The Devil's Bag Man (8 page)

H
e was known, by allies and enemies alike, as El Cortador. The cutter. Most would have been surprised to learn that the nickname did not bespeak violence. He was, in fact, good with a blade, but Herman Rubacalo's true skill was in cutting to the heart of a matter. Excising incompetence from his organization with surgical precision; hacking new trails like a bushwhacker with a machete. His blade might be broad or slim, might saw or stab or merely flash. But it was always sharp.

Most men in Herman's business were born into poverty and rose from disposability to prominence through a combination of ruthlessness and animal cunning, loyalty, and luck. They moved up the cartel's ranks, accumulating bodies and profits and avoiding gunfire, stepping into vacancies that opened up when others' nerves or brains or reflexes failed. Eventually, prison claimed most. The rhythms of their rise and fall were as predictable as respiration.

Herman was the exception. He had been born into the trade and groomed to run it—his mind a precious commodity, his father a shrewd
investor determined to extract maximum profit. Herman's education had not been in the streets, but rather the halls of privilege; he had studied alongside the sons and daughters of tycoons and aristocrats, rubbed up against money so old it had succumbed to dementia and couldn't remember where it came from anymore.

Trace that money back through time, and all of it was covered in blood, just like his own. That was the history of capitalism, of prosperity. It didn't mean you couldn't run your organization like a professional and aspire to something better.

The whole messy business was, in truth, a means to an end. Herman had a deeper purpose, an agenda that swallowed the drug trade whole.

That, too, had been in his family for generations. They were strategists, long-term thinkers.

Connoisseurs of irony.

An urgent mission, carried out over centuries
.

As a child, Herman had read a science fiction story in which aliens, who exist in a dramatically sped-up version of time, arrive on Earth. From their perspective, only the movement of plants is discernible, and so they conclude that only the plants are intelligent. The flickering lives of humans do not register at all, and so mankind is annihilated without a thought. Herman couldn't remember the title or the author, but the idea had stayed with him all these years.

Slow and steady wins the race.

El Cortador sipped from a bottle of mineral water as his three-vehicle convoy—the armored limousine in which he rode, the gun-turreted Hummer that trailed it, and the military helicopter hovering above them both—approached Ojos Negros Prison, after a three-hour drive.

The display of force and power was customary. Perfunctory, at this point, like the handmade Italian suits Herman wore, the Philippe Patek timepiece on his wrist, the charity galas his family foundation hosted on a quarterly basis, their surname forever gracing another hospital wing or university building.

If a quarter century atop the cartel throne had taught him anything, it was that appearances were paramount. One never knew who was watching, and the perception of weakness got you killed faster than weakness itself.

By the same token, the illusion of strength could tide a hobbled man over until real potency returned.

Today's gambit was all about appearances.

Not his own, but his adversary's.

Sometimes you had to play a hunch.

The gates opened, and the cars entered. The chopper veered off, having chaperoned Herman to his destination. It would disappear now, or seem to. In actuality, Herman's security detail would maintain surreptitious contact with the pilot and alert him if air support was necessary—in the event that Herman had to make a quick exit and needed the prison's rooftop snipers neutralized. It was unlikely but not impossible, and better to have your contingencies covered than to leave anything to chance.

The limousine drew up beside the entrance, and Herman took a final sip from his bottle. He could not remember the last time he'd felt nervous. Before his final undergraduate exams, perhaps.

This would be an entirely different kind of test, he thought—and then hastened to remind himself that it was he who would be asking the questions. This meeting was a concession in itself, an admission that reassurances had to be made. Never before had Herman or any of his predecessors—nor any of his rivals, for that matter—been granted an audience with El Cucuy. The Ancient One had always preferred to have them look upon his works and not his face. To maintain the mystery of his existence.

That he had agreed to meet bespoke a house in disarray.

Maybe.

