to New Orleans once and it took me twelve hours. How much farther is the border? I think you have to drive clear across Texas, too.”

Squires placed the tequila bottle, then the revolver, on a magazine stand, and sat up a little as he tried to picture the geography of the southern United States. In his mind, everything south of Texas was just a hazy design, with curves and bulges bordered on both sides by oceans.

“First,” Tula reminded him, “we must go to Immokalee and ask about my mother. I’m not going home without my family. People call her Mary. Mary Choimha. Or Maria sometimes, too. She lived at your trailer park for a while, that’s why I went there first.”

“Every chula in Florida is named Mary or Maria,” Squires said. “I can’t keep track of everyone who rents at my place. You Mexicans are always coming and going.”

Tula said, “Then you lied to me. You said you had met her, that you could take me to her. You told me that at the trailer park last night.”

Squires shrugged. “So what? We’re not all perfect like you.”

“You would remember my mother,” the girl insisted. “She’s very beautiful-much prettier than me. Carlson said, last year, he saw your wife talking to my mother. That she gave my mother a cell phone… or maybe you gave it to her, Carlson wasn’t sure. But the phone stopped working two months ago, which is why I came here. My mother would have called me if her phone was working.”

Squires told the girl, “I don’t have a wife, especially not the bitch you mean,” as he leaned back to think about what he’d just heard.

The information was disturbing. All kids thought their mothers were pretty-Squires all too aware that he was a rare exception, because his mother was a chain-smoking witch. But why would Frankie give Tula’s mother a cell phone unless Frankie had something to gain?

Squires had given dozens of cheap phones to Mexicans, the cell phones that charged a flat fee with a limited number of minutes. Usually, he gave them to men who were good workers-and it was always for selfish reasons: It was a way of controlling the guy, make him indebted, and a little scared, too, that the phone would be taken away or the service canceled.

Christ, Frankie had run so many Mexican girls through the hunting camp and their double-wide at Red Citrus, he would have needed a calculator to keep track.

Was it possible that this kid’s mother was one of the chulas Frankie had used? Squires considered the girl’s age, which would put the mother in her mid- to late twenties, Mexican girls being prone to marrying young.

The possibility was too upsetting, though, and Squires decided that it wasn’t something he wanted to think about. He stared at the girl intensely for a moment, then looked away, suddenly aware there was something eerily familiar about the girl’s eyes and high cheekbones.

“Why would you listen to that crazy old drunk, Carlson?” Squires said to the girl. “I don’t want to hear any more about your mother. Understand?”

Aware of the man’s sudden mood change, Tula said, “Let me fix you some food while we talk. You need to eat for strength if we’re going to drive to Immokalee.”

The man laced his fingers together-Tula had never seen hands so huge-and sat up in the recliner. He was trying to remember how many Marys and Marias he or Frankie had screwed or used one way or another. But then felt a withering guilt descending, so he stopped himself. Instead, he let his mind shift back to the girl’s idea about leaving Florida.

Squires had thought of traveling to Mexico many times. Most of the big steroid manufactures were there because it was legal to make and sell gear. Hell, the place was bodybuilder heaven. In fact, Squires’s first supplier, before he got into the business, was an Internet place called mexgear. com. Mexgear’s shit was good to go, and they had good prices. Squires had bought Test C, Tren, EQ and Masteron from the online Mexicans there for less than fifty bucks a vial, and they’d always thrown in some extra gear if it was a big order.

The fact was, he didn’t need Frankie to continue his steroid operation. He could set up an underground lab just about anywhere, plus he spoke English, unlike the Mexgear guys, which always made it a pain in the ass to deal with them.

Speaking English was definitely to his advantage, Squires decided, even in Mexico. Most bodybuilders were Americans or lived in Europe, so it would be a smart way to expand and maybe make a lot of money. He couldn’t wait forever for his rich mother to die.

“Go to Mexico for a few months,” Squires said aloud, testing the idea on his ears.

He looked toward the little kitchen as if he’d just awakened from a doze. “I don’t need any food. Not now. But I could us a little pickme-up. Come with me-I’m not taking my eye off you for a second. If you want to cook, that’s up to you. Here, I’ll show you how to turn on the gas.”

Tula watched the giant get down on his knees and open a cabinet beneath the sink. He told her, “There’s a red knob under here and an emergency-cutoff switch. But first check and make sure you turned the burners off or one spark and this whole place could go up.”

Squires stood, the trailer creaking beneath his weight, and Tula followed him out the door, past the peeping baby egret that she had placed in a box after feeding it water and a few drops of condensed milk with an eyedropper. Squires had refused to help her catch and mash up minnows from the pond, which is what Tula believed that baby egrets ate, but maybe later he would.

Or maybe the mother egret, which was still flying around, occasionally landing near the box, would figure it out and bring the fledgling some food.

A few seconds later, Squires removed two padlocks from the homemade-looking wooden building. He lifted a steel bar, and soon Tula was inside a dark space that smelled of chemicals and propane.

When her eyes adjusted, she saw a row of gas burners on a counter that were connected by hoses to tanks beneath. It explained the propane smell, just as shelves filled with bottles and stacks of paper filters explained the odor of chemicals.

“What do you make here?” the girl asked Squires.

“You ask too many questions. Forget you ever saw this place, that’s my advice to you,” the man replied as he touched a switch, neon lights flickering overhead. That done, Squires took a pack of syringes from a drawer, then opened two small boxes that contained rows of unmarked vials.

Out here, the propane burners had steel manual lighters, like lanterns the girl had used. She stood against the wall, out of the way, as the man put a pot of water on, flame low.

“I always heat my vitamins first. It’s cleaner, plus it shoots smoother,” he told the girl as he loaded a syringe with oily-looking liquid from three different vials, then dropped the syringe into the water.

“I got a shot once,” Tula said, pleased they were having a conversation. “A doctor came to our village. He was British, I think, but still a nice man. The needle was a vaccine for mosquito bites, he said, not vitamins.”

“Vitamins keep me strong and healthy,” Squires replied in a tone that told Tula he was lying about something, she wasn’t sure what.

