Chapter 14
Creative Sportsmanship
Disclaimer: I don't own El or Sands, much to their relief, I'm sure. I have only borrowed them for my own evil purposes. I'll put what's left of them back when I'm done with them.
Author's Note: More shifting POV again. Also, the angst warning from the previous chapter continues in full force. Sorry guys, but it seems the action/adventure portion of this story has taken a left turn into hurt/comfort territory.
But then again, that's how we like our El and Sands, right?
El. Where was El?
He concentrated on breathing. In and out. In and out. In and out.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. He lay very still, trying desperately not to panic. When they let him hear them coming, it meant they didn't care that he knew. It meant that soon they were going to hurt him very badly.
The footsteps stopped. Only one pair. Whoever it was, he was just standing there. Looking at him.
A ghost of the old hatred of being stared at rose within his chest. Go away! Leave me alone! He didn't dare say any of this out loud though.
Another set of footsteps approached. This one was accompanied by the merry jingle of chains. Immediately he breathed easier. El was coming.
"You shouldn't have done this," said a voice. It was the voice of the American, the one who had pulled and wrenched at his broken fingers until he had screamed and begged for it to stop.
"I don't care what you think," El said. He did not sound pleased.
"Now he'll never tell us what we want to know," the American said.
"Maybe," El said coldly, "you should have just asked him." Jingling chains came closer, and then a door was closed.
Sands did not move. He feared the American, who might actually be CIA. He feared all of them, even El, but so far El had treated him all right, and that was more than he had expected. Far more.
El came close. Chains jingled. A hand took his, and he flinched back, unable to help it. Something cold was placed on top of his taped fingers. "Here. Hold this."
He reached for it with his right hand, wincing already from the searing cold and the pressure of the ice pack.
"Jorge Ramirez is here," El said. "So are two of my friends. The American man is named Archuleta. His brother was Ramirez's partner."
Sands absorbed all this in silence. Old conversations flickered through his mind, reminding him how he had persuaded Ramirez to join his scheme in the first place. He wondered if the original Archuleta had been as much of a bastard as this one was. Or maybe, he thought suddenly, this new Archuleta had only become a bastard when a drug cartel in Mexico had tortured his brother to death. Maybe this Archuleta wanted his own revenge.
I had nothing to do with that, he thought. It wasn't me. Don't punish me for something I didn't do!
Not that it mattered, of course. They would do what they wanted to him, and he was powerless to stop them.
"I brought water," El said. "Are you thirsty? Can you sit up?"
At the mention of water, he suddenly became aware of a raging thirst. He lifted his head, and then El's hand was behind his shoulders, raising him up. He recoiled at first, but El did not seem interested in doing anything other than help him to sit.
"Here." Something hard made contact with his right hand. He let go of the ice pack and wrapped his fingers around the glass. It was cool to the touch.
He drank half the water without pausing for breath. He had never tasted anything so delicious. He took his time with the rest, safe with the knowledge that El would not pull the glass away just as he was finally starting to feel human again.
And in fact, El waited for him to finish, then took the glass back. "More?"
Sands thought about it, then nodded. Hell, yes. Some food would be good, too, but he did not say that out loud. He was aware that not too long ago he had been chatting to El like nothing had happened, but after hearing Archuleta's cold words, his voice seemed to have dried up again. Silence was safer, anyway. They couldn't accuse him of mouthing off if he never said anything.
He drank the second glass of water, then refused another. El eased him back onto the mattress, and rearranged the ice pack on his left hand. His fingers had gone numb with cold by now, and he could barely feel anything there. It made for a pleasant change from the last few hours.
"Get some sleep," El said. Chains jingled as he stood up.
Immediately the fear came back. If El left, he would be alone again in the dark. "Where are you going?" he demanded.
"I must talk with Archuleta and the others," El said. His voice was grim, laden with heavy promise.
Don't leave me!
Sands nodded stiffly. "I'll be here." Even to his ears, the words fell woefully short of any kind of humor.
Nor was El amused. "You better be. I don't want to have to cuff you to the radiator again."
"You won't have to," Sands said, very quietly.
"Good. Go to sleep." El walked away. A door opened, then closed.
Silence descended.
Sands curled up on his side and concentrated on breathing.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Archuleta demanded. They were all sitting in the living room, watching TV. When El walked in, Archuleta muted the sound, to Fideo's obvious dismay.
El looked at Archuleta. He could never explain his motives to a man like this, or talk about the complex history between him and Sands. So he decided to keep it simple. He pointed. "Bad cop." He pointed to himself. "Good cop."
"For Christ's sake." Archuleta brandished the remote control at him. "Like that's really going to work."
"He already trusts me," El said, wondering over the strange pride he felt as he said it. "He has told me something of what happened in the prison. He killed his cellmate."
To his annoyance, Archuleta did not look at all surprised. "I know." He lifted one boot and kicked at a manila folder lying among the detritus on the coffee table. "So would you, if you had bothered to read this."
El glanced at them all. Fideo and Lorenzo kept their eyes on the TV, not wanting to get involved. Ramirez had the grace to look embarrassed, but said nothing.
