Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“That’s the problem you gringos got. You’re always trying to figure out what kind of lie is gonna work, like right now you’re wondering how stupid is this Mexican man you got to deal with. I’m gonna be honest with you even if you ain’t been honest with me. You’re gonna have a bad night, man. You can cry, you can beg, you can pray, but only one thing is gonna happen to you, and there ain’t no way to change that. Don’t try to fight it. Tonight is gonna be a son of a bitch. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe you’re gonna catch a break.”

“I’m not a narc,” R.C. said.

“Maybe, maybe not. But the people I sell you to are gonna find out.” Negrito stood up and opened one of the back doors of the car and returned with a shovel and a gas mask that had an extra-long breathing hose. “See this?” he said. “It’s your chance to live. You just got to have a lot of self-control and not let your thoughts take over your body.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“It’s out of my hands, Tejano boy. I was just having a drink in the cantina. You came into the wrong place and put your nose in the wrong people’s business. Now you got to pay the price.”

“The other guy said to turn me loose.”

“You talking about Krill? He ain’t never gonna know what happened to you. Krill thinks he’s smart, but most of the time, his thoughts are in the next world, where he thinks his dead kids are.” Negrito brushed a piece of dirt off R.C.’s cheek with his thumb and smiled. “You’re a gringo cop who has a flat tire and ends up drinking in a whorehouse that has a bartender who works for La Familia? I hope in the morning you get a chance to tell these other guys that story. It’s a very good one, man. You got to tell them the joke about the golf course, too. They’re gonna really laugh.”

AFTER HACKBERRY AND Pam Tibbs left the bordello and got in the Cherokee, Pam remained silent for a long time. Then she started the engine and looked at him. “Where to?” she asked.

“Back to the cantina. That bartender was lying,” he said.

“I was a little worried in there.”

“About what?”

“When you cracked that guy in the mouth.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I’ve never seen you like that.”

“I don’t like child molesters.”

“You told those two guys in the living room you’d blow their heads off. I could hear you breathing when you said it.”

“That’s because I meant it.”

“That’s what bothers me.”

“Let’s get on it, Pam,” he said.

On the way back to the cantina, Hackberry lower

ed the brim of his Stetson and shut his eyes, wanting to sleep for an eternity and forget the violence and cruelty and sordid behavior and human exploitation that seemed to become more and more visible in the world as he aged. According to the makers of myth and those who trafficked in cheap lies about human wisdom, the elderly saw goodness in the world that they had not been allowed to see in their youth. But Hackberry had found that the world was the world and it did not change because one happened to age. The same players were always there, regardless of the historical era, he thought, and the ones we heeded most were those who despoiled the earth and led us into wars and provided us with justification whenever we felt compelled to commit unconscionable acts against our fellow man. Maybe this wasn’t a good way to think, he told himself, but when you heard the clock ticking in your life, there was no worse disservice you could do to yourself than to entertain a lie. Death was bad only when you had to face it knowing that you had failed to live during the time allotted you, or that you had lied to yourself about the realities of the world or willingly listened to the lies of others.

He felt his body rock forward when Pam touched the brake in front of the cantina.

“Take it easy in there, okay?” she said.

“I wonder what kind of night R.C. is having,” Hackberry replied.

“You can really drive the nails.”

“If we mess up here, R.C. dies. Inside that stone building on the corner are men in uniform who would gladly work in an Iranian torture chamber for minimum wage. The meth being funneled through this town probably originates with a bunch down in the state of Michoacán. These are guys who make the cops in the stone building look like the College of Cardinals.”

She turned off the ignition and stared straight ahead, her hands resting on the wheel. “I wasn’t criticizing you back there. I just worry about you sometimes. You don’t handle regret very well.”

“The person who does is dead from the neck up.”

“One of these days I’ll learn to keep my counsel.”

“Watch my back. I don’t want those rurales coming through the front door and planting one in my ear.”