MORNING BROKE RED OVER THE MOUNTAINS. THEY HAD stopped at a crossroads where a decrepit arena hulked. Rusted scaffolding. Warped wooden grandstand. Around the arena’s upper limit, old streamers flicked like dried eel skins. An aluminum sign over the clay parking lot depicted a matador dodging a bull, all in faded graphics and rattling in the wind. In the distance lay the jumbled haze of a city.
Oziel’s men dragged the dead renegades from the back of a vehicle and arranged the bodies on the clay of the arena’s lot, just off the highway, where they would be seen by travelers in and out of the city. Next they made the three surviving members, still naked, stand in a row next to the corpses. The men were bound around the ankles and wrists. Cicatriz leveled his gaze at Luz and Felipo where they stood, the boy leaning against her. Cecilia placed a silver pistol in Oziel’s hand, and he walked to the first of the surviving narcos. The man’s softer spots jiggled.
“Get a hold of yourself,” Oziel told him. “You made the choice that brought you here. Surely this possibility did not escape you.” Then he raised the pistol and shot the man through the forehead. Blood and bone and brain matter spurted, slopped to the clay, and the man collapsed in a heap alongside his dead comrades.
Felipo jumped. The report ricocheted in tinny fragments off the ancient bullfighting arena and vanished out into the waste.
The next narco in line tried hopping away but fell almost immediately. Oziel groaned and gestured. Two of his men came forward and hauled the man to his feet. Oziel gripped the man’s shoulders and squared him up. He gestured toward the arena. “Think of the strong creatures that must have died in this place. Draw inspiration from them.” And he shot the man through the forehead as well.
Cicatriz was last. He held still, watched Oziel. Cicatriz’s body was lean, almost starved looking. A small dark tattoo on his pectoral. Very little hair. He seemed young, and Luz supposed that he was.
“And here we are,” Oziel said. “Forgive my lack of ceremony, Juan Luis. I am merely glad to get this over with.”
Luz heard shuffling and glanced to see Cecilia pivot away from the scene, leaning against the Suburban and watching the red valley.
Oziel raised the pistol to Cicatriz’s sneering face. But he did pause, dropping his arm and spinning. “Wait!” he exclaimed. He strode to Luz and Felipo, extending the pistol by the barrel to the boy. “I am happy to let you finish this. For what he’s done to you.”
Felipo lifted his weight away from Luz. He glanced at her. His swollen and purple face, his one visible eye.
“Truly,” Oziel said, “it makes no difference to me who pulls the trigger at this point.”
Felipo took the pistol, held it in his hands. It gleamed. Luz watched. I have imagined it so often, Felipo had said, how it must have happened. His parents dead on the ground outside his home. He gripped the pistol and limped to his cousin.
Oziel followed close behind Felipo and said, “You see, Juan Luis. You are nothing, and you will soon be nothing forever, and no one will remember you.”
Felipo raised the pistol. The sign over the parking lot creaked and rattled in the wind. Felipo extended his arm, aimed at his cousin’s face.
Cicatriz licked his lips. He spoke to Oziel, words quick and high. “I am nothing, but so are you.” Felipo’s arm was shaking and he didn’t pull the trigger.
Oziel turned to one of his men and held his hand out. The man placed another pistol in it.
“I won’t be alone,” Cicatriz said to Oziel. “Nobody will care for you when you are gone. What you’ve done will be swallowed along with all the rest. You—”
Oziel stepped around Felipo, who was still leveling the silver pistol at his cousin’s face, and shot Cicatriz through the temple.
Cicatriz crumpled. Felipo’s arm dropped.
Luz could see the blood soaking and thickening into the clay, a red halo. She watched it near the toes of Felipo’s boots and she wanted to scream at him to move, but the words were stuck. Luz swayed on her feet, and she put her hands on her knees and took a deep breath and stared at the ground.
Oziel was saying something. Apologizing to Felipo. Luz felt a hand on her back. It was the boy. She straightened and he put his arm around her shoulders. “I couldn’t,” Felipo wheezed.
“I know,” Luz answered.
Oziel returned the two handguns to their owners. He drew a jackknife from the pocket of his slacks and locked the blade open.
“I will tell you why Juan Luis was wrong.” Oziel pointed at the corpse with the knife. “I will tell you why we are not going anywhere. The hand where the dollar originates may be hidden, obscured by agencies and borders and skin color, but that dollar does end up in our hand.” He held out his palm to demonstrate, splaying his fingers. “You see, the hand where the money originates hides. It is complicit, but it protects itself, cowering. It is afraid of dirtying itself. But my hand? Well.” And then he bent over Cicatriz and went to work with the knife.
Luz averted her eyes. It took Oziel a while. He straightened, yanked the piece of skin free, and kicked dirt onto the red-faced corpse. He exhaled, resolute. A narco came forward with a cooler, and Oziel placed the trophy inside. He spread his arms like a magician, the sun glistering on his wet palm, on the wet blade. Then he went over to an old hand pump next to the arena and opened the flow, rinsing his hands and face under the torrent. He returned dripping and grinning.
Oziel addressed the men: “You know the drill.”
The narcos disappeared into their vehicles and drove away, leaving Luz and Felipo, Oziel and Cecilia behind, with the corpses in a swirling of red dust.
“I feel like a new man,” Oziel proclaimed, opening the door to the remaining Suburban. “Shall we?”