The Hemingway Thief (29 page)

“Pieta,” Digby said.

“Michael.”

The guns roared, and they were on the ground. Dead.

“What happened?” Dutch asked. I could answer it only with my best guess. I surmised they had both drawn because I could see their respective pistols in their lifeless hands. Figuring out who had pulled first would have been impossible. I assumed they had responded to some mutual signal deep in their loins. The bullets had passed each other briefly, the closest their hearts had been in some time, and then lodged into their waiting bodies.

“They pulled and shot each other,” I said. “No preamble or nothing. They just fucking shot each other.”

“I suppose they said everything they had to the last time,” Dutch said, scratching his nose. His eyes were closed now and his breathing was labored.

“Yeah, but Jesus,” I said. “All this buildup and then nothing? It was a little, I don't know, anticlimactic.”

“That's how people die.”

“I guess.”

“You're telling me you're disappointed?” Dutch asked.

“A little.”

Thandy scrambled over to La Dónde's body and gave it a tentative kick. There was no response. He took a step toward Digby but stopped and covered his mouth with his hand. He crouched down to pry La Dónde's pistol from her fingers. Properly armed, he leaned forward and up on his toes to get a better look at Digby's lifeless body. When satisfied he was dead, or at least as satisfied as he could be without a tactile inspection, he folded his umbrella and tossed it through the open window of the Jeep. He dropped to his knees, took hold of Grady's collar, and pulled him back to a sitting position, using Grady's torso as a merlon.

“The situation has not changed, Cooper,” Thandy yelled.

“It's changed a little,” I said. Thandy pressed the gun barrel to Grady's jaw. Grady let out a groan and a few expletives. Again, I was relieved he wasn't dead.

“Bring out that fucking suitcase.” Thandy's genteel accent had devolved into caricature. Each word scraped out of his mouth like it was coming from a defective bullhorn. “Bring it out or I'm gonna spread his brains all over the mud.”

“He says he's gonna kill Grady,” I said to Dutch.

“I hear him,” he said. “You think he'll do it?”

“Yeah.” I picked up the Webley and tucked it between the suitcase and my chest, leaving my hand on the grip.

“You think you can do it?” Dutch asked. “You think you can shoot him?”

“No, but he doesn't know that.” I took a deep breath, recited what I could remember of the Our Father, and stepped out into the yard. The sun shone down through the clouds in shafts, bouncing off the puddles and illuminating the dead in a shimmering glow. I moved slowly. The mud sucked at my boots like hands begging me not to take another step, but I moved on.

Thandy had his bony hand wrapped around Grady's throat. The gun hand was shaking, but it was probably from the cold rain that had passed over us. His face was set and hard, no nerves there. When I was close enough, I lifted the leather-clad suitcase and showed the Webley underneath. It was aimed, I hoped, at the spot between Thandy's rueful eyes.

“It looks like we have what the pulps call a Mexican standoff,” Thandy said. His tongue slithered over his cracked lips.

“Maybe,” I said. I dropped the suitcase in the mud; the nearly century-old lock broke with the impact, and it opened. Thandy gasped as he looked on at the cardboard sinking into the mire. The pages, covered in scribbles and faded type, blew listlessly in the wind. Any moment, a good gust could take the whole thing away.

“You pick that up, you son-of-a-bitch,” he said with a jeering snarl.

“You know,” I said, and pulled Dutch's pack of cigarettes from my pocket. I drew the last one out with my teeth and tossed the empty pack into the suitcase. I kept the gun leveled on Thandy as I fished out my Zippo and lit up. I took a nice, long draw and smiled at Thandy. “Those old onionskins, I hear they make pretty good tinder in a bind.”

I tossed the lighter onto the frail, old parchment, and it caught in an instant. The top pages curled and blackened, and then the suitcase itself caught. The smoke wafted up, and it was spiced like cloves and cherry tobacco. The paper turned the same color as the ink, dissolving the words, sentences, thoughts, and dreams back into the ether from which they came. Thin slices of the soul of the man that was Hemingway in Paris immolated in the mud like a funeral pyre.