A guard led Herman and his entourage through a warren of tunnels, heavy with the musk of decrepitude. The thought that hundreds of men who worked for him were housed in the tiered cell blocks above—men who would spend their lives trying and failing to serve him well enough to earn notice and reward—flitted through Herman's mind, and then the passage widened, became a room with walls of dark stone, lit by torches. A slablike table, fashioned from the same stone as the walls but stained unmistakably with a burgundy wash of blood, dominated the space.

Seated behind it was a man, his legs crossed at the knee. Small-boned, clean-shaven, handsome.

“Welcome, Mr. Rubacalo,” the man said, rising and stepping around the table to extend a hand. “Domingo Valentine.”

El Cortador ignored it—stepped closer, forcing Valentine to drop his hand, and drew himself up to his full height. At six four, he dwarfed this peon—Herman's stature a point of pride, an ever-present reminder that his family's history stretched back into the mists of time, before miscegenation and migration and debasement, when men walked tall and the gods looked on them with favor and delight.

“Your name is of no interest to me. I have come to see your master.”

Valentine retreated. Stepped behind his chair and tried to reestablish authority.

“I'm afraid that is not possible. He has been called away on other business.”

El Cortador narrowed his eyes, as his brain calculated furiously. His security detail appraised Valentine's, both sides immobile and discreet, standing recessed in the room's plentiful shadows.

“There is no
away
for him,” Herman said slowly, dialing back the menace for now, replacing it with a pointed deliberateness. “And no business more important than mine.”

Valentine met his gaze, and Herman could see the tectonic plates shifting below the surface of the man as he considered his response.

“I do not speak of a physical absence,” he said at last. “The Ancient One is a being of . . . of spirit. And meaning no insult to you, Mr. Rubacalo, he is in a state of meditation that no earthly business could disturb. You and I—all of us—we exist on a single plane of being. The Great One—”

“I didn't drive three hours for a lecture on metaphysics, Valentine. Revenues are down. Conflicts are going unresolved. Business is suffering.”

“I will convey your concerns, Mr. Rubacalo.”

Herman unbuttoned his suit jacket, sat down, and crossed his legs, enjoying the stricken look on Valentine's face as he contemplated the move. Haltingly, Valentine sat as well.

“My sources tell me that no girls, no virgins, have been delivered to this prison for several months,” El Cortador said, in a voice so airy he might have been discussing the weather. “Perhaps you imagine that the
Great One's habits, his patterns, are unknown to us. I assure you, Mr. Valentine, that is not the case. As a businessman, it behooves me to keep tabs on the health of my partners.”

He let that hang in the air, watched Valentine's Adam's apple bob up and down in his throat.

“I assure you—”

“No, Mr. Valentine, you don't.”

Cucuy's man blinked at the insult, but he recovered quickly, his face hardening into a mask.

“You have never been graced with his presence before, Mr. Rubacalo, and you are not owed it now. If you have business to discuss, discuss it with me.”

Herman stifled a smile. Valentine's sudden aggression had confirmed all his suspicions. There was no doubt about it: something had shifted. Perhaps Cucuy's time was running short, and self-preservation was his only concern. Or perhaps his time had already run out, and this bantamweight usurper had stepped into the void, scavenged the keys to the kingdom from the body.

Was it really possible that the Great One's reign had ended, after all this time, with a whimper and a puppet show?

Had Herman's sacred oath been fulfilled, rendered null and void? Was the chain of centuries broken? Was he free to lead his life, to leave this odious business and this shadowy vigil behind?

He tried to read Valentine's face, found it weak but inscrutable.

Power does not disappear
.
It only changes hands
.

Or bodies.

Time would tell. The Enemy would emerge with strength anew, or he would not.

In the meantime, Herman Rubacalo would fortify his own position. Turn chaos into opportunity. Eliminate the competition.

That would flush Cucuy out, if anything would. To see his fragile ecosystem torn asunder, his chessboard overturned.

“Rosales,” Herman said. It was a conversational pivot toward the tangible, the flesh and blood.

Valentine's relief was palpable. “Rosales,” he repeated, as if hearing the word for the first time—a distinct possibility. “What about it?”

Herman made a show of sighing. “What about it. Are you a lover of poetry, Mr. Valentine?”

