Gun Work

How Barney came to occupy a room on the wrong side of management in a hostage hotel deep inside Mexico City had to do with his friend Carl Ledbetter and one of those scary phone calls that come not always in the middle of the night, but whenever you are most asleep and foggy.

“This is Carl, goddammit, Carl, are you there? Is that you, man? It’s you, right?” Hiss, crackle. “Look, I don’t have my cards, I don’t have my ID, I don’t have my passport, all I have is one of these shitty phone cards that runs out of time, they took Erica, they got her, man, grabbed her ass right out from under me, I haven’t got a piss to pot, I mean a pot to piss in—”

“Carl, slow down; I’m not even awake...”

The phone pad glowed at Barney while his slowly surfacing brain tried to process information. Anonymous Caller.

Carl Ledbetter worked for a specialty imprint of a New York publishing house that had recently been inspired to cherry-pick non-American talent, in this case, genre novelists — science fiction, detective, horror and romance writers — and provide the best of their work in translation to US paperback audiences. Erica, whom Barney had never met, was thumbnailed by Carl as a swoony bit of red-headed business working as an editorial assistant at Curve magazine. They had met at an American Booksellers Association conference, struck sparks, fell in love, cohabitated, and had recently begun referring to each other as fiancé and fiancée.

That was the last Barney had heard; he was not in the habit of keeping in touch. It was nearly-forgotten news, the kind for which you tender congratulations, then round-file. Bad news lasted longer.

Good for Carl, Barney had thought at the time. The whole marriage deal eliminated the thorny problem of how to refer to your supposedly significant. Boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, partner, sex monkey all seemed inadequate and socially inept for any pair of people who were actual adults. Because of their jobs, Carl and Erica rarely traveled together. The deal Carl’s publisher wanted to cut with several rising stars of the Mexican printed word afforded an opportunity to superficially fake a vacation. From Mexico City they could do Guadalajara or perhaps Acapulco.

Instead, Mexico City had apparently done them.

Barney had been keeping off the societal radar for the last year and a half — personal travails, old stories that don’t need telling right now — and had secured a position at the Los Angeles Gun and Rifle Range downtown in the warehouse district, occasionally working the counter, sometimes pitching in on gun repair if the problem was arcane enough. When you worked at a range with a piece on your hip, every customer was your pal from bangers to cops. It never occured to anyone to question the legitimacy of your identity. Guns were sexy and empowering and lots of women begged instruction. Ample time for practice and all the free ammo your hardware could eat. It wasn’t actual combat with real stakes, but it sufficed to fill the in-betweens, and for a gunman it was as natural a thing as breathing free air.

Meanwhile, people tended to seek Barney’s counsel whenever they fell afoul of some extralegal difficulty, the kind of gray-zone balls-up that consistently befalls people you think of as completely normal and law-abiding. Like Carl Ledbetter, who had known Barney even before they both wound up wearing dusty desert camo in Iraq. First came the reunion (hey, it’s you!), then the wild coincidence of it all (Carl had come as a journalist with a camera; Barney as a soldier with a gun), followed by the effortless bond of de facto brotherhood between men in the same war — the kind of brotherhood that was supposed to permit, years later, the sort of advantage Carl was about to ask of his amigo.

Carl and Barney had known each other since their 20s. Carl knew somewhat of Barney’s checkered past and politely never insulted his friend by asking about it. If you ever got a close look, Barney’s body was peppered with old scars, the kind of wounds that never got explained. The conceits of formula storytelling would not suffice to describe him — this height, that hair, this-or-that movie actor with whatever eye color. Barney knew the value of blending; call it instinctual. To the world at large he was a stranger, a background extra quickly moving on, and he liked it that way.

Now, rate your friends, your acquaintances and your intimates. Among that group you already know which person you’d ask for help when shady badstuff rears up in your life. Yeah, that one — the person you always suspected was a bit illicit, a hair violent, two baby steps beyond the law. After-hours help, a less-than-kosher midnight run, some muscle, maybe some payback, and you know the person you’d call when quiet society says you should be calling a cop.

“From the top, Carl,” Barney said into his phone in the dark. “Deep breaths. Simple sentences. Subject, object.”

“This goddamned phone card,” Carl’s voice crackled back at him from one country to another. “You’ve got to get a phone card to use the payphones and half of them don’t work. The time on the cards runs out faster than—”

“You said that already. You said they grabbed Erica. Who-they?”

In Mexico, kidnapping constituted the country’s third biggest industry, after dope and religion.

“They didn’t leave a business card,” Carl said.

“But she was abducted.”

“Kidnapped, right.”

“What do they want?”

“They said a million.”

“Dollars?”

“Yeah.”

Barney wiped down his face. Squeezed the bridge of his nose. He didn’t need to click on the nightstand lamp and become a squinting mole. “Why you?”

“Because they think I’m a rich gringo.” Carl started breathing more shallowly and rapidly on the other end of the line. “My god, bro, how can I—”

“Don’t start that,” Barney overrode. “You were doing just fine. Calm. Calm.” A beat, for sanity. “So... are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Rich. Can you cough up seven figures?”

Another beat. Barney frowned. His long-lost friend was wondering whether to lie.

Finally, Carl said, “Yeah. Don’t ask how.”

“And you want what from me, exactly? They’ve got the hostage and you’ve got the ransom. So, trade.”

“It stinks, amigo. It stinks like underbrush when you probe by fire.” He was playing the war-buddy card again. “Probing by fire” was when you cut loose a few rounds into unknown territory. If return fire erupted, you knew the hide was enemy-occupied. It helped to be fast-footed in such circumstances. The suspense was gut-wrenching, and you could smell your courage leaching out in your sweat.

“You want backup,” Barney said, dreading it.

“There’s nobody else I can trust in a shitstorm like this. No good faces. I’ll wind up nose-down in a ditch with my money and Erica gone. I need your help. The kind of help you can’t just buy.” Another telltale beat of quiet. “Will you help me?”

Barney got Armand to feed his goldfish during what looked to be a weekend absence. He flew into Mexico City — gunless — on an ironclad passport that did not have the name “Barney” anywhere on it. Carl Ledbetter would not meet him at the airport. They had arranged a rendez in a hole-in-the-wall tapas joint that served surprisingly good carne, as long as you didn’t question the source animal for the meat too stringently. Carl’s shirt and jacket were already ringed with perspiration.

Carl looked like a victim.

