A Blood of Killers Read online

  Todd slipped to the floor, finding that his strength was exhausted. His eyes were almost closed. He hardly had the breath to speak. But he had breath enough for one word, and he spoke it.

  “Yes,” he whispered. The last thing he saw was the hooded figure’s head nodding, and the night smiling down at him with a sudden burst of star light.

  He dreamed he was in a forest, more heavily wooded than the deepest part of the Botanical Gardens, and without the susurration of distant traffic ruining the illusion of wilderness. He came across his mother and sister sitting on a blanket under a tree and taking sandwiches and Tupperware tubs of salads and condiments from a plastic picnic bag. His little sister leaped up and ran to him, then threw herself on him and locked her arms around his waist in a fierce embrace. His mother laughed and shook her head from side to side. Todd sat between his mother and sister and ate as if his stomach was a bottomless pit, and when at last he was satisfied, he looked to his mother and told her, “I’d like to go home, now.”

  “Of course you would,” she said, giving him another smile, and they packed up the picnic bag and walked through the forest, winding their way around thick tree trunks and through shafts of light full of sparkling, dancing motes. His sister asked if he would race her and, laughing, he said yes and chased her through the forest as their mother walked behind singing an old gospel song.

  When he woke, he felt groggy and tired, and his nerves felt as if they had been rubbed raw against a jagged feeling that had taken a long time to wear away. He got up on his feet and leaned against the desk as he tried to reconcile images of trees and his family with the closed, stinking room in which he found himself. He looked around, wiping the sleep from his eyes, and found three dead men. He choked on their stench.

  Todd went for the door, hesitated, then paused over the bearded man and searched his pockets while he held his breath. He found car keys and a wad of bills. He took them both, and left.

  Hunger gnawed at his stomach as he trotted across the dark field of the warehouse floor, and the nagging whine of a mysterious need called to him. Todd emerged into a rainy late afternoon, and looked down his rolled up jacket and shirt sleeves at the pin prick on his arm. He remembered a needle, and a wave of warmth. A shiver ran through his body, and the faint, whining cry of his need sharpened the edge to the gusting autumn breeze spraying rain cold rain against his face. He spat with disgust and pulled his sleeves down over the mark, hoping his mother would not catch sight of it before it healed.

  The car started up. He drove away from the warehouse. He found a spot near a bus stop where he could ditch the car, then waited in the shelter for the bus to the city to come. His fingers closed around a piece of paper in his jacket pocket, and when he pulled it out he saw it was the test paper he had received yesterday morning. He smiled and shook his head at the red, circled grade, and thought of how he and his mother would laugh at all the silly mistakes he had made as they went over the math together.

  Todd recalled his aunt Eunice, and the memory of her chocolate cake made his stomach growl. She would take him in and help him find his mother, if he asked. This time, the voice in his head that had said no was silent.

  The bus arrived, its tires hissing over the wet blacktop highway. Todd paid the fare and took a seat, and thought of how the sound of the rain was like an echo of the word yes.

  DANCING WITH THE SKELETONS AT THE FEAST OF THE DEAD

  Framed by the iridescent plumage of scales and owl feathers, Osiel’s mask smiled at Max with a wide and toothy death head’s grin as they sat across from one another, cross-legged in the dirt.

  Red ochre dripped from the skeletons and skulls tattooed across Osiel’s chest and arms. In the light of the flames flickering in the hut’s central fire, the false bones seemed to bleed as well as dance.

  Max stared into the mask’s black eye holes, falling through their smoky depths in search of something to kill. He hadn’t stopped staring, or falling, for the hour he’d sat waiting for Osiel to say he was ready to die.

  Now wasn’t the time, the German had told him. Stateside, he’d been warned there were rituals to perform, protocols to be observed. Osiel had paid a great deal of money for his own execution. His many business associates watched to see if Max’s employers could be trusted to satisfy the needs of one of their own.

  But there was blood in the air, and the stink of sweat, desperation, desire and fear, though the last came from his escort. And dead flesh. Human flesh.

