The Girl with the Golden Gun

When she would have run from Chito, he grabbed her hand and tugged her unwillingly behind him until they reached the compound. She thought he would take her to Tavio’s mansion in the middle of the compound. Instead he headed for the forbidden buildings that lined the north wall. Opening a door of one of the low dwellings, he threw her across the threshold. The tiny room was dark and dank and reeked of urine and feces and vomit.

He screwed a low wattage bulb into a socket. In its dim light she saw chairs, ropes, a cot, slop buckets, whips, handcuffs and electric cattle prods.

When she gasped, he grinned.

Did he intend to torture her, rape her? Had Tavio given her to Chito? With a cry, she turned to run.

Laughing, Chito slammed the door and barred her way.

“You run from Tavio,” Chito said, his thin smile chilling her, as he fingered the irregularly shaped bone fragments strung on a gold chain that Delia said came from Pablito’s skeleton, a fellow drug dealer Chito had shot for double-dealing and dragged behind his jeep in the desert for hours while he drank tequila. “Maybe you want me instead?” He leered at her.

“Go to hell!”

He laughed, but his black eyes were as cold as ice chips as he leaned down and placed a wedge of wood beneath the door. “Who are you, bitch? Who hid you in that airplane?”

When he lunged for her, she kicked him in the shin and then kneed him in the crotch.

He doubled over, grunting in pain. He tugged the knife loose from his boot. “Now Tavio will realize how dangerous you are.”

Adrenaline pumped through her as she raced for the door. He picked up a pair of handcuffs, shook them so they clinked and laughed at her when she pulled at the door and it didn’t budge.

“He has killed many for less, gringa. But you very sexy. I see why Tavio like you. If you are nice to me, maybe I put in a good word for you, so he don’t kill you. Now—who helped you?”

She hesitated and watched him warily, her gaze flicking to the white chunks of bone at his throat. He was small, only an inch taller than she was, but he was strong and muscular. He could kill her in an instant if he wanted to.

He had black hair and dark skin and a sullen mouth. He had a hair-trigger temper and suffered from paranoia. He didn’t get along easily with anybody. Not even Tavio. Delia frequently sported black eyes and bruises. Once Mia had asked her why she stayed with him.

Delia’s big brown eyes, which were always so sad and hungry had widened with a strange yearning. Then all the light had gone out of her thin, young face.

“You rich in America. Everybody rich. I see TV. Even the women. You don’t understand how it is down here. For women like me. Chito, he protect me. He don’t share me with nobody.”

“And that’s enough? Do you like him? Love him?”

“My father, he was worse. My older sister…she run away…to Ciudad Juarez.” She strangled on a sob as if there were some horrible end to that tale. “Chito, he help me. He give my family food and money. You lucky. Tavio, he protect you. You should be nice to Tavio.”

Suddenly Chito lunged for Mia, the lust in his eyes, his strength and the stench of his garlic breath bringing her cruelly back to the present. Catching her again even as she pummeled his thick chest, he dragged her screaming to the cot, where he threw her down. When she fell, her head struck a wooden bar on the cot, and she could only stare up at him in dazed confusion.

“Be still, or I will hurt you worse.” He smiled at her as he took his time unbuttoning his trousers.

She was struggling to sit up when the thick wooden door behind them crashed against the adobe wall. Suddenly Tavio was a black giant in the doorway, his legs widely spread apart. He twirled his golden gun idly.

Instantly the air grew even more charged with electric, hostile danger.

Sweat popping across his brow, Chito jumped back from the cot, his knife falling with a soft thud to the dirt floor.

Feeling like a trapped animal, Mia got up and hurled herself into Tavio’s arms and clung to him, shaking, even though he smelled of those awful crack-laced cigarettes.

“Why is your heart beating like a rabbit’s?” Tavio whispered against her ear, pressing her closer for a second. He turned toward Chito. “I told you to bring her to me. What are you two doing here?”

“Teaching her a lesson since you won’t.”

She scarcely dared draw a breath as the two men exchanged dark, dangerous looks.

“I will deal with you later for the trouble you cost me, Angelita. Go to your room,” Tavio said, releasing her in an instant. When she hesitated, his whisper grew vicious. “Go! Ahora!”

“Don’t kill him.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, woman!” Although his voice was soft, every word bit her, especially the last one.

And then to Chito he said, still in that soft, deadly tone as he knelt and retrieved the knife. “What were you doing with my woman alone—here? Why was she on that cot?” He began to curse and make crude sexual accusations that terrified her.

As she walked toward the door, she heard Chito’s shrill, raised yelps. Then Chito’s knife whizzed past her and hit the exact center of the door.

She gasped. Just like that—she could have had a blade in the back of her neck and been dead.

A slop bucket hit the wall, splashing its foul contents. Chito screamed that he wanted her punished.

“It is not for you to punish my woman.” Another bucket was knocked over, increasing the sewerlike stench. “I will punish her myself.”

Mia flinched.

“She knows too much. It’s dangerous. She tried to escape in Marco’s plane. We can’t trust her.”

“I never trust her before,” Tavio said. “So—she try to escape? So what? She is a gringa. A nobody.”

“Don’t be so sure. A traitor helped her. She will betray us. I can feel it. In my gut.”

“Let me do the thinking. With my brain.”

“You are married to my sister. This woman…”

“She has nothing to do with my marriage. Your sister is still my wife.”

“The men snicker behind your back. They say it is sick the way you follow her around like a lovesick dog. Like you have no balls, mano.”

“I will prove to you and to her that I have balls—tonight. I will take her. You can stand outside in the hall and listen to her screams. But first, I will teach you a lesson.”

She heard fists, blows, a life-and-death scuffle. Chairs were overturned. A body hit the ground. When gunshots exploded, and metal pinged, Mia pulled the knife out of the door and then ran all the way to her second-story bedroom. She went to her bathroom.

Setting the knife down, she stared at the wild woman in the mirror. Her face was still flushed from having gotten so overheated in the airplane and from her struggles with Chito. Her own sweat had plastered her hair to her skull. Not that she cared.

She was too afraid. If Chito came instead of Tavio, she would either stab him or herself. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her ever again.

Too upset to shower, she ran a shaky hand through her hair. The wet tangles just fell back in her eyes. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought against her rising fear.

For a long time she stood there, paralyzed. Finally Negra came up and rubbed her leg. Then the cat began to purr. Picking the animal up she returned to her bedroom and sat down on the bed where she began to stroke the cat’s soft fur. Doing so restored her a little. If only she knew where Julio lived, she would try to find him and warn him and tell him that he must flee.

For a while Negra endured her affection. Then as if sensing her nervousness, the independent creature sprang to the floor and curled up to sleep on a little rug under a chair. A door slammed downstairs and she heard Tavio shout to his men.