The car broke down at the worst time. Only a quarter mile away from the gas station, whose light was barely visible. He pressed down on the petal. It rumbled. He turned it. The pole? Where did it come from? Sputtered smog shot from the exhaust wrapped around the curvature of the ruined bumper. The tessellated car hood teetered, crumpled to the side of the car. The pole, interred through the front, like an exit wound. It hung at an angle, slanted.

He had driven hours, perhaps, minutes (time is a fickle increment in the rush of things) to a small town nearing the casino El Rey. He dragged his body out of the car. Using his left hand hurt him, so he put it near his hips and let it dangle in bloody ruin, with bone protruding and tapping against his belt every so often. He could not even wince, could not also focus on his pain. His legs trembled as he stood, to the north, El Rey Casino, to the south, Las Vegas. Both with that halo of light about them. And strangely enough, there was something holy about Las Vegas, the gamblers paradise.

But most things are holy when death rears its head.

In front of him, a small little abode. To his rear, cars zoomed by every so often, not even so much as pausing to look at the wreckage. He looked behind himself, his eyes wide. He limped to the street, to the gasoline station. A windshield wiper drifted back and forth behind, against the shattered glass of his front windshield. He felt a shard drive up his big toe. He stumbled, found his way, and limped again.

He ran instead toward the little city, which was nothing more than a collection of truck stops and poor-handled motels. There was a bar hidden somewhere that took upon itself the name of this half-way spot, The Lindenburg. As he approached, the first thing to strike him was the pervasive smell of urine and alcohol, of which he could not distinguish between fresh and old.

The neon lights came second to his senses. It looked like the mapped electro-neuron brain of a patient. With electricity shooting at every which way, with all thought sporadic and unfocused. So it was. So he was.

He searched his pockets and pinched his cellphone out (he had three broken fingers in his right hand). The din screen flashed, then disappeared.

He cursed. Coughed.

He tasted blood in his mouth, a tooth dislodged. He felt too, the falling blood from his forehead and the gash growing. His bruises burned all along his abdomen and running felt like a rusty nail shoved down his heels.

He went to the gas station first.

"Hello, sir?" he met a man behind bulletproof glass whose dead eyes had a kind of reflective quality to them. They were vast and dark, and he saw himself in them, muddied in black.

“Shit, kid. Are you alright?” The bald man said. His voice had no distinct quality of danger or concern, though he did act speedily. “Hold on. I’ll call someone.”

He dialed a corded phone stuck to the side of the wall. It gave a hostile no-signal beep. Like tapping. Like tapping.

He tried his cell phone. But upon flashing the screen, it too seemed to die.

Shit, kid, you look like hell. Hold on. I’ll go run and get some help.” He opened the back door and ran to the alley, screaming for help. Then his voice was heard no more. Snuffed, disappearing into the darkness.

And he heard the tap of a cane once more. Against the hard asphalt of the cold-struck night, a tinge, an abrasive tune. A tap. It stopped. Santana turned his head. And as he went to look at the direction of the first few sounds, it returned, behind him now, where the old man had run to. Moving, now. Closer, now. Tap tap tap.

He limped away, opposite the old man, towards the little streets. Crossing and wandering aimless and desperate, his eyes wide and the sweat dripping like grease off his face. He couldn’t but feel burned. His foot snagged onto something. A little Patriots-themed blanket, a bum was sleeping along the edge of the street. Many were, their feet dangling into the gutters as if in cliffside leisure. He didn’t bother asking them for help. What would do against him, with their broken beer bottles and their drunk stupors?

He couldn’t even imagine a fight.

Michael was the fighter.

His eyes swelled. Sadness caught him before Ritcher did.

Michael was the fighter.

He repeated, in a monotonous sullen tone inside his head. Michael was a lot of things to him in life. And perhaps now that he was dead, he was even more things than Santana realized. He sighed. The tears and the sweat mixing well. They both tasted salty, and the burden of them made him slant against a paint-chipped wall of a motel six.

The air conditioners blasted exhaust from above. The water from them flowed down from emergency ladders onto Santana's back. He felt it crawl underneath his clothes like small creatures. Each incremental inch of water-drag, invoking that feeling of bug-crawl. A centipede, finding its way into his body, going in and out with reckless abandon. He scratched himself. He shivered.

He wiped his face of tears and turned to a sound, four bums were groaning and one vomited onto the floor next to a rusted green, dumpster.

"Do you know where I can find the police station?" His voice broke every so often.

The bum fell face first into his vomit. Two others ground and went to sleep atop cardboard and weathered blankets. One came along to urinate into a trash-can fire and fill the air with the ammonia-scented smoke.

He limped towards the vacancy symbols. Though there were no employees to offer him a room. They were all gone, gone from their little glass rooms or their small houses just outside the aforementioned apartments

He bumped into a crack and felt the pain of his ruined foot all along his thighs, up to his hip and into his abdomen. He had to rest against a wall. The streets had been getting smaller, closing in on him. He walked along one such claustrophobic enclosure. It must have been only two shoulders wide, a stream of dirty gutter water ran center. He looked up for stars, perhaps to navigate himself like the ancient mariners.

Nothing. Cloudy. And what little slivers of space were there were strangled by the light of the casino El Rey until it all was nothing more than blackness. Purebred darkness.

He heard water splashing behind him. He turned.

