Chapter 4
A Peso For Your Thoughts
Disclaimer: El and Sands are not mine. They are probably very glad of this.
Author's Note: Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed. Special thank to my beta reader Melody, who came through with this chapter even when she was sick and had to stay home from work. You're the best, girl.
Unsurprisingly, the motel was located in a poor area of the city. Chiclet turned into the parking lot, then made a sound of dismay. "Someone took our parking space," he said.
El looked around. Habit made him count the doors, so he would know how many rooms the motel had, and note the two exits from the parking lot. The motel was a two-story, rectangular-shaped building painted a hideous shade of green. A central courtyard contained a small pool and a pair of lopsided vending machines. At this hour of the night, most of the windows were lightless. It was a depressing sight that did nothing for El's spirits.
"We'll have to park two spaces to the right," Chiclet groused as he pulled the car into a space between two vehicles looking even more rundown than their own.
El looked at the door that stood two parking spaces away. "Then you already have a room."
"Naturally," Sands said. The orange lights in the parking lot glinted off his sunglasses. "Weren't you ever a Boy Scout, El? 'Be prepared' and all that." He fished in the pocket of his black jeans and came up with a room key. "Number 252," he said. "Why don't you go on up and check?"
El narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Check for what?"
"Well, if any bad guys found us, I'd rather they shoot you in the head, not me."
"I'll do it," Chiclet said. He turned around in his seat and held out his hand for the room key.
"Okay." Sands started to give him the key.
El was appalled. Expecting a grown man to walk into possible danger was one thing, but not a child! He snatched the key from Sands before the boy could take it. "I will be right back," he said with disgust.
Sands just shrugged. "Sure."
El got out of the car and headed down the sidewalk. Concrete stairs at one end of the building led to the second floor. He climbed the steps, listening to the excited shouting and splashing coming from the pool; no doubt teenagers who had no thought for the people trying to sleep. He wondered how many people were staying in the motel tonight. How many of them had their TVs on right now. How many of them were watching a somber news reporter talk about the explosion at the cantina south of here.
According to a weather-beaten sign hanging from two chains attached to the gutter, the block of rooms that included number 252 was on the other side of the motel, facing the inner courtyard. El found it without any trouble. He pulled his weapon, ready to blast away whoever might be lurking inside. He used the key to unlock the door, turned the knob, and pushed the door open an inch.
Nothing happened. After a long moment while El strained to hear the sounds of an intruder over the splashing and screaming of the teenagers in the pool, he decided that he was safe. The motel room was empty.
He opened the door all the way and walked inside. There were two beds, a dresser and a TV, and a closet with no door and no place to hang clothes. A small table stood between the beds, and a straight-backed chair missing a chunk from the seat was beside the dresser. The bathroom smelled of used mop water. El turned around and left the room. He walked the length of the upper floor, watching the teenagers playing in the pool. He turned the corner, and now he was walking along the short side of the rectangle created by the motel. As he neared the stairwell, he saw Chiclet and Sands were already halfway up the steps.
"It's clear," he said, watching them closely. Despite his youth, Chiclet kept his pace even with Sands, taking the stairs right alongside the older man. El frowned a little, unsure what to think about this. Again he was struck by the obvious hero-worship the boy had for Sands, and it unsettled him.
He turned around and went back into the motel room. He used the bathroom, washing his hands thoroughly. He had not been injured in the gunfight and there was no blood on his hands, but he felt dirty all the same. It had been a long time since he had killed a man. He had forgotten how it made him feel afterward.
Sands and Chiclet were just entering the room as El walked out of the bathroom. "No suitcases?" he asked. He sat on the chair next to the dresser, grimacing as he noticed immediately that one leg was shorter than the other, making the chair rock annoyingly.
"We've been here for two days," Chiclet said. "Our stuff's in the drawers." He grabbed the remote control from the table between the beds and flipped on the TV. Sands walked toward the bathroom, his steps slow and measured, as if he were suddenly very tired.
"Waiting for me," El said.
Chiclet shrugged. He was intent on finding something to watch.
El scowled. He was not at all pleased. It was not so much the fact that they had found him, but that he had not known about it. For all his precautions, he had been completely oblivious to the events happening around him. Anyone could have walked into the cantina and blown his head off, and he would have died without ever comprehending why. In a way, he owed Sands, for confronting him, for forcing him to face reality.
He hated that.
The bathroom door closed. After a pause, the light snapped on. "Why are you with him?" El asked quietly.
