Mostly
Mojavedragonfly's fault for being far too good a pimp on the
crackvan comm. The rest of the blame falls, of course, on Robert
Rodriguez for being far too good at everything!
Grateful beta thanks go to Ms Anon and andmydog.
It took him five days to
track down Sands, and that was two more than he had thought.
The reluctance of anyone to talk at first surprised him. These people had no reason to hold any loyalty to an American, and especially not to an American like Sands. But El knew some people, and those people knew others, and as the word filtered through Culiacán that he was on no-one's payroll, that he was 'safe', the information he slowly pieced together began to make more sense.
It wasn't Sands the people were protecting. It was the boy.
The story he heard was deeply disturbing, enough to make him think his choices over. Sands was a man who created chaos around him and walked through unscathed, and to find that this time he had not made him wonder if Sands had lost his role, if the clarity of vision that held him distinct from madness had finally slipped.
But he had known chasing Sands was a gamble when the idea first came to him. This new information didn't change his odds of getting what he wanted, only the nature of the risk.
Something else lurked beneath his renewed decision too - the shifting of his curiosity. The temptation to see the man brought low stirred deep, rippling over his soul, undeniable.
Nine days after the Day of the Dead, he walked down one of so many side streets, a pale concrete dust blowing around his feet and settling on his boots.
The city looked almost normal here, far enough from anywhere of importance to have escaped the bullet holes and bloodstains of the centre. The appearance was superficial and defective - anyone with ears knew the quiet, the subdued nature of the place and its people, the effects of the failed coup stretching over a far greater area than eyes could tell.
The houses were all alike, but he knew the one he wanted. There was a lengthy pause after he knocked, the door opening slowly, cautiously, but that was true of many of the doors he had knocked on in the last few days.
A young boy looked up at him, wide eyes flicking back over his shoulder before he caught himself.
El hated this feeling - that he was now one of the men who frightened children.
"Señor?"
He didn't know if the boy even realised who he was hiding. It was better to keep it simple. "I'm looking for the American," he said.
"There's nobody else here. Just my family." It was boldly spoken, but the child was no liar. Even if El hadn't already known this was the place, it would have failed.
"Arroyo told me he's here," he said gently. He crouched down to level himself with the boy, eerily aware of the length of the street at his back, of the windows and the houses opposite. "I won't hurt him, or your family," he said. "I came to talk."
"Are you his friend?"
The urge to laugh was almost choking, strangling down past the tension tight in his throat. "I don't know him well," he said truthfully, "but I'm here to ask for his help."
The child studied him in sullen silence. "How do I know I you're not lying?" he asked finally.
El looked him in the eyes. "I'm not sure you can ever truly know when someone is lying. You can only believe." He took the gun from his visible holster slowly and placed it on the dusty sidewalk between them.
The soft quiet returned, the tense emptiness of the whole district.
"You don't talk like them," he decided eventually. El wondered how much contact this child had with 'them' simply through living in this place, to be so certain of that.
The boy moved aside and back, drawing the door open wider. A man stood in the room behind, gripping a fire iron, further sets of eyes staring from another doorway. El picked up his pistol and replaced it at his hip as he rose to his feet and stepped inside. "I meant what I said," he told the man.
The man watched him and didn't answer.
"Wait here," the boy said, and vanished into the back of the house, quick and noisy. Voices, too low for him to hear the words, the rapid high Spanish of the child, and then that unmistakeable English, soft and sharply angry. The exchanges snapped back and forth, the boy's voice shakier with each babbled sentence, then sudden loud footsteps.
The boy darted from the room, his eyes on the floor as he passed El.
Sands' voice followed after him, bright and drawling. "Well, hi, El. I guess you should come on in, since you've gone to all this trouble to visit."
The house smelled strongly of cheap tobacco, and beneath it the sharp almost-taste of antiseptics as he stepped forward. He'd noticed something low in his throat when he first entered, but it was only now that he could name it.
He supposed that was good. He hadn't dealt in injuries for the last two years.
It was a small room, with a bed against the opposite wall visible from the door. The bed was empty, and made up neatly. Sands sat in a heavy chair just beyond the foot of the bed, facing the doorway. He wore loose clothes obviously not his own, and deep bandages over his eyes.
His hands were spread flat across his knees, deliberately unarmed and unthreatening, the pose of a man who didn't want to get himself shot. El didn't trust that image, but it seemed Sands still had plans that involved staying alive, and that worked for El.
