by Blake Banner
“Yeah?”
The door opened and Cissy stepped in. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not. What is it?”
She came over and sat on the bed. “You are such a gentleman. You know how few men would do what you just done?”
I smiled. “Shucks, Ma’am, it’s jist the way I was raised.”
“Stop it! Now move over an’ let me show you how we do things, Arizona style.”
I made room for her, smiled, and sank gratefully into the warmth of her arms.
Seven
I woke up late. The morning sun was laying twisted oblongs of light across the bed, and an early breeze was moving the curtains. Cissy was up. I could hear her downstairs. She had the radio playing country classics, and she was singing along. For a moment, I felt a stab of guilt that I couldn’t put into words. I rose and went to stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. Had I led Cissy to believe there could be something, that we were going somewhere?
And then I wondered, why not? Why could other men have a home and a family and a beautiful wife, but not me?
Because I was a killer. It was what I was born and trained to be. And Cissy, like Marni, deserved better than what I was, better than I could ever be.
I shaved, then stood under the hot jets of the shower, turned them to ice cold and felt better. As I toweled myself dry, I could see Sergeant Bradley in my mind, the light from the camp fire making his eyes diabolical under the night sky of the desert. His deep, New Zealand voice was oddly reassuring in the presence of imminent death.
“Men like you and me, Lacklan, we shouldn’t go soul-searching,” He had leered like a ghastly, Antipodean gnome, “I mean, who the fuck would want to find what we have in our souls?”
He wasn’t wrong.
I dressed and went downstairs. Cissy beamed at me from the kitchen. The swelling over her eye was almost gone, and she’d put plenty of makeup over her bruises. She came and kissed me, like a wife.
“I was just comin’ up to call you, sleepy head.”
I ignored my conscience, I kissed her back and went along with the game. It was nice to pretend. It couldn’t last. But while it lasted, I planned to enjoy it.
We had chit-chat over breakfast, discussed what she had to get at the store and what I wanted for supper. As she cleared the table, she said, “I’ll get all the big stuff on the weekend. Maybe you can give me a hand…”
She froze over the sink, realizing what she’d said. The weekend meant Saturday. Saturday meant Red. And in any case, by then I would probably be gone. I stood and went to her. I turned her around to face me and she forced a smile, like nothing was happening.
I said, “Trust me. It’s going to be OK.”
For a fraction of a second I saw Bradley’s face, smeared with boot polish, staring at me in the dark. “Hey, trust me. It’s going to be all right…” That night thirty men had died. None of them was SAS. We had done the killing. So Bradley had been right. Everything was all right.
She blinked and smiled. “Would you look at me, standing around like I got all day!”
She grabbed her purse and her keys. Then she stopped and pointed at the breakfast bar. “You’re gonna need some keys. I left a set on the bar for you.”
I watched her drive away and went to get my laptop.
There were no audio files. Marni had not spoken to anybody last night. She hadn’t even watched TV or listened to music. I knew what she’d done. She had read, and written.
The rest of the day passed slowly. Her tracker was silent and she didn’t talk. I drove over to Carson Corner three times. Her car was still in the drive. The impulse to go in there and confront her, find out what the hell she was doing and why she was cutting me out, became almost irresistible, but I fought it and waited. Was it wise patience? Or was it stupid pride?
Finally, as the sun slipped toward the hills in the west and the air started to turn to grainy dusk, I went up to my room, cleaned and oiled the Sig and spent five minutes sharpening the two sides of the blade on my Fairbairne & Sykes. When it was sharp enough to split a floating hair, I slipped it into my boot. I was taking the Sig to cover my bases, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to need to use it.
The fighting knife was a whole different story. Messrs Fairbairn & Sykes would drink deep that night.
It was dark by the time I got to the Casa Coca. As I pulled down the drive, I was pleased to see half a dozen trucks, a couple of Audis and a Cadillac, all parked outside. The trip would not be wasted. I climbed out of the car and slammed the door loud enough to be heard. Desert nights are cold, and I could see the clouds of condensation running like scared ghosts from my mouth, dissipating in the dark. I stood a moment, looking up at the sky. Night skies in Arizona are one of the most beautiful sights on this planet. It was not a bad place, or a bad way, to die.
