Chapter Fourteen
Aftermath
Delgado turned to El. "Lock him back up," he said with a glare.
In short order, El found himself alone. It felt odd, after what had just happened. Delgado had promised punishment, but had not delivered. Yet.
The room had very little space for angry pacing, so El kicked Sands's bed viciously. He went through every curse he could think of to lay on the man's head, and, because he could, he yelled them all out loud.
When the door opened again, three guards had their automatics leveled at the door. They stood well apart from each other, covering the entrance from every direction. The man opening the door shoved Sands in and stood back swiftly.
"You put him in here, and I'll kill him!" El yelled.
"Not a good idea, Pendejo," someone responded. "You killed Gomez. You make any more trouble, just remember, we're not on your side. He's worth more to us than you are. So far."
They slammed and locked the door.
Sands stood just inside the door, holding a paper bag. "They're a little hard on your self-esteem around here, aren't they?" he said.
Very deliberately, El took the bag from him and threw it aside. He then grabbed Sands by the throat and upper arm and hauled him around to where he could press him up against the wall. Sands did not resist. He seemed to weigh very little.
El squeezed very hard. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you," he snarled, and pulled Sands's head forward so he could bang it back again.
"Well," Sands coughed, and El released his grasp just enough to hear what the hijo de puta had to say.
"No, I've got nothing." Sands smiled ruefully. "You probably should."
El pulled his whole limp body forward and slammed it back again, for the satisfaction. Then he did it again.
"Except," Sands said between the blows.
"Yes?" Slam.
"You're not a murderer." Slam.
This brought a short bark of almost laughter from El. "Oh no?" he asked, and released him.
Sands caught himself, so he didn't slide to the floor. He lifted a hesitant hand to his throat. "You're one of the white hats." He coughed. "You don't kill men who are no threat to you."
"I kill men for revenge," El snarled into Sands's face.
"Yeah, you have got just a little bit of a point there, I'll grant you." The words were flippant, but his tone sounded tired. "All right." Sands took off his glasses, which made El, to his annoyance, recoil from his face. "Go ahead."
"Go ahead and kill you?" sneered El, but he was covering his discomfort. The ghastly holes in Sands's head made him seem both inhuman, and paradoxically, extremely vulnerable.
"Might as well," Sands said, as if they were discussing what to have for dinner. "It's a shame to waste this high, though. I don't suppose you'd consider waiting until the next time Delgado withholds my junk?"
El was silent for a long moment, regarding Sands. The blind man must have wondered what El was doing, but he showed no sign of anxiety. It was hard to read expression on that ruined face, but El thought he looked resigned.
El's question surprised himself. "Are you high? You don't act it."
A slight tremor went through Sands, but otherwise, nothing changed. "Are you going to kill me or not?"
"I guess not," El said, as they tossed life and death between them like a football. "Are you going to answer my question?"
Sands shrugged and sank onto his bed. He put on his dark glasses. "It could be better. They only gave me enough to keep me from screaming." He started to stretch out on the bed, and encountered the paper bag. He pulled it out from behind him and threw it, again with eerie accuracy, to El. "Here. Food. They want you healthy."
The bag smelled of beef and cooked beans, but El was more concerned about keeping an eye on his roommate than he was interested in food. The two of them had genuinely tried to kill each other not an hour ago. He hated the man with a pure passion. He could be free by now - free without having worked for a cartel. Lorenzo and Maria could be safe - no more blood of friends on his hands.
He watched Sands lie slowly onto the bed, as if he were getting into a hot bath. Once he was lying down, Sands stretched and squirmed, still in slow motion, almost sensuously. Where, before, he had looked like he desperately wanted out of his own skin, now he appeared to be luxuriating in it. He sighed small contented sounds. El knew those sounds. They were the sounds of relief from pain.
El leaned back on his own bed, wearily taking stock. He was still alive, a condition which often surprised him, considering the risks he was willing to take in a fight. Physically he was much better. Maria was all right, and was safely away from Sands. He had diminished Delgado's army by one, and he no longer had to share his cell with a man in agony. This last, he admitted to himself, was an immense relief. No matter how much he hated the man, El had never been good at ignoring another's pain. Causing it, yes: but not at ignoring it.
