“Yuck,” Pilar commented.
“But rather impressively biblical and miraculous.” Jaime steepled his fingers. “Maybe we could build some sort of catapult?”
“Oh, please!” Jane scoffed. “Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier to drop them from the roof?”
“What roof?”
“The nightclub.” Katya’s voice was fierce and taut. “I know the exact spot. The veranda on the back; that’s where they go to smoke dope. The MPs, they don’t patrol around there unless there’s a fight. Ken and his buddies bragged about it. It’s got an overhanging roof.”
Mack glanced at Loup. “Scouting expedition?”
She was already on her feet. “Yep.”
They surveyed Salamancas’ nightclub in the light of the setting sun. It was a ramshackle affair that had spread to encompass a number of buildings. The buildings were close together. Apart from the flat extension overhanging the veranda, the rooftop on the original building had a slight pitch. Most of the other buildings had flat roofs. Mack watched Loup gauging the distance between them.
“Think you could do it?”
“Yeah.”
His voice hardened. “You’d better be damn sure, Loup.”
She gave him a surprised look. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t.”
Toward the end of the block was an old apartment building with a fire escape, its rooftop almost touching the adjoining building, an abandoned café not yet annexed by the sprawling Salamanca complex.
Loup nodded at the fire escape. “That’ll work. Mack, I can get up and over and back and down, no problem. But how am I gonna know I’ve got the right guys? I know Braddock, but not the others. Even if I knew what they looked like, it’s gonna be hard to recognize them from overhead.”
Mack scratched his chin. “Yeah. We need Kotch on lookout. Think she’ll do it?”
“To get back at them? Hell, yeah.”
They staked out a place for the lookout in a narrow alley across from the veranda with a rusting Dumpster bin providing handy concealment. Loup snatched a pair of binoculars from an unattended jeep with casual ease.
“Might need these,” she said. “It’s not gonna be easy to pick out faces at that distance.”
“Loup!” Mack looked slightly alarmed.
“What?” She shrugged. “I don’t wanna rain snakes on the wrong guys.”
They made it back before curfew. In the early gray hours of dawn, C.C. and T.Y. snuck out to go snake hunting on the golf course. They returned triumphant with a heavy, squirming pillowcase that the Santitos examined that afternoon with varying degrees of disgust and fascination.
“Kinda cute, huh?” C.C. offered, extracting a long, wriggling green snake. “You wanna pet him?”
“Ohmigod.” Pilar sounded faint. “Get that thing away from me.”
“They’re harmless, I swear.” Loup peered into the pillowcase at the mass of twining coils. “Poor snakes. I feel bad for them.”
“They’re serving the greater good,” Jane said laconically. She swung a rustic wicker basket from one hand. “Look what I found in the storeroom. There’s a stack of spares.”
Jaime adjusted his glasses. “Santa Olivia’s basket?”
Jane nodded. “Since Santa Olivia won’t be making an appearance this time, it’ll be the perfect vehicle for her message, don’t you think?”
He smiled at her in total accord. “Perfect.”
They wrote out a message and tied it to the handle of the basket.
FORK-TONGUED LIARS.
SANTA OLIVIA DOES NOT FORGET.
Eight hours later, Loup lay plastered flat on the roof overhanging the veranda of the nightclub, peering at the heads of the soldiers below as they came and went. A haze of pungent smoke drifted upward. Santa Olivia’s basket was beside her, overflowing with a knotted pillowcase that writhed in a series of peculiar bulges. She waited and waited, periodically glancing toward the alley where Mack and Katya were concealed.
Waited.
And waited.
She thought about Tommy’s father taking their mother to Salamanca’s for a drink the night they met. About him promising to marry her. It sounded like he’d been one of the good guys, like his son. She felt bad lying to Tommy about playing Santa Olivia, but he’d be scared and mad if he knew. He’d yell at her for not being careful. And he would be right, of course. Tommy was usually right.
But Tommy hadn’t seen Kotch the night of the rape, all of her careless confidence in shreds. He hadn’t had to stand by a helpless witness while Colonel Stillwell chose to blame the victim.
And the O’Brien kids…
Loup thought about the glimmer of awe and hope in the boy’s eyes and smiled. Sometimes it was worth being a little careless. Maybe God had forgotten about Outpost, but it didn’t hurt to let people believe Santa Olivia remembered them.
An owl hooted.
