The Devil's Bag Man (12 page)

S
herry sank onto the couch, a pint of ice cream in one hand, a spoon in the other. She wasn't even hungry. Just bored. No wonder everybody in this country was fat. They sat in their stupid houses watching moronic shit on television and shoveling garbage into their faces. It anesthetized them to the tragic pointlessness of their own lives somehow, this endless parade of girls who didn't know which tattooed loser had knocked them up and wanted to find out before a live studio audience, and then fight the guy's wife.

Cooking. Home renovation. Hillbilly shitheads. The same five news stories. The same five baseball highlights. Click. Click. Click. It was amazing how fast your will seeped out of you and into the cushions.

The weight of everything Sherry tried not to think about was like a roiling storm cloud, and she expended tremendous energy shooing it away—keeping the horrific, the unfathomable at arm's length, the death and loss at bay.

Ruth had work to make the house bearable. She brewed her coffee, poured it into a travel mug—that was rich—carried it to her home
office, fifteen feet away, and shut the door. Sherry could hear her in there, the tapping of her fingers on the computer keyboard almost as loud as her voice on the phone. She broke for lunch, slapped together sandwiches for them both, then went right back to it. Evenings were better. Normal-ish. Nichols brought home groceries. The three of them would collaborate on dinner, maybe watch a movie together. But now that he was gone—for what he promised would only be forty-eight hours, though Sherry had her doubts—the nights would be an extension of the days. The same stale air circulating between them without so much as a hint of a breeze.

Sherry had begun the morning with a resolution to read, marched over to the bookshelf and picked out a proper hardcover novel. But she couldn't focus, didn't have the attention span to get through chapter two. She'd tossed the book aside by eleven, scooped up the remote. Her phone lay beside her, and she checked it reflexively every few minutes for messages, even though the volume was on.

Closest she'd come to exercise.

Yesterday, Eric sent her one of his periodic puppy-dog-hopeful, poorly punctuated texts—
hey I'm here if you wanna talk we can still be friends at least right?
—and her heart soared at the mere prospect of human contact. All the reasons she'd stopped seeing him seemed shortsighted and childish now; who else but Eric would ever, in a million years, understand even a fraction of what she'd gone through?

Sherry had been about to invite him over when she caught herself. What could she tell that sweet boy? That her life continued to be a roller-coaster ride through shit fields? That she was about to be a fucking high school dropout? That it wasn't safe to leave her house, between the kidnappers, the mysterious plots, her psycho father? That she needed him to bring over some weed, because she was all out and couldn't cope without it?

At some point even gentle, loyal Eric would have to conclude that Sherry
attracted
drama, just like these gross fucking women on TV.

At some point, she'd have to conclude the same.

Let's grab coffee next week?
she'd texted back at last, some fourteen hours later, figuring that by next week things would have either calmed down or she'd be willing to risk her life to leave the house.

Midafternoon, Ruth sashayed out of her office, all fucking radiant.
This pregnancy thing was a real trip: wake up looking like a seasick crackhead, progress to glowy earth goddess by noon, pass out at eight thirty, repeat.

“Do some yoga with me,” she said, flashing a
Prenatal Poses
DVD in her hand and heading for the TV.

“No thanks. I'm prenatal by, I dunno, about ten to fifteen years.”

“Ah, who cares? It's good to move a little.”

The doorbell rang, as if to signal the end of round one, and both their faces lit up. It had come to that: Boggs letting them know that he was clocking out and Hildebrand was taking over had become the highlight of their day.

Sherry beelined for it, with Ruth a pace behind, pulling her hair out of its ponytail so Boggs could fully appreciate its new bun-in-the-oven luster.

“Check the peephole first, Sher,” she cautioned.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sherry peered through it, saw the uniform, Boggs's back turned to them, the cruiser parked curbside like always, the whole tableau fish-eyed, distorted.

Just like her life.

She flicked the first lock, undid the chain on the second, and pulled the door wide.

“Hey, Russell.”

Right away, even before he turned, Sherry knew it wasn't Boggs. Or Hildebrand.

And she knew something was very wrong.

She tried to slam the door, but he was too quick: boot to the jamb, the big slab of wood shuddering on its hinges.

And then his fat red face and massive body filled the threshold, blotted out the world beyond.

“Hello, Sherry. You remember me.”

She did.

All too well.

Kurt Knowles threw his shoulder against the door and forced his way inside. Slammed it behind him and stood looking at them both, hands hipped, grin wide, teeth like jagged gravestones in his enormous mouth.

