Rawbone finally answered Doctor Stallings. 'Back at the train you said something that stayed with me.'
'We're here to talk about-'
'Grandeur and finality,' said Rawbone. 'That was it. Yeah. We'll cover last night. But first ... let's talk finality.'
JOHN LOURDES SAT at his hotel room desk and folded up a letter for the man who was his father. He looked out upon the riled waters of the Panuco as he awaited Rawbone's return. That morning he had taken to the motorcycle, challenging the rains. He'd driven the oil fields with their soaking and grime-stained laborers, and their women in tarpaper cafeterias and stifling warehouses, and Indians on rickety carretas and junker wagons relegated to the lowest scraps of work. They existed under the guidon of imposed fealty. A stranglehold of the futile and the feudal that was, in fact, what had brought his mother to America. It was why she'd ridden boxcars and walked bleached wastes to cross the Rio Grande and stand naked in that fumigation shed all to reach the promise of freedom and opportunity.
He was thinking of his mother as he sat on that idling motorcycle in the rain atop the same rise where Diaz and his surrogates stood in that film, and used it to lie to the world about the state of their nation. And John Lourdes, under a rolling thunder, came to see how much he was his mother's journey. He was not only the agent of her hopes but the eternal argument of her trials toward that freedom and opportunity.
Lightning flashed across the window as John Lourdes slipped his notes into the envelope with the letter, then set it down on the desk. He drank a beer and smoked and watched the harbored storm until the door lock turned.
Rawbone took his sodden hat and put it on the bureau. He hung his coat on the closet door. He went and sat in a cushioned chair in the far corner, all without a word.
'Is it the mayor?' said John Lourdes.
The father answered in a guarded tone, aware of the effect what he was about to say would have. 'We are to pick up the munitions at dusk. We are to deliver them to the appointed place at the appointed time. We are to kill the men who come for them. We are then to go to the mayor's house. I am told there is a carriage barn on the property. We are to put the munitions there-'
'What?'
'We are to put the munitions there. The mayor will be at home. We are to kill him. We are to kill anyone and everyone in the house, to leave no witness to that fact.'
They sat now with the knowing. Rain spattered across the window. Drops that seemed to carry the weight of time.
'I believe Doctor Stallings sent those women to work at the house knowing full well what he had in mind. Their actions in the desert marked them. And you also. Our friend the doctor asked if I could fully trust you.'
John Lourdes sat back. 'And what did you say?'
'That I could only fully trust myself.'
John Lourdes thought through the situation. 'You were giving him clearance to put a bullet through my head.'
'Would you have handled it any differently?'
John Lourdes shook his head no. It was, after all, a practical application of strategy.
'If the girl's welfare means something to you, get her out. Then strike it from here, Mr. Lourdes. You've exceeded what's expected.'
John Lourdes stood. He took the envelope and walked across the room and set it on the bed against the father's bindle.
'What is that?'
'A letter to justice Knox. I had it notarized so there'd be no question as to its authenticity. My notes are in there also.'
The father took a long breath. He eyed the letter.
'I put the film I took from the funeraria in your bindle.'
'My bindle?'
The father leaned out from the chair and took the envelope but hesitated opening it. Rather, he looked up at the son with a frank stare.
'The letter says you've earned your immunity. I need to make sure my notes get back. I'm leaving that to you.'
The father tried to absorb and understand. 'Last night in the bar. I get it now.'
John Lourdes walked back to the desk. He reached for the open