You're not a murderer. What a thing to say. Of course he was. Just ask his confessor.
Sands hummed a tuneless series of notes. Over and over.
El needed to make him stop.
"What is that?" he asked. "What you are singing."
"Marco," said Sands, and returned to humming.
El shook his head. The man was out of it, now.
"Boy, those guys would give their eyeteeth to know where Delgado is getting his stuff," rambled Sands. "What are eyeteeth, anyway? Eyes don't have teeth. Maybe my eyes are off biting someone somewhere. I hope so." He returned to humming the tuneless tune.
"Sands."
"El."
"What will I find tomorrow in Villahermosa?"
"I hope to Christ you find my cocaine shipment. 'Cause if you don't, Delgado will be fucking stingy with his shit." He hummed some more.
Biting back impatience, El asked, "Where is this cache? How is it guarded?"
"Oh yeah, that. I don't really know, you know? It's out in the boondocks, some isolated building. You know, the kind the kids find when they're playing, and they think it would make a cool hideout, but when they get closer they see the wires and some cartel goon waves them off. So everyone local knows what it is, but no one talks about it. Just the kids warning each other to stay the hell away."
"You have seen this?"
"Hah. Very funny." Sands hummed that damned sequence of notes some more.
"Sands." El spoke like he would to recapture a child's attention. "Have you been there?"
"No way. I don't give a fuck about the Orozcos. They're small-time. It's all in the briefs. Guess I won't be reading any briefs anymore."
Sands almost sounded rational. El shook his head. Only a psycho like Sands would be more in his right mind when he was hopped up on dope.
And he obviously didn't stop thinking. "It wouldn't be hard to figure out where the crops are, once you know to look where it's cold," Sands said, "Just find huge acreages owned by Delgado or his friends high in the mountains somewhere." Sands rambled, in between repeats of a tune of thirteen notes that was really starting to get on El's nerves.
El opened the bag and started eating. "So you are planning the ruin of the Delgado cartel?"
"Shit, no. I plan ways to make myself valuable to them. With my help they've just about got a lock on the South, and that means most of the supply lines to Colombia. Hell, my help has given them the reputation of being real bad-asses - like they have some magic legendary gunfighter."
"That is why you came for me."
Sands didn't reply; he just hummed.
"Wouldn't you rather see them all in flames?"
"In flames, El? How poetic. You are an artist. Listen, don't you pay no mind to the crap I was spewing before. Whatever I may think of Delgado, he's my man. No matter what the fucker does to me."
El had some second thoughts about when Sands was and wasn't in his true right mind.
"He's your pusher."
"I should think that's rather obvious, yes."
"You can get cocaine other places." It was a distasteful suggestion to El, but he was curious to feel the American out about his options.
Sands chuckled. "Well, no, not so much anymore, if you see what I mean. That's what a monopoly is."
That was ridiculous. It was only a monopoly in the south of Mexico. There were plenty of other cocaine sources.
Reading his mind, Sands said, "I can't go that long."
"What?"
"And then there's the little issue of being blind. I would never make it out of Delgado's territory. Not before I turned into a freaking nutcase."
El thought about that.
Sands hummed.
"What the hell are you singing?" El demanded. There was something familiar about it.
"Nothing," Sands said. He stopped. Which was odd. He certainly didn't stop out of consideration for his roommate.
"Did you take cocaine willingly, like Delgado said?"
Sands snorted. "That cocksucker. I was dying. Getting hooked was the last of my worries. Then they fucking rescued me and continued the 'treatment.'"
"In Culiacan."
"I'm sure you remember the Day of the Dead, right? It's the last day I ever saw. You weren't a lot of help, Mr. Oh I Think I'll Save the President and be a Hero."
El had no patience for the agent's sarcasm. "Shall I list your end of the deal? You were to provide protection. El Cucuy? He sold me to Barillo. Our deal was off."
Sands made no reply to that. He rubbed his nose gingerly.
El had considered saving some of the food for his fellow prisoner, but he remembered how he could be free by now, and finished it all.