by Blake Banner
“What does that mean?” I asked, but I knew what it meant. She just closed her eyes and her cheeks shone wet, streaked with makeup. And here I was again, with my arrogance, starting wars and leaving the innocent, broken and weeping, to pick up the pieces of their lives. I had marched into her house, taken on her boyfriend because I didn’t like him, taken on Arana because it would be good to bring down the whole damn set-up in one flaming, bleeding mass; play judge, jury, and above all, executioner. But when it no longer suited my plans, I walked away, leaving Cissy defenseless and broken. Just like I was ready to walk away from Marni. Just like I walked away from my home when I was nineteen, to join the British SAS, to go and make war.
Time to stop. Time to do it differently.
“There will be no party tonight, Cissy.”
The voice in my head kept telling me this was not my problem, not my fight; to collect my stuff and not make a bad job worse. But I told that voice to shut the fuck up, because as long as I had a shred of humanity left in me, I would not walk away from somebody like Cissy, who needed help. Nobody gets out of here alive. So better to die being a human being, than survive a little longer being a human monster.
“Give me his number.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just give me his number, Cissy.”
She told me and I dialed. It rang twice, then Red’s voice said, “Who is this?”
“Lacklan. Be at your club tonight at seven forty-five. Be on time. I have a demonstration for you. You’re going to like it.”
I hung up before he had time to answer. She was watching me. She asked again, “What are you going to do?”
See it through. That was what I was going to do. It had been a mistake to take it on in the first place, but now that I had taken it on, I had to see it through. I had a day, two at the most. It was enough.
I climbed the stairs to my room. She followed me and stood in the doorway as I pulled out my rucksack and started packing it. She saw the Smith & Wesson and the boxes of ammo.
“You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”
For the second time that day, I asked her, “Are you sure you want to know, Cissy?”
This time she nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
I stopped what I was doing and we stared at each other for a long moment. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright. “Good…”
I didn’t leave till late afternoon. I took my things over to Marni’s house, put them in the guest room and had a light meal. I didn’t know what was going to happen that night, but I was damned sure whatever it was, was going to be the end of it. By tomorrow, one way or another, I planned to be totally focused on Marni and Omega.
I arrived at the Hawk’s Nest at seven thirty. At that time it was pretty much empty. I sat at the bar and ordered a whiskey. Red was on time. He stepped through the door with two of his rednecks, saw me and walked over with a look on his face that said he wanted to bullwhip me.
“What’s the big idea, Lacklan? You giving me orders now?”
I thought about how to answer him, and while I thought about it I pulled a Pueblo from my pack and lit it. When I’d inhaled deep, I said, “Keep your panties straight, Red. I killed five of Arana’s men last night, down at his club in Abasse. Tonight I’m going to kill four more. I figure that gets me a place on the team, what do you say?”
His eyes narrowed. “I say you’re full of shit. I got work to do, Lacklan. This what you brought me here for?”
I shook my head. “I told you. I have a demonstration.”
“What fuckin’ demonstration?”
Right on cue we heard a truck pulling in outside. Only it wasn’t just one truck, it was two. Arana was playing it safe. That was fine by me. I climbed off the stool and said, “Come and meet the boys.”
Now he looked worried. “What fuckin’ boys? What the hell is this, Lacklan?”
I pushed out of the door into the floodlit, dirt forecourt of the club. Red’s Ford pick-up was over on the right. On the left, two guys were swinging down from a cream Toyota, and directly in front of us there were four more climbing out of a green Jeep. They were all big and they were all carrying assault rifles. The one who was obviously in charge had a Sancho Panza moustache and a big gut. The other three looked like athletes. Behind me, I heard Red swear, “Holy shit!”
Arana’s men recognized me from the night before. They thought I was Arana’s boy, so they paused and hesitated, probably waiting for instruction. A couple of seconds is all you need.
I had four in front and two on my left. A quick calculation told me the four in front would be getting in each other’s way. It was the two on my left flank I needed to worry about.
