He leaned back over the seat and spoke to me in a ferocious whisper. “Do you want to save your daughter?”
“Yes.”
He smiled at the people around us, while speaking through the side of his mouth. “Then keep quiet and enjoy the party.”
I glanced around, still unsure. “Look, somebody’s going to know.”
“You’re a big white guy.” He made a face. “You all look alike to us.”
I glanced at Bianca, who was smiling at my discomfort and shaking her head. She looked at Alonzo, and he shrugged apologetically. “They have a sports team, here in the village.”
I took the treasured blue Sharpie from my pocket and began signing things for people. “So.”
“A soccer team, our fútbol, the Torero Matadors, and they would like to have an exhibition game this evening in your honor.”
“Okay, but I don’t know how to play soccer.”
“No, they want you to make a speech.”
I glanced at the podium again. “Oh, hell.”
Her smile broadened. “I will help you.”
When I looked toward the front, the dignitaries appeared to be smiling at me, kind of like I would at a porterhouse steak. “What am I expected to talk about?”
She dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “Something about sport building character . . . I don’t know, foolishness like that.”
Adan pushed open the passenger-side door, stood before the group, and, taking on an air of diplomacy, urged them back, all the while talking a kilometer a minute. A few people started helping with the luggage, but I held the gym bag close if for no other reason than it was full of guns.
As I stepped from the Caddy there was an uproar, which I ignored by turning and assisting Bianca from the car; only then did I look around at the hundreds of people, still trying to disguise the fact that I felt like a complete idiot.
“They have a room for you and your wife in the bank building right over here.” Adan had gotten the Seer situated in his wheelchair, and our entire group moved toward the building to our left.
“The bank?”
“Not in use anymore, but the mayor says it was robbed by some of the finest bandidos in history, including your John Dillinger.”
“He got around, huh?” I snorted. “What about you guys?”
“We are staying at the local hotel; believe me, you got the better of the deal.”
It appeared that the mayor was the man in the ball cap, and he accompanied us, along with the other members of what I assumed were the city council, as we entered the wreckage of what had once been a bank with tall ceilings and marble floors. In a fit of hospitality, they had decorated the place as best they could and had set candles on all the steps leading to the second floor.
The dignitaries stopped at the stairs but bid us to continue as Adan took Bianca’s bag and a couple of the masks that the townsfolk had given him and led the way to a mezzanine, which in better times had probably housed offices. He opened the door to the farthest room, and you could see that the poor villagers had done the best they could to fix something akin to a bridal suite.
There was a large poster bed with gauzy material draped all around and more candles, and as beautiful as it was, all I could think was that the place was a fire trap.
Adan set the bag on the bed along with the masks. “You two will stay here.”
I glanced around as Bianca moved toward the window overlooking the square where music was playing and you could still hear the crowd. “There’s only one bed.”
“Personally, I don’t care if you sleep on the floor, but for appearance purposes the two of you sleep in here.” He turned to his sister. “The speech will be in an hour, after a banquet and before the soccer demonstration. We’ll do all of this as a courtesy to the village, but then we will leave very early in the morning.”
I set the gym bag on the bed with the other things. “What about supplies?”
“Alonzo will be covering that tonight.”
I nodded. “Any chance of Bidarte’s men being down here?”
“Practically none—they will be preparing for their own celebration on the mountain.”
I picked up one of the masks. The skull on it was ornately designed with cutouts and colorful appliqués and even sheet music applied to it. I tried to read the notes and finally came up with the piece. I had played Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, the one he left unfinished at the time of his death.
Appropriate.
I held it up to my face, but it was a little small. “Practically none?”
“You never know.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Some of the young people from this village, they go up there for the celebration.”
I lowered the mask and tossed it back on the bed, folded my arms and stepped toward him. “In God’s name, after what you’ve told me, why would anybody voluntarily go up there?”
“Food, drink, liquor, drugs, sex—what more can you want, eh?” He glanced toward the window and listened to the noise from the crowd before extending a finger toward me. “Be careful what you say and who you say it in front of in this place, every ear is guaranteed to have a running mouth.”
* * *
—
“That was the worst speech I’ve ever heard, let alone translated.”
It was a little unsettling to have a skull-faced woman reviewing my performance, as I gestured toward the crowd and turned in the folding chair next to her. “They liked it.”
She adjusted her mask and the large red flower in her hair, which complemented the lovely flamenco dress she’d produced from her suitcase and was now wearing. “They liked it because you told them that the Torero Matadors were known across America as the greatest soccer team of all time.”
“A slight exaggeration.” I shrugged and signed the last scrap of paper that a little girl held out to me, feeling only slightly guilty as I placed it in her hand and then watched as she raced away.
“A sheriff is a politician, yes?”
The band had started up again at the other side of the fountain, and I tossed the blue marker onto the table and shook my hand in an attempt to get some blood back in it. “Yep, but I’m pretty lousy at that part of the job, to be honest.”