It was pointless to make the standard greetings, so he said nothing.
"Still not inclined to talk much, are you? I suppose that makes a pleasant change, since the kid rattles on non-stop all day unless I kick him out."
El shrugged. "I talk when there's something to say."
"Well, you've got something to say now or you wouldn't be here." His voice slurred and flattened into boredom. "Feel free to fill me in whenever you're ready, any time's convenient for me."
El had thought over the days exactly how he should phrase his demand, and had decided to keep it simple. "I want you to help me."
"Yeah, that's the same cracked up camel shit the kid said you fed him." The fingers of his left hand tightened on his knee, fabric wrinkling into scars around them. "Maybe you skipped over the newsflash, but I'm not the best choice of mariachi sidekick right now, seeing how I don't aim so well as I used to. And I never did learn the guitar."
"Unlike you, I don't ask men to shoot others." His words were fast, and not entirely true, but lying to Sands wasn't something he was going to consider a sin. "I've been doing that very well on my own for many years."
The corner of Sands' mouth quirked. "What, no friends wanted on your little quest?"
"I have friends," he said flatly. "You are not one of them."
"Glad to hear it, El, here I was worrying you might turn all sentimental on me. So what the fuck do you want? Because you hanging around here is going to bring the kind of attention I don't particularly need right now."
It was interesting, hearing that rising note creeping through as he spoke, the words spinning faster, watching him struggle on the edge of control. So different from the man who had delighted in shaking the ground beneath others.
"They didn't take your brain when they took your eyes," he said, deliberate and casual. Oh, yes, that got through, Sands' whole body locking rigid for one lingering instant before he forced it back. "You have information. And you know the people who can supply the information you lack."
Sands laughed abruptly, every sound of it clipped tight and blackened. "I hate to disappoint you, but I'm thinking my network of connections is going to turn out a little less extensive and a lot less cooperative than they were a week or so back."
El smiled, cold, instinctive, before he remembered it was wasted and it fell away. "I don't think those people ever cooperated out of love for you. I think you had ways of persuading them."
Sands grinned in turn, lips stretching out knife blade thin. "Either way, I've got jack shit reason to help you. You screwed up your end of the deal as much as anyone did."
"The President didn't deserve to die." He made it a simple statement of truth, no recrimination. "He believes in this country, in its people."
"Just like you do, yeah, that's real sweet, El, but if the fucker was dead, I'd still have a way back in."
He watched the man in the chair, the set of his face below the bandages, and he knew Sands didn't believe it either.
"You said it yourself, El, you've always done a great job finding people to kill without my help. You keep right on gunning down the bad guys and stay the fuck out of my way."
"My methods are slow," he admitted. "I'm forced to start with those at the bottom. You work from the top."
"Not any more. I'm done with this leaking piss-basin of a country. The only thing I'm giving a fuck about right now is keeping myself alive."
'I wouldn't want to be you. Tell me, is there anyone who doesn't want you dead?' It was interesting how much a week could change things. Sands had fallen from untouchable to marked, the same walking dead man he had claimed El to be.
And that was his way to get to Sands.
He drew in a breath, slow, deep, let it go as he looked away from the chair over to the window. "You know you have no more time here," he said. "There's been some feeling of loyalty since the people brought down Marquez' army, but that will end. They are talking to me now, and soon they will start to talk to others. Those who care more for money than for Mexicans will not lie low for long."
Sands didn't answer, the deep silence from the rest of the house more than obvious in the pause.
"Why did you let them bring you here?"
Sands pulled his lips in tight, a chalk line scratched over his teeth. "I didn't let anybody do anything, you brainless fuck, I passed out from bleeding all over the fucking street. And given how it felt when I woke up, I'm not about to wish it'd happened any different."
Three sharp knocks echoed loud over tile from the front of the house, and El snapped around, his hand at his shotgun, eyes sweeping through the room, the window behind him. He caught the sudden tension in Sands, part of his brain keeping track as he reached beneath his seat and produced a silenced M11. No real accuracy at any distance, but a machine pistol was a useful weapon for a blind man.
As long as that blind man didn't care who else he shot alongside his enemies.
"It's okay!" The boy stuck his head around the door - he'd been listening in all along, El knew - his face glowing with a wide smile. "It's only the doctor. He comes at the same time every day, so we know it's him, see?"
