The Spyhole Motel was an unlikely oasis, a resting place for travelers who had almost entirely despaired of ever finding respite before the Mexican border. Perhaps they had skirted Yuma, tired of lights and people, longing to see the desert stars in all their glory, and had instead found themselves facing mile upon mile of stone and sand and cactus, bordered by high mountains they could not name. Even to stop briefly by the roadside was to invite thirst and discomfort, and maybe the attentions of the Border Patrol, for the coyotes ran their illegals along these routes, and the migras were always on the lookout for those who might be colluding with them in the hope of making some easy money. No, it was better not to stop here, wiser to keep moving in the hope of finding comfort elsewhere, and that was what the Spyhole promised.
A sign on the highway pointed south, advising the weary of the proximity of a soft bed, cold sodas, and functioning air-conditioning. The motel was simple and unadorned, apart from a vintage illuminated sign that buzzed in the night like a great neon bug. The Spyhole consisted of fifteen rooms set in a wide N shape, with the office at the end of the left arm. The walls were a light yellow, although without closer examination it was difficult to say whether this was their original color or if constant exposure to the sands had resulted in their transformation to that hue, as though the desert would tolerate the motel’s presence only if it could lay some claim to it by absorbing it into the landscape. It lay in a natural alcove, a gap between mountains known as the Devil’s Spyhole. The mountains gave the motel a little shade, although barely steps from its office the heat of the desert winds blew through the Devil’s Spyhole itself like the blast from the open door of an incinerator. A sign outside the office warned visitors not to wander from the motel’s property. It was illustrated with snakes and spiders and scorpions, and a drawing of a cloud puffing superheated air toward the black stick figure of a man. The drawing might almost have been comical, were it not for the fact that blackened figures were regularly found on the sands not far from the motel: illegals, mostly, tempted by the deceptive promise of great wealth.
The motel derived as much of its custom from referrals as from those who saw its sign in passing on the highway. There was a truck stop ten miles west, Harry’s Best Rest, with an all-night diner, a convenience store, showers and bathrooms, and space for up to fifty rigs. There was also a noisy cantina, frequented by specimens of human life that were barely one step up from the predatory desert creatures outside. The truck stop, with its lights and noise and promise of food and company, sometimes attracted those who had no business being there, travelers who were merely tired and lost and seeking a place to rest. Harry’s Best Rest was not meant for them, and its staff had learned that it was prudent to send them on their way with a suggestion that they seek some comfort at the Spyhole. Harry’s Best Rest was owned by a man named Harry Dean, who occupied a role that would have been familiar to his predecessors on the border a century before. Harry walked a thin line, doing just enough to satisfy the law and keep the migras and Smokies from his door, which in turn usually enabled him to stay on the right side of those individuals, mired in criminality, who frequented the shadier corners of his establishment. Harry paid some people off, and was in turn paid off. He turned a blind eye to the whores who serviced the truckers in their rigs or in the little cabanas to the rear, and to the dealers who supplied the drivers with uppers and other narcotics to keep them awake or bring them down as the need arose, as long as they kept their supply off the premises and safely stored amid the tangles of junk in the back of their assorted pickups and automobiles, the smaller vehicles interspersed among the huge rigs like bottom-feeders following the big predators.
It was 2 A.M. on Monday, and the Best Rest had quietened down some as Harry helped Miguel, his bar manager, to clean up behind the counter and restock the beer and liquor. Technically the cantina was no longer open for business, although anyone who wanted a drink at that time of night could still be served at the diner next door. Nevertheless, men continued to sit in the shadows, nursing their shots, some talking together, some alone. They were not the kind of men who could be told to leave. They would fade into the night in their own time, and of their own accord. Until then, Harry would not trouble them.
A connecting doorway led from the cantina into the diner. A sign on the diner side announced that the bar was now closed, but the main door to the cantina remained unlocked for the present. Harry heard it open and looked up to see a pair of men enter. Both were white. One was tall and in his early forties, with graying hair and some scarring to his right eye. He wore a blue shirt, a blue jacket, and jeans that were a little long at the ends, but was otherwise largely unremarkable in appearance.
