stopped. The only things in it that stayed the same were the killings and the river of narcotics flowing to the north. The poor suffered and worked in sweatshops and lived in hovels and abandoned their children to live on the streets of Mexico City. Why did they not all rise up and kill their masters? Krill had no answer. Could it be that they were holy in their passivity? As with Negrito, these were ideas he could not fathom, at least not adequately. Maybe that was why Negrito had become his companion and lieutenant. This last conclusion was a disturbing one, and he did not want to dwell further on it.
He saw Mimo and Lupa coming through the trees and tall grass, bent down, their unshaved faces as severe as those of men staring into an ice storm.
“?Que pasa?” Krill asked.
Their eyes avoided his. Lupa looked over his shoulder.
“?Digame!” Krill said.
“Muerto,” Lupa said.
“?Quiene?” Krill asked.
“Ellos,” Mimo replied.
“Do you think I am stupid? What did you do out there?” Krill said in English.
Neither man replied. They squatted and kneaded their thighs as though they had run a long distance. They wiped their noses on their hands and felt in their pockets for tobacco or chewing gum, then looked with relief over their shoulders when they heard Negrito coming through the brush, bent low, a button-down shirt wadded in his hand.
“What happened out there?” Krill said.
“We took care of them guys. Like you told me. The second guy fought,” Negrito replied.
“What is in your hand?”
“Nothing anybody’s gonna miss. At least them guys ain’t.”
“Do not play games with me, Negrito.”
“Krill, we are doing these things out of loyalty to you. We ain’t getting paid. Why are you on my case, man?”
“Put the shirt on the ground and open it.”
“I am at your orders. But you make a big thing out of nothing. You didn’t want no ears. So I took their noses. They were dead. What does a dead man care about a nose? What’s he gonna smell? There ain’t no flowers in a grave, at least the graves these guys are gonna have.”
“The second man? You said he fought. He alerted others?”
“He couldn’t talk, know what I mean?” Negrito drew a finger across his throat. “But he fought hard just the same. I think he was Russian. The Russians got cojones like baseballs. You got to kill them guys really dead. Krill?”
“?Que pasa?” Krill answered, overwhelmed by the processes of Negrito’s mind.
Negrito seemed to stare at the stone house and the light falling out of the windows on the patio and the windmill palms and umbrella trees and the dark surface of the swimming pool. The wind gusted, wrinkling the water, rustling the limp chains on the swing set. His brow furrowed. “Me and Lupa and Mimo was talking,” he said. “The inside of that house is like a bank. There’s got to be cash all over it. Maybe cocaine, too. We do everybody in there, man, then take what we want.”
“No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’? Come on, cabron. We suppose to work for nothing? It ain’t fair. We’re amigos. We have always shared. But you can’t share nothing.”
“Go back on your own if you don’t like our mission.”
“I will never leave you.”
“Then do as I say.”
“And what is that? To let the Russian’s friends hunt us down? We’re gonna kill them all, right? If we kill them all, why not take what should be ours? All of this land belonged to our ancestors. Now it is owned by everybody except us.”
“You are a logical man. But we do not have an issue with anyone but Josef Sholokoff. I do not want his possessions. We avenge Minister Cody. We made fun of his manhood, but it was he who set the souls of my children free. For that I honor his memory. Do not intrude upon my purpose here.”
Negrito raised his big hands and turned in a circle like a baboon attempting a pirouette. “Then let’s kill the Russian and be gone. I am tired of this place. Do you want me to do it? I would do it with great pleasure. I am tired of talking about baptism and souls while we don’t get paid for the work we do. I am not a mystic. I believe in the knife and gun and dealing seriously with my enemies.”
“You also believe in the shovel.”
“You speak of my cemetery? I signal our adversaries of our potential.”
“You keep a museum under the ground for your pleasure. As a ghoul would. Vamonos,” Krill said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked off through the brush and started down the incline, Negrito’s close-set pig eyes slipping off the side of his face.
As Krill approached the stone house, he forgot about Negrito and began to think about the challenge at hand. When the two guards Negrito had killed did not report in, others would be sent outside to find them. In the meantime, Krill had to find a spot that would allow him a clean shot through the front window. He thought he could hear the sound of a television coming from the front of the house, but in the wind he couldn’t be sure. His informant had told him that Sholokoff was staying at the house with no more than four men. Two of those were already taken care of. If Krill could get a clear shot at Sholokoff and kill him instantly, he might not have to kill his men, too. Few hired killers were willing to risk their lives for a dead employer. But if they chose to avenge their employer’s death, they would share the fate of their comrades on the hillside, Krill thought, and the choice would be theirs, not his.
He stayed in the shadow of the mountain and found a flat place up on a bench behind a rock, perhaps thirty yards from the front of the house, with an unobstructed view through the picture-glass living room window. He removed a small pair of binoculars from a pouch on his web belt and focused them through the glass. A diminutive, gray-headed, wizen-faced man in a belted scarlet robe was watching television from a reclining chair. His wiry beard and angular features made Krill think of a ferret or a toy constructed of Popsicle sticks and glue. How could one so small possess so much wealth and exert so much power over others? Krill wondered. Why did the gringos allow this tiny man to do so much damage in their country? The narcotics he sold were the poor man’s hydrogen bomb. But that was their business and not his. Krill wrapped his left forearm in the rifle sling, fitted his right hand in the pistol grip, and looked through the iron sights. Behind him, he could hear Negrito breathing in the darkness, an aura of dried sweat and tobacco and wood smoke emanating from his body.
“?Que bueno, hombre!” Negrito said.
“Do not talk,” Krill said, shifting the bipod on the rock, depressing the barrel slightly so the hood on the front sight formed a perfect circle around Sholokoff’s tiny head. He tightened his finger on the trigger, letting out his breath, his cheek flush against the dull black finish of the rifle stock.
“ Chingado, go ahead!” Negrito said. “Burn the whole magazine. It’s time we got out of here. I want to fuck my woman tonight.”
Krill had released his finger from the trigger and was staring numbly down the incline at the window. Two little girls and a little boy had just run from a side room and climbed into Sholokoff’s lap. Negrito leaned over Krill’s shoulder to see better, his loins brushing against Krill’s buttocks, his body odor and the smell of onions and garlic and fried meat on his breath enveloping Krill in a toxic cloud.
“Fuck, man, do it,” Negrito said. “I hear a plane. Them hunters come in and out of here all the time. They got a landing strip on the other side of the house.”
“Shut your mouth,” Krill said.
“You ain’t thinking straight. We already killed two guys. You got to finish the job, man. Sholokoff has many friends. We cannot have this man hunting us. Do it now, jefe.”
“Take your hand off my shoulder.”
“Then shoot.”
“You will not give me orders.”
“Then give me the rifle.”
