Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  “¡Dígame!” Krill said.

  “Muerto,” Lupa said.

  “¿Quiene?” Krill asked.

  “Ellos,” Mimo replied.

  “Do you think I am stupid? What did you do out there?” Krill said in English.

  Neither man replied. They squatted and kneaded their thighs as though they had run a long distance. They wiped their noses on their hands and felt in their pockets for tobacco or chewing gum, then looked with relief over their shoulders when they heard Negrito coming through the brush, bent low, a button-down shirt wadded in his hand.

  “What happened out there?” Krill said.

  “We took care of them guys. Like you told me. The second guy fought,” Negrito replied.

  “What is in your hand?”

  “Nothing anybody’s gonna miss. At least them guys ain’t.”

  “Do not play games with me, Negrito.”

  “Krill, we are doing these things out of loyalty to you. We ain’t getting paid. Why are you on my case, man?”

  “Put the shirt on the ground and open it.”

  “I am at your orders. But you make a big thing out of nothing. You didn’t want no ears. So I took their noses. They were dead. What does a dead man care about a nose? What’s he gonna smell? There ain’t no flowers in a grave, at least the graves these guys are gonna have.”

  “The second man? You said he fought. He alerted others?”

  “He couldn’t talk, know what I mean?” Negrito drew a finger across his throat. “But he fought hard just the same. I think he was Russian. The Russians got cojones like baseballs. You got to kill them guys really dead. Krill?”

  “¿Qué pasa?” Krill answered, overwhelmed by the processes of Negrito’s mind.

  Negrito seemed to stare at the stone house and the light falling out of the windows on the patio and the windmill palms and umbrella trees and the dark surface of the swimming pool. The wind gusted, wrinkling the water, rustling the limp chains on the swing set. His brow furrowed. “Me and Lupa and Mimo was talking,” he said. “The inside of that house is like a bank. There’s got to be cash all over it. Maybe cocaine, too. We do everybody in there, man, then take what we want.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘no’? Come on, cabrón. We suppose to work for nothing? It ain’t fair. We’re amigos. We have always shared. But you can’t share nothing.”

  “Go back on your own if you don’t like our mission.”

  “I will never leave you.”

  “Then do as I say.”

  “And what is that? To let the Russian’s friends hunt us down? We’re gonna kill them all, right? If we kill them all, why not take what should be ours? All of this land belonged to our ancestors. Now it is owned by everybody except us.”

  “You are a logical man. But we do not have an issue with anyone but Josef Sholokoff. I do not want his possessions. We avenge Minister Cody. We made fun of his manhood, but it was he who set the souls of my children free. For that I honor his memory. Do not intrude upon my purpose here.”

  Negrito raised his big hands and turned in a circle like a baboon attempting a pirouette. “Then let’s kill the Russian and be gone. I am tired of this place. Do you want me to do it? I would do it with great pleasure. I am tired of talking about baptism and souls while we don’t get paid for the work we do. I am not a mystic. I believe in the knife and gun and dealing seriously with my enemies.”

  “You also believe in the shovel.”

  “You speak of my cemetery? I signal our adversaries of our potential.”

  “You keep a museum under the ground for your pleasure. As a ghoul would. Vámonos,” Krill said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked off through the brush and started down the incline, Negrito’s close-set pig eyes slipping off the side of his face.

  As Krill approached the stone house, he forgot about Negrito and began to think about the challenge at hand. When the two guards Negrito had killed did not report in, others would be sent outside to find them. In the meantime, Krill had to find a spot that would allow him a clean shot through the front window. He thought he could hear the sound of a television coming from the front of the house, but in the wind he couldn’t be sure. His informant had told him that Sholokoff was staying at the house with no more than four men. Two of those were already taken care of. If Krill could get a clear shot at Sholokoff and kill him instantly, he might not have to kill his men, too. Few hired killers were willing to risk their lives for a dead employer. But if they chose to avenge their employer’s death, they would share the fate of their comrades on the hillside, Krill thought, and the choice would be theirs, not his.