The other man was almost as tall as his companion, but obscenely fat, his enormous belly hanging pendulously between his thighs like a great tongue lolling from an open mouth. His body appeared out of proportion to his legs, which were short and slightly bowed, as though they had struggled for many years to support the load they were required to bear and were at last buckling under the strain. The fat man’s face was perfectly round and quite pale, but his features were very delicate: green eyes enclosed by long, dark lashes; a thin, unbroken nose; and a long mouth with full, dark lips that were almost feminine. But any passing resemblance to traditional notions of facial beauty were undone by his chin, and the tumorous, distended neck in which it lost itself. It rolled over his shirt collar, purple and red, like an intimation of the gut that lay farther down. Harry was reminded of an old walrus that he had once seen in a zoo, a great beast of blubber and distended flesh on the verge of collapse. This man, by contrast, was far from the grave. Despite his bulk, he walked with a strange lightness, seemingly gliding across the sticky, shell-strewn floor of the cantina. Harry’s shirt was streaked with sweat even though the AC was blasting, yet the fat man’s face was entirely dry, and his white shirt and gray jacket appeared untouched by perspiration. He was balding, but his remaining hair was very black and cut short against his skull. Harry found himself mesmerized by the man’s appearance, the mix of terrible ugliness and near beauty, of obscene bulk and irreconcilable grace. Then the spell was broken, and Harry spoke.
“Hey,” said Harry. “We’re closed.”
The fat man paused, the sole of his right foot poised just above the floor. Harry could see an unbroken peanut just beneath his shoe leather.
The foot began to complete its descent. The shell started to flatten beneath the weight.
And Harry was suddenly confronted by the face of the fat man, inches from his own, staring straight at him. Then, before he could even begin to take in his presence, the fat man was to his left, then to his right, all the time whispering in a language Harry couldn’t understand, the words an unintelligible mass of sibilance and occasional harsh consonants, their precise meaning lost to him but their intimation clear.
Stay out of my way. Stay out of my way or you’ll be sorry.
The fat man’s face was a blur, his body zipping from side to side, his voice an insistent throbbing inside Harry’s head. Harry felt nauseous. He wanted it to stop. Why wasn’t anyone intervening on his behalf? Where was Miguel?
Harry reached out a hand in an effort to support himself against the bar.
And the movement around him suddenly ceased.
Harry heard the peanut shell crack. The fat man was where he had previously been, fifteen or twenty feet from the bar, his colleague behind him. Both were looking at Harry, and the fat man was smiling slightly, privy to a secret that only he and Harry now shared.
In a far corner, Harry saw a hand raised: Octavio, who took care of the whores, absorbing a cut of their income in return for protection, and passing on a little of it to Harry in turn.
This was none of Harry’s business. He nodded once, and returned to cleaning off the overspill from the beer taps. He managed to complete his task, then slipped quietly into the little bathroom behind the bar, where he sat on the toilet seat for a time, his hands trembling, before he vomited violently into the sink. When he returned to the cantina, the fat man and his partner were gone. Only Octavio was waiting for him. He didn’t look much better than Harry felt.
“You okay?” he asked.
Harry swallowed. He could still taste bile in his mouth.
“Better we forget, you understand?” said Octavio.
“Yeah, I get you.”
Octavio gestured to the bar, pointing out the bottle of brandy on the top shelf. Harry took the bottle and poured the alcohol into a highball glass. He figured that Octavio didn’t need a snifter, not this time. The Mexican put a twenty on the bar.
“You need one too,” he said.
Harry poured himself a glass, keeping his hand heavy.
“There was a girl,” said Octavio. “Not local. Black Mexican.”
“I remember,” said Harry. “She was here tonight. She’s new. Figured her for one of yours.”
“She won’t be back,” said Octavio.
Harry lifted the glass to his lips, but found that he couldn’t drink. The taste of bile was returning. Vera, that was the girl’s name, or the name she had given when Harry had asked. Few of these women used their real name for business. He’d spoken to her once or twice, just in passing. He’d seen her maybe three times in all, but no more than that. She’d seemed pretty nice, for a whore.
