Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“I’ll see what I can find,” the man said.

“Bring me a spoon. I cannot eat rice with a fork. Bring us water, too.”

“Want anything else?”

“Yes, to use a real toilet, one that flushes with water. Using a chemical toilet is unsanitary and degrading.”

When the man had gone upstairs, Krill lowered his voice and said, “Magdalena, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

“Did they hurt you?”

“No.”

“Where is Dowling?”

“I think he’s dead.”

“Did they mutilate him?”

“Yes, very badly.”

“Listen to me. I must say this in a hurry. I have killed many men. I have also killed a Jesuit priest. I tortured and murdered a DEA informant. I need your absolution for these sins and others that are too many to name.”

“I don’t have that power. Only God does. If you’re sorry for what you did and you renounce your violent ways, your sins are forgiven. God doesn’t forgive incrementally or partially. He forgives absolutely, Antonio. That’s what ‘absolution’ means. God makes all things new.”

“You remembered my name.”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because everyone calls me Krill.”

“It’s a name you earned in war. You shouldn’t go by that name anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll stop using it later, Magdalena. But right now I got to get us out of here. We need a fork from the man who brought us our bowls.”

“Why?”

“There are only two ways we’re going to get out of here. I have to open the lock on my door or get a man in my cell. We need a fork.”

“I heard you ask for a spoon.”

“This man is stubborn and slow in the head. He will do the opposite of what he is asked.”

The upstairs door opened, and the man with the duckbilled mouth came down the stairs. There were two dull metallic objects in his right hand. “I got you what you wanted,” he said. “Put your bowls outside the door when you’re finished.”

Krill stuck his hand through the bars and curved his palm around the utensil the man gave him. A spoon, he thought bitterly.

“Disappointed? I was jailing when I was sixteen,” the man said. “Better eat up. You got a rough day ahead of you.”

THE SINGLE-ENGINE DEPARTMENT plane dropped down over a ridge and followed a milky-brown river that had spread out onto the floodplain and was dotted with sandy islands that had willow trees on them. Above the plane, Hackberry could see the long blue-black layer of clouds that seemed to extend like curds of industrial smoke from the Big Bend all the way across northern Mexico. Down below, the willow trees stiffened in the wind, the surface of the river wrinkling in jagged V-shaped lines. On the southern horizon, the cloud layer seemed to end and looked like strips of torn black cotton churning against a band of perfectly blue sky.

The wings of the plane yawed suddenly, the airframe shuddering. “We’re fine,” the pilot said above the engine noise. He was a crop duster named Toad Fowler who worked on and off for the sheriff’s department. “Those are just updrafts.”

Nonetheless, he kept tapping the glass on his instruments.

“What’s the problem?” Hackberry asked.