“I—”

“To paraphrase Mr. Frost, two roads converged in a wood. And the name of that wood, Mr. Valentine, is Rosales.”

He crossed his legs, in subtle mimicry, and waited for Cucuy's servant to say something. Then he tired of waiting.

“I need that town—my distribution chain endures great hardship without it. And so, apparently, does Sinaloa's; the government's new enforcement protocols have cut down both our options. Do you follow?”

The slight man gave a slight nod. He was playing it close to the vest. Herman wasn't quite sure how to read that; from a man squatting on a vacant throne, he'd have expected obsequience, or a show of force—desperation in one direction or the other. But not stoicism.

Don't grasp at conclusions
, he reprimanded himself.
Just gather information
.
That's all you've got to do
.

“This is the kind of situation Cucuy has always refereed,” Herman went on. “If he won't, or he can't, then as far as I'm concerned his time is over. Barrio Azteca will take its business elsewhere.”

“Is that a threat?” Valentine asked, voice low and serpentine. As if he was coiling himself up. Preparing, in slow motion, to strike.

Herman rose from his seat. “Certainly not. It is a plea for the Great One's attention, in the fervent hope that our relationship might continue to flourish for many years to come.”

He buttoned his jacket and smiled. “Believe me, Mr. Valentine: if I were to threaten you, no explanation would be required.”

He turned on his heel and strode toward the door, security detail massing into a phalanx behind him.

El Cortador strolled slowly down the corridor, the decorum of his departure belying a desire for fresh air so pronounced it was all he could do not to sprint toward the light.

Five hundred years
, he thought. The words echoed in his head, syncopated to the rhythm of his footfalls.

Five hundred years
.

E
l Chango.

Galvan had never dreamed he'd see the inside of this bar again.

This bar, on the Mexican side of the border, where the strippers eyed the patrons like they were thinking about forgoing the usual tits-for-tips exchange and just robbing them blind. Where guns got checked at the front door, backrooms were for losing your shirt in poker games, and the walk-in storage locker probably housed the local health inspector's corpse.

This bar, where everything had started. Where a moment's compassion for a girl his daughter's age—drunk, vulnerable, about to become the victim of men twice her age and half her worth—had bought Galvan a blackout beatdown and an eight-by-ten cell.

Pick the underdog, and you died by the odds.

He'd run all night to get here. Ran until the sun was hot on his back and then hot above his head. Ran without stopping, except to swim. His clothes dried on his back, the moisture lifting away as if by magic. His
body was like an arrow shot from a crossbow, cleaving a path through space that was sure and true, unalterable.

Fleeing one country for another had been much harder the last time he'd had to do it.

What he was hoping to accomplish here, Galvan wasn't sure. It was as if the coordinates had been programmed into him without his knowing. Like a reboot. A fail-safe.

If everything goes to shit and you murder your daughter's boyfriend in cold blood right in front of her, head for the scummiest bar in Mexico
.

He sure needed a drink, though.

Cucuy had been quiet the whole way down. Maybe because the exertion muzzled him, or maybe because things were going exactly as the monster wanted, and he was content to sit back, throw his vehicle on cruise control, and watch it charge straight into his own country.

Take him home.

Hell, Galvan realized, the thought like a punch in the gut, maybe the dream had been Cucuy's. A false vision he'd smuggled into Galvan's subconscious to trick him into killing an innocent kid. Into letting that much more of his humanity crumble and blow away, like ash in the wind.

Who could be sure? The previous night was like a dream. All Galvan could remember clearly was the look of hatred on his daughter's face.

Something told him he'd never forget that.

“Otra vez?” the bartender asked, jutting his chin at Galvan's empty glass. The dude's face rang a bell: the hairnet, the lazy eye. Galvan nodded, and cheap whiskey splashed into the vessel. He'd slapped a twenty on the bar when he'd staggered in, an hour earlier. It was the only money he had, and if he hadn't drunk his way through it by now, he couldn't be far off.

This wasn't the kind of joint that encouraged you to drink on credit.

