But then he remembered Bill Speight in the sewer. He remembered he was being hunted.
He rolled over and faced the scabby tin wall, waiting for inspiration. He had to do something. His mind was full of bubbles — a good deal of commotion and light and very little substance. He had a sudden blast of insane, giddy optimism. But it collapsed almost as quickly as it peaked and the downward trip was a crusher.
He heard a noise and turned.
“Oh,” he said glumly, “it’s only you.”
The boy eyed him from the doorway, unimpressed. Trewitt had the terrible sensation of failing another test. Yet the boy liked him and in the two weeks Trewitt had spent in the barn, on most days the boy had visited him.
“You sure never kill no one in no fight,” the boy said.
“No, I never did. I never said I did. Go away. Get out of here.”
“Hey, I got some news for you.”
“Just get out of here.” It occurred to him to take a swat at his tormentor, but he didn’t have the energy.
“No, listen, man. I tell the truth.”
“Sure you do.”
The truth, Trewitt knew, was bleak. He had failed utterly in his dream of unearthing information on Ulu Beg’s journey through Mexico, in finding out whether the Kurd came alone — or with others. What he had succeeded in doing was inserting himself in the center of a Mexican mafia war.
Unless the one was part of the other.
Trewitt’s mind stirred for just a second.
But he had to face reality. Reality was that he now had to turn himself in to the Departamento de Policía. The whole story would come out. CIA AGENT NABBED IN MEX, the headlines would say. Phone calls, official protests and denials, embarrassments, awkwardnesses of all kinds.
“I found him,” said the boy.
Trewitt could see Yost Ver Steeg. He could imagine himself trying to explain.
See, we thought we found the guy who brought the Kurd across. We thought we could learn from him if —
Ver Steeg had no capacity for expressing emotion. The rage would be inward. Trewitt would sense it in constricted gestures, tightly held lips, a cool handshake.
You went into Mexico?
Uh, yes.
He could blame it on Old Bill.
See, Old Bill said that —
But Ver Steeg would have a hundred ways of letting him know he’d screwed up.
What were you doing there?
Well, uh —
Didn’t you cover Speight?
No, I sort of lost track of him.
And Chardy would look and see a hopelessly incompetent kid. And Miles, that seedy little dwarf, would glow. Another rival x-ed off the list, another potential competitor screwed, shot down in flames. Miles would smile, showing those brackish teeth, and clap his tiny hands.
“You found who?” Trewitt said.
“The guy.”
“What guy?”
“You know.”
“I don’t know a goddamn thing. Who, you little—” He lunged comically at the boy, missing. The boy laughed as he danced free.
“Him, man. Him. The bartender, Roberto.”
“Roberto?”
“Roberto, the bartender. Who would not shut up. Remember?”
Sure, Trewitt remembered. What he couldn’t remember was laying his sorry story on this kid here.
“I told you?”
“Sure. You come from the bar. Oscar’s. Stay out of there, you say. A bad place. The bartender, a bad guy, an evil man.”
Maybe Trewitt did have a vague memory of the conversation.
“So now you can go kill this guy Roberto. With a knife. Come on, I’ll show you where he lives. Cut his belly. My brother done that to a guy once and is still in prison.”
“You watch too much TV.”
“Ain’t got no TV, man. What you gonna do? Cut that cocksucker?”
“I don’t know,” said Trewitt.
The boy pointed in the dark.
“There. That’s the one.”
Trewitt traced the arc indicated by the small finger until he could see a certain house among a group of four of them, neither more nor less prosperous than its neighbors, a cinderblock shanty of flat roof and no windows.
“You’re sure now?”
“Sure? Sure I’m sure.”
The moon smiled above through a warm night. He and the boy were across a muddy lane in southern Nogales, miles from Trewitt’s homey barn. They crouched in a gully, which Trewitt had come to believe contained sewage. But perhaps not; his imagination again?
“You better be right, amigo.”
“Sure I’m right. You have a nice tip for me, okay? For Miguel, a little money?”
“Right now I couldn’t afford an enchilada,” Trewitt said.
He checked his watch. Nearly five, sun coming up soon.
“And Roberto,” said Miguel. “Soon Roberto. You’ll see.”
The light began to rise, revealing eventually a familiar landscape — the shacks on the muddy street, some shuffling chickens, sleeping dogs, puddles everywhere, pieces of junk strewn about. Into this still composition there at last came the figure of a man — a youth really — strolling along.
“He’s late,” said the boy. “You ought to kill him.”
“I just want to talk to the guy.”
“You should have seen what my brother did to this guy. He got him right in the guts. He—”
“Shhhh, goddammit.”
The bartender approached, picking his way among the puddles. He looked familiar to Trewitt, though thinner, more delicate than the American remembered. His hair was pomaded back and he had the thinnest moustache over his upper lip. He wore a leather coat over his jet-black pants and white ruffled shirt. He looked to be about eighteen.
He walked, hands in pockets. Trewitt had studied judo, though he had never earned a belt, and when the boy paused at his gate, directly across from him, Trewitt lunged from the gully in two muscular bounds, got his arms on Roberto, and quickly and savagely broke him to the earth.
The youth squealed, but Trewitt gave him a squirt of pressure through his pinned arm which calmed him fast; then he shoved him into the gully and leaped after. He punched him twice, hard, in the ribs, and got him into a wristlock. Trewitt was far too brutal, for Roberto offered no resistance and only yelped as the blows landed, but Trewitt was working off weeks of rage and frustration. He sensed the wrist he was gripping give, and saw the fear bright in Roberto’s eyes — and felt at once ashamed.
“I have no money, I have no money,” wailed Roberto.
“I don’t want money, goddammit,” screamed Trewitt in English.
“Cut him,” yelled the other kid, Miguel, watching from above with great, cruel joy.
“Shut up, you. Silencio!”
“Let me go, sir. I have only money for my sister and my mama and my two brothers and our dogs. Do not hurt me.”
“Why was the old gringo killed? Come on, talk, goddammit!”
He gave the wrist a quarter twist to the right.
“Ow! Oh! It hurts so. Ouch. No more. He went for the wrong woman.”
Trewitt tightened up on the wrist.