Secrets and Lies
Chapter 1
A Rude Awakening
Disclaimer: The only things I own regarding OUATIM are the DVD, the score, and a poster. I'm not making anything off this fic, so if you are a lawyer, please keep on going. Nothing to see here.
Feedback: Is always welcome.
Author's Note: Like most fics I write, I have only a vague outline for this story. Where it goes is completely up to the characters. The only thing I know for certain is that it's going to be an interesting ride. So let's get going.
The cantina was crowded, even for a Saturday night. El had to be careful as he wove his way among the tables. Women who smiled at him now would get really pissed off if he bumped into them and knocked over their drinks. And then the tips wouldn't be so great, and the manager would yell at him and threaten his job. So all in all, it was a good idea to pay attention to where he was going.
He smiled down at a young woman who was staring at him with a glazed combination of lust and tequila. He allowed his steps to slow so he could look her in the eye as he sang a few lines. The woman flushed and giggled, but did not once break the eye contact.
El gave her a half-bow and moved on. He was very good at picking out which members of the audience wanted a more intimate connection, and which ones were there only because they had nowhere else to be. Over the past few months, he had learned to recognize the repeat customers, and he was even on friendly terms with some of them. Most of the people who came to the cantina, however, were simply anonymous faces.
The song he was playing had been Carolina's favorite. Once it would have hurt him terribly to hear the music again. To sing it in front of strangers would have been unconceivable. But that had been before Marquez and the coup. Now he sang the song every Friday and Saturday night, and the ache in his chest was barely noticeable.
He supposed that was what three years could do for you. As the cliché went, time apparently did heal all wounds.
He passed a table full of smoking businessmen without slowing down. The stage was many steps behind him now, and he needed to head back soon if he was to be under the spotlight for the big finale.
Yet he found himself stopping behind the table with the businessmen. The cantina was dark and it was hard to see through the smoke hanging in the air, but he suddenly thought he had just seen a familiar face.
There. In the back corner.
Damn. Time had run out. He had to turn back. Quickly he pivoted on one foot and headed back for the stage. He leaped up the stairs and stepped out under the spotlight, still singing. A few more notes, and the song ended.
The audience applauded. El smiled and bowed, accepting their praise.
But his eyes remained on the figure in the corner.
There were only two songs remaining in his set. He began the first one, obscurely grateful that it was an upbeat number. The faster tempo allowed him to pace the stage without anyone being the wiser – they all thought he was having a good time. In truth, however, he was nervous as hell. He sang loudly and smiled at the women, but his attention was on the man sitting in the corner.
The audience clapped appreciatively. El spoke into the microphone. "This is for all the ladies. Good night."
The final song seemed to last forever. When it was finished at last, he bowed one more time, then went backstage, hurrying down the steps. He armed the sweat from his forehead and dodged the compliments of the staff who were there waiting for him. He knew he had performed well tonight. Of course he had. The cantina was small, but his reputation was well known. People came from miles all around in order to hear him sing.
Usually he hung around backstage for a while, waiting for the audience to disperse. Most of the older people left when he had finished his set; the late evening belonged to the young people of the town and their own breed of music. Tonight, however, he hastened to re-enter the cantina.
Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had left the stage, but already the cantina had morphed into a different place. Pounding rock music now filled the room. Young people danced and swayed on the floor. The lights were even dimmer than before. A haze of smoke hung over the tables.
Several people tried to stop him as he made his way through the room. He smiled vaguely at them all, but did not stop to talk.
The man in the corner was alone. He was dressed in black, and despite the poor lighting, he wore sunglasses. A glass half-filled with soft amber liquid sat beside his left hand. As El watched, he raised the glass to his mouth and drank, then set it down again.
El could hardly believe it. Three years had passed. He had allowed himself to believe that the events of the coup were far behind him. He had allowed himself to think he was finally safe.
He saw now how wrong he had been.
He walked right up to the table, deliberately bumping it with his hip. The man in black did not move, or otherwise acknowledge his presence. His right hand was in his lap, hidden from sight, El noticed.
He sat down in the chair opposite the one currently in use. "Sands."
The CIA officer smiled thinly. "El." He raised his glass in a toast. "Fancy meeting you here."
