Erica’s mouth popped into an O-shape — as in oh, you’ve got to be kidding — and she actually racked the slide to verify the worst. Empty chamber, vacant clip. It was just enough time, measured in tachycardia, for Barney to swivel on the floor, swing the Bulldog around. The gun was tough black passivate with pancake grips. He pulled the trigger once.
The shot caught her in the cheekbone and the hair on the back of her head flew apart. The slug, a semi-wadcutter, made a ballpoint-pen hole going in. Coming out, it was more like the size of a salad plate. The left side of her face collapsed around the crush cavity and her gun hand flew sidewise, drunkenly jettisoning the SIG.
The Bulldog spent, Barney nonetheless scrambled on top of her to pin her down. Hemorrhage was already darkening her brow and her eye on the gunshot side had orbited to a slit of white. Her other eye, still open, leering green, was fixed on him, but could no longer see him. No parting bon mot, no quip. Just dead.
Feeling pretty dead himself, Barney crawled toward the bathroom.
The first people to enter the room, later, were Elpidia Marcos and Esperanza Guitierrez, two Hispanic maids working for the hotel. They found bodies, blood, guns and a great deal of folding American currency strewn around on the bed and floor. Inside the single suitcase in the bedroom, they found even more money.
By the time they alerted their employers, stories had been jerry-rigged. Management staff entered the room to discover bodies, blood, guns and a far smaller amount of cash strewn around. No suitcase.
By the time the police were summoned, alibis had been solidified. By the time detectives visited the by-now thoroughly polluted crime scene, they found bodies, blood, guns and a couple hundred bucks on the floor.
The solution that allowed the quickest clean-up was that the two people in the top-floor suite had murdered each other with weapons found on-site. This story was not released to the news media, as the hotel had a reputation to uphold, as well as a fast shuffle in order to erase all evidence of misdoing and make the room rentable again as soon as feasible. If someone had suggested a bit of bribery was involved, even in the form of comps and favors to the police, nobody would have laughed.
Barney had left the hotel wearing a dead man’s clothing and lugging two suitcases that threatened to pull his tendons out with every step. After patching his ripped ear and realizing there was far too much blood on him to pass without comment, he rifled the closet and found some duds of Tannenhauser’s that would pass peripheral scrutiny. He smeared some of Erica’s base makeup into his more lurid, visible wounds, then saw that he could not just leave his own bloodsoaked clothing behind, oozing with his DNA. He popped one of the money cases and threw cash in handfuls onto the floor, to make room for the incriminata he had to smuggle out. Fair trade, all things considered.
Down the elevator and through the lobby, the whole trick was not to weave like a drunk, or puke, or black out, or start leaking fresh geysers of the red stuff. Maintain a brisk and businesslike pace. Avoid eye contact. Refuse tip-hungry assistance. Get out, get clear, get free and stay that way.
He made it back to his car, but there was no place for him to go.
Over a thousand people attended the funeral services for the gem-cutter and cowboy geologist known as Mano due to his loss of one hand years before through circumstances shaded in antiquity. Many estimated his age as over a hundred, though in fact he was 95 years old when he died easily, with dignity, surrounded by his many friends and family members in his modest home on the outskirts of the Xochimilco district of Mexico City. It was a neighborhood bordering on the rural, with wide swaths of open land separating grain fields and the occasional small cemetery, all of it yet unspoiled by urban metastasis. The cemetery in which Mano had requested burial had some markers that were nearly double his age, and trees that were four centuries old.
Among the mourners and speakers eulogizing Mano were a contingent of big, brusque men rumored to be luchadors, masked wrestling superstars incognito. Many of them wept openly, yet endured manfully. Tigre Loco, maker of masks, attended in his own distinctive headgear, for no one had ever seen his face, not even his customers.
One individual in particular stood out, mainly because he was taller than most of the mourners; an American who had come to live in Mexico as Mano’s apprentice and heir apparent (despite Mano’s large and diverse family). This man is referred to by some as el hombre de las armas, the gunman, a large, quiet enigma with slender, exotic hands. No one knows his real name, or if he even has a name. After his arrival, Mano’s gem and jewelry shop was never again targeted by even the most desperate or stupid robbers. Several of Mano’s blood relatives now staff the establishment, for when the big man arrived he quickly acquired several vehicles specially outfitted for long excursions deep into the mountains and countryside. He and Mano would often disappear for days on these elaborate expeditions, which grew to possess much of the quality of a vision quest. Nearly always they would bring back some mineral find of rare beauty or astonishing complexity from some dry riverbed or hidden cavern.
They also became a fixture at local cantinas and family-run eateries, always welcome, persistently popular, in no small measure because the mere presence of the stranger was deemed a good thing for the entire community. In the face of indifference by constabularies to petty crime, he seemed to be a guardian angel, like a samurai or paladin, a stoic protector of silent strength who inspired an overall sense of healing. He was the sort of man who has seen enough of pain and suffering and emerged scorched, but not burned, from that crucible. Ordinary people fabricated entire mythologies about his possible past.
Now, with Mano gone, the stranger continues his habit of long treks into the wild, still returning with something compelling every time. He is a frequent visitor and honored backstage guest at Arena Coliseo, where he avidly watches the age-old battle between good and evil enacted by high-flying men in colorful costumes and strange masks, in a ring where alliances are fluid and betrayal is the essence of drama. Good guys, bad guys... and even the most normal person can have a secret identity, an alternate life.
At his workbench in the rear of Mano’s shop the stranger labors with a monk’s patience among stone tumblers and wax castings, refining the lessons taught by the genteel little man. There is another, larger station for gun work; it takes up an entire wall and features many arcane tools. He has become expert at custom modifications and special adjustments. He manufactures many of his own parts and loads his own special pedigrees of ammunition. In jewelry and stones, he is committed to learning a craft; with guns, he is turning a craft into an artform.
The ghostly entreaties said to be heard at night during the full moon on the Arroyo de La Llorona have been dormant for some time now.
The stranger’s odd hands no longer bleed.
Among his many friends are a special group found in the back of his workshop; his closest and most intimate friends, gathered there on the table. You probably already know their names, too: Remington, Ruger, Browning, Beretta, Kimber, Colt, Smith, Wesson, SIG.
Don’t Let the Mystery End Here.
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