He slowly closed the phone.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
He wandered the street for half an hour, dazed one minute, lit up with fury the next, settling finally into a state of bloodthirsty calm. In a juke joint off East Paisano he scored a pistol from the bartender, a Sig Sauer 9mm, stolen from a cop, the man bragged. In a gun shop nearby he bought two extra magazines and a box of hollow points, loaded the clips right there in the store, hands trembling from adrenaline. Feo's gonna walk the border, he told himself, and the best place to do that is downtown, Stanton Street bridge. That's where I gotta be.
He walked toward the port of entry, found himself a spot to sit, lifting a paper from the litter bin for camouflage, spreading it out in his lap, the gun hidden just beneath. An hour passed, half of another, night fell, the lights came on. He sat still as a bullfrog, watchful, eyeing every walker trudging south into Mexico. And as he did the sense of the thing fell together, like a puzzle assembling itself in midair right before his eyes. If only that helped, he thought.
A little after eight his cell phone rang again. He considered letting it go but then he checked the display, recognized the rectory number.
"Jolt," he said.
Silence. "No one calls me that anymore."
"I just did."
"I want you to come back to the church."
"Not happening."
"What you're thinking of doing is wrong."
"All I want's Lorena. There's others want him dead on principle. That's why he's running."
"He'll be back."
"I suspect that's true."
"Suspect? I know. He's been in touch."
Chester shot up straight. A vein fluttered in his neck. "Feo."
"He wants to work a trade."
"I'm listening."
"No, you don't understand. He can't… Not what he's asking. I won't."
"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.
Sometime later-hours? days?-he found himself propped on a cantina barstool, a shot of mescal 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.
Ride-Along by Brendan Dubois