The House of Wolfe Read Online Free PDF Page A

they struggle in a frenzy, legs flailing.
    Huerta crouches beside them with an open switchblade and with a deft stroke cuts into the bicep of the arm choking Gallo. Blood jets and the big man yowls and the cut arm drops limp.
    Gallo slumps to the floor, gagging, then labors up to his knees and starts to raise his pistol to hit the big man in the face, but Huerta shoves him back, saying, “Basta!” and Gallo falls on his ass, still beset by choked coughing. Rubio helps him to his feet, and Huerta points toward a corner and says, Bathroom, and Rubio leads him away.
    The other two security men are wide-eyed and still have their hands up. They all hear Gallo hacking in the bathroom while Huerta tends to the big man. He cuts away his jacket and shirt sleeves to expose the wound streaming blood, uses a strip of shirt sleeve to fashion a tourniquet above the gash, then binds the wound with a cleaning rag and another strip of sleeve. He loosens the tourniquet and helps the man to sit up, then stand. The back of the big man’s head is a sticky web of blood and he cradles his arm to his chest like a sick child.
    You didn’t have to cut me, he says.
    You moron, Huerta says. You’re lucky you didn’t get your brains blown out.
    I’m still bleeding, the man says. He looks near to tears.
    You’re okay. It’ll hold till a doctor tends you.
    Huerta pats the man’s coat and extracts a wallet from an inside pocket and tosses it to Espanto, who adds it to a ragbag holding the other Angeles men’s wallets. Their guns are in another bag.
    Why you doing this, chief? the big man says in a voice plaintive as a child’s.
    Huerta ignores him.
    Rubio returns from the bathroom and says that Gallo’s okay and getting cleaned up. They put the three Angeles agents with the other two at the back wall of the garage. Huerta takes the bags of guns and wallets to the Town Car nearest the garage door and puts them under the front seats. He gets a handful of flex-cuffs and a roll of duct tape from the trunk and he and Espanto gag the three arrivals in the same way as the other two, then cuff all five of them with their hands at their backs.
    Gallo reappears, having cleaned off his suit with damp paper towels. His neck shows small dark bruises but he has washed his face and combed his hair and looks presentable enough to carry on.
    He gives the big man a hard look and calls him a son of a whore.
    The big man stares back in glum silence.
    Again holding to the shadows, Espanto and Huerta take the five Angeles men from the garage to the garden’s rear gate. The music from the house is louder now, the voices and laughter. The north sky now starless for the massing rain clouds.
    Espanto has warned the bound and gagged men that if they try anything stupid he will beat them unconscious with his pistol, but if they do exactly as they’re told, they’ll be fine. They will be taken to a house outside the city and there spend the night. In the morning they will be set free. We don’t give a fuck what you do after that, Espanto told them.
    When they get to the gate, Huerta extracts black blindfolds from his jacket pockets and applies one to each man. He senses a swelling of their fear and says, Don’t worry, boys, this is just so you won’t have to lie to anybody when you tell them you don’t know where you were held. Remember, I’m the bad guy, not any of you. You guys are in the clear.
    One of them mutters angrily but unintelligibly through his gag. Espanto smacks him on the head and tells him to keep quiet.
    They’ve been waiting in the darkness only a few minutes, Espanto at the open peep window, when they hear the rumbling engine of a vehicle coming down the alley. It stops just outside the gate. Espanto opens it and he and Huerta move the men outside. Standing there with its engine idling is a gray van, two men in the front seats. A man of Oriental features pokes his head out of the