James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“I cannot believe what you are doing,” Negrito said. “You’re letting us down, man. You are making a great mistake that each of us will pay for. It ain’t fair. You are betraying us, Krill.”

Krill was already walking deep into the mountain’s shadow, his M16 reslung on his shoulder, his eyes empty, like those of a man who has looked into a mirror and is unable to recognize the image staring back at him.

Hackberry Holland did not learn of the killings near the Santiago Mountains from another law enforcement agency, because they were not reported the night they occurred or the following morning, either. He learned of them from a questionable source, one in whom he had already induced a sizable dose of paranoia. In fact, he had a hard time concentrating on the telephone conversation. It was raining, and he had forgotten to take down the flag outside his office window. The flag, soggy as a towel, hung twisted and forlorn against a gray sky, its chain vibrating against the pole like a damaged nerve. “Mr. Dowling, I’ve heard nothing about a shooting in this county or anywhere around here,” he said. “It’s been surprisingly quiet.”

“Of course you didn’t. Josef doesn’t want cops crawling all over his property,” Temple Dowling replied.

“You say two men were killed?”

“Right. Two security guys. Somebody cut their noses out of their faces.”

“Sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? I mean, why is it you know about this but nobody else does?”

“Because maybe I got one or two people inside Josef’s organization.”

“What do you want me to do about this unreported homicide that only you seem to know about?”

“Go out to the game ranch. Investigate the crime. Stuff a hand grenade up his ass. What do I care? Why not just do your fucking job?”

“Because somehow you’re at risk?”

“Josef believes I put a hit on him.”

“Listen to what you’re saying, Mr. Dowling. Two guys got killed outside Sholokoff’s house, but no attempt was made to harm anybody inside the house. Does that seem like a rational scenario to you?”

“That’s because a bunch of hunters had just flown in. Look, my source says Josef went apeshit. He had his grandchildren in the house.” There was a pause. “His guys are coming after me.”

Hackberry could hear the tremor in Dowling’s voice, the frightened boy no longer able to hide behind arrogance and cruelty. “First, you have your own security service, Mr. Dowling. Why not make use of it? If a crime occurred in the place you describe, it’s out of my jurisdiction. Second, maybe it’s time for you to grow up.”

“Time for me to-”

“Everybody dies. Why not go down with the decks awash and the guns blazing? You’ve probably made millions profiteering off of war. Get a taste of the real deal and scorch your name on the wall before you check out. It’s not a bad way to go.”

“You’re a son of a bitch.”

Hackberry rubbed his forehead and started to hang up, then placed the receiver against his ear again. “If you think you’re in danger, get out of town.”

“I’m already out of town. It doesn’t matter. Sholokoff has a network all over the country.”

“I think you’re imagining things.”

“You don’t understand Josef. He doesn’t just do evil. He loves it. That’s the difference between him and the rest of us. Jack Collins is probably a lunatic. Josef isn’t. He creates object lessons nobody ever forgets. He has people taken apart.”

“He does what?”

Perhaps due to his fundamentalist upbringing, R. C. Bevins was not a believer in either luck or coincidence but saw every event in his life as one that required attention. The consequence was that he never dismissed any form of human behavior as implausible and never thought of bizarre events in terms of their improbability. The sheriff had once told R.C. that if a UFO landed on the prairie, two things were guaranteed to happen: Everyone who witnessed the landing would grab his cell phone to dial 911, and R.C. would knock on the spaceship door and introduce himself.

R.C. had pulled into a convenience store and gas station on a county road just south of the east-west four-lane that paralleled the Mexican border, and had gone inside and bought a chili dog and a load of nachos and jalapeno peppers and a Dr Pepper and had just started eating lunch at a table by the front window when he saw a pickup stop and let out a passenger. The passenger limped slightly, as though he had a stitch in his side. He wore shades and an unlacquered wide-brim straw hat, like one a gardener might wear. His nose was a giant teardrop, his jeans hiked up too high on his hips, his suspenders notched into his shoulders, the way a much older man might wear them. The man went into the back of the store and took a bottle of orange juice and a ham-and-cheese sandwich from the cooler and a package of Ding Dongs from the counter. He paid, sat down, and began eating at a table not far from R.C.’s, never removing his shades. R.C. nodded at him, but the man did not look up from his food.

“Bet you could fry an egg out there,” R.C. said.

“That about says it,” the man replied, chewing slowly, his mouth closed, his gaze seemingly fixed on nothing.

“My uncle says that during the drought of 1953, it got so dry here he saw a catfish walking down a dirt road carrying its own canteen.”

“That’s dry.”

“You looking for a ride? ’Cause the bread-delivery man is fixing to head back to town.”

“No, I’m visiting down the road there. South a piece.” The man drank from his orange juice and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and began eating his sandwich again.

“Did you see any salt and pepper up there at the counter?” R.C. asked.

“I think I did. Where the ketchup and such are. In that little tray.”

“You want some?”

“No, sir, I’m fine.”

R.C. went to the counter by the coffee and cold-drink dispensers and began sorting through the condiments. “Do y’all have any hot sauce?” he said to the cashier.

“It’s there somewhere,” the cashier replied.

“I sure cain’t find it.”

The cashier walked over and picked up the hot sauce and handed it to R.C. He was a short man with a sloping girth who always showed up at work in a dress shirt and an outrageous tie and with polished shoes. He had a tiny black mustache that expanded like grease pencil when he grinned. “Glad it wasn’t a snake.”

“Keep looking straight at me,” R.C. said.

The cashier’s face clouded, but he kept his eyes locked on R.C.’s.

“You know that old boy over yonder?” R.C. said.

“I think he was in yesterday. He bought some Ding Dongs and a newspaper.”

“He was by himself?”

“He came here with another man. The other fellow stayed in the car.”

“What’d the other guy look like?”

“I didn’t pay him much mind.”

“What kind of car?”

The cashier looked into space and shook his head. “It was skinned up. It didn’t have much paint on it. I don’t know what kind it was.”

“You ever see it before?”

The cashier rubbed his eye. “No, sir,” he said. “Are we fixing to have some trouble here? ’Cause that’s something I really don’t need.”

“No. Did the guy in the car buy gas with a credit card?”

“If he did, I didn’t see it. He got air.”

“What?”

“He went to the air pump. I remember that ‘cause he was the last to use it. Somebody ran over the hose, and I had to put an out-of-order sign on it. Ain’t nobody used it since.”

R.C. went back to his table and set the bottle of hot sauce down, then snapped his fingers as though he had forgotten something. He went outside to his cruiser and picked up a clipboard off the seat, then walked past the air pump. The concrete slab around it was covered with a film of mud and dust that had dried into a delicate crust. A set of familiar tire tracks was stenciled across it. “Michelins,” R.C. said under his breath.