“Okay,” said Harry.
“Okay,” said Octavio.
And, like that, the girl was gone.
∗ ∗ ∗
There were only three rooms occupied at the Spyhole Motel. In the first room, a young couple on a road trip to Mexico were bickering, still argumentative after a long, uncomfortable journey. Soon they would descend into uneasy, prickly silence, until the boy made the first move toward reconciliation, heading out into the desert night and returning with sodas from the machine by the office. He would place one of the cans against the small of the girl’s back, and she would react with a shiver. He would kiss her, and tell her that he was sorry. She would kiss him back. They would drink, and soon the heat and the arguments would appear to be forgotten.
In the next room, a man sat in his vest upon a bed, watching a Mexican game show. He had paid for his room in cash. He could have stayed in Yuma, for he had business there in the morning, but his face was known, and he disliked staying in the city for longer than he had to. Instead, he sat in the remote motel and watched couples hug each other as they won prizes worth less than the money in his wallet.
The last room on this block of the motel was taken by another solo traveler. She was young, barely into her twenties, and she was running. They called her Vera in Harry’s Best Rest, but those who were seeking her knew her as Sereta. Neither name was real, but it no longer mattered to her what she was called. She had no family now, or none that cared. In the beginning, she had sent money home to her mother in Ciudad Juarez, supplementing the meager income she gleaned from her work in one of the big maquiladoras on Avenida Tecnologico. Sereta and her older sister Josefina had worked there too, until that November day when everything changed for them.
When she called home Sereta would tell Lilia, her mother, that she was working as a waitress in New York. Lilia did not question her, even though she knew that her daughter, before she left for the north, had frequently been seen leaving the gated communities of the Campestre Juarez, where the wealthy Americans lived, and the only local women admitted to such places were servants and whores. Then, in November 2001, the body of Sereta’s sister Josefina was one of eight found in an overgrown cotton field near the Sitio Colosio Valle mall. The bodies were badly mutilated, and the protests of the poor increased in volume, for these were not the first young women to die in this place, and there were stories told of wealthy men behind barred gates who had now added killing for pleasure to their list of recreations. Sereta’s mother told her to leave and not to come back. She never mentioned the Campestre Juarez to her daughter, and the rich men in their black cars, but she knew.
One year later, Lilia too was dead, taken by a cancer that her daughter believed was a physical manifestation of pain and grief, and now Sereta was alone. In New York, she had found a kindred spirit in Alice, but that friendship too had been sundered. Alice should have stayed with her, but the grip of the sickness was tight upon her, and she had made her own choice to remain in the big city. Sereta, instead, had headed south. She knew these desert places and how they worked. She wanted those who were pursuing her to think that she had crossed into Mexico. Instead, she planned to skirt the border, making for the West Coast, where she hoped to disappear for a time until she could figure out her next move. She knew that what she had was valuable. After all, she had listened to a man die for it.
Sereta too was watching television, but the volume was down low. She found the glow comforting but did not wish the babble to disturb her thoughts. Money was the problem. Money was always the problem. She had been forced to run so suddenly that there was no time to plan, no time to assemble what few funds she had to her name. She had a friend bring her car to her, then drove away, putting as much space between herself and the city as possible.
She’d heard about the Best Rest in the past. It was a place where nobody asked too many questions and where a girl could make some money quickly, then move on without any further obligation, as long as she paid her cut to the right people. She took a room at the Spyhole, negotiating a pretty good deal, and had nearly two thousand dollars put away after just a few days, thanks in part to a particularly generous tip from a truck driver whose sexual tastes, messy but harmless, she had indulged the night before. Soon she would move along. Maybe just one more night, though, she thought, even as, unbeknownst to her, her existence had already bound itself to the lives of those who had taken her sister.
For far to the north, the Mexican named Garcia might have smiled familiarly at the mention of Josefina’s name, recalling her final moments as he busied himself with the remains of another young woman . . .
