But she didn’t. She squeezed his hands tighter, her face staring intently up into his. He freed one of his hands and used it to pull her other hand off his and fling it from him. He got into his truck and started the engine and rammed the transmission into reverse. He steered by glancing over his shoulder, the pedal to the floor, scouring dirt out of the yard, so he would not have to look into the Asian woman’s face again.
How had she gotten into his head? How did she know his history with such accuracy? He had always claimed he could read people’s thoughts. But that wasn’t true. He could read personalities, character traits, and especially secret designs that hid in the eyes of a manipulator. Every survivor could. That was how you became a survivor. But she was the real thing. She had seen into his past in a way no one ever had, and that thought made him grind his molars.
The purple haze he had seen earlier had spread across the valley floor, and he had to turn on his headlights to see his way down the dirt track to the county road. He had forgotten about the two Mexicans who had been smoking on the hillside earlier; he had even temporarily forgotten the rudeness one of them had shown Cody when he tried to say hello. The two men had gotten back into the gas-guzzler, and evidently had decided to stop and urinate at a spot where the dirt track was pinched on either side by big piles of rock.
He slowed his pickup and hit his high beams, drenching the two figures with an electric brilliance, carving their rounded spines, their splayed knees, the cupping of their phalluses, the amber arc of their urination out of the darkened landscape.
The license plate on the gas-guzzler was dented and filmed with a patina of dried mud and attached to the bumper with coat-hanger wire. Cody could see COAHUILA at the bottom of the plate. He mashed on his horn, holding the button down, clicking his high beams on and off, while the two men stuffed their phalluses back in their pants, their eyes glinting like glass.
The shorter of the two men walked toward Cody’s truck, shielding his eyes from the glare with one hand. His jaw was as heavy-looking as a mule’s shoe, his forehead ridged like a washboard, his hair and chin stubble the color of rust. “You got a problem, chico?” he said.
“Chico?” Cody said.
“That means ‘boy,’” the man with orange hair said. “You got a problem, chico boy?”
“Yeah, how about getting your shitbox off the road? Also, find a public restroom and stop polluting the countryside. There’s one at the truck stop up on the four-lane. It’s got a dispenser of toilet-seat covers on the wall. The sign on the dispenser says MEXICAN PLACE MATS. That’s how you’ll know you’re in the restroom.”
“This is a funny guy here,” the man called back to his friend. “Come up here and listen. He is very funny.”
Cody looked in his rearview mirror and could see only a dim glow from the compound of the Asian woman. The stars seemed to arch overhead and stretch beyond the horizon and curve over the earth’s rim. “I need to get about my business. How about it?” He lifted his finger to indicate their vehicle, but his hand felt disconnected from his wrist, lighter than it should.
“What is your business, señor?” said the man with a jaw like a mule’s shoe, leaning in the window, his breath rife with onions and mescal, the whites of his eyes a watery red.
“I’m a preacher.”
“Hey, jefe, the funny gringo is a preacher. That’s why he called my car a shitbox and shone his headlights on us while we were relieving ourselves.”
The second man approached Cody’s window, touching his friend on the shoulder, indicating he should move aside. “That’s right? You’re a preacher?” he said.
“Reverend Cody Daniels. But I got to be getting on my way.”
“You work with La Magdalena?”
“I’m just a neighbor making a neighborly visit. I live up yonder, in the bluffs. I got people waiting on me.”
The tall man’s shoulders seemed unnaturally wide for his thin waist. His profile made Cody think of an ax blade. “Why are you so nervous?” the man asked. “I do something to make you nervous? You have never seen somebody relieve himself on a road in the dark?”
“You got a pistol stuck down in your belt. That’s what some might call carrying a concealed weapon. In this county I wouldn’t mess with the law.”
The tall man fingered his cheek, then pointed at Cody. “I think I know you.”
“No, sir, I don’t think that’s the case.”
