The Rescue

38

After dinner they sit side by side on a glider out on the deck. It gets to be another long talk, like the one at Bettina’s house just a few nights ago. She feels great to be here on this cool spring night, breezy after the storm, clouds moving fast across the starry dark. She’s got her favorite overcoat on, a red wool Navajo pattern with wooden toggle buttons and contrast stitching.

All of this — Strickland, the breezy night, the heavy coat, the smidgin of bourbon and the good food — makes her feel safe in a way she hasn’t felt in days. Safe and trusting and very eager to break the news:

“I offered El Gordo a positive story and video in Coastal Eddy, and ten thousand dollars, in return for Felix. I haven’t heard back.”

Strickland wheels on her. “That’s insane, Bettina.”

In kicks Bettina’s instinctive hatred of being told what she can and can’t do.

“Why? I don’t think it’s insane at all. I go down there, do the interview, shoot the video and pay the money. Fly home with Felix. I’ve got the right papers from the clinic.”

“Insane because El Gordo lost a good soldier and two hundred grand up at Moulton Meadows Park in Laguna that night. Two hundred grand, Bettina. And you think he’ll trade the dog back for ten thousand dollars and a story? You surprise me.”

Strickland’s solid logic hits Bettina hard. She knows this is the fundamental flaw in her proposal.

“If I had more, I’d offer more,” she says stubbornly.

Strickland abruptly rises, walks across the deck to the railing, and looks out.

An airliner lowers toward Lindbergh Field, and Bettina focuses on its blinking red lights. The jet is flying very low over the heart of the city. Bettina knows that Strickland is right, and all her worst fears regarding Felix come thundering down on her again. She feels cold sweat on her shoulders and back; it’s like being dipped in the ocean.

Strickland turns to her and leans against the railing. “He won’t take your offer.”

Bettina speaks evenly to him, trying to ground her pitch in logic, not emotion.

“What if my story means more to Godoy than you think? What if he accepts my offer, not for the money, but for his pride? And vanity? To build his Robin Hood myth? His brand?”

“And you go off alone into the heart of the Sinaloa Cartel with ten grand and your camera?”

Of course I don’t, she thinks. I’ll need backup, and some Mexico savvy. Can’t ask Billy because he’s a cop.

“We go together and bring Felix back,” she says.

“His name is Joe.”

“His name is Felix and I’m bringing him back whether you help me or not.”

Strickland stares at her in mute stillness. She can’t tell if he’s angry or ready to laugh. Over his shoulder, Bettina tracks the red lights of the jet over the building tops.

“I told you once I’d do anything to protect you and Joe,” he says. “That offer hasn’t expired, and it never will. It’s possible. It’s possible Godoy will trade back Joe for his own pride and ego. If that’s the case, we’ll take Joe off his hands. You and me.”

Bettina feels her heart filling with hope and gratitude. Surprise and relief. With other emotions, too, some contradictory or too muddled to decipher.

She pushes off the glider and joins him at the railing, turns and leans against it, facing what he’s facing.

“Whatever I say will sound so corny,” she says. “Thank you? I’m surprised at the depth of your loyalty? Holy crap, Batman?”

“Nothing corny about those. Except maybe...”

“I’m going to kiss you again but it’s going to be a long one. If you don’t, you know, faint or something.”

She takes his hand.

Bettina finishes thrice with Strickland. The first is quaky and electrical; the second like falling through clouds; the third makes time either slow down or speed up, she’s can’t tell which.

Breath and sweat, heart and muscle.

As she drifts toward sleep beside him, Bettina thinks that Strickland is, well, mantastic. Maybe a little mechanical, but sound mechanics indeed. He’s breathing deeply, not snoring but she can tell he’s out. She smiles into the pillow, qualm-less for now, her world going dark.

Before sunrise she roams the penthouse, turning on lights and touching Strickland’s things because they’re his things and he’s hers now, in some mysterious way she’s never experienced. Which makes her interested in what interests him, curious about what he likes.

What a cornball notion, she thinks: You are the corniest girl of all time. You have your own category, the CGOAT — as she runs a hand along the top of his still-gurgling coffee maker, a twelve-cup programmable Cuisinart.

She hears him down in the gym, clanking away on the weights to what sounds like an old Western movie soundtrack, all big-sky strings, timpani hoofbeats, and languid rivers of pedal steel guitar.

She catches him downstairs on the bench press, waits for his last grunting rep, then slaps a kiss on his hot wet forehead. He stands and wipes his face with his workout gloves and kisses her forehead back.

“Soon,” he says.

“Soon.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. One way or another we’ll find a way to get Joe back home.”

“Felix.”

Getting into her Jeep, Bettina calculates that she’ll be home in time to shower and change, and still make the Coastal Eddy offices by eight.

She feels lucky, confident, powerful. Because she knows that El Gordo is going to defy all odds and sell Felix back to her for a little money and a damned good story and video.

From hundreds of miles away, she can feel his acceptance starting to form in his mind, forged by her fire.

Bending to their wilds, hers and Strickland’s.

She’s halfway home, northbound on I-5, when her phone pings with a new notification: a message from Alejandro Godoy.

Bettina reads the message twice, trying to vet Godoy’s intentions and stay in her lane at eighty miles per hour.

She remembers his time-consuming caution while orchestrating his attempted purchase of Felix up in Moulton Meadows Park. All the waiting and changing of venues. All his crafty caution, turned to shit. Costing Joaquín Páez his life, Valeria Flores her freedom, and El Gordo his $200,000.

She can’t be sure, but Bettina thinks he’ll be more decisive this time around.

Speeding for home in the bumpy Jeep, Bettina tries to send El Gordo the same kind of psychic vibes she was sending out to him less than an hour ago. She pictures her thoughts as bright monarch butterflies crossing the skies by the tens of thousands. Tries to butterfly-bomb El Gordo all the way down in Sinaloa. Like the prayers she launched at God from Anza Methodist when she was small.

Her phone pings again just as she’s through her front door. Godoy:

She calls Jean Rose and says she needs a few days off. Promises to get the Rod Foster feature polished and the entertainment calendar updated for next week’s edition before she leaves. Tells Jean she’s going to bring her a story that will get picked up by every major news feed on the planet, and a video that will explode on the internet. Says Coastal Eddy will become a household name and she’ll probably be shortlisted for a Pulitzer.

“Bettina, the editor in me loves it when you talk like this,” Jean says. “But as a person, I tremble too.”

“Trust me.”

“I sense no choice.”

Throat tight and heart pounding, she calls Strickland, who answers on the first ring.