Chiclet turned the TV off. He stood up. "I'll go get us something to eat," he said. "What do you want?"
"I am not hungry," El said. He was a little disappointed that the boy would not talk to him, but only a little. He had expected it. Maybe after a few days, when the boy trusted him more. And if El could talk to him alone, without Sands being present…
He shook his head. What was he thinking? He would not be here in a few days. He should not be acting as though he would be.
Chiclet left through the front door, and a beat later, Sands emerged from the bathroom. Moving in that same steady gait, he walked over to the nearest bed and sat down across from El. The mariachi watched him carefully as he walked past. He was still armed, and he had not removed his sunglasses.
"What are you trying to be, a rock star?" El gestured to his face.
"You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think that was an attempt to discover a sense of humor." Sands leaned back on his hands. "Where's Chiclet?"
"He went to get something to eat. How can you let a boy do all the work for you? He can't be more than twelve," he said, deliberately guessing low.
"Actually he's almost fourteen," Sands said. "His birthday is sometime in December, if I remember right."
El blinked. Once again Sands had managed to surprise him. He would not have expected the man to care, let alone know when the boy's birthday was. "Why are you letting him travel with you? This is too dangerous for a boy, no matter how old he is."
"But not dangerous for a man?" Sands flashed him a quick grin, then sat up straight. His feet dangled off the bed, and he kicked at the floral comforter. "He wanted to come with me. I let him."
El shook his head. "I remember seeing him in Culiacan. What about his parents? His family? Aren't they worried?"
"Why don't you ask him?" Sands snapped. "I'm not the fucking Yellow Pages. I don't have all the answers."
"No, you don't," El conceded. "But you know more than you are saying."
Sands said nothing. He reached into his pocket again and this time brought out a cigarette lighter. A search of his shirt pocket revealed a crumpled pack of cigarettes. "Smoke?"
Despite himself, El's eyes lit up at the sight of the battered cigarettes. He leaned forward until his butt left the chair and he could reach the pack. He pulled a cigarette free, then took the lighter Sands offered. Only when he had breathed in a deep lungful of smoke did he sit back down. "These are terrible," he said.
"I know," Sands said.
They sat in silence, smoking. El wondered where Chiclet had gone. In the room behind theirs, someone was snoring, the sound coming very clearly through the thin walls. Outside, the kids had begun to leave the pool, and the shouting was decreasing.
"You are not CIA anymore, are you?"
Sands exhaled a plume of smoke. He cocked his head back. El could almost see the sardonic amusement glinting in his eyes. "What makes you say that?"
"If you were, you would not be working with the cartels." El shook his head. "That may happen in the movies, but that does not happen in real life. Your government would never let you go undercover like that."
"You'd be surprised," Sands said cheerfully. "That kind of thing happens all the time. But you're right. I am no longer affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency. I have been disavowed." His voice remained nonchalant, as if being abandoned by his own country was no more irritating than a stubbed toe.
"Then why are you still here?" El asked.
"Lots of reasons," Sands said. He stubbed his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot, then let it fall to the floor, which was carpeted in a shade of mauve El had not known existed before tonight.
"Tell me one reason," El persisted. He glanced toward the door, hoping Chiclet would be back soon, hoping the boy would stay away for a while longer yet.
"Do you know how they found you?" Sands asked. His voice was light, but his determination to change the subject was obvious from the way his jaw clenched. "It was your hand."
Startled, El glanced at his left hand. He had stopped wearing the bracer except for the nights he played the guitar. The scars there had long since stopped bothering him, and he no longer felt the need to hide them.
"Funny, isn't it? You can run, and you can hide, but there's always something that gives you away. That one identifying characteristic. That one thing you can't change about yourself." The bitterness in his words made El look up in surprise. Since their meeting in the cantina, it was the first time he had heard anything in Sands' voice besides demented good cheer.
Sands ignored his questioning look, however, and just lit another cigarette. El watched him closely, wondering if that outburst had been a precursor to even more erratic behavior, but Sands seemed to have regained his calm. He took a long drag on his cigarette. "People talk, El. People always talk."
"About me," El sighed. Perhaps one day he could be just "the mariachi" again, without a capital letter. But somehow, he rather doubted it.
