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The others would at different times come out of the woodwork as they felt safer, as they collected information through their underground grapevine about what the hell had happened. And why. And how it did-or did not-directly threaten them.

The two slaps were enough to get Rosario’s attention-and more important, to get her to shut up and listen to reason. He had then been able to convince her to get in the Ford minivan, and that it was safer for her in the backseat, lying on the floor under a pile of bedsheets.

El Nariz then had gone back inside the laundromat.

Considering what had just happened, he thought that the scene did not look that bad. Or certainly not as bad as it could have.

El Nariz looked at the arch of bullet holes in the brick wall.

That crazy bastard!

What if he’d shot me-shot us all-instead of just leaving?

The wire baskets between the walls of washer and dryer machines were scattered wildly, a few toppled on their side. The severed head lay where it had slid to a stop, down by the table along the wall used for folding. He walked to it, afraid he might throw up, and quickly covered it with a white bath towel. The bloody slime trail it had left was becoming more and more dry, and he grabbed a damp towel from a wire basket and quickly wiped up what he could.

Then he found a box of plastic garbage bags, pulled two from the roll, and went back to the towel-covered head.

I still do not know who this is, may God rest her tortured soul.

Or how she is connected to Rosario.

But I do not question that she is.

He crossed himself, then carefully gathered the white towel around the head, lifting it all at once. He placed the severed head and its towel in one of the plastic garbage bags, then placed that bag inside the other. He added the bloody towel that he had used to wipe the floor, then knotted the bags closed.

He scanned the room and shook his head in resignation.

Nothing more to do right now.

Nothing but get the hell out of here.

Then, carrying the bag, he quickly moved to the steel double doors of the loading dock. He pulled them closed from the outside, locked them, then went to the minivan.

As the rear door of the minivan swung upward, he could hear the muffled sobbing coming from under the small pile of bedsheets.

“It is okay, Rosario,” he said softly. “It is only me.”

El Nariz carefully placed the garbage bag inside the rear storage area of the minivan-If she knows this is here, it will not be good for either of us; but it is not right to just leave it-and pulled the door down and closed it as gently as he could.

Rosario had sobbed uncontrollably on the drive to the South Philly row house.

And she was still inconsolable after Se?ora Esteban sat with both arms around her on the well-worn couch in the back-room parlor.

El Nariz had gone to clean up his head wound. He then took the double-bagged head down to the basement and, not sure what the hell else could immediately be done with it, he put it in the Deepfreeze, buried under plastic zipper-top bags of frozen vegetables.

Back upstairs, he’d stood watching from the doorway to the kitchen, taking an occasional pull from a liter bottle of agave liquor he held by his hip.

As Rosario continued sobbing, he’d finally gone back into the kitchen and poured two fingers of the tequila into a plastic cup. He’d then added twice as much orange juice to that and taken the drink into the parlor. With some effort, they got the girl to drink it.

After a short while, the alcohol had the desired effect. Rosario became somewhat calmer. She still trembled at times, but at least she no longer wailed.

Rosario now sat on the back-room parlor couch as Paco and Salma Esteban came back into the room. She had her knees pressed to her breasts and both arms wrapped tightly around the outside of her knees. She slowly rocked to and fro as she tried to hold back the sobs that seemed to rise from deep down inside.

“Rosario,” Salma Esteban began softly, “you do not have to do this thing now. You have been through very much.”

She shook her head vigorously.

“No,” she said. “It must be done.”