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By Root 976 0

happened to age. The same players were always there, regardless of the historical era, he thought, and the ones we heeded most were those who despoiled the earth and led us into wars and provided us with justification whenever we felt compelled to commit unconscionable acts against our fellow man. Maybe this wasn’t a good way to think, he told himself, but when you heard the clock ticking in your life, there was no worse disservice you could do to yourself than to entertain a lie. Death was bad only when you had to face it knowing that you had failed to live during the time allotted you, or that you had lied to yourself about the realities of the world or willingly listened to the lies of others.

He felt his body rock forward when Pam touched the brake in front of the cantina.

“Take it easy in there, okay?” she said.

“I wonder what kind of night R.C. is having,” Hackberry replied.

“You can really drive the nails.”

“If we mess up here, R.C. dies. Inside that stone building on the corner are men in uniform who would gladly work in an Iranian torture chamber for minimum wage. The meth being funneled through this town probably originates with a bunch down in the state of Michoacán. These are guys who make the cops in the stone building look like the College of Cardinals.”

She turned off the ignition and stared straight ahead, her hands resting on the wheel. “I wasn’t criticizing you back there. I just worry about you sometimes. You don’t handle regret very well.”

“The person who does is dead from the neck up.”

“One of these days I’ll learn to keep my counsel.”

“Watch my back. I don’t want those rurales coming through the front door and planting one in my ear.”

“R.C. is a tough kid. Give him some credit,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Put it in neutral, Hack.”

“Cover my back and lose the bromides.”

“You got it.”

Hackberry had already gotten out of the Jeep and crossed the sidewalk and entered the cantina before Pam had reached the curb. The bartender with the enormous swastika was stacking chairs on a table by the small dance floor in back. He grinned when he saw Hackberry. “Hey, amigo, you decided to come back and have dinner with me! Welcome once again. You brought the lady, too.”

“Who wouldn’t love a place like this? Excuse me just a second,” Hackberry said.

“What are you doin’, señor?”

“Not much. When I played baseball, I was a switch-hitter. I sometimes wonder if I still have it,” Hackberry said. He pulled a pool cue off the wall rack and grasped the thinly tapered end with both hands and whipped the heavy end across the bartender’s face. The cue splintered with the same hand-stinging crack as a baseball bat when it catches a ninety-mile-an-hour pitch at the wrong angle. The weighted end of the cue rocketed into the wall, and the bartender crashed over the table into the plastic-cased jukebox, blood pouring from his nose.

The bartender placed the flats of his hands on the floor and tried to straighten himself against the jukebox. Hackberry raised his right boot fifteen inches into the air and stomped it down into the bartender’s face. The man’s head pocked a hole the size of a grapefruit in the jukebox. “Where’s my deputy?” Hackberry said.

“I don’t know,” the bartender said.

“You want another one?” Hackberry said.

Three men at a table by the dance floor got up quickly and went out the back door. A fourth man emerged from the bathroom and looked at the scene taking place by the jukebox and followed them outside. Hackberry could hear a whirring sound in his head and behind him the sound of Pam Tibbs chewing gum rapidly, snapping it, her mouth open. “Hack, dial it down,” she said.

“No, Bernicio here wants to tell us where R.C. is. He just wants the appropriate motivation. Right, Bernicio? You have to explain to your friends why you cooperated with your gringo dinner guests.” He brought his boot down again.

“Oh, shit,” Pam said, her voice changing.

Hackberry turned and saw two Mexican policemen in unpressed green uniforms come through the front door and walk the length of the bar. Both of them wore