A limo was waiting outside, and we drove in silence out to the desert.
It was late at night, but the Big Man was awake. He was also limping. It looked like he was wearing a diaper, but I saw the grimace of pain on his face as he sat down, and I knew something else had happened, something far worse than mere incontinence.
I was afraid to ask, but I had to know. "What happened?"
"My cock," he said, his voice barely above a mumble. "It attacked me."
"What?"
"I woke up, and it'd turned into a snake. It was biting my leg and whipping around and biting my stomach, and I could feel its poison spreading through me. So I ran into the kitchen and got a knife and I cut it off."
It took a moment for that to sink in. Pressman had cut off his own penis? I imagined Maya's mother cackling to herself as she wove that spell.
"The doctors sewed me up, but they couldn't sew it back on. It was still alive. We had to kill it." He grimaced, using his arm to grab the side of the sofa and support himself. "So what'd you find out?"
I told him the truth. "Maya's dead. Her mother killed her. Now she blames you for that, too." I motioned toward his crotch. "So this is going to go on. You're going to be tortured until you die. And then she'll own you after death. She'll be able to do whatever she wants with your soul."
"I'll kill her," he said. "I'll find that bitch and kill her."
"Won't do any good. The whammy's on, and as I understand it, killing her won't stop it. All of the Guatemalans are terrified. She's one powerful woman."
"So what are my options?"
I shrugged. "Only three that I see. One: get her to stop, convince her to lift the curse, which, considering the situation, I don't think is going to happen. Two: put up with this shit until you die and then go gently into her vindictive little hands ..." I trailed off.
"And three?"
I looked at him. "You can take your own life. That will put an end to it. Her curse is meant to kill you ... eventually. But if you take matters into your own hands, if you interrupt it and thwart her plans, all rights revert back to you."
I was playing it cool, playing it tough, but the truth was, I was scared shitless. Not of the Big Man, not anymore, but of what I'd gotten into here, of the powers we were dealing with. I was out of my depth, but Pressman was still putting it all on my shoulders. I was supposed to be the expert, and it was a role I neither deserved nor wanted.
He was actually considering the benefits of suicide.
"So if I eat my gun—"
"No," I said. "It has to be stabbing or hanging."
He slammed his hand down on the back of the couch. "Why?" He glared at me. "What fucking difference does that make?"
"I don't know why," I said. "But it does make a difference. I don't make the rules, I just explain them. And for some reason, those are the only two ways that are guaranteed to get you out from under the curse. A shooting might work, but then again, it might not. And you'll only get one chance at this, so you'd better make sure it counts."
He shook his head, lurched away from the sofa. "Fuck that. There's no way in hell I'm going to off myself because some little wetback bitch put her voodoo on me. I'll take my chances. I'm going to find her and get rid of her and we'll see if that works."
That's what he said on Thursday.
On Friday, his teeth fell out.
On Saturday, he began shitting rocks.
His men did find the maid, and the cops found her later, her teeth knocked out, her arm amputated, her private parts cut open, her anus stuffed with gravel. Like Hector, she was in a Dumpster, having been left there to die, and over the next few days several other Guatemalans, who I suppose had some relationship to Maya's mother, were also found murdered.
But it didn't stop for the Big Man. His travails grew worse, and by midweek, he was able to walk only with the help of serious painkillers.
I asked around, checked my other sources, even went out to see Bookbinder, but the first facts proved true, and no one knew of a way to get around the witch's handiwork.
I stayed away, stayed home, tried to stay out of it, tried not to think about it, but finally he called me in, and I went. There was almost no trace left of that hard, confident crime lord I'd met the first day. He was broken and blubbering, drunk and wasted, and he told me that he wanted to hang himself.
Only he was too weak to do it on his own.
I told him he could have some of his men help him, but he said he didn't want them to do it and they probably wouldn't anyway. He also wanted to make sure he did everything right, that nothing went wrong.
"You're the only one who knows that shit," he said, his voice slurred.
I nodded reluctantly.
He grabbed my shoulder. I think he wanted to make sure he had my full attention, but it seemed more as though he used me to steady himself. "I don't want to suffer after death," he whispered. His eyes were feverish, intense. "And I don't want that wetback bitch to win." His voice rose. "Your daughter was the best fuck I ever had!" he shouted to the air. "I took that whore the way she liked it! I gave her what she wanted! I gave her what she wanted!"
I left him in the bedroom, went out to the garage and found a rope, and set it up, throwing it over the beam, tying the knots.
He changed his mind at the last minute. A lot of people do. It's a hard way to go, a painful, ugly way, and the second he jumped off the chair, he started to claw at the rope and flail away in the air.
I thought about helping him. Part of me wanted to help him.
But I didn't.
I let him thrash about, watching him die, until he was still. I'll probably go to hell for that, but I can't seem to muster up much remorse for it. I wish I could say that I let him die for his own sake, so Maya's mother wouldn't own his soul, but the truth was that I did it because I wanted him dead. I thought we'd all be better off without him.
"That's for Hector," I said softly.
I stood there for a moment more, watching him swing, and I actually did feel bad. No one deserved what had happened to the Big Man, and I was glad he'd escaped, glad he wouldn't have to suffer it anymore.
But I was also glad he was gone.
I walked out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the front of the house, where I found one of his men eating crackers in the kitchen.
"Call the cops," I said. "He's dead."
The flunky looked at me dumbly. He knew what had gone down, but it still seemed to catch him off guard. "What'll I tell them?"
I patted his cheek on my way out. "Don't worry. You'll think of something."
I walked outside and got in my car, driving as quickly as I could away from the house. The air in the vehicle was stifling, but I didn't mind, and I felt as though I'd just been released from a prison as I followed the dirt road through the desert, past the crosses and the doll parts and the skull-headed scarecrows, toward the distant white smog of Phoenix, shimmering in the heat.
Colony
When H. R. Haldeman died, I found myself thinking about the labyrinthine nightmare that was Watergate. Which led me to think about conspiracy theories. What if Haldeman wasn't really dead? I thought. What if he was only pretending to be dead but had really gone underground?
Why, though? What would be the reason?
Years later, when Hong Kong reverted back to China, I was reminded of Britain's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands (or Islas Malvinas). I had not known until the war that Britain had any remaining colonies. I'd been under the impression that the empire was history. Obviously I was wrong, and I wondered if there were other far-flung properties under British rule that I did not know about.