  The carnal aromas aroused his appetites. He could barely keep the Beast contained in its cage of fire and consequence. They would have to start the job soon, or else Max might, after all the years of service, disappoint his employers.

  Osiel shivered, and the scales of his mask rattled.

  Max had never killed anything shielded by such armor in all his years in the worlds’ jungles. They made a sound like a challenge from the grave.

  The Beast stirred at the vulnerability in the shiver. It didn’t need to hunt. It was happy to kill whatever was at hand.

  Osiel spoke, his first words to Max as clear as an owl’s hoot in the midnight despite the mask and the sounds of the band and the festival outside, as if he were transmitting directly to a tactical headset Max sometimes wore in the course of his work. He said: Your flesh will one day fall away in the wind of knives, but unlike the others granted this favor, your death will not come gently with time and nature. You will never dance in my land with the dead until you are reborn. Your path is much harder.

  Max was struck first by the absence of an accent. His briefing had been specific about Osiel being a local who’d learned English only so he could practice his side trade of witchcraft for the benefit of rich European tourists. They were no doubt easier to handle than drug lords.

  Osiel shivered again, and his shoulders drooped as he leaned forward. His sisters, four very young women dressed in long white satin gowns and golden tiaras, rushed forward like a gang of Virgin Marys bearing tequila. He lifted the mask and drank deeply from a bottle. It was his fifth since Max had entered the hut.

  Max suspected the women were sisters in title, only.

  The pilot who’d brought Max across the border called Osiel The Oz, as in the Wizard of Oz. Or Woz. But he told Max never to call him that to his face. Only the boys in Langley felt safe enough to use that as his call name. Max’s local contact, the emaciated German sitting behind him picking at the scabs on his forearms, never did, nor did the two guards outside, Manny and Carlos, fresh and trim from the School of the Americas in Georgia and on their way to serve on the death squads further South as soon as Max was done.

  The Oz’s necklace of eyeballs—a set of large, painted children’s marbles—with its centerpiece, a brown, weathered bone fragment the German reported was rumored to be one Quetzalcoatl missed when picking up the bones of the old gods he’d dropped and broken while escaping from the underworld from which he’d dared to steal them, swayed and writhed over the chest full of tattoos as if possessing a life of its own.

  As if the eyes could see through the fog of Max’s impatience, the red haze of the Beast’s hunger, to the greater sin of disrespect in his heart, with roots all the way down to the silver tips of his snake-skin boots.

  Whoever Quetzalcoatl was.

  A woman offered Max a bottle of tequila. He declined. The German grabbed it, tearing a seam in his too-small, stained cowboy shirt. Max wanted to tell him looting the dead was never supposed to be a first choice.

  The job should have been simple. LA to Culiacan, then a run to the Sinaloa sierra in the Piper Navajo outfitted with an empty fuel bladder ready to be filled for a run up north. They’d dropped like a stone on to an old airstrip hidden between folds of rock, ripping leaves and branches from oak and pine while scaring off woodpeckers and parrots. The plane was already being loaded with heroin and fuel before Max, the German and the guards got in the jeep that was to take him to Osiel’s villa. He’d thought he could finish the assignment and be back i
n time to make the return run with the heroin.

  He should have known better when a few of the drug runners found ways to touch him, either by offering help or casually brushing by him. After he’d knocked one of them unconscious and had to be pulled away from tearing out the man’s throat, the German had offered the observation that the locals were only trying to improve their luck by borrowing some of his. His arrival had been anticipated as the coming of an apostle of Jesus Malverde, bearing the task of sanctifying a marriage between the patron saint of drug dealers and La Santisima Muerte.

  The rumors, Max noted, assumed the Oz to be Malverde.

  Max had dismissed the information as the ravings of a drug-addled crew of incompetents and misfits.

  They’d come down from the landing strip on an old logging road diving and twisting through subtropical forest, a rougher ride than the plane’s descent, and emerged on to the grassy edge of a valley that quickly turned to dry, dusty desert, as if the earth had been napalmed and salted. The German had pointed to the white villa ahead of them. The Beast’s attention had sharpened, catching the fresh scent of prey in the air. Max sifted through conflicting impressions of destruction and life, motion and stillness, barely paying attention to the German’s talk of the villa’s history as a ruined orchard and a bankrupt ranch.

