“So let’s do it,” Rita said. “The fresh air will do me good. I’ll pray Raven isn’t there. Let me get my coat and tell Marta to close up.”
“You sure?” Sonny asked.
“I’m sure.” She kissed him and walked away.
“She looks tired,” Sonny said to Lorenza. “Not her old self.”
“She works too hard. But the fresh air will be good for her.”
“What can I do? I feel I’m running in circles, neglecting Rita, neglecting everybody—”
“Rita knows your predicament: She knows you have to find Raven and get the girls back.”
Ah, how the gusano turns, Sonny thought. It was a week before Christmas, and he and Rita should be doing the things they liked to do. Shopping for gifts. He needed to buy presents for his mom, Rita, Lorenza, all of them. Last year shopping with Rita had been a wonderful experience. Now they hadn’t even had the time to visit friends. When’s the last time he had seen his mother? He didn’t remember; he had lost track of time.
He should be going to his therapy sessions, walking the parallel bars, strengthening his legs, willing them to listen to commands from his brain, maybe going to the Jemez Springs Bath House and sitting in a tub full of hot mineral water. Having his legs massaged. Lorenza had told him of a healer who worked there, Cosima, who knew how to free the body’s blocked energy. He should be taking care of himself and Rita, but he was too busy chasing Raven.
He needed the time to rest, to get things straight. Winter was for kicking back, eating piñon, sitting in front of a stove burning sweet cedar, listening to don Eliseo’s stories, reading, visiting with friends in the evenings, going to Lobo basketball games, watching football games on TV, and looking forward to the Super Bowl, or just helping Rita at the café. Time for doing ordinary things. Instead, he was looking for the grandmothers of his dreams, the two girls, and an insane Raven whom the FBI believed could build a nuclear bomb.
“Ready,” Rita said, appearing in a black leather coat. She had freshened her makeup. Sonny looked at her and smiled. Suddenly she looked radiant, ready to go. He should be making love to her, not chasing after wild impossibilities.
“You look lovely, amor.”
“Gracias,” she replied.
“I—” He wanted to say something more, something about the love he felt that moment, some acknowledgment of the joy he found in her and how grateful he was for the time she spent nursing him. But his voice caught, and he was afraid if he continued his voice would crack.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, brushing his lips with hers. “It’s something we have to do for now. When this is over, spring will come. Then we’ll get married. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” She smiled.
“Did I say something while I was under?”
“Yes, you did.” Rita winked at Lorenza. “Didn’t he say he was going to make a decent woman out of me?”
“He sure did,” Lorenza said.
“Ah, come on,” Sonny kidded, “you can’t hold a dying man to his word. I was out of it.”
“You still are, amor,” Rita said, and took his wheelchair and pointed it at the door.
“Fever,” Lorenza added. “Men are like that. They make promises, then blame it on their fever.”
They laughed as they boarded the van and headed toward Barelas. For the moment, the joy of friendship and the joy of the season had returned.
Fourth Street south of Central was decorated for the season but nearly deserted. A few cars moved down toward Bridge Street and then on to the South Valley. The city was renovating the street, sprucing up the old barrio. Just past Bridge Street the Hispanic Cultural Center rose, a center where the art and culture of the old Hispanos and Mexicanos could be kept alive.
Don Eliseo had warned him: Lose the language, the threads of history, and the traditions and the ways of your ancestors will disappear from the earth of La Nueva México.
Sonny shivered. The barrio, bathed by streetlights, was hanging on to its inheritance. A cold breeze blew across the mesa, over the sluggish Río Grande, crying as it swept past the bare alamos and elm trees and through barrio streets. The cold, mournful whisper forced many a barrio denizen to hurry home.
One bright spot filled the void. At Barelas Road they spotted the procession. Lorenza parked in a side street.
“Pacific,” Sonny murmured, looking up at the street sign. Ben Chávez territory. Should I take my pistol? he thought, and decided yes. He stuffed the pistol under the blanket Rita had placed over his legs.