There was only one other person on the motel property. He was a slim young man of Mexican descent, and he was seated behind the reception desk in the office, reading a book. The book was entitled The Devil’s Highway, and it told of the deaths of fourteen Mexicans who had attempted to cross the border illegally not many miles from where the motel lay. The book made the young man angry, even as he felt a sense of relief that his parents had made a good life here and that such a death was not destined to be his.
It was almost 3 A.M., and he was about to lock the door and retire to the back room for some sleep, when he saw the two white men approach the office. He had not heard their car pull up and supposed that they must have deliberately parked some way off. Already he was on his guard, for that made no sense to him. There was a gun beneath the counter, but he had never had cause even to show it. Now that most people paid by credit card, motels provided poor pickings for thieves.
One of the men was tall and dressed in blue. The heels of his cowboy boots clicked upon the tiles as he entered the office. His companion was absurdly corpulent. The clerk, whose name was Ruiz, believed that he had never before seen a man who looked quite so unhealthy, and he had seen many fat Americans in his young life. The fat man’s belly hung so far between his thighs that Ruiz guessed that he must have been obliged to lift it up each time he made water. He carried in his hand a tan straw hat with a white band, and wore a light jacket over a white shirt, and tan pants. His shoes were brown, and polished to a high sheen.
“How you doing tonight?” asked Ruiz.
The thin man answered.
“We’re doing well. You full up?”
“Nah, when we’re full we turn on the NO VACANCIES sign out on the road to save folks a trip.”
“You can do that from here?” asked the thin man. He sounded genuinely interested.
“Sure,” said Ruiz. He pointed to a box upon the wall, lined with switches. Each was carefully labeled with a handwritten sticker. “I just flick a switch.”
“Amazing,” said the thin man.
“Fascinating,” said his colleague, speaking for the first time. Unlike the other man, he did not sound interested. His voice was soft, and slightly higher in pitch than a man’s voice should have been.
“So, would you like a room?” asked Ruiz. He was tired and wanted to get the two men booked in and their cards processed so that he could catch up on his sleep. He also, he realized, wanted to get them out of the office. The fat man smelled peculiar. He hadn’t noticed any stench from the one in blue, but the tubby guy had an unusual body odor. He smelled earthy, and Ruiz involuntarily found himself picturing pale worms breaking through damp clods of dirt and black beetles scurrying for the shelter of stones.
“We may need more than one,” replied Blue.
“Two?”
“How many rooms do you have?”
“Fifteen altogether, but three are occupied.”
“Three guests.”
“Four.”
Ruiz stopped talking. There was something wrong here. Blue was no longer even listening. Instead, he had picked up Ruiz’s book and was looking at the cover.
“Luis Urrea,” he read. “The Devil’s Highway.”
He turned to his companion.
“Look,” he said, displaying the book to him. “Maybe we should buy a copy.”
The fat man glanced at the cover.
“I know the route,” he said drily. “If you want it, just take that one and save some money.”
Ruiz was about to say something when the fat man struck him in the throat, slamming him back against the wall. Ruiz experienced a sense of pain and constriction as small, delicate parts of himself were crushed by the blow. He was having trouble breathing. He tried to form words, but they would not come. He fell against the wall and a second blow came. He slid slowly to the floor. His face was turning dark as he suffocated, his windpipe entirely ruined. Ruiz began to claw at his mouth and throat. He could hear a clicking noise, like the ticking of a clock counting down his final moments. The two men did not appear particularly interested in his sufferings. The fat man walked around the desk, stepping carefully over Ruiz. The dying man again caught the smell of him as he switched on the NO VACANCIES sign out on the highway. His companion, meanwhile, flicked through that night’s guest registration cards.
“One couple in two,” he told the fat man. “One male in three. The name sounds Mexican. One woman in twelve, registered under the name Vera Gooding.”
The fat man didn’t acknowledge him. He was now standing over Ruiz, watching blood and spittle trail from the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll take the couple,” he said. “You take the Mexican.”
