The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [21]
"Strip each body of everything in their pockets," said John Lourdes. "Wallets, any scrap of paper. Leave nothing. Collect it for me. Saddlebags too."
"Mr. Lourdes ..."
The son ordered him again in no uncertain terms and the father walked off. "Why don't I do that, Mr. Lourdes. That'll give you some time to negotiate the matter at hand with your conscience."
A moment later there was a gunshot that caused the horses to startle and scatter. The father turned. The impact had driven the man to the earth, where charred cinders blew over him. With a streak of pure mean Rawbone mocked what the dead man had said down at the roadhouse. "The way I see you by that truck, looking off to the hills ... you're a real climber, son."
TWELVE
FEW LAST SCATTERED sparks blew from that barren upland as the truck descended to the road. They had it rigged up and strapped down with the trappings of war. They'd even lashed the motorcycle, like some trophy from a battle of yore, to the truckbed.
It was a matter now of the crossing into Mexico. The main bridges over the Rio Grande with their immigration agents and customs officers posed too much of a threat and so were out of the question. And finding shallows you would gamble a truck might navigate would be a marvel of stupidity. But Rawbone knew of a rope ferry south of El Paso near the old Socorro Mission. The river had changed course there near a half-century before, and was a place of isolated sandbars and lonely stretches of shoreline.
They drove through the chilly hours before dawn. A smoky oil lamp hung from the roof frame above the son's head. The father's upturned derby rested on the cab seat between both men. It was filled to the brim with what Rawbone had scavenged from the dead as John Lourdes had ordered. Rawbone watched as John Lourdes meticulously studied each personal item, every bit of identification, holding them up to the trundling light, eyes squinting from the grainy smoke to better read ink that had faded with wear. He would then write certain details down in a pocket notebook he carried. His concentration stayed exact and his hand steady even as the truck pitched and rose on that worthless road.
It seemed to Rawbone he himself did not even exist during these hours. He was, in fact, left to his own private maelstroms and outside the fitted plan. This fed a sense of disadvantage and that always left him uncertain and wary. "Why all the looking and writing, Mr. Lourdes?"
He glanced up from his notebook. "I noticed," he said, "there's no paper money in that derby of yours."
"You didn't order me to grub the dead for your salary."
"I suppose you left it to the buzzards as a charitable donation."
"As a matter of fact, my notion was to buy you something when we're done. In memorial of our time together."
John Lourdes went back to his notebook.
"You didn't answer me, Mr. Lourdes."
"I didn't answer."
"That much I know."
John Lourdes looked up again. He slipped the pencil behind his ear, set the notebook in his lap. He began with the girl at the fumigation building, then following her into Mexico and sketching in a series of strange incidents that took him to that morning at the Mills Building.
Rawbone leaned back and scratched at his cheek with the edge of a thumb. "If I ever meet her, I'll have to remember to thank her for the introduction."
"One of the dead back on that mountain. The Mexican. That was her father."
That detail was like a stone dropped into a pond of still water and the ripples it sent through Rawbone's mind. He said, "I see now."
"Do you?"
"If you want to get to the heart of something, cut away."
John Lourdes had been thinking out how the dead back up on that mountain came to know about him and the truck. It seemed apparent. Mr. Simic and his associates had come upon an alternate way to resolve their unfortunate problem-they notified the people they were supplying that the truck and its cache of munitions had been taken. Rawbone leaned into the steering wheel and listened