The Devil's Bag Man (9 page)

W
hen the sun disappeared, Galvan slowed to a walk and kept on trucking. He had yet to locate the limit of his endurance; he knew how to tire himself enough to sleep, but he'd never pushed past what the weightlifting magazines of his youth referred to as
muscle failure
. That last rep you just couldn't power through, that wind sprint your body insisted you abort.

He was determined to do it now. He'd move until he couldn't. Drop where he stood. The tank had to empty out sometime.

But when the pink blush of dawn came, he was still putting one foot in front of the other. Just as remarkable, he had one full jug of water left, slung across his back in what had once been his best shirt—best and second-worst—and was now a makeshift bandolier.

The early morning desert stretched out in front of him, an endless gold-lit vista of scrub brush and cacti, rolling hills and shallow valleys and big sky. He'd been charting a rough southeastern path, keeping well off anything that resembled a road and tacking wide anytime he saw so much as the distant glimmer of lights.

Every once in a while, the breeze shifted and he caught a waft of salt
air, but whether he was anywhere near Rosales, or the ocean, was strictly a matter of conjecture.

Sooner or later, he'd have to roll through civilization, ask somebody for directions. Find a meal.

It wasn't a thought he relished.

Cucuy seemed determined to match Galvan's feat of endurance with one of his own. There had been no silence on this journey, no respite. The narrative unspooling from the monster's mind was wide-ranging, part history lesson and part enticement, part threat and part theology.

He discoursed on the Line of Priests: the farmer who had been its progenitor, how he'd seen a vision and wandered the desert for weeks, growing weaker and purer, the veil between the worlds lifting, lifting, as he searched for the
great spear cast from the heavens into the earth
so that he might
mortify his flesh upon it, and come to know the mysteries of the Divine Sorcerer
.

How Tezcatlipoca, Most Fearsome and Beloved, had taken an interest in man that far surpassed that of his fellow gods and molded the world like clay, through the Holy Instrument of his priests. How his dictates had caused the scales to fall from the eyes of man, so that Tezcatlipoca came also to be known and worshipped as the Bringer of Glory.

Galvan knew he should shut it out. Shut it down.

But it was fascinating.

So he listened.

And he walked.

Cucuy told him of the great betrayal of Tezcatlipoca by the goddess Omecihuatl: how she seduced him, then bound him to a magical bed as he slept. He awakened to find the greatest of the gods assembled before him, a celestial tribunal eager to judge and sentence him.

Tezcatlipoca's crime, they said, had been to teach his acolytes too much. To love mankind with too hot a passion.

Tezcatlipoca argued that the spark he lit within his priests was meant to illuminate the ways of the universe. So that they could more fully understand, more skillfully serve the majesty of the gods.

This explanation was deemed irrelevant. But then, the crime of which he was accused was not the real reason he was on trial. That would go unspoken.

The gods conferred at length about his punishment. Tezcatlipoca had grown to be among the most powerful of them. His sorcery, his spellcraft, was unmatched—and these were arts he had invented and perfected, not attributes endowed to him upon creation.

This, according to Cucuy, was the real reason the others sought to be rid of him: in Tezcatlipoca's diligence, his enterprise, they saw their own demise foretold. He alone possessed the capacity for change, for growth, and they found it terrifying. His very existence had become a threat.

And yet, he could not be destroyed. For the gods to raise arms against one of their number would bring about calamity, unmake the universe.

Instead, they expanded it. Called into being a new realm, a dimension beyond all knowledge, for the sole purpose of imprisoning their brother. Then, in hatred and jealousy, they cast him into that gray place.

But Tezcatlipoca was not entirely without defenses.

Nor was the gods' fear misplaced.

Had they not conspired to strike first, the Divine Sorcerer would soon have forced a reckoning. His mastery of his arts had grown apace with his disdain for the natural order, the fixity of power. And in the fervor of his boundless exploration he had discovered a method of rending that order, that fixity.

He meant to increase his power by leaching it from others—to render those who dared to challenge him impotent, victims of their own refusal to embrace the principle of change.

Of evolution.

Now, instead, he would teach his priest—a lowly mortal, a halting supplicant—to do to Tezcatlipoca exactly what he had schemed to do to them.