Fascinated by what she was seeing, Tula watched as the man stripped off his shirt, then rubbed what smelled like alcohol on his left shoulder. Never in her life had she seen such huge muscles. Squires really was a giant. He looked as if he had been carved from stone, gray stone, the sort her ancestors had used to build pyramids.

“I saw a movie once in Guatemala City,” Tula told the man, aware of a strange feeling in her chest. “My father took us, my brother and me. The movie was about Hercules, the strongest man in history. He was so strong that he pulled down marble columns and defeated the Centurions who killed Jesus. But I think you are stronger than him. You are much larger.”

For the first time since she had met Harris Squires, a pleasant smile appeared on the man’s face. In that instant, Tula could see how the giant must have looked as a little boy. He had been a sweet child, probably, maybe a little shy. It caused the girl to wonder what had happened in this man’s life to make him mean and to do dirty things such as take photographs of naked women.

Squires replied, “Hercules, no shit? Well, it’s all about living clean and using the right vitamins,” as he plunged the needle into his bicep and emptied it.

He wasn’t done. He used two more syringes-one to load the steroids, a second needle to inject-and pinned a darker oil into the cablelike muscle that angled from his neck to his shoulder.

“Dianabol,” Squires said, sounding dreamy and satisfied, rolling his shoulders. “By God, I love a big hit of D-bomb. I don’t need any food now, I’m good to go.”

Tula watched the man, wondering what that meant as he added, “It’s twenty-some miles to Immokalee, but I don’t expect there to be much action on the streets. Not on a Wednesday. But if that’s what you want, let’s do it.”

Tula felt a thrill as the Maiden came into her head again, instructing the girl what to say next.

“We’ll go to the churches,” she told Squires. “On a Wednesday night, people will be praising God and singing. We will find people there who might know about my mother.”

Squires was shaking his head. “Where do you come up with this crazy crap? People don’t go to church on Wednesday nights, not even Catholics. Unless it’s to play bingo or some kind of shit. At least, they didn’t back when they made me go.”

“The Maiden speaks to me,” Tula told him, interested in the man’s reaction. “If she says it’s true, then it will happen.”

Saying it, the girl felt as if she was sharing a secret with Squires, something that increased the weight on her chest and gave her an odd sensation in her abdomen. It was a warm feeling, standing close enough to the giant now to touch her head briefly against his elbow just to see how he reacted.

This time, he didn’t yank his arm away. So Tula took another chance by placing her fingers on the man’s huge wrist as she told him, “We can trust the Maiden. Whenever I need guidance, she is always there for me.”

It felt strange to the girl, her fingers on a man’s skin, but Tula decided that she liked it.

Squires turned off the burner, then the lights, before padlocking the door closed. As they walked toward the RV, he said, “The Maiden

…? You mean that saint you mentioned? Don’t ever tell a shrink what you just told me. They’ll throw you in the damn loony bin. Which is probably where you belong.”

“Joan of Arc is my patron saint,” Tula said, her voice firm. “She does speak to me. Usually at night-that’s when the visions come to me.”

Irritated, Squires said, “Night visions, too. You’re even screwier than I thought. Listen, I don’t want to hear every damn detail. You talk too much.”

“But it’s true,” the girl said. “I see things that will happen in the future. Sometimes I see things during the day, too. But it’s better if I’m alone. For me, sitting in a tree is a nice place.”

Remembering that the girl had spied on him from a tree caused Squires to feel the dianabol he’d just injected accelerate to his temple, vessels throbbing. It created a blooming chemical anger in him, and he clenched his fists as he reconsidered what was happening.

Why the hell was he being nice to this crazy little chula? He brought her out here expecting to strip the girl’s clothes off, then have some fun. The little brat could send him to Raiford Prison if she wanted. At the very least, he should kill her.

It’s not too late. I can take her out to the pond, shoot her in the back of the head, then drive to Mexico on my own. I don’t need her. Why put up with any more of her crazy talk?

But from the sick feeling Squires got just thinking about it, he knew he couldn’t do it. Maybe later but not now. The reasons had to do with the girl’s irritating kindness… and also the haunting familiarity of her face.

Even so, it pissed him off the way this know-it-all wettail kept chattering away, so Squires decided to shut her up by saying, “I don’t want to burst your bubble, chula, but that Joan of Arc bullshit, it’s all just fairy-tale crap. You’re talking about the girl who carried a sword and dressed like a dude? It’s total bullshit.”

Instead of waiting for the girl to answer, he continued, “She’s a goddamn cartoon character, for Christ’s sake. Like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. The Disney World people probably came up with that Joan of Arc stuff. What in the hell ever convinced you that she talks to you?”

Tula was a couple of steps behind Squires as they walked toward the RV, but she hurried ahead and grabbed the man’s wrist, which caused Squires to stop and peer down at her.

“Don’t ever say that again,” Tula told him, her expression fierce. “The Maiden is real. I can show you in the history books! She led King Charles’s army, carrying her banner and sword. She forced the English sinners out of France. At first, even the king didn’t believe that she was sent by God, but the Maiden proved it to him.”

Tula gave the man’s wrist as shake. “She was a great leader and her soldiers loved her. The Maiden lived a pure life. She died a virgin, as a woman without a husband should. Have you committed so many sins that you don’t want to believe such a good person could exist?”

Squires didn’t know what to say. He felt ridiculous, allowing himself to be lectured by this skinny little teenager with her boy’s haircut, breasts just beginning to blossom.

“And something else,” the girl continued, giving the man’s wrist another shake. “Stop calling me a chula. My name is Tula. Please show me respect. And no more profanity! It hurts me when you use those words. Why do you intentionally hurt me when you know I care for you? I want to help you to be happy again, but then you say such awful things!”

Harris Squires got a funny feeling in his throat when the girl said that. It was stupid to react that way, he knew it, but there it was.

He stood silently as he watched the girl march off toward the truck, then turn with hands on her hips before saying to him, “If we’re going to Immokalee, let’s go. But you can’t go like that-not into a church. You have to change your clothes.”

Squires growled, “What?” He was carrying his shirt in his hand, wearing baggy shorts and flip-flops.