“Howdy, Doc.”

The chest of his uniform shirt was soaked with blood, and there was a two-inch rip in the fabric stretched across his barrel chest.

He followed her eyes to it. “Don't worry, sweetheart. That ain't mine.”

He jerked his thumb toward the street, the car. Toward Boggs.

“That's his.”

He took another swaggering step into the living room and tapped his hand against the knife strapped to his thigh, the blade still red with blood.

“I'm not here to hurt y'all,” he said. “But I am allowed to, if you don't cooperate.”

Sherry looked at Ruth, found her frozen in place, the color drained from her face, both hands splayed protectively, unconsciously, over her stomach. She wasn't going to be doing any fighting; there was too much at stake for her, too much to lose.

Sherry, on the other hand, really didn't give a fuck anymore.

And this was on her. She was the one he'd come for.

“What do you want?” she blurted.

“The three of us are gonna take a little drive.”

“Where are we going?” Sherry asked, mind racing. “Do I need my passport?” There was a gun in a box in the bedroom closet. Nichols kept it loaded. If she could get to it, she wouldn't hesitate.

“You'll see when we get there. Now let's go.” He grabbed her by the elbow, yanked her toward the door.

She yanked back, wrenched her arm free. “Just take me,” she said. “I'm the one you came for, right?”

Knowles cackled—whether at the defiance or the question, Sherry wasn't sure—and a toxic bouquet of blood, sweat, and motor oil billowed toward her.

“What, are you fuckin' kidding me? Me and the doc go way back. Ain't that right, Doc?”

“Get the fuck out of my house!” Ruth snarled.
She looked like a cornered dog
, Sherry thought, and then
No, like a mother dog, defending her young
.

Sherry had been wrong—a hundred and eighty degrees wrong. Ruth had too much to lose
not
to fight.

No sooner had she thought it than Ruth turned and dashed from the room.

She's going for the gun,
Sherry thought. But no. The bathroom; she heard the door slam, the lock click into place.

“I'm calling the police!” she screamed.

Sherry felt a drop of sweat slide down the inside of her arm as she braced to run: in an instant Knowles would make a move, storm over there and kick in the door, and when he did she'd break for the bedroom, grab the gun—

But no.

This wasn't his first rodeo, and Knowles wasn't about to let her out of his sight. He grabbed Sherry by the back of the neck, his arm like a steel cuff, and half dragged her over to the bathroom. Slammed her up against the door and called to Ruth.

“Put it down or I start breakin' bones, Doc. That what you want?”

He twisted Sherry's arm behind her back until pain shot through it, hot and sharp, and she screamed.

Ruth opened the door, face blank with fear, cell phone in hand.

Knowles grabbed it and released Sherry. She crumpled into a pile on the floor, cradling one arm in the other, and cursed herself for being weak. Fragile.

So fucking human.

“Hey, asshole,” she said, blinking back stars.

Knowles looked down at her, and Sherry lifted her face, threw everything she had into the biggest shit-eating grin she could muster.

“You know my father's gonna kill you, right?”

Knowles shoved the phone into his pocket. “Your father's already dead. Now stand the fuck up.” He grabbed her by the arm he hadn't just nearly snapped and pulled her to her feet.

And then, for the first time in days, Sherry was outside, squinting in the sunlight as Knowles paced them toward the cruiser, hands manacled around each of their wrists.

Sherry cast around for anybody who might help—a neighbor, a passerby, a landscaping crew, a fucking dog—but the block was empty of all life. Folks were at work, or they were someplace air-conditioned. She got off half a scream anyway,
Hel
—before Knowles shoved them both into the backseat and the locks clicked shut.

He opened the driver's door and rolled Russell Boggs's shirtless, bludgeoned body into the gutter.

Sherry gasped, the sound huge in the hermetic, airless car.

Knowles fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb.

The cruiser cruised. Down the block, full stop at the sign, two-second pause, left onto Edmund, right on Bristol. The police radio babbled anodyne mundanities, no big action in Del Verde County this afternoon.

Ruth grabbed her hand, squeezed. Whether she was the beneficiary of comfort or its dispenser, Sherry was not sure.

Except, neither.

“You know, Doc,” Knowles said after a few blocks, half turning toward the grated metal partition that separated the backseat from the front, the criminals from the cops, “Aaron Seth was like a father to me. And my club, well, they were like my brothers.”

He put the monologue on hold and made a looping left onto Old Ranch Boulevard. They were coming up on the highway.

