Santa Fe Edge

2

Barbara Eagle Keeler was taken by a female guard from her cell in the El Diablo Prison for Women, east of Acapulco, Mexico, handcuffed and delivered to the office of Pedro Alvarez, the warden of the facility. It was not her first trip there.

She had been imprisoned now for nine weeks after a trial of one hour and ten minutes and a jury deliberation of half that, and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for each of three attempted murders, the sentences to run concurrently. One of the attempted murders had consisted of Barbara’s severing with a straight razor the penis of a young man who turned out to be the nephew of a captain of police in Acapulco. This had proven an unfortunate choice of both victim and technique, and had ensured her conviction by an all-male jury, who, upon hearing the young man’s testimony, had, as one man, crossed their legs.

Before leaving the Acapulco jail for El Diablo, Barbara had been raped repeatedly by the captain and a couple of his subordinates, as the nephew had watched, but the young man had not been allowed to cut up her face, as he had wished to do.

“It is more difficult in prison for a beautiful woman than an ugly one,” the captain had explained. “You will be avenged often.”

The captain had spoken without taking into account the animal cunning that reposed in this particular woman. Barbara had survived an awful second marriage to the murderer of her first husband. She had been convicted as an accessory, though she had not known of the man’s intentions, and had served a sentence in a New York State prison, where she had been schooled in female-on-male violence and other criminal activity by other inmates and where she had been interviewed by the Santa Fe attorney, Ed Eagle, on the subject of her criminal sister, who had been married to a Hollywood film producer with a Santa Fe home.

Upon her early release, due to a court order after a lawsuit concerning prison overcrowding, Barbara had made her way to Santa Fe, where she had looked up Ed Eagle and, in fairly short order, enticed him into marriage.

A few months later, she had made off with a large sum of his money, and, after an extensive search by two clever private detectives, she had been lured aboard a yacht in La Jolla, California, and transported to a spot in Mexican waters a few miles off Tijuana, where, by previous arrangement, the police had boarded the yacht and arrested her for the three attempted murders, two of which victimized the private detectives.

Upon transfer to El Diablo, she had established herself among her fellow prisoners as someone who would not be fucked with, as she would have put it, without violence being perpetrated upon her assailant. At the same time she had preserved her appearance and her physical fitness, and she had made it her business to be noticed by the warden, Capitán Alvarez.

Alvarez lived with his very plain wife in an apartment adjacent to his office, and Barbara had learned that the wife sometimes traveled to Acapulco to visit her mother. Twice Barbara had been ordered to Alvarez’s office, where he had raped her.

Barbara had accepted this stoically, even letting the man believe she enjoyed it, because she knew that if she fought him, he would kill her-or have it done by the guards. Now his wife was in Acapulco again, Barbara had learned through the prison grapevine, and she was back in Alvarez’s office.

The capitán was, perhaps, six-two and three hundred pounds.

“Get naked,” he had said to her, forgetting to say “please.”

He had removed her handcuffs, then closed and locked his office door. He poured himself what was, apparently, not his first shot of tequila of the morning and sipped it while he watched her undress.

Barbara had done so without hesitation, and had even managed to be alluring during the process. Alvarez had dropped his pants, sat down on his office sofa, taken her by the hair and pulled her to her knees, where she did what was expected of her. Such was her skill that it did not take long for him to reach a successful conclusion. He sagged sideways onto the sofa and, after a few minutes of her caresses, fell asleep, snoring loudly and breathing tequila into the close atmosphere of the small room.

Barbara did not waste time putting on her clothes. She went to the interior door she believed led to his quarters, opened it as quietly as possible and entered the apartment.

It consisted of a living room with a dining area, a bedroom and a bath. There were bars on the windows of the living room and bedroom, but an exploration of the bathroom revealed a small window over the toilet that had not been fitted with bars. She stood on the toilet seat and unlatched the window, which swung outward. She found herself looking a dozen feet down into an alley, which ran off a larger street to her left that a sign revealed to be Camino Cerritos. Directly across the street from the alley was an establishment named, on a large sign, Cantina Rosita.

