She rose to tend the child.
Wil stared down at the silver necklace in his hand. In a flash of resentment, he dropped the medal ion into the space beneath the floorboard where he normal y hid his cash.
Let Saint Anthony stay in San Antonio. Soledad would have no more need of him. Wil would protect her.
He would make sure she never suffered loss again.
He closed up the secret place in the floor, and made his phone cal to Gerry Far. A moment later, the apartment door exploded.
A police siren brought Wil back to the present.
The patrol car was several blocks up Roosevelt, red lights flashing, the cop tapping his bul horn as he pul ed through traffic.
Wil was prepared to turn on a side street, to run if he had to, but a block away from him the police car veered into a residential neighborhood.
Probably nothing to do with him.
He turned on the radio. Immediately, the newscaster said, “—al eged leader of the Floresvil e Five.”
Wil turned it off. He didn’t want to know. His nerves were frayed enough. It was seven in the evening, sun going down. He needed to find a store to rob.
Final y a corner sign caught his interest—ZUNIGA’S PRODUCE. The name sounded familiar, though Wil was sure he’d never seen the place before.
Its wal s were an odd color of stucco, like Chinese skin, so veined with cracks they seemed ready to fal apart. The doors were propped open with Black Diamond watermelons. Heaped outside were wooden crates of other produce—tomatoes, avocados, chili peppers, plantains.
No cars were parked out front. No customers at al , that Wil could see. The store wouldn’t have much cash in the til , but it wouldn’t have surveil ance cameras, either. Maybe the workers would be il egals. The owner would have no great desire to cal the police.
Zuniga.
The name tugged at Wil ’s memory, but he put it down to nerves.
He imagined Reverend Riggs’ laser-blue eyes staring into him, trying to burn a hole in the small part of Wil ’s conscience that stil believed in God.
He parked the car. He’d hesitated long enough.
Inside were two aisles—one for groceries, the other for produce. There was no one behind the counter— just a curtain to a back office, a cigarette rack, a black-and-white television with a Spanish telenovela flickering on the screen.
In the produce section, an aging Latino in a tank top and sweat pants and rubber galoshes was spraying down the fruit. The line of mirrors over the vegetable bins al reflected his bel y.
A cleaver, a heap of rubber bands, and a large mound of green onions sat next to him. The grocer’s eyes were watering like crazy. Like he’d just taken a break from chopping and tying the cebollas into bundles. Or maybe he’d been fol owing the telenovela.
He looked over tearful y as Wil picked up a shopping basket.
“Nice seein’ the sun out there,” Wil told him.
The man shrugged. He went back to spraying his apples.
Wil picked up three dusty soup cans, a loaf of Wonder Bread, Fig Newtons, chocolate bars—whatever didn’t look too stale. He was conscious of the gun under his Hawaiian shirt, the grip digging into his abdomen.
He moved to the produce aisle, where things were much better tended. He picked up an orange, some apples, a pint of strawberries. The smel of the strawberries reminded him of the prison yard—hot summer afternoons, a thousand acres ripening in the fields al around Floresvil e.
Wil brought his basket to the counter.
There were stil no other customers. No one on the street. Just him and the old man.
The grocer looked over lazily. He cal ed, “?Lupe, ven acá!”
Wil felt that uncomfortable memory tugging at the base of his skul . He had the sudden urge to leave.
Before he could, the back office curtain parted. A woman came out to help him.
She had been one of his.
He didn’t recognize her, exactly, but he knew from the way she bore herself—the downcast eyes, careful gestures, as if she were walking through a hot oven. Her hair was prematurely gray, tied back in a bun. Her face, once beautiful enough to warrant a good price, was now drawn tight from years of hard work.
Wil remembered something Gerry Far had told him for a laugh, years ago. Gerry had sold one of their acquisitions to a love-struck grocer, an old man who’d bought the girl for ten times her worth, cleaning out his savings and mortgaging his store to possess her. Wil and Gerry had joked about how much the old man must like to squeeze ripe fruit. The man’s name might’ve been Zuniga.
The woman didn’t look at Wil as she emptied his basket.
She ran her hands deftly over each item—estimating the weight of the produce, clacking prices from memory into an old-fashioned adding machine. She put everything into a brown paper bag for him, told him in Spanish it would be nineteen dol ars and twenty-eight cents.
Wil made up his mind. He would simply pay and leave.
He reached in his pocket, hoping to find some cash. Surely he’d overlooked at least one twenty-dol ar bil .
But he didn’t have time. Lupe looked up at him—straight through the sunglasses and the dyed hair and ten years of her own freedom—and she yelped with fear. “?Es él!”
As if she’d expected him. Wil realized the jailbreak must have dredged up her worst memories. The television would’ve kept his face constantly before her. Like thousands of others he’d brought north, Lupe must’ve been half expecting Wil Stirman, her personal nightmare, to walk back into her life somehow. He had obliged her.
The rest happened fast.
The grocer Zuniga dropped his spray gun and grabbed the onion cleaver. He shouted at Stirman to get away from his wife. He told her to run, cal the police.
The woman didn’t move.
Wil drew his gun. He told the old man to stop, to drop the knife.
Zuniga kept coming.
It’s a fucking gun, Stirman thought. Stop, you idiot.