“And now,” Leonard said, “we don’t have our bargaining chip. And we aren’t going to get any money, and we aren’t going to surprise him… Ferdinand… where is he?”
“Out back,” Jim Bob said. “They took him out there and hacked him to pieces. I wish he’d had a machete. I wish he’d had his chance… Probably that goddamn giant did it.”
“What now?” I said, and was surprised at how hoarse my voice was.
Jim Bob took off his battered hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, three things occur to me. Let’s wipe our fingerprints up, and hope there aren’t too many old ones. They come up, we get hauled in, we were visiting Cesar. He’s a friend of mine, so maybe we can swing it. I doubt anything’s missing. I don’t thing Juan Miguel would give a shit about anything Cesar owned.
“Second thing is we get the hell out of here quickly. Third thing is Cesar might have told him we were staying at the hotel. Since we got everything we own in the car, I say we check in somewhere else. We don’t go back.”
We wiped down what we knew we had touched, eased out of there, and with Brett at the wheel, we drove briskly away.
35
We moved to a smaller hotel. Jim Bob carried the suitcase with the shotgun in it to his and Leonard’s room. Leonard kept the nine mil. I kept mine. I kept the suitcase with the rifle.
We were too stunned to eat. Too shocked to think. That was good. I had been thinking too much. I may not come up with class plans, but I could at least come up with something. I had been trying to be too damn smart. I had let Jim Bob the pro do what the pro knew how to do, and it hadn’t been enough. The pro was good. He was grand. But sometimes the way you kill a bug is just step on it. You don’t think about it too much. You don’t go get bug spray or call the exterminator, or talk to the bug and tell it why it must die, or try to bargain money from it, you just step on it.
Brett watched a Mexican television show for a while, not understanding a word of it, then fell asleep. I sat and watched her sleep. I thought about poor Beatrice, how she looked after that animal Hammerhead had had at her. It had to be him. Hammerhead was the one. He was the one that had come for me and killed Charlie instead. That’s what Juan Miguel said. I thought of Cesar. He had done his best to help us. He had tried to be a friend. And Hermonie. How horrible it must have been for Cesar to have been betrayed by her. More horrible than the torture.
And Ferdinand. If they had given him a machete like Jim Bob said, let him fight it out with Hammerhead, he would have died happy. And he might not have died. He had been a terror with a machete.
God. All that blood. The skin peeled back on Cesar’s hands and feet. I kept thinking about his eyes. His mouth. The way his pants cuffs were rolled up. Somehow that hit me the hardest. Just that simple little thing, the careful rolling up of the cuffs so they could peel the flesh higher.
I got up quietly, checked on Brett. She was snoring like a lumberjack. I got some of the hotel’s stationery out of the desk drawer, a pen. I wrote.
Brett, I love you.
You wake up and read this note, you be cautious. I’m leaving the nine millimeter on the desk. You keep it, go stay with Leonard and Jim Bob. Trust me on this. Tell Leonard I love him. A man couldn’t ask for a better brother. Don’t tell him that unless I don’t come back. No use giving him the big head. Tell him I love him, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him for everything. He won’t know what he needs forgiving for, but I like the idea of making him nervous.
This isn’t a suicide note. This isn’t a so-long note. It’s a just-in-case note. You read it, you remember that. It’s just in case. I’m going to do what always sounds so hokey, but tonight sounds exactly right.
I’m gonna do what a man’s got to do, and I’m going to do it without dragging anyone else into it. If you figure what I’m doing, try and help me, you’ll just fuck it up. But if I’m not back by tomorrow, then I didn’t do it. It’s best you just take a plane home and forget about all this. Leonard and Jim Bob will do whatever. And I have a pretty good idea what that will be. I want them to. But better yet, I want them to end up going home with you. I want Leonard to be with John and Jim Bob to be with his pigs. Leonard and John in a carnal sense, and for all I care, Jim Bob and his pigs in a carnal sense. Actually, I kind of like that idea.
