The Second Saladin

“I told you?”

“Sure. You come from the bar. Oscar’s. Stay out of there, you say. A bad place. The bartender, a bad guy, an evil man.”

Maybe Trewitt did have a vague memory of the conversation.

“So now you can go kill this guy Roberto. With a knife. Come on, I’ll show you where he lives. Cut his belly. My brother done that to a guy once and is still in prison.”

“You watch too much TV.”

“Ain’t got no TV, man. What you gonna do? Cut that cocksucker?”

“I don’t know,” said Trewitt.

The boy pointed in the dark.

“There. That’s the one.”

Trewitt traced the arc indicated by the small finger until he could see a certain house among a group of four of them, neither more nor less prosperous than its neighbors, a cinderblock shanty of flat roof and no windows.

“You’re sure now?”

“Sure? Sure I’m sure.”

The moon smiled above through a warm night. He and the boy were across a muddy lane in southern Nogales, miles from Trewitt’s homey barn. They crouched in a gully, which Trewitt had come to believe contained sewage. But perhaps not; his imagination again?

“You better be right, amigo.”

“Sure I’m right. You have a nice tip for me, okay? For Miguel, a little money?”

“Right now I couldn’t afford an enchilada,” Trewitt said.

He checked his watch. Nearly five, sun coming up soon.

“And Roberto,” said Miguel. “Soon Roberto. You’ll see.”

The light began to rise, revealing eventually a familiar landscape — the shacks on the muddy street, some shuffling chickens, sleeping dogs, puddles everywhere, pieces of junk strewn about. Into this still composition there at last came the figure of a man — a youth really — strolling along.

“He’s late,” said the boy. “You ought to kill him.”

“I just want to talk to the guy.”

“You should have seen what my brother did to this guy. He got him right in the guts. He—”

“Shhhh, goddammit.”

The bartender approached, picking his way among the puddles. He looked familiar to Trewitt, though thinner, more delicate than the American remembered. His hair was pomaded back and he had the thinnest moustache over his upper lip. He wore a leather coat over his jet-black pants and white ruffled shirt. He looked to be about eighteen.

He walked, hands in pockets. Trewitt had studied judo, though he had never earned a belt, and when the boy paused at his gate, directly across from him, Trewitt lunged from the gully in two muscular bounds, got his arms on Roberto, and quickly and savagely broke him to the earth.

The youth squealed, but Trewitt gave him a squirt of pressure through his pinned arm which calmed him fast; then he shoved him into the gully and leaped after. He punched him twice, hard, in the ribs, and got him into a wristlock. Trewitt was far too brutal, for Roberto offered no resistance and only yelped as the blows landed, but Trewitt was working off weeks of rage and frustration. He sensed the wrist he was gripping give, and saw the fear bright in Roberto’s eyes — and felt at once ashamed.

“I have no money, I have no money,” wailed Roberto.

“I don’t want money, goddammit,” screamed Trewitt in English.

“Cut him,” yelled the other kid, Miguel, watching from above with great, cruel joy.

“Shut up, you. Silencio!”

“Let me go, sir. I have only money for my sister and my mama and my two brothers and our dogs. Do not hurt me.”

“Why was the old gringo killed? Come on, talk, goddammit!”

He gave the wrist a quarter twist to the right.

“Ow! Oh! It hurts so. Ouch. No more. He went for the wrong woman.”

Trewitt tightened up on the wrist.

“The real reason, dammit.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Of course I’m hurting you. Come on, goddammit, talk.” He squeezed.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

A cock crowed and Trewitt looked nervously about and saw no movement, though a goat in a pen down the way seemed to stir. He knew he’d better get on with it. In a few minutes this place’d be crawling with people.

“Why, why?” he bellowed in righteous fury.

“Ahhhh. Let me go, please. Don’t hurt me no more.”

Trewitt relaxed his grip a bit. “Next time I break it. Why’d they kill the old man? Why?”

“He ask after Ramirez.”

“Okay. So?”

“The story they tell is that Oscar Meza set Ramirez up to take over his place. And here’s this old gringo asking questions. And Oscar no like the gringos and he no like the questions.”

“Oscar?” said Trewitt.

“Yes. Let me go. Oh, please, mister, it hurts so bad.”

Trewitt almost did. He was exhausted and he was running low on energy and purpose. But his fury boiled up again darkly.

“No, goddammit, there’s more.” There had to be. He gave the Mexican another jolt.

“Ohhhh. No, I swear. On Jesus, on the Virgin. He kill me if he finds out.”

If there wasn’t any more, then Trewitt was in big trouble. Next step? He had no next step. This wasn’t an intelligence operation, it was a gang war. He’d stumbled into the middle of it, and now the whole Mexican underworld was after him. Or was the youth lying?

He tried to think of what one of the old cowboys would do in his place. Chardy, a hero, a pro, an operator’s operator. What would they do? Maybe the kid was lying; maybe he wasn’t. There’d really only be one way to make certain, and that would be to take him all the way. Put him on the black edge of death and see what he said.

Trewitt knew in an instant that Chardy would be capable of a higher brutality here, for wasn’t the other side of bravery just the numb capacity to hurt and feel no guilt? Suppose now, suppose a Chardy broke the kid’s fingers, both hands, then his kneecaps, then his nose, all his teeth, then his wrists, and finally the kid broke. And this Chardy-type then used the dope he got from the kid and turned it into a real coup. Became a hero. A legend would grow, a reputation; maybe a career would blossom. But nobody, least of all Chardy, would remember the hurt youth, humiliated, debased, raped almost, in a gully in a scabby Mexican slum; the boy used, tossed away.

Weariness suffused Trewitt. His will vanished. “Ah, Christ,” he muttered, knowing he could hurt his victim no more. He felt the youth slip away.

“Go on. Beat it. Scram,” he said.

The young bartender fell back, rubbed his mouth and then his aching wrist and crossed himself quickly for deliverance.

“You should not do this,” said Miguel, perched on the lip of the gully. “You should make him talk.”

“Shut up. I cut your throat, little shit,” said Roberto, making a listless lunge that sent the younger boy scurrying.

“Go on, get out of here. Both of you.” For now Trewitt could not stand the sight of either of them.

Trewitt sat back in disgust and exhaustion. Next step? Departamento de Policia. And damned quick, before somebody from the mafia blew him away over the ownership of Oscar’s. Still, he dreaded it; it meant the coming to an end of a phase of his life. For surely he was done at the Agency; that much was clear — after a mess-up like this, there’d be no future.

It was also clear to him that he deserved to be done at the Agency. He simply was no good at this sort of thing — he hadn’t the hardness, the cunning, the fury. They never should have sent him; they