The merry one glanced in, studying each man’s face, one at a time, settling at last on Chester. “You wanna un-ass that seat, big fella?” He grinned, cracking gum between his molars.
Chester opened the door and bent Skillet forward as he struggled to unfold into the sun, while Mr. Merry Menace leaned on the Firebird’s fender, arms crossed. His wraparounds sat crooked on his face.
“Understand you’ve made some inquiries regarding a certain Emigdio Nava.” A whiskey baritone. “Mind telling us what that concerns?”
Us, Chester thought. “He stole an instrument of mine.”
The man cocked his head toward his partner, who just continued to glare. Turning back: “Instrument?”
“You knew we’ve been making inquiries, I’d guess you know about what.”
The smile didn’t falter. The man repeated: “Instrument?”
All right then, Chester thought. Way it’s gonna be. “Accordion. Belonged to my granddad. Serious sentimental value.”
A loathsome chuckle. “Sentimental value. Touching.”
“Can I see some identification?” Chester said.
The man pushed his wraparounds up his nose. “I don’t think so. No.”
“You’re not the law.”
“Better than the law, most occasions.”
“Such as this?”
“Oh, this especially.”
The sun-baked office bore no name, just another anonymous door in an industrial park ten blocks off the interstate. Four men not much different than the first two emptied from the second car, another two waited inside. They put Chester and Skillet and Geno in separate rooms, each one the same morose beige, folding chairs the only furniture, to which each man got bound with duct tape. A silver Halliburton case rested in the corner of Chester’s room, and he doubted an item of luggage had ever terrified him more.
Mr. Merry Menace snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “So you’re musical.”
“Look,” Chester said, his mouth parched, “no need for this, I told you-”
The fist came out of nowhere and landed like a sledge, the latex chafing his face like tire rubber. He heard the hinge crack in his jaw, a phosphorescent whiteness rising within his mind, blotting out the world. When the world came back, it came back screaming-Geno, the next room over.
Chester shouted, “I’m telling them everything!” but all it earned him was a crackback blow, knuckles busting open his cheek.
“You talk to me. Not them.”
Chester shook his head, gazing up through a blur. The trickle of blood over his stubble itched. “Why do this?”
“What was it like, finding your bus by the side of the road, Feo’s little ape-girl inside?”
Chester shook his head like a wet dog. “You know.”
“Oh, I know. Yes.”
“He said he loved her.”
“Love?” The man’s smile froze in place. “She stood up to him, only woman who ever did, so it’s said. He put up with it. That’s love, I suppose. Up to a point.”
“Why-”
“Cut off her head?” A shrug. “Style points.”
Chester coughed up something warm, licked the inside of his cheek, tasted blood.
“They hurl severed heads onto disco floors down Mexico way, Chester, just to send a message. It’s how vatos blog.”
“I don’t-”
“I’m gonna make it simple, okay? There are forces at play here. Secrets. Schemes and counterschemes and conspiracies so vast and twisted they make the Kennedy hit look like a Pixar flick.” A gloved finger tapped Chester’s brow, tiny splash of sweat. “Bottom line, you’re dispensable, you and your two wack friends. I’m doing you a favor. Whatever business you have with Señor Nava, it’s hereby null, moot, done. Tell me I’m right.”
“I don’t understand.”
An open-hand slap this time, mere punctuation. “He’s a poacher. Understand that?”
Chester inhaled, his chest rippling with the effort. “I grew up in Calcasieu Parish. I know what a poacher is.”
“Not that kind of poacher. He’s Mexican military, Teniente Nava, trains infantry, automatic weapons. When he’s not recruiting assassins for the Juárez Cartel.”
Chester swallowed what felt like an egg. “That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Not now.”
“Not never. All I want is Lorena.”
The man glanced to his partner, eyebrow cocked. Perplexed.
Chester sighed. “My accordion,”
It was like he’d admitted to sex with a fish. “Damn,” the man said. He barked out a laugh. “You are sentimental.”
They were escorted all the way back to the Houston city limits, then the two cars broke away. Message delivered, no further emphasis required. Skillet held a wet bandanna to the gash on the side of his head. He’d about had it with being hit on the skull. Geno, glancing up into his rearview, face swollen and colored like bad fruit, caught Chester’s eyes, held the gaze.
“Say the word.”
Chester had never killed a man-thought about it, sure, even plotted it out once. Now, though, he felt as close as close got. Feo had to pay. Pay for the theft of Lorena, pay for what Geno and Skillet had just endured, pay for the girl in the back of the Flyer. Feeling within him an invigorating, almost pleasurable hate, he imagined it was what his granddad-tongue unlocked by a jug of corn, Lorena resting in his lap-once described as the sickness at the bottom of the mind. He confessed to killing barehanded, last days of the war, his unit charged with cutting off the German retreat through the Cisa Pass. Low on ammunition, they didn’t dare call in air or artillery support, the white officers would too easily call in fire directly atop their position. When the Germans overran their front line it got down to bayonets and bare knuckles, swinging their M1s like clubs. I choked one man, stabbed two more, beat another unconscious with my helmet, then smothered him with his own coat. Lucky for me they was all starved weak. The voice of a ghost. But now Chester understood. So be it, he thought. The old man would not just understand, he would insist. I will not betray her. I will find her. I will bring her home.
“You drop me at the airport, then go on back to Port Arthur.”
“That won’t do.” It was Skillet.
Chester shook his head. “I can’t let you-”
“Ain’t you to let.”
“Skillet…”
“You catch your plane.” The older man’s voice was quiet and cold. “Geno and me, we’ll turn on around, head west again. We’ll check around San Antonio, see if we can find Lorena. Not, we’ll see you in El Paso.”
“I can’t make it up to you.”
“Nobody askin’ that.”
He slept in the terminal and caught the first flight to El Paso the next morning, touching down noonish, then a cab ride to the rectory of Santa Isabel. The pastor there was Father Declan Foley, but Chester knew him as Jolt. A boxer once, backwater champion before heading off to seminary.
A cluster of schoolgirls sat in the pews as Father Dec led them in confirmation class. Chester caught that haunting scent, beeswax, candle flame, hand-worn wood, a lingering whiff of incense, almost conjuring belief. Or the want of belief.
The priest glanced up as his visitor ambled forward. The girls followed suit, pigtails spinning. I must look a sight, Chester thought, jaw swollen and bruised, a zigzag cut across his dark-stubbled cheek.
“Father,” he said, a nod of respect.
The priest told the girls to open their books, review the difference between actual and sanctifying grace, then led Chester back into the sacristy. He eyed his old friend with solemn disappointment.
“You look, as they say, like hell.”
Chester tried to gather himself up, quit halfway. “Feel like I been there.”