He walked over and pulled the folder out from under Archuleta's boot. He knocked over an empty coffee mug and spilled corn chips everywhere, but he did not care. He opened the file and began to skim its contents.
Right away he understood why the warden had called Sands a problem. The file was filled with notations about violent behavior. On his first day there, Sands had killed his cellmate. Just broke the guy's neck with his bare hands. The guards had immediately hauled him off to a solitary cell, but when he had behaved himself, they had allowed him to return to the rest of the prison population.
Where he had immediately struck again, this time badly injuring a fellow prisoner. Once again, the guards had removed him from the others, and once again, Sands had settled into the behavior of a model prisoner.
And so it went, through the entire year. El looked up. He flapped the folder, unimpressed by what he read. "He wanted to stay in solitary. It was safer for him there."
Lorenzo nodded, judging it was safe to enter the conversation now. "A man like that, he'd get eaten alive in jail. And he knows it."
Ramirez shook his head. El discovered he was doing the same thing. "That is not true," Jorge said. "He should have been running that prison. Controlling it, within a year. Even the warden should have been jumping to do his bidding."
"Okay, so why didn't that happen?" Fideo asked.
El knew the answer.
The man currently lying in the back bedroom was nothing like the man he had helped arrest one year ago. That man from a year ago had acted like he owned the whole world. That man had walked with his head held high and a devilish smirk on his lips. That man had looked the world in the eye – despite not having any eyes himself – and refused to behave like he was supposed to. That man had shot five government soldiers and never even broken a sweat. And that man had refused to accept the fundamental thing that made him different from everyone else.
"Because he's blind," El said.
They all looked at him.
Prison had to be a nightmare for any man, El supposed. He had heard plenty of stories over the years, mostly from his first American friend, the one who had been killed while helping him look for Bucho. He had heard enough to never want to go there himself. So what must it have been like for Sands, a man who could not even see the dangers all around him?
Of course he had killed his cellmate, El thought. What choice did he have? Left among the rest of the prisoners, he truly would have been killed. So he made his choice. Made himself the killer, instead of the victim. And when that choice got him a solitary cell where the dangers were relatively low, he made another choice – to get back to that safety whenever he could. Any time his good behavior brought him back to the rest of the population, he lashed out, doing whatever was necessary to return to the place he wanted to be.
Only something in the plan had gone wrong, El thought. The evidence was in the way Sands allowed himself to be mistreated, making only a token attempt at running away. Or the fear in his voice when he realized he was going to be left alone – when isolation should be the one thing he craved above all others.
El didn't know what had gone wrong yet, but he was confident he would find out. Along with everything else he wanted to know. Sands wasn't the only one who could play games and keep secrets. El could do it, too. He could be the good guy, be the one Sands turned to for comfort and companionship. And when he had learned all Sands' secrets, he would leave and not look back, finally free to live his life the way he had always wanted.
Yet he was honest enough with himself to admit that he was standing here feeling guilty about what had happened to Sands, about the role he had played. He had deliberately left a blind man alone on the side of the road, and it had been hours before he had felt any reservations over what he had done, and still weeks later before he had felt any remorse. Now, seeing the results of his grand idea, he was ashamed of himself. Prison had broken Sands, but El had put him there. There was no escaping the fact that this was his fault.
He looked at Archuleta. "He will tell me what we want to know," he said. "I promise you that."
Archuleta stared at him for a long moment, then surprised him by smiling. It was not a very nice smile. "I believe you."
He wasted no time putting his plan into action. He thanked Lorenzo and Fideo for their help, borrowed some money from Lorenzo (of course Fideo was broke), and told them to return to their village. Fideo agreed willingly, but Lorenzo pulled him aside first. "Don't do anything stupid," his friend warned. "Call me if you need anything. Just, ah, don't expect me to be the bad cop."
El smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "I will."
Ramirez and Archuleta were less happy to leave. They had nowhere to go, for one thing; this was their apartment. El paid them for it and spoke alone with Ramirez. "It isn't safe for you in Culiacán. They know you lived here. They will be looking for you."
"If it isn't safe for me, it certainly isn't safe for you," Ramirez pointed out.
El was in no mood to argue. "I'll be fine." He knew his way around Culiacán, and if he became truly desperate, he could call upon Chiclet's family for help.
"I want you to know," Ramirez said, "this was not what I had in mind when I asked you to help us."
"I know," El said. His dislike of Archuleta did not extend to Ramirez. The former FBI agent was a good man, and El respected him. Ramirez was not to blame for Archuleta's mistakes.
"You should know," Ramirez said, "they will probably come looking for Sands."
"So they did know where he was," El said. He had been wondering about that. It had not seemed possible that an American could wind up in a Mexican prison without some kind of word reaching the government. Sooner or later someone would have investigated, and discovered the imprisoned American was none other than Sands.
"Of course they knew," Ramirez said. "But what could they do about it? Killing an American, especially one who used to work for the CIA, is too dangerous. It was safer for them to let him stay where he was. As long as they ensured his silence, he could be forgotten about."