The girl didn’t back down. “If you hadn’t thrown me into your truck this morning without even asking, I would have brought my extra shirt. But you have clean clothes hanging in the trailer. I saw them.”

Squires thought about arguing, maybe even threaten to slap the girl’s face to let her know who was in charge. But then he thought, The hell with it.

The little brat was exhausting. Besides, it wouldn’t kill him to get cleaned up a little. It might even make him feel better, because his shirt was soaked with sweat-he could smell its hormonal stink-and he hadn’t showered since almost having his ass eaten off by Fifi the night before.

“You mind if I take a little nap first?” he said to the girl, being sarcastic, but he meant it. He was suddenly very tired despite the fresh D-bomb juice and testosterone pulsing through him.

“Will you put those steel things on my wrists again, the handcuffs?” the girl asked. It made her nervous, the idea of being alone with the man in the trailer. He might start drinking again. Drink himself into a different mood, and Squires might even try to force her into his bed-Tula would have preferred a bullet in the head to the horror of a man’s hands on her body.

But then she studied the giant’s face, seeing how empty and tired he looked, and decided no, he would not hurt her. Not now, at least. So the girl added, “If you think you have to chain me, I won’t fight you. If it will allow you to sleep for a little while, I think it’s what you should do. I won’t mind.”

The Maiden had been imprisoned in chains, and Tula felt an unexpected thrill at the thought of sharing the experience. It was exciting, the prospect of being locked up alone, but safe with God and Jehanne in her head, while the giant slept nearby.

But the man disappointed her by saying, “If you promise to shut your mouth for a little bit, I don’t care what you do. Run off and get eaten by panthers, that’s your decision. Just stop your damn talking for a while. My ears are starting to hurt.”

Four hours later, when Squires exited the trailer wearing slacks and a polo shirt instead of shorts and flip-flops, his hair wet and slicked back, Tula tried to compliment him by saying, “You look very nice. Blue is a nice color, it shows your eyes. When you were sleeping, you looked so peaceful, I hated to wake you. But it’s getting late.”

The girl was nervous because Squires was carrying the iPhone she had used an hour ago to type a quick message to her patron, Tomlinson, while the giant slept. She had done it just to let him know that she was safe and not in trouble. It was the first text Tula had ever attempted and she had hit the sEND button accidentally before she was done.

Would the big man notice?

Tula watched Squires glance at the phone, then held her breath as he looked at it more closely.

“That’s weird,” he said, swiping his fingers over the screen. “Usually, I don’t get service out here at the camp, but it looks like someone called. No message, though-probably because of the shitty reception.”

Tula relaxed a little when the man swore again softly, adding, “It was Frankie, I bet. I bet she is one pissed-off chick. If I’m lucky, I won’t never see her again.”

As they approached the truck, the redheaded woman with muscles was still on Squires’s mind because he asked the girl, sounding serious, “Tell me something. At Red Citrus, you ever talk to Frankie? Did she ever try to get you off alone?”

“I saw her at the trailer park twice,” Tula said. “I had a bad feeling about her, though. So I stayed away from her.”

Squires was interested. “A bad feeling? What do you mean by that?”

“A feeling that there is something dark in the woman’s brain. That’s the only way I can explain it. She scared me. I’m glad you don’t want to see that woman again. I think she is a bad influence for you. And she’s too old, anyway. A man who looks like Hercules could choose any woman in the world. You should marry a nice woman. A young girl who cares about you and can cook you food.”

Realizing how that sounded, Tula threw her hand over her mouth, embarrassed.

But Squires didn’t appear to notice. Sounding like it was hard for him to believe, the man said, “That surprises me. Frankie never said even a single word to you?”

“Her eyes watched me when she saw me,” the girl replied. “I could tell she wanted to speak with me, but I didn’t give her the chance. Her eyes are very blue. I felt like she was trying to see through my clothing. And that there might be something bad inside her. Maybe evil, I’m not sure. So I stayed away.

The man appeared satisfied, maybe even relieved. “Good,” he said. “That was real smart of you. Never ever let that bitch get you alone.”

Squires grunted as Tula, getting into the truck, tried to buoy his spirits by saying, “There’s no need to worry about the redheaded woman now. The Maiden is my protector. Now she is your protector, too.”

“Sure, yeah, right,” the man replied. “Whatever you say, sis. But if you really want to impress me, try shutting that mouth of yours for a while.”

“You’ll see,” Tula insisted. “Jehanne is right about the churches tonight. We will find people there who can help us. And that woman-Frankie? Even if she is evil, you and I have nothing to fear.”

By the time they’d spent a couple of hours in Immokalee, with its Circle Ks, tomato-packing warehouses and migrant housing, Squires had stopped trying to figure out how the weird little Jesus freak had gotten so famous among all these Mexicans who came out of the woodwork to see the girl, once word got around that she was in town.

Squires knew that the chilies back at Red Citrus had built some kind of voodoo-looking shrine to Tula. Why? He had no idea. But how did these Mexicans know about the girl way out here in cattle-and-tomato country, sixty miles from the Gulf beaches and his trailer park? Christ, Tula had been in Florida for only a week or so. Now here she was with strangers fawning over her like she was some kind of damn rock star.

Something else that surprised the man was that the Maiden-whoever the hell she was-was right about churches being open on a Wednesday. Not all, but a couple.

More likely, though, credit went to the strange little girl who heard voices but sat quietly, hands in her lap, during the twenty-mile drive from the hunting camp to this city linked to the outside world just by train tracks and a winding road.

The only time Tula had stirred was once when they passed a state trooper’s car going the other way. When the girl saw Squires’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel, she stroked his forearm and said, “If a policeman stops us, don’t worry, I’ll tell them you’re my friend. And that we’re looking for my mother. They’ll believe me. Know why? Because it’s the truth.”

Squires had tried to catch the news on the radio, hoping for an update on the dead woman they’d found. It was also in his mind that Tula could have been reported missing and that the cops might make the connection.

Hell, for all he knew, Frankie had blown the whistle on him herself, once she discovered that all their cash missing. Blame the dead girl’s body on him, that would be easy enough for Frankie to do-and maybe even try to prove it, the bitch was such a good liar.

