McMa.n.u.s disregarded him. "What have you become?" he repeated.

"Call your fee," said Rawbone.

McMa.n.u.s ordered, "Emmanuel."

The little man with the shotgun took a step forward, kicking away a bench that was in his path.

"I said, what have you become?"

"Don't do this," said Rawbone.

"What have you become?"

There was a furied determination to McMa.n.u.s about having that question answered. The son studied the father; he noted the slightest movement of the hand with the derby.

"We've been friends, how long?" said Rawbone.

"Answer."

"Alright. I came to this place as some would say, a common a.s.sa.s.sin. And I'll be leaving this place the same way. So now ... what's your fee?"

"What have you become?"

"Jesus, man. It's about survival, alright. My personal survival. And I don't want to hear you keep talking from the belt buckle down. What's your fee?"

"McMa.n.u.s!" shouted John Lourdes. "The BOI wants nothing with you."

McMa.n.u.s leaned into Rawbone and looked down at him and said, "You're the hole in the s.h.i.thouse floor now."

"What's your fee?"

"There's more than survival."

"So you say. Now what's your fee?"

The man's head lolled to one side like a great bear, slowly, and the eyes grew small as vapor drops. "You're my fee."

"Aye, brother," said Rawbone. And just like that, before his derby hit the floor, he had wheeled about and fired his automatic repeatedly. The little man named Emmanuel had no business being behind a shotgun. He was driven back and crying out, jerked in half. The shotgun went off wildly. A gas lamp exploded, throwing stars of gla.s.s and sparks everywhere. The funeral drapes on the far wall were run with flames.

Before Rawbone could turn McMa.n.u.s plowed that slagheap of a body right at him and got a grip on his gun hand. He kept right on for the wall, churning his legs with Rawbone trying to break loose and the gun going off wildly. John Lourdes locked his arms around McMa.n.u.s's neck to pull him back, but he was too strong and using his shoulder flung the young man like he was nothing against the projector. The motor kicked on and there was the click, click, click, click, click, click of the turning sprockets and a rush of dusty light and Rawbone was battered right into the adobe.

An ugly sound came out of Rawbone as if he'd been staved clear through. He'd expended all his ammunition. The body of the dead Emmanuel lay a foot away. The shotgun angled upright across his corpse. Rawbone twisted and bent to try and get low enough to reach the weapon. John Lourdes again was right on McMa.n.u.s, this time bracing his arms up under the dense shoulders to pull him loose. McMa.n.u.s lost his footing briefly and Rawbone was able to score himself down the wall just enough for his fingers to crab around the barrel and take hold before McMa.n.u.s righted himself.

McMa.n.u.s began to yell out a pained and atavistic war cry. He used his prosthesis like a whip but he had Rawbone still in the clench of his one good arm and there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce for a breath between them. The three were all tangled together now and they spun crazily, crashing over benches. The newsreel began to play and their shadows wraithed across the screen where President Diaz stood before an array of businessmen and dignitaries and generals and invited the viewer to come and see a burgeoning world.

The smoke from the drapes afire grayed the air. McMa.n.u.s now struggled backward. His boots clopped out a sidling but steady drum of steps. He was like a freight car to take down and the two men even together could not. Rawbone still had the shotgun in his grasp, working to edge his fingers down the barrel.

The three were entwined like some ancient statue from the sh.o.r.es of Troy within the light of the screen and across their bodies were flickering images of vast petrol fields on the Gulf and oil-slicked men with their tired faces and a lone train moving toward blanched and serrated mountains.

The drapes were a mural of smolder and flame. The men grunted like animals for each gasp of air. McMa.n.u.s now steadied himself and slammed John Lourdes against the adobe. He then leaned forward and the young man's boots scruffed along the wood. McMa.n.u.s slammed back again and the blood from the wound above John Lourdes's eye spattered over the side of McMa.n.u.s's face.

Rawbone gasped, "Mr. Lourdes, can you hold my friend a bit longer?"

"I can ... hold."

And now Rawbone drove the top of his head into that spur of a chin as he worked his hand down to the trigger. And John Lourdes got an arm around that bear of a head to wrench it back. And Rawbone snaked and squeezed his other arm across his body and finally he steadied up the weapon. McMa.n.u.s watched the barrel clock out inches till it was no longer if, but when.

Rawbone, near wasted with exhaustion, said, "Let it go."

McMa.n.u.s would not have it.

"Just give up and we'll be done with this."

McMa.n.u.s opened his mouth and hissed.

"To what end?"

Rawbone confronted a harpoon stare.