The barman lingered, watched him pour the liquor down his throat. “You look familiar,” he said, cocking his head to jog his memory.

“Well, I ain't,” Galvan grunted, and he punctuated the remark by plunking the glass down on the bar.

The dude raised his palms in a practiced none-of-my-business gesture and turned away.

“I am looking for work, though,” Galvan informed his back, drunker than he must have thought, the sentiment sliding from his brain to his mouth with zero friction, the whiskey turning Galvan into a waterslide.

The bartender shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the towel off his shoulder, and polished some grime into a shot glass.

“You seen the pit out front,” he said, sizing Galvan up. “Might make some money that way, if you don't mind a little risk.”

It had been empty when he'd entered, but Galvan remembered from last time: roosters kitted out with razor blades, clawing one another to death, the money flowing as the warm blood sprayed.

“I don't know shit about picking a winning bird.”

The barman shook his head. “Weekdays, it's cockfighting. Weekends, that pit's for men. Ultimate fighting style, carnal. You look like maybe you could kick some ass, ey?”

Galvan took that in and sighed.

“You got a fuckin' sign-up sheet or something?”

Three whiskeys and thirty minutes later, he was in the ring, shirtless, facing off against a three-hundred-pound Mexican with arms like Christmas hams. Drunken gaming enthusiasts surrounded them on all sides, leaning over the barbed wire that marked off the arena, shouting and waving fans of currency.

Kill him
, Cucuy crooned.
Snap his neck like you did Seth's
.
The door to your old life has closed
.
You are a fugitive
.
Dead to your daughter
.
Dead to them all
.
Become what you are meant to be
.
It begins right now
.

They were more than words. Galvan could feel the monster's strength, pulsing through his muscles like bursts of electricity. It merged with the flow of his adrenaline, the cocktail dizzying.

Why the fuck not?
he thought, as the enormous luchador-looking cocksucker stampeded toward him and the crowd roared, drunk on the promise of blood, the possibility of money.

What have I got to lose?

Why fight it?

I've been a loser
.
I know what that's like
.
Been a moralist too
.

Maybe he's right
.
Maybe we don't understand shit
.
Maybe we're all just ants
.
Maybe our only purpose is to die for God
.

So why not be a god, then?

The man was almost upon him. At the last possible instant—well after it, if your neurological frame of reference was the human male, and more so if it was the human male after seven whiskeys—Galvan darted out of his path. Raised an arm to crucifix position and let the dude run straight into that instead.

It might as well have been a brick wall, the way he went down—broad back slamming against the hard-packed dirt a fraction of a second before his skull landed, lessening the impact and allowing him to maintain consciousness. He slurped for breath, the intake riotously loud against the throng's stunned silence.

Galvan's knee was on his throat before the guy could exhale. His hands clamped around the luchador's wrists, as inescapable as the steel shackles he'd found himself wearing when he first awakened in Cucuy's dungeon beneath the prison, three months and an entire lifetime ago.

Finish him
.
You are a god
.

A flash of crimson obscured his vision, and Galvan shook his head. He could not extricate his thoughts from Cucuy's, did not know whether the man below him was supposed to live or die or why or whether such a thing as why existed anymore. He jerked his head and felt a shooting pain, then looked into the man's eyes, found them wide with surrender. He pulled his knee back, sprang to his feet, offered him a hand up. Yanked the luchador vertical and turned to address the audience.

“So. Who's next?”

We call that mercy, motherfucker
.
It's what makes us human
.

Silence. Both inside and out.

The win netted Galvan a C-note, plus all the whiskey he could stomach. Its speed and flawlessness prevented him from earning any more; the patrons of El Chango might have been desperados, but they weren't stupid.

The fight earned Galvan a new buddy, too: Bebo, his conquered foe. He'd insisted on buying the first round, regardless of the fact that it was supposed to be on the house. Turned out he'd held the crown for two or three months—easy enough to believe; the motherfucker was built like a brick shithouse, probably hadn't been knocked off his feet since he was knee high to a duck. His friendliness seemed to stem
from a mixture of awe that Galvan has bested him so easily, gratitude that he hadn't taken the opportunity to pound Bebo senseless once he was down, as most would have, and relief that Galvan was just passing through town and thus Bebo would be the odds-on favorite again come tomorrow.