"What are you doing here?" El demanded. He did not like being unable to see Sands' right hand. More worrying was the fact that Sands was even here at all. What did the man want? What kind of crazy scheme did he have in mind now? Had he come to ask for El's help yet again?
"Well, that's very simple," Sands drawled. He knocked back the last of his drink. "I'm here to kill you."
El blinked. He told himself that he shouldn't really be surprised. After all, why else would Sands be here?
Nonetheless, the words came as a nasty shock. The attempted coup was in the past, dead and buried. He had a life now. He was not a killer anymore. He was only a mariachi, as he had always wanted to be. It was not fair that Sands should find him now and take away his hard-won peace.
"Why?" he managed.
"Well, why not?" Sands grinned. He reached up and took off his sunglasses. El stared into his dark eyes, eyes very much like his own, he realized with some shock, except that Sands' eyes were completely devoid of even the concept of pity.
"Bang," Sands whispered, and pulled the trigger.
And right on cue, El woke up.
He sat up with a groan, wincing slightly as he pressed his hand to his lower back. It was a quarter to six, and the alarm clock was set to go off in fifteen minutes. He slapped at it, turning it off. No sense in trying to go back to sleep now.
Rubbing his chin, he rose naked from the bed. He yawned and stretched, wincing again at the ache in his back. He felt tired and unrested. After three years he was tired of dreaming the same dream, or variations thereof. Some nights it was Cucuy who came to kill him. Sometimes it was Armando Barillo. Often it was Marquez. But most of the time, for reasons he could not fathom, it was Sands.
He walked over to the window and yanked open the heavy drapes. Bright September sunlight streamed into the room, and he blinked under the onslaught. Like the recurring dream, here was another thing that he could not bring himself to accept. It still felt strange to sleep during the day and work at night.
He walked into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the shower. The dream had made him feel unsettled, like his skin didn't fit right. He was glad he had woken up fifteen minutes early. He planned to spend the extra time standing under a long, hot shower.
Forty-five minutes later, he was walking into the cantina. He didn't own a car. He liked the simple exercise of walking to work. The sun was only starting to think about setting, and wavy heatlines rose from the pavement. His black mariachi outfit was uncomfortably warm, so that the cool air inside the cantina was very welcome.
A few people hailed him as he entered through the back door, but not many. Most did not even know his name. He was just the mariachi who played on the weekends. When his set was over, and during the rest of the week, he was just the bouncer.
It was better that way, he had decided long ago. The fewer people who knew his name, the easier it would be to slip away in the middle of the night. He was under no illusions. They had found him once before. They could find him again. But this time he would not make the same mistakes. He allowed himself no attachments, no friends, no one who could be hurt because of him. He did his job here and he was good, and that was all that mattered.
Or so he told himself. Lying awake in bed, huddled under the covers to block out the noon sun, he was forced to be honest himself. And the simple truth was that the years since the attempted coup had been very lonely ones. He enjoyed being a mariachi again, but he had no friends. He performed alone every night. Quino and Campa were long dead. And after the coup he had parted ways with Fideo and Lorenzo and asked them not to try and find him. He did not even know where they were, these days. They might be in the same little town he had found them in. Or they might be in Los Angeles.
And there had been no women. Not even a messy fuck in a nameless hotel. He held Carolina's memory sacred in his mind. He would not be untrue to her. There would never be another for him.
Alone in his dressing room – which was the size of a very small closet – he stared into the mirror, wondering about the man he saw in the glass. That man wore an outfit with glittering silver chains and a red cummerbund. That man had dark hair down to his shoulders. That man had bottomless eyes.
It was those eyes that disturbed El the most. He was not sure when it had happened, this slow drifting from reality. The image staring back at him looked like half a man, albeit a well-dressed one. But when exactly had the man in the mirror become a ghost?
He almost preferred not to know. It was simpler that way.
Tonight the cantina was full. It was Saturday, and the young people of the town were eager to spend their money and dance with total strangers they would later take into their beds. El had nothing in common with them. He had never been as carefree as they were. He had never spent money as freely as they did. He had never slept with a woman one night, and then come back for her friend the next night.
Nonetheless, the young people and their money kept the cantina in business. Their patronage meant the manager could pay El to stand on stage two nights a week and sing his mariachi songs, to the amusement of that younger generation. Some nights they jeered at him and his traditional music. Other nights they seemed in a happier mood, and they smiled and clapped eagerly.