"Mr. Lourdes, force your head back."

John Lourdes bent away as best he could.

"Friend," said Rawbone, "let it go or you'll be this moment forever."

The face above the gun barrel filled with floodwaters of defiance and contempt and a reverie to fearlessness and in the smoke and sweep of images flickering on the screen the moment saw Rawbone pull the trigger.

NINETEEN.

-HE FACE WAS there one moment, and the next it was a denuded ma.s.s of bone and blood. That great hull of muscle and will dropped like a boulder to the floor. Rawbone stood with smoke and strips of burning cloth floating in the air about him, looking down at what was his friend. "All he had to do was let it go."

John Lourdes knelt exhausted and choking from the smoke. He rolled the body over and tugged his automatic from the dead man's belt. He stood. Rawbone was still staring down at the brutal evidence of what just had happened.

"Put the fire out," said John Lourdes.

"Leave it-"

The last of the film kite tailed with the endless turning of the reel as John Lourdes looked over the projector.

"What are you doing?"

"Put the fire out."

JOHN LOURDES WALKED out of the funeraria and into a star-filled night with the reel of film under his arm. It was quiet, save for the lone wail of a distant train. Rawbone stood looking across the river and smoking when he joined him. The father took a bandana from his back pocket and handed it to the son. "You're still leaking oil."

Rawbone went back to looking across the river. His past loomed out there in the dark. He was heir to the brazen hand of his own making, and he knew it. John Lourdes watched. Rawbone seemed distant and troubled, and caught up in a strained uncertainty. It was a picture of the man the son did not remember as a boy. Of course, it could well have been the part a boy could not recognize.

"He flat out perished himself," said Rawbone. "Why?"

The son was not sure the father expected him to answer. He had a sense of why, but his was an emotional verdict he meant to use at the appropriate time, with a vengeance.

Rawbone pointed to the reel of film. "What's so important about that?"

John Lourdes explained about the film and how he thought it might prove to be evidence connecting certain people and events. Rawbone offered a clipped and sarcastic laugh. "I guess the future will come in all shapes and surprises." Then he took from his pocket a slip of notepad paper and pencil the son had given him.

"Like I said before, Mr. Lourdes. You had some good luck tonight." He pa.s.sed the notepaper and pencil to the son. "And your good luck tonight is my good fortune tomorrow."

The father was animated now and near grinning. "Tomorrow you'll be justice Knox's sainted poker hand of an agent and I'll be pleasantly off for parts unknown." To that he added, "With a clear conscience and a clean record."

Rawbone was able to cast aside what had just happened with absolute impunity and refocus on himself. It was a trait, though not n.o.ble, John Lourdes thought he'd better acquire.

He looked at the father's chicken-scratch handwriting. He saw names-the word railroad, underlined a number of times-and the Panuco River.

Rawbone described how the scam to get him into Hecht's good graces had played out even better than he could have imagined. And the note John Lourdes had written- As they walked to the warehouse behind the funeraria Rawbone near mocked a reading of it: "Mr. Hecht, I've arrived with the makings of your icehouse-Will arrange for financial settlement tomorrow morning."

Each took a shed door to open. The hinges groaning as they went. Rawbone kept on, "It was a priceless way to word it, Mr. Lourdes. That note was delivered all the way up to the headwaters of his a.s.shole."

Rawbone used his cigarette to wick up a lantern. Light filled that belly of a s.p.a.ce and there was the truck, parked beside a hea.r.s.e that was comely and elegant and covered with dust. The light rivered across its gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt.

The father went on about the meeting with Hecht as John Lourdes, exhausted and still bleeding, put the reel of film on the cab seat then sat down on the runner.

Rawbone told how Hecht lived in a row house up from Customs. He'd invited the father along, believing him to be a friend of Merrill's. He'd been taken to the kitchen where the cook, an old Mexican woman, was told to offer him food and coffee. Then Hecht excused himself.

Men kept arriving, one and two at a time. There were what sounded like discussions in a far room. The voices were gray and controlled. What he wrote down was all he could pick up under the watchful eye of the cook. He carefully plied her with a few questions, but she was immune to either friendliness or flattery.

When the men left and all was quiet, Hecht returned to the kitchen and excused the cook. The two men had sat like old friends at an ornate table, drinking coffee spiked with gentleman's whiskey.

"He was all polite and full of s.h.i.t," said Rawbone. "Poking me with questions to size me up. He's a wily b.a.s.t.a.r.d." The father looked at himself in the dusty gla.s.s paneling of the hea.r.s.e. His image imprinted there on a glowy lantern dusk. He spoke to himself as if he were Hecht.

