Chapter 17
The Storm Breaks
Disclaimer: El and Sands are not mine. I am only borrowing them from their rightful creator and owner, Robert Rodriguez. Did you know, I read today an interview with him where he said only he and Antonio Banderas know El Mariachi's name. I hope one day one of them decides to enlighten us all. Or would that ruin the mystery?
Rating: R for language and violence.
Summary: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
Author's Note: This chapter contains shifting points of view. I really didn't want to do it this way, but I couldn't find another way to convey what I wanted. So whenever you see a **** to indicate a scene change, that may also mean a change in POV. When you get to Sands' POV, there is some overlap with the previous scene. I tried to be as clear as possible, but I apologize if anybody gets confused.
****
They were driving back to the house when El saw the kid.
He was half-running, half-staggering. The side of his face was covered in blood. El had seen enough gunshot wounds in his life to recognize the source of all that blood, and his heart began to pound with dread.
Chiclet looked up, saw the car coming, and waved his arms frantically. A second later, he stopped dead, swayed back and forth, then collapsed.
El slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a shuddering halt. He threw it in park, fought a mercifully brief struggle with his seat belt, and leapt out of the car.
He ran down the road, his hair whipping into his eyes from the rapidly increasing wind. The first raindrops pelted his face. His breath came in hot, panicky gasps.
Chiclet was dead.
His thoughts were a white, frozen blur. His brain could only process those three terrible words.
Something inside him let out a wail. Chiclet was dead!
El genuinely liked the boy. He was funny, a gifted mimic, and he had a pure heart. He had a steadying influence on Sands. Over the summer he had slowly, completely unconsciously, begun to draw the agent out of his hard shell, and teach him how to interact with people on a normal level. In just three months the boy had accomplished more than El could have hoped to achieve in a lifetime.
And he was a good guitar player.
He had his own guitar now. He kept it at the house, saying that if he brought it back to his home, one of his parents or many siblings would steal it from him and sell it for the money. El had nodded in understanding when he heard this. He had told Chiclet that the boy could keep the guitar in the living room, where he could come any time and play it.
Sands had actually bought the guitar, on one of his many trips to the market, shaming El by the gesture -- he felt he should have been the one to think of it. Sands had said nothing to El of his plans. He had just left one day, and come back with a proud, strangely shy little smile on his face and the guitar in his hand. "Look what I got for Chiclet."
El had smiled back. It was a good guitar, he could see that from where he was standing. Seeing it had reminded him of the boy from his own past, who had used a guitar to smuggle drugs so his father would have an easy life. "Can I try it?"
"No." Sands had scowled, and rotated his wrist so the guitar ended up half-hidden behind his back. "It's a good guitar, I can tell." He had given El a self-deprecating smirk. "Besides, no one in this town would dare sell me shoddy merchandise."
This much was true, El had to admit.
Chiclet was astonished when he received the present. He had thrown his arms about Sands' neck and hugged him, much to Sands' chagrin. He had immediately set about playing it, producing such a discordant noise on his first attempt that Sands had taken the guitar from him.
But the agent had been laughing. "That's not even a note, Chiclet."
El had been sitting nearby, watching all this with interest. But when he heard that, a crushing wave of grief had overcome him. He had gone outside, to stand alone on the porch. He was thinking about Carolina, and the first night they had spent together, how he had said the very same thing to her as she tried to help him play. Inside the house he heard Chiclet asking Sands why he had left.
In a surprising display of tact, Sands, who had known damn well why he had left, made up an excuse. Something about El's mariachi pride being offended at seeing a boy play such a fine instrument.
El had just bowed his head. He had walked outside because he had not wanted Chiclet to see him being sad.
Within the week the boy had been playing the guitar, and playing it well. He was a natural musician, and El enjoyed hearing him play. Recently he had begun to ask about the piano, it was so pretty, was it hard to learn, could you play both guitar and piano, that sort of thing. El had thought about ordering one and having it shipped to the house, its arrival timed to coincide with a day Chiclet was visiting. It would be worth the hassle and expense, just to see the look on the boy's face.
But there was not going to be a piano now. He skidded to a halt beside the boy's fallen form, and dropped to his knees. "Please," he whispered.
And to his astonishment, Chiclet stirred.
El slumped with relief. Until that very moment, he had truly believed the boy was dead. But the bullet had merely grazed the boy's forehead, he saw now. There was a lot of blood, as there was with all head wounds, but Chiclet was alive. In pain, and frightened, but very alive.