A victim of the Zone diet, among other things. Too much turkey in controlled portions, therefore too much tryptophan, sedating him as his life softened, knocking his guard down into comfy semi-coma. If you had to hit the gym to keep fit, you weren’t moving around enough in the first place.

Carl looked like an American tourist — sideswiped by sunburn (already peeling), at sea with a non-native tongue, confused by the currency, lost without a guide. Pattern baldness, prescription spectacles and a general mien that said mug me. Sweating, nervous, jumpy now, ill at ease in clothing the wrong fabric for the climate; clothing which announced his outsider status to locals who grossed ten bucks a week if they were lucky.

Carl looked like a neutered tomcat. He had put on thirty pounds since hooking up with Erica. He ignored his tapas and swigged from a glass bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola loaded with real sugar, not fructose or corn syrup.

Part of the explanation he offered involved tapping the cash-flow of a rich guy on Wall Street, a broker who had learned to stash the pennies that constituted the fallout from the cups-and-balls shuffle of big money accounts. Rounded-up or down half-cents and quarter-cents from millions of dollars in invisible transfers. The crimes of which the broker was guilty already constituted more than a single-spaced page of malpractice, but it explained where Carl had been able to score his million on short notice and without suffering a credit check. The story smelled flimsy but Barney knew that was all the exposition he was going to get on that front, at least for now.

What Barney wanted was a drop plan, or shadowy faces he could track. Instrumentality, not cryptography.

At the same time, Barney hated himself for re-evaluating his old buddy Carl. There is a nasty section of the human heart: everyone has it, some people flaunt it, and it is never flattering. The I-told-you-so impulse. That was what Barney was feeling now, but vaguely, not wishing to confront it head-on. Carl had gotten legitimate. Hooked up with Erica, who by all reports was splendid. Then blundered into a zone of hostiles like a tyro and gotten blindsided, worse than a damned tourist. Carl had forgotten or ignored the rules of engagement. He had exposed his throat to a sharpened world.

Never, thought Barney. Never would I get foxed like that.

And at the same time as that same-time, Barney felt powerful and enabled. The weaknesses of guys like Carl permitted guys like Barney to exist and persevere. Barney could fix things. Lots of people can’t fix a leaky faucet. Even more people had no idea how their automobile worked; it’s just a magic box, you get inside and it goes. Barney could strip an engine or put a drop of solder into an iPod and make the magic thing go again.

The tough part, really, was surfing the waves of emotional garbage people brought to their problems as extra baggage, to prove how human and normal they were. You were supposed to sympathize and coddle. None of which had anything to do with fixing the problem.

So it came as a surprise when Carl whipped out a dirty kerchief and displayed a woman’s severed finger with an engagement ring on it. Supposedly the diamond was non-conflict.

“I’ve looked at this a thousand times,” he said, not meaning the ring. “I don’t have to. It’s Erica’s.” His expression had the dull infinity focus of someone who has been overloaded with too much truth.

“The cut looks three days old,” said Barney. You could tell from the way the flesh desiccated. Lividity. Whether the amputation was rough or precise. A dozen details Barney thought he could spare Carl just now.

Carl nodded. Yep, three days. Most abductions at this price took about a week to play out.

“What else did they give you?”

Carl dug out a cellphone. “I’m supposed to call them if things screw up. Otherwise I’m supposed to wait for this thing to ring.”

Barney examined the phone. Scratch marks on the case where it had been pried open and customized — probably to route through several other countries to make it trace-proof.

“How much American cash do you have?”

“You mean besides the —?” Carl’s face went cheesy at almost blurting out big money while surrounded by hungry foreigners. He lowered his voice, playing spy. “A couple thousand.”

Barney held out his hand under the table and Carl passed a wad of damp currency. “Give me your hotel room key. Tell the hotel you lost it. Be ready to call them at six o’clock and say you just want to get it over with. Then find a car agency and rent a car that has a global positioning system.”

“What are you going to do?”

Barney pocketed the money as absentmindedly as you’d tuck a small receipt. “Go shopping.”

As an anonymous outsider, it was comparatively easy for Barney to score the things he wanted: three cheap cellphones, gray-market night vision binoculars, a ex-military Colt 1911-A chambered for modern .45 caliber rounds. But he was carrying more than that. He felt the crush of obligation on his shoulders, trying to weary him prematurely. He felt depressed about becoming the designated tough guy, and therefore devaluing Carl in his mind because Carl was reluctant to soldier up. At least Carl fit into the universe; all Barney had to fall back upon was rusty old myths about the nobility and honor of samurai, or ronin, or paladins — those stiff-lipped protectors who always wound up dead when the status was returned to quo.

In another way, it wasn’t Carl’s perceived weakness so much as Erica’s influence. Erica, the yet-unseen, had changed Carl. Perceived as feminine and thus victim fodder, she was the prime target. Carl was responding as protector — a damnable predictability. If the kidnappers had grabbed Carl and pushed Erica through this wringer, things might have sorted out differently.

Barney wondered about Erica while he field-stripped and cleaned the .45. The sidearm was narrow and heavy, its parts scuffed with wear and burnished by time, but as a functional assembly of parts it was nearly indestructible. You could hammer nails with it, dunk it in fresh concrete, and it would still fire reliably. Not subtle, it would kick like a piston. It was like a longdistance mace, designed for one to fire at full arm extension, single-handedly, and knock down enemies out of choking range. The two-handed grip amateurs had learned from the movies was strictly boutique, a precious formality that made you seem more impressive on the shooting range. It was useful for target shooters; less practical in combat. Felt recoil was only a downside if you let it disrupt your aim.

The gun was an unsung classic, most definitely an antique. It was stamped UNITED STATES PROPERTY M1911A1 U.S. ARMY on the right side of the receiver, though the serial numbers had been scratched off both the slide and receiver (probably with a Dremel, Barney noticed). It bore the Coltwood plastic grips introduced in the 1940s — dull reddish-brown, no mold numbers — to replace the Coltrock and checkered walnut stocks of earlier iterations. Slide marks and factory stamps indicated the barrel had probably been replaced several times.

