“Yes.” I heard this intake of breath from her mouth. “Oh God, poor Bud.”
“Don’t look at him, darling. Focus on Fierro. You see the crosshairs?”
“Yes.”
Put them on the tip of Fierro’s nose, if you can see it.”
“I can.”
“Put them there then.” Adjusting for wind, distance — there was no time to talk her through these things. Aiming at his nose would likely put the bullet in his mouth or chin, or high up on the forehead, or through either eye. It would likely take him out, either way.
I said, “When you feel the gun is steady, and those hairs are steady on your mark, take a deep breath, and then pull the trigger. Don’t flinch when you do it. The bullet will be on its way before you can react, so don’t anticipate the sound, or the kick of the rifle before they happen. Just take a deep breath, check your target a last time, and squeeze the trigger with even pressure.”
I waited for what seemed like five minutes.
Then I heard the crack. I heard her scream and watched her head drop.
38
I said, “Alicia. Honey? Did you hit him?”
She was shaking all over. She turned to look at me, pulling the long black curtain of hair from her face with a shaking hand. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Come over here,” I said, nodding at Agent Brown. “Please. Take over.”
She slid back over and pressed her hands to Agent Brown’s wound.
I retrieved the walkie-talkie and raised the pilot. I said, “Agent Brown is down. The others are all dead. We need you here now, and you need to get a hospital prepared to receive him in San Diego. We’re near a shack about 1.5 miles south of your present location. It’s the only structure in sight.”
I squeezed Alicia’s arm. “Chopper will be here in a minute. I’m going to go get Bud.”
On shaking legs, my vision blurred, I ran low through the mesquite to where Bud was staked out. I kept my Colt out, waiting to be fired on by Fierro or some confederate of his who might be hiding in the brush.
But no more shots came.
Fierro was sprawled on his back, blinking and unable to speak. Alicia had shot him in the neck. His arms and legs weren’t moving. Fierro was paralyzed and maybe shot through the vocal chords, to boot.
The Butcher was alive, but it would be a hell of a way to spend one’s declining years.
I holstered my Colt and dug out my Swiss Army knife.
“Are you with me, Bud?”
His voice was hoarse. “Hector? Oh thank Christ, Hector!”
“Don’t move, son. I’m gonna cut your arms and legs loose, then we’re going to count three and I’m going to pull you off that goddamned plant.”
First, I pulled the rocks from his back. I wrapped an arm around his skinny torso to support his weight as I cut loose the ropes from his ankles and wrists and from around his waist.
I said, “On three.” Then, before counting “one,” I jerked him backward onto my lap.
He screamed and blacked out on me. I checked his pulse — he hadn’t checked out for keeps.
Most of Bud’s wounds looked superficial. Two looked deep. I tore off my own necktie and tore it into fat strips. I rolled up two of these and thrust them in Bud’s deepest belly wounds. They’d pulled off Bud’s boots and burned the soles of his feet with cigarettes. They had apparently done the deed with Bud’s own cigarettes, judging from the stubs and the brand of the empty cigarette pack on the ground. If that didn’t make him quit smoking, nothing would.
I got him up on my shoulder and then, grateful for his skinny-assed frame, I carried Bud Fiske a hundred yards across that sweltering desert.
Visions of heart attacks or hemisphere-paralyzing strokes loomed. As I drew closer, I squinted against the sand kicked up as the helicopter descended.
Bud came-to as the helicopter settled to the ground. He said, “The skull didn’t fool, Fierro. He said Obregón was the one who intercepted the head all those years ago. Fierro was looking for a particular hole at the top of the head where Obregón kept his fountain pen. That’s how he knew the one we gave Emil was a fake.”
I said, “Don’t talk, Bud.”
Nearly done in, I reached the helicopter that was now waiting. Agent Brown was already inside and stretched out. Alicia was taping thick pads to his neck.
She said, “Is Bud alive?”
“He’ll make it,” I said.
“And Fierro?”
Goddamn me anyways, sometimes. I wanted Fierro to myself. I didn’t think about the effect my callous lie would have on her.
I should have said, “Fierro is still alive. You saved Bud.” That would have been good.
Instead I said the words I would have wanted to hear under those circumstances. I said, “You’re a good soldier. You killed that monster dead. Put him down like a pro.”
The look in her eyes ... my God. I fancy myself a writer and I couldn’t describe what I saw. But I knew I hated it. I knew on my best day at the writing table, I could never hope to capture that ineffable look of self-loathing she wore. And I hated myself for putting it there.
The pilot said, “We’re low on fuel, and now we’d be flying out with one more than we went in with. And these guys are on their backs, so there’s not much room. Can you see to yourself until I can get help here, sir?”
“Think Hoover will really send help?” I smiled. “My car is here. I’ll drive myself back. I hoisted the radio. Just leave your unit on, so when I’m in range, you can maybe tell me which hospital to go to.”
He smiled and nodded. “Gotta go and I mean now.”
Alicia said to me, “You’ll be all right, with the blood sugar?”
“I’ll find something to eat. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry—”
“Not now,” she said.