  Then he’d recognized the horde of ants swarming over a carcass as a festival spilling out from under the central villa’s covered porch, through the outbuildings and into the surrounding blighted landscape.

  Not what he’d expected, having come so far to kill a man.

  Though the rambling Mexican colonial mansion showed its age, and perhaps a touch of contempt for the heritage it represented. With cracks in its stained and weathered stucco walls, rusted ironwork gates and window guards, and tiles missing from the roof, it remained a startling sight as much for the incongruity of its solitary existence in the remote high valley in which it had been built as for the teeming life surrounding it. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to construct the villa, so far from ciudades or pueblos. And though its presence had blighted the land, it still drew life like a predatory bloom.

  His handlers hadn’t lied or exaggerated about the size and nature of Oz’s following.

  Tents, trailers, battered RV’s and temporary corrals accommodated the overflow of celebrants, from jet setters to lowland farmers and their mules and horses. Tambora bands labored over the gusting breeze and crowd noise to deliver New World versions of 3-step dances while masked children played or lined up for sugar skulls; cooks watched over their pots beside piles of dried chili peppers; women assembled towering altars under canopies or chisel cut paper banners into intricate scenes; weavers constructed figures from palm fronds; serranos traded rare herbs and roots from their mountain enclaves; young men assembled a catafalque from pre-cut timber and boards already decorated with painted skulls, crosses and plaster glyph reliefs of vivid and intricate kings, victims and monsters.

  The man Max had come to kill was in fact a kind of Wizard of Oz, and his people were not going to let him go without tears and laughter.

  The German had brought Max to the hut, telling him Osiel had been preparing all day for Max’s arrival. No one told Max how much longer he’d have to wait.

  The Beast didn’t care.

  The job refused to be as easy as it should have been.

  Osiel coughed, suddenly threw the mask off, scampered over to Max’s side of the fire on all fours, as wild as a street dog dodging cars. His dark eyes glimmered with reflected fire from a terrain of deeply folded flesh. He whispered into Max’s ear: “You can call me Oz if you want. My friends in the world tell me there is respect in the name. But not in public. My people would never understand. And never use Woz.” His accent was thick, his voice a rough baritone, nothing like what Max had first heard from him.

  Oz backed away, picked up the mask, put it on, went to the door and waved to the crowd. Up on his feet, he was a short, thick man with a bouncing pot belly, but his forearms and calves bulged with shadows of their former power. His age showed in his curved back and hunched shoulders, the thinning grey of his hair, the loose flesh at his throat and groin. His loin cloth had slipped off and his balls and cock jumped as he started dancing. The crowd cheered.

  Oz came back in, handed the mask and necklace to one of the women. A few others washed and dried him, then helped him put on pants, sandals and a shirt. He motioned for Max to stand.

  “Walk with me,” he said.

  They stepped out into the bright sun. Max blinked, shielded his eyes with a raised hand, choked on the dry, dusty air, as if his lungs craved the hot smoke he’d just left. The Beast pulled at his heart and gut, sensing vulnerability, eager to explode into a storm of violence. In the moment of distraction, after all the waiting, Max couldn’t remember why he shouldn’t release his appetites. There were certainly a great many victims available.

  The Oz put a hand on Max’s shoulder, as light as the linen of his white shirt, and leaned close to his ear. “Just walk,” he said, in a thick rumble.

  Max felt as if he’d been spoken to by the father he never knew.

  The Beast whirled and snarled, found nothing but blinding sun and wisps of smoke as black as ink. It circled the gaping pit of its hunger, growling, snapping, testing its bite to see if it was large enough to swallow a burning orb of light, or endless emptiness.