Barney put fifty rounds through the pistol to warm it up and check its balance. The action was tight as a snare drum; whoever had stolen or bought or recovered this pistol had taken good care of it. Barney dum-dummed another box of fifty and loaded four clips of nine. He acquired a brown leather shoulder holster that had gone furry at the rivets, with a counterbalance web for the extra magazines. He was strapped to several pounds of shooting iron plus about a pound each for the mags; the Zen trick now was to forget the burden existed. It had to become part of him, no second thoughts, and a weapon was a tool, and you never drew it capriciously. Unholstering the gun had to be instinctive, and deployment of firepower a foregone conclusion. The combination of thoughts and actions required for threat/response/aftermath was too cluttered to permit linear logic. It had to be almost autonomic, like breathing or blinking. Barney had spent a great portion of his life subverting his fear triggers in order to fix things, to get jobs done, to never flinch.

He had become, he realized, a kind of monster to normal human congress, like a rattlesnake in a society of rodents. Normally they were prey, and left you alone due to your threat protocols. Your look, your attitude, your aura. But occasionally they could gang up on you and kill you for being different. A fellow Barney would always remember as the Old Assassin had once told him: “I am what I am, and that’s not always very pretty. But being ugly is better than being nothing.”

The Old Assassin was no longer alive. He was no longer anything.

Most American law enforcement had switched to nine-millimeter sidearms in the 1980s. Not so with the ostentatiously Kevlared policemen of the Distrito Federale, who packed whatever they wanted, including grease guns dating back to the Second World War. They peppered the streets in pairs and quartets, spoiling for trouble from behind mirrored sunglasses and body armor, defining corruption in a freefire zone of aching poverty. For the most part they were sadistic, bored, and sailing on some form of speed, with a predator’s eye for weaklings in any herd. This was why Carl had not called the cops, and had called Barney instead.

Carl was a tourist. Tourists were prey. End of story.

Tourism was shallow people attempting to sample local flavors that by definition were ruined by the presence of tourists. These days, it was even worse if you were an American; they openly sneered at you in foreign ports because you were a loathsome example of the worst of the phylum; ignorant, loud, alien, greedy for things you cannot have, eternally disappointed in ways you can never cognate or admit. Tourists flew the big red flag that read victimize me, I deserve it.

And Mexico... Jesus. Most Americans viewed Mexico the way most Californians viewed Tijuana, as a cesspool, a whorehouse, a dumping ground, a party zone where you did not have to clean up after yourself.

Barney’s test, and indeed his skill, was invisibility in the midst of the circus of human congress, no matter what country he was in. He had enough Spanish to ask questions, order food, or obtain the odd farmacia medication. Ampicilina, cincocientos milligramas, por favor.

Hence, he had been able to obtain his toys without comment.

He knew his old buddy Carl probably thought Barney had evolved into some kind of black ops badass. Kill a man with a paper napkin. Eat roadkill to survive. Make bombs out of fertilizer and kitchen cleaning products. The emotional depth of a robot. Barney was none of the inhuman things ordinary people assumed. He was one thing — a gunman, the sort of man who would not mind if every single walking citizen was packing a legal firearm. It certainly would make strangers more polite in mixed company. To a certain extent, Barney felt that he was the embodiment of his own skills, an instrument for action that could rust through disuse or neglect. For Carl to ask Barney for help confirmed Barney’s own existence. Simple.

The vehicle Carl had procured was pretty amazing.

His “rental” turned out to be an armored limousine, actually a Town Car with the stretch deck, a bomb shell underbelly, solid rubber anti-deflating tires, a personnel-carrier suspension for the extra weight, and bulletproof tinted windows.

“They had three of these things,” Carl said rather sheepishly. “They made me a deal.”

“Soft market?” said Barney.

Carl shrugged. “Look, it’s got the GPS. I thought, it couldn’t hurt, right?”

“As long as it goes over sixty on the flats.”

Barney spent the next hour or so dismantling the map-tracker. He had watched one of his shooting range regulars do this once and retained the knack of learning and extrapolating through observation. You never knew what weird skills you might need someday. Then he performed surgery on the nylon cargo bag in which Carl planned to store his million bucks in cash. It was big. A single banknote, no matter what the denomination, weighs a gram. If the $1,000,000 had been in one dollar bills, it would have weighed over a ton. In fifties, forty-four pounds; in hundreds, half that. A million bucks in reasonably clean, circulated bills only fit into a slim Halliburton briefcase in the movies.

Barney stitched the tiny microprocessor board behind the thick vinyl logo riveted to the bag, honestly the only place to hide it.

“Do you really need to have that gun?” said Carl, eying the .45.

Barney looked at his friend as though he had just stepped out of a flying saucer. Waited. Then, calmly: “Yes. I need it.”

“Damn, it’s... heavy.”

Barney’s hand lashed out like a striking cobra, slamming Carl’s wrist to the table. Pure instinct. He had looked up from his work to see the muzzle of the pistol directed at his face. Now it was angled at the ceiling, potentially bad for other guests.

It was like a bad joke version of Barney’s range test for newbies. Hand them an unloaded piece and see where they wave it. A good quick way to discover who might or might not handle a firearm responsibly. Carl had just failed with flying colors, picked up a loaded weapon, put his finger on the trigger without thinking, and pointed it right at Barney. The only thing he had not done was try to imitate Cagney and make little pchew-pchew gunshot noises... which would have been obliterated by the sound of the weapon discharging and spreading Barney’s inmost thoughts all over the water-stained wallpaper of their amenity-less hotel room.

Carl stammered, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, man, I—”

...haven’t held a gun in twenty years, yeah, I know.

Barney never felt sorry for ordinary folks, regular citizens, the law abiders, the walking dead. But sometimes he did pity them. Carl had put weapons handling, and Iraq, far behind him. Even there, Barney remembered him with an AR-15, mostly for show, but never a handgun.

Carl was frittering, nervous with anticipation. He needed a chore.

“Have you got a picture of Erica?” said Barney, stowing the gun, which had been cocked and locked.

Suddenly it was very important for Barney to obtain a mental image of the person they were supposed to rescue. He certainly wasn’t going to get an accurate account from Carl. Too much emotion polluting the information. Barney needed to see a photo.

Predictably, the snapshot Carl produced was from the humid depths of an overstuffed wallet. At least he hadn’t stored a thousand pictures of his beloved on his phone or iPod.

Erica Ledbetter, née Erica Elizabeth Stolyer, appeared to be a gamine redhead with Bombay Sapphire blue eyes and a wide, generous mouth; pure Midwestern corn-fed all-Americano hotcha; the girl who had fled the small town for better things. Because she was standing beside Carl in the photo, Barney put her height at about five-four, give or take heels. Something in the glint of those eyes gave Barney the feeling that she was very camera-conscious, and always tilted her head down and looked up when there was a lens present. It did not make her look older but did make her look dangerous beyond her apparent youth; Carl had mentioned that she was currently thirty-three years old. Fair complexion; freckles. No wonder they had snatched her. She could not have looked more out-of-town, a pale, white, well-appointed, red-headed target.