"Señor!" Chiclet grabbed at his arm. "La mujer Americana! Ella esta a su casa!" The American woman! She's at your house!
El felt the blood drain from his face. "Was she alone?"
"Sí," the boy said. "Señor Sands, he said to run and find you. He said to tell you that he was still standing."
El's heart contracted in his chest. If Sands and Belinda Harrison were alone at the house, then one of them was surely not still standing. "How long ago was this?"
"No se," the boy said. He gave El a miserable look, well aware that he had just failed to answer a crucial question.
El tried not to look angry. A lot depended on the answer to that question. If Belinda Harrison had just arrived, there might still be time to stop her. But if Chiclet had fallen unconscious for a while before running down the road, there was no telling how much time they had lost. And in a situation like this, even five minutes could make a difference.
Overhead, it thundered. Lightning strobed through the clouds. Lorenzo and Fideo came trotting up, worry on their faces. Lorenzo had drawn his gun. "Is he all right?"
"He's fine," El said. He reached out a hand and helped the boy sit up. Chiclet gasped with pain, and touched the wound on his forehead.
El pulled his hand down. "Don't," he said. "Let it bleed. It will clean the wound."
Chiclet nodded, his face screwed up with pain. He turned to look in the direction of the house. His dark eyes were filled with worry. "We have to hurry. Señor Sands was all alone with her. Ella esta loco."
"I know," El said. Belinda Harrison was insane. After today, he knew that beyond a doubt. "Come with us."
As he and Chiclet walked back to the car, it began to rain in earnest.
****
When they arrived at the house, El told Fideo to wait in the car with the boy. He took Lorenzo with him, and approached the house slowly, his gun drawn.
He could see nothing. There might have been a figure at the window as he pulled the car into the driveway, but if there had been, the person was gone now.
All was silent.
On the porch he found the first signs, the beginnings of the story. A bullet hole was in one of the steps leading up to the porch. Splinters of wood had sprayed outward from the hole.
There was blood on the railing above the stairs.
Sands' guitar was on the floor.
The front door was ajar. El motioned for Lorenzo to stay on the porch, and using the barrel of his pistol, slowly pushed the door open all the way.
The scene inside made the breath catch in his throat. He just stood there for a long moment, unable to believe what he was seeing.
A tall, blond man lay on his back in the middle of the floor. It took El a long moment to recognize him as one of the junior CIA agents, because half his face had been blown away. A long knife slash crossed his forearm, as though he had been cut while in the process of reaching out for something.
Belinda Harrison was sitting on the couch. She had been shot in the shoulder, and just below that was a deep stab wound. Her white shirt was a garish crimson on that side of her body. She was soaked in sweat, her blond hair plastered to her head. She was holding a gun on him. Sands' pistol was tucked in the waistband of her jeans.
Sands was standing near the window, looking for all the world as though he was staring out at the rain. He was covered in blood and gore, although El could tell most of it was not his. Blood rained to the carpet from a ragged hole in his left hand, and El felt a twinge of sympathetic pain in his own hand at the sight.
Behind him, Lorenzo stepped into the house, ready to back him up. When he saw Belinda Harrison, he raised his gun.
Without moving from her spot on the couch, she shot him four times. Lorenzo staggered backward, hit the doorframe, and collapsed.
Stunned, El stared at his dead friend. He looked back at Belinda Harrison. She still had not moved.
His hand tightened on his gun. His finger curled around the trigger. He meant to shoot her then, and finish this woman off once and for all.
"Hey, El," Sands said. He sounded slightly dazed, as though he was but a step away from fainting. He came toward El, and El suddenly saw that he was holding the scorpion dagger in his good hand. The blade dripped with blood.
El looked from Sands to Belinda Harrison and back. Outside, it thundered again, directly overhead. The entire house shook with the resulting echo.
The thunder rolled on endlessly. El felt the tremors of the house settle in his own body. Except for that trembling, he could not move. He felt weighted down with shock.
No, he thought. It can't be. After everything they had been through, for Sands to betray him now -- it wasn't possible.
"Why?" he managed. If Sands was going to kill him, he wanted to know why, first.
"Sorry about this," Sands said emotionlessly, and plunged the dagger into his chest.
****
The only interesting thing about this whole fuck-up was that it gave Sands a chance to really think hard about El, and how he felt about the mariachi.
