The universe was his.
A strange feeling came over me. Of watching in slow motion, of moving in slow motion. I had had a similar feeling before. In fights. It’s always that way. You may be moving fast, but to you it’s slow, and everything around you is moving slow. But life is heightened. It’s as if in that moment of violence you feel directly connected to the world around you, as if you are in tumultuous union with the universe.
This moment was stronger than ever before. I remember wiping my eyes, rubbing out the sleep. I had been sitting on my ass, but I rose up on my left knee, raised my right knee, put the rifle against my shoulder and looked down the sight. The sight was very fine, like a little blackhead in the center of Juan Miguel’s face.
He was rolling his neck now. I watched him roll it. I wanted him to stop moving just for a moment. The way you’re supposed to shoot someone is you aim at the biggest part of them, but I wanted Juan Miguel’s head.
I was putting the little blackhead on his face, when I heard a noise and saw, coming around from the rear of the house, Hammerhead. He was naked except for a white beach towel wrapped between his legs and around his waist. It made him look as if he were wearing a huge diaper.
That’s all right, I told myself. That’s all right, Mama, that’s all right with me.
I put the sight back on Juan Miguel as he lifted his arms and touched his hands in dive fashion, and as he lowered them to make his leap into the pool, his head lowered, I shot him right in the top of it.
There was a cough from the silencer, a flash of red juice, a flurry of hair, a whirl of skull like a hubcap fragment, and Juan Miguel dropped his arms and went into the water. There was a burst of dark blood, like ink from a Technicolor squid.
I shifted, floated the barrel, put the sight on Hammerhead.
He had just removed the towel from himself, probably preparing to swim with his boss. He held it in one hand like an oversized hanky he was passing to someone. His jaw hung low, his eyes were fastened on Juan Miguel’s body floating under the water, dropping slowly to the bottom.
Hammerhead crouched, dropped the towel, turned his head, looked in the direction from which he thought the shot must have come. In that moment he saw me in the foliage. Our eyes snapped together like padlocks. I fired again.
It was a good shot, but not as good as it would have been had he not moved. It went through his throat, low and on the right side. He snapped a hand to the wound and let out a bellow. I put three in his chest as fast as I could pull the trigger.
Where he clutched his throat blood was running through his fingers. Three little holes appeared on his chest without much blood.
The pool was in front of him and he hit the water running, went down, not quite over his head, tried to trudge along the bottom. The water bounced him up and down. I took a bead on his eye and let it rip.
His head snapped back. When it righted itself, he continued forward. Much of the pool’s surface was slick with his and Juan Miguel’s blood and it kept widening as if its job was to paint the remaining blue red.
As Hammerhead climbed out of the pool, a real feeling of terror went over me. This bastard had three in the chest, one in the throat, and one through the eye, and he was still coming.
As he stepped out of the pool on my side, I aimed for his kneecap, popped him twice. The knee went away. He collapsed, tried to raise up on his elbows, but I shot him again, about where the neck meets the shoulder.
This time there was a big burst of blood, like a pipe full of pressured rusty water had broken.
Hammerhead’s head snapped forward on the cement at the edge of the pool. He pulled himself forward another inch or so, then lay with only his foot jerking and one hand vibrating. The hand quit, then the foot.
I took a deep breath.
I looked about.
No wife.
No assholes. They were probably watching bowling on TV.
I took the wrench out of the suitcase and took the rifle apart. My hand was shaking so much it took me longer than it should have. I put the pieces in the suitcase.
I looked up.
Still no one. I tossed the suitcase over the fence. I climbed on a slanting palm near the fence, inched up it with the speed of a ground sloth with its leg in a sling.
I made it to the fence and looked down. It didn’t look good. I didn’t see the suitcase. I’d need that. It had fingerprints all over it.
I walked along the top of the rock wall until I found a place I felt I could descend, went over and started working my way down. Below I heard a car, looked. It went zooming by. I wondered if they had seen me.
It was easier and faster going down in the light than it was going up in the dark. I made the ground fairly easy, looked for the suitcase, didn’t see it.
Worse, the car was gone. There was windshield glass on the ground, so I knew during the night, while I slept, someone had smashed the glass and hotwired the rental.
Typical.
I eventually located the suitcase. It was up the hill, hung up in some roots and bushes.
I took a deep breath, started up again. I got the suitcase, and as it still had my belt through the handle, I slung it over my neck and shoulder and climbed down.
I brushed myself off as best I could and started walking.
It took an hour or so for me to reach the main road. I had walked along about fifteen minutes when a large ancient truck with sideboards appeared. It pulled up beside me. In the seat were five men wearing straw hats. One of them stuck his head out the window and said something in Spanish. He was young-looking, with a split between his teeth. He had taken advantage of the split and had inserted a straw between it. It moved around in his mouth when he spoke.
I finally realized they were asking me if I wanted to ride.
“Si,” I said.
I climbed in the back, over the sideboards, found I was company to three large black and white hogs. In one corner of the truck was a large pile of hog shit, and as we bounced along, so did it, creeping its way toward me.
They let me and my suitcase off in town and I walked to our hotel. I wondered if Brett, Leonard, and Jim Bob were still there.
I went straight to Jim Bob’s room and knocked. If it was someone else I’d just claim the wrong room and go away.
Jim Bob answered.
“You asshole,” he said. “You thoughtless asshole. We been worried fucking sick. Serve you right if you were dead.”
“Hi. Good to see you too.”
I went inside. Brett was there, she pushed past Leonard, who was trying to shake my hand, grabbed me, kissed me on the face.
“Wow,” she said. “What have you been rolling in, Rex?”
“Hog shit,” I said. “Really.”
“He has,” Jim Bob said. “If there’s one smell I know, it’s hog shit, and that’s hog shit.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?” Leonard said.
“He and that Hammerhead are two of the deadest motherfuckers you’ll ever see.”
“Good,” Jim Bob said. “Goddamn good.”
“Who says you have to have good plans to get the job done?” Leonard said.
“You know,” I said, “I sort of thought you guys would charge to my assistance. Note or no note. It was just for dramatic effect.”
“I slept late,” Brett said.
“We didn’t see it until a few minutes ago,” Jim Bob said.
“I was considering just how bad I wanted to kill you,” Leonard said, “then I thought maybe Juan Miguel and Hammerhead would do it for me, so I went back to sleep.”
“He did not,” Brett said. “He was having a shit fit. We were just about out the door, come to help.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but I wasn’t going to dress up for it.”