El swore quietly and turned back to Sands as the boy scampered off to get the door, but his anger checked when he saw that Sands had frozen, the muscles along his jaw bunched tight.
Sands had no way of knowing the time, and would have spent most of the last week heavily drugged. Or at least El hoped that he had.
Sands tipped his head at a slight angle to the doorway, the gun muzzle still pointed directly towards it at chest height. The boy's voice came from the front of the house, and then another belonging to an older man. Sands obviously recognised it, shiver-twitch through him as he relaxed fractionally. When the child came trotting back with only a single set of footsteps following, the M11 disappeared back beneath the seat just before the doctor reached the door.
"Good day, señor." He had the forced, cheerful greeting common among his kind, and Sands didn't answer. The doctor glanced over at El, a look of instant jagged suspicion that told him exactly what kind of clients this man was used to dealing with, before he switched all his attention wisely back to the inside of his bag.
Sands reached into the pocket of his shirt, drawing out a cigarette and a cheap plastic lighter that El very much doubted was his own. He put the cigarette to his lips, ran his fingers down to the tip, then back a couple of centimetres, holding it. His right hand brought the lighter up until it touched the end, lowered it slightly, then click and flame. The whole process had the smooth quality of a familiar ritual, and El imagined Sands had been working on lighting cigarettes since he became even half-lucid.
The doctor spoke little as he examined Sands, beyond the obligatory, "Does this hurt?" He rolled up his left sleeve, quickly checking and redressing the gunshot wound above his elbow. Sands smoked his way through the cigarette and largely ignored him. Twice he felt his way down the leg of the chair to the ashtray on the floor right beside it, tapping away the embers.
"You can fuck off now." The doctor blinked, startled, then realised Sands was talking to El.
El had no morbid curiosity about what was left of Sands' eyes. He'd seen more than enough of the things men did to others. "I'll be waiting outside."
He had no doubt that wasn't what Sands had intended.
The boy was still lurking by the doorway, and El gestured him through to the front of the house. He put his finger to his lips, and kept his own voice low. "Tell me, where is he hurt, besides the arm and his eyes?"
The boy looked at him with that same mulish expression he'd worn at the door, and El remembered that Sands had already snarled at him once for listening to him. He sighed, and lowered himself to the floor, sitting back against the wall. "He's a proud man, you know this." The child nodded once, solemn. "He won't tell me if I ask, because he hates to feel weak." He nodded again, looking ridiculously serious for a boy of his age, and El had to work not to smile. "But if I don't know, then I don't know how to help him."
He thought on that for a while. "He doesn't like you, señor."
"No, he doesn't." After what he'd overheard, there was no point in denying that. "But I don't think he likes anyone right now."
Reaction, immediate and beacon-bright. He'd suspected Sands wouldn't have made a pleasant houseguest, even before he arrived to worsen things.
The boy watched him a little longer before pointing to his own body, high on his left thigh and then above his right knee. That fitted with most of the stories El had heard over the last few days. "Thank you," he said, finally letting the smile show. "I won't tell."
The boy grinned back at him, suddenly looking the child he should be. "I won't tell either."
It was so simple, one of those ordinary moments common to so many children, and he had to look away, his smile gone.
The boy sat down beside him, matching his pose against the wall, his legs stretching across and not quite reaching the painted plaster opposite. He looked confused, uncertain again, and El simply waited.
"What will happen to him, señor?" His eyes were knotted on him, wide and pleading.
El paused, and considered. "When he is healed, he will most likely go back to his own country," he said.
The boy thought about that, and nodded. "That will be better," he said, and gave El a small, grateful smile.
It made him feel still more awkward. He was handling this badly. This child didn't deserve to be lied to, but he had done nothing to deserve having to face truth either.
If Sands hadn't contacted the CIA before now, it was because he knew he would be unwelcome. America was closed to him, and Mexico was death.
"Hey, kid, get back in here." Sands' voice carried along the hallway, a casual demand that irritated El. The boy scrambled to his feet instantly and raced off towards the bedroom.
El took it as his own cue to return, following more slowly.
The antiseptic smell was stronger now, and so was the smoke. The doctor was finishing redressing his face, carefully wrapping the bandages behind and above his ears. El could imagine what Sands would have said to anything that obscured his hearing.
He knew Sands knew he was there, but neither acknowledged the other.
"Get him to leave more of those pills, kid."
