idea too.”
“Hector, come,” she said, a pet command, and took his arm to lead him away.
Connolly glanced from one to the other, feeling he had to do something, say anything to hold him.
“But that was you. See, I didn’t put two and two together until you beat up the guy at the PX. I didn’t realize you were queer too.”
The fist, exploding, came up and smashed into Connolly’s face. He staggered back against the wall, blood spurting out of his nose in a rush.
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you,” Hector said, moving toward Connolly and chopping his fist down against the side of Connolly’s neck, forcing him to drop to his knees, stunned. He heard a woman scream in the other room, saw in a hazy flash of peripheral vision people turning on the patio to see what was going on. Connolly leaned forward for a second, catching himself, afraid he would black out.
“Hector, no!” Hannah shouted.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, pushing her aside, heading for Connolly.
But it gave Connolly the second he needed. He brought the gun out of his pocket and held it up before him with two hands. He saw that they were shaking, one of them smeared bright with blood. “Stop,” he said, the word garbled by the blood in his mouth.
More screams. Footsteps. Hector looked down at him, hesitating for a split second, then, sneering, brought up his foot and kicked from the side, knocking the gun out of Connolly’s hands. It slithered across the polished wood floor toward the corner, and Connolly lost sight of it as the workboot came up again, kicking him. He fell over, his face hitting the floor with another crack.
“Stop it!” Emma’s voice. Dimly, Connolly saw her pounding Hector’s back. His face raging, Hector turned away from Connolly and flung her aside as if her fists were nothing more than wasp stings. She fell against the pedestal, the scrap-metal cowboy crashing to the floor beside her.
Connolly tried to stand, but Hector’s foot caught him in the stomach, and when he fell this time he put his hands around his head, curling his body into itself to protect it from the blows. “Stop it!” he heard Emma scream again. Then there was another kick to his chest. He groaned. Hector kicked him again, a machine now, uncontrollable. Connolly realized that if he didn’t move, he was going to die, bludgeoned to death like Karl. Then, in some bizarre transference, he turned to look up and saw not Hector but Emma, her hand held high in the air, swinging the metal down toward him, just the way it must have happened at San Isidro. When he turned his head slightly to protect his eyes, he heard the statue connect, a crack, a thud into flesh, and heard Hector grunt, rearing his head back so that the force of the smash was strengthened and the horse’s hooves pushed into his scalp. There was an explosion of blood from Hector’s head, spattering in a circle around them, an oil well of blood, before he fell over, partially covering Connolly, his body twitching in one long drawn-out spasm.
Connolly heard the statue fall to the side. Now there were lots of voices, screams of surprise, and he knew it was almost over. He looked along the floor to the gun in the corner, but it was gone. Raising his head to see better, he felt the nausea that he knew meant he would black out. He stretched his fingers to grasp the statue and drew it toward him by the hooves, so that when the crowd finally arrived it was clutched in his hand, and with his breath crushed by the weight of the body on top of him and his face sticky with blood, he did pass out.
He couldn’t have been out more than a minute. He felt Hector’s body being lifted off him, then hands hooked under his arms, pulling him to his feet, holding him from behind. “Jesus Christ,” someone said, and Connolly looked at Hector too, his head still oozing blood. Connolly weaved, dizzy, trying to draw breath through the dull pain in his chest. For a moment nobody moved, and Connolly saw the drops of blood on the painting next to him, the end of the arc. One of the guests was leaning over Hector’s body, turning it so that his face, absolutely still, stared up at them. His legs, twisted, hadn’t moved with the rest of him. Connolly tried to move toward him, but someone still held his arms, restraining him.
“Somebody get an ambulance,” the man kneeling over Hector said, feeling the side of his neck for a pulse.
Connolly saw Holliday run into the room, people moving aside in a wave to let him through. He stopped in front of the body, taking in the scene-Connolly with his arms pinned, the statue still dangling from one of his hands, the giant body lying on the floor, blood spreading out from the head in a small lake.
“Let him go,” he said to the man behind Connolly, and Connolly, his arms suddenly free, slumped against the wall. He watched Holliday bend over and examine the pupils, then close the lids of the Mexican’s eyes.
“Oh my God,” someone in the crowd said.
“Call my office,” Holliday said to the man next to him. “Get some of the boys over here. Quick.” Then, turning to Connolly, “You all right?”
Connolly, still breathing heavily, nodded, feeling another wave of nausea as he moved his head.
“This the guy?” Holliday said simply.
Connolly nodded again. The nausea was gone now, and he took a handkerchief from his back pocket to stanch the blood in his nose.
“Broken?” Holliday said. Connolly nodded. “Anything else?”
“Maybe a rib. I don’t know.”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” a woman said. “He was kicking him, kicking him. It was awful.” Everyone seemed to be talking.
Holliday turned toward the guests. “You folks want to give me a little room here?” His voice, easy and unhurried, stopped them. “How about all of you wait outside till the boys get here. But don’t anybody run away now- we’ll need to make a report,” he said, slipping into his small-town police manner.
“I saw everything,” the woman said, beginning to cry. “It was awful. Awful.” Someone took her arm to lead her away. The room began to empty, some people craning their necks to get a last look.
Holliday looked at the body, then up at Connolly. “He’s dead,” he said simply. “You kill him?”
Connolly nodded.
“Well, that’s a hell of a thing. He come after you?”
“It was him. He killed Bruner.”
An ambulance siren wailed outside, rising over the voices on the patio.
“Who was the woman with him?” Holliday said calmly.
“Hannah. His boss.”
But where was she? Connolly looked around the empty room, suddenly panicked. “Where’s Emma?” he said, but Holliday didn’t know what he was talking about. “Doc, come on.” He moved away from the wall, but Holliday stood up, blocking him.
“Take it easy. I don’t want two bodies on my report.”
“I’m all right.”
“Well, we got a killing here.”
“Doc, she’s got the gun.”
“Who?”
“Hannah,” he said impatiently. “The other one. I’ll explain it later. She’s got the gun.”
Holliday stared at him as the ambulance crew rushed into the room, carrying a stretcher. Connolly could see police uniforms moving through the crowd on the patio.
“Doc, now,” he said. “She’ll kill her.”
Holliday looked at him for another minute, deciding. The ambulance crew swarmed around them. Then he said, “I’ll drive.”
On the patio, people moved away as Connolly approached, afraid to make contact with the violence. “Ask them,” he said to Holliday. “Somebody must have seen them leave.” Holliday glanced at him and turned to a group standing next to one of his men, already reporting details of the fight.
But it was Chalmers, finally, who came forward, hypnotized by the blood on Connolly’s face. A black Chevy, yes. Emma’s car. Heading down toward the bridge. Not the Cerrillos Road, to Albuquerque. The bridge. He thought they’d been too frightened to stay. Two of them, yes. He hoped it wasn’t wrong, their leaving the scene-
Connolly grabbed Holliday, moving him toward the street, so that a few people, puzzled, thought, that it was the chief who was being taken into custody.
“They’re going to her ranch,” Connolly said, getting in the car. “Up past Tesuque.”
But when they reached the Alameda, one of Holliday’s men, on traffic duty, had seen the car going west.