He squatted down beside Ruiz. It was a surprisingly graceful movement, like the dipping of a swan’s head. He extended his right hand and brushed the hair from the young man’s brow. There was a mark on the underside of the fat man’s forearm. It looked like a twin-pronged fork, recently burned into the flesh. The fat man turned Ruiz’s head from left to right.
“Do you think we should bring it back for our Mexican friend?” asked Blue. “He works well with bone.”
“Too much trouble,” said the fat man.
His tone was dismissive. The fat man gripped Ruiz’s hair, turning his head slightly, then leaned in close to him. His mouth opened slightly, and Ruiz saw a pink tongue and teeth that tapered to blunt ends. Ruiz’s eyes were bulging, and his face was purple. He spit red fluid, and as he did so the fat man’s lips touched his, his mouth closing entirely upon Ruiz’s, his hand clasping the young man’s face and chin, keeping his jaws apart. The Mexican tried to struggle, but he could not fight both the fat man and the end that was coming. A word flashed in his head, and he thought: Brightwell. What is Brightwell?
His grip upon the fat man’s shoulder loosened, his legs relaxed, and the fat man drew away from him and stood.
“You have blood on your shirt,” Blue told Brightwell.
He sounded bored.
∗ ∗ ∗
Danny Quinn watched his girlfriend as she carefully applied the small brush to her toenails. The polish was a mix of purple and red. It made her look as though her toes were bruised, but Danny decided to keep this opinion to himself. He was content to bask for a time in the afterglow of their lovemaking, taking in her concentration and her poise. At times like these, Danny loved Melanie deeply. He had cheated on her, and would probably cheat on her again, although he prayed each night for the strength to remain faithful. He wondered sometimes at what would happen if she found out about his other life. Danny liked women, but he distinguished between sex and lovemaking. Sex meant little to him, apart from the satiation of an urge. It was like scratching an itch: if his right hand was broken and his back was itchy, then he’d use his left to deal with it. All things being equal, he would prefer to use his right hand, but an itch was an itch, right? If Melanie wasn’t around—and her work with the bank sometimes required her to be away from home for two or three days—then Danny would go elsewhere for his pleasure. Mostly, he told the women involved that he was single. Some of them didn’t even ask. One or two had fallen for him a little, and that had created problems, but he had worked them out. Danny had even used hookers on occasion. The sex was different with them, but he did not consider sex with hookers as cheating on Melanie. There was no emotion involved at all, and Danny reasoned that without emotion there was no real betrayal of his feelings for Melanie. It was clinical, and he always practiced safe sex, even with the ones who offered a little extra.
Deep down, Danny wanted to be the person that Melanie thought he was. He tried to tell himself, each time he strayed, that this would be the last. Sometimes he could go for weeks, even months, without being with another woman, but eventually he would find himself alone for a time, or in a strange city, and the urge to trawl would take him.
But he did love Melanie, and if he could have turned back the clock of his life and made his choices again—his first hooker, and the shame he felt afterward; the first time he cheated on someone, and the guilt that came with it—he believed that he would live his life differently, and that he would be a better, happier man as a result.
I will start again, he lied to himself. It was like alcoholism, or any other addiction. You had to take things one day at a time, and when you fell off the wagon, well, you just got right back up again and started counting from one.
He reached out to stroke Melanie’s back, and heard a knock at the door.
∗ ∗ ∗
Melanie Gardner was afraid that Danny was cheating on her. She didn’t know why she thought it, for none of her friends had ever seen him with another woman, and she had never found any telltale signs on his clothes or in his pockets. Once, while he was sleeping, she had tried to read his e-mails, but he was scrupulous about deleting both sent and received mail, apart from those that had to do with his business. There were a lot of women in his address book, but she did not recognize any of the names. Anyway, Danny was regarded as one of the best electricians in town, and in her experience it was women who tended to make most of the business calls to Danny, probably because their husbands were too ashamed to admit that there was something around the house that they could not repair themselves.