"Eventually the word reached the right ears. Or the wrong ears, in your case. So one Friday night a pretty girl comes in with her giggling friends, and they sit at a table and you sing to them, and they swoon all over you, and they stay for a few hours and dance, and then they leave and they report to their boss that yep, the guy at the cantina is him, it's really him, El Mariachi. And next week, another pretty girl comes in with her pretty boyfriend, and you sing a romantic love song and they kiss and stare into each other's eyes and they dance together and then they leave and they make the same report. That girl last week, she was right. It really is El Mariachi. So the next week a group of yuppie businessmen come in and get totally hammered and you have to throw one of them out while his friends all protest that he didn't really mean anything, and they all stagger out of the parking lot and a car picks them up and they are suddenly very sober and very scared because oh yeah, that's El Mariachi in that dinky little cantina." Sands looked at him. "That, El, is how they found you."
His stomach twisted. How many times had he looked one of them right in the eye? How many times had he smiled at them? And they had smiled back. And he had never known, never guessed, who they really were.
"How did you find out?" he asked hoarsely.
"Like I said," drawled Sands, "eventually word reached the right ears. I might not be CIA any longer, but I still have my contacts. So when the cartels learned it was you, I made some discreet inquiries of my own. The reports came back with the same information. It was you." He shrugged. "I made it my business to be part of the team that was sent to take you down."
This was where El became confused. He wanted to know just what, exactly, Sands' role in all this was. "Back there, you made it sound like you had told those men that I wouldn't be in the cantina when the bomb went off. But I would have been, if you hadn't been there. Their plan would have worked. Why did you lie to them?"
Sands sighed. "Jeez, you really do have trouble seeing the big picture, don't you?"
"Then make me see it," El demanded. He did not trust Sands, but in his limited experience, the man could be surprisingly honest sometimes. El just hoped this was one of those occasions. He was still trying to decide what to think about everything that had happened so far, and he needed more information before he could decide anything.
"Think about it," Sands said. "I used to be CIA. I was involved with an attempted coup d'etat. Because of that involvement, one of the biggest drug lords in Mexico was killed. My ass was on the line. I had two choices. I could run and hide, or I could stay out in the open. So I got in touch with the very people who wanted me dead. I offered them my services, my network of contacts, and all the information I had, in exchange for immunity." He shrugged. "They accepted."
El felt disgusted. "After everything they did to Culiacan, and to the people of this country, you allied yourself with cartel?"
"I could have tried to hide," Sands said. "But that always comes back to bite you in the ass. You should know all about that.
"Anyway, I got bored after a while. That's why we're sitting here now, having this conversation. I'm tired of listening to them and their stupid beliefs. I want out. And the only way I can do that is if I have you on my side."
Coming from anyone else, this vote of confidence would have been flattering. Coming from Sands, it just made El feel dirty all over again. "But now you are a target," he said. "You are their enemy."
"Seems that way," Sands said brightly.
El finished his cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray thoughtfully provided on the dresser. He looked pointedly at the butt Sands had dropped on the floor, but the other man ignored him.
A knock sounded at the front door. El jumped, one hand reaching for his weapon. "It's just Chiclet," said Sands. He had not so much as flinched, El realized with embarrassment.
He let the boy in, glancing outside while the door was open. The kids had left the pool, and the courtyard was empty now. Satisfied with the silence, he let the door close and locked it behind him.
Chiclet had his arms full of packages from the vending machines. He had potato chips, chocolate snacks, pretzels, candy bars, and cans of soda pop. He spread the stash out on the bed, then selected a bag of pretzels, a Snickers bar, and a can of Coke and gave them to Sands, who was still sitting on the second bed.
"Thanks," Sands said, and tore into the bag of pretzels.
El stared at the bounty spread on the bed. There was an awful lot of food there, and he had not heard the jingle of any change in Chiclet's pockets when he had left. Stolen, then. The machines jimmied open so the boy could reach in and take what he wanted. Probably Sands had taught him how to do it.
Sighing, he reached for a Twinkie.
Only Chiclet slept that night.
Sands stretched out on the bed he had claimed, fully dressed, still wearing his sunglasses and all his guns. He lay flat on his back, unmoving, one arm over his head. He gave the impression of a coiled blacksnake, lazy now but ready to strike at any moment.
El dragged the chair over to the window and sat where he could look out through the gap in the drapes. All night long he watched the courtyard and the swimming pool, looking for signs of suspicious activity. Occasionally he glanced behind him, checking to see if Sands had moved, but he was always disappointed.
On the bed behind him, Chiclet slept peacefully.
At some point, when the hour on the clock was in a vague zone between four and five, Sands spoke. "You know, you could have done the same thing."
It was as if their conversation from earlier in the evening had never been interrupted. "I would never join a cartel," El said. He kept his voice low out of respect for Chiclet, but he made no effort to hide his scorn.