But no luck with the radio-there were only FM stations out here in the boonies. So Squires decided, screw it, he would just go with the flow and stick with the girl. He couldn’t make himself kill his crazy little eyewitness, so maybe he was better off joining her. For now.

At the edge of the Everglades, the open highway became Main Street, with palm trees and gas stations, and lots of small brown people, some of them woman, wearing what looked like colorful blankets. And lots of scrawny, bowlegged Mexican men, too, wearing straw cowboy hats.

At a supermarket named Azteca Super Centro, Squires turned right past Raynor’s Seafood amp; Restaurant, then drove backstreets, zigzagging through a residential area, because that is what the girl told him to do.

The man had never been in a town so small with so many wetback churches. Iglesia Bautista Jesucristo. Pentecostal Church of God. Evangelica Redimidos por la Sangre de Jesus. Amigos en Cristo.

It was like being in a foreign country, the names were so strange . A lot of Spanish praying went down on this plateau of asphalt and lawns bleached brown by the Florida heat, the entire city opened wide to an Everglades sky above.

Not all of the churches were busy, but a couple were, with parking lots full-pickup trucks and rusting Toyotas-church doors open, with people inside singing hymns or shouting out wild words in Spanish.

Squires could hear all this, as they idled along in his truck, windows down. A few blocks later, they came to an adobe-colored brick building with a tin roof, Iglesia de Sangre de Cristo, and the girl told him to pull in. She’d start here.

“I’m staying in the truck,” Squires said, giving Tula a look that told her Don’t bother arguing. “But remember this: If you try running out on me, there’ll be hell to pay. That ain’t a profanity, it’s a promise.”

Tula stared at him a moment, the door open, her wounded expression asking the man When will you ever learn?

Then she jumped down to the ground, a girl not much taller then the truck’s tires, saying, “If the priest will let me, I’m going to talk to the congregation. I would like you to come in and listen. I wouldn’t feel as nervous if you were with me. Please? I can speak in English for you. Most of them will understand.”

Squires shook his head, and kept his eye on Tula until she was inside. After half an hour, though, he did get out and peek through a window, because it seemed strange the way people off the street were suddenly hurrying across lawns to get to the church. The place was already packed, but more people kept coming, some of them chattering on their cell phones, excited expressions on their faces, as they jogged along.

What Squires saw through the window caused him to wonder if Frankie had slipped some Ecstasy into his fresh batch of steroids, the stuff he’d just injected.

That’s how surreal the scene was.

What he saw was Tula, the skinny little girl dressed like a boy, standing at the altar, speaking Spanish in a strong voice, as the priest-a fat little dweeb with no hair-looked on adoringly. Which caused Squires to think maybe the asshole really believed Tula was a boy. But the priest wasn’t the only one giving the girl his full attention.

Sitting squashed together on wooden pews, some of the women were bawling silently into hankies, moved by what the girl was saying. And a line was forming near the altar, Mexican men with farmer’s tans, short little women-some on their knees-apparently waiting to meet the girl when she was done speaking.

But why? Squires moved to a window that was closer to find out.

It made no sense, but what the people wanted to do, he discovered, was kiss the girl’s hand, or hug her, or maybe ask her to say a prayer for them, which Tula appeared to do several times, touching her hand to a person’s head while she muttered words toward the ceiling.

My God, even the priest got in on it, hugging the girl while she touched his dweebish bald head and said something that Squires was close enough to hear but couldn’t understand.

Dumbass, the man thought to himself. Why the hell didn’t I ever learn Spanish?

It was frustrating hearing but not understanding, especially because he was trying to figure out why the girl commanded such respect from so many adults, all of them strangers.

Maybe Tula sounded smarter in Spanish. That might explain it, which caused Squires to spend some time weighing the possibility. It had to be true, he finally decided. In English, the girl came off as pretty damn strange, maybe even nuts. In Spanish, she must have sounded a lot smarter.

Right or wrong, it gave Squires a funny feeling to witness how famous the girl had become. He guessed it was something to be proud of, hanging out with a celebrity, even if the girl’s fans were all Mexicans.

What he was witnessing was impressive, Squires had to admit it. Being with a celebrity was new in his experience, unless he counted Frankie, which he didn’t of course. Fifteen years ago, Frankie had been a minor bodybuilding star-Miss South Florida U.S.A. once and Miss Vermont Bodybuilder three times in a row-which the bitch never stopped reminding him when they got into arguments over which steroids were best for different kinds of cycles.

But being with Tula, the strange little Jesus freak, was an entirely different experience. Squires had never seen anyone look at Frankie the way these adoring people kept their eyes glued to that little girl.

Yeah, sort of proud-that’s the way he felt. And he would have continued watching if a few tough-acting Mexicans-or were they Guatemalans?-hadn’t slipped out the church door to give him their hard-assed beaner glares.

“What you lookin’ at, man?” one of the chilies said to Squires as they walked toward him, all three taking out their gangbanger bandannas, he noticed.

Squires turned to gauge the distance to his truck where he’d stored the Ruger Blackhawk beneath the seat. Not that he needed a gun to deal with these little turds-even with a pulled hamstring-but it was good to know he had options.

He waited until the trio was closer before he said to them, keeping his voice low and confidential, “Hey, I gotta question for you boys. What’s that little girl in there saying that’s so important? Man, even the priest is hanging on every word. How’d she get so famous?”

Squires was trying to be friendly, strike up a nice conversation with these hard Mexicans. But no luck.

The head chilie was easy to pick out. He was the one tying on his blue colors, low over the eyes, as he said something that sounded like, “Choo tryin’ to be funny or what, man? ’Cause choo ain’t funny,” his Mex accent strong.

Not quite so friendly now, Squires told the dude, “You’d be laughing your ass off if I wanted to be funny, douche bag.”

The two beaners moved closer to the head gangbanger, standing shoulder to shoulder, as their leader replied, “We know who you are, man. We know all about the shit goes on out there at your damn hunting camp, too. So get the hell out of here, back to your trailer park that smells of mierda. This here’s a damn church, man. Why you wanna bother us here with your presence?”

