“What happened to him?”
“Nothing. He owns a bunch of massage parlors in Los Angeles. Is that a Rolex?”
Temple looked at his watch, then realized how long he had been in the lounge. Where were his men? They had been acting strangely ever since two of them had been dumb enough to get themselves popped by Preacher Jack. “I never noticed. I have about a dozen watches I wear. Do you ride horses?”
“Sometimes. I barrel-raced when I was in Four-H. I was a hot-walker at Ruidoso Downs. Talk about a horny bunch. You ought to be in the bar after the seventh race.”
“Yeah, but that’s not your crowd. I bet you go to college.”
“If that’s what you call working at the McDonald’s inside Wal-mart. How about that for being a two-time loser? Your steak is getting cold.”
“You want one?”
“I’m a vegan. My whole life changed after I gave up meat and milk products. I thought my needle-dick boyfriend was the problem, but I think it was my diet.”
“What problem?”
“My organisms were messed up.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Meat and cheese and barnyard shit like that are toxic to your erogenous development.” The waiter placed a coaster in front of her and set down her old-fashioned. She wrapped her gum in her napkin. “Anyway, thanks for the drink. I can’t take that group next door. You know their problem?”
“No,” he replied.
She took a drink from her glass and her eyes brightened and her cheeks filled with color, in the same way a thirsty plant might respond immediately to water. He could feel the coldness of her breath when she exhaled. “They feel unloved,” she said.
“You have a lot of insight for such a young woman.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m in charge of the french-fry basket.”
“You smell like orange blossoms.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m chewing an orange rind.” She turned on the stool toward him, her knee hitting his. She let her eyes hold on his. “I bummed a ride here with a friend, but he’s gonna stay at the meeting for another hour. I live six miles away, and I don’t have money for a cab. I’d like a ride, but when I get home, I go in by myself.”
“You’re the captain of your soul?”
“No, I’m just not somebody’s backseat fuck.”
He picked up a small cooked tomato on the tines of his fork and placed it in his mouth and chewed slowly. “I wouldn’t ever say or even think something like that about you,” he said.
“So you’re gonna give me a ride?”
“If you’ll do one thing for me.”
Her eyes shifted sideways with a level of dependence that made his heart drop. “What’s that?” she said.
“Walk through the open-air jewelry market with me. I’m a sucker for Indian junk. I need an expert hand to guide me.”
“You have a daughter?”
“No.”
“I thought that’s what you were gonna tell me.”
“Why?”
“Most of the time they say I remind them of their daughter. They can’t do enough for you.”
“Who?”
“The kind of guys who like to grope young girls in the back of the church bus,” she replied, picking up her purse. “Think I’m kidding? Ask yourself why any middle-aged man wants to make a career out of being a youth minister or a park director or a guy who teaches leather craft to rug rats. Because he likes the way the restroom smells after little kids have pissed all over the bowl? Give me a break.”
“How old are you?”
“Buy me a veggie burger and I’ll tell you. Let’s go, I won’t bite,” she said, squeezing his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Krill had parked the car in a grove of dead fruit trees no more than fifty yards behind the house of the woman Negrito kept referring to as la china. After the setting of the sun, the wind had dropped, and the sky had turned as stark as an ink wash. The gingerbread house and trees and windmill and barn and horse tank, even the hills, seemed drained of color and movement of any kind. The horses and chickens were gone from the yard, and there was no birdsong in the trees. The only sound Krill could hear as he and Negrito approached the house was water ticking from a rusted pipe that extended over the surface of the horse tank. A nimbus of dust hung above the house like a great cloud of gnats.
Krill stopped and knelt on one knee behind a car that had no wheels or glass in the windows and whose metal was still hot from baking in the sun all day. He stared at the house and the absence of electric lights or movement inside. Negrito knelt beside him, the leather cord of his hat swinging under his chin, the heavy gray fog of his odor puffing out of his clothes. “Krill, you got to tell me,” he said.
“Tell you what?”
“Why we are here. I don’t see no percentage, man.”
“There isn’t one. Not for you, anyway, my old friend.”
“The others have deserted you, but still you talk down to me like I’m the enemy and not the maricones who ran away.”
Krill placed his hand on Negrito’s shoulder, which felt like a flannel sack filled with rocks. “Like me, you are a killer. But killing is not a problem for you. You sleep without dreaming and rise each morning into a new day. But I relive all the times I watched the light go out of my victims’ eyes. My thoughts have become my enemies.”
“That’s why there are whores and tequila in Durango. A trip there will ease your problems, jefe.”
“I have to talk to La Magdalena.”
“You want to sleep with her? That’s what’s going on? You think there’s something special about a Chinese woman in bed? They ain’t no different from our women. You love them at night, and in the morning they make your life awful.”
“Poor Negrito. Why do you always think with the head of your penis?”
“’Cause it ain’t never let me down, man,” said Negrito, and cupped his hand on Krill’s shoulder. “Come on, tell me the truth. Why you got to talk to this woman if you ain’t looking to poke her?”
“To confess my sins, hombre. To rid myself of the faces I see in my sleep.”