“What part are you good at?”
“I’m still working on that.”
Adan appeared through the crowd, glad-handing as he came with his own mask pushed up on his head. “That was the worst speech I’ve ever heard.”
“That seems to be the consensus, so the next presentation we have to do, one of you can do it.” I reached over and opened a soda from the table and stood, leaning on the broken portion of the fountain and having a sip as I glanced around at a street party that looked nothing like it was winding down. “Is this going to go on all night?”
“Probably.”
“When will some of these misguided pilgrims begin their journey to the mountain?”
“Sometime tomorrow during the day.”
“Why don’t we just go up with them and use the crowd for cover?”
Bianca moved past us, glancing at the throng as another individual approached with one of the tiny footballs; she shook her head and turned the man away. “Because you stand out like a polar bear.”
There was some noise from the other side of the fountain, beyond the band and the people dancing—probably a fight. “So, we leave early?”
“Sí, at sunup.” Adan fanned some fingers at the municipal building where we were staying. “We will pull into the alley behind you and leave at five-thirty.”
There was more noise at the fringes of the crowd, and I was about to mention it when I heard the unmistakable sound of a quick burst from an automatic weapon. People screamed, and the crowd seemed to shift en masse, but there was no more shooting. “What the hell?”
Adan leapt up on the fou
ntain. “There are some men approaching, and they are heavily armed.”
Just as he’d finished speaking, Alonzo appeared in the crowd, waving and pushing people aside to get to us. “It’s men, Bidarte’s men.”
Adan stepped down. “We will just continue with the illusion we have created.”
“How many of them?”
“A half dozen, at least.”
Peering through the crowd, I could catch glimpses of a group of men, some of them carrying bottles of what I assumed was liquor. Leaning to the side I could see the strikingly handsome man who appeared to be the leader, an individual who was out of place with blond hair poking out from under his ball cap.
David Culpepper.
This was the man I was certain had killed Ricardo, my daughter’s housekeeper’s nephew, and possibly the one who had actually kidnapped Alexia and Cady. I’d only met him once, but he would most certainly know me on sight.
I reached over and took Adan’s mask, removed my hat, and slipped the disguise over my face. “The white guy in the front, his name is Culpepper and we’ve met—he’ll know who I am.”
Turning, I slipped my arm around Bianca and pulled her close as the group of men broke through the crowd and Culpepper pointed toward us with what looked to be an M16. He staggered a little and took a swig from a mescal bottle in his other hand; great—drunk, psychotic sociopaths with automatic weapons.
He stopped about twelve feet away and extended his arms, threw his head back, and screamed, “How ’bout them Cowboys!”
A few of the men behind him, who were also carrying AK-47s, fired a few rounds in the air as punctuation.
He grinned a crazy smile with a lot of teeth, and it was all I could do to keep from leaping over the table and taking him by the throat.
“Bob Lilly!” He turned to the group behind him. “Number seventy-four!” His face swiveled back to me. “Mister Fucking Cowboy!”
I released Bianca and stood straighter.
He staggered forward a little closer, finally clutching the edge of the table for support. “My uncle used to tell me stories about you.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Twenty-nine-yard sack of Bob Griese in Super Bowl Vee-Eye—a fucking NFL record!”
I adopted a gravelly voice and gently placed a hand on Bianca’s shoulder. “Excuse me, but my wife . . .”
He studied me for a second, his wobbling eyes finally focusing. “Oh fuck, I mean . . .” He set the bottle on the table and stepped back and actually swept the hat from his head and placed the rifle across his chest, bowing just a bit. “I am dreadfully sorry, ma’am. You’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve been down here in this godforsaken country in this den of killers and thieves so long that I’ve forgotten my manners.”
Bianca inclined her masked face at him.
“I was brought up better, I can promise you.” He turned back to me. “David Culpepper, sir. A proud son of Texas, Throckmorton to be exact, and I bet that rings some bells with you, now don’t it?”
Actually, it didn’t. “Absolutely.”
“Where you played your senior year.” He raised a palm. “Greyhounds!”
We struck hands, and I nodded. “Greyhounds.”
He looked at me questioningly. “Something wrong with your voice?”
I gestured toward my throat, but Adan quickly stepped beside me. “Mr. Lilly gave a wonderful speech and has been talking with fans all evening, and I’m sure his voice has reached its limits.”
Culpepper nudged the mescal bottle toward us. “Well hell, give him some of this—that’ll cure him.” He turned to Bianca. “Excuse my French, ma’am.”
“Mr. Lilly doesn’t drink.”
“Really?” After a second he turned back to Adan. “You’re a little far south, aren’t you Doc?”
Adan squared off with the armed man, and I had to respect his nerve. “We are escorting Mr. Lilly and thought it best that he have some native speakers with him—in case you haven’t noticed, there are unsavory characters in the vicinity.”
