The Road to Hell

THE ROAD TO HELL

  Four Stories

  By Paul Levine

  “The Road to Hell”

  Copyright © 2011 by Paul Levine. All rights reserved.

  Ebook Design by Rob Siders

  Cover Design by Aaron Kowan

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Nittany Valley Productions, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  El Valiente en el Infierno (The Brave One in Hell)

  A Hell of a Crime

  Development Hell

  Solomon & Lord: To Hell and Back

  Mortal Sin (Excerpt)

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Free Newsletter

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The four stories in this anthology have something in common in addition to the word “hell” in their titles. The heroes travel dark and dangerous paths as they confront devilish and powerful villains. The journeys are by land, by sea, and in one case, perhaps only in the mind.

  “El Valiente en el Infierno” (The Brave One in Hell) is an original short story inspired by a tale I heard in Mexicali, Mexico while researching “Illegal,” my border-crossing thriller. Several people swear the harrowing story is true. After his mother dies, a 13-year-old Mexican boy crosses the border in search of his father, a migrant worker in the United States. The boy’s courage is tested when he runs into two gun-toting American vigilantes, and the confrontation will change all of them forever.

  “Development Hell” is a well-known term in Hollywood. The phrase symbolizes the purgatory where books and screenplays are stuck while being “developed,” rather than being made into films. The story first appeared in the anthology, “On a Raven’s Wing: New Tales in Honor of Edgar Allan Poe” (2009), edited by Stuart Kaminsky. “Development Hell” imagines a “pitch session” in which a bedraggled Poe squares off with a slick Hollywood producer who wants to make a cheesy slasher flick out of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” This one provides a dose of humor with your horror.

  “A Hell of a Crime” presents a dysfunctional family of lawyers. An insecure prosecutor exists in the shadow of his more prominent parents. His father was a revered District Attorney, his mother a powerful trial lawyer in her own right. So just why does the mother interfere when her son prepares to prosecute a murder trial? And how is the prosecutor’s enigmatic wife involved in the case? It’s a mystery with a punch to the gut at the end.

  “Solomon & Lord: To Hell and Back” features two of my favorite characters. The ethically-challenged Steve Solomon and the very proper Victoria Lord are mismatched Miami law partners. Steve says he’s going fishing with Manuel Cruz, a sleazy con man. Victoria knows that Cruz embezzled a bundle from Steve’s favorite client and is an unlikely fishing buddy. So just what is Steve up to now? Something between mischief and murder, Victoria figures. To protect Steve from himself – and Cruz – she hops aboard the boat, and the three of them head for deep water and dark troubles. The “Solomon and Lord” novels have been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity and International Thriller Awards, as well as the James Thurber Humor Prize. This story is an inviting introduction to the novels.

  “The Road to Hell” also contains an excerpt from one of my novels featuring Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, a tough guy with a tender heart.

  “Mortal Sin” finds Lassiter with a dangerous conflict of interest. He’s sleeping with Nicky Florio’s wife…and defending the mob-connected millionaire in court. Florio has hatched a scheme deep in the Florida Everglades that oozes corruption, blood, and money. One false move, and Jake will be gator bait. “Recalling the work of Carl Hiaasen, this thriller races to a smashing climax.” – Library Journal. “Mortal Sin may not be better than a trip to Florida, but it’s the next best thing.” – Detroit Free Press

  This warning sign is familiar to drivers in Southern California near the Mexican border.

  EL VALIENTE EN EL INFIERNO

  (THE BRAVE ONE IN HELL)

  I am not afraid.

  That is what I tell myself.

  Just after midnight, five hundred meters from the border fence, I keep still, squatting on the ground beneath a mesquite tree. Buried in the sand are motion sensors and infrared cameras.

  My name is Victor Castillo. I am 13 years old.

  Back home, in my village, a man warned me not to do this.

  You are looking for el cielo. Heaven. But you will find only el infierno. Hell.

  Still, I am not afraid. In a matter of minutes, I will be in the United States. By breakfast time, I will be with my Aunt Luisa in a little California town called Ocotillo. She is a nurse, but an even better cook. The best huevos rancheros in the world. Homemade tortillas, the eggs not too runny, the red sauce spiked with jalapenos. We will have a cry about my mother, then mi tia will put me on a bus to Minnesota, where my father works in the sugar beet fields.

  But first, there is the fence. It slithers down a rocky slope and disappears between distant boulders, like an endless snake. We move from the cover of the trees to a ravine filled with desert marigolds. I hope the golden flowers are a good omen. We climb out of the ravine and up to the fence, the links glowing like silver bullets in the moonlight. The man who calls himself El Leon – “The Lion” – snips at the metal with wire cutters. He wears all black and his long hair is slick with brilliantine.

  In the States, they would call El Leon a coyote. In Mexico, he is a pollero, a chicken wrangler. Which makes the rest of us – Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans – the pollos. The chickens. Hopefully, not cooked chickens. If we are caught and turned back, I don’t know what I will do. All my mother’s savings are paying for my passage

  The wire cutters fly from El Leon’s hands, and he curses in Spanish.