“We’re in time,” Rita said as they made their way toward the small but enthusiastic crowd gathered around the actors playing the roles of Joseph and Mary.
Sonny sniffed the air. Like a coyote coming into new territory, he had the habit of sniffing for scents. Smells revealed the place and often revealed danger. But tonight his sinuses were stuffed, and this heightened sense he trusted revealed very little.
The barrio lay huddled under the cold. The darkness was punctuated by the flashlights and candles held by those in the procession.
A TV-4 van was parked nearby. Carla Aragón and her cameraman were shooting the pageant for the ten o’clock news.
Sonny turned his attention to the actors, paying special attention to the girl playing the Virgin Mary. The girl sat quietly on a burro while the man playing Joseph tugged at the halter. If Raven was here, he would go after the girl.
“Do you know her?” Sonny whispered. Rita had been raised in Barelas, and she knew a lot of the families, but she answered no.
A man next to Sonny drew close and whispered, “She’s a substitute for Carmen Abeyta. Carmen got sick. She’s at the last house of the Posadas, with her parents.”
“Thanks,” Sonny replied. The man was bundled for the cold, a scarf pulled up around his chin. The black hat he wore was pulled low so Sonny couldn’t make out the face.
He turned his attention to the procession.
The man playing Joseph pulled the burro toward the gate of the first house. The chorus of neighbors following Mary and Joseph broke out with the first song, the plea for a room at the inn, their voices rising joyfully into the night:
El Señor de bondad nos proteja,
Nos bendiga y nos colme de amor;
Su Sagrada Pasión nos defienda,
Y nos libre de mal y dolor.
St. Joseph stepped up to the gate of the first house and knocked. The door opened and he asked for a room for the night, explaining to the innkeeper that he and his pregnant wife had traveled very far and needed to rest:
Venimos de muy lejos
Y llegamos cansados,
Ahora les pedimos
Posada esta noche.
The man who opened the door, playing the role of an annoyed innkeeper, answered:
Quién viene a nuestra puerta,
En esta noche de hielo?
Quién se arrima con impudencia
A molestar nuestro sueño?
“Váyanse de aquí,” he finished, closing the door in their faces. St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary moved to the next house, followed by the carolers who now sang along with St. Joseph.
Quién le da posada
A nostros los peregrinos?
Llegamos muy cansados
De andar tantos caminos.
The person who answered the door in the second home was no friendlier than the first. He accused Joseph and Mary of being robbers and slammed the door shut. Again the patient Joseph took the burro’s reins and moved slowly to the next house, where again he asked for a place to rest. Even a corner in the kitchen would suffice.
He was refused again by the man at the door. There was no corner to spare. “Go out into the fields, there’s plenty of room there!” he shouted, slamming the door shut.
Leading the burro with the young Virgin Mary solemnly perched on its back, Joseph moved on to the next house. The patient crowd moved with him, lighted candles casting a bright glow on faces.
At the next house Joseph
explained his wife was pregnant, but the woman inside the house, yawning, accused them of robbing her sleep.
By the time they arrived at the fifth house, St. Joseph was irritated. “My wife is freezing,” he pleaded, but again he was turned away.
As they moved along, the crowd parted, allowing Sonny to move to the front. Lorenza and Rita politely held back. When Sonny glanced back, he couldn’t see them.
“My young wife is cold,” St. Joseph sang at the next house.
“Too bad,” came the response from within. “Move on!”
The procession moved to the seventh house. Here St. Joseph finally revealed that the woman with him was the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven. The unbelieving innkeeper shouted back, “There’s lots of room out in the desert.”
Sonny’s attention had been on the young girl playing the Virgin, but the mood of the entreaties and the responses enveloped him in the story. Suddenly he was startled as someone behind him took hold of the handles of his chair.
“Hace frio,” the man in the black hat whispered.
“Sí,” Sonny replied.
“You’ll catch cold,” the man said.
“I’m okay.”
The man remained standing behind Sonny’s chair.