"I've to set an arrangement tomorrow to pick up a truck with the makings of an icehouse that is to be delivered south of the city. I was to entrust Merrill the job, but since he is not here and you are a friend ... and I say to him while I'm filling my cup with more of his gentleman's whiskey . . . 'When Mr. Merrill comes back he'll tell you how I can be trusted, for no one knows me better than he.' Of course, Mr. Hecht has no idea the last I seen Merrill he was leaking oil out of his skull."

Rawbone turned to John Lourdes. "And then he baits me out even better. He says if I do right there'll be a job for me with the men who work with Merrill. Now, Mr. Lourdes, do you see the whole play from his side?"

The father drew down on his cigarette and waited as the son made a silent catwalk through the dark corners of human motive. He'd been holding the bandana to the wound along his eye but now he stood. He looked into the hea.r.s.e gla.s.s to see if the blood had stanched. Rawbone was beside him now. He noted the son beginning to smile and then outright laugh.

"He's throwing you to the wolves."

"There you go. I get the truck, I come back, alright. But if there's chicanery I'm the perfect ignorant fool who ends up in a ditch somewhere."

He put his hand on John Lourdes's shoulder and leaned in to talk as if they were lifers conjoined in criminal plans. "Now, let me tell you how I think we play this out and finish it."

"I can see what you're thinking as far away as forever."

"Is that so?"

"You bring the truck back," said John Lourdes, "and you keep the money. In return you'll deliver it for Hecht but I find out through you where and to whom. Then I go home and you, maybe you take Hecht up on that job. As you say, with a smile and good cheer. You know, you may have accidentally stumbled on a future down here."

"Ah, Mr. Lourdes, you can be a racehorse son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h."

"A pure thoroughbred."

But the son wasn't done yet. He took the cigarette from the father. His mood locked down as he considered a more daggered attack. "You're going to deliver the truck," he said. "But what if you brought a body back with it. To show you had to kill for the truck."

The father drew in closer and eyed the son through the dusty paneling of gla.s.s from where he stared back.

"Even the money should have blood on it," said John Lourdes. "Think how much trust you'd have earned. How indebted Hecht would be to you."

In the half shadows of the warehouse the father raised an eyebrow. "A man who can breathe a thought like that has to have a black mark in his life somewhere."

"You have no idea."

Reflection to reflection. The father now c.o.c.ky and self-possessed. "There's a notion that a hea.r.s.e should never be cleaned or repaired unless it has a firm booking. Otherwise, if it is readied, it will find itself work. Are you superst.i.tious?"

"No."

"Well, I am. So keep your d.a.m.n hands clear of it."

RAWBONE WAS SITTING at the kitchen table just as he had the night before, when the phone rang down a hallway. Mr. Hecht entered the room a few minutes later and excused the cook. He had written down the appointed place, the appointed time. He was carrying a leather packet which he set on the table before Rawbone.

West of Calle de la Paz was a ravine that ran all the way to the Rio Bravo. It was also where garbage was dumped. Hours later Rawbone left an urgent message by phone for Hecht to meet him there.

Gulls drifted on the thermals or picked away at the trash. Rawbone smoked and waited alone as a single vehicle struggled its way down that worthless stretch of road.

Mr. Hecht was alone. He looked Rawbone over as he got out of the car. He looked the truck over. "I don't understand," he said. "Why are we here?"

"I'll show you why."

Hecht was led to the rear of the truck, where a tarp was pulled back just enough for him to view what remained of McMa.n.u.s. The old man kept his head at the sight. The leather packet was positioned beside the body. Rawbone held it for Hecht to take. It was blood-stained.

"This one had a different idea about the transaction than you did."

Mr. Hecht waved away the packet.

"THERE'S NOTHING LIKE a finely worked 'f.u.c.k you,"' said Rawbone. He removed a thin band of hundreds from the packet, then tossed it aside and pocketed the money.

John Lourdes had watched everything from a stand of trees, joining the father only after the dust trailing Hecht's vehicle had pa.s.sed away. He was looking over a note Hecht had written on his personal stationery. Addressed to a Doctor Stallings, it was about a job and was to be brought to a railroad siding at the junction of the road to Casas Grandes.

"You know who the doctor is, don't you?" asked Rawbone.

"I do. He's in that film."

The father put out a hand to shake, but the son was preoccupied with that letter. "Mr. Lourdes, you have fulfilled your obligation and I, mine. It is time we part ways."