Rawbone leaned toward John Lourdes and spoke behind the cover of his hand: "I love the nickelodeon. Wished they had 'em when I was a boy. That's a world to be introduced to. There's only one thing they can't show right. Movies, I mean. And you know what that is?"

The son had no idea. The father held his hands together as if the fragile and the priceless rested there. "The dyin'," he said. "They can't get that right. The horror when a gent knows all trace of him is being wiped out of existence. The knowing you will be no more. For that's the only thing there is, one's own living self."

F'IFTEEN.

-CMa.n.u.s CAME THROUGH the doorway like a wind, all hail and hearty h.e.l.los for his friend, dragging Rawbone out into the atrium where they embraced and cursed each other.

McMa.n.u.s was a great hulk of a man with a flabby nose and a quarter-size chin. He was also missing an arm, the left one. He wore a prosthesis up past the elbow with a shaped wooden oval wrist and detachable wooden hand. The fingers, oddly, were spread out wide as if in a state of perpetual surprise. And the arm itself looked to be a few sizes too small for him, as it was at least six inches shorter than the other. It was with this arm and hand he pointed at John Lourdes. "What is this?"

"This ... is a Mr. Lourdes."

"Really. One of those, heh. Did you serve in Manila, Mr. Lourdes? Is that how you came to be under the spell of this b.u.g.g.e.r?"

"Look at him, you brainless s.h.i.t. He would have been a boy."

"They had boys fighting that were thirteen."

"Mr. Lourdes, would you mind," said Rawbone, "waiting by the truck."

The tenor of the two men's talk changed immediately upon John Lourdes leaving.

"Since when did you start running a boy's home?"

"Since I was ... engaged ... to work with a certain former railroad detective on a ... particular matter."

McMa.n.u.s jerked a thumb toward the outside. "That one?"

"That one."

"If he don't look like a lightning bug trying to pa.s.s for lightning."

"I got a truck outside that needs to be parked away in your warehouse till morning. You will be neatly compensated for your charity."

"By the lightning bug?"

JOHN LOURDES WAITED by the truck. The dead from the mountain and the river were with him in the dark, still in their a.s.signed poses at the moment of demise. He wondered now, did G.o.d see man as this threadbare and vanquished figure infected with his own immorality? Yet, with all that on his mind and soul, the single overriding principle he clung to was-the practical application of strategy. The door opened and both men approached.

"You can be free with my friend here," said Rawbone. "I've told him you had been a railroad detective and . . . we were engaged in a particular matter. And there would be money for the use of his warehouse."

Stepping up into the cab seat, he added, "You wait here, Mr. Lourdes. I'm gonna bed down this truck."

The night had cooled and John Lourdes grabbed an old leather coat from the back. Rawbone drove off leaving him with McMa.n.u.s. They stood in the doorway shadowed together and watching the truck gear slowly around the corner. John Lourdes looked at McMa.n.u.s. McMa.n.u.s smiled down at the young man, but it was not a heartening smile.

"So, you were in the war," said John Lourdes.

"Part of the Texas Battalion. Served with Rawbone. In Manila."

"I didn't know that."

"They say the best soldiers are the biggest b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"That would mean he'd qualify."

This drew a genuine laugh from McMa.n.u.s. "Two medals, and he's not even a f.u.c.kin' patriot."

The idea that Rawbone had ever fought for the country set off a run of thoughts. "Do you know a man named Merrill? He served in Manila. Was with Standard Oil in Mexico."

"No."

John Lourdes reached into his vest pocket. When McMa.n.u.s saw the notepad, he commented, "I make it a habit of not remembering names."

John Lourdes understood. "You won't even be a mention."

McMa.n.u.s answered, "Comforting."

But John Lourdes suspected he now wasn't so sure. The photo and business cards were tucked away in the notepad. He handed the weathered print to McMa.n.u.s, who set it in the palm of his wooden hand. Holding it close, he squinted. "I don't know this man."

"Are you familiar with the Alliance for Progress?"

SON AND FATHER walked obscure and wretched streets past beggars in doorways and broken-down bars and past children huddled up in makeshift boxes that were all they had for homes. Rawbone eyed the urchins and knew himself in their deserted stares. As they made for the appointed destination dragoons rode past in slow, watchful columns. The late-night patrols another sign Mexico was about to be taken by nightmare. He got out a cigarette and lit it.