I stood squinting at the glare from the helicopter’s windscreen as the copter lifted away. I waved goodbye to Alicia with my Colt in my hand.
* * *
The keys to my Bel Air were in the car. I opened the glove compartment and found a stash of crackers and melting candy bars Bud had put there. I wolfed down two candy bars and then walked back to Fierro.
I tried to get him to speak, but he couldn’t. His eyes implored me.
So I smiled at him. There was an anthill about four feet from where they had staked out Bud. Fierro was probably saving that torture technique for later. I went back to my Chevy. I found that little bottle of honey shaped like a bear that Alicia had been using to spike her tea. I poured a thin trail of honey from the anthill over to Fierro. I emptied the bottle across his eyes, which, when I had finished, were opened wide, sticky and begging.
I said, “Don’t run off.”
Then I went into the shack. Not much there. I pulled the bodies of Fierro’s lieutenants inside, found some old papers and fuel oil and torched the place with the corpses inside. Less for J. Edgar to have to fret over.
Before I left, I stood over Fierro a last time. The ravenous ants were about a foot from finding The Butcher. I leaned in close to Fierro and said, “Viva Villa.”
* * *
Two miles north of the shack, I hit a roadblock. I recognized the car — a Buick. It was that third vehicle that had fallen in behind Fierro’s car when Bud was snatched hours before. Five young guys with guns were crouched behind the car. They yelled, “We want the head.”
More fucking frat boys.
Christ but I was soul sick of this and their ilk. I got out, my hands up. I walked to the back of my Chevy and opened the trunk. All those guns that Bud and me had collected were there, resting there at the ready.
Could have had me my own private Alamo out there on the outskirts of TJ.
It would have been a good and a colorful death. But I had dimming dreams of life with this Mexican lady and her little girl.
Grunting, I pulled out one of the carpetbags with one of the lesser heads and flung the thing into the dust between us.
I pointed at the bag and yelled
to them, “Take it. Stick it in your fucking trophy cabinet. And now forget you know me, yeah?”
* * *
I had a lot of time in the car alone driving back up to San Diego.
Can’t say I enjoyed the company.
39
They said that Agent Brown would pull through.
Alicia had finally taken a cab back home to her daughter and grandmother. I said I’d call her in a few days to check on her. That’s all it would be, “checking in.” Alicia had made it clear that I wouldn’t be getting to know that little girl of hers.
She hugged me hard and left without kissing me.
Bud Fiske, recuperating, had borrowed a typewriter and locked himself in an L.A. hotel room to bang out his overdue article about yours truly.
“I’m having trouble figuring out how to write it,” he confessed.
“Screw that,” I told him. “Just do it. Make it up. Have fun with it. Build a legend around me.”
The poet shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“You have to, Bud. The last few days we’ve lived...nothing there to be used. Just make it up. It’s what I do, all the time.”
Bud looked skeptical. “Sure.”
“Yeah — sure,” I said, firmer now. “I do it every morning, at least three hours a day, every day, whether it’s shit or not. Only way to get anything done. Besides, you can’t ever tell True the truth.”
“All right then,” he said finally, after some more pushing.
With Alicia gone and Bud busy writing, I was left at ends — always a dangerous way for me to be.
So I bit my lip, held my nose, and drove to Venice to close out my lingering business with Orson Welles.
* * *
Here’s a secret for you. Next time that you watch Touch of Evil, carefully study those vignettes with Orson and Marlene. If you’ve got a good eye on you, you’ll notice something. After an establishing shot in their very first scene, they are never again in frame together. When Marlene says her lines to “Hank Quinlan,” that’s me she’s talking to.
Orson delivered his lines to some Mexican extra that at least should have been Alicia. But I’d cost her that gig, too.
That’s my hand you’ll see in the film, drunkenly spreading those damned fortune-telling cards. And I was drunk ... flying on mescal.
After filming, safe in Marlene’s trailer that was laced with the smell of her cooking and us, together, I rolled off her.
I reached down for a towel and wiped my cum from her flat belly. She sighed and stretched and moved her thigh over my crotch and ran her fingers through my chest hair. It was sweltering in the trailer. I leaned over and kissed her small, salty left breast.
“Thank you for doing this for Orson,” she said.
“You know that I didn’t do it for him.”
“Then you’ll do one more thing for me. You’ll call Papa, won’t you?”
I sighed. My Teutonic chanteuse was indomitable. “I will. But not tonight and maybe not tomorrow.”
She bit my shoulder and I winced and knotted my fingers in her tousled hair — it was dark with dye for her role as “Tanya.” I kissed her, hard. Marlene said, “Promise me, Hector. And make it a real promise, yes?”
“I promise, Kraut. Cross my heart—”
She quickly pressed her stained fingers to my lips. “The luck,” she said. “Don’t send those kinds of thoughts out into the world. It’s enough for me that you promise.”
“I want to spend the night here,” I said.
Though we hadn’t discussed her, Marlene seemed to know about Alicia and me. Maybe she had been playing with those damned Tarot cards that had been given to her as a prop for her character — perhaps in the cards she saw my plight.
Marlene smiled a sad smile. “Tonight you can stay.”
