Murder like sex heightened one’s sensibilities, and the moment that he saw Montez with two big, ugly, impassive men coming toward him in the terminal building, Carlin knew he was in trouble. He should have understood from the conversation, should have understood from the beginning exactly what was going to happen, but he had been stupid. From too much fatigue and excitement he had given way to too little anticipation, he had looked for Montez for help when what he should have understood was that Montez would only see him as a dangerous rival who now, having put himself alone into the hands of his enemy, could be dealt with quickly and quietly. All Mexicans were treacherous. Montez had always seemed obsequious with him, had never given Carlin any reason to feel that the man was dangerous, but then again he had never seen Montez alone either. Or announced himself to the man as coming in alone.
Stupid, Carlin thought, as the three of them surrounded him, the two silent men yanking him to his feet, Montez nodding in a peculiar and private way. Stupid, Carlin thought, as they led him through the terminal, one in front and two of them to the sides to the limousine. Stupid, he thought, when they piled him into the back seat of the limousine flanking him, Montez sitting in front, turning back to spread the glass partition and lean back to talk to him, the driver something invisible to the left moving the car. He should not have done this. He should have anticipated. Still, how long could he continue at the level of alertness with which he had operated when he killed Janice and the houseman? There were limits to anyone’s will. It was not really his fault. That was no comfort, of course. None whatsoever. In the back of the limousine the men checked him quickly and professionally for weapons while Montez looked back at him through the partition, his face solemn. The limousine began to move. “You know I didn’t have anything,” Carlin said, “I couldn’t have gotten anything through the airport detectors.”
“People are resourceful,” Montez said. “People have endless resources in crisis.”
“You’re doing this wrong,” Carlin said. He had no desire to fence with the man; both of them knew exactly what was happening and why. “You can only make things worse. You’re a fool. We did good business together. We could have kept on doing business. Why did you have to make it this way?”
Montez nodded to the man on his left and the man on his left hit Carlin in the jaw. It was a careful blow professionally administered; Carlin heard something crack in there, but there was only a minimal lost of consciousness and that unblocked swiftly so that he could feel the pain. The pain was terrible. He brought up a hand and rubbed the jaw, and that sent new splinters of pain through. The man on his left folded his hands like a child who had been given approval in a classroom for something difficult but necessary. A little smile worked its way through his face, but that could only be an illusion in the strange illumination of the car, refracted glitter from the dashboard the only light, the tinted glass keeping the mountains out. They were moving fast and low to the ground through hilly country. “Murderer,” Montez said, “filthy fucking murderer.” The elegance of his diction, the strange formalism with which he said this only made it the more horrifying. “Putrescence,” he said, “diseased slime.”
Carlin, sliding into unconsciousness on the seat, shook himself like a dog and said, “I can explain everything. “
“You can explain nothing. Filthy disgusting pig.”
“Everything,” said Carlin weakly and the man on the right pinched his thigh midway between knee and groin in a painful way that Carlin had never felt before. He would not have known there was much sensation in the area. “Please,” he said, “please stop it.”
“Now you are weak,” Montez said through the partition, “now you babble, now you beg. Would that you had shown such mercy to your victims.”
“They were doing it to me,” Carlin said. “I mean I did it to protect myself. To protect you.”
“You are an excrescence,” Montez said. The man on the left hit him on the cheekbone, the arc of pain intersecting with what was pouring from his jaw, and Carlin involuntarily retched, spewing little gobs of saliva and vomit not only on himself but on the man next to him. The one on the right moved over silently and very seriously began to choke him.
The scene wavered before Carlin and then it went away. When it came back Montez was saying, “Enough for now. We do not want to kill him just yet,” and the pressure had receded. He was sitting straight and hard against the panels of leather behind him, his eyes feeling as if they were burning their way out of his skull. “Oh my God,” he said then in a voice he could not believe was his own, so terrified did it sound, so childlike, so at bay. This could not have happened to him. He could not have been reduced to such a condition. “Oh my God,” he said again, realizing that even if he closed his eyes it did not go away. It was happening. It was all happening to him right now and he was in the center of it.
“We will deal with you when we return,” Montez said. “We will find out exactly what kind of a pig you are.”
Carlin tried to say something but it caught in his throat. He could not get sound out. It occurred to him that he might be dying, and this was surprising because he had always been very frightened of death but he had comforted himself with the feeling that cowards die many times but brave men only once and that death, when it came, would be very easy. It would be like a swimmer falling into sheets of water, one gesture of parting and then done. But this was not easy. This was not easy at all; it was terrifying. He felt spittle catching in his throat and hawked it, this brought him into a partial alertness and he smelled the odor of the men in the car. They were smoking cigars blowing the smoke casually into the compartment. Montez also had lighted a cigar and was still staring through the partition, the cigar in his teeth, little casual clouds of smoke coming from it. “I didn’t mean to do it,” Carlin said pointlessly. “I didn’t mean to do anything.”
“Now you did not mean to do it. Of course you did not mean to do it; no one means murder when they must face the consequences,” Montez said.
How, Carlin thought, could this be happening to him?
He had always been in control. Montez had been nothing more than his supply man.
Montez said, “Because you did not understand what you were. Because you thought that I was working for you when all the time you were working for me.”
Everything wavered. Nothing made sense. “I’m sorry,” Carlin said, and so he was, he guessed he really was. He began to understand what sorrow might be, but this would not do him any good, he knew, no good at all. The limousine moved on through the dense high hills surrounding Mexico City. Never did he think that it would have come to this. You lived in the open but you died in close. You lived in light and possibility but death was a little cell that squeezed around you. Funny, he thought, funny to know this now, but would it have made any difference to him to know this way back? No it wouldn’t, he thought, no it wouldn’t and Montez snapped the partition closed, and temporarily Carlin retreated into that final cubicle of space, layers of warmth around him but one shuddering, suffering part of his mind told him that it was only temporary and that soon enough he would be back. Back and back. Well, consciousness was better than death.