John Lourdes still had the photo in his hand and kept tapping it against his shoulder holster as they went. He was making a determined inventory of the facts at hand to try and distill what he knew into a plan that would fulfill his orders.

"McMa.n.u.s said you were in the army."

"Yeah."

"He said you served with the Texas Battalion."

"Yeah."

"Were they posted at Fort Bliss or San Antonio?"

"Fort Bliss."

Rawbone was preoccupied. He blew the smoke out his nostrils hard. He wanted this night over, he wanted Mr. Lourdes out of his life, he wanted freedom.

"Did you spend a lot of time in El Paso during those years?"

"What is it with the questions?"

"You were asking me at the church about the barrio and did I know families there. I just wondered-"

"Yeah." The question went right to the pitiful bits of truth he did not want any part of tonight. Tonight was about survival. f.u.c.k the agony of remembered ghosts-for now. "The army wasn't much," he said. "I needed time out of the States. The war, though. If you have the temperament for it, war can be a blessing."

"What were the medals for?"

He tossed the cigarette away. "Killing, of course."

THE VIEJA ADUANA was a block-long building with a clocktower above the main entryway. The facing was all Palladian windows and the interior lit so bright the Customs House seemed to be on fire. Son and father could see the lobby was crowded with men, so many they were spilling out into the street where frontier customs guards stood at the watch. Most of the men, be they nationals or foreigners, were of the business and mercantile cla.s.s, suited and without guns. But there were also rough verdaderos hombres, "real men" as the Spanish liked to call them.

Around the entryway John Lourdes picked up on runs of conversation flush with panic. There were reports alleging Madero, the duly elected president forced into exile by Diaz and living in the United States, was about to declare himself president pro tem and issue a decree for the overthrow of the government. This was fed by rumors rebel armies were already forming to the west in Sonora and Chihuahua to the south. And from the way small armed bands of peons could be seen riding the roads, this had more than just the feel of a rumor. One thing was for certain, Ciudad Juarez would be put under siege. The war would be brought to the border of the United States, for the United States was the world. And U.S. companies, along with British companies, controlled near all the wealth from oil and mining in Mexico.

Rawbone kept on through the crowd, but John Lourdes had stopped at the Customs House entryway. Inside that vaulted lobby booths and tables had been set up by business organizations so concerns could be addressed and pamphlets handed out. On a makeshift stage men took turns speaking from a podium while others waited. Some were met with applause, others excoriation. It was a war of words dedicated to self-proclaimed interests.

Rawbone realized John Lourdes was not with him and went back to the entryway where he stood. "You know what you have here, Mr. Lourdes ... the practical application of strategy."

Each table had across it a flag naming the organization or a.s.sociation it represented. One read ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS.

"Mr. Lourdes, this country is gonna burn. So let's get this done and be gone out of here."

John Lourdes heard the father well enough, but his mind was turning like the earth as he took dogged inventory of the facts at hand, trying to distill an answer-how one p.a.w.n of a truck, moving through a conspiracy of allegiances, meant to affect the world at large.

"Mr. Lourdes?"

The son stared into the Customs House. "This is where we're going," he said.

The father grabbed his arm. "What for?"

"The cause of things."

SIXTEEN.

-ITH THAT RAWBONE gravely followed. The air in the Customs House was a heady reek of tobacco, nervous sweat and body tonics. John Lourdes led them through a swell of arguments over how these men might best preserve their financial world, till he got close enough to the ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS table that he could spy unnoticed.

A cadre of businessmen stood around the booth. A flier was being handed out while a poised gentleman, with hands folded and a face near expressionless as a piece of paper, calmly spoke.

"As a member of the American consulate I can speak clearly to the one issue I am constantly asked about. If there is to be a revolution, and it certainly looks as if there will be, what can America do to maintain stability here? Of course, by that you mean, beyond diplomacy, military intervention. Now I know what I'm going to say you don't want to hear, but it's exactly what I have expressed to Mr. Hecht."

The consul looked to the man handing out the fliers in acknowledgment. This Hecht fellow, the one to whom the truck was to be delivered, was old and slightly hunched but had fierce eyes in an otherwise stagnant face.

Rawbone whispered, "He doesn't look much more than a cadaver."

"America is not now, nor should ever be, in the business of nation building," said the consul. "And that is what American military intervention here would mean. It would be a great calamity. And in the end all other nations would stand to reap the advantages, whatever the outcome. And I warn you, our country would end up bearing all the expense only to reap the crop of resulting hatred and revenge unlike anything you could imagine."