The discussion that followed was fast and animated, the doctor reluctant to give many painkillers to a patient with obvious potential for suicide, though he didn't say that last part openly. Sands lit another cigarette, growing impatient as the child made no progress. "For fuck's sake, just give him more money."
The boy started just briefly, then reached into his own pocket and carefully counted through the cash there. He seemed largely unaffected by Sands' anger when it wasn't aimed at him.
The doctor eyed the roll of notes the boy finally held out to him. "If you are determined," he said. He pushed the money inside his jacket before returning to his bag for the drugs. "The large bottle has the painkillers. Take two each time, no more than four times a day. The others are more antibiotics, one morning and night as before."
"Yeah, got it, thanks." Sands sounded distinctly bored. "See you tomorrow an' all that cozy cocksucking shit."
"Goodbye, señor." The doctor had lost the false cheery attitude of his arrival. Spending time with Sands seemed to have that effect on everyone.
"Go see him out, kid."
The boy was puzzled, looking from Sands to El and back. "Señor?"
Sands breathed out slowly, smoke streaming from his nose. "I mean, 'Fuck off.'"
He hesitated, obviously torn between wanting to stay and not annoying Sands, but he turned and left after the doctor, quick footsteps pattering through the building.
The front door opened, then closed with a definitive click, and the house sank back into its erratic silence.
Sands leaned forward, running his hand down the chair to crumple his cigarette into the ashtray. "Well, I guess you do have a point, El. This place probably won't be healthy for much longer." El had a moment's odd disorientation when he realised Sands had deliberately avoided using his label while the doctor was there. 'You can fuck off now.'
Sands was pushing himself to his feet, letting the weight settle onto his legs gradually. "So where do you want to start?"
"You're coming with me?" It wasn't what he'd expected. The change was too sudden, too eager.
"I don't seem to have many other offers coming my way right now," Sands said, his tone obsessively light. El felt like pointing out that he hadn't offered either, he had only demanded information. But he couldn't stay here, and it would take far too long to get facts from Sands if the man didn't want to give them.
"I assume you've got a car?" Sands asked.
"In the next street." He hadn't wanted to park outside the boy's house.
"Oh, yeah, that fits this whole fucking scenario real snug around the balls," Sands muttered. He leaned forwards slowly, right hand on the foot of the bed to steady himself, the other feeling beneath it and bringing out a bag. He opened it up while he rescued the pistol from the chair, and El made a point of seeing inside – a matching M11 and a pair of semi-automatics at least, all with holsters and clip belts.
Sands had collected his arsenal from Barillo's men, yes. That too fitted with some of what he had heard about the Day of the Dead, let him separate further layers of fact from the rumours.
He could have asked the boy for more, but he was reluctant to press the piece of trust he had been given. The child was naturally kind, and deserved better than to be used because of it. Sands had done that more than enough.
Sands threw a couple of shirts into the bag - presumably also borrowed, though with what he'd seen Sands wear before, it was hard to be sure - and lifted it. "Time to go," he announced, and stepped forward, his leg held stiff and unbending.
He reached out to take Sands' arm.
He jerked away the moment his fingers touched the fabric of his shirt, staggering back, barely keeping from falling as he grabbed at the chair. "Fuck off!" His voice was almost a shriek, crawling somewhere along the edges of panic, and El saw the instant wince as the man realised exactly how he sounded.
Sands steadied himself visibly, his breathing back under his control with just a few inhales. He'd kept hold of the bag through it all, clutching for support only with his injured arm, and El began to wonder if he might actually live a short while before the cartel got to him.
"I know my way round the fucking house," Sands said, low and furious. "I can still take a piss on my own."
"That's good to know," El said, deadpan. "I had no plans to help."
Sands snapped back into total control of himself, or close enough that El could no longer see where it blurred, still standing awkwardly but somehow casual with it. "Well, I can already tell this is going to be a truly marvellous little road trip - just think of all that caring and sharing to come." The words were drawn out slow to hang in the space between them with perfectly timed threat. He swapped the bag to his left hand, his right trailing along the wall as he walked carefully to the door. El wasn't sure if it was more for guidance or support.
The boy's parents stood in the entrance to the kitchen, saying nothing, their expressions dried and set in plaster. However much they did or didn't know about Sands, it was clear they didn't like him, or want him here. El had enough idea of what Sands' first days must have been like to feel real sympathy for them, and he wondered that the child had managed to persuade them at all.