The tall man jiggled his finger playfully. “You are like me, a hunter. I’ve seen you down on the border. You hunt coyotes. Except these are coyotes with two feet.”
“Not me. No, sir.”
“No? You’re not the man who likes to look through a telescope?”
“I just want to be on my way.”
“What did you see up there at the house of la china?”
“Of la what?”
“You seem like one stupid gringo, my friend. Do I have to say it again?”
“If you’re talking about the Chinese woman, I saw the same thing you saw through your binoculars—a bunch of people stuffing food in their faces.”
“You were watching us?”
“No, sir, I passed you on the road here, that’s all. I wasn’t paying y’all any mind.”
“You’re one big liar, gringo.”
“That woman up yonder is your problem, not me.”
“You’re a cobarde, too.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You’re a coward. You stink of fear. I think maybe you’re a cobarde that shot at me once. A man up in the rocks with a rifle. You were far away, safe from somebody shooting back at you.”
“No, sir,” Cody said, shaking his head.
“What we going to do with you, man?”
“I’m gonna turn out on the hardpan and drive around those rocks and let y’all be. You’re right, sir, none of this is my business.”
“That’s not what’s going to happen, man. You see Negrito over there? He drinks too much. He’s a marijuanista, too. When he drinks and smokes all that dope, you know what he likes to do? It’s because he was in jail too long in Jalisco, where he was provided young boys by his fellow criminals. Now when he drinks and smokes marijuana, Negrito thinks he’s back in Jalisco. If you try to drive out of here before I tell you, you will learn a lot more about your feminine side than you want to know.”
“Don’t be talking to me like that. No, sir.”
The shorter man, the one called Negrito, opened the passenger door and sat down heavily in the seat. He smiled and touched the side of Cody’s head and ran one finger behind his ear. “You got gold hair,” he said. He touched Cody’s cheek and tried to insert the tip of his finger in his mouth. “Mexican place mats, huh? That’s really funny, gringo.”
“You get him out of here,” Cody said to the tall man.
“La china is hiding a friend of ours, a man who has gone insane and is wandering in the desert and needs his family. You need to find out where la china is hiding our friend. Then you need to build a fire and pour motor oil on it so the smoke climbs straight up in the sky. If you call anybody, if you make trouble for us, we’re going to get you, man.”
“I won’t do it,” Cody said.
“Oh, you’re going to do it. Show him, Negrito.”
The man named Negrito fitted his hand over the top of Cody’s head, his fingers splaying like the points of a starfish. When he tightened his fingers, the pressure was instantaneous, as though cracks were forming in Cody’s skull.
“I crushed bricks with my hands in a carnival,” Negrito said. “I ate lightbulbs, too. I could blow fire out of my mouth with kerosene. I snapped a bull’s neck. I can punch my fingers through your stomach and take out your liver, man. Don’t pull on my wrist. I’m just gonna squeeze tighter.”
“Please stop,” Cody said.
When Negrito released his grip, Cody’s eyes were bulging from his head, tears running down his cheeks, his ears thundering.
“When I see the smoke
climbing up from the bluffs, I’ll know you’ll have something good to report,” the tall man said. “If I don’t see any smoke, I will be disappointed in you. Negrito is going to stake you out on the ground in the hot sun. Your voice is going to speak to the birds high up in the sky. Maybe for two or three days. You will learn to yodel, man.”
“I was just driving down the road. All I did was blow my horn,” Cody said.
“Yes, I have to say you’re a very unlucky gringo,” the tall man said.
They were both laughing at him, their work done, Cody’s self-respect in tatters, the person he used to think of as the Reverend Daniels gone from inside the truck.