There was no other way. It was either that, or allow his very essence to be obliterated. Sheared from him the instant Tezcatlipoca stepped into the great void of the Dominio Gris.

But along with all that was great and potent, Tezcatlipoca decided, the priest must also inherit his god's pain.

He must know heartbreak.

Betrayal.

If he was to become more than a man, he must first become less.

Empty himself utterly, so that he might be filled anew.

The vassal would become a vessel.

And the Dominio Gris would perhaps not be so barren as Tezcatlipoca's enemies intended.

If he must serve out eternity in hell, the god would make of it a kingdom. Shape it to his needs.

And what he needed most was company.

Galvan jerked his head sharply, at the word. “Whaddayou mean,
company
?”

You're having a conversation with him,
Galvan reprimanded himself.
Like he's a friend
.
Stop it
.

The monster within paused, almost as if it pained him to explain.

Don't assign him human attributes
.
He's only got one purpose
.

And then Cucuy's answer filled Galvan's mind, the way a candle did a cave.

When the soul and the body are severed from each other in a manner that is unnatural
. . .

He trailed off, and Galvan finished the thought aloud.

“The soul goes there. To the Dominio Gris. While the body . . . stays behind.”

That is correct
.
In a manner of speaking
.

A few minutes of silence, Galvan picking up the pace, matching body to mind as he parsed the ramifications.

Keep it to yourself, Galvan
.
There's no fuckin' reason to tell him what you think
.
He ain't gonna give you a gold star for being such a smart boy and figuring it out. Just—

But he was already talking. Apparently, the art of ignoring Cucuy had deadened his ability to listen to his own advice, too.

“Tezcatlipoca didn't just take away your wife. He
took
your wife. For himself.”

Cucuy was silent. Galvan felt a chill run down his spine, as if an inky cloud had passed over the mounting face of the sun.

Another thought hit him, and Galvan stopped dead in his tracks.

“But not just her. All of them. It's like the goddamn—the Muslim heaven for martyrs, where everybody gets, what is it, seventy-two virgins to fuck around with.”

I do not know what it is like
, Cucuy said, the words icy and sharp.

For the first time he could remember, Galvan grinned. “Boy, ol' Tezcatlipoca sure did all right for himself, didn't he? Talk about making the prison experience comfortable. These cartel bosses got nothing on T-Cat, lemme tell you.”

On the contrary, his separation from the divine is an agony you cannot begin to fathom
.

“And here you are, his sworn enemy for what he made you do—”

I am no such thing
.
I
am
him
.
All that he was, and more
.

“Yeah, no, that's bullshit. You hate him. But what do you do? You keep on sending over girls. It'd be fucking hilarious, if it weren't so tragic. He played you like an all-day sucker, and you know it.”

Cucuy fulminated, and Galvan grinned wider. Those cheek muscles were gonna be sore tomorrow.

“Five hundred years is a long time to be pissed off, man. Maybe you oughta just let it go, find some new hobbies. Do a little yoga, learn to yodel—”

Enough! Your insolence grows tiresome
.
But understand, Jess Galvan: if I depart this world, Tezcatlipoca will return
.
The Dominio Gris is no longer his prison—I am
.
You are
.
The other gods have withdrawn from this realm—

“Because they couldn't stomach
you,
from what I heard.”

What he made me was an abomination in their eyes, yes
.
But if you believe nothing else I say, believe this. Tezcatlipoca's return would doom mankind
.

“I thought he was this big-time friend of man. Wasn't that the whole problem to begin with? You're not making a whole lot of sense here.”

Galvan shook his head—and then narrowed his eyes at a small, jerky movement just short of the horizon line.

Something was out there, and it wasn't an animal.

“I don't buy it,” he went on. “Your doom, maybe. Yours and mine. But you know what? I'm good with that. I'm
great
with that.”

You do not understand
.
There is nothing left here that can match his power
.

“Funny, I seem to remember you telling me the same thing about yourself. All that ‘rise up, embrace your destiny, kill people for the hell of it' shit—and now, what, you want me to believe that you're the lesser of two evils? I've
seen
you, motherfucker. I
know
what you do.”

