The Silencers Read Online Free Page B

over the fallen girl. She tried to pull him away so she could get in there, and he drove an elbow back and knocked her down. It was my turn, and I got him to his feet with a heave. He didn’t weight much, just a little white-faced, black-mustached runt in a loose-fitting dinner jacket.
    He spun to face me, snarling, and reached under his shiny lapel. I did something flashy with my hands, and as he prepared to duck or parry the blow, I kicked him hard in the groin. He doubled up and fell down, moaning. I heard the one-whistle signal for danger behind and dropped on top of him. Something went over me. I rolled aside to see the tall, scarred portero raising a blackjack for another blow, but LeBaron was in back of him now. LeBaron dropped him with a chop to the neck.
    I glanced at mine while LeBaron made sure of his. Mine was nothing to worry about. They weren’t going to straighten him out in less than half an hour with anything less than a block and tackle. LeBaron’s was his business and I left it to him. I heard the thud of a kick as LeBaron made sure we weren’t bothered for a reasonable length of time. I was already turning back to the girl on the floor.
    The pretty lady of the furs was kneeling beside her. When I saw the two faces close together and the similarity of the bone structure, I knew, of course, what had caught my eye in the nightclub down the street. The girl opened her eyes.
    “Gail!” she breathed.
    The kneeling woman touched her cheek with a gloved hand, hesitantly, the way you touch the dying. “Don’t talk, dear. I’m sorry for everything, Janie. We’ll get you home where you belong...”
    The girl shook her head, almost imperceptibly. She licked her lips and spoke with difficulty: “Under my hair, in back... Here. Take it.” Summoning all her strength, she reached for something at the nape of her neck, pulled it loose and passed it over. Her eyes looked up and found me. I thought I saw a sort of challenge through the film of pain. “Gail,” she breathed, “bend closer, listen, it’s important, the whole world... the whole world.”
    Then she was whispering inaudibly, as far as I was concerned, in the older girl’s ear. A moment later she was dead. Gail looked up at me quickly, shocked and unbelieving.
    “She’s dead!”
    “Yes.”
    “But she’s my sister. My little sister! When I heard she was working in this awful place, I came all the way from—”
    “Sure,” I said. “Come on.”
    “We can’t leave her like this!”
    “She’ll be taken care of. Come on.”
    I glanced at LeBaron, standing guard. He jerked his head towards the rear. He was mopping his cheek with a bloodstained handkerchief. The portero hadn’t touched him, but Elena had got in at least one good lick with her fingernails. I looked around. The place was still bedlam, but our particular part of it wasn’t popular. This was Juarez, where you didn’t associate with dead bodies if you could possibly help it—you went elsewhere fast. LeBaron put his handkerchief away and looked down.
    “What about it?” he asked. “The man in Washington said get her out.”
    I’d had a decision to make, but I’d already made it. It was a neat disciplinary point—there are certainly times when orders should be followed to the letter—but there are also times when a little judgment is advisable. I didn’t think Mac really had any use for a dead girl, particularly when there was a live one handy.
    “She’s out,” I said. “Whatever she had, she just passed it. Let’s go... Come on, Gail.”
    Sarah’s sister—or Lila’s or Mary Jane’s—was still kneeling there, numb and dazed. “But Sam, the man I was with—”
    “The hell with Sam,” I said. “Have you ever seen the inside of a Mexican jail, honey?”
    Even in that moment, in that place, she didn’t like being called honey. I was presuming on too short an acquaintance. I could see that we could spend all night there getting introduced properly, so I picked