He had, of course, reappeared at Sands' side as soon as Sands stepped from the room. Sands lifted his hand to touch his shoulder. "I need a hat," he said, "a big one, with a brim."
He looked up at him, his face stripped bare. "You're leaving?"
"Yeah, kiddo, and so are you. You got relatives somewhere else you can all go and stay with a while?"
The boy turned to his parents, translating into Spanish.
"No-one too close," El added. "Cousins or less, or just friends."
The two of them looked at one another, more resigned than surprised, and leaned together, discussing low and fast.
El wondered why Sands never spoke Spanish when he understood the language so easily. Probably he spoke it badly, heavily accented and flawed. Sands wouldn't allow himself to look less than perfectly in control - to attempt something and fail would be no part of the image he desired.
It was a good thing for Sands. If these people had been able to understand his words, he would have been thrown out days ago, despite the child.
"We have somewhere," the father said finally.
The boy looked up at him, a bright mix of curiosity and excitement. "Are we going to –"
"Shut up!" Sands' voice was pistol-fast and as instantly effective. "Don't tell us, you stupid fucking brat. You don't tell anyone, got that?" The boy's face crumbled into distress, and El wondered if Sands had any idea what he did to him when he spoke that way.
Probably he didn't care. He would see no reason to care.
"I'll get the hat for you," the child said, and El was surprised by how steady he held his voice.
He very much hoped he didn't intend to imitate Sands in other ways.
"Leave tonight," El told the father. "Or at least before this time tomorrow. Don't tell your neighbours. It's better if no-one sees you go."
The man exchanged a silent look with his wife, then nodded. "How long?" he asked. "How long do we stay away?"
"Months, or more," he said, his voice making the uncertainty clear. He looked past them to the three other children watching with identical wide eyes from the kitchen. "If it were my choice, I wouldn't come back here at all."
The mother's face bleached as she reached for her husband's hand, and El felt no regret.
He wouldn't want these people to learn the painful way that the passing of years did not make you safe. Only unprepared.
He locked his full attention back to Sands at the first distinctive scrape from that bag of weapons.
Sands stood with his shoulders against the wall as he drew out a gunbelt, double-checking the spare magazines were all in place. He fixed it around his waist, no hesitation with straps and buckles, his fingers running through it all automatically. He slid his hands down the holsters, feeling for the hem of that oversized shirt he wore to ensure the guns were hidden.
El knew he would have checked the guns earlier.
A door slammed, and the boy was back at his unchanging high speed, now carrying a cheap sombrero, as big across as half his height. He stopped in front of Sands, reached into his pocket for the rest of the money he had there, and touched the notes to the man's hand. "This is all of it that's left, señor."
Sands brushed his hand away. "Keep it," he said, impatient. "Did you get the hat?"
"Here." He gave it to Sands, smiling brightly. "I remembered Guiomar next door had one, I've seen him with it."
"You didn't steal it, did you?" Sands asked, his voice dark and dramatic.
"No! I paid him for it!" the boy insisted, then added sadly. "He made me pay too much."
"Well, kid, when you want something badly, that's just the way it works," Sands told him, adding a quick, closed-lipped smile. "You may as well learn it early." He slapped the hat on his head, and followed it with a pair of dark glasses. "How do I look?"
His hair hung forwards loose, obscuring the sides of his face. The hat was pulled down low, and what part of the bandage wasn't covered was heavily shadowed by the brim, and further hidden by the sunglasses.
He looked ridiculous, the worst kind of tourist idiot, but Sands had never concerned himself with such things. He was happy enough to use that image when it worked to his advantage.
"You look fine, señor," the boy insisted.
Sands' lips curled at the edges. "I kind of doubt that, but thanks for the vote, anyways."
He beamed up at him, the delight clear in his voice. "I'll come with you to the car."
"No, you won't, you'll stay here." Sands had lost that mocking glitter, entirely serious now. El had to agree - the child had been seen too much with Sands already. But he was pained still by that look of quiet devastation.
"Good luck, señor," the boy said, a little subdued now.
"Yeah, have a nice life, kid," Sands answered without turning his head, and El opened the door onto the street and stepped out.
He hesitated, wondering whether to try and guide Sands again. Indoors was one thing, but he wouldn't have been outside since he got here. "Get moving, beanbrain," Sands said, with pointed impatience. "I don't think we want to be standing around in the street waiting for everyone to get a good look. I can follow you to the car just fine."