He stood in front of the window, listening to the rain and the thunder, holding the scorpion dagger in his right hand, trying desperately not to think about the pain in his left hand. He felt cold all over, and he knew that blood loss was affecting him. A nagging hurt in his neck made him reach up. To his amazement, the needle was still there, from when Harrison had tried to drug him.
He pulled it out and dropped it to the floor. He leaned his forehead against the window, and tried to focus.
Last night he had wanted to kill El, but something had stopped him at the last minute. Now he was expected to kill the man, and he just didn't know how he felt about it.
As he usually did in times like this, he consulted the voice within. And for the first time in a very long time, it had nothing to say.
Sulking? he prodded.
It remained quiet.
And he realized that he was going to be allowed to think about this one rationally.
He was not ungrateful. He could hear Belinda Harrison behind him, occasionally groaning and shifting about on the couch. He had hurt her, and maybe even badly, but she was clearly still feeling well if she was moving around that much.
Don't think about her, asshole. Think about El.
Ah, there it was. The voice. His oldest companion. But that was all it said. Just that one mental nudge.
All right, all right. Think about El.
The problem was that he wasn't used to thinking about anyone except himself. He couldn't really put himself in El's shoes because they just didn't fit.
You don't know me, he had said to El, but here was the kicker. He didn't know El, either. They had spent all this time together, but it wasn't like they sat up at night talking about things mysterious and profound. He knew things about El, but he didn't really know the man.
"But I think," he whispered -- it helped him order his thoughts sometimes to speak them out loud -- "I want to."
Sometimes he hated El. Occasionally, although this happened with far less frequency these days, he felt slightly afraid of El. Most of the time he actually liked the mariachi.
And yes, once upon a time he had wanted to kill El. Ever since the day El had thrown him through the porch out back, dragged him out of the house, handcuffed him to the door handle and driven away with him, he had wanted to kill El. Because of El, he had lost control of his own life, and become nothing more than a supporting player in a drama he had always intended to watch from the safety of the sidelines.
Yet El was the first person he had ever wanted to kill, whom he had not killed. No one else had gotten so lucky. Always before, when he had made up his mind to kill, that person had died. No second chances, no last requests, no nothing. Just death. End of story.
Except for El.
He was hard pressed to explain it. At first, he had refrained from killing El because he had needed the mariachi alive. El had driven him all over Mexico in an effort to keep him ignorant, until finally he had confronted El in a hotel room, and forced the mariachi to stop lying to him.
After that things had changed. They had been more open, more honest. After that, he had not killed El because he was enjoying the chase. Hunting down the Escalante cartel had given him something to do, something to think about other than the terrifying darkness he lived in now. If he killed El, the hunt would end and he would be forced to think about his blindness, and that was something to be avoided at all costs.
The night before going down to Escalante's hacienda, he had sat under the stars and played guitar for El. For a few brief moments, he had been content. It had not mattered that he couldn't see, or that the chances of dying the next day were extremely good. It had been enough, that night, just to sit outside with a companion.
The next day, standing outside the courtyard of the hacienda, waiting for El's explosive to go off and start the slaughter, he had suddenly been struck by a thought. He had asked El once, Why did you take me with you? but he had not asked the more important question.
Why didn't you kill me when you found me at Ramirez's house?
He supposed he hadn't asked because he knew the answer already. He and El had many things in common – more than a man like El would want to admit – but there were large differences between them, too. The fact that El had not killed him was just one of those differences.
After the shoot-out with the cartel, his focus had become his own survival. No time to think about killing El.
Then, Puerto Vallarta.
He had seriously considered shooting El the morning after his breakdown. Not since childhood had he allowed anyone to witness such a humiliating loss of control. The fact that El was responsible for it made him even more determined to kill the mariachi.
But he had not. Understanding that his welcome was worn out, El had packed his things, taken his guitar case, and left.
And that was that.
Until spring, when he had encountered El at Ramirez's house yet again. Only this time, he had not felt any desire to kill the mariachi. None at all.
In fact, deep inside, in those secret places where he could rarely stand to do more than glimpse at what lay inside, he had been glad to see El again. He had missed the mariachi's brooding companionship.
The CIA was after them, and the chase was on again. Everything had happened so fast, but in Durango, it had all come to a head. In Durango, he had realized that he cared about El. That he did not want to lose the strange, violent friendship he had developed with the mariachi.
And El had come back for him. He had never known anyone who would have done such a thing for him.
