Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“I appreciate your cooperation.”

Hendron stared at him again. “You do that. Holliday, I’m counting on you to make sure nothing goes wrong here. We’re going for a conviction on this one.”

“I understand you have witnesses?” Connolly said.

“Bartender saw them leave together. Some of the other, uh, patrons’ll verify that. Turns out old Ramon worked that parking lot before. No question he did it. We got a signed confession, you know.”

“So I heard.”

“Yeah, well, Arnold here will show you the way. You be nice and easy with him, now. Old Ramon come to a little grief the other night, so he’s probably not feeling his best.”

“What kind of grief?”

He smirked. “The kind they got in jail when you’re not too popular. Seems they don’t go for Ramon’s type back there. I guess he did better with the army engineers.”

They were left to wait in a room down the corridor from Hendron’s office.

“You’re not making any friends here,” Holliday said, handing him a copy of the statement.

“I wish I knew what the big deal was. What does Hendron care, anyway?”

“You ever step on a snake by accident? You didn’t mean to and he doesn’t want to, but he’s just got to bite. It’s the surprise of it.”

“Then what? He crawls back under a rock?”

“If you let him alone.”

Connolly read through the statement. “Kelly? I thought you said he was Mex.”

“His mother. Father probably worked on the railroad. We get a lot of that here. Mostly they don’t hang around long enough to leave a name, though.”

“Maybe it was love,” Connolly said absently, still reading through the transcript. “Christ, fifty dollars? He stuck a knife in somebody for fifty dollars?”

“That’s a lot of money to some folks. Anyway, it was just a fight. You know how accidents happen in a fight.”

Connolly looked up at him. “Manslaughter?” he said, a larger question.

“Murder second degree would be more my guess.”

“And you don’t hang for second degree.”

“Not in this state.”

“He have a fight with Bruner too?”

“No. He was defending his manhood,” he said flatly, not willing to meet Connolly’s eyes. But Connolly refused to look away. “That’s what it says.”

“You believe this?”

“No reason not to believe it. He said it, didn’t he? Machismo’s a big thing with these people.” He paused. “It’s something any jury here would understand.”

Connolly turned back to the paper, not wanting to press him. “How much did he say he got off Bruner?”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be fifty dollars. Karl would never carry that much.”

“He says it wasn’t about money.”

“That’s right, I forgot. He was protecting his honor. So he smashes Karl’s skull in. Messes up his face.”

Holliday sighed. “Just didn’t know his own strength, I guess.”

But when Kelly was led in, he seemed to have no visible strength at all. He shuffled in, careful of the guard, and stood before the table, quiet and sullen, a schoolboy brought up before the principal. He was slight but wiry, his shoulders hunched as if the handcuffs were weighing him down. His face was like a map of his mixed ancestry, the copper skin and Aztec slant of his cheekbones set off by the surprising blue of his eyes, now half lost in the swelling on one side and the deep purple bruises. A thin scraggly mustache was pushed up by the cracked puffiness of his upper lip. There was no disguising the meanness of his face, however. The discolored skin stretched across a hard mask of defiant wariness, the look of someone who’d never known a favor in his life.

“Thank you,” Connolly said to the guard. “He need these?” He pointed to the handcuffs. The guard looked at Holliday, who nodded, and reluctantly unlocked the cuffs. Kelly rubbed his thin wrists, surprised and suspicious at the same time.

“I’ll be right outside,” the guard said. “Ramon here give you any trouble, you just holler.”

“Sit down,” Connolly said, ignoring the guard and offering a cigarette. Kelly winced slightly as his cracked lip curled around it, then let it dangle from the side of his mouth, his eyes closed against the rising smoke.

“I work for the government and I need to ask you a few questions,” Connolly began.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“About what?”

“About no government. What’s this have to do with the government? Nobody told me about that.”

“One of the men you killed worked for the government.”

For the first time Kelly looked alarmed, his bruised face furrowed in concern. “I don’t know nothing about that. I didn’t kill nobody. It was an accident.”

“And with”-he searched the paper-“Jack Duncan, that’s the man in Albuquerque-that was an accident too?”

“No. Jack was different. That was a fight.”

“What was the fight about?”

He shrugged. “You know. A fight.”

“You knew Duncan?”

“I seen him around.”

“Did you have sex with him?”

He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Hey. I don’t do that. He had sex with me.”

Connolly looked at him, surprised at the distinction. “What did he do?”

“What, are you kidding me? He blew me, what do you think? He liked doing that.”

“Did he pay you?”

“Nah. It was for, you know, the fun of it. I let guys do me once in a while. When I can’t get it any other way. What’s the difference?”

“But you had fifty dollars.”

“He give me that. It was a loan, like.”

“So even though he gave you fifty dollars, you two had a fight.”

He shrugged again, stubbing out the cigarette.

“That where you got those bruises?”

He stared at both men as if it were a trick question.

“The fight was a while ago,” Connolly said. “Those look pretty fresh.”

“I fell.”

“Where? Here?”

“Yeah, here. I fell.” He looked away.

“What about the man in Santa Fe, did you know him?”

“No.”

“Where did you meet?”

“In a bar.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. Some bar near the plaza.”

“What were you doing in Santa Fe?”

He shrugged. “I was just there, that’s all.”

“Then what happened?”

“We went for a walk. Then he-look, I already told all this stuff. Why are you asking me again?” He took another cigarette, more confident now.

“I just want to be sure I got it right. So you went for a walk. Not a ride?”

“No. A walk.”

Connolly felt Holliday stir beside him, shifting in his seat, but he didn’t say anything. “Down to the river,” Connolly prompted.

“Yeah.”

“Then what happened?”

Kelly smirked. “He come on to me.”

“Did that surprise you?”

The question seemed to catch him off-guard.

“You just thought he wanted to talk.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Okay, I thought maybe he wanted to do me. It crossed my mind.”

“Did he talk about himself? His work?”

Kelly looked puzzled. “No.”

“So what did you talk about?”

“Nothing. I don’t remember.”

“He was a pretty big guy,” Connolly said evenly. “Did that worry you?” Again he felt Holliday stir.

“I can take care of myself.”

Connolly looked at the thin, sinewy arms, the bloated face, and wondered how often he had said this before, how often the posturing had protected him. “I can see that.”

“Hey,” Kelly said, offended. “I told you. I fell.”

“So you went for a walk and you ended up hitting him. Why?”

“He got out of hand. I told you.”

“He didn’t want to have sex with you?”