  He stayed in the shadow of the mountain and found a flat place up on a bench behind a rock, perhaps thirty yards from the front of the house, with an unobstructed view through the picture-glass living room window. He removed a small pair of binoculars from a pouch on his web belt and focused them through the glass. A diminutive, gray-headed, wizen-faced man in a belted scarlet robe was watching television from a reclining chair. His wiry beard and angular features made Krill think of a ferret or a toy constructed of Popsicle sticks and glue. How could one so small possess so much wealth and exert so much power over others? Krill wondered. Why did the gringos allow this tiny man to do so much damage in their country? The narcotics he sold were the poor man’s hydrogen bomb. But that was their business and not his. Krill wrapped his left forearm in the rifle sling, fitted his right hand in the pistol grip, and looked through the iron sights. Behind him, he could hear Negrito breathing in the darkness, an aura of dried sweat and tobacco and wood smoke emanating from his body.

  “¡Qué bueno, hombre!” Negrito said.

  “Do not talk,” Krill said, shifting the bipod on the rock, depressing the barrel slightly so the hood on the front sight formed a perfect circle around Sholokoff’s tiny head. He tightened his finger on the trigger, letting out his breath, his cheek flush against the dull black finish of the rifle stock.

  “Chingado, go ahead!” Negrito said. “Burn the whole magazine. It’s time we got out of here. I want to fuck my woman tonight.”

  Krill had released his finger from the trigger and was staring numbly down the incline at the window. Two little girls and a little boy had just run from a side room and climbed into Sholokoff’s lap. Negrito leaned over Krill’s shoulder to see better, his loins brushing against Krill’s buttocks, his body odor and the smell of onions and garlic and fried meat on his breath enveloping Krill in a toxic cloud.

  “Fuck, man, do it,” Negrito said. “I hear a plane. Them hunters come in and out of here all the time. They got a landing strip on the other side of the house.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Krill said.

  “You ain’t thinking straight. We already killed two guys. You got to finish the job, man. Sholokoff has many friends. We cannot have this man hunting us. Do it now, jefe.”

  “Take your hand off my shoulder.”

  “Then shoot.”

  “You will not give me orders.”

  “Then give me the rifle.”

  “Remove your hand and take your odor out of my face.”

  “Look at the plane. It’s dipping out of the sky. You have to choose between our families and these worthless people. You worry about my odor? What is wrong with you, man?”

  “You are like an empty wagon rattling across a bridge,” Krill said. “You speak craziness and nonsense. You are like the demoniac babbling among the swine. We do not kill children. Have you learned nothing? Do you understand nothing except killing?”

  “We did not put the children here. This is not our fault. Lupa and Mimo and me will do everything that is necessary inside the house. You will not have to see or hear anything that happens down there. One day you will be right in the head, but now you are not. So we will do these things for you and forget the bad words that you have spoken.”

  “You will do nothing without my permission.”

  “Take the shot, Krill. Please. You can
do it. I’ve seen you shoot the head off a dove at a hundred meters. Concentrate on the Russian and don’t worry about the children. They will be all right. But we cannot leave this man alive.”

  Krill’s head was pounding, his ears filled with whirring sounds that were louder than either the wind or Negrito’s incessant talking. Had it been like this for the soldiers in the helicopter who had machine-gunned the clinic built by the East Germans? Had they seen Krill’s children playing in the yard and wondered if they should not abort their mission? Had they fired on the building in hopes that they would not hit the children? Or had they given no thought at all to what they were doing? Did they simply murder his children and fly back to their base and eat lunch and drink warm beer under a palm-shaded table, staring idly at a smokeless blue volcano in the distance? Was that what happened when they slew the innocent children he had loved from the first breath they had drawn?