There were no bums, not this far deep.

"Who's there?" He said to that darkness.

"Who's there!" He screamed.

He limped along, both hands pressed against the walls, propelling him forward.

His eyes fretted between looking forward and back. He scanned for safety, found none.

The alley exited into the wider street and to creeping overhead shadow of skinny apartment complexes with their crows perched above. The light posts buzzed. The gutter oil and grime receded into the sewers, and for a moment, as he stared at down current of grime, he thought about it; to open the manhole and to just allow himself to fall. That would have been the fastest way to safety, the fastest escape. He limped to the manhole and looked at his hand to remind himself which fingers worked. He stuck his index and ring finger inside a crack in the manhole but could not lift it, not with his muscles or his stamina. The manhole went one inch off the floor and crushed a finger. He screamed but that was instinct, reaction. He was not, if you questioned him, actually surprised. Or really, concerned at all, his hand was ruined already. He suckled on the swelled finger and heard it and though it was language, it felt like a shock. Right through his brain.

“Come, little thief.” The voice said. “Join me in ceremony. Admit to it.”

His eyes almost rolled up towards his skull. He ran (limped) back onto the street. Looking at windows. Looking at the light. Fragmented, small, coming through rustling curtains. He waved. He jumped. He hissed.

"Come on!" He yelled at the moving curtains. "Anyone here? Help. Help, please!"

The motels did not answer. The shops did not respond. The people did not answer. They all turned off their lights. Only automation remained alive, vending machines and signs that blinked gasoline prices. He was a tumbleweed, thrown and thrashed about without concern, from wind to wind, not of volition (for what choice was there? He had to run away from the voice. From the tap tap tap), but out of fear.

He looked for an entry ramp or indeed any sound at all. There was none. In desperation, he found the nearest car and tried to break the glass with his elbow. It was his career up until now, but at this moment, he felt like a novice. And his elbow was too weak and too pained and too broken to shatter glass. He was worse than glass, simply dust, blown out from the desert. Fractured and weak. Dust.

Tap tap tap.

He shot for the center of the street. A car passed by with flashing lights, he waved his hands. The car zoomed by.

“Fuck you.” He cried, trying to hold tears back with a yell.

The high walls looked down at him. The streets desolate, like dried arroyos. The sound of cars disappeared in the distance. He had strayed too far from the freeway.

Where am I then?

He turned around a corner and stopped. He fell on his ass. The phone in his back pocket popped and shattered. He found a dripping pipe to lift himself off of. He turned. Though shouldn’t, for death in surprise would have been better, for at a distance, beyond the neon lights and half-working night posts, he could see the figure, tall and gloomy. He could see the shadows across his face and the small, few strands of slicked hair and the apathetic, dark eyes. He could see the scarred mouth, from nose to chin. He could see death.

He ran, at last, as if pain was as much an accessory as his clothes or his shoes.

He ran with one foot dragging the others, pushing himself off and silver-cans. He shouted and threw objects at windows. An audience, any audience, was better than death.

No one answered, wind whistled through the holes of broken glass.

“Why are you running, little thief?” The voice said, almost tenderly. “No, no. Not that way, left. Come left, little thief.”

He took out his compass (a brilliant idea!) and set it in front of him. He watched it, monitored it and went opposite where it pointed. First north. No! South. West? It moved along, he moved along. He went alley to alley eying the little compass, letting it fall where it fell, letting fate lead where it lead.

And at last, he came to, the idiot, having trusted the machine, the arcana over instinct.

He found himself stuck in an alley. A smooth, graffiti-riddled brick wall in front of him. The compass twirled in circles. It went rapid moving into full loops. He could not hear much but must have known he was coming. He looked to his rear, a few doors leading into the back of stores. One had a simple lock, a butcher shop. This one.

He took out two rusted lock picks from his pocket (part of a set he always carried). He went over to the doorknob and worked it and felt his hand fiddle and must have dropped his tools ten times. His eyes glanced from door to street, his legs shook. He hoped the alarm would go off.

The doorknob popped. A beeping noise went off. He sighed and opened.

The doorway was dark, and his eyes were calm and easy. He took a step.

Both of them did.

And Richter’s face appeared from that darkness, a bandage over his eyes.

"No!" Santana screamed. The arms wrapped around his body. "No! No! No!"

“Little thief, why are you surprised? Quid pro quo.” He felt his arms break and crack from the grasp. Was he being thrown? Dragged? Crushed? Strangled? “A secret of mine for a secret of yours, what is inside your skull?”

He shouted, for as long as he could.

The door closed and nothing remained. The sound of screaming replaced, in that slow and methodical way, with sounds of bone-crushing, with sounds of gargling, with sounds of flesh-slopping along the floor.

And Richter whispered, the sound low and brief, small enough only to fit through the keyhole. Richter whispered:

"Don't you worry," He said. "Daylight won't find us. So don't you don't you worry, it's fine to sleep here."

♣

The door opened once more. Richter's walking cane went ahead of him, tapping tapping tapping along the floor.

He fitted his gloves on his wet hands and approached the voices (for what else do blind men do but follow?). They stopped talking at his approach.

His hand searched out in that darkness before him, feeling for something solid. He found the table and then the arm of the chair and sat, with his chin against his cane and his back hunched over in the small chair.

“Have I missed dinner?” No one responded. “I apologize. I was lost in prayer.”