James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“Through the kitchen, boss?” Eladio said.

“No, we’re going in through the patio,” Jack said.

“The kitchen is wide-open, boss,” Eladio said. “The big man with a child’s face left it open.”

“No, the French doors take us into the dining room, then down the stairs to the cellar,” Jack said. “You two will go ahead of me.”

“That’s not your usual method, Senor Jack,” Eladio said. “You are always our leader. No weapon does damage like your Thompson loaded with a full drum. It is magnificent to behold.”

“We’re involved in a military action here. We’re splitting our forces and catching our enemy in a pincer movement,” Jack said. “You know what that is, don’t you?”

“No, what is it?” Eladio asked.

“The Germans learned it from Stonewall Jackson. They put their panzers on their flanks, just like Jackson put Jeb Stuart’s cavalry on his. You boys are family. You think Stonewall Jackson wouldn’t take care of his boys?”

“What is this about Germans and rock walls? This sounds like bullshit,” Jaime said.

“Come on, boys, let’s have some fun. While the sheriff and his deputy draw everybody into the cellar, we’re going to put hair on the walls.”

“The gringos are not to be trusted, Senor Jack,” Eladio said. “The old one dotes on his puta. She has a foul mouth and looks at us with contempt. When they get what they want, they will dispose of us.”

“The sheriff is a straight shooter. But that’s also his great weakness,” Jack said.

“He shoots straight? Shooting straight doesn’t have nozzing to do with this discussion. You speak in nozzing but riddles,” Jaime said.

“‘Nozzing’? Son, you obviously have a speech defect,” Jack said. “When we get back to the States, I’m going to take you to a speech therapist, and we’ll cure this problem once and for all. In the meantime, Eladio, could I see your cell phone?”

“What you want it for, boss?”

“To make sure we have service here. It’s always good to be prepared,” Jack replied.

Through the bars in his cell, Krill could see the rain blowing on the fields and the side of the house, and the hills that looked like giant white caterpillars disappearing inside it. Mike stood in the middle of the room next to the Asian woman, who was still suspended from a rafter. Mike was opening and closing his hands, his wide-set eyes turned upward at the sound of feet overhead.

“I am sorry I caused you this trouble, hombre, ” Krill said. “I have been a soldier in the service of others, just as you are. We take orders from little men who never have to kill or die in battle themselves.”

“You talk too much,” Mike said.

“Give the woman some water. She’s done nothing to deserve what has been done to her.”

Mike’s attention was fixed on the sound of boots moving back and forth on the floor upstairs, and he could not be distracted. His blond hair was long and oiled and hung in strings over the tops of his ears. His eyes were so widely spaced, they looked as though they had been removed from his face and stitched back in the wrong place. He was a man to whom the fates had not been kind, Krill thought.

“Give the woman some water, and I’ll give you back the spoon,” Krill said. “Then Frank will not be able to use you as his scapegoat any longer.”

“Where is it?” Mike asked.

“In the chemical toilet. Where else?”

“Get it out.”

“You have to give the woman some water.”

Mike walked toward the bars. “You’re going to pay a big price if I have to come inside that cell.”

“I am not putting my hand in a toilet for you. I am sorry, senor .”

“Where are your shoes?”

“They hurt my feet. I took them off.”

“Get back against the wall.”

“What for, senor? I am not a threat to you.”

Mike stepped closer to the bars. “Get back against the wall, turn around, and lean on it. I’m coming in.” With a flick of his right hand, he whipped a telescopic steel baton to its full length.

“ Senor, you’re not going to use that on me, are you?” Krill said.

“Get back against the wall!”

The woman, still hanging by her arms, lifted her head from her chest and parted her lips. “Give me some water,” she said.

Mike looked over his shoulder at her. “Be quiet,” he said.

“I need some water,” she said.

“You did this to yourself, lady. I tried to be nice to y’all, and this is what I got. Now close your mouth.” Mike turned back to Krill. “You move your ass to the back of the cell. Spread your legs and lean on your hands. Don’t tell me you don’t know the drill.”

“Please give me water,” the woman said.

Mike turned around again, his hand gripped tightly on the foam-wrapped handle of the expandable baton. “I’ve had it with you, lady. You open your mouth one more-”

From the back of his waistband, Krill pulled loose the shoestrings that he had removed from his running shoes and braided into a garrote. He flipped the garrote over Mike’s head and jerked it tight around his throat and squeezed Mike’s head between the bars, pulling backward with all his weight, the garrote sinking deep into the neck, closing the windpipe and carotid artery and shutting off the flow of blood to the brain. Mike tried to work his nails under the garrote while veins bloomed all over his neck, not unlike cracks in pottery. Krill pulled tighter as Mike slipped down the bars to the floor. Krill grabbed Mike by the back of his shirt so he would not roll away from the cell once he was on the floor.

Krill got down on his knees and reached through the bars and slipped his fingers into the dead man’s shirt pockets but found nothing. With two hands, he turned him over so that the dead man faced the cell, his eyes half-lidded as though he had been shaken from a deep sleep. Krill got his hand into the man’s left pocket and found a folding single-bladed knife and a wad of Mexican currency and a penlight and a betting receipt from a racetrack. In the other pocket was a three-inch iron key.

Krill was trembling as he rose to his feet and extended his arm through the bars and inverted the key and inserted it into the lock. The key was an old one, and he twisted it slowly so as not to break it off inside the mechanism. He felt the tumblers turn and click into place and the tongue of the lock recede into the door and scrape free of the jamb. He shoved the door open, pushing aside Mike’s body.

“Hold on, Magdalena,” Krill said. “You are a great woman, a master of distraction, the greatest woman I have ever known. I will get you down right now. I never could have done this without you. You were magnificent.”

“Don’t talk,” she said, her lips caked, her voice hoarse. “His right ankle. You must hurry.”

“What about his ankle?”

The color was gone from her face. “He has a gun,” she said. “They’re moving around upstairs. Hurry.”

“No, we get you down first,” Krill said. He fitted his left arm around her waist and lifted her weight against him, then sawed through the pieces of clothesline that held her wrists to the rafter. When she fell against him, her cheek and hair touched his face, and he thought he smelled an odor like seawater on her skin.

“The holster is Velcro-strapped to his right ankle,” she said. “Take the pistol from the holster and give it to me.”

“You are a woman of peace, Magdalena,” he said. “You have no business with guns.”

“Don’t talk in an unctuous and foolish manner,” she replied. “A shadow just went past the window. Please do not waste time talking. The men upstairs will show us no mercy.”

Krill pulled up the right pant leg of the dead man and removed an Airweight. 38 from the black holster strapped to his ankle. The woman took it from Krill’s hand just as he heard an upstairs door crash open and glass breaking and a burst of machine-gun fire ripping through walls and doors.