The Hot Country

by Robert Olen Butler

  24

  The train station was ahead but I needed to transform the passport in my pocket into my own passport before I could put a name on a ticket. I needed Bunky first. I needed to turn into Gerhard Vogel. I headed for the Diligencias, where Bunk was no doubt by now seeking a remedy with the hair of the mangy Mexican street dog that bit him. I put my head down and walked fast and expected to think about Mensinger’s talking points; the time had come to focus on this story as if I were with the Greeks again at Kilkis and I was ready to go on ahead to Sofia if they beat the Bulgars as badly as I expected. All of which clear, professional thinking was impossible in the present moment. It was not every day you saw the throat slashed of a guy who could admire the way the Cubs turned a double play even though he was a Pirates fan. Or who played a minor horn in a brass band like he actually enjoyed making music. If he was such a bully American spy and he had a build on him, how did he let some Hun feed him to the worms?

  I stewed about this till I was coming up on the portales, and the place was not even a quarter full, with the siesta in full snore and the newsmen either adopting that particular local custom or off trying to invent stories. Davis, I’d learn later, was at this very moment with Fred Palmer and Medill McCormick getting themselves arrested up the train line toward Mexico City, asserting their rights as journalists and giving Davis one of his meaningless, self-instigated, derring-do magazine stories out of it. I knew better than that.

  And there was Bunky, as I expected, sitting alone at our table nursing a mezcal to ease the pain in his head. As I sat down with him, he was full of avid assertions that it was only one drink so he could actually focus his eyes.

  “I know, I know,” I said, and I wasn’t sounding sarcastic. He wasn’t totally out of control yet, old Bunk. He did still know how to arrange for a fairly sober week after a really bad night.

  And the bit of mezcal had already done its work sufficiently to let him notice my face.

  “What’s happened?” he said.

  I told him the whole story.

  He listened in focused silence, and then, when I finished, he looked off to the street and whistled, low.

  I slid the passport across the table to him. He took it and glanced at the picture page and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ve got a couple of shots of you that’ll work,” he said.

  “I need it right away,” I said.

  “No problem,” he said.

  “You think you can face the smell of the chemicals right now?”

  “Two more sips and I can sniff Satan’s butt,” he said.

  “Looks like that’s going to be my job,” I said.

  “You be careful,” he said. “These guys seem to know what they’re doing.”

  I gave him a single nod, like my catcher had just asked for a fastball that I was ready to throw.

  Bunky lifted his glass of mezcal to me and took the first of his two-more sips. He said, “You want to try some of those things on me that Mensinger wrote down?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I looked away to bring them to mind and I found myself staring into Diego’s face. But from across the street, and he was passing by quickly.

  He was cutting across the zócalo at a medium trot, as if he was being chased but didn’t quite want to show it. And he was giving me a look as if he had a little bit of a problem and he was checking to see if there was anything the boss could do. Then he was looking forward again and he vanished behind the trees up the path toward the band shell. I didn’t have time to think about this: Walking briskly across my sight now, unaware of me, seeming to match Diego’s pace for the moment but apparently not ready to catch him, was Kapitän Krüger. For a brief moment I didn’t recognize him. No Uhlan uniform. His outing pants were dark and so was his shirt and he had on what looked like a very dark railroad workman’s jacket, but also vaguely military, with unadorned epaulets, and his head was bare. The clothes, in being so at odds with Vera Cruz weather in their darkness, seemed consciously chosen for some specific purpose; the bareheadedness seemed as if he had gone out in haste. And he was clearly following Diego, who had probably tried to embellish his orders from me about the wallet and of course it had gone wrong.

  All this ran through my mind even as I was jumping to my feet and crossing the street as soon as Krüger was past easy head-turning range. I jogged into the path and Krüger was thirty yards or so ahead of me. I reckoned Diego was about that far ahead of the German, so I slowed to their pace and followed. We circled the band shell to the left and headed back toward Independencia. I caught a quick sight of Diego far up ahead. He had come this way to get my attention and to show me, even now, that Krüger was definitely following him.

  I did nothing to hide my presence, other than keeping my distance. I was not afraid of Krüger seeing me. If he did and it made him break off, then all the better. But he was not focusing on anything except the boy. This wasn’t going to end well.

  We crossed the avenida now and we were heading south on Calle de Miguel Lerdo. The streets were nearly deserted with everyone sleeping. The sun was high and Krüger was badly dressed for this heat, overlayered and dark. I would have liked to wear him down a little if he and I were going to tangle, but this was a Prussian-blooded officer. He was used to much worse. And I started thinking about what I’d learned from stage fisticuffs, especially in the character of ruffians. The dirty fighters from melodramas. The Trail of the Serpent. Or The Black Swine Gang. Not that I hadn’t done enough pretty serious fistfighting just from being a theater kid dropping into real schools now and then. I did plenty. And I was doing too much thinking, I realized. I needed to focus my body now. I was in the wings, ready to go on.