I tipped my head back on her arm, my scarred hand stroking her flat belly.
She was softly singing something.
“What is that tune?”
“It’s an old Mexican song that Papa taught me,” she said. “I sing it with the German lyrics. It’s called Canción Mixteca.”
I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
40
That morning, I spent an hour going over my car, fender to bumper, inside and out — tearing off gizmos that had been planted on it.
I called the management company and told them they had a rental back on their hands — let someone else enjoy that Tom Mix vibe.
Bud offered to let me read his first draft of my profile in typescript. I demurred. “I’m gonna love it, I’m sure,” I said. “Besides, I need something to look forward to.”
Bud nodded, looking reluctant. “So what now?”
“I need to get back down to New Mexico. To pick up a parcel ... make a delivery.”
“What parcel?”
“Pancho Villa’s real head.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Give it to the one who should have it.”
“You need someone to ride shotgun?”
“I didn’t think there was a chance in the world you’d agree, or I would have asked.”
“I want to come,” Bud said. “Finish right. Like we started. Just you and me.”
“That’s great,” I said, and meant it.
41
We took our time, ambling slowly down toward New Mexico and, eventually, to the border.
Along the way, we did some sightseeing ... hung out in some taverns hosting good musicians. I started drinking again.
Bud was tapering off the cigarettes. I tried to follow his example on that front.
One night, I also tried to buy him a woman.
He wasn’t going for it. “I can’t pay for that,” he said.
“I’m paying,” I said.
“I mean that I can’t pay for sex. It’s ... not something I can do under those circumstances. Couldn’t perform. It wouldn’t be any good, Hector.”
“We’re men, Bud,” I said. “The worst we ever have is fine. And you know, this gal I’ll find for you, she’s a pro. She’s paid to let you be you.”
“That’s ... abhorrent.”
I decided, pretty quickly then, it was best not to push.
We drove on.
The box was waiting for me at the hardware store.
We took Pancho’s mummified head and stopped at my hacienda to spend the night. I hid the head in the wheel well of my Chevy again.
My place was quiet ... dusty. I didn’t sleep too good.
Bud sat up reading the draft of my new novel — background for his article, he said.
In the morning we set off for la Quinta Luz.
* * *
Pancho Villa purportedly had many women — many “marriages.”
But there’s really only one woman who is recognized by most as his “official” wife.
Hell, Pancho himself seemed to regard her as his one true woman.
They married in 1914, when she was a girl of twenty.
I had called ahead about our reason for coming. On the phone, she told me that a local priest who married them asked Pancho to first declare his sins. He refused, saying that that would “take days.” My kind of groom.
Pancho set Luz Corral Vda. De Villa up in this big old house in Chihuahua City called Quinta de Luz. The French-style house is two stories tall and stuccoed pink. It is made of brown stone and has 40 rooms and an open center courtyard. In that courtyard, squatting under the trees heavy with fruit, is the bullet-riddled black Dodge that her husband died in — shot to death while leaving another wedding.
The widow’s house is rambling, crumbling and wonderful. My own place back in New Mexico would fit inside, twice.
Luz had turned the house into a museum to her late husband.
She stood by her legendary husband through his incessant sexual betrayals. She accumulated the memorabilia and detritus of his crazed life. And now, seventy-four-years-old and in astonishingly good health, she lived with the slain general’s m
emory all around her.
Such unwarranted devotion made me wonder: where do callous bastards like Villa and me go to find such women?
Villa’s luck, I could only suppose, was simply so much better than my own. I hadn’t found a devoted caretaker for me or for my memory ... not yet.
We rang the bell and Luz Corral de Villa personally answered the door.
“So many,” she said, “they try to fool me. I hope you are not like them.”
“No,” I said. “We want no money. We want nothing but to give him back to you so he can rest at last.”
We went inside into the cool from the punishing sun. The floors were covered in expensive Italian tile. The old bandit seemingly liked to live well.
Pancho Villa’s hats and gun belts hung on the walls.
Myriad photos hung on the walls, too. Photos of Pancho on his mare ... standing with Black Jack Pershing (that cocksucker Rodolfo Fierro peering over Villa’s left shoulder). Pistols were displayed in glass cases. It was really all more than the eye could absorb.
She led us to a sitting room and I gently deposited the carpetbag on an overstuffed French divan. Luz approached the bag, slowly and carefully.
She opened it and pulled out the head, wrapped in that Navaho rug. She unbundled it, her eyes glistening.
The old woman picked the head up in her wrinkled hands and examined it.
She began to weep and she kissed its forehead.
I turned my gaze away, unable to watch her — it felt like an invasion. I looked at Bud. He looked away from her and from me, his eyes wet.
She placed the head on a table and then kissed my hands with those old lips — the lips that had just kissed the head of Pancho Villa.
She said, gracias over and over.
I kept saying de nada.
The widow bustled over and hugged Bud, then came back and kissed my hands again.
The little widow offered to pay us. Hell, she had no money except pesos from those who came to tour the house.
We refused.
She offered us lunch. I was sorely tempted to stay and hear some stories about Villa, but she kept casting glances at her husband’s long-lost head.
Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 16