“It ain’t a sin to kill people in a war. We were farmers and cattle workers until the war came. The people we killed had it coming. What is the big loss when a Communist is killed?”
“My children died because of me.”
“That don’t make no sense, Krill.”
“I used to blame the army and the Americans and those from Argentina who first gave us our guns. But I took the pay of corrupt political men and did what they told me. I killed the Jesuit and the leftists. You know these things are true, Negrito, because you were there. The helicopter machine-gunned the clinic, but I was their brother in arms. I helped bring a curse on our land.”
“No, your head is screwed up, Krill. That woman ain’t no priest. Whatever you confess to her, she’s gonna tell the cops. Then they’re gonna hunt us down. They don’t want nobody to know what we done down there.”
“There’s something strange going on in that house,” Krill said.
“What’s strange is your head. It glows in the dark. I think you got too many chemicals in it. Remember those nights in Juarez?”
“The woman’s truck is by the barn, but there is no one moving in the house, and no electric light is turned on. But look through the window of the chapel. The candles are burning in front of the Virgin’s statue.”
“Of course. She burns candles all the time. That’s what people like her do. They burn candles. The rest of us work and sweat and sometimes take bullets, but they burn candles.”
“No, this one has been to war, Negrito. She is not one to go off somewhere or take a nap while an open flame burns in her house.”
“You make a complexity of everything,” Negrito said. “You are a man who cannot bear to have a quiet and simple thought. You constantly construct spiderwebs so you can walk through them.”
“Look on the far side of the fence, beyond the barn, where th
e grass is tall.”
“It’s grass. So what is the great mystery about grass?”
“There is a channel through it. The wind is not making the channel. Somebody walked through there.”
“Animals did. Deer or horses. They cross the field by walking on it. It took you a long time to figure that out?”
“No horses are in that field. And deer do not make paths on flat land, only on hillsides, where their feet have to find the same spot every day.”
“See what I mean? A simple visit to the home of this pretender sacerdote becomes a torture of the brain.”
“The back door is ajar, Negrito. There is something wrong in that house. You stay here and guard my back. You keep the rifle, but do not use it unless absolutely necessary. If everything is normal, I will come to the door and wave to you with my right hand, not my left.”
“ Claro, man. My head is starting to hurt again with all your cautions. I cannot stand this. We were never afraid before. I told you from the beginning, this woman who wears men’s trousers was bad luck. But your obsession has no bounds.”
“Then leave. Go to Durango. Bathe in the diseased fluids of your whores,” Krill said.
Negrito was breathing heavily, the whiskers around his mouth as thick as a badger’s. His pupils were no bigger than pinheads, the skin around his eyes wrinkled and flecked with scales. “You make me want to do something that’s very bad.”
“You want to be me, Negrito, to leave your own body and live inside mine. And because you are a killer by nature, you believe a bullet can give you my heart and brain.”
“I am a loyal servant and follower and brother, not an assassin. I want you to be you and the leader you used to be, Krill, not a self-hating fool ruminating on his sins.”
“If I wave with my left hand from the door, rather than my right, what message will I be sending you?”
“I see only one message in any of this: that of a man being led with a ring through his nose by the Chinese puta.”
“You are brave in ways that few men are, Negrito. But do not try to think anymore. For some men, thinking is a dangerous vanity. You must accept that about yourself.”
Krill stood and walked toward the back entrance of the house, a holstered. 357 Magnum hanging from the right side of his web belt, his skinning knife in a scabbard on his left. He stepped up on the back porch and listened, then felt a breeze on the back of his neck and heard the windmill come to life and water running into the horse tank. But where were the horses? Or the illegals who came almost every evening for food or benediction at the house of La Magdalena?
He paused at the back door and listened again. The windmill was stenciled against the black and gray patterns in the sky, and tumbleweed was bouncing through the yard, hanging in the fences, skipping by the junked car where Negrito was crouched with the M16. Krill pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Through the hallway, he could see her sitting very still in a straight-back chair, her hands resting on her knees, her hair tied in a bun. In the gloom, he could hardly make out her features. Her face was so still that in profile, it looked like it had been painted on the air. He eased his. 357 from its holster and waited, his left foot in front of his right, breathing slowly through his mouth, the checkered grips of his revolver hard inside his palm.
He stepped backward, never taking his eyes off the Chinese woman, his left arm extended out the door. He opened and closed his hand so the fading light would reflect off it, then moved his arm up and down so Negrito could plainly see that he was signaling with his left hand and not his right. Please remember what I told you, he thought. This is the moment I have to count on you, Negrito. This is when your skills will be of the greatest necessity.
Krill went down the hallway and could see the woman watching him from the corner of her eye.
“Magdalena?” he said, his voice hardly audible.
She continued to stare straight ahead, her hands absolutely still.
“?Que pasa?” he said. He glanced over his shoulder. Where was Negrito? “Senora, look at me,” he said. “It’s Krill. I want to make confession. I murdered a Jesuit priest. I must have absolution. You can give it to me.”