  And we crossed Avenida Cinco de Mayo and Cortes and Hidalgo and we were keeping this same pace. We’d been bounded by runs of shops and stucco houses with courtyards and then adobe houses and then there were open stretches of rubbled lots and we crossed the tram tracks at Avenida Bravo. And suddenly Krüger was moving faster. But still at a brisk walk. If he were really making a move on Diego, he’d be running. Diego himself must have picked things up. If I couldn’t see him because of Krüger, maybe he couldn’t see me. Maybe he looked quickly back over his shoulder and all he could see was the Hun in pursuit, and Diego was truly scared now. But I just kept up. And still Krüger failed to look over his own shoulder, which was arrogance, one way or another: that Diego had no one to defend him and Krüger could easily have his way, or that somebody was following and Krüger could deal with him in due time without even checking out who it might be.

  We crossed Avenida Guerrero and ahead was a set of train tracks that had curved out of the great tangle of switching tracks south of the terminal, the main branch bearing the National Railway to Orizaba and on to Mexico City. There was a run of warehouses just ahead, dead quiet in the afternoon siesta and lightly populated anyway and with corridors between that were out of public sight. I figured if Krüger was going to make a move, this would be the place. There was one thing for me to try to make this go relatively easy. With no fight at all maybe; maybe with just some hard looks and bad words.

  “Captain Krüger,” I called out.

  He glanced over his shoulder at me without breaking his stride and then he turned back toward Diego ahead of him. And now Krüger started to sprint.

  “Watch out!” I cried and I ran hard to follow the two of them.

  Ahead I saw Diego dart off the street to the right and between two warehouses.

  Krüger angled toward the corridor and I followed, pressing hard, sprinting too, and the Hun was fast and he vanished between the warehouses, and this was a bad moment, every stride I took too slow, too slow, and rocks were underfoot, a scattering of trash, I had to watch where I put my foot with this step and this one so as not to stumble and I was into the dimness of the corridor and Krüger was twenty yards ahead, and by his ignoring me I fig
ured he was thinking I’d still be around after Diego was dead, but if he turned to take me out first, Diego would vanish, so he would deal with the boy quickly before he dealt with me, and all that was bad, that was very bad, I strode hard and Krüger was lunging now as he ran and I couldn’t see Diego but Krüger must have been knife-slashing at him as he ran, he was close, he was close and all Diego needed to do was stumble once, I had to get Krüger to deal with me, and a stone was ahead on the ground a smooth rounded stone and one stride more and I bent and strode and grabbed and strode and rose and slick as Joe Tinker charging a slow roller toward short I was up throwing and I put something on the throw and the stone flew straight and Krüger was just coming up from a lunge and the stone caught him hard in the center of his back and he broke his stride but it was not enough to make him fall, his torso dipped forward a bit and twisted at the pain and I saw a flash of Diego just ahead still okay and running and Krüger straightened and he was running but I was suddenly gaining on him and he slowed and I strode and I would fall on him from behind but I needed to grab his knife arm, needed to grab it, but Krüger was quick and he was in full control of his body now and he knew I was coming and he lunged a little to the left and he was doing a spin flashing around to face me and I stepped hard and pressed at my legs to stop, I could no longer tackle him from behind, and I saw the blade of his knife now coming around and I stopped, I was stopped, but he was barely ten feet before me and he was squared around and he crouched a little and spread his feet, spread his arms like he was relaxing in a reading chair, and his knife was ready to do its work.

  And beyond Krüger I could see Diego. He had stopped and was coming back our way.

  “Keep running,” I called to him, having the presence of mind not to use his name. If we all three came out of this alive and Krüger had a tale to tell, I didn’t want it to be clear that Diego and I knew each other. I could just be a guy poking his nose into somebody else’s nasty business.

  The profoundly stubborn and undisciplined Diego Cordero Medina Espinoza was not minding me.

  “Run away, boy,” I shouted.

  He took another step in our direction.

  I had not let Krüger leave my vision, but now I looked fully at him again. He hadn’t attacked yet because he knew what was going on beyond him. I could see him thinking: Perfect. The boy refuses to go. I can still kill you both.

  He smiled.

  I looked at his knife and I took a step back, and it occurred to me that this was the knife. This was the knife that killed Gerhard. This very morning. And Krüger started forward now. He was thinking he could toy with me. Maybe he could. I took another step back.

  He took another step forward, still in his crouch. He had returned to my line of sight toward Diego. The boy had vanished. It was just Krüger and me. This was probably better. I had to focus totally on the Hun and his knife or I was a dead man. I figured I might be anyway.

  Fencing, fine. Bare-knuckle brawling, fine. Pistols even. Fine. But my stage training had nothing in it to prepare me to defend myself with my bare hands against a German soldier and a knife. I took another step back.

  Krüger was enjoying this. “Will you run now, girlie?” he said in English. “Why don’t you try to die like a man.”