I looked over at the building. There was a soft light burning under the wooden veranda, and there was a big guy leaning in the doorway smoking a cigarette and watching me.
I walked across the dirt, stepped onto the porch and stood in front of him. I’m over six foot tall, but he was looking down at me.
“I’m here to see Arana. Move.”
He didn’t take the cigarette out of his mouth to speak, so it wagged on his lip and small clouds of ash trailed down onto his gray shirt.
“Fock you.”
Everything was against him. I’d had a frustrating day. I was feeling impatient. I was keen to see Arana. And, most of all, I was convinced that there are already too many guys like this in the world.
However big a guy is, if he has a big gut and you punch down onto it, the combined weight of his belly and your punch will drag down on his diaphragm, wind him and, sometimes, even paralyze his heart. I put all of my two hundred and twenty pounds into the punch. His eyes bulged and he went a pasty gray color as he leaned forward, gaping his ugly mouth and wheezing for air. His suffering didn’t last long. I slipped my knife from my boot and rammed into his fifth intercostal, right up close to his sternum, and felt him shudder as his heart went into spasm. I let him slip to the floor and stepped over him to open the door.
I went in, wiping the blade on my jeans, and let the door swing closed behind me. At a quick estimate, I figured there were two dozen guys there, and maybe half that many women. Most of the guys were of the big, bad, and stupid variety. There were a couple of suits and there was one I knew straight away was Arana. His suit was expensive, Italian and vulgar. He had enough gold on him to sink a tanker, and you could tell by his eyes that he made up in psychotic sadism for everything he lacked in intelligence.
All of this I saw as the voices in the room fell silent. I made a point of ignoring Arana and looking at every other face in the room. They all stared back at me. The Mexican music they were playing on the hi-fi sounded suddenly kind of embarrassed, and too loud.
“Which one of you is Arana? I need to talk to him.”
I slipped my knife back in my boot and waited. The suit sitting next to Arana stood and shouted, “Quien coño es el pendejo este? Donde esta Dixon?” Which translates roughly to, who the fuck is this guy and where is Dixon?
“Dixon is dead. And I’m the guy who’s going to save your ass. Are you Arana?”
He scowled at me and shouted at the four guys at the table nearest. He was nothing if not predictable.
“Atrápenlo ya, cojones! A que esperan?”
Get him. What the hell are you waiting for? I smiled at the guys as they scrambled to their feet. I could have shot each one of them in those four long seconds, but I had a point to make, so I let them come.
The biggest came first, with bulging yellow eyes and breath that stank of onions and cigarettes. His brains were as rudimentary as his technique. He lunged at me with both hands. I don’t know what he planned to do once he had me. He probably didn’t know himself. I didn’t really care. I rammed the middle knuckles of my left hand into his windpipe as I pulled my knife back out from my boot. Then I pushed him aside to choke
to death on the floor while the other three rushed me.
The thing when you’re being rushed by more than two guys, is to always strike at the one on your far right. That forces them to turn left, and into each other. That was what I did then. I stepped to my right. The nearest guy went for me, and I took his left wrist in my left hand as he reached for my collar. With a quick slash, I severed the tendons in his armpit. He didn’t feel it at first. But when he saw the blood spurting out and realized he couldn’t move his arm, he started screaming over the Mexican music. That much took all of two seconds.
The other two tried to get to me, but their screaming pal was in the way. I stepped behind him and shoved him hard into their path with my boot. The farthest, a blond guy with a pencil mustache, was shouting at him to get out of the way as blood sprayed over his face and his shirt. The nearest one gritted his teeth and thrust at me with a blade he’d pulled from his jacket. He was off-balance because of trying to get around his screaming buddy, and because his technique sucked. I took his wrist and deflected his thrust across his body so that he stumbled toward me, onto my blade. I was already moving toward the big blond as I cut up into number three’s solar plexus, and let him fall, jumping and quivering, to the floor.