Ramirez gave him a cell phone number and ordered him to stay in touch. "I don't like hiding," he said. "Let me know when this is all over."
El promised he would. He had every hope that the end would come within a week.
He told this to Ramirez, who just gave him a small smile. "I hope so," he said.
When the apartment was empty, he returned to the back bedroom. "Get up," he said. "We're going for a walk."
What little color remained in Sands' face drained away. "Where are we going?" He had managed to sit up by leaning against the radiator, although it looked like he was going to fall over at any moment.
"You need a shower," El told him. "You stink."
Sands made another one of those harsh bursts of laughter. "So sorry to offend."
El shrugged. "Come on."
Sands did not move.
El counted to three. And then to six. In order to win this game, he was going to have to play by the rules. But since he was making it up as he went along – practicing creative sportsmanship, if you liked – he was also in charge of creating the rules. And right now the rules said he had to be patient.
"You aren't coming?" he asked.
"I can't," said Sands.
"Why not?"
A year ago the question would have earned him a stinging insult and possibly a punch to the nose. Now El was disconcerted to see that Sands did not even look remotely angry. "I can't see where I'm going."
So he had been right, El thought. Sands' blindness was a large part of the reason he had let the prison get to him. He wondered what the other reason was.
Patience, El reminded himself. Last year Sands would have followed the sound of his voice and walked confidently across the room. Now he was either unable or unwilling to do such a thing. "I'll guide you," El said, pleasantly surprised to hear how normal his voice sounded as he said those strange words. He walked over to the mattress, reached down, and pulled Sands to his feet, all before the other man could even begin to protest.
Sands instinctively laid his hand on El's forearm, ready to be led. Then he broke the contact. "Why do you suddenly care what happens to me?"
El had an answer ready. He had thought of it before, figuring it would not be long before he was asked this very question. "The last time I saw you, I said you needed to suffer. Now I think you have suffered enough."
"That's very charitable of you," Sands said dully.
He placed Sands' hand back on his arm and began walking toward the door. "Not really," he said.
El walked slowly. Sands kept up, but everything about him spoke of extreme reluctance. He turned his head to one side, and he shuffled, barely picking his feet up off the floor. When they reached the doorway, his left shoulder bumped the doorframe, and he cringed back so violently he collided with El. He stopped walking. "I can't do this."
"Why not?" El asked. He was torn between pity and disgust. "You did it before. You did it for three years."
"Yeah," Sands said. Then, with the first flash of spirit he had shown all day, he added, "But I only did it because I had Chiclet."
A little surprised that Sands would dare to say the boy's name, El only nodded. He could of course say, "Well now you have me," but he knew better. Even in his battered state, Sands would know that for the lie it was.
Instead he said, "The bathroom is across the hall from this door." He remembered Chiclet at the motel in Guadalajara, telling Sands that the stairs were only eight steps away. "It can't be more than three steps," he said.
"Oh, God." Sands sounded utterly depressed. "You're really going to do this, aren't you?"
"I am," El said, and propelled him forward.
They made it into the bathroom without incident. El described the layout of the room in great detail, mentioning everything he could think of. Sands remained at his side, rather than exploring the room on his own. Given how hurt he was, El couldn't really blame him, but he was still uncertain that this was for the best. "Are you picturing this?"
"No, I'm standing here making my grocery list," Sands said.
El smiled. There. That was the old Sands. Sure, the quip sounded like it had taken a lot of effort, but it was good to hear, anyway. He couldn't exactly say why, but he was relieved to know the Sands of old still existed.
"I'll get some towels," he said. Making sure to jingle a lot, he left the bathroom, allowing Sands a few moments of privacy.
The linen closet was well stocked, if somewhat haphazardly. El took some towels off the top shelf, then went into the den. Someone had been in here, he noticed, because the blood had been cleaned off the table. He guessed it was Ramirez.
He found what he was looking for in the top drawer of the computer desk. The scissors were heavily scarred and blunt, but they would suffice for what he had in mind. He laid them on top of the towels and returned to the bathroom. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open.
Sands was sitting on the edge of the tub, looking very apprehensive. His injured hand was cradled in his lap. "Where are we?" he asked.
"Culiacán," El said. He spread one of the towels on the floor at Sands' feet. "Turn around." He made a twirling gesture with his finger, then abruptly stopped. "Feet in the tub. Your back to me."
Sands did not ask why he was being asked to do this. He just did as he was told. A single shiver ran through him.
"Hold still," El said. He picked up the scissors. "I don't want to cut you."
Sands stiffened. His shivering grew more pronounced.
The blades were duller than El had thought. He had to saw them back and forth a few times before they consented to work, and the whole thing took longer than he had planned. Still, when he was done, he had to admit it was a definite improvement. "Better?" he asked.
Sands lifted his hand and touched the ragged edges of his hair. El had cut it just above his shoulders, the way he remembered it. "Better," he said softly.
El swept the fallen hair into the towel on the floor and scooped up the whole mess. "Take a shower," he said. "I'll wait out in the hall."
Sands nodded. "Thank you."
El did not reply, but as he closed the door, he was smiling again.