You
—

“Shh.” Galvan raised an arm. Like Cucuy could see it. “There's something out here. We're being watched.”

He squinted, scanned. Maybe it had been a mirage, a trick of the light. He had been walking for damn near twenty-four hours, after all, without more than a piss break.

But no.

There.

A rustling in his periphery, a football field away. Galvan spun left, pinpointed the sound, and sprinted toward it.

What a relief it was, to run at something instead of away from everything.

The movement stopped, abruptly—the quarry, realizing the jig was up, dropping and playing dead. Too late for that. Galvan was there in a flash, sweeping back the brush.

Huddled beneath, face buried in the crooks of his arms, knees tight against his chest, was a scrap of a man, clad in scraps of clothing—his filthy, billowing pants tied with a rope belt, his T-shirt Swiss cheesed, more holes than fabric, the soles of his mismatched shoes flapping at the heel and toe.

“Get up,” Galvan ordered. “Let me see your face.”

Slowly, the man withdrew his bony arms, raised himself into a sitting position, opened his cracked lips to bare his scattered, rotten teeth.

Galvan's stomach curdled. He knew the guy. What's more, a part of him had been waiting for the motherfucker to turn up again.

He was a skulker, a denizen of the desert.

A walker in two worlds, his soul severed from his body—a Righteous Messenger who had turned on his employer, eaten the heart with which he'd been entrusted, and banished himself to the Dominio Gris.

“Gum,” said Galvan. “You sorry son of a bitch.” And extended a hand.

Gum looked up at it and shuffled back a pace, as if Galvan had thrust a live snake at him.

“Suit yourself,” said Galvan, dropping it to his side. “But why follow me, if you don't wanna say hi? 'Cuz it's just me now. Nobody around for you to turn against me anymore. Nobody to convince I oughta die. Just
me and you and a whole lotta open space, pendejo. So you might as well state your business, or move the fuck on.”

Gum stood and filled the distance between them with a filthy, tremoring, outstretched arm. His eyes were red-rimmed dinner plates, his voice a weak rasp, a knife dull with rust.

When Galvan heard the creature's words, he didn't know whether to feel terror or relief.

“I know what you are.”

S
o what are you trying to say?” Sherry demanded, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand and flinging the other in Nichols's face. “That he was
right
?”

Welcome to the Lockdown Show, Day Three.

In today's episode, tempers flare when a harried but well-meaning sheriff tries to protect his pregnant lady friend and traumatized teenage ward from unknown dangers by keeping them home, under police protection
.

Nichols clenched his jaw, ground his molars together, and headed for the refrigerator, where the beers tended to congregate.

Count to ten
.
Calm down
.
Take a swig before you answer
.

Remember you've gotta go to work in ten minutes
.
Put the beer back in the fridge
.
Lament the decarbonation of a perfectly good beverage
.

“For the last time, I didn't say he was
right
. But he wasn't wrong, either. He wasn't
incorrect
.”

He sighed and raised his eyebrows at her. “You wanna see Albarra's rap sheet again? Look, Sherry, I know it hurts, but you've got to accept it. He was a fraud, and he was out to hurt you.”

She crossed her arms. “I thought your job was to arrest people who break the law. You know, like
murderers
.”

Nichols rubbed his weary eyes with a thumb and forefinger and tried to pretend this conversation wasn't making his blood boil.

“Was he a murderer when he killed Aaron Seth? How about when you stuck a knife in Marshall Buchanan? Should I arrest you for that? Let you explain it to a jury?”

“Both of you, stop it.” Cantwell tottered into the room, faintly green of face, and went straight for the teabags. They both gave her a wide berth, as if pregnancy might be contagious.

Sherry complied, only to open up a new front a few seconds later. Her anger was untethered, floating through the air in search of something, anything, to latch on to. Nichols felt for the kid, but Jesus Christ, was she becoming unbearable.

“So how long are we in jail?” she asked, fake-casual.

“You're not in jail,” Nichols heard himself respond by rote, wondering why he bothered.

“If you can't leave, it's jail,” Sherry retorted, sounding pleased with her logic.

“Fine. Have it your way. You're in jail until I figure out who sent Albarra, and why. And how your father knew. And where he is.”