Beyond the image, here is what Barney saw: She used to date outlaws but tired of their arrested adolescence. Probably snagged a useless college degree or two. Just old enough, now, to appreciate adult company. Doesn’t want children and never has; that DNA imperative was subtracted from her makeup, so this woman has sex for pleasure. Barney looked at Carl again, now seated on a sagging twin bed redolent of mildew, staring uncomprehendingly at a TV game show in Spanish. A lot of people were shouting and talking very fast. Carl would have to work to satisfy this woman.

Back to the photo: The type of woman who does not expect convenience, knows life entails pain, and earns what she considers to be her rewards. Yeah: If held captive, she could probably muster some backbone. A darker thought: Maybe her union with Carl was strategic.

First impressions, a still life, impossible to say.

Barney handed Carl one of the cellphones. “The ringers are off. They’ll blink. These are our walkies.”

“What’s the third one for?”

“I put the guts into the car’s GPS, which is a simple receiver. Now it’ll tell us where the chip is, instead of where the car is.”

“You mean where the bag of money is. Why? If they give Erica back when we—”

Barney overrode him. “If they don’t, we’ve got something to follow. If they’re smart, they’ll ditch the bag straightaway. The difference could be just enough time. A fix, a location, a general direction. I mean, you’re not going to be able to Google ‘hostage hideouts’ and come up with a list of addresses.”

“You still want me to call them tonight?”

“Yes.”

Whatever Barney was going to add was cut short by a knock on the door, in a place where there was no room service.

Nobody was supposed to know where Carl and Barney were headquartered. Barney had engineered the move himself, advising Carl to keep his original hotel room at a place six blocks distant. Nobody was supposed to know Barney was an added extra guest, and it was a fair bet that housekeeping was not this formal, not at the dive Barney had purposefully selected.

The gun was already in Barney’s grasp as he backed toward the bathroom. With a finger of silence to his lips, he directed Carl toward the door.

Here is a snapshot of what walked in:

Long legs on six-inch heels, liquid brown eyes, skin the color of Bailey’s Irish mocha, shiny gaze, glittering bangles, sharp edges, a halter top and skirt that pretty much showed you in detail what you were getting — a healthy balcony (no implants), good teeth, a few scars for character and no scabs — along with the triple-shot of attitude that stormed into their presence. From what Barney could figure out from his vantage, eavesdropping, this flamboyant vision’s name was Estrella — “star.”

“Hey, Carlito,” she said, advancing on Carl. “You should know better than to try and hide from your chamaca... you alone?”

Her radar was good, as if she could smell Barney in the space, and Carl knew better than to try faking it. “Ran into an old war buddy.”

Barney had been cast in the part, no audition, and now the spotlight was on. He flushed the toilet to give himself an entrance cue. It gurgled and tried to back up. The bowl was ringed with brown stains similar to the strata of calcification on the teeth of many Mexican citizens, a fringe benefit of no fluoride. Estrella obviously enjoyed a better dental plan.

“Hey,” Barney said, playing his walk-on badly. “Company?”

“Hombre,” said the intruder, inviting enough but not game for a handshake. She sized Barney up in an eyeblink. “Looks like you’re the company.”

Barney tried to picture the pie chart of her bloodline, which looked to be a generational dime-a-dance mix of Latin, Asian, maybe some Dutch, plus a shot of some indefinable exotic extra wallop.

Great. Carl had gotten himself entangled with some Mexican hottie. The scenario sucked more by the microsecond. She needed to be jettisoned.

“You come to party with Carlito?” She wagged her eyebrows up and down.

“Just cervezas and dirty boy talk,” Barney said. But there was no beer in the room.

“You gonna talk dirty to me, Carlito?” She already had her hand on his belt buckle, pulling him into a clinch. Possessive. Territorial.

“You guys need a moment?” Barney smiled. It hurt his face.

Estrella held up two fingers. Peace sign. “Two moments.”

Barney’s gaze exchanged information with Carl’s: You okay?

Carl: Yeah. Let me deal with this.

“I’ll just go get some cigarettes,” Barney said. He didn’t smoke. The gun was beneath his shirt, against his spine, as he exited.

There are little mercados and bodegas all over the city, but if you are smart you don’t pop out to pick up drinks and a snack after nightfall, at least without bodyguards or armored support. Fearful eyes will watch you from behind curtains as you pass. Buildings are locked, bolted, barred. Surly glares from darkened portals await you, sizing you up. The air is thick with feral pheromones and incipient hazard. Teen punks, drug casualties, bangers and outright sociopaths are eager to test your machismo. They always mock but never kid. They are coyotes on the lookout for the next domestic pet-snack. As Barney stepped out, the sun was on the wane. About an hour before the vampires came out to enjoy their time.

Trouble would come later. For now, Barney knew he had nine little ballistic friends with him. Plus one in the pipe, already chambered.

He purchased some El Sol to cut the dust, Cokes, and a couple of American protein bars. He avoided the “chocolate-flavored” snacks because the dye and seaweed used to color them tended to turn your poop green. Real Mexican chocolate was pretty wonderful, but this packaged stuff was mass-market and of questionable origin.

He wondered if Carl’s cellphone would ring while he was with Estrella. Now that would be a French farce come to life.

He squandered about twenty minutes, stopping to watch a cart vendor expertly spatulate some simmering chorizo tacos. The aroma was hypnotic. The grinning brown entrepreneur had evenly spaced two-millimeter gaps between each of his teeth and the next, but his cart was scrupulously clean and his ingredients looked fresh. Some of the best food in Mexico comes from these little wheeled stands, the kind of thing that would make turistas grimace. Barney was tempted but decided not to weigh himself down with chow, in case he and Carl had to move nimbly later. He bought a Manzana in a glass bottle from the vendor’s bin of refrescos; the apple-flavored soft drink was very popular down here.