The agitated men forced questions but the consul made an officious movement with his hand to signal he was continuing.

"Consider what military intervention would symbolize. What it might foment amongst certain sections of the citizenry. The destruction of the oil fields, the tank farms, the pipelines, the refineries. Do you know what that means in revenues? What the solution is, is open to discussion. What it is not, is-"

A shot registered across that vaulted ceiling. Men scattered from around the stage where a verdadero hombre now stood behind the podium with a smoking revolver he used as a gavel. He had a formal and very charged face, with a mustache grown to the sh.o.r.es of his chin line, and he spoke in the crude but poetic Spanish of a rural hacendado.

"I've come all the way from the south. I listen and I listen before I speak. But I speak. You think with your pockets. Sadly. But you know what is between your pockets." He stood away from the platform. The gun hung from one hand and with the other he grabbed his crotch. There was a wall of laughter and applause that he waved away with his revolver.

"You know what else is between your pockets." He touched his heart reverently. "And this also." He then touched his head. "What are the right principles? Our people live to be only thirty. Most are in homes that are uninhabitable. Because you are all only of the pockets. G.o.d on high is watching. And G.o.d on high is taking measure of your souls. I've come all the way from the south to tell you this."

A squad of customs guards responding to the shot now appeared. They drove through the crowd in a phalanx of rifles toward the man on the stage with the gun who was speaking to that crowd, near yelling. "I am not finished yet ... I have one thing more to say before I am taken by the wolves."

His arm swung toward the soldiers and Rawbone had to pull John Lourdes back or he would have been driven under by a rush of boots and bayonets. And then, of all things, it was the crowd around the stage that refused the soldiers a pathway. These businessmen and merchants, these signposts for a kind of strangled masculinity, once in the presence of a true verdadero hombre, wanted to prove their mettle, at least for a few minutes. And so the speaker continued.

"It was G.o.d at his most blessed who gave you this." He touched his head. "So you would know what is right. It was G.o.d at his most blessed who gave you this." And he touched his heart. "So you could feel what is right. And it was G.o.d who gave you these," he grabbed his crotch again, "so you would have the f.u.c.kin' cojones to do what is right even if it means your own death. That is G.o.d's holy trinity on earth. And if you do not live by that you are just useless pockets-"

He'd barely gotten out the last word when the customs guards on an order surged and took the stage. The hombre belted his weapon and put up no resistance and a pathway of retreating bodies opened and he was shuttled out and the pathway closed and he was gone almost before his words fell silent. Then it was as if he had never been there at all.

John Lourdes bent down to pick up a couple of ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS fliers that had fallen to the floor. They were about a fund drive and pet.i.tion signing to rally support for American intervention in case of war.

As he stood Rawbone said, "There's only one thing missing in this place, and you know what it is ... the headstones, Mr. Lourdes, the headstones."

"Come with me."

"Too staunchly orthodox to appreciate the humor in it?"

John Lourdes looked for a quiet place along the far wall. One thing he could say about what he'd seen of the evening so far, it was as if they'd stumbled upon a well-defended and determined inst.i.tution whose charter read, "Justice is secondary; security is the byword."

He took out his notepad.

"Do you take down anything I say, Mr. Lourdes? For posterity, I mean."

He handed Rawbone one of Merrill's business cards and the pencil. "Write Anthony Hecht ... Alliance for Progress ... and the address."

He turned so the father could use his back. Rawbone placed the card there and did as he was commanded. Still, he wanted to know, "Why am I doing this? I can see the b.a.s.t.a.r.d from here. I know the address. It's just a matter of me delivering the truck."

John Lourdes turned. "There's been a change of plans. You're not delivering the truck."

"What the h.e.l.l is going on in your head?"

The son pointed over the father's shoulder and he turned to see. The walls of the Customs House had been decorated with murals. The one they stood beneath was of a Christ somewhere in the Mexican desert, ministering to two angels.

"And I thought you didn't have a sense of humor. Well, shame on me, Mr. Lourdes."

SEVENTEEN.

-NTHONY HECHT HAD no idea whatsoever about this unshaved and slightly filthy rough calling him by name. Looking at a business card held up like a cigarillo between two fingers told him even less.

Hecht took the card. Saw what was scribbled on the back. He had been in dialogue with the consul and excused himself.