Now, as she sat on the bed, the warmth of him gradually fading, she felt the urge to confront him. She wanted to ask him if he was seeing someone else, if he had ever been with another woman in the time that they had been together. She wanted to look in his eyes as he answered, because she believed that she would be able to tell if he was lying. She loved him. She loved him so much that she was afraid to ask, for if he lied, she would know, and it would break her heart, and if he told her what she feared was the truth, then that would also break her heart. The tension she had been feeling had broken through at last in a dumb argument about music earlier in the evening, and then they had made love even though Melanie did not really want to. It had allowed her to delay the confrontation, nothing more, just as painting her toenails had suddenly seemed a matter of great urgency.
Melanie painstakingly filled in the last patch of clear nail upon her little toe, then placed the brush back in the polish, turning slightly as she did so. She saw Danny reaching out for her.
She opened her mouth to speak at last, and heard a knock at the door.
∗ ∗ ∗
Edgar Certaz thumbed idly at the remote control, flashing through the channels. There were so many that by the time he had finished flicking through them all he had forgotten if there were any of the earlier ones that merited his attention. He settled at last upon a Western. He thought it very slow. Three men were waiting for a train. The train came. A man with a harmonica got off. He killed the three men. An Italian played an Irishman, and an American actor whose face was familiar to him appeared as the villain, which threw Certaz a little as he had only ever seen the American play good guys. There were few Mexicans that he could see, which was good. Certaz was tired of seeing peasants in white clutching sombreros as they appealed for help against bandits from gunmen in black, as though all Mexicans were either victims or cannibals who fed on their own.
Certaz was a middleman, an intermediary. Like the woman in the next room he had connections with Juarez, and he and his fellow narcotraficantes had been responsible for many deaths in the city. His was a dangerous business, but he was paid well for his troubles. Tomorrow, he would meet two men and arrange for the delivery of $2 million worth of cocaine, for which he and his associates would receive a 40 percent commission. If the delivery proceeded without a hitch, the next consignment would be considerably larger, and his reward commensurately greater. Certaz would make all of the arrangements, but at no point would either drugs or money be in his possession. Edgar Certaz had learned to insulate himself from risk.
The Colombians still controlled the manufacture of cocaine, but it was the Mexicans who were now the biggest traffickers of the drug in the world. The Colombians had given them their start in the trade, albeit unintentionally, by paying Mexican smugglers in cocaine instead of cash. Sometimes, up to half of every shipment into the United States went to the Mexicans. Certaz was one of the original mules, and had quickly worked his way up to a position of prominence in the Juarez cartel controlled by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed “Lord of the Skies” after he pioneered the use of jumbo jets to transport huge shipments of drugs between territories.
In November 1999, a joint raid by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement unearthed a mass grave at a desert ranch named La Campana, near Juarez. The grave contained two hundred bodies, maybe more. La Campana was once the property of Fuentes and his lieutenant, Alfonso Corral Olaguez. Carrillo had died in the summer of 1997, following an overdose of anesthesia administered in the course of plastic surgery intended to change his appearance. It was rumored that his Colombian suppliers, envious of his influence, had paid off the medics. Two months later Corral was shot and killed at the Maxfim restaurant in Juarez, leading to a bloody turf war headed by Carrillo’s brother Vicente. The bodies at La Campana, stored in the narco-bunkers that riddled the land, included the remains of those who had crossed Carrillo, among them members of the rival Tijuana cartel as well as unfortunate peasants who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Certaz knew this, because he had helped to put some of them there. The discovery of the bodies had increased the pressure on the Mexican dealers, forcing them to be ever more careful in their operations, and so the need for men with Certaz’s expertise had grown considerably. He had survived the investigations and the recriminations, and had emerged stronger and more secure than ever before.
In the movie, a woman arrived on a train. She was expecting someone to meet her, but there was nobody waiting. She took a ride out to a homestead, where the Irishman lay dead on a picnic table alongside his children.
Certaz was bored. He pressed his thumb against the remote to kill the picture, and heard a knock at the door.
∗ ∗ ∗
Danny Quinn draped a towel around his waist and went to the door.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Police.”