Sonny turned his attention back to St. Joseph, who was knocking on one more door and pleading for a room. “I’m Joseph and this is my wife, Mary,” he sang in Spanish verse.
“So what!” the people in the house sang back. “We don’t know a Joseph and Mary. Go away, it’s late and we’re not going to open for you!”
Late arrivals had joined the swelling procession, pressing slowly toward the ninth house, where St. Joseph revealed once again that Mary was the mother of God.
This was the turning point of the drama. The innkeeper recognized Mary, the Queen of Heaven, and threw open the door, singing loudly:
Ábranse las puertas!
Rómpanse los velos!
Aquí viene a posar,
La Reina del Cielo!
“Thank you, thank you,” St. Joseph cried out, the chorus around him joining in the revelation. “For the kindness you have shown us, yours is the kingdom of heaven.”
The doors of the house were thrown wide open, becoming the church that will embrace the child about to be born. St. Joseph and Mary entered and were jubilantly greeted:
Entren santos peregrinos,
Reciban este rincón,
No de mi pobre morada,
Sino de mi corazón.
Those at the front of the procession eagerly pressed forward to get into the house. Hot coffee, tamales, posole, biscochitos awaited them, a welcome treat on a cold night.
“You want to go in?” the man in the black hat asked Sonny.
“Yes,” Sonny replied, looking for Rita and Lorenza but not spotting them. He wanted to see Carmen Abeyta for himself.
“The Abeytas are friends,” the man said. “We can go around the side of the house. It’s easier for your chair. We can go right into the kitchen.”
“What did you say is the girl’s name?” Sonny asked as the man pushed.
“Carmen,” the man answered.
Consuelo, Catalina, now Carmen. The hair along the back of Sonny’s neck stood on edge.
“You said the girl is with her parents,” Sonny said.
“Yes, inside,” the man said. “This way.”
The man guided the chair around the side of the house. The path was level but dark. Sonny glanced back to try to let Lorenza and Rita know where he was headed, but they were lost in the crowd.
Faint sounds of celebration echoed from the front of the house.
“Wait,” Sonny said, and at the same time he felt a stab to the back of his neck, a needle entering, something warm oozing. He reached for the needle, but a thick canvas tarp dropped oven him. Barely conscious, he felt ropes quickly securing the smothering tarp.
He felt two men lifting him, then he was dumped on a hard surface. A second thud told him they had thrown in his chair. The door banged, and through the numbness of the injection he heard the screeching of tires, felt a careering movement that told him he was in the back of a van or truck, heading out of the barrio.
Oh, please, he thought, let me stay awake.
13
He struggled to remain conscious, to keep the nightmare at bay. Whoever injected him and wrapped him in the tarp had worked fast. Two, Sonny figured, and strong enough to lift him.
Now he was on the floor of a van, heading, he could only guess, to a rendezvous with Raven. But now he knew why Raven played games; why he just didn’t come out in the open and kill him?
The numbness remained, but his head cleared and Sonny could sense one man sitting next to him. The other drove. Where were they heading? He couldn’t tell anything about the direction, bundled as he was.
Under the tarp he gasped for air and struggled to stay awake. Half an hour later, he guessed, they drew to a stop. Someone asked the driver for identification. They were entering a restricted area. Where?
Sonny thought of shouting for help, but thought better of it when he felt the muzzle of a pistol on his head. “Not a word out of you,” the man whispered.
Outside, the guard said okay, and they were allowed to proceed.
Minutes later the van stopped again, and the back door opened. The two men silently carried Sonny into a building. He heard the door lock behind them as they carried him a short distance and set him in a chair. Someone with a very thick Russian accent protested.
“Why have you brought him here? Are you crazy? This is not good. There are guards!”
“Pipe down, Doc,” one of the men replied. “We got orders.”
“You are mad!” the man shouted. “I have not agreed to this!”
Another voice sounded in the room. “You don’t give the orders around here, Chernenko. I do!”