So go home and forget about all this.
Except for me. Remember me awhile. Then forget me.
I keep writing because I don’t want to go.
I’ve got to go. I keep waiting, keep messing around here, I’ll be waking you up asking you to proofread this. I go now, I may get back before you know I’m gone, then I can tear up this silly tripe and we can go home.
Love, Hap.
P.S. I don’t come back tomorrow disregard what I said before. Have Jim Bob and Leonard kill that sonofabitch. But you go home.
The keys to the car were on the table where Brett had left them. It was easy for me to walk out with the suitcase containing the rifle, scope, and silencer. I drove along the highway, half expecting to see a dark car filled with Juan Miguel’s two thugs and the impossibly large Hammerhead.
How would he fit in a car? Did they have to drive a convertible? Did they pull him behind them in a trailer?
I kept thinking about all kinds of stupid things. I felt as if I was coming undone, a piece at a time.
The moon laid greasy patches of light along the road and the road rose up and curved. I could see Juan Miguel’s great house standing tall with its palms and its thick high wall, the moon above and behind it like a chunk of suspended lard.
Then the road dipped and I could only see the rise of land on which it was positioned. The road went that way awhile, then rose again. I took a cutoff that was all dirt and steered through tight trees that scraped the car, finally came to a widening in the road that was below Juan Miguel’s wall.
I pulled over and got out with the suitcase.
I walked up the road apiece, where the brush and trees cleared, looked up. There was moonlight and man-made light spilling over the vine-covered wall. I could see it was no easy task to go up the side of that big hill, which was maybe two hundred feet high to the wall.
I took off my belt and ran it through the suitcase handle and fastened it, slipped the belt over my head and one shoulder, started to climb.
At first there was vines and brush to hold on to, then some rocks and little plants that sometimes jerked free of the dirt the moment I touched them.
When I was about halfway, I thought I was going to have to give up and start down. I lay tight against the hill, my face touching a cool rock, and gave that a lot of thought. I could get down from here now, give up this silly idea, go back to the hotel, throw away my note, shower, get in bed with Brett and make love to her, and tomorrow, no matter what Jim Bob or Leonard thought, I could take her home and live happily ever after.
I took a deep breath, started up again.
I had gone about twenty more feet when I decided I definitely couldn’t make it and had to go back. The suitcase was killing me. Atlas and the world on his shoulders was nothing compared to that goddamn suitcase.
But by then I had gone too far. I was committed.
I continued climbing. It was slow, exhausting work. My fingers ached something horrible. I was losing feeling in them. I wasn’t even sure if I was holding on to anything. I decided to look neither up nor down, but to concentrate on the moment, on what was in front of me.
I had no idea how long I had been climbing. Wasn’t wearing my watch. Couldn’t look at it if I had been. Too dark. Couldn’t spare the handhold.
The moonlight shifted. Maybe two hours had passed. I needed to pee. My hands hurt and they were bleeding.
I kept at it. Inch by inch. And then I touched the rough rock wall and the vines that grew over it.
I clutched a fistful of vines and tugged. The wall didn’t come loose. Neither did the vines.
I pulled and scuttled and pretty soon I was near the top.
I reach
ed an arm over the wall, hauled up slowly, poked my face over the edge, looked down on Juan Miguel’s property.
There was no one there. The pools were blue and shiny and the growth around their edges was thick and green.
I dropped over the wall, managed to get a shaft of a shrub nearly up my ass, fell, clattered against some tall elephant ears and lay still.
I got up slowly, hustled around on my hands and knees until I could see through a split in the shrubs.
Still no one.
I opened the suitcase and took out the rifle parts and, in the glow of the pool lights, I put it together, pushed in the clip, put on the silencer. I didn’t bother with the scope. This close I didn’t need a scope.
I pulled the suitcase back with me, found a place less obvious. It was a thick swathe of hedge next to a palm tree that afforded me about six feet between it and the wall, and was a good hiding place. It was a good position. I could see all of the side pool. Across the way, I could see the backyard pool.