It was a mistake, but Brightwell was distracted. It had been a long trip, and he was tired. The heat of the day had made him weary, and now the comparative cool of the desert night had taken him by surprise.
Danny looked at Melanie. She took her purse and headed for the bathroom, closing the door behind her. They had a little weed in a Ziploc bag, but Melanie would just flush it down the john. It was a shame to lose it, but Danny could always get more.
“You got some ID?” said Danny.
He still had not opened the door. He looked through the spy hole and saw a fat man with a round face and a weird neck holding up a badge and a laminated identification card.
“Come on,” said the man. “Open up. This is just routine. We’re searching for illegals. I just need to take a look inside, ask you some questions, then I’ll be gone.”
Danny swore, but relaxed a little. He wondered if Melanie had already flushed their stash. He hoped not. He opened the door, and smelled something unpleasant. He tried to hide his shock at the man’s appearance, but failed. Already, he knew that he had made a mistake. This was no cop.
“You alone?” asks the fat man.
“My girlfriend is in the bathroom.”
“Tell her to come out.”
This is all wrong, thought Danny, all wrong.
“Hey,” he said. “Let me have another look at that badge.”
The fat man reached into his jacket pocket. When his hand reemerged, it was not holding a wallet. Danny Quinn saw a flash of silver, and then felt the blade enter his chest. The fat man grabbed Danny’s hair and pushed the blade up and to the left. He heard the girl’s voice calling from the bathroom.
“Danny?” said Melanie. “Is everything okay?”
Brightwell released his grip on Danny’s hair and yanked the blade free. The boy collapsed onto the floor. His body spasmed, and the fat man placed his foot upon his stomach to still him. Had he more time, Brightwell might have kissed him as he had Ruiz, but there were more pressing matters to which to attend.
From the bathroom came the flushing of a toilet, but it was being used to mask another sound. There was the creak of a window sliding open, and a screen being forced. Brightwell walked to the bathroom and raised his right foot, then shattered the lock with the impact.
∗ ∗ ∗
Edgar Certaz heard the knock on the adjoining room seconds after someone commenced knocking on his own door. He then discerned a male voice identify himself as a cop claiming to be hunting illegals.
Certaz was not dumb. He knew that when the cops came hunting, they didn’t do it so politely. They came hard and fast, and in force. He also knew that this motel was not on their shit list, because it was relatively expensive and well run. The sheets were clean and the towels in the bathroom were changed every day. It was also far from the main routes used by the illegals. Any Mexican who got this far was not going to check into the Spyhole Motel for a bath and a porno movie. He was going to be sitting in the back of a van headed north or west, congratulating himself and his buddies on making it across the desert.
Certaz did not reply to the knock on his door. The knock came again.
“Open up,” said a voice. “This is the police.”
Certaz carried a lightweight Smith & Wesson mountain gun, with a short, four-inch barrel. He did not possess a license for it. While he did not have a criminal record, he knew that if he was taken in and fingerprinted, his prints would set off alarm bells in local and federal agencies and that he would be a very old man by the time he was released, assuming that they did not find an excuse to execute him first. So two thoughts crossed Edgar’s mind. The first was that if this really was a police raid, then he was in trouble. The second thought was that, if these men were not police, then they were still trouble, but trouble that could be dealt with. He heard a muffled scream from the room next door as Brightwell dealt with Danny Quinn’s girlfriend.
You want me to open up, decided Edgar, then I’ll open up.
He drew the Smith & Wesson, walked to the wooden door, and began firing.
Blue bucked as the first of the shots hit him in the chest, its force diminished slightly by its passage through the door. The second took him in the right shoulder as he spun, and he grunted loudly as he hit the sand. There was no use for silence now. He drew his own Double Eagle and fired from the ground as the door to the motel room opened.
There was nobody in the gap. Then Certaz’s gun appeared, low down from the left, where the Mexican was hunched beneath the window. Blue saw the dark finger tense upon the trigger and prepared for the end.
Shots came, but not from the Mexican. Brightwell was at the window, firing down at an angle through the glass. He shot Edgar Certaz in the top of the head and the Mexican tumbled forward, even as two more bullets entered his back.