“Shit,” she muttered, recognizing Mack’s signal. She peeked over the edge of the roof. Three new guys had sauntered onto the veranda. She memorized the tops of their heads. One had a little nonregulation ducktail of hair curling over the collar of his BDUs. “Okay,” she whispered to the snakes, unknotting the pillowcase. “Sorry about this, really.”
The soldiers leaned on the railing, sharing a joint and chuckling in low tones. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Mack and Katya were making their furtive way back to the church.
Loup waited.
People came and went. PFC Braddock’s companions lingered to enjoy a leisurely high. If they’d picked up girls that night, they weren’t offering to share their stash. Lying flat on her belly, Loup maneuvered the pillowcase into position, holding the opening shut. A lone green snake found its way out and slithered around her wrists, its forked tongue tickling her skin as if to ask a question.
“Cut that out,” she whispered to it.
The ducktailed soldier pinched out their joint and flicked the roach into the darkness. He and his comrades sauntered back toward the club and passed beneath the overhanging roof.
Loup upended the pillowcase.
Snakes fell like rain, twisting in midair.
The ensuing shouting was surprisingly gratifying. “Mother-FUCK!” someone yelled, his voice rising above the din. “Mother-fucking snakes!” She grabbed the basket and let it dangle, taking a split second to appreciate the scene. Soldiers batting furiously at their cropped hair, yanking at the collars of their BDUs, trying to shed their shirts. On the veranda, snakes wriggling everywhere, just trying to get away.
She let the basket fall.
“The hell?” One of the soldiers looked up, fumbling for his flashlight.
But Loup was already in motion, already on her way. She crossed the flat expanse of the overhang and scrambled up the shallow pitch of Salamanca’s roof on all fours. She vaulted over the peak and found her feet. By the time the flashlight’s beam sought to tag her, she was already on the downslope and running.
It felt good.
So good.
There was starlight; enough to see by, just barely. At the edge of the roof, Loup leaped. Air and the abyss. She launched herself and crossed it, landing solidly on the roof of the next building. Behind her there was a commotion. She kept running, dodged a defunct ventilation duct.
Leaped again.
Solid.
It was easier without carrying a basketful of snakes.
The fire escape almost came too soon. Loup scrambled down it. By the time her feet found purchase on the street, the commotion was well behind her, half a block away.
She melted into the darkness.
Gone.
TWENTY-ONE
Petitions to Santa Olivia began appearing at the church.
It had been a long time since there was anything resembling real religious devotion in most of Outpost. Father Ramon celebrated the mass on Sundays and people still came, but for the comfort and familiarity of ritual. Everyone more or less knew he wasn’t a real priest, and there was the matter of his relationships with Sister Martha and Anna. The church had retained its standing because of the services it provided—the clinic, the free lunches. Caring for the dying and the dead, taking in the orphans of Outpost. Whatever else was true, everyone knew that Father Ramon and Sister Martha had worked tirelessly for many years to keep the community alive.
Faith wasn’t much of an issue.
But now it was different. People weren’t dying of the plague. The church hadn’t taken in an orphan since Pilar Ecchevarria, and she didn’t exactly count. Even the rumors about El Segundo had been muted.
And Santa Olivia had been seen in Outpost.
Santa Olivia had performed miracles.
Outposters trickled into the church at all hours to light votive candles to the child-saint’s effigy, until the church ran out of candles. They left petitions written on folded scraps of paper in Santa Olivia’s basket. The statue of Our Lady of the Sorrows looked on in seeming approval, the rusty tearstains on her face fading.
“Listen to this.” Crazy Jane read aloud. “‘Santa Olivia, my husband is cheating on me with that whore Linda Flores. Please make his dick go limp.’”
“You shouldn’t steal those!” Maria protested. “It’s sacrilegious.”
“Why the hell not? Father Ramon just throws ’em away. He’s afraid we’ll get ideas.” Jane read another. “‘Blessed Saint Olivia, my father buried my mother’s jewels in a sand trap on the golf course twenty-five years ago. They died in the plague. Now I work tending the greens. I been digging and digging, but I cannot find them. I beg you to come to me in a dream and show me where.’” She laughed. “Greedy fucker!”
There were pleas to heal injuries and cure sicknesses, pleas for wealth and love. But mostly, there were pleas for vengeance.
The Santitos read them with morbid fascination.
“‘Old Salamanca ruint my family.’” T.Y. squinted at a scrap. “‘I beg you to make his daughter poor. Fair is fair.’”