  This is taking too long.

  Above us, a three-quarter moon is the color of milk. Under our feet, the earth is hard as pavement. Somewhere, on the other side of the fence, La Migra, the Border Patrol, waits. I listen for the whoppeta of a helicopter or the growl of a truck.

  El Leon, please hurry!

  He keeps snipping and cursing. I sit on my haunches, inhaling the smell of coal tar from the creosote bushes. From a pocket in my backpack, I take out a photograph of my mother, her face pale in the moonlight.

  El Leon works quickly now, the links cra-acking like bones breaking. Finally, he says, “You first, chico.”

  I duck through the opening, then hold the wire for a Honduran girl. Maybe I should say a Honduran “woman,” because she is pregnant, her stomach a basketball under her turquoise blouse. But she is probably only sixteen or seventeen and is traveling alone, and she looks too young and too scared to take care of a child. On her feet, huarches, sandals made from old tire tread. I hope she can keep up with us. A selfish thought, I realize, and immediately feel ashamed. My mother taught me better.

  The pregnant girl places two hands on her stomach, bends over, and squeezes through the fence. Following her are two campesinos from Oaxaca who smell like wet straw. The men wear felt Tejana hats, cowboy boots, and long-sleeve plaid work shirts. Then the rest, fourteen in all.

  Ten minutes later, we are climbing a dusty path, moonbeams turning the arms of cholla cactus into the spiny wings of monsters.

  Los Estados Unidos. I am here!

  Do I feel different, changed in some way? I am not sure. The rocks on the ground and the stars in the sky all look the same as in Mexico. May
be mi mami is looking down at me from those stars. Her weak lungs gave out five days ago, and I recited the oraciones por las almas over her grave.

  “Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness.”

  The stars have “everlasting brightness,” so yes, I pretend she watches me, even though I never believed half of what the priests said.

  I travel alone to find my father. My two older brothers have been with papi for nearly a year, carrying their weeding hoes all the way from our village in Sonora to a town called Breckenridge in Minnesota. Beets, strawberries, cabbage. Melons, corn, peas. Whatever is in season and requires hands close to the ground. The work is hard, but the pay is good, at least by Mexican standards.

  Now we walk along a rocky path that crawls up the side of a hill sprouting with stubby cactus like an old man who needs a shave. El Leon yells at two Mexican sisters, calls them parlanchinas – chatterboxes – tells them to keep quiet. He has a rifle slung over a shoulder. But why? Who would he shoot?

  The older sister is still babbling, something about every house in California having a swimming pool, when El Leon hisses, “¡Cállense la boca!”

  He cocks his head toward the hill. I hear something, too.

  A clopping.

  Growing louder. Horses!

  A gunshot echoes off the hillside.

  “Vigilantes!” El Leon yells.

  My stomach tightens. Our village priest warned me about the vigilantes. Not policemen. Or National Guard. Or Border Patrol. Private citizens, gabachos, calling themselves the Patriot Patrol. Maybe protecting their country or maybe just taking target practice with their friends. Maybe one day shooting Mexicans instead of road signs and cactus.

  “Run!” El Leon screams.

  But where? On one side of the path, a steep upward slope. On the other, a creviced, dry wash.

  The two campesinos leap into the wash and take off, the spines of prickly pear tearing at their pant legs. El Leon leads the others back toward the border. But I cannot follow them. ¡Mi papi está en los Estados Unidos!

  I scramble up the steep slope, grabbing vines, pulling myself hand-over-hand. The horses are so close now I can hear their hooves kicking up rocks on the path. “Yippee ti-yi-yo, greasers!” A gabacho’s voice. Gruff and mean.

  Two men on horseback in chaps, boots, and cowboy hats. One man holds a large revolver over his head and fires into the air.

  “Git on back to Meh-ee-co! Look at ‘em run, Calvin.”

  Calvin, a big man with a belly flopping over his jeans, coughs up a laugh. “Whoa, what do we got here, Woody? Looks like a piñata on Michelins.”

  I see her then, too. The pregnant Honduran girl in her tire-tread huarches, trying to hide in the shadow of the hill.

  ”Someone aims to have herself an anchor baby,” Calvin says.

  I know what the man means. Anyone born on this side of the border is automatically an American citizen. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Mexico, Guatemala, or Mars. If el Diablo himself fathered a child in Los Angeles, the unholy offspring would be an American.

  “Welfare and food stamps and diapers all on the taxpayer’s dime.” Woody spits out the words.

  Gripping a vine at its root, I keep still. Afraid to dislodge a stone. Afraid the gabachos will see me. And ashamed of my fear.

  On the path below me, the girl tries to run back toward the border, but the best she can do is a duck waddles. The two men cackle and whoop. Calvin grabs a lariat from his saddle. “Where you goin’ chica? The amnesty bus already left the station.”

  He twirls the lariat and tosses it over the girl’s head, where it settles on her chest. He pulls it tight, nearly yanking her off her feet.

  “No!” she screams, clawing at the rope. “¡Mi bebé!”

