“The girl.”
Another silence.
“Chester…”
“The one I saw in the church today. One who looks just like Rosa Sánchez.”
“It’s just an accordion, Chester.”
The rage blindsided him, a surge in his midriff like coiling fire. “Not to me. Not to my granddad.”
“You can’t trade a child for a thing.”
A thing? “Is it still a sin to chew the wafer, Dec? You know, because it really isn’t bread anymore. Something’s happened.”
“Don’t talk like a fool.”
“Says the man who turns wine into blood.”
“Her name is Analinda. The girl, I mean.”
Of course, Chester thought, knowing what the priest was up to. Give her a name, she turns precious. She’s alive. Like Lorena. “She’s his daughter.”
“She’s her daughter.”
“Point is, the girl’s what he wants, has been all along. Why? I have no clue. Killers are vain, kids are for show. It’s an itch, the daddy thing, comes and goes, maybe he felt a sudden need to scratch. The mother gave her away, spare her all that. So he paid me to write her a song, impress her, get her to ease up, forgive him, introduce him to his daughter. Then I went and screwed the pooch on that front, so-”
“He has no right.”
“Who are you to say?”
“He’ll sell her.”
“So offer him a price.”
“You said it yourself, he’s a killer.”
“He’s not alone in that. My granddad was a killer. Killed for you. Killed for me.”
“Chester…”
“God’s a killer. Put some heat under that one.”
The priest, incredulous: “You want to argue theodicy?”
“Not really.” He felt strangely detached all of a sudden, preternaturally so, tracking the walkers bobbing past. It was no longer in his hands. “I’m just passing the time, Jolt.”
“I want you to come back to the church.”
“And what exactly does that mean-argue the odyssey?”
“Not the odyssey. Theodicy.”
“I know,” he said. “Just messing with you.”
He spotted it then, the hardshell case he knew so well, nicked and battered from the Italian campaign, a long whitish crease like a scar across the felt, left by the bullet from a Mauser 98 at Gallicano. The man carrying it walked hurriedly, face obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt. Chester felt no doubt. He flipped his phone closed, rose to his feet, and let the newspaper flutter down, tucking the pistol beneath his shirt. You’ve taken what belongs to me, he thought, what belongs to my family, the most precious thing we’ve ever owned. Two good men are dead because of you, not to mention the woman, the one you crowed over, said you loved. You deserve what’s coming. Deserve worse. I’m doing your daughter a favor. I’m bringing Lorena home.
He chose his angle of intercept and started walking, not so fast as to draw attention but quick enough to get there, easing through some of the other walkers. From across the street, a second man appeared. Chester recognized him too, the shoulders, the bulldog face, that distinctive jarhead fade.
Let it happen, he told himself, and it did.
Feo caught sight of the ex-Marine, began to run but the accordion slowed him down. Drop it, Chester wanted to shout, but the Mexican wouldn’t let go and then the gunman was on him and the pistol was raised and two quick pops, killshots to the skull. Feo crumpled, people scattered. The killer fled.
Blinking, Chester tucked the Sig in his pants, pulled his shirt over, moving the whole time, slow at first, cautious, then a jog, breaking into a run, till he was there at the edge of the pooling blood, the Mexican, the poacher, the Ugly One, lying still, just nerve flutters in the hands, the legs. Strange justice, Chester thought. The sickness at the bottom of the mind.
He pried the case from the dead man’s fingers, gripped the handle, and began to run back toward downtown. Something wasn’t right. The weight was off-balance, wobbly, wrong. He stopped, knelt, tore at the clasps, lifted the lid. Staring back at him from a bed of sheet music, the eyes shiny like polished bone, was the severed head of Rosa Sánchez.
Some time later-hours? days?-he found himself propped on a cantina barstool, a shot of mezcal in his fist, a dozen empties scattered before him, splashes of overfill dampening the bar’s pitted wood, a crowd of nameless men his newfound friends, all of them listening with that singular Mexican lust for heartbreak as he recited the tale of La Monita and Feo, told them of Geno and Skillet, confessed in a whisper his unholy love for Lorena. Time blurred into nothingness, he felt himself blurring as well, just another teardrop in the river of dreams, and he wondered what strange genius had possessed him, guiding him to this place, over the bridge from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, the murder capital of the planet. Nor would he recall how or when he crossed that other bridge, the one between lonely and alone, but it would carry him farther than the other, days drifting into weeks, weeks dissolving into months then years, more cantinas, more mezcal, till life as he’d known it became a whisper in the back of his mind and the man named Chester Richard drifted away like a tuneless song.
The ghost in the mirror of the bus terminal washroom, rinsing out his armpits, brushing his teeth with a finger, hair wild as an outcrop of desert scrub, sooner or later shambled off to the next string of lights across a doorway, entered and plopped himself down, crooning his garbled tales of love and murder and music, then begging a drink, told to get out by the owner, indulged by the angry man’s wife, exiled to a corner with a glass of tejuino-no mezcal for a gorrón-and he’d wait for the musicians to appear, assembling themselves on the tiny bandstand like clowns in a skit, until once, in that endless maze of nights, a boy of ten shouldered on his accordion in the smoky dimness, and the nameless drunk criollo glanced up from his corner to see the seasoned mahogany dark as cane syrup, the pearl inlays, the purple heart accents, the buttons of polished bone, and with the first sigh of the kidskin bellows came that deep unmistakable throbbing tremolo, and he felt his heart crack open like an egg, knowing at last he was free.
SIX DEAD CABBIES by TIM TINGLE
Ellington AFB
Fifty years later, the image will not leave me alone. Six cab drivers, their throats sliced from behind, left slumped and twitching in the front seat, while a gaunt man with a bum knee wipes blood from his switchblade to his jeans and walks ten miles to his car, parked in the lot of the Officers’ Club at Ellington Air Force Base, southeast of Houston. He limps through the security gate to his waiting car, pulling his jacket collar high and nodding to the guards.
“Another fight with the old lady?” yells a guard.
Just a nod in reply.
“Man, I hope she’s worth it. Making you walk at four in the morning.”
A shrug. Nothing more. Laughter from the guards.
“Don’t ever tell anybody more than absolutely necessary to get what you need.” If Denny said it once, he said it a dozen times. “Too many words will cost you.”
Too many words. 1966, summer of. I was working as a busboy at Ellington Air Force Base, senior year of high school coming up. I was doing okay, too. After a month I got promoted to Head Salad Maker, an illustrious title worth fifteen more cents an hour, the price of a gallon of regular. But the promotion meant a stylistic change that came as a sweet surprise. I became part of the kitchen crew, who made no pretense at cleanliness and courtesy, like waitresses and busboys had to. Nope, if you felt it coming, no need to stifle, not in the kitchen.
Burns and yelps and cussing out loud, grease-splattered sleeves and aprons and bumping into each other ten times a night, stolen minutes with cigarettes in the cinder-block men’s dressing room-nobody would think of wearing real clothes in this kitchen, only the white pants and shirts provided by the management-while jokes and dirt of every sort came flowing from the kitchen and spilling out the back door onto the employee parking lot.