“Now that we got it all talked out, how about we go do it,” Leonard said.
34
WE DROVE UP in César’s yard at about eight-thirty. When we got out of the car a cold feeling went over me. Something was out of kilter.
I said, “Something sucks.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “But what is it? It doesn’t look any different.”
Jim Bob stared at the house for a moment. “Yes it does. The blinds are closed. They haven’t been closed before.”
“Maybe they wanted them closed,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Crushed shells up by the porch are pitted. Like maybe there was a struggle there. See, there’s shells on the porch. More than would have come off someone’s shoes. It’s like they were rolled in them, got dragged on the porch and the shells fell off their clothes. Screen door is unlocked and it’s slightly open.”
Jim Bob strolled to the rear of the car, opened the trunk. He popped one of the suitcases. He took two nine mils from the case and gave one to me, one to Leonard. He got the shotgun parts out of the other case and put it together. He gave us ammo clips, took a fistful of shells and stuffed them in his shirt pocket. He loaded two in the double-barrel.
“I’ll just stroll around back,” Jim Bob said. “You and Leonard take the front.”
Jim Bob trotted off. I said, “Brett, you get behind the wheel. You see anyone come out of the door you don’t want to see, you back out and go. Go away fast.”
Brett nodded, climbed in behind the wheel, closed the door softly.
Me and Leonard moved toward the front door.
I thought: It could be they wanted the shades closed. Maybe César or Hermonie fell in the drive, brushed themselves off on the porch. Went in and didn’t close the door well. In a hurry. It could be that.
I moved the door with my foot. It swung open with a sound that would have made a can of WD40 cry.
Easing inside, crouching, the gun held before me, I saw why things were quiet, and I felt my knees wobble. I kept the gun at ready, but I knew I wouldn’t need it.
Leonard came in behind me about the time Jim Bob reached the back patio glass. I strolled over and let him in, using my shirttail to work the latch.
I went around what was on the floor, stepping carefully, eased to the bedroom, pushed the half-open door the rest of the way with my foot.
The room was empty, of course.
I checked out the bathroom, just in case Hammerhead might be using the commode, found nothing, went back to the living room.
I sat down on the brick ridge of the fireplace and looked at what was before me.
Hermonie was dressed in her white pants suit, seated on the couch, looking pretty much the way she always looked, except one side of her head poked out in a funny way. That was because a bullet entering the other side had come out on the side facing me, splintered the bone, lifted her hair. Where her hair was lifted it was slick, as if she had been hit with a tomato. Her right eye had moved a little too far to the right and was almost hidden. The left looked straight ahead. A splotch of blood like another shot from a tomato was splattered on the right shoulder of her outfit. There was red on the wall and the back of the couch.
César lay on the floor. He had been tied to a chair. In his final agonies, most likely, he had turned it over.
His fingers had been chopped off close to the knuckles, and I could see the skin on his hands had been filleted all the way to his elbows. He was shirtless and there were burns on his chest. His eyes were open, as if he had just discovered he had gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas, but his mouth was wide and gummy and his tongue poked out of it, fat and gray as an old piece of liver. His pants had large globs of blood on the knees where they had dripped off the chair when it was upright. His shoes were gone. So were his toes. The skin on his feet had been peeled all the way to his calves, and his pants were cuffed high to allow it. There were little bits of crushed shells from the drive stuck to his clothes and on the floor around the chair.
Leonard leaned against the wall and let the nine mil hang by his side. Jim Bob bent over César, stood up, looked at Hermonie.
“You have some intuition,” I said to Jim Bob. “You were right about there being a struggle in the yard.”
“Intuition is really just the unconscious mind learning to talk to the conscious.” He gestured toward Hermonie. “One for her and it’s over with. César, not so easy. What’s that tell you?”
“He didn’t talk,” I said. “So they gave him hell.”
“Shit, he talked. I would have. I tell you what happened. Hermonie here, she called Juan Miguel and told where the girl was.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Because she wanted what she thought Juan Miguel could give her,” Leonard said.
“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “Leonard, you aren’t as dumb as you look.”
“Thanks.”
“I never really trusted her,” Jim Bob said, “but I didn’t think this. I didn’t think she was this stupid. I just thought she was a shit and a bad pick for César. Goddamn, César didn’t deserve this.”
“Who the hell does?” Leonard said.
“You actually think she called Juan Miguel?” I said.
“They finished her easy,” Jim Bob said. “No torture. They just popped her. That tells me she thought maybe she could make the big money. Maybe Ileana talked Hermonie into it. Said I’ll see you get paid good. I’ll get you in good with Juan Miguel you get me out of this.”
“Who did she think she was dealing with?” I said.
“She had no idea,” Leonard said.
“No,” Jim Bob said, “she didn’t. She didn’t like us, and according to César, she didn’t like him much either. But I don’t think this is what she expected. Maybe she thought César would get his, but she figured she was doing Juan Miguel a favor, so she thought she was all right. Would make some big money out of the deal. Get a chance to end up with what she thought she deserved. Juan Miguel had other plans. He decided to thank her by not torturing her. He gave her what he thought she deserved.”
“So now Juan Miguel knows we were going to ambush him?” I said.
Jim Bob nodded. “I’m sure César said what he had to say.”
“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 César. 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 César owned.
“Second thing is we get the hell out of here quickly. Third thing is César 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 César. He had done his best to help us. He had tried to be a friend. And Hermonie. How horrible it must have been for César 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 César’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 reached 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 César’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 m
e 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.