Barbara closed the window, then inspected the bedroom. Inside a closet she found a wardrobe of dresses perhaps two sizes larger than her own, and shoes slightly smaller than her feet.

She looked through a chest of drawers and a bedside table, hoping to steal money but finding nothing except some awful costume jewelry. There was something else she was very glad to see: a telephone on the bedside table. She closed the bedroom door and found the phone book. Her Spanish was poor, but she managed to divine how to call the United States, so she dialed a number she knew very well, belonging to her dear friend, the film producer James Long.

“Hello?” a sleepy male voice said.

“Jimmy, it’s Barbara,” she said softly.

“Good God! I read in the paper you were in a Mexican jail!”

“I am-in a prison called El Diablo, in a little town east of Acapulco, called Tres Cruces. Write all this down.”

“Okay, I’ve got a pen.”

“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “Do you still have the same cell phone number?”

“Yes.”

“I have some clothes and some identity documents in a suitcase in the apartment over your garage, remember?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ve found a way out of here. Can you come to Acapulco?”

“Yes.”

“Charter a small airplane. I’ll pay for it. Ask the pilot to wait, for two or three days, if necessary.”

“All right, when?”

“Now, today. Book a room at the Acapulco Princess, and check in. I’ll call you on your cell when I’m ready. Tomorrow, rent a car from the hotel, drive to Tres Cruces and find Camino Cerritos and a bar called Cantina Rosita. Park near there. There’s an alley across the street. I’ll call you on your cell, then drive into the alley, and you’ll see a small window about ten or twelve feet above the pavement, on your right. Park under the window. Got it?”

He repeated the instructions.

“Buy me some hair dye, auburn, in the hotel shop, and some good scissors.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, baby,” she said. “I’ll call as soon as I can.” She hung up and returned to the office, where Alvarez still snored away, and began searching the room for useful items. There was a cabinet containing guns, but it was securely locked and grilled with ironwork. There was also a substantial safe with an electronic keypad lock.

She went to the desk and methodically searched the drawers, but the only thing of use to her was half a dozen of what appeared to be handcuff keys. She took one and put it into her mouth, under her tongue, then she looked at the sides and bottoms of the drawers, finally finding what she was looking for, taped to the bottom of a pull-out typewriter shelf. It was a piece of paper with a six-digit number written on it, and she did not doubt that it would open the safe. She also did not doubt that if she used the code now, it would cause electronic beeping that would waken the warden. She memorized the number.

Alvarez stirred. She ran back to the sofa, sat on the floor beside him and pretended to be asleep.

“Hey, you, girl,” Alvarez said, shaking her.

Barbara raised her head. “Hey, you,” she said in a low voice.

“You’re pretty good, you know?”

“I know.”

“Get dressed and get out. I’ll send for you again.”

“I’d love to see you again,” she said. “When?”

“You want some more, eh?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

“When does your wife return?” she asked.

“What do you know about my wife?” he demanded.

“Just that she’s away.”

He looked at her for a moment. “Sunday,” he said.

“Then we have tomorrow to play,” she said, standing up and slowly putting on her clothes.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said.

“Yes, Capitán,” she replied. “I will be ready.”

He handcuffed her, then unlocked the office door and turned her over to the guard who waited outside.

The guard marched her back down the dirty hallways and put her back in the small cell that she shared with five other women.

“Have a good time?” one of the women asked suggestively.

“Shut up, bitch,” Barbara replied, and lay down on her bunk. Tomorrow, she thought. Saturday at the latest.

Later, she got up and motioned to the guard in the hallway.

“Eh?” the woman said.

“I can’t sleep,” Barbara said. “I need something to take.”

“Sleep is expensive,” the woman replied.

“Twenty dollars American for Ambien or two Valiums.”

“Show me the money.”

“When I see the medicine.”

The woman went away and returned with two yellow pills. “Valium,” she said. “See the writing?”

Ten milligrams, Barbara thought. Ideal. She retrieved the money from a capsule in her vagina and paid the woman. Now all she had to do was survive tomorrow.