Squires was surprised, at first, that the Mexican knew so much about him, but then he wasn’t. Hell, maybe all three of these dudes had lived at Red Citrus for a while. That wouldn’t have surprised him, either, because most of the illegals sooner or later showed up at one of his parks.

“Let me offer you some friendly advice,” Squires said to the men, motioning for them to lean closer. “Pay attention or I’ll rip your ears off and stick ’em up your ass. I asked you a polite question. I expect a nice answer. That girl in there is a friend of mine. Why’s the priest letting her stand up there and talk to the whole audience?”

“Right-t-t-t,” one of the chilies said, feeling around for something in his pocket. “That girl in there, if you say you know her, you lying cono. She’s a saint, man. So you better behave yourself with respect or we’ll run your white ass outta here.”

“Is that what she claims?” Squires asked.

“She talks to God and God answers her back,” the Guatemalan replied, sounding defensive, but pissed off, too. “What proof you want? God is telling her we should return to our homes in the mountains. And not put up with gringo assholes like you. For what? Live in a shithole trailer park like yours? Drive a fancy truck that takes half my pay every month?”

The word “mountains” registered in Squires’s memory, which caused him to say, “I hear it’s pretty nice where some of you Mexicans come from. Even in summer, I heard it’s nice ’n’ cool up in those mountains. That true? What’s a big house and a few acres sell for?”

“A jelly boy like you moving to Guatemala?” the chilie said to him. “Man, don’t even think about it. We don’t want your kind dirtying up our home.” He took a step. “You say you a friend of this girl? I think you full of bullshit, man.”

Squires was looking through the church window again, trying to gauge how pissed off Tula would be if he caused a disturbance outside. No, he decided. He wasn’t going to do it. The girl had already gotten mad at him once today, giving him a look that had made him feel sort of low, like he’d disappointed her. Once was enough. He didn’t want to have that feeling again.

Squires held up his hands, palms out. “Stay cool, amigos. Only reason I’m here is to help the girl find her mama. Ya’ll just run along before the little saint in there makes you come back and apologize to me. Because when she was talking to God, the big guy didn’t send her to you. God sent her to me.”

Smiling, Squires limped back to his truck and waited. The three gangbangers looked at one another for a moment, their faces unfocused, then they obviously decided Fuck it! and went inside the church.

While he was messing with the radio, trying to find some decent news, his phone rang once, but no one was there when Squires answered, saying, “Hello… hello?” during a long silence.

A wrong number, he decided. It had to be.

An hour later, a little after eleven p.m., Squires and the girl were back at the hunting camp, walking from his truck toward the RV, as frogs chirred from a spatial darkness that was bordered by cypress trees and stars. He had been feeling pretty good about things up until then, but, suddenly, Squires didn’t feel so good anymore.

Shit!

Frankie was at the trailer, waiting for them. Laziro Victorino, too, along with some of his gangbanger soldiers, who came out of nowhere so fast they had their hands on Tula before Squires had time to do anything about it.

Up until then, though, it had been the best night he’d had in a while. The big man had been feeling better and better about helping the strange little girl instead of shooting her in the back of the head. And Squires had never seen the girl so happy.

On the drive from Immokalee to the hunting camp, she had sat in the passenger seat, chattering away, sounding excited because she had found out where her aunts and brother were living. Maybe her mother, too. Or so she thought.

But when Tula told Squires about it, he wasn’t so sure.

“Aunt Vilma and Isabel are working on a tomato farm in a city called Ocala!” Tula had exclaimed as she exited the church, waving a piece of paper. “I have Aunt Isabel’s phone number. And my brother, he picked oranges this winter. He was always so lazy, but it must be true.”

As they drove down Main Street, Immokalee, out of town, the girl was laughing, telling Squires, “Pacaw has moved around a lot, but he might be living outside a city that is named Venice. He had trouble finding work because he’s younger than me, only twelve-but he acts older. Everyone I met at the church thought he was at least sixteen. The people I met tonight, they are wonderful.”

Squires had to ask. “Did they say anything about me? Some tough Mexican dudes came outside and gave me some of their tough-taco shit. But you were… you know, in the middle of your speech. I didn’t want to cause no trouble.”

The big man said it expecting the girl to appreciate his thoughtfulness. Maybe she did, but he had hoped for a more positive reaction.

Squires gave it some time before he glanced at the girl and asked a question that had been on his mind: “You could have run out on me tonight, sis. You could’ve had your new friends call the cops. Why didn’t you? I was sitting here in the truck, wondering about it.”

The girl had looked at the giant, shaking her head, and didn’t bother to speak the words her affectionate expression was telling him.

Instead, she said, “I’m very hungry. One of the women-she was so sweet. She asked for a lock of my hair but didn’t have any scissors. She told me there is a very excellent restaurant not far. It’s called Taco Bell. You must be hungry, too.”

They used the Taco Bell drive-through, and Squires listened to the girl chomp down about half her weight in junk food as he drove-Tula, beside him, eating like it was the best Mex she’d ever had in her life.

Squires had the taco salad and an unsweetened iced tea. He was an athlete, for Christ’s sake. In his business, diet was everything, even during a bulking cycle. The perfect male body wasn’t built in the weight room, it was sculpted in the kitchen-Squires had read that someplace.

Ten miles from the hunting camp, the girl had gotten onto the subject of her missing mother, a conversation that Squires had tried to postpone because he already suspected where it was going.

“I keep trying to tell you the best news,” the girl had said to him. “My mother was working in restaurants and cleaning houses. But then she went to work for a very rich man and has been traveling a lot-which is probably why I haven’t heard from her. She didn’t tell anyone the man’s name. But she told someone’s niece that the man’s company makes movies. That she was going to become an actress! This was about two months ago, which is probably why she had to get a new telephone. My aunts or brother will know more when I talk to them. Didn’t I tell you that my mother is beautiful?”

Squires thought, Uh-oh… understanding immediately why Tula’s mother hadn’t told anyone her employer’s name. Either no one had revealed the name to her or the woman was too ashamed to admit it. Every Mexican in Florida knew that Laziro Victorino was a badass gang leader and the only films he had an interest in were porno and snuff films.