“What would you do if somebody took away your family, Doc?”

All Sherry could see of him were huge fists, choking the black leather steering wheel.

“If I've done something to hurt your family, I'm sorry,” Ruth said, and Sherry could tell she was trying to keep the quaver out of her voice, inject the therapist into it. “That was never my intention.”

“Don't you fuckin' lie to me. Mr. Seth told me all about you, Doc. You're a meddling little cunt. He'd be alive, it wasn't for you. Well, guess what?”

“You're a fucking psychopath,” said Sherry, for no better reason than the fact that it was true.

Knowles cackled. “Guess again.”

He turned far enough to look them both in the eye. “Give up? Well, Doc, you got a real special treat coming. Seeing as how you spent so much time up Mr. Seth's ass about what was happening to all them girls, you're gonna get to find out for yourself where they ended up.”

He turned back toward the road.

“This here, Doc? This is what we call a pussy run.”

With that, Kurt Knowles merged onto the highway, headed south. Sherry heard an earth-shaking rumble behind her, and then another. She twisted in her seat, in time to see four True Natives pull off the shoulder, the chrome pipes of their Harleys gleaming in the afternoon sun, and settle into formation around the car.

I
gotta say, Fuentes,” Nichols offered as the scenery sped past, “power agrees with you. You musta dropped what, forty pounds?”

The Mexican laughed and flipped the toothpick in his mouth, end over end, without taking his hands off the steering wheel.

“Thanks, cabrón. What can I say? I'm a stress eater. I'm feeling more relaxed these days.”

They were a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty miles south of the border, zipping along an empty two-lane road in Fuentes's brand-new Prius, past farmland and scattered shacks, the occasional huddled town.

“That's good,” Nichols said. “I mean, I don't think ten times more responsibility would chill me out, but hey, whatever works.”

Fuentes chuckled, flipped his mouth lumber again. He'd been worrying the thing for half an hour. Disgusting fucking habit.

“Well, don't get me wrong. The narcos and the politicians are still jacking each other off, and I still don't have the resources to be more than an inconvenience to any of these hijos de putas. But the view from twenty thousand feet is better than the view from ground zero, tu sabes?
At least now, I feel like I can see the whole chessboard. Know who the players are.”

“Guess that counts for something,” Nichols grunted, half sorry he'd gotten Fuentes going. A hard man to shut up, once he got on a roll. Then again, as long as he was ruminating aloud, Fuentes wouldn't be cranking the
Ennio Morricone's Greatest Western Movie Themes
CD waiting in the deck. That stuff worked fine behind a shot of Eastwood lighting a cigarillo, but Nichols couldn't think of another context in which he'd choose to hear it.

“I hate to say it, amigo,” Fuentes went on, “but the position I'm in now? I'm learning to see the gray areas. Lesser of two evils, enemy of my enemy, shit like that.”

He shook his head, shifted his hands to twelve and six. “It's like those old questions they used to ask us in school—you know, you're driving a train, and ahead of you on the track are four kids playing, and if you do nothing, you're gonna hit 'em. But on the only other track you can switch onto, there's two kids. So do you make a move and kill fewer kids, or do nothing and kill the four?”

Nichols scowled out the window. “The fuck kinda school you go to?”

Fuentes laughed. “A shitty one, carnal. Ay, you thirsty? Let's get something to wet our whistles in the next town, yeah?”

“Why not? Gotta be coming up on happy hour by now.” He stretched his legs—as best he could, anyway—and then his arms. Loosed a savage yawn, closed his eyes, and opened his big fat mouth.

“Moral relativism's really not a good look for you. I think I liked Fat Fuentes better.”

He tried not to crack a smile. Failed.

Fuentes cackled. “I got your Fat Fuentes right here.” Nichols didn't have to unshutter his eyeballs to know the cop was grabbing his crotch.

Nichols drifted off, awakened only when the lulling hum of rubber rolling over road cut out from underneath. They were in a parking lot, the neon
CERVEZA
sign in the bar's front window glowing the same electric blue as the evening sky.

“Vámonos, gringo.” Fuentes got out and slammed the driver's door, sauntered toward the entrance.

Nichols unfolded himself, knuckled the crust out of his eyes, and
had a look around. Something was off, but he couldn't pinpoint what it was. Maybe just his postnap grogginess, or a touch of the off-balance feeling he got in Mexico sometimes, everything the same but slightly different, a Coke not quite a Coke.