Mexico was its own set of contradictions, overpopulated with Catholics mired in poverty who nonetheless gave to the church. Friendly people who would open your throat at a wrong word. Helpless people who might help you; trapped people who might free you. Rare beauty in the midst of ugliness; atrocities framed in Spanish gold. A frontier sense of liberty and advantage butted against the lowering specter of threat. Barney’s image of Mexico City was summed up by the Basilica de Guadalupe — not the new, adjacent Astrodome version, but the original shrine where Juan Diego supposedly first saw the image of the Virgin in a blue mantle in 1531. Second only to the Vatican as a holy place and destination of pilgrimage, the grand old building has been sinking into the earth since the late 1960s due to faulty foundations. It was Mexico in a nutshell: most revered, gothically ornate, culturally omnipresent, sinking into the dirt in the middle of a vast city center only slightly smaller than Red Square in Moscow.

Estrella was brushing her teeth when Barney returned. She grabbed an El Sol without asking and swigged half of it. Her scent filled the room, not unpleasant, a vague waft of spice that hit you when she passed; maybe it came from all her burnished mahogany hair.

“You dinna hafta take a vacation, baby,” she said to Barney. “We can party if you want.”

“Later we will,” said Barney, ever the courtly gentleman, feeling the way a nine-year-old feels when he inadvertently catches his parents in the act of making younger siblings.

She kept glancing at the door. Gotta go. They all fumbled through the usual air-filling small talk, and presently she breezed away, leaving her scent to pleasure the room.

“Half mast,” Barney said, indicating Carl’s zipper.

Carl secured his cargo, already anticipating Barney’s actual concerns. He gulped most of an El Sol as though he had just crawled off the Gobi desert. Cleared his throat a couple of times. “It’s a little... uh, complicated.”

“No doubt.”

Carl wiped down his face. His hand came away oily. The world was still the same. It would not erase like one of those Magic Slates.

“See... Erica had this thing when she was in New York. This affair. Right about the time she got promoted at Curve, the magazine. It was just one of those things, like, y’know, those trap-reactions.”

“You mean she was looking down the gun barrel at marriage, which means settling, which makes everything boring, and soon you feel your youth passed you by, so you’ve got to bust out? One last fling?”

“It’s not like she loved the guy or anything. She came clean; she was up-front about it.”

“So you brought her down here either to try to zip up your relationship in a foreign port or keep an eye on her, and it’s not going as well as you hoped?”

“She got kidnapped, man!”

“And between the time she got kidnapped and now, Estrellita bounces along to fill your lonely waiting period? What, did you run out of magazines?”

Carl flushed crimson again. “I met her in a bar. I was going out of my mind, man.”

Barney sighed. They’d gone through worse, and crazier, in Iraq.

“Erica is the only thing I’ve ever done right in my life,” Carl said. “You remember how I used to be. I was a world-class fuckup. Still am. That’s why I need you. That’s why I need to save Erica.” He held his hands out in entreaty. “She’s all I’ve got now.”

Barney tried never to judge. What was that line about walking a mile in another man’s shoes? Oh yeah: By the time he figures out you’ve screwed him over, you’re a mile away, and you’ve got his shoes.

“Call the bad guys,” Barney said.

The Rio Satanas was not a genuine river. It was a toxic spillway etched into bedrock by overflow from Mexico City’s compromised waste management system. It was lost — that is to say, handily concealed — within the contaminated maze of industry on the municipal outskirts, everything from oil pumpers to propane plants contributing their discharge. At some point, somebody had built a wooden bridge over one of its tributaries, the veins and backwaters eroded by its determined march toward cleaner waterways. The bridge was almost quaint-looking, as though it had been shipped in from New England, but the whole place would never make for an attractive postcard.

The bridge was the rendez, and Carl obtained directions. Barney drove the ostentatiously ridiculous limo, even donning a chauffeur’s cap he found stashed in the glovebox. Why not play it to the rim? Rich American shows up in big car driven by obvious lackey to deliver dinero grande with extra sauce.

Using the GPS in the car, Barney checked the signal on the transplanted chip. Thumbs up.

They got lost, naturally, trying to navigate chuck-holed streets with no signs, following directions mostly by landmark — a clear, wide, long, twisting trail that would allow ample surveillance, and guaranteed no tails or hidden reinforcements. They knew they were in the right general area when they could see the car headlights cutting through assorted noxious gases. They could see the air. Dark, now.

Barney scanned the perimeter a safe distance from the bridge, using the nightvision binocs. Wherever their opponents were, they had blended well. No movement, no hot spots just yet. A few heartbeats of very tense quiet, to the backbeat of distant machines, grinding, pumping, polluting.

When the cellphone went off in Carl’s hand he nearly shrieked like a freshman with an icicle up his nether port.

For the first time, Barney heard the curiously uninflected voice that was bossing Carl around.

“You are to exit the car on my word. You are to walk thirty paces straight ahead to the bridge, place the bag on the ground, turn around, and return to your car without looking back. You are to drive away without looking back. Remembering this route will be useless to you. Be advised that you are being tracked by men with automatic weapons. Non-reflective gear, sight-shields and baffled muzzles. You will not be able to see these men using night vision equipment. Step out of the car now.”

It did not sound like some grubby gangster playing snatch-and-grab. This sounded more like excellent strategy, or maybe a simple playbook of what worked, per brutal experience in the game. Carl’s glance to Barney said perhaps they were in far deeper than their competence.

“What about my wife?” Carl said to the caller.

“Your wife is about to lose another finger if you do not step out of the car now.” Click — that was all.

“We don’t even know she’s alive,” said Barney. “We can about-face and burn ass out of here in this tank, right now, and they can shoot all they want.”

“No,” said Carl, opening the passenger door. “I’ve got to do this. If somebody nails me, at least... wing ‘em, or something.”

“I’ve got your back.”

Carl stepped out, exposed, elaborately demonstrating that he carried nothing except the bag, then began to plod toward the bridge. The smell outside was unique, almost physical in its oppressiveness. Barney could see through the binocs that Carl was actually counting his paces.

Non-reflective gear, sight-shields and baffled muzzles.

This was big time.

Carl must have sweated off half a pound for every step, to and from. No commotion from the outlands. No snipers in the trees, so far. Not that trees could survive here. He made it back to the limo with all his skin intact, and the phone rang again.

“I see three men coming down for the bag,” said Barney. Three shadows, from different directions, vectoring on a target.

“Carl?” The voice on the phone belonged to Erica.

“Baby...?” Carl sounded lost, or damned. His voice had constricted.

Erica was gulping air, sobbing on the other end of the call. “He told me... they told me I have to tell you...”

Barney leaned over to listen, trying to keep an eye on the bag.

