else.
Daisy sat in back, upright and alert. Leftwich offered Ozburn a nip from his ancient battered flask, then took one for himself. Ozburn was pleased as always by its flavor and cool temperature. It hit him hard and fast. It wasn't like other drinks, Ozburn thought. It brought energy and clear thinking and confidence.
'Nice truck,' said Ozburn.
'I'm happy to help. And I have a table for us at Amigos, just as you asked. How is Seliah?'
Ozburn looked over Daisy's snout at Father Joe. The priest's face gave off green tracers. 'We'll talk about that later.'
'But is everything okay?'
'Why wouldn't it be?'
'I don't like the sound of this, Sean.'
They sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, Daisy allowed to join them after Ozburn growled at the manager and Father Joe gave him a fifty-dollar bill. She lay under the table, next to Ozburn's duffel.
Ozburn ordered a Tecate and two shots of reposado, Leftwich the same. The waitress brought the drinks and a bowl of water for Daisy. They ordered dinner and when she was gone they toasted with the tequila shots. Ozburn dug two vitamin packs and five aspirin from his pocket and washed them down with beer. Anything to keep the feeling in his feet and the pain from his joints.
Leftwich watched him. 'So you visited the Yuma safe house, did you?'
'Not quite. They were expecting me.'
Father Joe regarded Ozburn with his usual optimistic expression. He looked ridiculous in the cowboy hat. 'You must have expected that, after your visits to the other two.'
Ozburn said nothing.
'Exactly who was expecting you-ATF or the baby assassins?'
Ozburn sipped the tequila and thought about Seliah. He felt his anger stir. His body was aching more now and he wondered if he should increase his vitamins and supplements again. 'It was probably Hood. He's the most durable of them.'
'Be very cautious if you try again, Sean. Blowdown will be expecting you, and the sicarios will either be gone or very jittery.'
'I didn't ask you here for advice about Yuma.'
'No, of course not,' said Father Joe. 'Just trying to catch up with your busy life, Sean.'
Ozburn waited until the food came and the waitress had left. He looked across the dining room through the bright green tracers at the scattered guests. Even with the sunglasses his eyes stung and watered. His fingertips tingled. He couldn't feel his feet and he wondered if he could stand up right now. He was thirsty but just the sight of the red plastic tumbler of ice water made him nauseous. For the first time in all of this he was feeling the scouts of defeat, stealing up on him for a look into his empty soul. He finished the tequila.
'Father Joe, Seliah is sick and I am, too.'
'Sick?'
'Body and soul. Deeply.'
'But you look young and strong, Sean.'
'Tell me about the bat in your room at the Volcano View, Joe. Tell me the truth or I will become very angry.'
Father's Joe's face went stone serious. He lifted off his hat and set it on the padded leather bench beside him. He ran a hand through his short dark hair.
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'The maid found a bat in your room the morning after I fell asleep in your bed. In the bathroom wastebasket. It was a vampire bat and it was alive.'
'A maid claimed this?'
'Itixa, the head of housekeeping. Hood went down there. He talked to her.'
'There was no bat in my wastebasket unless she herself put it there. I know what I put into my own wastebasket, Sean. Don't you? Rest assured, there was no bat. And I can tell you that Itixa has a passion for beer. She swills the stuff. I saw her unable to walk because of it. And she's widely known around Arenal as a storyteller and a gossip and a woman who has visions.'
Ozburn looked at Leftwich, thinking how easy it would be to snap his neck. The priest's face dissolved in a shower of green tracers. 'Seliah saw the bat, too.'
Leftwich cut into his steak, looking at Ozburn with a questioning expression. 'Oh?'
'Yeah, oh. She looked through your window screen and you were sitting at the foot of the bed. When I was conked out. You were leaning forward, doing something to my feet with your hands.'
'And she's certainly right about that, Sean. But good gracious, I was simply fanning a fly off your toes. Remember what happened to Eduardo? I explained this to Seliah that night. It was an almost absentminded reflex to the bothersome fly. My larger concern was how to wake you up and get you back to your own room so I could get some sleep.'
'And when she came into the room you stood up and something dropped into the bedspread that was on the floor. You saw it, too. Remember? You saw it, Father Leftwich. Seliah said you both looked but couldn't find it.'
Father Joe swallowed a bite of his steak, nodding, pointing his fork at Ozburn. 'I do remember. That part of Seliah's story is accurate also. We found nothing in the bedspread. Nothing under the bed. Nothing at all.' Apparently satisfied with this conclusion, Leftwich cut another piece of meat.
'Seliah says that what dropped from your hands was a bat,' said Ozburn.
'That's strange, because she said nothing at all about a bat that night. While we searched, we speculated what it could have been and where it could have gone. But it's absolutely impossible that it was a bat. I'll tell you why-because I would never touch a bat with my bare hands. Not in a million years. I fear them.'
'Seliah thinks you trapped it in the bedspread, probably crushed it right then and there, and hid it from her.'
'But why? For what reason?'
'Just a little sleight of hand is all it would have taken-late, poor light, Seliah still half-drunk.'
Father Joe's face flushed and Ozburn saw the anger in his eyes. The priest set down his knife and fork on the plate and looked at Ozburn. 'What does she imagine I did with this alleged bat?'
'She believes you used it to give me rabies. She believes I gave it to her a few weeks later when we made love.'
'Rabies? You two have rabies, and I caused it? Sean. Sean, what have I ever done to Seliah to give her such a low opinion of me? What have I done to you? Ever?'
'She tested positive for it, Joe. She's in a hospital right now, in a therapeutic coma. They knocked her out and they're hoping she can outlive the virus. She's got just a very small chance of waking up again.'
Leftwich leaned back into the booth. His ruddy face went pale. A moment later a tear ran down his face. 'This is all wrong. It's terribly and hugely wrong. There was no bat in my room. Did you hear me? No bat. Thus, there is no rabies.'
Leftwich stared at Ozburn as the tears came. 'Sean. You don't know this about me-how could you-but I studied medicine at Trinity College in Dublin before I decided on the priesthood. I did not graduate, but I came close. So I must ask you-who are these doctors? Did you know that very few doctors have even seen a case of human rabies? Now, look at you, Sean. You don't look to me like a man with rabies. Rabies tests are complicated and best done postmortem. The presence of antigens is not always conclusive. What if this is just a simple misdiagnosis by inexperienced physicians? Down through the centuries rabies has been one of the most misdiagnosed of human diseases.'
Ozburn looked at the priest's face, suspended in a pool of bright green light. Ozburn's legs were numb to his knees and he wondered if it was his posture. With great effort he was able to move his feet apart and he felt a tingle of feeling down in his toes. He felt Daisy next through his boot. What a feeling to have feeling.
'These last seven weeks have been a living hell for us,' said Ozburn. 'Pain. Anger. Agitation. Fear of water, fear of light. Insane thoughts, insane sensation. How do you diagnose that, Father Joe?'
'Well, let's think it through. I can surmise by your vitamins and aspirins that you're not feeling well. You wear your sunglasses even at night, so I know that you're sensitive to light. What if you and Seliah contracted an unusual