“What you done to have this kind of luck, man?” Negrito asked, caressing Cody’s cheek with the back of his wrist. “Maybe you just act like you’re a funny man. Maybe you’ve done some things you want to tell me and Krill about. Things that make you feel real bad. You’re a nice boy. We’re gonna be good friends.” He leaned close to Cody’s ear and whispered, his breath like a feather on Cody’s skin. Then he withdrew his mouth and smiled. “You gringos call it pulling a train. But in your case, I’m gonna be the train, the big choo-choo in your life, man.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HACKBERRY HOLLAND HAD given the paper plate used by Krill to the FBI. That was on a Monday. The next day he heard nothing but marked it off to the workload that beset all law enforcement agencies. On Wednesday he began making calls, none of which were returned. Nor were they returned on Thursday. Late Friday afternoon Maydeen Stoltz came into his office. She had fat arms and wore too much lipstick and smelled of cigarettes and took a pagan joy in her own irreverence. Hackberry had been reading a book he had checked out of the public library. He closed it and let his arm rest on the cover. “That fed was on the phone,” Maydeen said.
“Which fed?”
“The one who uses the department to wipe his ass on.”
“Good heavens, Maydeen—”
“If it was me, I’d slap him upside the head, I don’t care how old he is.”
“Would you kindly tell me who we’re talking about?”
“Ethan Riser, who’d you think?”
Hackberry rubbed his temples, his gaze fixed on neutral space. “What did Agent Riser have to say?”
“That’s the point. He didn’t say anything, except you should call him. I told him you were in your office. He said he didn’t have time to talk with you right now. He said you can call him back later on his cell phone.”
Hackberry tried to process what he had just heard, then gave up. “Thanks, Maydeen.”
“Want me for anything else?”
“Nope, but I’ll tell you when I do.”
“I’m just passing on the conversation.”
“Got it,” he said.
A half hour later, Ethan Riser called again. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me a while ago?” Hackberry asked.
“I had an incoming call from Washington. I thought I explained that to your dispatcher.”
“Evidently not. Did your lab get some prints for us?”
“Come down to the saloon. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“You’re in town?”
“Yeah, I have to be over in Brewster tonight. But I like the saloon and café you have here. It’s quite a spot.”
“I’m glad you were able to find time to visit. You have a reason for not coming to my office?”
“Can’t do it, partner. That’s the way it is,” Riser said.
“I see. My dispatcher is named Maydeen Stoltz. If you run into her, just keep going.”
“Care to explain that?”
“You’ll figure it out.” Hackberry hung up the telephone without saying good-bye. He got up from his desk and went into Pam Tibbs’s office. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.
When they entered the saloon, Riser was eating a hamburger and drinking beer from a frosted mug in a back booth. His gaze slipped from Hackberry’s face to Pam’s, then back to Hackberry’s. “Order up. It’s on the G,” he said.
Pam Tibbs and Hackberry sat down across from him. The saloon was dark and cool and smelled of beer and pickled sausage and ground meat frying in the kitchen. The floor was built from railroad ties that had been treated with creosote and blackened by soot from prairie fires, the heads of the rusty steel spikes worn the color of old nickels. The mirror behind the bar had a long fissure across it, shaped like a lightning bolt, so that the person looking into it saw a severed image of himself, one that was normal, one that was distorted, like a face staring up from the bottom of a frozen lake. Riser drank from his beer, a shell of ice sliding down his fingers. “I like this place. I always stop here when I’m in the area,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s five stars, all right. How about losing the charade?” Hackberry said.
“I do what I have to do, Sheriff.”
“I’m not sympathetic.”
“Okay,” Riser said, setting down his beer, pushing away his food. “The guy who ate off that paper plate doesn’t have prints on file in the conventional system. But you knew that or you wouldn’t have given it to us. You were trying to use us, Sheriff.”
“I gave you the paper plate because I had a professional obligation to give it to you,” Hackberry said.
“Deputy Tibbs, can you go up to the bar and get whatever you and Sheriff Holland are having and bring another beer for me?” Riser said.
“No, I can’t,” she replied.
Riser looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He finished his beer and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “This guy Krill is in the computer at Langley. Before 9/11 we didn’t have access to certain kinds of information. Now we do. A couple of decades back, our administration had some nasty characters working for us in Central America. Krill was one of them. He was of low-level importance in the big scheme of things but quite valuable in the bush.”