He stepped into the room and felt the barrel of a gun touch the back of his head. “Bad timing, greaseball,” a voice said.
There were four men inside the room, all of them wearing beige-colored gauzy masks with slits for the nose and mouth and eyes. One man stood against the far wall, his left hand on the shoulder of a girl not over ten years old. With the other hand, he held the stainless-steel four-inch blade of a clasp knife under the girl’s throat. The girl’s eyes were wide with terror and confusion, and her bottom lip was trembling.
The man holding the gun to the back of Krill’s head removed the. 357 from his grip. “Who’s with you?” he said.
“A shit pile of people. They’re going to cook you in a pot, too,” Krill said.
“That’s why you came in by yourself?”
“Who are you guys?” Krill said.
“Your worst nightmare, fuckhead.”
“In my nightmares there are no guys like you. I don’t have space in my head for guys in Halloween masks or guys who frighten little girls with knives. These are not the guys of nightmares. These are clowns and eunuchs who were born with penises but no cojones. Why would guys like these be in anybody’s nightmares? That would be a great mystery to me.”
“Antonio, don’t speak to these men,” the woman said.
“I was just clarifying my thoughts to myself, Magdalena. These men and their cleverness are a great mystery to me,” he said. The yard was empty, the light dying in the trees, the windmill spinning against a horizon that looked as though the clouds were dissolving and running down the sides of the sky. Then he saw Negrito moving from behind the barn and around the front of the house, bent low, his greasy leather hat pulled down tight on his head, the M16 gripped with both hands, his heavy, truncated body moving with the fluidity of an animal’s. In the distance, he thought he heard the thropping sound of a helicopter’s blades.
“Take me but leave the child,” the woman said to the man holding the gun to Krill’s head.
“That’s not a problem,” the man replied. “But this guy is. Who is he?”
“A man seeking forgiveness. He’s no threat to you,” she said.
“You a coyote, buddy?” the man with the gun asked.
“No, hombre. I’m a Texas Ranger. I’ve been shooting the shit out of guys like you for many years.”
“You’re a real wit, all right. So smart you came in here and stuck your head in a mousetrap.”
Then Krill heard banging and shuffling noises at the front of the house, booted feet coming down hard on the gallery, and a door flying back against a wall. Krill felt his heart drop. Two more men, each wearing the same masks worn by the men inside the house, were pulling and shoving Negrito into the living room. Blood leaked in a broken line from under the brim of Negrito’s leather hat, running through one eyebrow, streaking the stubble on his cheek. His face was lit with a grin as wide as a jack-o’-lantern’s.”?Que bueno! Everybody is here!” he said. Then Negrito saw the expression on Krill’s face, and his grin faded. “These cobardes come up behind me. I’m sorry, Krill,” he said.
“So you’re the one they call Krill. We’ve heard about you,” the man behind Krill said.
The helicopter passed overhead and circled over a field and began to descend on the rear of the property, the downdraft flattening the grass, blowing dust and desiccated cow manure in the air.
“Hey, Krill, I know who these guys are. They’re Sholokoff’s people,” Negrito said.
“No, we have no interest in these people or the business they conduct,” Krill said.
“Ain’t that right?” Negrito said to his captors. “You work for that Russian prick. We know all about you. I hear a couple of your guys are missing their noses. Be nice to me, and maybe I’ll tell you where their noses are and you can glue them back o
n.”
Negrito, Negrito, Negrito, Krill thought.
The man behind Krill stepped back and looked at both Krill and Negrito like a photographer arranging a studio portrait. “This is quite a pair,” he said.
“What do you want to do?” said the man holding the knife to the little girl’s throat.
“Take the girl in the kitchen.”
“And?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know if this gig has parameters or not.”
“There’s a key sticking out of the lock in the pantry door. What does that tell you?”
“Lock her inside?”
“Brilliant,” the man with the gun said. “Then take the woman to the chopper.”
“What about these two?”
“That’s a good question,” the man with the gun said.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Negrito said.
“You’ve got a question? Wonderful. What is it, greaseball?” the man with the gun said.
“If you’re born without cojones, does that mean you’re automatically a queer, or is it something you learn? ‘Cause I believe every guy who ever called me a greaseball was probably a maricon. Know why I think that? ’Cause when I was in jail in Arizona and Texas, it was always the Aryan Brotherhood guys who were trying to get me in the sack. That’s right, man. Macho gringos like you was the main yard bitches in every joint I was in. I tell you what, man. ’Cause you look like a nice guy, I’m gonna do something for you. You surrender to me and Krill, I’ll fix you up with some punks that ain’t got a feather on them. You gonna dig it, man.”
“We’re wasting time here, Frank. What’s it gonna be?” one of the other men said to the man with the gun.
“We split the difference,” Frank replied. “Krill is the guy who kidnapped the Quaker. Josef will want to talk to him. The ape seems to have a death wish.”
“Listen to me, hombre,” Krill said. “Negrito is a good soldier. He can be of value to you. He will never give up information to the FBI. Pain means nothing to him. His only defect is he runs his mouth when he shouldn’t. But he can be a valuable man to your employer.”
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