The Cokes were better, actually. Real cane sugar, not that corn syrup crap. That was now a
thing,
apparently—you could get Mexican Coke in all the hipster bars in Austin. Kat had told him on the phone, though for the life of him he couldn't imagine how he and his ex got on the subject. Maybe because they'd honeymooned in Mexico, discovered Mexicoke together. Whatever. They were friends now. That was okay. You could be friends with your ex. Especially if she was a lesbian.

Your mind is wandering, old man
.
Pull it together
.

Suddenly, it hit him.

Theirs was the only car in the lot.

“You sure this joint is open?” he called to Fuentes.

“It's open,” he called back, without turning. And sure enough, a moment later the newly svelte cop slipped through the smoked-glass door. Nichols ambled after him, sufficiently awake now to relish the thought of an ice cold beer.

He strode into the long dim roadhouse, still mulling over the vacant lot. Maybe they were near a factory or something, and everybody walked here to drink.

Or maybe it was a roach-infested pisshole the locals stayed away from in droves.

“Fuentes?” he called, smiling at the thirtyish woman standing behind the bar, acting like he was invisible or she was out of booze.

“In here, cabrón.”

Nichols walked toward the sound of his voice, figured the barkeep had steered Fuentes toward the back room. They probably consolidated the afternoon crowd there or something.

Sawdust and peanut shells blanketed the floor, glued in place by spilled beer and crisscrossed with the muddy treads of shitkickers.

Lotta charm, lotta charm.

“Just 'cause I'm buying doesn't mean—” Nichols was saying, when the sight of what lay through the open door brought him up short.

Fuentes sat at a four-top, eyes fixed on Nichols, jittery as a speed freak.

Next to him sat a man Nichols had only seen in photographs—grainy black-and-whites snapped from a distance as he strode from nightclub to chauffeured car or chauffeured car to mansion, ensconced within a phalanx of security.

Speaking of which.

“Arms up, please.”

Nichols obliged, as a young man sporting a high-and-tight crew cut and a Kevlar vest approached him. Another stood behind the table; they were a matched set, and Nichols guessed a few more were floating around. Out back by the car, probably.

Car or the goddamn helicopter.

“Lemme save you the trouble,” he said. “Gun on the waist, and a Bowie knife strapped to my ankle, if that type of thing's of interest.”

The kid nodded, palmed the gun, and bent to pat him down anyway. Did it with a certain respect, which Nichols would have appreciated if he wasn't busy being perplexed and furious.

“Wanna tell me what the fuck is going on here?” he demanded, when the search was over.

The seated man rose. He was deeply tanned, impeccably dressed, and towered over Nichols.

“I apologize for all of this,” he began, spreading his arms to take in the surroundings, and then extended a hand. A large square jewel on his pinkie finger caught the light.

It was a goddamn Harvard University class ring. The balls on this asshole.

“My name is Herman Rubacalo. Please, be so kind as to sit down.”

“I know who the fuck you are,” Nichols snapped. He glared at Fuentes. “This what you mean by the lesser of two evils, you slimy son of a bitch?”

Fuentes raised his palms, showed them to Nichols in a calm-down gesture. “Hear him out, my friend.” And then he narrowed his eyes, shot Nichols a look rich in the ferocity of its intention.

I had no choice
, it said.

For whatever that was worth.

Rubacalo beckoned toward the chair, his voice a low, solicitous rumble. “Please, Sheriff Nichols, let us talk.” He cupped his hand to his heart. “I am not what I appear to be.”

He turned up his lips to leaven the cliché and then sat down. Leaned forward, dropped his elbows onto the table, and used his left palm to cover his right fist.

“Alonzo, Gabriel, get us some beers.” The guards vanished quickly and quietly from the room.

Nichols relented, yanked out a chair, plopped himself into it.

“Say what you gotta say. I'm not here on vacation.”

“Indeed you are not,” the drug lord agreed. “You are here to find Jess Galvan.”

Nichols lobbed a murderous grimace at Fuentes, then turned back to Rubacalo. “You're very well informed, Cortador.”

“Please, call me Herman. That name, Cortador, it's for the tabloids. And yes, Sheriff. I am.”

He leaned back, caught Nichols's eyes in the tractor beam of his own steely gaze. “I may even be able to give you some answers, where right now there is only confusion.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The goons returned, deposited three sweating bottles of beer on the table. Nichols wondered if it would be giving in to drink.

Then he drank.

Fuentes and Rubacalo raised their bottles, too.

“You have seen things you cannot explain, Sheriff. This man Galvan has caused you to call everything you thought you knew into question. Yes?”