“Just say it, baby, whatever it is.” Carl was jittering, on the verge of implosion.

“They say you broke the rules,” Erica said, parroting what a deep male voice was telling her to say. “You contacted someone. Brought someone with you. That’s... that’s not allowed. He says...they say the ransom is now two million, and this is a down payment.” More instruction, then she reluctantly added, “In good... faith that you will not betray them again.”

Carl was shouting Erica’s name into a dead line.

“No good,” said Barney. “We’re blown. They’ll dump the bag unless we give them a reason to run with it.”

Barney floored the accelerator of the limo, heading straight for the bridge.

The night came alive with auto weapons fire.

“What the hell are you doing —” Carl hollered.

“Shut up. Get in the back. Head down.”

Lacquer chips jumped from the hood of the Town Car as a fusillade of nine-millimeter slugs flattened into the windshield, making starbursts, rude impact hits without the attendant cacophony of gunfire. The voice had spoken true — silencers.

Triangulating, Barney figured four shooters, three of them the guys after the bag. One grabbed and they all scattered two seconds before the limo came to a dust-choked halt near the natural stone foundation.

Barney already had the Army .45 in his hand.

As the car stopped he chocked his door open with his foot and stayed low, popping two rounds and dropping the runner with the bag, who was not shooting. The bag was scooped by another runner who fired back — Uzis, from the sound and cycle rate. Barney ducked the incoming angry metal bees, mostly discharged unaimed, panic fire, gangsta showoff.

The brake was up and the limo began a slow roll toward the bridge. This was intentional. Barney crabwalked alongside, scanning around for the bonus shooter, who expectedly rose from the crest of the bridge and began shooting downward, ineffectually. Barney put a triple-tap in his general direction to keep him down, under cover.

The right front wheel stopped against the outstretched leg of the first guy to grab the bag.

“Now,” Barney shouted at Carl. “Drag that sonofabitch in here!”

He spent his final five rounds keeping Bridge Guy down. It took Carl about five seconds to find his own spine, then jack-in-the-box out the starboard side of the limo to collect their captive. Only about one in twenty fired shots from the darkness was even hitting the car now. They were back in the thick of battle, and dormant reflexes and instincts resurged. Carl even remembered to grab the insensate man’s gun, and hefted it across the seat to Barney just as Barney’s clip ran dry and the action of the .45 locked back.

Barney’s hands knew the weapon, a Heckler-Koch MP5 with a retractable buttstock. A Navy version of the assault gun favored by SWAT teams, notorious for having a dicey thumb safety. Barney quickly checked the cocking handle and then emptied the 30-round mag at the top of the bridge before he ducked back into the limo. The integral silencer was starting to cook already, and the gun was hot as a barbeque.

Sporadic incoming fire tried to hector them, but their armor was as good as advertised. Barney stomped the limo into reverse, humping the big vehicle inelegantly out the way they had come.

Carl shouted something about Barney being out of his mind, what was he thinking, they were all sunk now — clear the table, bring in fresh meat and stick a fork in them, because they were done.

“Just clock that maggot if he wakes up,” said Barney, meaning their guest.

“What’re we gonna do?” Carl moaned.

“I hate to put it this way, old buddy, but if Erica is still alive, they’ll call you, you bet. If they don’t call, she’s already gone. But if they do call, you tell them that now we’ve got a hostage, too.”

What had just happened?

Past the insanity, when the shouting had abated, what had been accomplished, and why?

That was what Carl would want to know. Barney was stone-faced and silent as he put distance between them and the bad guys, one eye already on the GPS tracker in the limousine. The onscreen map was shifting, stuttering southwesterly — away from them. Carl would want to talk, to quell his rampant panic with chatter; Barney would tell him to please be quiet.

Gunfire produces a surreal, accelerated state of mind, and the first rule is not to be seduced or distracted by the hyper-reality of metal projectiles whizzing through the air all around you, the noise, the muzzle flashes, ricochets and panicked confusion. You must envelop yourself in a pocket of calm deliberation that permits maximal safe evasion, target tracking, and optimum — not wasteful — return fire in order to neutralize the opponent’s capacity to kill you. The learned behaviors of firing scared, firing blind, or firing wounded cannot be acquired by advice or instruction; either you got it or you ain’t.

The people who had abducted Erica Ledbetter were businessmen in a cruel trade who no doubt thought of what they did as a brutal necessity in a harsh and unforgiving world. If they were good at what they did, they would not gratuitously sacrifice a revenue asset — Erica — for the sake of a macho gesture.

But. But this was Mexico, birthing crib of cowboy machismo. What if their dicks had been scuffed enough to warrant a violent display and alpha-male retribution?

But. But the voice on the cellphone hadn’t sounded like a street thug. He’d sounded like a businessman with an education, which made his status in the kidnapping trade extra-lethal, because here was a person who would not bluff.

But. But Carl and Barney now possessed a counter-hostage, one of the bad guys, currently dozing in the back of the limo after being knocked unconscious by Barney’s second shot, a deflection hit that had skinned the hair off his left temple and put his nasty self down into dreamland. Barney’s first shot had hit the guy in the ass, and the slug was buried deep in the meat of his right buttock. That would be painful soon enough, and very useful.

But. But Carl would believe Barney was a loose cannon, a gold-card-carrying member in good standing of Club Psycho, for taking provocative action. Carl might not understand that had been the only option. They could accede like sheep or push the ante. The deciding factor for Barney had really been the bulletproof car. The armored limo had been better than having five extra guys on their side. The Rio Satanas drop-off stank in more important ways than its eye-watering odorama: At the moment Barney had seen the setup, he’d known the drama was far from over, but there’d been no time to explain that to his compadre.

The kidnappers had never wanted an exchange at Rio Satanas, Erica for the cash. They had wanted an excuse to sweeten the pot. They had already known Barney was in play before he and Carl left their seedy hotel, so credit Estrella for sinking them even before they got to the river; Erica was probably miles away. Carl was to be told his desperate gambit — using Barney — had been hopeless. There was to be the requisite gunfire and shouted ultimata. It was designed to play that way so Carl, now more freaked out than ever, would eagerly agree to any solution, any carrot the bad guys offered, like doubling the ransom. Minimal effort, and the kidnappers win two-to-one.