Culpepper picked up the bottle again and took another swig. “That so?” His eyes swiveled to me again. “Well, just don’t let this son of a bitch work on you, Mr. Lilly. This witch doctor’s worked on a couple of ours, and they didn’t make it, and I’m still not sure if it might’ve been intentional.”
“I would’ve thought you were preparing for the festival in Las Bandejas.”
His eyes went back to Martínez. “Yeah, well . . . The boss don’t know it, but we decided to come down here and see Mister Cowboy for ourselves, you know?”
“Well, now that you have seen him . . .”
“Hey, there’s no reason to be like that, Doc.” He swung the M16 toward Adan. “You keep actin’ like that, and we’re gonna get the feeling you don’t want us around.” He pressed the muzzle of the automatic against Adan’s chest. “That’s not the case, is it, Doc?”
Unfortunately, I’ve found myself in a lot of situations like this, in wartime and not. I don’t take a particular pride in knowing when a man is going to pull the trigger, but I knew that David Culpepper was preparing to do just that.
With one quick move I snatched the weapon away from the drunken man as the group behind him leveled their guns on me, the sound of chambering rounds the only noise.
Undeterred, I flipped the rifle over and with the power of rote muscle memory punched the button and dropped the magazine onto the table. Cocking and releasing the safety, I squeezed the trigger, then cocked it again and set the safety. Quickly pressing the button, I removed a screw, freeing the lower receiver assembly. Removing the charging handle, I slipped out the bolt carrier, the firing pin, retaining pin, removed the bolt cam pin, and plucked out the bolt, lining the parts up on the white tablecloth like a display.
The entire action took about nineteen seconds.
Semper Fi.
“Damn.” Culpepper stared at his disassembled rifle and waved for the others to lower theirs. “You weren’t in the military, were you?”
I shrugged.
“Damn.” He took the last swig from the bottle of mescal. “You got a bag? I’m too fucking drunk to put it back together.” He stuck out a hand. “I just wanna shake, Mr. Lilly.”
I paused for a second and then gave it to him.
He squeezed for a moment and then looked through the holes in my mask. “You sure are in good shape to be as old as you are.”
“I still work out, a little.” I stepped toward Bianca and slipped an arm around her waist in an attempt to indicate that the evening was over.
He continued to smile at me. “Well, maybe we can have breakfast tomorrow or something.”
Figuring we’d be gone long before he was up, I agreed. “I don’t see why not—we’ll be around.”
“Good.” He raised a fist. “Go Greyhounds!”
I returned the cheer. “Go Greyhounds.”
He nodded and then half-turned away, motioning to one of his underlings as he pitched the bottle into the fountain where it shattered. He gestured toward his disassembled rifle. “Pick that damn thing up and let’s go find something more to drink.”
We watched as they did as he said, and then they all disappeared into the crowd. Adan leaned into me and grinned, breathing through his teeth. “Let’s go watch a soccer game, Mr. Lilly.”
* * *
—
I closed the door behind us and slid the mask off my face, happy to be rid of the thing. “How did I do?”
Bianca slipped off her own mask and looked up at me. “Much better than the speech.”
Not knowing much about soccer, I’d stood and cheered whenever everybody else did and seemed to have made it through the game without committing any terrible errors in sport etiquette. I hadn’t seen Culpepper or any of his men at the event and figured they’d either drun
k themselves into oblivion or had found some other way to entertain the baser instincts of their natures.
Fatigue was seeping into every part of my body, and I felt like I was wading in water as I turned and sat on the foot of the bed. I looked at my boots and wondered what the hell I was doing.
“You must be exhausted.”
Raising my face, I looked up to find her standing over me. “I am.”
“That was very brave, what you did to save my brother. It was also very foolish.” She stepped in closer and rested a hand on my shoulder. “But thank you.”
“That’s kind of my trademark, the foolish thing.”
She leaned in and placed my head on her breast, and all I could think about was the sound of her voice and how good she smelled. “You should come to bed.”
It took a few seconds to summon the strength and the will, but I pulled free and stood straight. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I think maybe I should go into one of the other rooms and sleep.”
She placed a hand on my chest and looked up into my eyes. “I promise I won’t take advantage of you.”
“Yep, well, I don’t know if I can make that same promise.”
Her head kicked sideways, and she stepped in, draping a hand around my neck and pulling my face down to her lips where she kissed me very softly and then turned the side of her face and rested it on my chest. “That would be even better.”
Taking her shoulders, I gently stood her back up and looked at her. “It’s not that I don’t find you painfully attractive . . .”
“I guess I’m not much of a bruja, am I?”
“Oh, yes you are.”
Her eyes dropped. “There is someone else?”
I thought about Vic. “There is, at least I think there is—someone else.”
“If you think, then it must be so.”
Feeling even more like an idiot, I patted her shoulders and stepped back. I’m not sure why I picked up the gym bag from the bed, but I did and then stepped around to get a pillow and a cover I could use.
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