Fermín raised a hand. “That’s me, the one with the muscles.”

Fernandito rushed over to grab his arm, pulling at him. “I need you,” he begged.

“Look, kid, don’t take this the wrong way, but the most stunning of females have told me the same many a time, and I’ve known how to resist.”

“It’s Alicia,” Fernandito panted. “I think she’s dying . . .”

Fermín went pale. He looked at Daniel in alarm and, without saying a word, let Fernandito drag him to the street and get into the taxi, which sped away.

Bea, who had just poked her head around the back-room curtain and witnessed the scene, looked at Daniel in bewilderment.

“What was that?”

Her husband sighed despondently. “Bad news,” he murmured.

* * *

As soon as he landed inside the car, Fermín came up against the taxi driver’s eyes.

“Not you again,” said the driver. “Where are we going now?”

Fermín tried to size up the situation. It took him a few moments to realize that the figure with skin as pale as wax and a faraway look lying on the back seat of the taxi was Alicia. Fernandito was cradling her head in his hands, struggling to hold back his tears of panic.

“Just keep going,” Fermín ordered the taxi driver.

“Where to?”

“For now, just straight ahead. Step on it.”

Fermín searched Fernandito’s eyes.

“I didn’t know what to do,” stammered the boy. “She wouldn’t let me take her to a hospital or a doctor and . . .”

In a brief moment of lucidity, Alicia gazed at Fermín and smiled sweetly at him. “Fermín, always trying to save me.”

When he heard her shaky voice, Fermín’s stomach and all its neighboring entrails shrank. Since he’d eaten a whole bagful of dry almond biscuits for breakfast, it was triply painful. Alicia dangled between consciousness and the abyss, so Fermín decided to shake the young boy for information, since he seemed the most scared of all three by far. “You, what’s your name?”

“Fernandito.”

“Can you tell me what’s happened here?”

Fernandito began to sum up what had happened in the last twenty-four hours with so much rush and confusion of details that Fermín stopped him, deciding to establish practical priorities. He felt Alicia’s belly and examined her bloodstained fingers.

“Helmsman,” he ordered the taxi driver, “head for the Hospital del Mar. Fly!”

“You should have hailed a balloon. Look at the traffic.”

“Either we get there in the next ten minutes, or I’ll burn down this heap. You have my word.”

The taxi driver grunted and pressed the accelerator. He and Fermín exchanged scowling glances through the rearview mirror.

“Don’t quarrel, you two,” Fernandito scolded them. “We’re losing Señorita Alicia.”

“Holy shit,” swore the cabdriver, dodging the traffic on Vía Layetana on his way to the waterfront.

Fermín pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Fernandito. “Hold the handkerchief out of the window,” he ordered him.

Fernandito nodded and did as he was told. Taking great care, Fermín lifted Alicia’s blouse and found the hole left by the awl in her belly. Blood was gushing out of it.