Even through the tarp Sonny recognized Raven’s voice. Sonny heard him moving to his side. The ropes around the tarp came loose and the canvas was lifted. Sonny blinked.
Raven stood in front of him. Behind him stood a very nervous Dr. Alexandr Chernenko, the Ukrainian nuclear physicist. On either side stood his abductors. One was lean and tall, the other short and muscular. Sonny recognized Sweatband and Tallboy, the same two who had helped Raven at the Juárez warehouse where they had tried to burn Sonny to a cinder.
“Awake?” Raven scowled. “I thought you would be dreaming.”
“The rough ride woke me up,” Sonny answered.
“Let’s kill the sonofabitch and be done!” Sweatband cursed.
“We owe him one,” Tallboy seconded him.
“That’s exactly what I have in mind. But I have a far better way of doing it.” He leaned over Sonny. The entire left side of Raven’s face was an ugly scar.
“It’s time, Baca,” he whispered. “Solstice time.”
Sonny knew Raven’s plan wasn’t to kill him in the flesh; it was his ancestral soul he wanted to destroy. So he had something in mind other than slicing his throat. Anyway, when really behind in the struggle, goad your tormentor.
“Why don’t you kill me and get it over with?” Sonny taunted. “Come on,” He turned to Sweatband. “Get it over with! You chicken? Afraid of a man who can’t walk!”
Sonny reached out, inviting the man to a fight. Four men in the room and he couldn’t even stand on his feet, but he wasn’t going without a fight.
Sweatband jumped forward and hit Sonny full across the face. “I’ll kill you!” he cursed, drawing a knife.
“Come on, try it!” Sonny taunted again. “You can’t kill me!”
Sonny looked past Sweatband to Raven. Raven couldn’t kill him! Not here, not in this world.
“Not even Raven can kill me!” he shouted, and laughed. His boldness made Sweatband hesitate.
“I can kill you anytime I want!” Raven retorted. “Or I let them do it. And it won’t be pretty.”
“Yeah,” Sweatband said, gathering his bravado and brandishing the knife. “I??
?ll carve you up real good.”
He grabbed Sonny’s hair and pushed his head back. Holding the sharp blade at Sonny’s throat, he grinned and looked at Raven. “Come on, let me do it now!”
“No!” Raven pushed him away. “I’ve got better plans for Sonny Baca. Wait outside.”
A hesitant Sweatband looked from Raven to his buddy, then slowly drew back. “I hope what you got planned for him is good,” he spit. “’Cause I owe him!” He motioned to Tallboy, and they both went out of the room. Chernenko started to follow, but Raven stopped him with an abrupt command.
“You stay! Prepare the second injection!”
“I don’t like this,” Chernenko mumbled. Sonny watched him walk to a small stand on which nested a syringe, a small bottle.
“Nobody’s asked you to like it,” Raven replied. “You do as you’re told and you get paid. Leave the rest to me.”
When Chernenko moved, Sonny got a clear view of the apparatus that rested in the middle of the large laboratory. A huge, round, barrel-like machine. Sonny recognized a crude device that was similar to pictures he had seen of the first atom bomb the Los Alamos scientists had built in 1945.
I’m in Chernenko’s lab, right in the Sandia Labs’ nuclear reactor area, Sonny thought, and this is the bomb he’s building!
“Yeah, that’s it.” Raven smiled, following Sonny’s gaze to the device. “Built right under their noses. Chernenko’s a genius, building the Gadget was a breeze. He calls it the Gadget, after the first bomb detonated at Trinity. I call this beauty the Avenger.” He looked at Chernenko. “Our man was once a top nuclear physicist in Ukraine.”
“I only want to finish and get paid,” Chernenko muttered. “Then I leave this place.”
“Patience, Doctor, patience,” Raven teased. “We have a little dream inducement yet to do. A shot of Valium for our boy. To make him ease into sleep nice and mellow.”
Dream inducement? Sonny thought. So that was the plan. He looked at Chernenko as he inserted the syringe needle into the vial.