Thandy screamed, and it came out a guttural squeal; he dropped the gun and launched himself at the conflagration. Grady fell over in a hump. I took a moment to enjoy the old man pounding at the flames, bits of paper and ember floating up into the air like fairies dancing in the moonlight. A few glowing pieces dropped to the puddles with a soft, satisfying hiss. The doddering fool sobbed over the flames as if his tears could put them out. When I'd had my fill, I walked up to him and placed the barrel of the Webley against his gray temple.

“You destroyed it,” Thandy said with snarl. “How could you? How could you just destroy it?”

“I made it real,” I said, and kicked the case over. The paper that had not burned took off in the breeze. The cardboard case crackled and spit, and the fire died into a picayune hillock of ash and pulp. No more Hemingway suitcase.

“And now you'll kill me, is that it, Cooper?” Thandy said. It was a pathetic little croak. He was on his knees, his suit ruined. I shrugged and motioned with the revolver for him to stand.

“I remember someone telling me about a tradition down here,” I said, aping his aristocratic speech. “It seems, Thandy, that when a body's got a body in a position like this, you can give the prisoner three choices.”

“Fuck you,” Thandy wept.

“Oh, so you know about the
Bota
, the
Lena
, and the
Plomo
,” I said. “Problem is, I don't have a prison to put you in, and I don't see any two-by-fours around.”

“Please,” Thandy said, and held his hands up in a prayerful pose.

“Makes your options a little limited. Tell you what. I'll give you to the count of ten to get in your Jeep and get the fuck out of here before I blast your sorry ass all over the canyon. One.”

“Please, no.”

“Two.”

He got to his feet and staggered back.

“Three.”

Thandy gasped and scrambled around the front of the Jeep. He got the door open and dived inside.

“Four. Oh fuck it,” I said, and fired a bullet into the rear window. Thandy shrieked like a woman and threw the truck into drive. I could still hear his screams echoing in the canyon long after the truck was out of sight.

I scratched the back of my head and looked down at Grady.

“I hope you know what to do about your legs, because I don't know fuck all about first aid,” I said. Dutch stood in the doorway, holding onto the jamb for support. I waved him on to join us.

“It's not as bad as it looks,” Grady said.

“Good, cause from here you look like shit,” I said. Dutch fished a first aid kit from the back of truck and knelt down next to Grady.

“If we can stop the bleeding, he should be OK,” he said. “We got a doctor back at the camp. You're gonna have a hell of a limp, though.”

“He's been looking for an excuse to do less walking,” I said.

“Fuck,” Grady said, grunting as Dutch tied a bandana above his left calf. He waved his hand at the mound of ash that had been the Hemingway suitcase. “It was all for nothing, huh?”

“I still got my story.”

“I'll tell you this much, Coop,” Grady said.

I walked back to Dutch's truck and flipped the top off of the cooler in the bed. The beer was still cold.

“What?”

“John Fucking Grisham never had a day like this.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

We took the van. I drove and Dutch stretched out in the back. He had showed me how to dress his wound and stop the bleeding. Grady insisted on riding up front with me and the open window. He had lost a lot of blood, and I had to give him an elbow every once in a while to keep him awake. The rain had come back and it blew through the window, soaking Grady's shirt and beard.

The guards were waiting for us at the gate. I slowed to a stop, rolled down the window, and whizzed through my smile Rolodex, coming up with the one I use for turning in late manuscripts. Jorge bent down and stuck his head inside the truck. I could see Thandy's black Jeep just over his shoulder, parked up against one of the bungalows.

“All set,” I said. “Thanks for the time.”