He was fishing, Nichols thought, and stayed quiet.

“I'm going to tell you a story,” the cartel chief declared, crossing his legs and settling deeper into his chair. “It begins five hundred years ago, with a man named Izel Notchi Icnoyotl, a low-ranking priest in the Aztec Empire's most powerful cult, the Temple of Tezcatlipoca.”

He paused, waiting for some sign of recognition. Nichols maintained his poker face.

“Tezcatlipoca was a sorcerer. And a warrior. Over the course of many generations, his priests' influence came to transcend religion. They held sway over the politicians. Controlled the military.”

“Like the pope,” Fuentes interjected.

“Precisely. The head priest was a man named Cualli. You now know
him as Cucuy.” He paused, gave Nichols another look of appraisal. “You have heard this name, Sheriff?”

“Rings a bell.”

“And what do you know of him?”

“That he gave Jess Galvan a heart in a box to take to his son. Seth was supposed to eat it, and . . .”

He trailed off. Saying this shit out loud still made him feel like a fucking lunatic.

“And what?” Rubacalo prodded.

Nichols took a deep breath and exhaled a gust of words. “And get all Cucuy's powers. But instead, Galvan ate it and his fucking severed arm grew back and he's basically been a psychotic superhero ever since.”

Rubacalo was silent for a moment.

“Then it is as I have feared,” he said at last.

“And why's that, Herman? Don't you have a fuckin' international drug cartel to run?”

They stared at each other until Rubacalo blinked. He took a long swallow of beer, then hunkered low over the table.

“Izel could have stopped Cualli from becoming a monster. Instead, he gave his blessing. Allowed his sister to be sacrificed.”

“That ain't what I asked you.”

“The power of Tezcatlipoca was too much. Cualli became a monster. He sustained himself on the hearts of virgins; his madness and his power knew no bounds. The gods themselves turned their backs on the world. And as the centuries passed, he faded into the shadows, conned the world into forgetting he was real. Made himself into a myth. His body weakened, and he began to look for another. Now it appears he has found one.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on a second there—”

“Jess Galvan is not Jess Galvan anymore, Sheriff.” He cocked his head, spoke softly. “But you already know this.”

Nichols shook his head. “That's impossible.”

“Are you still so quick to think you know what's possible?”

“No, I mean—I've talked to him. I
know
him. He's not the same, but he's—he's still him. Last three months, he's been living out in the sticks, because he doesn't trust himself around people. He hunts, he chops wood. He drinks beer. That sound like Cucuy to you?”

“But he's not chopping wood and drinking beer anymore, is he, Sheriff?”

Nichols closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

“No,” he heard himself say. “He's not.”

“On the contrary, he's murdered thirty-one of my men in the last twenty-four hours. And some number of my competition, as well.”

Nichols' head snapped up. “
What?
”

“He seems to have taken a liking to a village called Rosales. As you surmised.”

Nichols nodded, stupefied, and waited for him to go on.

“Rosales is a violent place, just now. Ironically, it was Cualli who maintained whatever balance there can be in a business as erratic as my own. With him gone, there is nothing to prevent me from crushing my competition.” He smiled. “Or them from attempting to crush me.”

“And why would Cucuy want to defend some random village against the cartels?” Nichols demanded. “How does that make any sense at all?”

Rubacalo raised an eyebrow, gave a sideways nod. “On the surface of things, it does not. But it has been prophesied that when the Ancient One reemerges, he will disguise himself as a defender of the weak, a bringer of justice. Until his cruelties reveal him.”

“Yeah, well, Galvan has pretty much made a career out of defending the weak. Besides, why would Cucuy piss around for months impersonating some isolated weirdo? That doesn't lead to world domination, usually.”

“Allow me to finish,” Rubacalo said, and tapped the table with a splayed hand. “There are two possibilities. What's for certain: Galvan and Cualli are related. They share blood. A lineage. If they did not, eating the heart would have destroyed him.”

He paused, stared past Nichols and into space. “But it may be that Galvan has not been subsumed. The genetic link may be too weak. He may be . . . fighting it.”

Nichols picked up his bottle and fleetingly considered how inadequate a beverage it was for this conversation. He needed tequila. Or maybe a nice warm glass of bleach.

“
That
sounds like Galvan,” he said.

The silence welled around them as Rubacalo mulled that over.

“You still haven't told me how the fuck you figure in,” Nichols said at last.

Rubacalo trickled some beer down his throat.