  He bent over the rifle again, feeling the sling tighten on his left arm, his mouth filled with a taste like pennies, a brass band thundering in his head. The little boy was seated firmly in Sholokoff’s lap, watching the television. Krill raised the rifle barrel until the hood on the front sight circled Sholokoff’s head like the frame on a miniature photograph. He took a breath and waited a split second and then exhaled slowly, slowly, slowly, his left eye squinted shut, his right eye bulging like a child’s marble, his index finger tightening as though it had a life of its own.

  Suddenly, he stood erect, pulling his hand from the trigger guard as though it had been shocked with a cattle prod. His teeth were chattering, his breath catching in his throat. Murderer, he thought he heard a voice say. Assassin! Man who brought death to his own children. He stared wide-eyed at Negrito.

  “You look sick, cabrón. You look like your mind has flown into the darkness,” Negrito said.

  “We go back through the grass and out the fence,” Krill said. “We are through with this. We will deal with Sholokoff at another time.”

  “I cannot believe what you are doing,” Negrito said. “You’re letting us down, man. You are making a great mistake that each of us will pay for. It ain’t fair. You are betraying us, Krill.”

  Krill was already walking deep into the mountain’s shadow, his M16 reslung on his shoulder, his eyes empty, like those of a man who has looked into a mirror and is unable to recognize the image staring back at him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HACKBERRY HOLLAND DID not learn of the killings near the Santiago Mountains from another law enforcement agency, because they were not reported the night they occurred or the following morning, either. He learned of them from a questionable source, one in whom he had already induced a sizable dose of paranoia. In fact, he had a hard time concentrating on the telephone conversation. It was raining, and he had forgotten to take down the flag outside his office window. The flag, soggy as a towel, hung twisted and forlorn against a gray sky, its chain vibrating against the pole like a damaged nerve. “Mr. Dowling, I’ve heard nothing about a shooting in this county or anywhere around here,” he said. “It’s been surprisingly quiet.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Josef doesn’t want cops crawling all over his property,” Temple Dowling replied.

  “You say two men were killed?”

  “Right. Two security guys. Somebody cut their noses out of their faces.”

  “Sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? I mean, why is it you know about this but nobody else does?”

  “Because maybe I got one or two people inside Josef’s organization.”

  “What do you want me to do about this unreported homicide that only you seem to know about?”

  “Go out to the game ranch. Investigate the crime. Stuff a hand grenade up his ass. What do I care? Why not just do your fucking job?”

  “Because somehow you’re at risk?”

  “Josef believes I put a hit on him.”

  “Listen to what you’re saying, Mr. Dowling. Two guys got killed outside Sholokoff’s house, but no attempt was made to harm anybody inside the house. Does that seem like a rational scenario to you?”

  “That’s because a bunch of hunters had just flown in. Look, my source says Josef went apeshit. He had his grandchildren in the house.” There was a pause. “His guys are coming after me.”

  Hackberry could hear the tremor in Dowling’s voice, the frightened boy no longer able to hide behind arrogance and cruelty. “First, you have your own security service, Mr. Dowling. Why not make use of it? If a crime occurred in the place you describe, it’s out of my jurisdiction. Second, maybe it’s time for you to grow up.”

  “Time for me to—”

  “Everybody dies. Why not go down with the decks awash and the guns blazing? You’ve probably made millions profiteering off of war. Get a taste of the real deal and scorch your name on the wall before you check out. It’s not a bad way to go.”

  “You’re a son of a bitch.”

  Hackberry rubbed his forehead and started to hang up, then placed the receiver against his ear again. “If you think you’re in danger, get out of town.”

  “I’m already out of town. It doesn’t matter. Sholokoff has a network all over the country.”

  “I think you’re imagining things.”

  “You don’t understand Josef. He doesn’t just do evil. He loves it. That’s the difference between him and the rest of us. Jack Collins is probably a lunatic. Josef isn’t. He creates object lessons nobody ever forgets. He has people taken apart.”

  “He does what?”

