The Girl with the Golden Gun

In the beginning, like all young fools, the drug business had seemed exciting more than dangerous. He’d hired desperately poor people as his runners. They’d taken all the risks. When they’d been busted, he’d lost his shipment, but they’d gone to prison.

Poor women, too many of them to count who would do anything to feed their children, were sentenced to thirty years, which meant their children were orphans. That had meant nothing to him then. But sometimes, late at night or when peasants came to him begging him for favors, these things haunted him now.

His business had grown, sí, and soon he’d had to fight off competitors. To expand he’d entered into an ever-changing, complex relationship trafficking cocaine for the Colombians. In time he’d been forced to kill many people to maintain control of what was his. He did not enjoy killing, but it was part of doing business.

Too late, he’d learned what a vicious, deadly game he was in. When he killed, he made more enemies, and he’d had to become tougher to survive. His best men, like Chito, were those he could trust the least because they wanted to take over. The rules of his business were as simple as those the desert animals lived by. Win—or lose. Live—or die. Kill—or be killed. When you lived like that long enough, it changed you.

When he’d been young, he’d thought he’d retire with a big ranch in northern Mexico. He was now rich enough to retire, richer than he’d ever dreamed of being. But if he ever quit he would have to leave Mexico. Then many of the people he protected would die.

So what? The little people always suffered in Mexico. But as long as he was alive, certain people in the business would be nervous. Hit men would try to track him down and kill him. So, he stayed, and to stay, he had to be strong.

He hadn’t thought of leaving the business for a long time. Not until Angelita. She made him think of Paris or London or maybe a Caribbean island or South America. Never her country, America, because he was a wanted man there.

He still desired her, more than ever, even after tonight when she’d turned him away when he’d been crazed with anger and fear and desire. Even during saner periods, when he was alone, his blood would pulse as he thought of her in one of those thin nightgowns he’d bought her that had cost enough to feed a family of peasants for a year.

How much longer could he play this waiting game when his men were taking bets on how many nights it would take him?

Angelita was afraid of him. Always before he’d liked the edge fear lent to sex. It was like a spice to make a dish hotter. But not with her. He did not want her afraid. She was an intelligent creature of light and love, and he wanted her to stay that way.

He remembered going into his white father’s mansion as a small, impressionable boy. His father’s white wife had seemed like a queen.

Tavio wanted to know Angelita and for her to know the real him. He wanted her acceptance and her trust, and he had no idea why these things mattered or why she mattered. They just did. He did not want to believe she’d had anything to do with Marco’s death.

Disgusted with these thoughts, he ripped off an ostrich-skin boot and flung it on the ground. Then he yanked off his other boot. Next he whipped his leather belt out of the loops. Last of all he took off his thick gold Rolex. Without bothering to remove his jeans or shirt, he dove into the icy water and swam to the bottom to where the caves began, willing to brave the freezing spring in an attempt to kill the molten desire that was devouring him.

His head broke the surface again, and he stared at her window, which was dark now. He had never loved anybody before. He knew that now. Not enough to sacrifice everything for them. He’d admired his father. He’d longed to love him and be loved by him like little Federico had been loved, but it hadn’t happened. No matter how hard Tavio had tried, in the end his father had refused to claim him as his son. When his father had disowned him in favor of Federico, who was weak and spineless, walls had grown around his heart. He’d never intended to let anyone make him feel that needy again.

He stared at his mansion. He had so much. How could not having this one woman care about him matter?

He loved his golden gun that had been a gift from a former president and his machine guns. He loved his prized Polish-Arabians. He loved his rancho and his trucks. He loved his planes. He loved the power he had over other men. He loved the way their eyes glazed over with fear when he got a certain edge in his voice. He had loved his little brother, too.

So many things made him feel big and powerful as he had not felt when he’d been the bastard son of a rich man. He loved the pale-brown desert and the barren red mountains.

He liked animals, even Angelita’s good-for-nothing, scrawny black cat. But other than Marco and his own sons, he had never loved people much.