“What’s his real name?” Pam asked.
“Sorry?” Riser said.
“Are you hard of hearing?” she asked.
“Sheriff, we have a problem here,” Riser said.
“No, we don’t have a problem,” Pam said. “The problem is you treat us like we’re welfare cases you keep at bay with table scraps. Sheriff Holland has treated you and the Bureau with respect. Why don’t you and your colleagues pull your heads out of your asses?”
“I had hoped we might establish some goodwill here,” Riser said.
“I think Pam has a point,” Hackberry said.
“I don’t make the rules. I don’t make our foreign policy, either,” Riser said. “Nobody likes to admit we’ve done business with crab lice. Our friend Krill’s real name is Antonio Vargas. We don’t know that much about him, except he was on the payroll for a while, and now he’s off the leash and seems to have a special hatred toward the United States.”
“Why?” Hackberry asked.
“Maybe the CIA paid him in Enron stock. How would I know?”
“You need to stop lying, Mr. Riser,” Pam said.
“Ma’am, you’re way out of line,” Riser said.
“No, you are,” she said. “We bagged up that guy’s dirty work. You ever pick up human fingers with your hands? Anybody who could do what he did has a furnace inside him instead of a brain. For us, these guys are not an abstraction. We live on the border, in their midst, and you’re denying us information we’re entitled to have.”
Riser picked up his hamburger and bit into it. He chewed a long time before he spoke, his face looking older, more fatigued, perhaps more resigned to serving masters and causes he didn’t respect. “This saloon reminds me of a photograph or a place I saw on vacation once,” he said.
“The Oriental in Tombstone,” Hackberry said. “It was run by the Earp brothers. That was just before the Earps and Doc Holliday blew three of the Clanton gang out of their socks at the O.K. Corral, then hunted down the rest and killed them one by one all the way to Trinidad.”
“You guys must have a different frame of reference, because I’m ne
ver quite sure what you’re talking about,” Riser said.
“The message is we don’t like getting dumped on,” Pam said.
“This has really been an interesting meeting,” Riser said. He got up from the booth and studied the check. He wore a brown suit with a thin western belt and no tie and a cowboy shirt that shone like tin. He didn’t raise his eyes from the check when he spoke. “I love this country. I’ve served it most of my life. I honor other people who have served it, particularly someone who was a recipient of the Navy Cross. I also honor those who work with a man of that caliber. I’m sorry I don’t convey that impression to others. I hope both of you have a fine weekend.”
PAM AND HACKBERRY said little on the way back to the department. Rain and dust were blowing out of the hills against the sunset, a green nimbus rising from the land as though the day were beginning rather than ending. Hackberry took down the flag and folded it in a military tuck and put it in his desk drawer. He started to pick up the book he had left on his desk blotter. He was not aware Pam was standing behind him. “Don’t buy into it,” she said.
“Into what?”
“Riser is putting the slide on us.”
“He isn’t a bad man. He just takes orders. Consider how things would be if the Risers of the world hung it up and let others take their place.” There was silence in the room. “I say something wrong?” he asked.
“Your goodness is your weakness. Others know it, and they use it against you,” she replied.
“You need to stop talking like that to me, Pam.”
She glanced at the title of the book on his desk blotter. “You reading about Air America?” she said.
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Is the Asian lady’s name in there?”
“In fact, it is.”
“You like her?”
“I don’t think about her one way or the other.”
Pam gazed out the window. Down the street, a neon beer sign had just lighted in a barroom window. The pink glow of the sunset shone on the old buildings and high sidewalks. Pickup trucks and cars were parked at an angle in front of a Mexican restaurant that had a neon-scrolled green cactus above its front entrance. It was Friday evening, and as always in the American Southwest, it came with a sense of both expectation and completion, perhaps with the smell of open-air meat fires or rain on warm concrete. “Hack?” she said.
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