I threw the knife underhand. It thudded home in the nearest guy’s chest and everybody stared at him, while he stared at the hilt sticking out of his sternum. While they all stared I stepped over and took hold of the barrel of the other guy’s assault rifle. He stared at me and his expression was almost comical, like he was outraged. I smashed his nose with my left elbow while I slid my right hand down to the trigger. As he staggered back I steadied the barrel and double tapped Sancho Panza, spraying blood and gore out of the back of his chest. So far three seconds had passed.
I put the rifle to my shoulder and took two strides toward them. They were just beginning to react. There were three of them. The nearest was blond with a military crew cut, behind him was a skinny guy with a scar on his face, and next to him was a big slob with long blond hair. He looked real scared. Behind me I was aware of the guy whose nose I’d smashed. He would be reaching for his pal’s gun any second.
I took out the crew cut with a double tap that blew the top of his head off. But this was a demonstration. I didn’t want to just shoot everybody. So I kicked Scarface in the nuts, smashed Goldilocks in the face with the rifle butt and turned and shot the other guy between the eyes, just as he was reaching for his fallen companion’s rifle.
We were far from done yet.
I threw my weapon on the ground. Scarface and Goldilocks were recovering fast. Terror will do that to you. Adrenaline is a powerful medicine. Scarface had a knife in his hand and he lunged at me, snarling. As he did so, I saw Goldilocks reaching for the rifle he’d dropped when I hit him.
It’s not like the movies. Fights to the death are very quick, and it is hard to see exactly what happens. Scarface thrust forward with his blade. I deflected his arm inward with my left hand. With my right I took hold of his wrist and folded his arm back against the joint. It happened in a quarter of a second. He lost his footing and dropped the knife. As he fell, I let go of his wrist, put my arm around his throat and twisted. His neck snapped and I was already walking toward Goldilocks before Scarface hit the ground.
He was panicking. I knew he would. That was why I left him till last. He tried to get the rifle trained on me, but before he could, I had levered it out of his hands, smashed him in the head with the butt and emptied two rounds into his chest as he hit the dirt. The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds.
I dropped the rifle on his chest and walked back toward Red and his two hillbilly goons. He was trying hard not to gape. He was also trying to comprehend what he had just seen.
“Six automatic rifles, two trucks and Arana eleven men down. Does that buy me a place at the table, Red?”
I didn’t let him answer. It wasn’t really a question. I went and pulled my knife out of the schmuck’s chest, wiped it on his shirt and slipped it back in my boot. Red was laughing. It was a kind of hysterical laugh.
“Boy! Boy, you whipped their asses! Man, you just…” He stared around him like he was trying to remember what happened and where. “I didn’t see it!” He turned to his goons. “Did you boys see that? I didn’t see it!” His voice was shrill in the cold night air, against the sound of distant traffic.
While he was mouthing off, I pulled out my cell and took photographs of the corpses. When I’d finished, I said, “You
got a job for me or not, Red?”
His eyes were bright and calculating. “You bet!” He turned to his two gorillas. “Jeb, get this trash cleaned up. Seth, get a couple of boys. You, me, and Lacklan here are going down to collect the merchandise from Romero.” To me he grinned and said, “You just got yourself a place on the team, boy.”
Eleven
We drove fast through the dark, down the I-19 toward Nogales. Two bright headlamps in the mirror told us Seth was just behind us. Red was hyped up. He’d been snorting and his adrenaline was pumping hard. I knew the state he was in. I’d never been there myself and never wanted to go. But I’d seen it often enough. It was a dangerous state of mind. He thought he was invincible, indestructible. He wasn’t.
At Rio Rico, I made him stop at a gas station so I could use the toilet. After that, we turned left off the interstate and took the South River Road away from the illumination of the town and into the darkness of the desert. We followed the road, winding down to the tiny village of Beyerville, desolate and silent even at this time of night.