Who was she, this woman who so possessed him? She kept her secrets. Never before had he felt such a visceral link with another human being. He thought that lack was what made him strong. Now he thought he’d been a dead man all his life.

Until Angelita he had been going through the motions of living. When he had pulled her out of the gulf and she’d been so white and cold in his bed, whimpering and shivering as she’d slept for long hours in his arms, a tenderness he’d never known before had taken possession of his heart. Even when she’d been weak and defenseless, he’d sensed her strength and fierce independence. When she’d opened her eyes and looked into his, she said, “Shanghai,” and had smiled with an infinite yearning that had melted his heart. Then she’d snuggled closer and clung to him, repeating that name again and again.

He had wanted to be that man. He wanted her to say his name and look at him that tenderly.

Estela, his wife, was an easy woman, who got what she wanted through sexual manipulation and feminine wiles. She did as she was told. It had been pleasant living with her until he’d brought Angelita home. Estela had never minded his other girlfriends. She’d understood he was simply a man. But from the first when she’d seen how he was with Angelita, she’d gone crazy with jealousy. Even now she screamed at him on the telephone if he called his sons. He felt bad to cause her so much pain, but he couldn’t help himself.

Angelita was fate.

The sound of boots stomping across the hardpacked dirt broke into his thoughts. When he saw it was Chito, he swam for his gun. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since their fight and the bust, and he didn’t trust him.

“I’m sorry about Marco and the plane and the cargo,” Chito said. Then he threw a bunch of newspapers and a videotape onto the ground.

“What are those?”

“More articles written by that pendejo, Terence Collins. And a videotape.” Chito lit a cigarette. “She throw you out, no? She’s the reason you’re swimming in a cold pool at night, eh?”

“Shut up. What’s Collins up to?”

“Take her. Force her. Get it over with. Break her, like you would a horse. Find out what she knows. If she had a hand in Marco’s death, you must kill her, so the men will respect you again.”

“She had nothing to do with Marco!” Tavio wished he knew that for sure. “I have heard there are new ways of breaking horses. Gentler ways.”

“You scare me. Don’t go soft. If we get soft, we die. Don’t let her change you.”

Live—or die. Kill—or be killed.

“I came looking for you for another reason,” Chito said. “There’s been a second drug bust on a ranch north of El Paso. We lost Paulo’s plane, too—the crew, the pilot and the load.”

Tavio let out a stream of obscenities.

“Juan just flew in with these latest newspapers from Ciudad Juarez. Collins wrote an exposé on you and some of the politicos we pay for protection. He aired this videotape on a local news show in El Paso. There’s some footage of you with Garza in Colombia. And some of you and me paying off Lopez in Chihuahua City. Your brother ran it in Ciudad Juarez on his television station.”

“Collins got all that on film?”

Chito nodded grimly. “Something big is going on. Lopez is under house arrest. I called Comandante Gonzales to see what he knows, and he wouldn’t take my calls. Somebody’s feeding the DEA and Collins a hell of a lot of information.”

Tavio frowned. Federico had always been jealous of him. Was he in the middle of this? “But who is selling me out?”

“Any one of the bastards. If the price is right.…We must find this traitor and kill him. If you have to kill ten men to get the rotten manzanas, you must do it.”

Kill—or be killed.

Tavio was silent for a long time.

“Maybe we don’t have to kill so many. Maybe just one or two—to set an example.”

“But—”

“You’re right.”

“Who do we go after first?”

“Angelita knows who helped her. Rape her. Threaten to cut her. Make her tell you!”

“Bastardo, did you hide her in that plane?” Tavio demanded, knowing the answer.

Enough pesos would buy almost anything. In the end he had not had to rape Angelita to find out who’d hidden her. He’d simply put up a reward for the information. Three peasants had come forward with different versions of the same story.

Julio’s thin form shook with fear as he stumbled ahead of Tavio through the brush-studded sand hills at the foot of the red mountains.

“Tell me, and I’ll spare your life.”