Tonight was one of the good nights. Within moments of stepping onstage, he had them right where he wanted them. They clapped along with the opening song, stomping their boots and singing the chorus with him. Cancíon del Mariachi was a crowd-pleaser, and singing it made El feel good. The song reminded him of simpler days, when he had truly been nothing but a mariachi.
The ringing notes of the song had just died away when he realized that his days of dreaming had come to an end.
Seated in the back corner, almost hidden by smoke and the dim lighting, was a solitary figure.
He bowed in response to the audience applause, but he kept his eyes on the figure in the back. He told himself not to be stupid, but he knew deep in his heart that the man was here for him.
He always walked among the audience, although usually not until halfway through the set. Tonight he fought the urge to go wandering earlier, just so he could see the man in the corner more clearly. He was not allowed to show any signs of nervousness. If he broke from routine now, the man in the corner would know, and then things might get real ugly, real fast.
It was not easy, though. El had performed in front of drunken crowds before, American hecklers, and a busload of Japanese tourists with their cameras. All of that paled in comparison to tonight's show. Standing still on the stage and singing about lost love while the man in the corner stared at him was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
At last he reached the point in the show when he could walk around. He gripped his guitar tightly, wishing vainly that he was armed. He had mentioned once to the manager that it might be a good joke for him to walk onto the stage wearing two pistols. The manager had given him the blank stare of one who lacked even a rudimentary sense of humor, and El had never brought it up again.
Right now he would settle for a nice knife, he thought wistfully. Anything sharp. Anything at all, in fact. Just something to heft in his hand. Something to make him feel slightly better about the unnerving stare coming from that back corner.
He worked his way through the crowd, avoiding the waitresses with their trays of beer bottles, and the grasping hands of the young girls. He could see the man in the corner a little better now.
The man was not big, which meant it was not Cucuy. He wore sunglasses and dark clothing. He was smoking, but he had no ashtray, and he was letting the ashes fall carelessly onto the floor. In fact, his table was completely bare; no bottle or glass marred the clean surface. Even the centerpiece was gone, although El could not guess where it had disappeared to.
He had gone as far as he could. It was time to return to the stage and finish the song. Reluctantly El turned his back on the man who would not stop staring at him, and headed back for the spotlight.
When the set was over, he lingered awhile in his dressing room before going out. The walls shook with a heavy bass beat. Out in the cantina the rock and roll would be nearly deafening, but back here it was nothing but muffled noise. El stared hard at his reflection and allowed his eyes to drop to the bulge on his hip.
Except when he was onstage, he was always armed.
Not that he had ever needed the gun here. No one entered his room without his permission. Even the manager gave him some space. After all, he was the best bouncer the cantina had ever had, and he brought in business every night. Occasionally he had to use his fists on a particularly rough or drunken customer, but those times were rare. He had never had to resort to the gun.
Yet he had always known he would need it. Even before the dreams had begun, he had known. He had said farewell to Fideo and Lorenzo on a dusty highway outside Culiacan, but he had known that it was not over. He was El Mariachi. For him, it would never be over.
He sighed and raked the hair out of his eyes. Time to go meet his accuser. He hoped he could send the man on his way with a minimum of fuss, but he had to admit that it did not seem likely.
The cantina was darker than before. Smoke fogged the air. El grimaced and waved a hand in front of his face. Music thumped in his chest. A few women tried to dance with him as he walked past, but he ignored them all.
The man in the corner had not moved. He had finished his cigarette, but he had not ordered a drink, or any food. He just sat there, calmly waiting. Expecting his visitor.
El walked straight up to the table and sat down in the lone empty chair. "Sands."
The man smiled, a ghostly echo of his dream. "El Mariachi. What's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?"
"What are you doing here?" His heart was racing. After three years of dreaming of this moment, it had finally arrived. Someone had finally come to kill him.
Sands sat his chair casually, turned slightly sideways. His right hand was hidden, just like it always was in the dream. The sunglasses obscured his eyes, making it hard for El to tell just what he was thinking.
"Well, I heard a rumor you were here in town for a few sold-out shows, and I just had to see for myself if it was true." Sands smirked. "Whaddaya know. It looks like the grapevine got one right for a change."