That gave Squires a sick feeling in his belly. She could have been talking about some other guy who made movies-but he strongly doubted it.

Tula’s mother must have been damn hard up for money to make such a decision, which wasn’t unusual for Mexican women who sent money back home. But to go to work for the V-man? It had to be more than just needing cash, Squires decided. Maybe she’d gotten hooked on crank or crack. No telling, but a lot of Mexican girls did after getting into porn or prostitution.

Squires remembered the little girl sniffing the little doll she’d found and saying her mother had one just like it. It didn’t prove the girl’s mother had been entertained by Victorino or Frankie, sitting in their trailer, drinking margaritas laced with Ecstasy. But it sure made it a strong possibility.

There was also an even more disturbing possibility, but just thinking about it made Squires feel queasy. That he’d been the one who’d entertained Tula’s mother-the Mexican chula in his sex dream. So Squires had changed the subject by handing Tula his iPhone, saying, “Call your aunt what’s her name. Tell her you’re okay. Where’d you say they’re living? Do it now because we’re going to lose reception the moment I turn off the road to my camp.”

“We’re not going back to the trailer park?” the girl asked, surprised. “That’s what I told the priest. That’s what I told everyone, that we’re returning to Red Citrus.” She hesitated. “I would feel better if I could sleep on my own cot and get my things. I have a book there I read every night before I turn off the light.”

Squires shook his head. “The camp’s closer, and I need a drink. We’ll get your things tomorrow.”

Guessing what the girl was worried about, he added, “Don’t worry, you’ll have your own bed. And all the damn privacy you want-as long as you promise to stop talking so much. What about calling your aunts?”

As Tula giggled in her seat, excited to be dialing her aunt, Squires thought about details. He wasn’t good at geography, but he’d done bodybuilding shows all over Florida. Tula had mentioned Ocala and Venice. They were both north, off Interstate 75, which was right on the way if they were driving to Mexico.

Damn… it was a big decision. Leaving the country had seemed like a smart thing to do earlier when he’d been drunk and scared shitless. Now, with the girl laughing and chattering in Spanish to her aunt, it suddenly seemed all too real. Like the idea was closing in and smothering him.

How would he feel riding with a bunch of wetbacks all that distance? His truck was a double cab, so there’d be enough room. Hell, Mexicans were like folding chairs. You could pack twenty of them into a Volkswagen. And it wasn’t like he’d be breaking any laws, since he’d be driving a load of illegal immigrants back to where they belonged. Still, the prospect seemed so foreign to him that he began searching for an alternative.

But no matter how Squires viewed his situation, he couldn’t get around the fact that if the cops questioned Tula about the dead Mexican girl, they’d arrest him for something, probably murder. Laziro Victorino was in the back of his mind, too.

Then Squires thought about the way the girl had described her village. It was quiet and clean, she’d said. A place that was high in the mountains where it was cool, and closer to God.

Squires told himself he didn’t care anything about God. But he was sure sick of Florida, where he’d been doing stupid, illegal shit, always feeling guilty- a dirty life, Tula had described it, and the girl was right.

All his problems would be solved, though, if he took Tula and her family to Mexico. No more murder rap, no worrying about cops busting his steroid business, no more of Frankie’s bullying, and of her sick, twisted ways.

Squires reminded himself that he had around sixty grand in cash-plus a few grand more he’d stolen from the two white guys last night. That was more than enough money to kick back at some Mexican beach resort for a month or two.

And if he liked the place, maybe he’d invest some of that money in starting up a first-class steroids lab-a place where it was legal to use and make gear. Hell, he could hire Tula and her family to keep the place clean and do office work. The girl was strange, but at least he knew that she’d never steal from him or lie to him about the books.

Okay, Squires thought to himself, Mexico it is.

Goddamn, that felt good! He’d finally made a decision. It put a little smile on his face until Tula handed him his cell phone as if the thing was broken, telling him, “I can’t hear what my aunt Isabel is saying anymore. She was right in the middle of telling me something important when we got cut off.”

“I told you, we don’t have good reception out here,” Squires replied.

“But I wanted to hear what she was telling me!”

As the man slipped the phone into his pocket, he paid attention because the girl sounded so serious, which is why he asked her, “What’d she say that’s got you so riled up?”

Tula replied, “My aunt said an important woman called her tonight. A woman who works for the government helping immigrants. She was very worried because she said the police are looking for you and me.”

Squires felt his heart begin to pound. “Your aunt said that?” he asked.

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. The woman said they’ve been talking about us on the radio and television all night. Some kind of special alert for children. It has a color in the name.”

Squires whispered, “Shit! An AMBER Alert.”

Reacting to the expression on the man’s face, Tula added quickly, “Yes-but it’s okay, don’t worry! The first thing my aunt will do is call the woman and tell her that you are my friend. She’s probably talking to the woman right now. Telling her that I’m very safe and happy. My aunt promised.”

Squires said, “Jesus Christ, an AMBER Alert. What next?” but was listening, wanting to hear better news.

Tula told him, “Then my aunt will call the church and speak with the priest-she knows him very well because she picked tomatoes in Immokalee for a season. His name is Father Jimenez, and she will ask him to telephone the police tonight and tell them the same thing.”

“Talk slower,” Squires said. “Tell the cops what?”

“That I’m with you because I want to be with you. So no one will be worried. My aunt was so relieved to hear my voice, she was crying. But she promised me, so I know she will do it.”

Tula held up the paper she was carrying. “In the morning, I will call the woman myself. I have her number here, too.”

Squires took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, before he said, “Maybe you should call the immigration woman now. I can back up. Usually, reception doesn’t go to hell until I get to the gate.”

But then he realized that turning around, driving toward Immokalee, might be a mistake. The woman from state immigration would want to know Tula’s exact location. That would bring the cops, asking questions.

The girl made up his mind, saying, “The police will believe Father Jimenez. A priest? Of course they will believe him. Plus, I told Father Jimenez that you are a wonderful man. He wanted to meet you, but I told him you are shy about coming into churches.”

