días, it’s good to see you too.”
Opening the car door he stepped out and took her hand leading her around the car to the passenger side to help her in. He was quickly back in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the hospital parking lot. “We can drive past your house, but we must be very careful not be to be seen by anyone who might be waiting there. I now know who’s behind this and they will stop at nothing to get what they want. They plan to kill me, and if you or Inez get in their way, they will kill you too.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she took his hand in hers. “Why is this happening?” she asked through tears.
“Because money makes men do bad things and lots of money makes bad men do evil things. You and Inez just had the misfortune of meeting me. It’s that simple,” Rudy said while trying to smile.
“Oh Rudy....please don’t say that, don’t even think that. You’re not the one causing us this trouble, someone else is.” Tears were now freely streaming down her cheeks. She put their cupped hands to her lips and kissed his. Rudy guided the car to the curb and stopped. He put his arms around her and held her as tight as he could. She cried and they held each other until her sobbing slowed and then they kissed. Rudy used his fingers to wipe the tears from her beautiful face.
“We’re going to be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. This is about money, my money, and they want it. If it takes giving it to them, then they can have it. What I want is you and for you to be happy. Damn the money.”
“Oh Rudy, she began to cry again. “I want you to be happy too,” she said. He held her to him until she started taking deep breaths and calming down.
Then he said, “Now listen, we’re just about a block from your house. You’ll have to sit up and act like nothing is wrong as we drive by. We can’t draw attention to ourselves....okay?”
She nodded her head yes and pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.
Maintaining the speed limit as he drove past the brownstone, Rudy glanced at the parked cars along the curb making sure no one was staking out the area while Pamela watched the house for any sign of activity.
“All the lights are on,” she said in a whisper as if someone might overhear.
“Yeah, I turned them all on a few hours ago when I went inside for your luggage. I wanted to see if anyone would turn them off. So....my guess is that Inez has not made it back yet. Do you know of any place she may have gone if she were in trouble?” he asked.
“No, she has no relatives in the States that I know of. She was to take a trip back to Mexico for a few weeks and was going to take the bus to El Paso, then cross over into Juarez.”
Rudy thought for few minutes and then asked, “What’s her last name?”
“It’s Martinez, Inez Martinez”, she replied.
Rudy’s right eyebrow arched, “We just can’t catch a break with this. There are over two million people in Juarez and about half of them are named Martinez. It’s like Jones or Smith.”
They drove past Central Park without speaking. Rudy finally said, “We need to get some coffee and a quick breakfast then go get a few hours sleep before we can do anything else. I got us a motel room on the other side of town and I saw a 24 hour diner about a mile from the motel.”
Pamela’s apprehension showed in her eyes as she said, “Mmmm....a hot meal and a hot bath sounds wonderful.”
When they arrived at the diner parking lot it was less than a quarter full. “I wonder if the food’s that bad or that it’s just too early on a Sunday morning,” Rudy mused.
Pamela shrugged her shoulders with an I’m too tired to care attitude. Rudy opened the door for her and they found an isolated booth next to a window. The waitress brought menus and asked if they wanted coffee, decaf or regular?
“What’s your pleasure,” Rudy asked Pamela.
“Regular is fine with me,” she said, “I may regret it in an hour but right now I need the caffeine.”
“We’ll have a pot of regular,” Rudy ordered. They looked over the menus and Rudy asked “what sounds good this morning?”
“The eggs benedict has my vote,” she replied. The waitress delivered the pot of coffee and Rudy ordered two eggs benedict.
They drank coffee and watched each other. Pamela said, “You look like you have something you want to say.”
“Yes, I do. I’d like you to change the dressing on my shoulder when we get the chance ....and I also would like you to know the truth about something that I lied about. I’m very sorry but at the time I didn’t know how important it would become to me. I didn’t know how important you would become to me. I lied when I told you about my shoulder wound being a self inflicted accident. You were correct, it was a knife.” Rudy lowered his eyes to his coffee cup. “And it was from a fight I had with two guys in my hotel room. Maybe if I had been truthful about it you wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybe telling the police from the beginning would have saved a whole lot of grief for you and Inez. I’m so sorry. If I had known that any of this was going to happen I would have told you the truth. I just hope you can understand the position I was in and why I did it....When I left my hotel room and went to the hospital that night I thought that during the fight I had killed those guys in self defense. They had come to kill me but now I’m not so sure that they were dead.” When I got back to my room they were gone. No sign of them, just a lot of my blood to show they had been there.”
Pamela was silent for a moment waiting for him to continue his story. “Rudy....what were you thinking....what did you think was going to happen?” She was disappointed that he had lied to her. “I wanted to believe your romantic sword practice explanation that night....and I want to believe you are telling me the truth now, but what were you going to do with two bodies when you got back to your room?”
“I don’t know....my first thought was to wait until morning and then call my Uncle Juan, as my attorney, and have him there when we called the police. But that has all changed now, because he’s the one behind everything that’s happening to me. He’s the one who sent the two killers to my room that night and the fake cops the next day to take me into the mountains to kill me....When I told the lie about the sword to the police that morning, Juan had a sword delivered to the hotel to set me up, so that he could abduct me later to have me killed. I believe he’s the one who called the police with the anonymous tip claiming I had killed my brother. He would plant the suspicion to make sure that the police would not permit me to leave the city. That way he would then have his second chance to have me eliminated and it would look like I ran away and was hiding out somewhere while he continued to control the trust fund.”
Pamela watched Rudy nervously fumble with his napkin as if his confession to her was not an easy thing for him to do. “It must be hard for you to face the fact that your Uncle Juan would have you murdered....What about your brother? Is he in danger too or is he in this with Juan?”
“Roberto will share my fate.”
Both were silent for the next few minutes gazing out the window at nothing in particular. Their breakfast was served and Rudy was the first to break the silence after the waitress had left. “I know that this is all coming about very quickly for both of us and that we’ve only spent a few hours together but I have a very strong attraction to you and I’m hoping you have the same feelings towards me. I don’t want a mistake I made at the beginning to come between us and end something that I think we both want....I’m sorry....is all that I can say. I wish I could place my hand on a Bible and tell you that it will never happen again. I wish that I could take it back, but I can’t. There are parts of my life that are very complicated and may never be fully explained to everyone’s satisfaction. Things aren’t always the way the appear.”
Pamela slid her hands across the table and placed them on top of his. “I’m sorry too Rudy. If I had been in your place I don’t know