  “If there really is a kid…” Calvin hops off his horse. “Let’s have a look, chica.”

  He struts toward her, bowlegged, his belly jiggling over his wide belt,

  which is studded with silver buttons.

  I want to fly down the mountain and take the gun away. If they give me any trouble, I will shoot one in the kneecap and the other in his big, fat belly. Isn’t that what a valiente – a courageous man – would do? Take any risk, fight any foe, protect the weak, punish the wicked. But I am a boy. And they are grown men with guns.

  “You with that coyote calls himself ‘El Leon?’” Calvin demands

  The girl’s head bobs up and down.

  “El Leon’s a narcotraficante. You carrying his cocaina instead of a kid? You a mule?”

  “No! Mi bebé!”

  “C’mon. He always uses kids and women to carry his drugs.”

  “Not me. ¡Te lo juro por Dios!”

  Calvin slips the lariat off the girl, then yanks up her blouse.

  Even from this distance, I can see her bulging stomach, creamy white in the moonlight.

  “She ain’t lying,” he says to Woody, patting the girl’s belly. “Maybe we should deliver the baby right now. Save the county some money.”

  The girl screams.

  “You got a knife, Woody?”

  “You know I do. Bowie knife.”

  I must do something, but what? My arms feel like they’re dipped in boiling water. I try to get a better grip on the vine, but it tears from the dry earth. I dig my sneakers into the slope.

  Calvin says, “Who’s gonna operate?”

  “You do it, Woody. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  The girl chants in Spanish. Asks God to take her own life but save her baby.

  I do not expect God to answer her prayers. He did not answer mine when my mother was sick. It is up to me.

  Can a valiente be afraid?

  I tell myself yes. If he acts with courage, despite the fear.

  I grip the vine with my left hand, pick up a rock with my right. Round and jagged, the size of a baseball. I throw the rock at Woody, the gabacho still on his horse. It sails past the man’s head, clunks into the dry wash.

  “What the hell!” Woody turns in the saddle, faces the slope, revolver in hand.

  “Up here, pendejos!” I yell.

  “It’s a kid,” Calvin says, pointing. “Right there, Woody.”

  “C’mon down here, you little jumping bean,” Woody orders.

  “Come and get me, culero!” I throw another rock, adjusting for the downward arc. Woody never sees it coming out of the darkness, and it plunks his shoulder. He yelps and his horse does a little dance under him. He turns the revolver toward the slope and fires. A bullet pings off a boulder. Not even close. I think maybe he is not such a good shot.

  “I work for El Leon!” I yell, waving my backpack in the air. As if I’m carrying cocaine and not just a pair of jeans, three t-shirts, and a first baseman’s mitt.

  “Little greaser’s the mule!” Calvin sounds as if he’s just made a great discovery. Now, I think maybe the men are not too smart, either.

  “I may be a mule, but you’re nothing but chicken-hearted bandidos!”

  I start up the slope again, clawing at rocks to make my way.

  “Stop, you little punk!”

  I keep going, hoping they will try to follow.

  Another gunshot ricochets off a boulder far over my head.

  “C’mon down here, you little peckerwood!” Woody shouts. “Give us the coke and we’ll let you go.”

  I reach the top of the slope and look down toward the vigilantes. “So long, pendejos!”

  “Go around that way, Cal,” Woody orders, tugging the reins and pointing into the darkness. “We’ll meet up on the far side.”

  The vigilantes turn their horses and take off in opposite directions. They will try to cut me off on the other side of the hill. And they may succeed. But at least, they have left the girl alone. I glance one last time down the slope. The girl waves and says something to me I cannot hear, but in my head, I think she is chanting a blessing for me. I wave back and scramble on hands and knees over the top of the hill.

  Minutes later, I am
stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men.

  But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain.

  “Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can’t put an ounce of weight on it.”

  “Hang in there Cal.”

  I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. “Damn rope’s fouled in the rocks.”

  “Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Jesus, ankle’s swole up and hurts like hell.”

  Calvin’s voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side.

  It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away.

  Then I hear Woody moan. “Damn, it hurts like a sumbitch. I might pass out, Cal.”

  “Hang with me, man!”

  “Gonna die out here.” Woody starts to sob. Great, wracking sobs that seem to echo off the rocks and boulders.

  Why don’t I just sneak past them? I don’t know. Sometimes we do things without ever knowing exactly why.

  “You can’t get the rope free that way,” I say to Calvin as I come up behind him.

  Startled, he wheels around. “Ain’t your business, chico. Git out of here.”

  “I can rope down the cliff.”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Rappelling. Rock climbing. I’ve done it back home.” I look over the side of the cliff. Woody sits on a ledge about 20 feet below us. The rope is stuck in a crevice maybe 15 feet from him. “I’ll work the rope out, walk it along the cliff face till I reach your friend.”

  Calvin looks at me as if he thinks I might steal his wallet. “Why would you help?”

  “Because somebody has to.”

  He seems to think about this a moment.

  “After you pull him up, drop the rope back to me,” I tell the man.

  “You trust me to do that, kid?”