Over to the west, there was a glow of some kind of complex or facility on the Santa Cruz river. I didn’t know then what it was, or how important it would become.
South of Beyerville, we moved on to a dirt track that bumped and rattled us southeast, toward the border. Pretty soon, we came to the fence and we stopped. In the glow of the headlamps, I could see where somebody had hacked a large gap into it.
“I guess your uncle has friends in the border patrol, huh?”
He laughed and we rolled through. “Bienvenido a Mexico, amigo!”
“Where to now?”
“Don’t ask questions, Lacklan. Romero does not like questions.”
“Romero’s your supplier?”
He looked at me with eyes that were cautiously contemptuous in the dark cab. “That another question, Lacklan?”
I met his eye with no particular expression of my own. “You want to shut my mouth for me, Red? Or shall we be friends instead?”
He looked away as we jolted onto a broad dirt track. He didn’t answer, but I knew that in that moment he had decided he would have to kill me. A lot of people have decided that about me over the years.
We followed the rough, rutted road through spars, ghostly trees for about twenty minutes. Then we saw a glow up ahead.
“That’s the Romero Ranch.”
“Does he make the stuff there?”
He stared at me a moment, his mouth hanging open like he couldn’t believe I’d asked another question. Then he sighed. “Yeah, Lacklan. What are you, CNN? He has a lab in one of the barns. They bring girls in too. They pick ’em up in the ghettos, in the cities.” He mused for a moment as we pulled into the drive. “Most times, they’re grateful to get out of the slums.” He grinned. “At first, anyhow.” Then he laughed.
It was a nice ranch, brightly lit, with attractive gardens out front and broad, sweeping stairs up to an elegant, colonial house with shuttered doors under a wide terrace half covered in ivy. There were spotlights concealed among the foliage and in their beams you could see moths spinning insanely in circles, waiting to get eaten by the bats.
Seth pulled up next to us and we climbed out of the trucks. Seth had two rednecks with him, and I saw one of them was carrying a sports bag. The slam of the car doors echoed in the night. Up the steps I saw a group of men standing at the top of the stairs, by the shuttered French doors. The one in the middle had to be Romero. He was small, not more than five-three, in his late fifties with grizzled gray hair and the face of a peasant. He wore jeans and a huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ shirt, riding boots and a cowboy hat. There were four guys with him. They did not seem to be armed, and everybody was smiling. Nobody expected trouble.
As we started up the stairs, Romero came down to greet us.
“Red, good to see you, amigo. Hola, Seth!” His eyes flicked over the other guys, whom he clearly recognized, but did not deem worthy of greeting. Then he gave me a once-over and his eyes were hard. He looked into Red’s face, gesturing at me with his left hand. “Who is this?”
“This is Lacklan. He’s new, Emilio. You’re gonna like him…”
Romero raised a hand and shook his head. He didn’t look like a man who was about to like anything. He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Don’t tell me what I am going to like, Red. What I don’t like is surprises. You come to my house and you bring somebody I do not know. I don’t like this.”
Red was uncomfortable and did a funny little dance, jutting out his knees, like he was trying to adjust his pants. “I brought him to introduce you, Emilio. This is one good man.”
Romero spread his hands. His face looked constipated. “No, Red, this you tell me before you bring him. What do you know about him? Who is he? Where has he lived? What has he done?”
The situation was getting away from me and I was getting mad. I snapped, “Hey! I’m right here, Romero. You got a question, ask me.”
He didn’t look at me, but he looked like he wanted to gut Red right there and then. His skin seemed to contract over his face and his eyes shone with anger. The boys who’d stayed by the door now came down the steps. I felt the warm glow of adrenaline in my belly and smiled.
“Let me ask you a question, Emilio. You know Arana?”
Red was doing a weird thing with his head. He was staring over to the right, licking his lips. Then he’d turn and stare at nothing on his left, still licking his lips. I just hoped he wasn’t going to soil his jeans.
Emilio Romero finally turned and looked at me. “You talkin’ to me, gringo?”