The words sent a chill spike into El's gut. If rumors were flying, then it was only a matter of time before they found him.
Suddenly feeling ill, he looked wildly around the cantina. Maybe they were already here. Maybe Sands was the diversion, and by sitting here he had allowed them to surround him.
However, it did not take long to ascertain that Sands had come alone. More confident now, El tapped his fingers on the scarred tabletop. "So why tell me?"
"Oh, well, see, that's where it gets a little dicey," Sands said. "For an answer to your question – and to all your questions – I suggest you come with me." His voice was light and oddly modulated. It was the voice of someone with questionable sanity, El now knew.
He had never forgotten that meeting at the cantina in Culiacan. Of all the things that had happened to him over the years, his encounter with Sands was one of the strangest. Now it was happening all over again. Sands wanted to lead him by the nose and he wanted nothing to do with the man. "I am not going anywhere," he said. "I have a job to do. Already I am late." He started to stand up.
"El the bouncer," Sands said. He managed to make the three words sound pornographic. "So how's that going? You enjoy sending underage kids back home until they can get a real fake ID?"
El refused to rise to the bait. "You know," he said, "it is my right to throw anyone out, if I think they are causing trouble."
Sands' smile grew even thinner. "Why El – I can still call you that, can't I? – I never knew you were so vulgar. Threatening an innocent man and all."
"You were never innocent," El growled. He would never forgive Sands for his involvement with the coup, and the horrible events of that day.
"Well, that's questionable," Sands said. He sat back in his chair. "However, right now I don't have the time to discuss it. And neither do you." The dry click of a gun being cocked was perfectly audible over the pounding music and shouting voices of the dancers. "Why don't we take a walk?"
"Now who is making threats?" El glanced about, looking for help. No one caught his eye, however. As always, he was alone in this. He scowled at Sands, hoping the man did not realize this. With any luck, Sands would think everyone who worked at the cantina was his close buddy, ready and willing to defend him to the death. "You know I am not going anywhere with you."
"I kinda thought you would say that," Sands replied. He sounded thoughtful. "It's a shame, really. Now we have to do it the hard way." He shook his head, making a "tsk tsk" noise. "Just look at all the innocent people in here. Why, some of them might even accidentally bump into one of my bullets."
Cold fury choked El's next words. He could not say anything. He could only sit here. He could not endanger the people in the cantina. They did not deserve to be dragged into his mess. They had done nothing wrong.
"I'm not much for moonlit walks," he said, trying to sound as flippant as Sands, and failing miserably.
To his surprise, Sands found this amusing. "Neither am I, El. Neither am I." He stood up in one fluid motion. The gun had vanished, a temporary situation, El knew.
He decided that he might as well get this over with. He rose to his feet. "After you."
Sands did not even bother to reply. He simply set off, pushing through the sweat-slicked dancers, uncaring who he bumped or whose foot he trod on. El followed close behind, hoping that anyone who even bothered to notice them would think he was merely escorting another unruly patron outside.
It occurred to him that he could shoot Sands in the back now, and rid the world of a very dangerous threat. But if he did that, the cantina would erupt in panic. People would be hurt trying to flee the gunshots. And Sands was a survivor. There was every chance that he would not be killed right away, and that in his enraged response, he would gun down as many innocents as he could before El finished the job. No, it was safer to wait until they got outside.
Unsurprisingly, Sands headed for the back door. El pursed his lips. Of course. He should have known. Men like Sands never used the front door. No, I'll shoot the cook. My car's parked out back anyway.
They went through the steam-filled kitchen. A few employees looked up with dull curiosity, then returned to their work. In the doorway, Sands paused. "Go on," he said.
"So you can shoot me in the back," El grouched, sorry now that he had let his one chance slip away.
Sands shook his head. "Not my style."
El was not convinced, but he could not see that he had any other choice. Clenching his jaw to hold back his anger, he pushed open the back door and stepped out into the night.
The sun had set, and full dark had descended. Stars glittered overhead. The night smelled of smoke and music. El breathed deep, then spun around, his hand plunging downward, reaching for his weapon.
Too late. Sands already had the gun out again. Just one twitch of his finger, and it was over. "Now, El. You see that car parked over by the dumpsters? Get in. We're going for a ride."