  PERHAPS DUE TO his fundamentalist upbringing, R. C. Bevins was not a believer in either luck or coincidence but saw every event in his life as one that required attention. The consequence was that he never dismissed any form of human behavior as implausible and never thought of bizarre events in terms of their improbability. The sheriff had once told R.C. that if a UFO landed on the prairie, two things were guaranteed to happen: Everyone who witnessed the landing would grab his cell phone to dial 911, and R.C. would knock on the spaceship door and introduce himself.

  R.C. had pulled into a convenience store and gas station on a county road just south of the east-west four-lane that paralleled the Mexican border, and had gone inside and bought a chili dog and a load of nachos and jalapeño peppers and a Dr Pepper and had just started eating lunch at a table by the front window when he saw a pickup stop and let out a passenger. The passenger limped slightly, as though he had a stitch in his side. He wore shades and an unlacquered wide-brim straw hat, like one a gardener might wear. His nose was a giant teardrop, his jeans hiked up too high on his hips, his suspenders notched into his shoulders, the way a much older man might wear them. The man went into the back of the store and took a bottle of orange juice and a ham-and-cheese sandwich from the cooler and a package of Ding Dongs from the counter. He paid, sat down, and began eating at a table not far from R.C.’s, never removing his shades. R.C. nodded at him, but the man did not look up from his food.

  “Bet you could fry an egg out there,” R.C. said.

  “That about says it,” the man replied, chewing slowly, his mouth closed, his gaze seemingly fixed on nothing.

  “My uncle says that during the drought of 1953, it got so dry here he saw a catfish walking down a dirt road carrying its own canteen.”

  “That’s dry.”

  “You looking for a ride? ’Cause the bread-delivery man is fixing to head back to town.”

  “No, I’m visiting down the road there. South a piece.” The man drank from his orange juice and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and began eating his sandwich again.

  “Did you see any salt and pepper up there at the counter?” R.C. asked.

  “I think I did. Where the ketchup and such are. In that little tray.”

  “You want some?”

  “No, sir, I’m fine.”

  R.C. went to the counter by the coffee and cold-drink dispensers and began sorting through the condiments. “Do y’all have any hot sauce?” he said to the cashier.

>   “It’s there somewhere,” the cashier replied.

  “I sure cain’t find it.”

  The cashier walked over and picked up the hot sauce and handed it to R.C. He was a short man with a sloping girth who always showed up at work in a dress shirt and an outrageous tie and with polished shoes. He had a tiny black mustache that expanded like grease pencil when he grinned. “Glad it wasn’t a snake.”

  “Keep looking straight at me,” R.C. said.

  The cashier’s face clouded, but he kept his eyes locked on R.C.’s.

  “You know that old boy over yonder?” R.C. said.

  “I think he was in yesterday. He bought some Ding Dongs and a newspaper.”

  “He was by himself?”

  “He came here with another man. The other fellow stayed in the car.”

  “What’d the other guy look like?”

  “I didn’t pay him much mind.”

  “What kind of car?”

  The cashier looked into space and shook his head. “It was skinned up. It didn’t have much paint on it. I don’t know what kind it was.”

  “You ever see it before?”

  The cashier rubbed his eye. “No, sir,” he said. “Are we fixing to have some trouble here? ’Cause that’s something I really don’t need.”

  “No. Did the guy in the car buy gas with a credit card?”

  “If he did, I didn’t see it. He got air.”

  “What?”

  “He went to the air pump. I remember that ‘cause he was the last to use it. Somebody ran over the hose, and I had to put an out-of-order sign on it. Ain’t nobody used it since.”

  R.C. went back to his table and set the bottle of hot sauce down, then snapped his fingers as though he had forgotten something. He went outside to his cruiser and picked up a clipboard off the seat, then walked past the air pump. The concrete slab around it was covered with a film of mud and dust that had dried into a delicate crust. A set of familiar tire tracks was stenciled across it. “Michelins,” R.C. said under his breath.

  R.C. went back to his table with the clipboard. “I got to do these dadburn time logs,” he said to the man at the next table.