He said he swam every night.
Would he swim tonight?
Was he off celebrating having Hermonie shot, having Cesar’s feet and hands skinned, Ferdinand chopped up like a fish at the market?
Maybe he was celebrating by staying over with his mistress.
The bitch. Jim Bob was right. She knew what Juan Miguel did. What he was like. She didn’t care.
I took a pee in the bushes, picked some prickles out of my hands as best I could.
It was hot even for so late at night, so I sat with my back against the cool stone wall, watching through my split in the shrubbery.
There were lights on in the house. They looked orange instead of yellow. I watched the lights until I decided they were causing me to focus too hard. I began watching left and right, waiting, listening.
I must have dozed for a while. I came awake to the sound of the back door opening.
Some ambusher I was.
A woman came out. The wife. She was nude. She walked out to the back pool, leaped in, swam for a while.
This nude business was starting to seem common to me. Maybe I should strip off now. I could be the nude ambusher.
I kept waiting for Juan Miguel, but he didn’t show.
She must have swum half an hour. She climbed out, snatched a towel off the back of a chair and slowly dried herself, running the towel the length of her legs, drying between her legs, her breasts, her hair. When she was finished, I felt like I should leave her money.
She went inside. The orange lights soon went out. The moon was starting to drop low in the sky.
I leaned against the wall and dozed.
I dreamed of trying to go back over the wall, of falling.
Then I dreamed I was eating a banana.
I hoped to God I was smart enough to never tell Leonard about that dream. He’d give me shit.
I awoke, hungry, in spite of my nocturnal banana. My stomach growled. Loud.
Trying to shift to get comfortable, I heard a car door. I peeked through my leafy peephole. Beyond the pool, about where Jim Bob and I had taken a beating from Juan Miguel’s two assholes, was a long black car. Juan Miguel got out. So did Hammerhead and one of the assholes.
The other asshole drove the car to the other side of the house, to the garage. The remaining three walked up the drive and the big stone steps before I could say to myself, “Where the hell is my gun?”
They went inside.
Some shooter I was.
I waited awhile. They didn’t come out. I stood up, stretched my legs behind some tall plants, took a leak again, went back to my spot, lay on my side with my back against the wall. I knew it was not a good idea, but I couldn’t help myself. I was exhausted. I slept.
When I awoke I had a taste in my mouth like a well-used cat box. The greasy moon was gone and the sun was a ball of flaming lead burning away the clouds, heading up toward high noon.
I was sweaty and my face was dirty where I had slept with it pressed to the ground. I brushed myself off, moved my tongue around in my mouth trying to move the rotten taste about.
I peeked through the slit in the shrubs, saw nothing. He was probably sleeping in. Maybe getting a morning quickie with the wife, then brunch.
I wondered how that worked for the wife. She knew he had a mistress. Did she say, “Hey, did you and Ileana have a good hump last night? You did wash your pecker before we did it, didn’t you? What shall I get her for her birthday? Edible underwear?”
It was such a weird situation, and yet to them it was as normal as a nose on a face.
A pocked and diseased nose.
Maybe he wasn’t sleeping in. Maybe he had already left, and me, the lone assassin, had slept through it.
I wondered if Brett had seen my note.
Surely.
By the sun it was about ten o’clock I figured.
What was Brett thinking since I hadn’t come back?
Had she told Jim Bob and Leonard?
Would they do something foolish like rent a taxi and have it drop them off so they could go into the house, guns blazing, looking for me?
Nope. That was more my kind of plan.
More Leonard’s kind of plan. Jim Bob wouldn’t let that happen. He might come in guns blazing, but he wouldn’t arrive in a taxi. He’d be sneaky.
Hell, I had been sneaky, and in the end I had hidden in the bushes and taken a nap.
I was thinking about that, when suddenly I realized I was looking directly at Juan Miguel.