Which was why the only option had been to jab them, see who flinched, maybe score a drop of blood in payback. It had all happened very quickly, and the exchange seemed to have soldiered Carl up. He had dropped back into combat mode, heeding the incoming fire, grabbing their hostage, tossing Barney the MP5, not pointing the muzzle at Barney or himself.

Maybe that was why Carl was being unaccountably quiet right now.

Barney’s own return to combat mode had come much earlier. It had surged back instantaneously like a good cocaine bump to his bloodstream. It was all foregone the moment he saw the bridge. Flooring that pedal was as natural for Barney as hitting the brake would be for an ordinary human with a toddler in their path. You either got it or you ain’t, and Barney owned it.

He could feel his heartbeat. He was awake now, and that was why he had engaged superior forces while hopelessly outnumbered.

Now all he had to do was figure out a way to tell Carl that his saucy little friend Estrella was working for the bad guys.

“He’s awake,” Carl said from the back of the car.

“The bag has stopped,” Barney said, watching the GPS screen.

Barney heard the sound of Carl punching their captive in the face, more than once, sort of as punctuation as he spit invective. It was not necessary, in fact, it was badly advised, but Carl needed a place to put his rage and the impotence of the past few days. You vent the rage, you get it out of yourself, then you can assess more clearly. The downside of shedding your rage is usually that somebody else has to absorb the burden, in this case, one tooth-loosening knuckleblow at a time.

“Hey! ¿Como se llama, puto? ¡Digame, pinche cabron! ¡Repuestame!”

Thud. Thud.

Hurting them first generally got answers more briskly than asking them first, then hurting them. It was the same as the kidnapping theory: Pay us or we’ll kidnap your wife would not work nearly as well as the other way around.

“¡Oigame, pendejo!” Thud.

“I didn’t know you knew so much Spanish,” said Barney.

“What about the goddamned bag?” Thud.

“Driving toward it now.”

“¡Nombre, joto!” Thud, thud.

Their guest tried to respond, in a spray of tooth chips, flecks of blood and bits of his tongue, but Carl was enjoying hitting him too much. Apparently the fellow’s name was Jesús.

“¡Me llamo Jesús, Jesús, chinga tu madre, Jesús! ¡No molestarme!”

“¿Se hábla Inglés?” Carl cocked but didn’t strike, and it got the desired response.

“Si, un poquito,” said Jesús, quickly recognizing a wonderful opportunity not to be hit again. “I speak a little. Please, por favor, no —” He had his hands up, defensively.

“The guy’s just a bagman, Carl; lighten up,” said Barney.

“He shot at us.”

Point, Barney thought.

“Better start a conversation with my amigo back there,” said Barney. “He might keep punching until he breaks on through to the other side.”

“... me cago en la tapa del organo y me revuelco encima de la mierda,” Jesús muttered.

“What was that?” said Barney.

“Ole Jesús here thinks his world just turned to shit,” said Carl, pulling back for a definitive haymaker that caused Jesús to start talking faster.

“Those guys! The guys!” he said. “They just hire me! Pay me to do job!”

“Bullshit, Jesús — you haven’t got any dinero on you. If they agreed to pay you and you don’t have any money, that means you’re going to see them again.”

“They kill me super-bad if...”

“I’ll kill you super-bad right fucking now, Zorro!” Carl was not screwing around. The whites of his eyes had pinked in anger, Barney saw in the rearview.

They circled wide and caught up with the bag where it had been dumped, about five miles from the bridge. At least it proved Barney’s little GPS trick could work, and gave them a general direction they could employ to strike some good, clean Catholic fear into Jesús.

“Nobody has called,” said Carl.

“They’re going to sweat you,” said Barney.

“Sí, es verdad,” said Jesús. “They make you wait.”

“So what do we do?” said Carl.

“We clear out of the hotel,” said Barney, “because we’re all the way made. If Jesús’ homing skills don’t improve, we’re going to have to kill him all the way dead. ¿Comprende?”

“Claro,” said Jesús.

Somebody had already visited the hotel room. Barney had expected that. What came as a shock was what their nocturnal visitors had left behind.

Estrella was completely naked, duct-taped to a tubular metal chair, her neck opened ear-to-ear with a razor. About a gallon of blood saturated the note that had been left nailed into her chest.

Rescate = $2M ahora

We Do This to Bitch

Estrella’s eyes were wide-open, unseeing. She had gotten her party, all the way, with no pestersome hangover.

“Hustle,” said Barney. “Cops are probably on their way.”

The limo was riddled with dents where bullets had hit but they had no time for anything fancier. Once they were back on the road, they looked for someplace they could base themselves with a simple cash payment and no annoying questions. Their gear was piled in the back of the limo since Jesús occupied the trunk. Barney had estimated Jesús was in no danger of bleeding to death; in fact, the wounded bagman told them freely that he had been shot before, that they shouldn’t worry about that.

What they found was a downscale sex motel called La Pantera Roja, complete with a gated courtyard (to discourage private investigations), individual garages with roll-down doors (so your spouse could not spy your car in the lot), and even a bizarre kind of room service — microwaved pizza or a limited beverage menu could be discreetly delivered to your room via a little revolving airlock-style compartment, like the door on a darkroom. In case the occupants were naked, identifiable, or otherwise tied up.

The headboard of the whorehouse bed was screwed to the wall. The lamps were bolted to the tables. Everything was garishly overpainted. The TV was coin-fed and locked down. A metal band secured the top of the toilet to the tank so nobody would steal it. A payphone was mounted to the brick wall. It was perfect. They were able to drag Jesús inside under complete cover.

“We’ve got to get some more shirts,” Barney said as he rustled the gun cleaning kit in his rucksack to one side to retrieve a roll of duct tape, for Jesús, from whom Carl had also liberated an extra mag of ammo for the MP5.

Jesús was glazed, eyes dilated and breathing shallowly.

Carl could do little apart from watchdogging the damned cellphone, trying to will it to ring.

So Barney was stuck trying to obtain some fresh clothes, minimal food, and another terrific plan. When he returned, the bloodless expression on Carl’s face told him that he’d been on the phone.

“Thirty seconds, maybe less,” he said, frittering with his hands. “Erica talking, again. Telling me what they told her to. She’s alive. At least she was —” he checked his watch “— eight minutes ago.”

“They’re not going to kill her,” said Barney, handing Carl a beer. “What did they say?”

“The usual gangster movie crap about paying the penalty for violating their goddamned rules. Estrella was to demonstrate they are serious. They don’t give a damn about ole Jesús, over there. All they want is for me to call them when I get the money. The extra money.” Carl killed the beer in a swallow.