I looked hard into the blond’s eyes and said, “Don’t!” He hesitated just long enough for me to slice across his throat. His brain bled out in a couple of seconds. His eyes rolled up and he dropped. The guy with the severed tendons had gone down and was slipping into coma. His legs kept twitching. The floor was awash with blood. The whole thing had happened in less than ten seconds. If you count out ten seconds in your mind, it’s a long time when you’re killing people.
I wiped the blade on my jeans for the second time and looked at the suit. I said, “Sit down.”
He did. Then I looked at Arana, whose face was wearing a ‘what the fuck’ expression. I pointed at him with my knife, just to let him know there were no boundaries here. “You ready to stop playing compare dicks and start talking? Or do I have to kill some of your suits, too?” I waited. He didn’t say anything. I went on, “All I want is to sell you some information you need to know.”
The Mexican band wailed on. There was a moment of complete stillness. I could feel the Sig p226 hard against my back. I was pretty sure of what would happen next, but if he got the wrong look in his eye, I’d shoot the suit and blow Arana’s knee in half before his apes had time to say “Ayayay!”
Luckily for him, he did what he had to do. His eyes turned sullen and he snarled at his right-hand man, “Get this fockin’ mess cleaned up, Juan, what you fockin’ waiting for?” To me he said, “Sit down, wha’s this fantastic information you have for me?”
Juan the Suit got up and started shouting at people. Crying girls brought mops from the kitchen, and a couple of guys got hold of some bed sheets and big black garbage sacks. By gradual degrees, the four things that had, only a few minutes earlier, been people, were dragged out into the desert night, to be buried, eaten, and forgotten. That was the path they had chosen, and that was where that path led. Maybe that was where my path led too. I didn’t know, and right then I didn’t care.
Eight
I sat with my back to the wall, pulled a Pueblo from my pack and told the waitress, “Irish, no ice.” I lit up with my battered, brass Zippo, breathed the smoke deep into my lungs and studied his face.
“You think you have coke and prostitution sewn up in this area.”
He shrugged. “So what?”
“You haven’t.”
The waitress brought my drink. She had tears in her eyes and her hands were shaking. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
“So tell me. Who else is runnin’ blow and putas?”
I gave a laugh that was about as amused as a gay bishop at a stag night. “What am I now, your new best friend? Have I got ‘stupid’ written across my forehead? Who do I have to fucking kill around here for you to take me seriously? You want me to kill fucking Juan over there? Should I kill Juan?”
It was a good performance. It scared the bejaysus out of Juan, who dropped one of the corpses’ legs and stared from me to Arana and back again in alarm.
Arana raised his hands and looked irritated. “Take it easy! Cojones! You don’t need to kill nobody else! What’s your price?”
“Five thousand bucks, and…” I pointed at the last of the bodies being dragged out through the door. “Looks like you have a vacancy. I want a job. I plan on sticking around for a while.”
He looked both skeptical and uncomfortable. “You want a job, with me?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Think about it, Arana. If I plan to report for duty tomorrow morning, that has to mean my information is good, right?” His eyebrow twitched. I moved right on before he could think it through. “Plus, I just killed five of your men, and instead of getting killed myself, I’m sitting here drinking whiskey with you. How many men do you know who can pull that off? I’ll eliminate your competition and double your income before the end of the month. I am useful to you, and you know it.”
He scowled at me. Then, predictably, he started laughing. “OK, amigo!” He slapped me on the shoulder and turned to Juan. “Juanito! Go to the safe. Bring five grand for our new Marketing Manager! Carmencita! Traiga tequila!”
Carmencita, looking a little less scared, brought a bottle of tequila, a handful of shot glasses, a dish of lemon and a pot of salt. Arana watched me watching her as she set them down on the table. “You like her, amigo? She is for you. Now, tell me, what is this information?”
