With his hands pressed against his nose and the blood running between his fingers, Deleon screamed "No disparen. La mujer. No disparen."
Behind me Chollo translated softly, "Don't shoot the woman."
Deleon felt around on the ground for his gun, didn't find it, and got to his feet, trying to stop the blood with his left hand.
"This is not your husband," he said to Lisa.
Lisa pressed closer against my back.
"No," she said, "a friend."
With a loud, wrenching crash another piece of the tenement collapsed in on itself, cascading mud and water down through the mounting rubble, damping the cloud of plaster dust that tried to rise.
"We're taking her out," I said. "No one wants her hurt."
"You are not from Joseph Broz," Deleon said slowly. Like his troops, it had all come to him too quickly. He was trying to sort it out.
"No."
"And Mister del Rio?"
"Mister del Rio don't give a fuck about you, Luis," Chollo said. "Excuse me, ma'am."
Deleon nodded slowly. He was now holding his left sleeve against his nose and having some luck slowing the blood. He looked at me as if he was starting to get it. Behind him I saw the women and children come out from one of the alleys beyond the next tenement. They crouched in the street, the children pressed in close to the women. Several of the men stood in front of them the way buffalo bulls circle the calves.
"It was a trick to get in."
"Yes."
"To get Lisa."
"Yes. Now we're going to walk away from here, past those cars."
"No."
"Yeah. We got her. We got you if we want to. Freddie Santiago is out there with fifty men. You got no place to take cover, no place to run. You start and everyone dies. It'll be a bloodbath."
"You would leave me?" he said to Lisa.
"You'll have to kill me to keep me."
"And if I let you go?"
"We walk, you walk," I said.
"And Freddie Santiago?"
I raised my voice. "Senor Santiago," I said.
From the darkness beyond the headlights, Santiago's voice said, "I am here."
"The deal is we walk, they walk."
"I do not care about los campesinos," Santiago's voice said. "But Luis comes out with you."
"Peasants," Chollo translated quietly.
There was a murmur among los campesinos, the specifics of which were unclear but the general thrust of which was disapproval.
"That wasn't our deal," I said.
"You were going to take him out for me," Santiago's voice said.
"I didn't need to," I said. "The house fell in instead."
"I still want him taken out," Santiago's voice said. "You are the one who is changing the deal."
"I don't like the deal," I said.
"You are in no position to like it or not like it, Mr. Spenser," Santiago's voice said. "Either he comes with you, or we simply cut everyone down, you and the woman included."
Most of Deleon's troops had backed away from the confrontation by now and gathered in front of the women and children. Some of the children were crying. I had the Browning steady on Deleon's stomach. He looked at Lisa, then he looked at the trapped huddle of men, women, and children near the alley mouth. Fish in a barrel. Finally he turned his head back and stared at me for a minute. I stared back and we both knew what the deal was going to have to be. Deleon's gaze shifted to Lisa.
"I was going to let you go," he said. She didn't answer.
"It is why I had your clothes brought to you."
She said nothing. He kept his eyes on her for a long time.
From the darkness Santiago's voice spoke again. "Are you coming or not? I have waited a long time to catch Luis Deleon. I don't wish to wait any longer."
"Time," I said to Deleon.
Still looking at Lisa
he called out in Spanish to the men and women now packed into the mouth of the alley. Chollo, as the troops had drifted toward the alley, had come around to face them and now stood beside me.
"He says he's going with Santiago," Chollo translated. "Says no shooting."
I nodded. Deleon straightened and adjusted his costume. The open silk shirt was dark with the blood from his nose, and some of the blood had dried on his face.
"It was not just craziness," he said to Lisa. "I always loved you."
"It doesn't matter," Lisa said.
Deleon nodded. He started to say something, then he stopped. I think his eyes began to tear. He turned quickly away.
"We could make a fight," Chollo said.
"And lose," I said.
"There are worse things," Chollo said.
"We're here to rescue Lisa," I said.
"Sure," Chollo said.
Deleon looked up at the dark sky for a moment, the rain hitting his face, then he began to walk toward the cars. We followed him at a distance of maybe thirty feet, Lisa between us, her right hand in mine, the Browning in my right. On the other side of her, I could hear Chollo's breath. His lips were barely parted and the air hushed over them. Chollo had his gun upright, the barrel laid against his right cheek. He was so concentrated in the moment that he moved like some sort of hunting animal as we walked toward the darkness beyond the headlights.
Deleon stopped again, just at the front bumper of one of the cars. The rain was pelting down, soaking pinkish into the dried blood on his shirt front. He looked back at Lisa.