Oh, and how the fuck Kurt Knowles managed to walk out of a county lockup and vanish into the night
.

Nichols kept that part to himself. Ruth and Sherry were frazzled enough already. And it didn't make a difference, as far as the security; that was already ramped up as high as it could go.

Besides which, keeping it to himself made Nichols feel like he was protecting his women from something, even if that was goddamn idiotic. Shielding people from the truth and shielding them from a bomb were two entirely different things.

Get it
.
The Fuck
.
Together
.

“So, basically never,” Sherry shot back.

Nichols grabbed his holstered weapon, shades, and newspaper off the kitchen table. “I gotta go. Boggs will be out front. Let him know if you need anything.” He kissed Cantwell on the forehead, rubbed the small of her back. “Think of it as a vacation. A shitty, shitty vacation.”

He threw Boggs a nod as he left the house, stifling a pang of guilt for ordering the deputy to babysit—especially since it served the secondary purpose of keeping the kid sidelined, questions to himself, while Nichols continued to treat the Albarra incident as a blameless death.

And investigated it off the books, on department time, while neglecting the rest of his duties.

The apartment in Fort Worth had been a send-off; the old lady who lived there had never heard of any Lalo Albarra. She'd served coffee and Danish to the cop Nichols sweet-talked into running the address down, let him poke around to his heart's content. Nothing.

The trail hadn't gone cold; the trail simply didn't exist. Albarra's last prison stint had been two years at Beaumont; he'd checked in with his PO once, then disappeared. Not a blip on the radar in the two years since, which probably meant the kid had linked up with somebody who'd bumped him up a notch, taken him off the street.

Or that he'd crossed the border and become someone else's problem.

Or maybe he'd seen the error of his ways, found Jesus and a quiet life of service.

Hardy fuckin' har.

Bottom line, Nichols had spent the past three days with his dick in his hand, unable to scavenge so much as a lead on a lead. At first, he'd held on to the hope that Jess would reach out. Or that he'd go back home, continue living his life of psychotic drunken isolation as if nothing had happened; that seemed crazy enough to fit.

No, and no. The trailer showed no signs of occupation. Not the first night, not the second. By the third, a family of raccoons had moved in. They seemed to be in the process of tidying up, so Nichols left them to it.

Jess was gone. And around these parts, a man on the run only headed in one direction.

That meant it was time to call Miguel Fuentes.

Love him or hate him or a little of both, he was the best friend Nichols had south of the border. And the gambit he'd roped the sheriff into on that fateful fucking day three months ago had gone over like gangbusters with the brass—Fuentes had managed to spin the whole revenge-fueled, seat-of-the-pants shit show as an impeccably executed,
long-in-the-making joint operation, gotten his contacts in the press to spill an ocean of laudatory ink, and surfed his way to a plum job a few rungs up the ladder, supervising intelligence operations. All that Last Honest Cop horseshit he'd been blathering about for years had come to fruition; he was now the man who'd brought down a corrupt Federale, Luis de La Mar, and it was either celebrate Fuentes's relentless, self-sacrificing thirst for justice, or admit that de La Mar was not the exception but the rule, and take a long, close look at the whole bureau.

Nobody wanted to do that.

So.

Welcome to your new office, Señor Fuentes
.
We're honored to have you
.

The guy owed Nichols a lifetime's worth of favors, but calling them in was low on the list of things Nichols wanted to do. Fuentes hadn't seen Galvan's grand finale, had missed all the brain-melting shit; to him, the world was the same disgusting and corrupt and predictable place it always had been. There was a gulf between them, and Nichols had avoided reaching out because it only widened that gulf.

Oh, and because Fuentes had revealed himself as manipulative, untrustworthy, and far too comfortable turning judge, jury, and executioner into a one-man show.

But hey, nobody was perfect.

And Nichols needed eyes and ears in Mexico, land of Jess Galvan and Kurt Knowles and who the fuck knew what else. As soon as he rolled into the office, he asked Maggie to get his old friend on the phone.

“Line two,” she called a moment later. Nichols lifted the receiver, passed it from one hand to the other, steeled himself for the usual juvenile banter.

“Señor Fuentes. Long time no speak. I hear your dick's about three feet long now, eh?”