I sipped my whiskey and studied his face. I waited till Juan came hurrying back out with a large manila envelope. He gave it to Arana who opened it and showed me the contents. It looked like five thousand dollars in large bills. I said, “You have a Judas among your disciples.”
He scowled. “A Judas?”
“Yeah. Somebody I figure you pay a lot of money to, to keep things sweet. He’s helping to set up an operation competing directly with you.”
“Who is this son of a bitch?”
“The sheriff of San Juan County. He’s helping his nephew, Red, to set up a club in Tucson. They’re buying crack and girls down in Mexico and selling them up here. I’m guessing you didn’t know about that operation. Hand over the money, pal. Let’s stay friends.”
His face flushed and he screamed for a bit in Spanish, about the sheriff being a son of the great whore, and all the things he was going to do to various parts of his anatomy. I reached over, took the money and put it in my jacket pocket. He watched me do it with staring eyes.
“How you know this?”
“That’s none of your goddamn business, Arana. Tomorrow night he’s going to be at his club at eight PM. Camino del Oeste, where it makes the corner, on the edge of the desert. He’ll have a shipment that he brought from his supplier south of the border. Don’t go. Send your four best men with automatic weapons. I’ll be there. We’ll wipe out the gang, collect the dope and bring you Red. You interrogate him, find out who his supplier is, and I’ll wipe him out too. Deal?”
He didn’t like the way I was talking to him, but he liked the plan. After a moment he leered. “OK, deal.”
I knocked back the whiskey and stood. Arana looked disappointed. Maybe he hoped we’d hang out and be pals. I signaled to Carmencita. “Get your bag, sweetheart. We’re going home.” To Arana I said, “Give me a cell where I can contact you.”
He spread his hands. “What’s your hurry, gringo? You don’t like my tequila?”
I didn’t smile. “When Red is lying out in the desert feeding the buzzards, and his club is being hosed down by the fire department, then I’ll drink tequila with you. Tonight I’m going to sleep. And tomorrow I am going to solve your problem.”
Carmencita was standing with her bag looking down at Arana. Her legs were shaking. She said, “Que hago, Jefe?”
She was asking him what to do. I gave him a look that said he shouldn’t upset me and he snarled, “Vaya con el. Hág
ale feliz.”
He’d told her to go with me and make me happy. I jerked my head toward the door and she moved that way. I turned back to Arana and he handed me a card. I took it and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow night, about twelve or one.” I gave the shadow of a smile. “Then we’ll drink tequila and party.”
He nodded. Right then we both knew that his plan was to kill me tomorrow. He knew I was much too dangerous for his peace of mind. But what he didn’t know was that by tomorrow things would be looking very different.
Outside, the desert air was icy. I got into the car and Carmencita climbed in beside me. The doors slammed, shutting out the cold. She put her hands between her knees and stared down at them, as though if she focused hard enough she could make me and the nightmare I represented go away.
The engine roared, the hazy funnels of the headlamps broke into the darkness, and the reverse gear whined as I pulled back up the track and onto the road. I stopped, put it in drive, and then we were sliding forward through the night, with the twisted trees springing out like shocks in a nightmare, only to fade away again behind us, in the blackness of the desert. Over in the east, the first sliver of the moon was rising over the hills. We drove on in silence for about ten minutes. Then I said to her, “Carmencita, do you speak English?”
She nodded at her hands. “Yes.”
“I want you to understand something. The decisions you make tonight—the choices you make—will determine what happens to you and your family for the rest of your life. Do you understand that?”
She nodded again, harder. “Yes, señor, I will do anything you want. Please don’t hurt me or my family.”
I sighed. “No, Carmencita. I am not here to hurt you or your family. I am here to help you. You have an opportunity tonight. A lucky break. I want you to do the right thing.” I glanced at her and asked again. “Do you understand?”
She was watching me. The dim light from the dash touched the planes of her face, making her look beautiful but ghostly. She said simply, “No…”