36
He seemed to just appear, standing at the edge of the pool. He was in all his naked glory and quite fond of himself, stretching his arms, rolling his shoulders. He looked left and right, then checked his package, shook it, let it go.
I could see it in his eyes, in the relaxed way he stood and stretched, the slight smile on his face.
He was happy.
He was the king.
The king’s package was fine, ready to be used at any time. The envy of all others, that package. Men feared and admired him, women wanted him.
The universe was his.
A strange feeling came over me. Of watching in slow motion, of moving in slow motion. I had had a similar feeling before. In fights. It’s always that way. You may be moving fast, but to you it’s slow, and everything around you is moving slow. But life is heightened. It’s as if in that moment of violence you feel directly connected to the world around you, as if you are in tumultuous union with the universe.
This moment was stronger than ever before. I remember wiping my eyes, rubbing out the sleep. I had been sitting on my ass, but I rose up on my left knee, raised my right knee, put the rifle against my shoulder and looked down the sight. The sight was very fine, like a little blackhead in the center of Juan Miguel’s face.
He was rolling his neck now. I watched him roll it. I wanted him to stop moving just for a moment. The way you’re supposed to shoot someone is you aim at the biggest part of them, but I wanted Juan Miguel’s head.
I was putting the little blackhead on his face, when I heard a noise and saw, coming around from the rear of the house, Hammerhead. He was naked except for a white beach towel wrapped between his legs and around his waist. It made him look as if he were wearing a huge diaper.
That’s all right, I told myself. That’s all right, Mama, that’s all right with me.
I put the sight back on Juan Miguel as he lifted his arms and touched his hands in dive fashion, and as he lowered them to make his leap into the pool, his head lowered, I shot him right in the top of it.
There was a cough from the silencer, a flash of red juice, a flurry of hair, a whirl of skull like a hubcap fragment, and Juan Miguel dropped his arms and went into the water. There was a burst of dark blood, like ink from a Technicolor squid.
I shifted, floated the barrel, put the sight on Hammerhead.
He had just removed the towel from himself, probably preparing to swim with his boss. He held it in one hand like an oversized hanky he was passing to s
omeone. His jaw hung low, his eyes were fastened on Juan Miguel’s body floating under the water, dropping slowly to the bottom.
Hammerhead crouched, dropped the towel, turned his head, looked in the direction from which he thought the shot must have come. In that moment he saw me in the foliage. Our eyes snapped together like padlocks. I fired again.
It was a good shot, but not as good as it would have been had he not moved. It went through his throat, low and on the right side. He snapped a hand to the wound and let out a bellow. I put three in his chest as fast as I could pull the trigger.
Where he clutched his throat blood was running through his fingers. Three little holes appeared on his chest without much blood.
The pool was in front of him and he hit the water running, went down, not quite over his head, tried to trudge along the bottom. The water bounced him up and down. I took a bead on his eye and let it rip.
His head snapped back. When it righted itself, he continued forward. Much of the pool’s surface was slick with his and Juan Miguel’s blood and it kept widening as if its job was to paint the remaining blue red.
As Hammerhead climbed out of the pool, a real feeling of terror went over me. This bastard had three in the chest, one in the throat, and one through the eye, and he was still coming.
As he stepped out of the pool on my side, I aimed for his kneecap, popped him twice. The knee went away. He collapsed, tried to raise up on his elbows, but I shot him again, about where the neck meets the shoulder.
This time there was a big burst of blood, like a pipe full of pressured rusty water had broken.
Hammerhead’s head snapped forward on the cement at the edge of the pool. He pulled himself forward another inch or so, then lay with only his foot jerking and one hand vibrating. The hand quit, then the foot.
I took a deep breath.
I looked about.
No wife.
No assholes. They were probably watching bowling on TV.
I took the wrench out of the suitcase and took the rifle apart. My hand was shaking so much it took me longer than it should have. I put the pieces in the suitcase.
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