“Yeah, I’m talking to you. It’s a simple question. Do you know Arana? I’m figuring you do, because you’re not so stupid that you’d start trafficking putas and blow across the border into Arizona without knowing who your competition is. Arana is your competition, and in the last twenty-four hours I have personally killed eleven of his men. So whether you want to or not, Emilio, you are going to like me. Because I am the man who is going give you the Arizona border. You have any questions, you ask me. Entiendes, compadre?”
His expression had slowly changed during the speech, from contempt and hatred, to slow understanding. Slow understanding that Red’s days were numbered, and I was the guy he needed to be talking to. A faint smile touched his eyes and he looked back at Red. “This is true?”
Red was pale and pasty. He was still doing his weird knee dance and looking at things that weren’t there. He nodded. “Sure is, Emilio. I saw him do it with my own eyes. I would never have brought him if I thought you’d feel disrespected. You know that.”
Emilio slapped him on the shoulder. “No harm done, my friend. In future…” he turned his smile on me, “In future let’s talk before we do things. OK, let us go inside.”
We followed him up the stairs and through the big doors into a wide, internal patio with a colonnade of arches at ground level and a gallery running around the first floor. There was a fountain playing in the center, illuminated by spots. On the white walls there were wrought iron lamps, and in the small pools of light they gave, I could see geckos, motionless, waiting and watching.
As we crossed the patio toward a door on the far side, Emilio spoke to me. “Arana is a powerful man. He is very dangerous. But his strength lies mainly in the fact that he is crazy. I have known him for many years, and unless you know him real well, you cannot predict what he is going to do. He rules by terror, instead of by intelligence.”
I glanced at him. “But you rule by terror and intelligence. That the idea?”
He nodded and spread his hands as he walked. “That is the intelligent way.” He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face me. “Amigo!” He said it like he was making a really important point, and placed a finger on my chest. “I want you to be terrified of me. Terror is the basis of all power. But not all the time!” He laughed. “Most of the time I want harmony and friendship. But I want you to know, if you cross this line…” he pointed to an imaginary line on the floor.
“I will skin you alive!”
I gave him the dead eye to let him know he was teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. “I’ll try to remember that.”
Over his shoulder I could see Red looking left out. He and Seth glanced at each other. They knew something was wrong but they weren’t sure exactly what it was. Emilio nodded and we continued walking. He led us through a door into a kind of dark bodega, where there were several barrels against the far wall, a rough-hewn table, a dozen chairs, and cheeses and salamis hanging from the ceiling. He turned and beamed at me. “We do not only make cocaine, Mister Lacklan. We also make wine. The earth is not perfect for vines here, but we are improving, experimenting. I hope one day we will have a good product.”
He flipped a switch and gestured to a bench at the far right of the room. Between two pyramids of cheese wheels, there was a stack of plastic packages. It looked oddly homely and inoffensive. I ignored Red, pulled my knife from my boot and stepped over. As I pierced a pack half way down the stash, he elbowed his way toward to me and muttered in my ear, “Take it easy, boy, he’s starting to think you’re taking over.”
I glanced at him like he wasn’t real interesting and tasted the blow. I gave Romero something that might have been a smile and said, “Gasolina!”
He laughed. “You like it, huh? You got fifteen kilos there. Is good quality. I’m not gonna fuck around givin’ you bad shit. I want you to be happy. I want your customers to be happy. When everybody is happy, it means everybody is getting what they want. Am I right?” The question was rhetorical, but he answered himself anyway. It was the kind of man he was. “Of course I’m right.” He seemed to remember Red was there and gave him a courtesy smile. “You happy, Red?”
Red sounded peeved. “Yeah, thanks for askin’.”
“You wanna see the girls now?”
Red clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Yeah! And how about a snort on the house, huh, Emilio?” He laughed noisily and Romero turned to one of his boys. “Traigan a las putas, y unos gramos de coca para los chicos.”