did the hit. At some place called Chapala Crossing. But I never believed that.”
Jack could hear the wind blowing in the street, the traffic light at the intersection swinging on its support cables, the tin roof on a mechanic’s shed swelling against the joists.
“You’re serious about your work, but you’d never hurt a woman,” she said. “That’s what I told them. That’s right, isn’t it, Preacher?”
He closed the cell phone in his palm, his hand shaking, his throat as dry and thick as rust.
Krill had never given much thought to the mercenaries he had known. To him, they existed in a separate world, one in which men did not serve a cause or even fight out of necessity. They were simply uniformed employees without depth or ideology, with no desire to know either the enemies they were paid to kill or the civilians they were paid to defend or the countrymen like Krill they were paid to fight alongside.
When Krill thought about them at all, it was in terms of their physicality and their access to North American goods and to fine weapons of international manufacture. Mercenaries were almost always barbered and clean. When they sweated, they smelled of deodorant rather than the glands. They were inoculated against all the diseases of the third world. Their bodies were hard, their stomachs flat, their shoulders and arms of the kind that could carry ninety pounds of supplies and weapons and take the shock of a parachute opening, sometimes crashing through a jungle canopy in the dark, jolting inside their harnesses with enough force to break the back of a cow.
He mostly thought of them in terms of what they were not. They were not haunted by the specters that trailed behind Krill everywhere he went. They did not fear their sleep or need to drink themselves into a stupor when the light went out of the sky and the wind was filled with the sounds of people crying in a village while their huts burned and belts of cached ammunition began popping in the heat. The mercenaries opened their tinned food with a tiny can opener they called a P-38, their eyes fixed on the task with the quiet intensity of a watchmaker at his craft. The deeds they had just committed, no more than a kilometer away, had already disappeared from their lives. Why should it be otherwise? They were not moralists; they were advisers and oversight personnel and not makers of policy. They came and went, as shadows did. Empires fell apart and died and new nations were born. A footprint in a jungle was as transient as the life span of an insect. The porous stone altars of the Mayans still contained the blood of the innocents who had been sacrificed by pagan priests centuries ago. What were the lives of a few more Indians? Krill believed this was how the mercenaries thought when they thought at all. In truth, he had never really cared about these men one way or another. Not until now.
His cell had a domed ceiling and seemed to bloom with a cool, fecund odor that was like water in the bottom of a dark well or mouse droppings inside a cave that dripped with moisture. There was another odor, too, one that was like mushrooms someone had trodden upon in a forest that never saw sunlight. It was like the smell in the disinterred bodies of his children. It was an odor that only a grave produced.
Krill propped his arms against the bars on the door and watched the mercenary the others called Frank. “You took off your mask,” Krill said.
“We’re all family here,” Frank said.
“You’re a nice-looking guy, man. Why are you a hump for a man like the Russian?”
“Sometime we’ll have a beer and I’ll fill you in.”
“I don’t have illusions about my situation. But I think you do,” Krill said.
Frank grinned. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt scissored off just below the nipples and a pair of black cargo trousers with big snap pockets stitched on the thighs. He had the clean, chiseled features and freshly scrubbed look of a 1930s leading man. “Just out of curiosity, what were you doing with the zip?” he asked. “Don’t give me that seeking-forgiveness crap, either.”
“What does ‘zip’ mean?”
“As in ‘zipper-head.’ I’m talking about the Chinese broad.”
“She can absolve sins.”
“Did you know your ancestors never invented the wheel?”
“Before the Spaniards came, there were no draft animals. Why would my ancestors want a wheel when they had no animals to hitch it to? They did not spend their time on non-utile pursuits.”
“You said I’m operating under some illusions.”
“When you killed Negrito, you freed his spirit. You don’t know it yet, but you got some serious problems, man.”
“You’re inside a prison cell and I’m outside of it. But I’m in trouble? You got to clue me in here. I’m fascinated by Indian mumbo jumbo.”
“Negrito wanted to be me, to live inside my skin. The way an assassin wants to become his victim. But he was too loyal to hurt his friend. So you did it for him and let his spirit leave his body and go inside mine. Now, no matter what you do to me, Negrito is going to be waiting for you. That is very bad for you, man. You haven’t figured that out yet, but you will.”
“Can your friend’s spirit rise out of concrete? Because you’re gonna be part of the foundation in Josef’s new barn.”
“Me cago en tu puta madre. Or are you already standing in line for that?”
“What did you say?”
“‘I defecate in your mother’s womb.’ That was Negrito’s favorite expression. See, I told you, Negrito is on the loose.”
“See my friend there, carrying that bucket out? Know what’s in the bucket?”
“The waste your mother usually makes you carry out?”
“Take another guess.”
A thick-bodied man, stripped to the waist, with a buzz haircut, was walking up the cellar stairs, a bucket swinging from his left hand. The muscles in his back looked like oiled rope. In the yellow glow of the bare bulb that hung above the steps, Krill could see stringlike tendrils of blood on the man’s skin.
“The item in that bucket was donated by one of our other guests,” Frank said. “Those two guys you whacked and mutilated at Josef’s place were friends of mine. Keep shooting off your mouth, greaseball. I’ll make sure you’re a donor, too.”
At nine A.M. of the same day, an independent taxi operator parked his vehicle in front of Hackberry’s office and came inside with a package under his arm. The package was wrapped in twine and thick brown paper. “Got a delivery for you from the airport, Sheriff,” he said.
“Who’s it from?” Hackberry asked, looking up from his desk.
“I don’t know. There’s nothing written on it except your name. I got a call telling me to pick it up at the ticket counter and to keep the fifty dollars in the envelope tucked under the twine.”
“Where’s the envelope?”
“In the trash. I didn’t think it was important. What, you reckon it’s a bomb or something?”
“Leave it there.”
“It’s cold. Maybe it’s some food.”
After the taxi driver had gone, Hackberry went into the outer office. “Pam, tell Felix to go to the airport and see what he can find out about a package that was left for me at the ticket counter. Then come into my office, please.”
He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and removed a pocketknife from his desk drawer and opened the long blade on it. He placed the flat of his hand on the wrapping paper. He could feel the coldness in the box through his glove.
“Put on a vest and a face shield, Hack,” Pam said.
“Step back,” he replied, and cut the twine. He inserted his fingers under the paper and peeled it away in sections from the top of a corrugated cardboard box.
“Hack, call the FBI,” Pam said.
He pulled back a strip of tape holding the flaps on the box’s top in place and folded the flaps back against the sides. He looked down at a carefully packed layer of Ziploc bags containing dry ice. One of the bags had broken open, and the ice had slid down deeper into the box and was vaporizing against a round, compacted lump of matter wrapped inside a sheet of clear plastic. There were whorls of color pressed against the plastic that made him think of an uncured ham that had been freezer-burned in a meat locker.
“What is it?” Pam said, staring at the blankness of his expression.