Squires liked it when Tula said that. He began to relax a little and feel at ease as the girl added, “Do you now believe that the Maiden is watching over us? When you do God’s work, good things happen to you!”

By then, they were at the gate to the hunting camp.

Squires began to suspect trouble when he realized there was a light on inside his RV, the vehicle sitting up on blocks in the darkness. He and Tula had just gotten out of the truck, which was when the big man placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder, stopping her.

“Hold it, sis,” he said as he stared at the light. He knew he’d switched off the generator before leaving just in case he and the girl didn’t return. Plus, he would’ve heard the little Honda engine running if it was on.

That meant that someone inside had a flashlight. Or had lit a candle, or an oil lamp maybe. But where was the person’s truck?

Squire’s head pivoted from the mountain of cypress trees to the west, then to the east, where there were shadowed pine flats and a distant halo glow that was Lauderdale.

There had to be a vehicle somewhere. No one in their right mind would hike cross-country through the Everglades, not this late. Not half an hour before midnight… unless… unless they had parked their vehicle behind the RV. Which was possible. But how could they have gotten through the gate? The gate had been locked when he and Tula had arrived just as he’d left it.

Thinking that gave Squires a prickly feeling along his spine. Frankie had the only other key.

Squires reached out, patted Tula’s arm and whispered, “Hang on for a second, sis. Something ain’t right about this.”

He took a few slow steps toward the trailer, favoring his right leg, but then stopped abruptly when he saw what might have been a person moving in the shadows behind the trailer.

Squires couldn’t be sure. He had left the truck running, lights on, so he could see to unlock the door to the generator shed. He didn’t have a flashlight, so all he saw was a blur of movement like someone ducking for cover.

Squires was thinking about hurrying back to the truck and opening the hidden compartment to get his revolver and night vision binoculars. That’s when Tula whispered, “There’s someone here. I smell cigarette smoke. And perfume, too.”

Squires thought, Shit. It’s Frankie.

Yes, it was. The large woman appeared, standing in the RV’s doorway, shining a flashlight in his eyes, then focused the beam on Tula. Squires was shielding his eyes when he heard Frankie say, “Well, well, look at what we have here. Harris, you dumb pile of shit, I don’t know what to do first-have some fun with the pretty little wettail you brought me or call the cops and hope there’s a reward for turning in a kidnapper.”

The woman was very drunk and probably stoned. Squires could tell by the way she slurred her words. Frankie had to grab the railing as she started down the steps, adding, “Either way, I want the goddamn money you stole from me. Sixty thousand dollars in cash, you son of a bitch. You really thought I’d let you get away with it?”

For a woman, Frankie had the lowest voice Squires had ever heard. It was from using too much primobolan and shooting testosterone, which the woman lied about, too. But there was no disguising what steroids had done to her voice-and the female parts of her body, too.

Squires waved and called, “Hey, sugar babe, I was hoping you’d be here!” like he was glad to see the woman, but then he nudged Tula toward the truck, leaning to whisper, “Get in and lock the doors. Don’t come out ’til I tell you.”

Tula yanked her arm away, though, being stubborn, and said, “I’m not leaving you! You’re afraid of her, I can tell. I’m staying with you.”

Frankie, on the grass now, wearing tight jeans, her breasts ballooning out of a tank top, was close enough to hear the girl, because she laughed, saying, “Now, isn’t that sweet! You found yourself a loyal little chula. A cute young one, too. Harris, know what that tells me? It tells me you haven’t screwed her yet. Even if she’s a virgin, she wouldn’t still be hanging with you. She’d be ready for someone bigger and better by now.”

In a chiding voice, Frankie spoke to Tula, saying, “I’ll bet you’re still pure as the snow, aren’t you, nina? Then this goddamn piece of white trash comes along and kidnaps you. But you don’t have to be afraid of him now. Come here to Frankie”-the woman was patting her thigh as if calling a dog-“I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

Squires felt Tula move close to him, throwing an arm around his bad leg for protection.

He wasn’t afraid of Frankie-he’d never admitted it to himself, anyway-Tula was wrong about that. But the woman did make him nervous, particularly when she was as drunk as she was now.

Nervous, yes, that’s the way Squires felt, but he could also feel a testosterone heat moving to his ears.

“You shut your mouth about this girl,” Squires said to Frankie in a warning tone as he stepped in front of Tula. “She’s not used to your garbage talk. And stop your damn swearing in front of her. This little girl’s religious.”

Frankie laughed, “Priceless,” as Squires continued, “You go on back inside the trailer. If you want to talk to me, I’ll get the generator going and we’ll talk. But you leave this girl alone.”

Squires was lying about the generator. The moment Frankie closed the trailer door, he’d load Tula into the truck and they’d get the hell out of there.

Go where, though? Frankie knew what she was talking about when she’d mentioned kidnapping. Even if the priest told the cops that everything was okay, a call from Frankie might put them back on the alert. The woman would drop the dime on him the moment he left, Squires was sure of it.

Or would she?

Mismatched details were going through Squires’s mind as he tried to view the situation clearly. Maybe Frankie didn’t have so much leverage over him after all, he decided. Once he was in jail, how could the woman force him to give back the money he’d taken? She’d have to admit to the feds that they’d piled up a ton of cash selling steroids. They hadn’t paid a dime in taxes, either.

No, Frankie couldn’t risk that.

The woman was drunk. She was a vicious twat, but she was smart. She’d realize that getting the sixty grand was the most important thing, once he reminded her. It caused Squires to wonder if maybe he should offer the woman some kind of deal… which is when he heard an engine start in the distance.

A second later, a truck loaded with men came fishtailing out from behind the trailer, the truck’s lights blinding him and the girl. In the same instant, a Mexican voice from behind Squires said, “Hey there, jelly boy! You stand real still or I’ll blow your damn head off.

Squires turned.

Christ! There was Laziro Victorino, grinning at him with his gold teeth. And pointing a shotgun at him-a Browning Maxus 12-gauge that Squires had kept locked in the trailer gun closet.

Victorino and Frankie together?