The idea of walking even a short distance with a man like Sands at his back made his skin hitch and crawl all the way up to his neck. "I think I like you better where I can see you."
Sands' lips thinned, and El supposed that Sands would feel a lot easier if he could see him too. But that was Sands' problem to deal with, and El didn't care. "If I'm behind you, I know I'm not going to be walking into any window ledges or street signs, asshole."
That was logical. It didn't make El any happier. "Give me your guns."
"Are you going to be handing over yours?"
"No."
"I thought not. So fuck you."
Damn. They shouldn't stay right outside the boy's house like this, and this wasn't an argument he could win quickly. He tried to force himself to think like Sands, balancing the reasons he might want to kill him against the reasons he might not. Sands wasn't lying when he said that his options were few, and while El was his only route to somewhere safer, he should be fine. Sands could pull a gun on him, try to control where they went, but Sands wouldn't know if he cooperated or not, and wouldn't dare shoot him anyway. Not even in the leg, not if he wanted him to drive.
At least not until he knew they'd be in an automatic.
"This way," he said.
He made himself walk slowly. It wouldn't be a good plan to annoy Sands by moving too fast for him to keep up. He placed each foot deliberately, the sound of his boots on the sidewalk obvious in the quiet street.
His instincts screamed at him with every careful step, his senses straining backwards to keep track of the killer who followed him.
Sands quickly matched step with him, his right leg moving forward when El's did, the left with more hesitation and slide, the scrape of sole over stone. That bullet near the hip couldn't have been good. He kept the rhythm, though, recognising it as the only way to follow a man so closely without risk of tripping.
Over their footsteps, he could hear Sands breathing hard, but steady.
He cast frequent, trigger-light glances back over his shoulder, reluctant to keep his eyes off the man for long. Sands did nothing that even hinted suspicion, seeming to focus all his concentration on just listening and moving.
"Right," he said quietly, and made the turn at the side street. Sands stumbled as he twisted on his injured knee, harsh rattle from the bag, El jumping and spinning fast to see what he was doing.
Sands recovered himself, tight-lipped and pale, and readjusted to his steps.
El was wishing he'd parked closer. He didn't give a damn about Sands having to limp down the street, he just wanted to be rid of that creeping sensation up his spine.
He could see the car now, past the others in the row, closer with every slow, careful step.
If Sands had been going to shoot him, take him in the back with a silenced 9mm, that stumble at the corner would have been it, and he hadn't, so that meant he wouldn't.
Unless he would, and that had been planned to make him relax.
That wasn't going to be happening any time around this man.
"This one," he said, and Sands put his hand out to the left, touching the trunk of the car, following the line of the roof to the door, and down to the handle. El walked round to the driver's side, and the relief in just being able to watch Sands was stark as he unlocked it.
Sands opened his door when the lock clicked, his hand skimming the edge of the seat before he swung his bag into the back seat. It landed with an inelegant thump that made El glad his guitar case was upright behind his own seat.
"Fuck!" Sands had forgotten to allow for the sombrero as he climbed in, grabbing for it just before it was knocked into the street. He tugged it further onto his head, and eased himself slowly back into the passenger seat, shifting to get comfortable. "So, where are we going?"
"Isn't that for you to tell me?"
Sands stared ahead, and El could almost see the information ticking over his stilled face, facts and rumours he had gathered all through his time in Mexico shifting in priority.
He wasn't staring, of course, but El was unable to shake the impression the man gave.
"Lázaro Cárdenas," Sands stated finally.
"Lázaro Cárdenas?" Over a thousand kilometres along the coast, more than a day's drive.
Sands shrugged, then tensed. El could imagine how the pain of that simple movement would have shocked all through his arm. "We can go somewhere else if you like, but this arrangement isn't going to work too well if you don't listen when you ask."
El didn't bother arguing further, just started the engine and pulled out into the road. He wondered if there was any chance it was a coincidence, Sands directing him to a city named in honour of a Mexican president, but for now, the important thing was getting out of Culiacán. He had time along the way to get his explanations.
The street was cobbled, like many in the city, and El didn't drive it slowly. He saw Sands' jaw lock, his fingers clench white on the window handle, and he smiled a little. That was payback for how he had treated the boy.
Sometimes, a little justice felt as good as ever.
He took a left, and headed south.