He heard the car pull up outside. He took a quick step to his right, so he would not be in front of the window. A door slammed, then another. Footsteps hurried through the rain, two sets of them. He heard the clunking bootheel and knew the second person was Lorenzo.
And suddenly he knew what he had to do.
He stood very still as El and Lorenzo entered the house. He did nothing as Belinda Harrison shot Lorenzo.
When Lorenzo fell, he made his move. He began walking toward El.
And El let him come. He knew the mariachi was in shock, unable to understand what was happening. El did his best thinking on his feet, but this had rocked the man back on his heels, and left him incapable of thought.
"Hey, El," he said. He raised the dagger.
"Why?" El asked. He sounded utterly defeated.
That defeat pissed Sands off. He felt bad about the whole killing El thing, really he did. But it wasn't like he had a choice.
Besides, El ought to know better.
You don't know me, he had said, but El did. The mariachi had proved that often enough, never more so than last night.
I know you've spent all summer fighting your insanity, and it's killing you.
True. Very true.
But guess what, El? I'm not fighting it anymore.
And I've never felt better.
Surely El would know that he had no intention of joining someone like Belinda Harrison. If he were going to betray El, he would have done it long before now, back when they were still enemies. Before the confrontation in the hotel room, before he had forced the truth into their relationship. No, the time for betrayal had come and gone. That was an opportunity that wouldn't be coming round again.
Surely El would know that.
"Sorry about this," he said.
El stiffened beneath him as the knife sank into his chest. "Sands?" The mariachi sounded bewildered, his voice very small.
Behind them, Belinda Harrison started laughing.
"Shut up," Sands said. He let go of the dagger, leaving it in El's chest. Blood slimed his hand where he had held it. He didn't know anymore if that blood belonged to Harrison, Boston, El, or himself. He supposed it didn't matter.
He reached out and encountered El's arm. He followed the arm down, his fingers moving lightly – the touch of a blind man – and finding El's hand.
Finding El's gun.
He pulled the gun from El's hand with ease. He cocked it. "Say good-bye, El," he whispered.
With a low groan, El collapsed to the floor. On the couch, Belinda Harrison laughed louder. She clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, Sheldon, I wish you could have seen his face."
Sands turned around and calmly shot her.
Her laughter broke off in a gasp of shock and pain. "No!"
"I said, say good-bye, Bel." He walked toward the couch, the gun held high.
In his head, he heard their voices.
Barillo. Fortunately for you, you have only seen things.
He pulled the trigger.
Belinda Harrison, laughing as she dug her fingers into the empty place where his eye had been.
He pulled the trigger.
Barillo again. We must make sure that does not happen again.
He pulled the trigger.
Ajedrez. See something you like?
No. He would never see again. But he still had his imagination. And sometimes that was enough.
When he reached the couch, he stopped. "Are you dead yet?" he asked, keeping his voice low, soft. The way he had spoken to all those people he killed, just before pulling the trigger one last time.
She was dying, but she found the strength for one last defiance. "Barillo...was supposed to...kill you," she breathed.
Sands leaned down. "I know," he whispered. He pressed the muzzle of his gun to her face. Just below her eye. "But he didn't. You fucked up. Good-bye, Bel."
He pulled the trigger. Her whole body flew backward, slammed into the back of the couch, then slid slowly down to one side.
Sands dropped the gun into her lap, and turned around. "El."
The mariachi did not respond.
"El?"
A wave of sound roared into him, muting the world with a gray drone. His knees buckled and he fell. He slumped backward, sprawling against the couch so that Bel's left knee brushed his right shoulder.
"Talk to me," he pleaded.
But they were silent. All of the voices.
****
El watched as Sands killed Belinda Harrison. He had fallen with his head turned to the right, and he could see it all as it happened. He saw the uncomprehending shock on her face as she realized she had been betrayed. Only at the very last did she realize the magnitude of her error, of thinking she could get away with what she had done to Sands.
Because she had done it. He knew that now. It had taken three hours of searching her house, but he had found it. In a document pouch hidden inside a fake compartment in her bookcase, he had found the proof. A copy of a letter to Armando Barillo, dated July 2, 2003 -- four months before the Day of the Dead, and the attempted coup.
In the letter Belinda Harrison told Barillo about Sands. She gave Barillo his badge number, and urged him to check into the CIA agent's background. She warned Barillo that Sands knew about the coup, and was trying to stop it, but more importantly, that he was planning to steal the payoff money meant for General Marquez.
