“I’m no thief and no drug dealer either,” El Mago said, sounding affronted.
“Anaya’s dead,” Elvis said dryly.
“Is he?” El Mago laughed. A good, full laugh. Elvis always liked El Mago’s laughter. It was rare, but it was lavish, like the rest of El Mago. El Mago was so lavish, so big, so much. A god, not a man. El Mago wasn’t a coward who murdered his underlings because he was scared.
El Mago was a figment of Elvis’s imagination. But El Gazpacho had been real.
“Yeah. I guess we saved your ass in the end. You know, the Russian and I.”
“The same Russian who will shoot us in the next five minutes,” El Mago said, smiling; it was like a raw gash across his face.
“No,” Elvis said. Now he was standing right in front of El Mago, and he looked him straight in the eye. “He’s not shooting you.”
His fingers curled around the screwdriver in his pocket, and he jammed it into El Mago’s neck. The old man gasped, his mouth wide open, but no sound emerged. In his shock, he dropped the gun he’d been holding in his hand, the gun he’d been using to beat the woman.
El Mago was always telling them guns were a weapon of last resort, and Elvis had decided to follow his lesson plan, after all.
El Mago fell to his knees and made a motion, one hand fumbling, attempting to retrieve his gun. Elvis kicked the weapon away and bent down, pulling the screwdriver out. Blood welled like a fountain, and El Mago scrabbled at his neck, tried to press his hand against the wound, but it was too much blood. No way of stopping it.
He fell and lay on his back, his eyes fixed on Elvis’s face, and Elvis wondered if he’d had the decency to look into El Gazpacho’s eyes when he died. Elvis stared back at El Mago until he stopped shivering, then he dropped his own gun next to the screwdriver, on the puddle of blood that had formed by El Mago’s head.
The woman wept, her tragic, lost face for once seemed to fit her surroundings, and in his corner the man who had been staring at the wall had pissed himself. Elvis looked at the Russian and wiped his nose with the back of his hand because he was also crying.
“So,” Elvis said, “you gonna shoot me with that Smith and Wesson?”
The Russian shrugged. “What for?”
“To get even for your lost film.”
“Killing you won’t bring it back, will it?”
“No,” Elvis muttered. “It sure won’t.”
“My professional advice is to get out of here and stay out of trouble.”
“You’ll leave the lady alone?” he asked.
“I have no problem with her.”
“All right.”
He looked at the woman again, and for a second he thought about saying something to her, but he didn’t know what the fuck to say or even why he felt that impulse to speak, to murmur a nice word in her ear.
He wanted to tell her he’d seen her in a book about fairy tales once, when he was a kid, and he believed you could grow a beanstalk that might reach the heavens.
He did as the Russian said: he left. He had no car, so he walked. It was raining and the water was icy against his skin, washing away the blood on his hands and chilling his bones. But nothing was ever going to wash away the rest, to rinse the past clean.
He walked and let the rain kiss him.
30
HOW DO STORIESend? she wondered. With comic books it was easy to tell: the closing panels were clearly indicated, the words “final issue” were emblazoned on the cover. With life it was harder to figure out where anything begins and where it concludes. Storylines bled outside the margins of pages; the colorist didn’t apply final touches.
She didn’t know how it would end, that first night, and she didn’t search for Rubén immediately. That first night, she went home. She was still afraid, and she had bruises and cuts that needed to be looked after. In the morning she called her job and told them she’d been in a car accident. Then she tried the hospital closest to Asterisk, and after a few awkward questions she got lucky: he was there.
She didn’t know how he’d react when he saw her, but he seemed pleased, and even when she told him the photos were gone, he didn’t appear too upset. She supposed since he had survived two bullets, other matters were, for the moment, much smaller issues.
“You did your best,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