“You heard right, cabrón. I been using it to club rats to death.”

“Now there's a lovely image. Listen, I need a favor.”

“Of course. Anything I can do, just ask.”

Nichols pictured him leaning back in his chair, cowboy boots up on the desk, hands interlaced behind his head. Fuentes, the benevolent.

“I assume you remember Jess Galvan.”

“Every night in my prayers, hermano. How is that crazy bastard?”

“Missing.”

“Missing kidnapped? Missing on the run?”

“Missing off the record. This is for your ears only. My own people don't even know.”

Nichols stood up, phone in hand, and walked to the door. He opened it a crack, peered out, and made sure no one was within earshot, well aware of the precaution's utter pointlessness. A slave to his compulsions.

“He killed somebody. But I'm pretty sure he had his reasons.”

“Sounds like Galvan. So . . . what? Be on the lookout for a one-armed gringo who doesn't give a fuck?”

“Actually,” said Nichols, resisting the urge to smack himself for failing to think this through ahead of time, “he's got two arms now. Or, I mean, a really good prosthetic. You can't even tell.”

“Kind of like your prosthetic dick, ey?”

“I'm glad to see that power hasn't changed you, Fuentes. Very inspiring.”

“The man makes the money, Nichols. The money don't make the man. So who did Galvan kill? Anybody I know?”

“That was gonna be my next question. The victim was a kid named Lalo Albarra. One of yours. Twenty-five, ex-con, general scumbag. But he jumped parole a couple years back, disappeared off our radar. You got anything on him?”

“Give me a second and I'll tell you.”

The clicking of a keyboard, as Fuentes typed the name into whatever sleek machine was perched on his desktop.

“Let's see . . . the only Albarra I have is at Ojos Negros, doing three-to-five for trafficking underage girls.”

Nichols heart thudded against his ribs.

“Same prison Galvan was in. That's him—that's my guy.”

“Except that your guy's dead over there, not locked up over here.”

“Send somebody to his cell. I'll bet you a steak dinner it's empty.”

“I'll make a call. So he and Galvan had some kind of personal beef, you think?”

“That wouldn't explain how he waltzed out of prison without anybody noticing,” said Nichols, the gears of his mind turning. “Somebody sent him on a mission. And it wasn't Jess he went after—it was Jess's daughter. Who really runs that prison?”

But even as he asked, the answer crashed against Nichols's skull, like a wave against a levy.

Cucuy.

That was who.

The dark power that lurked belowground. The defiler of girls. The bogeyman who had brought Aaron Seth into the world and set Galvan on his gruesome quest.

He was still alive.

“I'll look into it,” Fuentes promised. “Barrio Azteca, I think. But Sinaloa is strong there, too. Like everywhere. The usual song and dance. But listen, what about Galvan? Where could he be headed?”

An image of Jess flashed before his eyes: naked to the waist and smeared in blood, the still-warm corpse of a mountain lion draped over his shoulders like a scarf.

“He'd be looking for action,” Nichols said, with sudden conviction.

“Well, we got plenty of that. Don't get me started, cabrón. I got cartel drama on my hands so crazy I can't even send in my guys. All we can do is lie back and wait for it to burn itself out, know what I mean?”

“That sounds just about his speed,” said Nichols. “Where's it at? Wanna meet me there? I'll bring a picnic lunch.”

“You're crazy, Nichols. He could be anywhere. It's a big country, tu sabes?”

“Call it a hunch. I gotta try. Besides, isn't this kind of thing your job?”

“Not even a little bit, cabrón.”

Fuentes sighed, and Nichols knew he had the bastard. Miguel was a loyal son of a bitch, when it came right down to it.

“Look,” he went on, “I don't like red in my ledger. If I roll down to Rosales with you, we're square. Debt's paid in full.”

“Absolutely,” Nichols agreed. “I'll owe
you,
even.”

“I can't be coming heavy, either. Just the two of us. No uniforms or any shit like that. We take a quick look around for Galvan, and then haul ass out of there before we end up with our heads on stakes.”

“Sure. Definitely. Thank you.”

“And one more thing, pendejo.”

“What's that?”

“You better be serious about that lunch.”