“So where you headed?” the dude asked. He and Galvan were hunched over the bar, and roughnecks clamored for beers on either side of them, the handful of big winners who'd bet on Galvan engaged in the time-honored tradition of giving the money right back.

“Dunno. South.” He shrugged. “Gun for hire. Just looking for work.”

Bebo arched his eyebrows, jowled his cheeks, nodded. “Just steer clear of Rosales. Trust me, no amount of money is worth getting caught up in that.”

A guy with his back to them perked up his ears at the mention of Rosales and turned toward the conversation. He was tall and poker-faced, the poker having hit him just beneath the cheekbone, the gash poorly stitched, the scar a livid red.

“Don't listen to this pendejo,” he said, throwing a play punch at Bebo's meaty shoulder. “He's a family man. In Rosales, any vato willing to get his hands dirty can make three, four times the normal rates.”

“Sure,” said Bebo darkly. “Just enough to cover your own funeral.”

“I wanna be where the action is,” said Galvan, glancing at one and then the other. He rapped a fist against his skull. “Keeps me sane. What's in Rosales?
Where
is Rosales? I never even heard of it.”

“That's cuz it's a little godforsaken fishing village in the middle of nowhere,” said Pokerface.

Bebo drained his drink, beckoned for more. “It was. Until that big-ass cell-phone company decided to build its corporate headquarters in Gómez Palacio and brought in an army's worth of private security to drive out Barrio Azteca. Now Rosales is the only place with a seaport and a highway for a hundred miles.”

“Which is why Federacíon Sinaloa was set up there to begin with,” Pokerface finished.

“So it's war,” said Galvan. This was sounding better and better. Keep the ol' brain and body occupied, maybe even do some kind of good in the world.

Or at least do some bad to some bad guys, if he had to do some bad.

Which it seemed like maybe he did.

Bebo affixed him with a wet-eyed look, full of a pleading affection that belied the thirty-seven minutes they'd known each other. “Don't do it, man. Hell, stay here and kick my ass once a week instead.”

Galvan clapped him on the back. “I wish I could. How far's this village?”

Pokerface calculated. “About two hundred miles southeast,” he said.

“All right, then.” Galvan slammed his drink, beckoned to the bartender. “You got gallon jugs back there? Yeah? Fill two of 'em with your finest water, would ya?”

Bebo blinked at him. “You're not leaving
now
.”

“Sure am.”

“Where to?”

He already knew, so Galvan didn't tell him.

Bebo swiped a hand across his face. “You're not
walking
.”

Galvan shrugged. “Probably run most of the way, and walk the rest. I'm a, whaddayou call it—an endurance athlete. This kinda shit is fun for me.”

Bebo stared at him. “You're not kidding, are you?”

He knew the answer to that one too, so Galvan kept it zipped.

“There are easier ways to kill yourself, cabrón. Shit, wait till tomorrow and I'll drive you there myself.”

“Thanks anyway,” he said. “You're all right, Bebo.”

Galvan dug into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out the damp, folded wad of bills he'd won and pressed them into the dude's hand. “Here. I'm gonna be raking in the big bucks in a few days anyway.”

Bebo tried to give it back.

“I can't take this.”

“Buy your kids something,” Galvan said. He grabbed the water jugs from the bartender and headed for the door.

“At least sober up first!” Bebo called, behind him. “You've had like fifteen drinks.”

“That's what the water's for,” Galvan replied and stepped out into the sunlight.

Here it comes
.
Here it comes
. He braced himself.

You cannot outrun me, Jess Galvan
.
You cannot outrun your destiny
.

A sharp pain flashed through his head, his chest—like the electrical bursts he'd felt in his muscles, before the fight, but different.

Weaponized.

A lash. A slavemaster's whip.

“Fuck you,” he said.

And Galvan ran.