"But you could have," Sands said. "You came face to face with Bucho. Your own brother was a drug lord. And you had a choice. You could have joined him."
"I had no choice," El said.
"You had a choice," Sands repeated.
"I had no choice!" El shouted, overriding him. On the bed, Chiclet frowned and burrowed deeper under the covers, but did not wake up.
"Okay," Sands said, conceding defeat. "You had no choice. But say you did. On the one hand, kill your brother and become the most wanted man in all of Mexico. On the other hand, swear allegiance to him and get to live with the woman you love in relative wealth and comfort. What do you choose?"
"He would have killed Carolina anyway," El said miserably, "just to punish me."
"Was that her name? I never knew." Sands continued to stare up at the ceiling. "Well, then I guess maybe it wasn't really much of a choice, after all."
El said nothing. Killing Cesar was one of the things he had never forgiven himself for. He doubted he ever would. Of all the blood that had stained his hands over the years, the blood of family still remained. That stain would never wash away.
"Well, then let me ask you this. Was it worth it? The choices you made?"
El stared out at the empty swimming pool, seeing it but not seeing it. The years had blunted Carolina's memory, but he could still feel fresh pain when he thought about her. Would he trade the years of happiness he had known with her? Were they worth this current pain and loneliness? He no longer knew.
"I only ask because you know, as of last July, your beloved El Presidente is presidente no more. And the new regime has made it clear that they not only despise cartel, but that they want any such blights upon Mexico's image wiped out. And that means you."
El blinked, needing a moment to adjust to the idea that Sands was not talking about Carolina anymore. He turned around to face his accuser. "What do you know about that?"
"Not a lot," Sands said. "But enough. I know they are embarrassed by the coup, and they want all traces of it destroyed."
"That should not be hard to do," El said. "Marquez and Barillo are both dead."
"So they are," Sands agreed.
"Yet you are still alive," El said.
"Still standing," Sands said proudly. "Oh yes, I'm on their list. Just one more reason to join the cartels, you see. I needed their protection."
El thought of the former president, a man he had respected, a man he had saved. That man had pardoned his crimes, but apparently the new El Presidente was not so forgiving. "Why don't you go back to America?" he asked.
"That's an idea," Sands said, in the tones of one who had no intention whatsoever of even considering the thought.
"Somewhere else, then. Canada. Brazil." Anywhere but Mexico.
"Maybe." Sands yawned, the first time El had heard him admit to being tired. "Maybe not."
"Where, then?"
"Who says I am running away? What makes you think I am going anywhere?"
"You cannot stay here. That is obvious even to me. You are caught between the government and the cartels. Where can you go?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Sands said. "I am not entirely without resources in this country."
Neither am I, El thought. He had Lorenzo and Fideo. They would come if he called them, although they would be hurt by his long silence. Yet still they would come. He felt a little warmer inside when he thought of them. He did not have to be alone if he did not want to be. He had friends. It was about time he remembered that.
"Neither am I," he said. "And it is time for me to go."
Sands sat up in a single, fluid motion. One of his guns was aimed at El's head. "I don't think so, El."
"You won't shoot me," El said. "You need me to stay alive."
"Actually, that's not true anymore," Sands said. "I needed you to stay alive last night. Now it doesn't matter. I could kill you and bury you in the dirt and no one need ever know. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you would still be on the run with me. And that's all I really need. For people to think what I want them to think."
El narrowed his eyes. A man like Sands would never stop scheming and plotting, but sooner or later even the greatest of plans came crashing down. Something was rotten here, but El could not quite grasp what it was. He only knew that there was more to the story than what Sands was telling him. Something hidden, something secret. Something he needed to discover.
"If I stay," he said, "where would we go?"
"Nowhere, for now," Sands said. "They'll know by now that you escaped the bombing. They'll be searching around Guadalajara. It's best to lie low. When they've moved on, so will we."
Not happy with the prospect of spending too much time in these close quarters with Sands, El gestured to the sleeping boy. "And what about him?"
"Chiclet? He'll be fine. He always is." Sands rose from the bed and slowly removed his guns, dropping the shoulder holsters onto the bedspread. "I'm going for a walk," he said. "Wake Chiclet up at six, and he'll go get us some breakfast." He walked toward the door, fingers trailing over the surface of the dresser until they touched the room key. He snatched it up with a flourish, never breaking stride, sparing El not even the briefest of glances as he passed by.
And then he was out the door and gone, and El was left alone with only a sleeping teenage boy for company.