It took Squires a slow, stunned moment to realize what had happened. Yeah… it had to be. Frankie and the gangbanger had teamed up. That was the only explanation. Frankie had somehow hooked up with the V-man, probably today at Red Citrus. After the woman had discovered the money missing, she would have been in the perfect mood to seduce someone like Victorino, a guy who could help her get what she wanted.

Even so, this surprised Squires, because Frankie was the most racist person he’d ever met. But here it was, staring him right in the face. And the two of them had been at it for a while, sharing some fun together, judging from the confidential looks Victorino and Frankie were now exchanging. Both of them drunk and probably cocaine crazy.

Squires had seen the woman like this many times. And the V-man was no different, he guessed-probably worse. Drunk as they were, neither one of them gave a damn about what they did or the consequences. They wanted the cash. But the V-man probably wanted Tula more or he wouldn’t have wasted his time-a girl Tula’s age was worth a lot more than sixty thousand to a business shark like him.

And they would kill him, Squires realized. They had to. Use the shotgun, but, more likely, Victorino’s box cutter. He’d do it slowly to impress Frankie, a woman probably twisted enough to video the whole thing.

That made Squires feel sort of queasy. Then he felt worse when he realized that, no, Victorino and his gangbangers would be the ones to video his murder. Get it all on their iPhones and add another snuff film to their collection.

This was all shocking information for Squires to process. He didn’t expect loyalty from Frankie, but he didn’t expect her to help a Mexican dude murder him, either. He and the redhead had spent more than four years together, most of it either screwing or screaming at each other, but they’d had some good times, too. Could Frankie let go of all that so fast?

Squires got his answer when Frankie called to Victorino, “Don’t shoot him now, dumbass! Get them in the cookshack, I’ve got the camera all set. Hurry up, it’s almost midnight!”

Cameras in the steroid shack-this was another surprise to Squires. Why not the trailer, where they had already built a porno set complete with lights and a computer?

The V-man was wagging an index finger at Tula as he pointed the shotgun at Squires, saying something in Spanish to the girl-probably ordering her into the steroid shack-before telling Frankie, “What’s the rush, now? Bring some duct tape. I’ll hold the gun on your boyfriend while you tape him.”

The woman replied, “The greaser genius giving orders again,” sounding sloppy drunk now. But still sober enough to remember that Victorino enjoyed killing women, because she added, “Duct tape. Check. I’d love to tape that worthless piece of shit.”

Squires watched the redhead walk toward the RV but then stop near the steps, where she reached down into a box. When he heard Tula scream, “Don’t you touch that!” he remembered the fledgling bird the girl had saved. Could the thing still be alive?

Yes, it was. The egret was squawking and flapping its bare wings as Frankie held the bird up in the light. The woman was grinning as she said to Victorino, “Do you Mexicans like to eat squab? I think we’ve got a bottle of champagne around her someplace.” Before the man could reply, though, the woman said, “Ouch! The little bastard just bit me!” and hurled

the bird hard against the aluminum siding of the RV.

Tula gave a little shriek and swung her head away, but Victorino thought it was pretty funny, the hard-assed redhead getting bit by a bird.

Staring at Squires, the V-man grinned as he said to Frankie, “See? We’re having ourselves some fun now. What’s the hurry? Come back with the duct tape, then we gonna have more fun making movies. Hell, this dumbass probably has the money on him, maybe stashed somewhere inside his truck. It won’t be hard to find.”

As Tula sobbed, Squires was thinking, The hell it won’t.

He’d built the hidden compartment himself, using a cutting torch and the help of a magic mechanic friend of his. Frankie didn’t know about the compartment, because while she sometimes drove his Ford Roush, she never messed with his hunting truck.

More pressing on Squires’s mind was the fact that Victorino and Frankie had planned this out together. Cameras and duct tape? Those were the principal props in the few snuff films that Squires had seen. They were sickening things to watch, although he’d never admitted that to Frankie, who always had a glassy, heated look on her face by the time one of those videos ended.

Thinking about it caused Squires’s heart to pound, a slow fury building in him. Victorino would use that shitty hardware-store knife on him. He felt certain of it. And then he and Frankie would have more fun together by raping the girl, probably filming that, too.

Then an even worse scenario flashed into Squires’s mind: They would video what they did to Tula first, just to piss him off. Make him watch the whole sick business before they got around to killing him.

Again the question came into Squires’s mind: Why the cookshack, a room that was all chemicals and propane tanks but no bed?

A moment later, Victorino’s gangbanger buddies were jumping out of the truck-a Dodge Ram-as it skidded to a stop, running toward Squires and Tula. The V-man took a few quick steps, his eyes still fixed on Squires, and scooped the girl up in his left arm.

Tula screamed for help, yelling, “He has me, make him let me go!”

Squires took a step but then stopped, frozen by the gun and what was happening.

Now the girl was hollering to her invisible friend, “Jehanne! I need your help, Jehanne!” as she slapped at Victorino with her hands. Then the skinny girl shot a heartbreaking look into Squires’s eyes, pleading, “Don’t let him hurt me. All I want is my mother!”

Without even thinking about it, Squires began limping toward the V-man. Slow at first, then faster, taking long strides despite his bad hamstring.

Squires knew that the shotgun was loaded with bird shot, which was what he and his buddies used to hunt dove and quail. Little tiny pellets half the size of match heads. Hell, he’d been hit by more than a few of those pellets when he and his drunken buddies shot at birds in a cross fire. They didn’t hurt much, and it took almost a direct hit to break the skin.

Not that it mattered, because inside Squires’s brain something had snapped. He felt an invincible cerebral combustion surging through him. It caused the steroid oils, and the D-bombs he’d swallowed, to engorge his monster face with blood.

Laziro Victorino screamed a warning as Squires moved toward him, dragging his right leg with every step. The gangbanger screamed again as he hurled the girl to the ground, pointed the shotgun and this time pulled the trigger.

Squires jolted, grunting at the stinging impact. But that didn’t matter, either. The giant stumbled, regained his balance and kept coming.

Arms outstretched, Harris Squires was hell-bent on getting his fingers around the V-man’s neck because now the little saint was calling for his help again, screaming, “Please, please, Harris! Don’t let these men take me away from you!”