Black Dog(53)

The dangerous edge in those last words made bright fear run down Alejandro’s spine and set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. His silence felt like cowardice; it felt like he was abandoning Natividad. But he did not dare defy Ezekiel Korte.

Alejandro was not afraid of Ezekiel because he thought the verdugo would kill him here and now. He was simply afraid of him. He’d thought he’d begun to get over that simple physical fear and now found he had not, and was ashamed that he had not, but the shame made no difference. And he knew that Ezekiel must be aware of all of this.

Ezekiel turned back to the plane’s instruments. “I’ll show you the controls,” he said, his voice rough, but no longer holding that razor sharp threat. “It would be useful if you could fly this thing.”

Alejandro made no attempt to answer, but he paid attention. Even if he hadn’t been interested, he wouldn’t have dared do otherwise.



The plane landed in Chicago almost on time. There was no snow in this city, but everything – the vast lake they had seen from the plane, and the ground, and all the buildings, and the sky above – was gray and unpleasant. The air felt heavier despite the wind, and everything smelled thickly of car exhaust. It was nearly 5 o’clock in the afternoon. In Vermont, it would have been dark. Even here, it would soon be dusk, and the heavy moon would rise for the first night of its full strength. Alejandro thought he could already feel the moon’s tidal pull, for all that the moon itself still lay hidden in the light above.

“Get a map,” Ezekiel said, waving Alejandro toward a kiosk as they made their way out of the airport. “Chicago’s pretty easy to get around in, but get a map anyway. We should have a car waiting for us. They’ll have lost their record of it, I expect, but try not to kill anyone at the rental place no matter how much they deserve it.”

Chicago had tremendously crowded highways looping around in all directions, but Ezekiel only glanced at the map. Though Alejandro held it folded to what he thought was the right page, Ezekiel left him in no doubt about his superfluity.

“Williams lives outside Chicago proper. In fact, he lives, if our information is correct, west and north of a town called Joliet.” Ezekiel took an exit without seeming to pay any attention to it, as though he drove this way all the time and knew exactly where he was going. “This time of day, it’ll take us quite a while just to get out of the city, never mind all the way to the Williams’ place. I want to get back to the airport no later than midnight, so we’ll have to move things along once we get there.”

Alejandro nodded.

“You know what your role is?”

“To do what you tell me, I guess,” Alejandro answered, then flinched, expecting an amused, scornful, “Is that what you guess?”

But Ezekiel said, his tone merely eficiente, “Yes, but not only that. I’ll deal with Williams, but if I have to take him the hard way, you’ll keep his wife safe – keep her from running, stop her from shooting me if she’s had the same bright idea as your brother. You’re used to handling your temper around your sister, your brother. Grayson assumed you can do this. Tell me now if there’s a problem with this assumption.”

A role he could actually play. A useful role. That was both unexpected and welcome. Alejandro said, “No. No problem.”

“Then this should go perfectly smoothly,” said Ezekiel, his tone once more slightly mocking.

Thaddeus Williams and his wife turned out to live way, way out of the city, where the air smelled of turned earth and cows and growing things. Alejandro liked this much better than the bewildering crowded city, though it was a poor area. They found the place eventually: a trailer, not a house. Other trailers and ramshackle houses were scattered back along the road, though none were actually in sight.

The car already parked in front of the trailer was a battered Chevy. Clotheslines stretched between rusty poles, though nothing hung on the lines in the chill damp. Beyond the clotheslines, pieces of broken bricks outlined neat beds within a small garden, bare in this season. Alejandro was surprised by a surge of homesickness. This place only lacked half a dozen gallinas pecking around in the garden to give it very much the feeling of his mother’s village.

He had wondered what they would do if Thaddeus Williams and his wife were not at home. He had not asked only because he was afraid of Ezekiel’s temper if the verdugo did not have a plan for that. But both Thaddeus and his wife were in the trailer: he could smell the ash-and-burnt-clay scent of a black dog, and behind that, the clean, bright scent of a Pure woman.