  Osiel and Max took a few steps together into the daylight and the crowd cheered. The Oz let him go, spun away to dance with a young blond couple, obviously from across the ocean. Max moved to the open space between two rows of food stalls, where he thought he could get his bearings. The German followed through the hut’s doorway, still nursing the bottle of tequila.

  The guards fell in behind the German. Manny did a little dance with the music, kicking up his heels and puffs of dust to the amusement of the children who he had to shoo away after proving himself to be one of them at heart. His boots were finely worked, and they matched his belt with its silver and turquoise buckle. His jeans and T-shirt hugged his body. Carlos kept his focus on the crowd. He’d been the more serious of the pair, quiet, calm, committed, reflected in his slacks and jacket, though his boots, like Max’s, were also tipped in silver. Max understood Manny’s exuberance, though his own appetites had never drawn him to children. He was the more dangerous of the two fresh death squad recruits. Carlos, for all of his severity, couldn’t act without consciously making a decision and revealing his intention. Manny was unpredictable.

  Osiel returned from his brief dance to bump into Max, as if to get his attention. Max expected to be led to the villa by the elbow, but the old man kept his hands at his back as he whistled along with the band, cheeks puffed like a frog’s throat, and led the procession of assassin with attendants through the stalls.

  Men gathered like flies, bringing sugarcane and baskets of papaya, cucumbers, and other produce in for storage.

  “What is all this?” Max asked, with a vague wave of the hand. “Tomorrow is the Day of the Dead. We celebrate our ancestors. It is also my funeral.”

  “I have to wait until then to kill you?”

  “You’re so young.”

  The women who’d diligently ministered to Osiel’s needs left in a bustling knot from the rear of the hut, dressed in dull brown smocks, their gowns and tiaras sticking out from shoulder bags. The Beast tracked their departure. Their sweat and smoke tainted bodies made Max lick his lips. He noted where they were heading. Where they could be found.

  The Oz kissed and shook hands with many who left the food lines to exchange a few words with him. Max was reminded of how he’d been treated when he landed.

  The German and guards drifted back five and ten paces to the rear, Manny and Carlos flanking wide to cover lines and angles of fire. Max had told them he could handle anything close range. As far as Max could tell, no one appeared to be protecting Osiel. He was, Max supposed, already dead.

  The Oz led them in a circuit around
his villa. Everywhere he went, children ran up to him, screaming and shouting from behind their painted wooden masks. People would wave, yell greetings, but those who were working continued on with their labors. Another couple came up, older, black and auburn-haired, smelling sweet and clean, boots and pant cuffs barely dusted, and spoke to him with bowed heads, their hands folded at their rounded bellies. Their words drifted through Max like the babbling pleas of his victims. Osiel smiled, patted both on their heads, spoke to each for about ten seconds, finger jabbing in dagger thrusts to their hearts. They left weeping. Osiel applauded gently while smiling, though his chin lowered until he was looking down at the dirt that would soon bury him, as if the weight of his head was too great to lift up.

  Not all eyes on the Oz were filled with adoration. Predators mingled with the sheep, searching not for blessing or fortune, but for lies, illusions, vulnerabilities, as if afraid the great Oz was not going to die. As if Max was not capable, or worthy, of taking his life.

  Max tracked them by the twitching of their lips when they should have been laughing or smiling; by the gaze that always seemed to drift to Max, ending with a short, hard stare like a sledgehammer smashing against the wall of a vault where secrets were kept. He caught them because they looked lean and hungry, but didn’t care about the music or the food or the families all around them.

  Oz put his hand on Max’s upper arm for a moment. The air, disguised as a snake, rattled in his chest. He shook his head once, regained his balance. Continued to walk.

  “I heard about what happened to Mr. Tchask,” Osiel said, looking everywhere except at Max.

  “The cost of doing business,” Max said.

  A pair of women smiled at each other over the Oz’s weakness. A man, short, almost child-like, flicked his tongue, a reptile tasting prey on the breeze. They were all tiny cold spots in a warm, embracing sea.

  Max was drawn to the promise of their violence. There was safety in their hatred, which would not change unexpectedly, like the love for the great Oz. And they promised a feeding for the Beast.