“El Cuerno wants to talk to you,” Jorge said, and reached past me to turn off the engine. “Looks like you still got bad manners.” He pulled the key and leaned back, placing the barrel of his AK-47 on the windowsill. There was a house, newer than the others and in much better shape, up on the hill, with brick stairs leading down to the gate. A portly middle-aged Mexican dressed in white emerged at the top of the stairs. He had a servant on each side of him. One held a green Masters umbrella over the head of the man in white, and the other had an AK slung over his shoulder. Obviously the man in white was El Cuerno. He took the stairs slowly, limping and relying heavily on a wooden cane.

“Hello,” El Cuerno said with only the slightest accent. “Busy afternoon up at the old place, huh? Jorge tells me first you three come through with a fourth man. Then Pieta, her men, and an old man they did not know. Then Sullivan, who I thought was dead, comes through in this van. All these people come into my camp. We are open like Disneyland, I suppose.” Jorge's head hung low and he wiped his face with a red handkerchief.

“Tourist season, I guess,” I said with a weak laugh.

“Then the old man comes back down. No men. No Pieta.”

“I see his Jeep over there,” I said.

“No, no, you see my Jeep. I just got it today. What do you think?”

“It's a lovely vehicle. I'm sure you could get that window fixed real easy,” I said. “Did you get it at a good price?”

“For me, yes. Not for the old man,” he said. “I see you have Dutch. Hello, Dutch.”

“How is your crop this year, El Cuerno?” Dutch said from the back. He reached up to shake the narco's hand but could only manage a few inches with his shoulder injury. El Cuerno reached the rest of the way and took Dutch's hand, shaking it gently.

“Damn mochomos are driving us mad,” he said. “Is your friend dead?”

“Getting there,” Dutch said.

There was a commotion toward the back of the van. Jorge and a second guard opened the side door and pulled at the edge of the tarp back there. El Cuerno held up his finger and limped over to see what they had found. I kept my hands on the wheel, flexing them for something to do. El Cuerno appeared in the open frame of the side door.

“There are two dead bodies back here,
amigo
,” he said.

“Yes,” Dutch said.

“I know Sullivan. Who is the other one?”

“The nephew of the man who used to live up at the old place,” I said.

“Pieta killed them?”

“More or less,” I said.

“And where is the lovely Pieta?”

“Dead. They killed each other, Sully and her,” Dutch said.

“That is the way it would have to be with them, huh. And where is she?”

“Back there,” I said, moving my head back toward the canyon. “Coyotes gotta eat, right?”

“That is right,
amigo
,” El Cuerno said, and burst into laughter. He tapped his servant's shoulder with the back of his hand. The rest of the men joined in the laughter. “And they are mighty hungry around here, eh.” I let him finish laughing, holding his belly, and tapping his cane against the ground. I smiled politely and nodded.

“I guess we'll be on our way then?” I asked. El Cuerno picked at his teeth with his thumbnail. When he was finished, he spat on the ground and kicked dirt over it.

“Your friends here, Dutch,” El Cuerno said. “They are dear to you?” Dutch squinted and looked up at the brightening sky.

“Dear enough, El Cuerno,” he said.

“We need help with the mochomos.”

“I can be out next week,” Dutch said. El Cuerno tapped his cane against the ground vigorously.

“A new Jeep, no more Pieta, and Dutch to take care of the mochomos,” El Cuerno said. “
¿Jorge, está un día bueno?
”

“
Sí, Jefe
,” Jorge said. “
Está muy bueno.
”

“He has to say that,” El Cuerno said. “Everything that happened today is his fault. I will see you next week, Dutch.” He whacked Jorge on the knee with his cane. Jorge reached into his pocket, pulled out the keys, and tossed them to me. I had them in the ignition and turned before the sound of their jingling stopped. The gate was open and we were free to go. Dutch closed the side door, and I pressed down on the accelerator.

“Don't know what all the fuss is about,” Grady said. He reached his cupped hand out the window and splashed some rainwater on his face. “These cartel guys ain't so bad.”