In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

“The health club,”

Sidney said.

“No, before that. Maybe from Nicaragua or El Sal.”

“Could be. Lot of guys were looking for a job back then. You?”

“A little bit. Nothing to write home about.”

“Three hots and a cot, right?” Sidney said.

They went through Lolo and turned west on Highway 12, heading toward the Idaho line. Darrel was amazed at how green the hills had become after only one day’s rain. Lolo Creek was boiling, the current filled with driftwood from the banks. Up ahead Darrel could see the blueness of the sky above Lolo Pass and snow on the tip of St. Mary’s Peak.

Then he looked through the back window for his Honda. It was gone.

“They stopped for something to eat. They’re gonna join us. Don’t worry about it,” Sidney said.

“Yeah? That’s my car. I want it back,” Darrel said.

Sidney didn’t answer. But Greta turned around in the front seat. “You’re in good hands,” she said.

When Darrel didn’t reply, she said it again. But Darrel was now staring at the side of Sidney’s face. “It was at El Mozote,” he said. “On the Honduran border. December 1981. You were standing by the trench where all those peasants were buried.”

“You got the wrong dude, Mac,” Sidney said, staring indifferently out the side window.

The Chrysler’s tires hummed around a slight bend in the road and Darrel saw the entrance to Karsten Mabus’s ranch, the white-railed fences and breeding barns shining in the sun. But the Chrysler kept going, climbing a hill, rounding another curve that was layered with outcroppings of gray and yellow rock.

“Mabus is the guy I need to talk to,” Darrel said.

“Sure,” said the man on the other side of Darrel, and plunged a hypodermic needle into his neck.

FOR THE NEXT three hours Darrel McComb drifted in and out of a red haze that was like the sunrise down on the equator—hot, pervasive, blinding when you looked straight into it. Pain had become geographic, a conduit into past places and events, a tropical garden spiked with bougainvillea, lime trees, crowns of thorns, and rosebushes that bloomed in December. He saw the waxy faces of the dead, the firing-squad victims with their thumbs wired behind them, the sawed-off soldiers in salt-crusted uniforms and oversized steel pots, their M-16s leaking white smoke. And for the first time in more than twenty years he felt these images leaving him forever.

The pain his tormentors had inflicted upon him hadn’t worked, and neither had the chemicals they had injected into his veins. At some point a cloth bag coated with insecticide had been fitted over his head, but that had not worked, either. In fact, it had even obstructed his interrogators’ agenda.

“You think people are coming to help you?” Sidney said, bare-chested, squatting down eye-level with Darrel. “Take a look at who’s having drinks by Mabus’s pool.”

Two of Darrel’s tormentors lifted up the chair he was strapped in and set it by a window in the log house high up on a mountain overlooking the back of Mabus’s ranch. Sidney fitted a pair of binoculars on Darrel’s eyes. “That’s United States Senator Romulus Finley down there, pal. That’s also your friend the district attorney, Fay Harback. They’re on the pad, my man,” he said.

But Darrel’s eyes were too swollen to see.

“Light him up again,” Sidney said.

Someone behind Darrel poured a bucket of water over his head, then an electrical surge struck his genitals and his nipples like a blow from a jackhammer. They hit him again. And again. And again. When he awoke, he was bleeding from the mouth.

Sidney had pulled up a straight-backed chair in front of him. He leaned forward, his lean stomach ridged, his chest patinaed with gray monkey fur. “Don’t be a hardhead. I don’t want to keep doing this to you,” he said. “Just tell us where American Horse is. You’ll get to live and make yourself a few spendolies at the same time.”

The sun had gone behind the mountain, and in the shade the trees on the hillside looked cold and dark. But on a flat outcropping that jutted out over the canyon, Darrel thought he saw Rocky Harrigan gazing at the countryside, his heavy physique and the ledge he stood on bathed in sunlight. Rocky was wearing slacks, penny loafers, his aviator glasses, and his favorite goon shirt, a Hawaiian job printed with bluebirds and palm trees, the way he always dressed for an evening out. Been waiting on you, old partner. Come on, we’re going to have a fine time, Rocky said.

Darrel saw him remove his shades and give the thumbs-up sign, then beckon Darrel to walk across the air and join him on the lip of a canyon that opened onto green valleys Darrel had never seen before.

Darrel’s eyes closed, then opened briefly. “Got to tell you something, Sidney,” he whispered hoarsely.

Sidney leaned down, his eyes close to Darrel’s. “Go ahead, pal. You got the right attitude. Let’s get this behind us,” he said.

Darrel tried to muster the words but could not get them out. His teeth were red with his blood, his breath fetid, his eyes like slits in tea-colored eggs.

“Take your time. You can do it. You’re almost home free,” Sidney said.