Hackberry could smell the stagnant water and expectorated tobacco juice under the drain covers in the concrete floor, and the stale cigarette smoke in the air and the residual odor of dried sweat that seemed layered on every surface of the cantina. From the cribs in back, he could smell a stench that was like fish roe in the sun and human waste leaching from an open ditch. He could hear a drunk singing in one of the cribs in the alleyway. He could hear his own heartbeat starting to crescendo in his ears.
“She’ll kill you,
buddy. Don’t lose your life over a man who wears the tattoo of a self-important fool on top of his head,” Hackberry said.
What followed was a phenomenon that Hackberry had seen perhaps no more than a dozen times in war and during his career as a lawman. Perhaps it could be called a vision of mortality. Or a moment when a person simply calculated his risk and evaluated what was to be lost or gained and then made his bet with full knowledge that his foot rested on the edge of the great precipice. Sometimes the heart-stopping pause that took place before the die was cast, when the filmstrip seemed to freeze inside the projector, dissolved into what Hackberry called “the blink.” The blink was not in the eyes but deep down in the soul, and the effect was immediate and as real as the brief twitch, like a rubber band snapping, that shuddered through the person’s face.
“I see nothing either exceptional or of value here,” the policeman with shined boots said. “This is not worthy of official attention. Serious men do not waste their time on situations such as this. Good evening to you, señor and señorita.”
With that, he and his companion walked out of the cantina and into the street.
Hackberry heard Pam release her breath and ease down the hammer on her revolver and return it to its holster. “I don’t want to ever relive that moment or even discuss it,” she said.
“Neither does Bernicio,” Hackberry said, looking down at the bartender. “Right?”
“Fuck you, man,” the bartender said.
Hackberry knelt on one knee, the splintered felt-tipped end of the pool cue still in his hand. He glanced at the front door to ensure that the policemen had not returned. He knew at some point they would try to back-shoot him and Pam in the street or call their friends to devise a means to get even for having their faces put in it by a woman. You didn’t shame a Mexican cop without running up a tab.
“You know where my deputy has been taken,” Hackberry said. “Not approximately but exactly. If you claim to not have this information, I will not believe you. The continuation of your life depends entirely upon your ability to convince me that you know where my friend is. Do you understand the implications of what I have told you?”
“No, I do not understand these things. Your words are mysterious and confusing. Why are you doing this to me?” the bartender said, blood glistening on his upper lip.
“Because you’re an evil man.”
“No, hombre, I am not evil. I’m a worker. I am part of the revolution.”
Hackberry placed his knee against the bartender’s chest and leaned forward and forced the shattered end of the pool cue over his teeth and into his mouth. “In five seconds I’m going to push this down your windpipe and out the side of your neck. Look into my face and tell me I won’t do it.”
He could feel Pam Tibbs’s hand clasp the top of his shoulder and squeeze. “Hack,” she said softly.
He paid no attention.
R.C. MASSAGED HIS wrists, then picked up the shovel by his foot, as the man named Negrito had told him to do. The sky was black and hazed with dust, and the shooting stars above the hills looked like chips of dry ice that were melting into nothingness. R.C thought he heard a train whistle in the distance and the sound of boxcars with their brakes on sliding down an incline, the wheels shrieking against the rails.
“What are you waiting for, Tejano boy? Start digging,” Negrito said.
R.C.’s hands were propped on the shaft of the shovel, the worn, rounded, silvery tip an inch into the dirt. Strips of severed duct tape hung from his boots. He could feel his heart beating against his ribs and a line of sweat starting to run from each of his armpits. Negrito was squatted on a rise fifteen feet away, his 1911-model United States Army .45 gripped casually on one knee, his fingers loose around the trigger guard, completely confident about the situation he had created. His leather hat hung on the back of his neck, the chin cord taut against his throat. He picked up a dirt clod and threw it at R.C.’s head.
“I’ve been kind to you,” he said. “Don’t abuse my charity. I’m not a nice man when I’m provoked.”
“I cain’t do it,” R.C. said.
“Sí, puedes.”
“I ain’t. That’s what I meant to say.” Even to himself, R.C.’s voice seemed full of broken glass, his words thick, the worst fate he could imagine about to be realized only a few inches from where he stood.
“Meant to say what, Tejano boy?”
“I meant to say I ain’t gonna dig my own grave,” R.C. replied. “And I ain’t no boy.”
“It don’t matter what I call you, man. You’re gonna dig.”
“No matter how it plays out, I ain’t gonna he’p you. No, sir, I won’t do it.”
“That’s what they all say. They buy a little time that way, and it makes them feel less bad about themselves. They want to believe their friends are gonna come over the rise and kill Negrito and take them home to their mothers and fathers and wives and husbands, but finally, they dig. You don’t got to feel bad about it.”
R.C. raised one foot and rested it on the top of the shovel blade, still gripping the shaft with both hands, his eyes stinging with sweat, a vinegary stench rising from his armpits. His heart felt as though it had been invaded by threadworms and was slowly being reduced to the point where it could no longer pump his blood.