Blue rose to his feet. There was now blood on his shirt too. He swayed a little.
From the back of the motel, they heard the sound of someone running. The door to the last motel room remained closed, but they knew that their quarry was no longer inside.
“Go,” said Blue.
Brightwell moved quickly. He ran less gracefully than he walked, rocking from side to side on his stubby legs, but he was still fast. He heard a car starting, then the engine being gunned. Seconds later, a yellow Buick shot around the corner of the motel. There was a young woman behind the wheel. Brightwell fired, aiming to the right of the driver’s head. The windshield was hit, but the car kept coming, forcing him to throw himself to one side to avoid being struck. His next shots took out the tires and blew out the rear window. He watched with satisfaction as the Buick hit the late Edgar Certaz’s truck and came to a sudden halt.
Brightwell got to his feet and approached the ruined car. The young woman inside lay dazed in the driver’s seat. There was blood on her face, but otherwise she appeared uninjured.
Good, thought Brightwell.
He opened the door and pulled her from the car.
“No,” Sereta whispered. “Please.”
“Where is it, Sereta?”
“I don’t know what—”
Brightwell punched her in the nose. It broke under the impact.
“I said, where is it?”
Sereta fell to her knees, her hands against her face. He could barely understand her when she told him that it was in her purse.
The fat man reached into the car and retrieved the purse. He began tossing the contents onto the ground until he found the small silver box. Carefully, he opened it and examined the piece of yellowed vellum within. He looked at it and, seemingly content, replaced it in the box.
“Why did you take it?” he asked. He was genuinely curious.
Sereta was crying. She said something, but it was muffled by her tears and the hands that she had cupped over her ruined nose. Brightwell leaned down.
“I can’t hear you,” he said.
“It was pretty,” said Sereta, “and I didn’t have any pretty things.”
Brightwell stroked her hair almost tenderly.
Blue was approaching. He staggered a little, but remained on his feet. Sereta crawled back against the car, trying to stem the bleeding from her nose. She looked at Blue, and he seemed to shimmer. For a moment she saw a black, emaciated body, tattered wings hanging from nodes upon its back, and long, taloned fingers that clutched feebly at the air. The figure’s eyes were yellow, shining in a face that was almost without features, apart from a mouth filled with small, sharp teeth. Then the shape before her was, once again, a man dying upon his feet.
“Jesus, help me,” she said. “Jesus, Lord God, help me.”
Brightwell kicked her hard in the side of the head, and her words ceased. He dragged her limp body to the trunk of her car, opened it, then dumped her inside before walking to his own Mercedes and returning with two plastic cans of gas.
Blue leaned against the Buick as his colleague approached. His eyes lingered for a moment on the gasoline, then shifted away.
“Don’t you want her?” he said.
“I would taste her words in my mouth,” said Brightwell. “Strange, though.”
“What is?” asked Blue.
“That she should believe in God and not in us.”
“Perhaps it is easier to believe in God,” says Blue. “God promises so much . . .”
“. . . but delivers so little,” finished Brightwell. “We make fewer promises, but we keep them all.”
Had Sereta been able to see him, then Blue would have shimmered again before her eyes. His companion did not notice. He saw Blue as he had always seen Blue.
“I am fading,” said Blue.
“I know. We were careless. I was careless.”
“It does not matter. Perhaps I will wander for a time.”
“Perhaps,” said Brightwell. “In time, we will find you again.”
He sprayed gasoline upon his companion, dousing his clothes, his hair, his skin, then poured the remainder upon the interior of the Buick. He tossed the empty containers onto the backseat, then stood before Blue.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye,” said Blue. He was almost blinded by the gasoline, but he found the open door of the Buick and eased himself into the driver’s seat. Brightwell regarded him for a moment, then took a Zippo from his pocket and watched the flame take life. He tossed the lighter into the car and walked away. He did not look back, not even when the gas tank exploded and the darkness behind him was lit by a new fire as Blue passed from this world, and was transformed.