It was the badge number, El knew, that would have convinced Barillo of the letter's authenticity. Without that he would have dismissed it as a crackpot threat. But the badge number was serious. That was real.
So Barillo had set about finding out for sure. He had sent his daughter Ajedrez to find Sands and make him trust her. And when Ajedrez learned the plan, she had gone straight to her father and told him everything.
The only thing El could not figure out was why Barillo had not just killed Sands. He knew the man had been ruthless and cruel – blinding someone would have been just his kind of sick fun. But killing Sands would have been so much easier.
There were only two answers to this puzzle, and El Mariachi would never know which one was right. Either Ajedrez had suggested they just remove Sands' eyes, or Belinda Harrison had. Whoever's idea it had been, Barillo had listened to it.
El shuddered.
The movement sent a bolt of pain through him, and he gasped. He had been lying there, so still, lost in a daze, but now the world suddenly came back to him with startling clarity. And everything was very quiet, he realized.
Belinda Harrison was dead. She had fallen face-forward onto the couch cushions. Blood spattered the wall and cushions behind her.
Sands was sitting on the floor, his back against the couch, one leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out. His left hand rested in his lap. He was bleeding very badly. He seemed conscious, but it was hard to tell.
Footsteps sounded to his left, running up the porch steps. El turned his head so he could look out the open front door. Doing so brought the hilt of the scorpion dagger into focus, and he felt sick to his stomach at the sight.
Worse, seeing the dagger made the pain in his chest flare to life. He gasped, arching slightly with the hurt.
The pain was terrible -- but he would live. Sands had stabbed him high enough to miss his heart or his lungs. The dagger was buried in the fleshy part of his upper chest, a painful injury, but not a life-threatening one. The stabbing had been necessary, he understood now, so Belinda Harrison would think Sands was on her side.
It still hurt like hell, though.
Fideo stopped dead in the doorway. He stared down at Lorenzo's body, grief twisting his features. "Oh my God."
Chiclet stood behind him. The boy obviously wanted to run into the house, but he held himself back. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, and Fideo had cleaned him up some, so he looked much better. Still hurting, but better.
"It's all right," El said wearily. He tried to sit up, failed miserably, and tried again. His breath caught on a low groan, but this time he made it. He pushed with his feet and his elbows, scooting backward across the carpet until he could lean against the armchair that had been Ramirez's favorite. "It's over with."
Over by the couch, Sands lifted his head. "El?"
There was no mistaking the relief in his voice. El wondered if that relief was due to the fact that he was still alive. Did he think he killed me?
"El?"
He said the first thing that popped into his head. "I'm still standing."
Sands sighed. His shoulders slumped. He thought he killed me, El realized with some amazement. He really did, and it upset him. I'll be damned.
Immediately he was ashamed of himself for thinking that way. The man slumped against his couch was not the same man who had reveled in the chaos of a coup d'etat. Sands had changed so much since that day that sometimes El barely recognized him.
He felt sorry for Sands. The man was psychotic, but something had made him that way. He was capable of surprising flashes of humanity, just enough to keep El hoping that maybe one day Sands would be able to conquer his madness. The battle he had fought all summer was just one more reason for that hope. Any man who could try to overcome his insanity was not a man to give up on.
"What happened here?" Fideo whispered. He knelt down beside Lorenzo, and touched his friend's face.
"El." Sands ignored Fideo completely. "The kid." He stopped, and swallowed convulsively. He laid his head back on the couch cushions. "She shot him. Chiclet. I couldn't stop her. He's dead. I'm so sorry." His shoulders hitched, and El suspected that if it was possible, Sands would be crying right now.
It was cruel to keep silent. But this was not his revelation to make. He glanced outside and saw Chiclet standing in the doorway. The boy's eyes were huge in his face as he stared at the carnage in the living room.
El beckoned him inside. He pointed to Sands.
And Chiclet did not hesitate. He came running forward. "Señor!"
Sands sat bolt upright. "Chiclet?" he said in disbelief. "Oh my Christ. I thought she killed you."
The boy skidded to a stop in front of Sands. He seemed unsure what to do next. "No," he said with simple childish honestly. "She just shot me." His eyes filled with tears when he saw the ruin of Sands' left hand. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, I'll be just peachy," Sands sighed.
"I was so worried about you." Chiclet threw his arms around Sands' neck.
And Sands, after only a moment's hesitation, returned that hug with all his strength.
****