  And as I realized it was time to take a stand and I formed the intention to move my eyes to the knife hand, the world slowed way down, and Krüger straightened a little to come at me and he lifted from the shoulders just a bit and started to move his leg and suddenly his right shoulder flinched forward and a gray chunk of stone popped up off him from behind and I started to move my leg to close on him as the stone veered and glanced off his right ear and his head jerked a little to the left and my eyes fell now to the knife hand and it was moving but not toward me it was moving in an angle off to the right as he jolted a little forward from the stone’s blow and I stepped again and my hands were coming up and opening wide and his knife hand had stopped its unintended push forward and his arm had opened up enough that I had a clear shot at his wrist and my hands lunged and his arm was starting to move back to me but my hands clamped now on his wrist, clamped hard, and I’d been in enough schoolyard brawls to know to fight dirty and for now I held on to the wrist even as I felt his arm tense and I would deal with this arm but first I turned my face toward him and down and I shifted in my footing, rotated slightly, and I planted my left leg and I was lifting my right leg and my hands resisted his straining arm which was struggling without the leverage of a body behind it and my right foot rose and my eyes now were on my target, which was his right knee, and I kicked, I thrust my leg hard I thrust as if my foot would break straight through and the bottom of my boot cracked heavily at his knee joint from above and across and the knee jerked downward and inward and I heard his scream as a distant thing, a very distant thing, and now I turned and it was time for the arm even as it had gone slack, I brought my right foot back and planted it and I jerked his knife arm high and I ducked and twisted my body downward and under the arm and around, all the way around, holding the arm tight where it was and I was facing him again and he was wrenched down on the ground, legs folded beneath him, and his arm was twisted up and far behind him.

  The knife fell from his hand. But my hands, my whole body, roared on. I twisted hard at the arm, twisted it even farther across his back, I put my foot against his right shoulder blade and I wrenched at the arm and felt it give way at the socket.

  I heard screaming. Distant screaming.

  I stopped. I was on both my feet. He was down against the ground.

  I heard screaming. Nearby now. Very loud. Krüger was screaming.

  I looked at his arm. I’d let it go. It was lying nearly flat across his back.

  I looked down along his body and I saw his right leg splayed out from under him, the angle all wrong at the knee.

  I was breathing fast and heavy and it was like I wasn’t breathing at all, my lungs felt utterly empty, and I slowed it down, slowed it all down. I thought about what this all was. I started to actually feel the air I was drawing into me. I was breathing. I was slowing down.

  I could hear Krüger struggling to control the screaming, struggling to be a man, though the low sobbing moan that abruptly took over for the scream must have embarrassed him just as much.

  I turned to Diego, who was pressed back against the warehouse wall. His eyes were wide.

  “Are you okay?” I managed to say, though my voice was thin and soft.

  He nodded yes.

  Krüger had gone quiet. I looked down at him. He was lying face forward, his head turned to the side, his face pressed against the dirt, his mouth gaping. I thought he’d passed out from the pain. But his lips seemed to be trying to move and he was starting to moan again.

  He’d chosen this.

  Diego and I had to go.

  But before we did, I had to understand for certain what my instincts had told me a short time ago.

  I leaned down and grabbed Krüger’s torso and I tried to turn him over onto his back. He moaned loud as he turned, and his arm stayed twisted and vanished beneath him, keeping him from going flat, but I could see his dark shirtfront. I clearly made out a darker, faintly glistening stain there, a great dark stain splashed upon his chest. Krüger had known that he would be covered in Gerhard’s blood and that his dark clothes would hide the stains for his return to the consulate.

  I looked back to Diego. He had not moved. His eyes were not quite so wide now, but he was still frozen there.

  I took a step toward him. My legs were unsteady. But I focused. I took another step.

  And for a moment Diego pulled away from me. Ever so slightly. But I could see his shoulders go back, his face tighten, his eyes freeze.

  It made no difference that my violence was in his defense. For one terrible moment—as terrible for me as for him—I was his papi coming for him.

&nbs
p; I stopped. And the moment flickered and passed. The moment passed. He was looking at me again, not at his father. He knew it was me again.

  “You sure you’re all right?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You caught him outside, coming back to the consulate,” I said, more a statement than a question, though Diego understood that I was asking.

  He nodded yes.

  “You tried to hit him up for a reward for finding the wallet.”

  He nodded yes.

  “Will you ever learn to do what I say?”

  He nodded yes.

  We just looked at each other. For one breath, and another.

  Then I said, “Thanks for the stone.” He’d probably saved my life. And he could not have known that I’d thrown one only a few moments before.

  Diego said, “David and Goliath. I am a good Catholic son.”

  I turned back to Krüger. He murdered Gerhard. I had no doubt. I thought to kill him. Right now. Take his own knife, which was lying a few feet away, and do the justice that, in this time and place and circumstance and considering the victim’s secrets and the killer’s diplomatic status, I knew would not be done.

  The part of me that sounded so reasonable making this case but raged wildly beneath, that part wanted to do this thing, wanted to kill this son of a Prussian whore. But the other part of me that trembled now in muscle and nerve from what I’d done so far and yet was calm beneath, that part wanted me to live my life the way I’d always lived it, at observant peace amid war, watching, writing, taking care. Gerhard and Krüger could eventually come to justice through my printed words. Let God be God; I’d be Christopher Marlowe Cobb.

  I knew I was being watched. Not from heaven. From a few feet away.

  I turned again to Diego. My high-energy little street punk was still pressed against the warehouse wall, had still barely moved a muscle. His eyes had grown wide again, as if he knew what I was considering.