“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 cafe 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 never 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.
Don’t say it. Don’t think about it, he heard a voice say inside him. But he didn’t know if the voice was directed at Pam or him. “What?” he asked.
“It’s pretty here in the evening, isn’t it?”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of Riser.”
“You didn’t.”
She looked out the window again. “We’re off the clock now. Can I ask you a question?”
No, that’s not a good idea, he thought.
“Hack?” she said, waiting for his response.
“Go ahead.” In his mind’s eye, he saw the motel room in the crossroads settlement north of the Big Bend; he even felt the primal need that had caused him to break all his resolutions about involvement with a woman who was far too young for him and perhaps interested only because he had become a paternal figure in her life.
“Do you think about it?” she asked. “At all?”
“Of course.”
“With regret?”
He took his hat off the rack, glancing into the outer offices. “No, but I have to remind myself that an old man is an old man. A young woman deserves better, no matter how good her heart is.”
“Why is it that I don’t get to make the decision, that you have to make it for me?” she asked.
Because you’re looking for your father, he thought.
“Answer me,” she said.
“I’m still your administrative supervisor. You have to remember that. It’s not up for debate. This conversation is over.”
“I’ve seen your wife’s picture.”
He felt a tic close to his eye. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“The Asian woman. She looks like her, that’s a
ll.”
“I think I’d better head for the house.”
He started to put on his hat, although he never did so unless he was going out a door. She stepped close to him, her thumbs hooked in the sides of her belt. He could smell her hair, a hint of her perfume, the heat in her skin. There was a glaze on her eyes. “What’s wrong, Pam?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing. Like you say, you’d better go to your house. It’s the kind of evening when most people want to celebrate the sunset, have dinner, dance, hear music. But you’d better go to your house.”
“That’s just the way it is,” he replied. Then he remembered those were the words Ethan Riser had used to defend behavior that Hackberry considered morally indefensible. As he walked away, he heard her draw in a deep breath. He kept his eyes straight ahead so he did not have to look at her face and feel the hole in his heart.
Hackberry seldom slept well and never liked the coming of darkness, although he spent many hours sitting alone inside of it. Sometimes he fell asleep in his den, his head on his chest, and awoke at two or three in the morning, feeling he had achieved a victory by getting half the night behind him. Sometimes he believed he saw the red digital face on his desk clock through his eyelids. But quickly, the haze inside his head became the dust on a road north of Pyongyang and a molten sun that hung above hills that resembled women’s breasts.
Sometimes as he dozed in the black leather swivel chair at his desk, he heard an airplane or a helicopter fly low overhead, the reverberations of the motors shaking his roof. But he did not identify the sound of the aircraft with a law enforcement agency patrolling the border or a local rancher approaching a private airstrip. Instead, Hackberry saw a lone American F-80 chasing a MiG across the Yalu River, then turning in a wide arc just as the MiG streaked into the safety of Chinese airspace. The American pilot did an aileron roll over the POW camp, signaling the GIs inside the wire that they were not forgotten.
When Hackberry slept in his bed, he kept his holstered blue-black white-handled custom-made. 45 revolver on his nightstand. When he dozed in his office, he kept the revolver on top of his desk, the handles sometimes glowing in the moonlight like white fire. It was a foolish way to be, he used to tell himself, the mark of either a paranoid or someone who had never addressed his fears. Then he read that Audie Murphy, for the last two decades of his life, had slept every night with a. 45 auto under his pillow, in a bed he had to move into the garage because his wife could not sleep with him.
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