Barney quickly checked to see if Jesús had overheard. Nobody home. He was almost snoring, palate clicking, not so much asleep as unconscious.

“You should have heard her, man,” said Carl, voice cracking. “Repeating that crap. ‘Tardiness in any form will result in additional damage to your merchandise.’ Christ.”

“I bet they said come unarmed, come alone?”

Carl made a little thumb-and-forefinger gun. “You got it.”

“Carl, this guy you know in New York, the money guy. Would you call him a friend?”

“Sure, I guess so. I mean, a million bucks...”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about a friend — do you trust him?”

“He’s the only person I called before I called you. When I realized this was too deep for me to do by myself. Yeah, he’s into all kinds of shady crap, but he’s a friend.”

“Sort of like me, then,” Barney said. “Call when cornered?”

“I guess,” Carl repeated, not sure of where this was going.

“But... after you get your wife back, and you go back to your nice, safe American way of living, you still have to find some way to get this guy his money back, right?”

“Sure, I mean... of course.” He still looked puzzled.

“How you going to do that, Carl? How’re you going to pay the guy back a million bucks? Or two million?”

“I don’t know. Barter counts for a lot. He needs people to run straw accounts, dummy corporation drops, money laundering, that sort of thing. He wants me to do something like that, well, I owe him, don’t I?”

Barney wondered just how far Carl’s ethics permitted the notion of debt. Not money, but actual obligation.

“What’s his name?”

Carl looked at Barney as though he had just sprouted eyes on stalks. “I can’t tell you that, man.”

“Sure you can. These dinks just tried to frame us for a murder, just to make a point. We haven’t actually killed anyone yet, but not for lack of trying, plus we kidnapped Jesús there. We’re driving around Mexico in a bullet-riddled car with Federales looking for us. You can damned well tell me who your sugar daddy is, your friend, or we are less than friends and I quit — do you copy?”

“For god’s sake, it’s Felix, all right? Felix Rainer, in New York. Okay? Happy now? God, what’s with you?”

Carl would have to phone New York like a deadbeat college kid begging more cash, and Barney hated his reflex desire to listen in on that call, because it meant that Carl’s fidelity was sliding into a gray zone. To distract himself from the relentless logic chain forming in his mind, he said, “Want to hear our Plan B?”

“Shoot.”

He lowered his voice. “We tag our pal Jesús with the GPS chip and dump him at the nearest clinic. With luck...”

“He’ll burn ass back to his bosses.” Carl smiled.

“But,” said Barney. “You’re going to call Felix and get the cash. Because we cannot afford to fake it, not now. Not after gunfire.”

Carl’s brow furrowed. “We might not even need the cash.”

Barney forced a smile and it felt like his face was cracking. “What’s the matter, Carl? Don’t you trust me?” He’d meant it to play as a joke, but it just wasn’t very funny.

Why did you come down here? Barney thought to himself as he jacked the car. It was a five-year old BMW M3 with a manual shift, thoroughly alarmed but nothing a Swiss Army knife could not neutralize. Tacking on plates boosted from a junker felt strangely nostalgic, a flashback of bandit thrill from high school, before Iraq, before Carl. No problem: Over a hundred cars were stolen in Mexico City every day. Even the jackers had quotas.

Why did you come down here, really?

It went beyond his talent for fixing problems, being the guy who knew the how of things. Scoping the worst possible scenario, then whupping it anyway. The gunfire had brought his adrenaline back, restored the beat to his heart. But what had he gained?

Doubts about Carl Ledbetter, for one thing. Slowly coalescing suspicions about the man presenting himself as a friend.

Like the suspicion that Carl knew the kidnappers, maybe.

Like the premonition that things were about to go rotten if Barney did not stay sharp.

And you know how that nag works, like a toothache, a cold sore, a hangnail that commands far more attention than it merits.

The BMW gave up all its secrets to Barney’s touch.

The phone call had been almost comical, like one guy asking another to borrow a DVD. Another mil? Sure thing, Carl old yeoman, anything for a buddy. Hope it all works out, dude. Later!

So before Carl embarked to a bank to collect wired funds, Barney had tagged him, not Jesús, with the GPS chip. He had amputated the receiver from what was left of the rental limousine and had it with him as he boosted the BMW, his “job” while Carl was presumably working high finance and Jesús was cooling his wheels and deliriously considering his severely limited options back at the Pantera Roja.

In fractured Spanglish Jesús had requested the bible from the bedside drawer. Barney left the book in his lap so he could thumb the tissue-thin pages with his wrists permanently duct-taped to the metal. Jesús said gracias señor to the man who had shot him, squirming uncomfortably on the bullet still lodged deep in his beefy ass. It had to feel like sitting on a flaming poker.

And now Carl was on the move. Not at the bank, not at the motel. In a cab, most likely, and his trajectory was eating up new ground, northeast, into the thick of the city.

Barney hated what he was doing, and did it anyway. That was his special talent, his social mutation, if you will. He recalled more words of the Old Assassin: “I have no one, I care for no one, and I am cared for by no one. So all I have is what I can do.” Barney disliked feeling beholden, and appreciated that throughout his existence he had taken pains and occasionally made grand, operatic gestures to ensure he never belonged to anyone. He never had.

Except his veneration of the Old Assassin’s counsel had obligated him to the memory of the Old Assassin. Great — he kept the guy alive in his head, like one of those shoulder-perching angel-or-devil advisors of conscience, and thus Barney was obligated, dammit to hell, connected to someone who had long since chewed that mouthful of grave dirt that awaits us all.

This is not to say Barney did not form liaisons or forge friendships, but there was always a clear demarcation, an unspoken line of hazard tape that could never be crossed, that kept his plus-minus columns internally ordered. He had acquaintances. He had connections. He had friends, but no intimates. He enjoyed the company of women, but no intimacy. He had sex; he had never made love. “Making love” denoted the manufacture of something that would need to be maintained. Barney’s golden rule was to always be ready to jump out of the chopper and start shooting at a millisecond’s notice. He had never cohabitated with anyone. The closest he ever came was stuff like sharing bedsprung motel rooms with guys like Carl.

Carl, who had now birthed a goblin of doubt in Barney’s calm.

There were other people Barney trusted in his limited fashion. Armand, for example, back in the States, feeding Barney’s goldfish, which did not have a name other than “the fish.” Armand was a champion target shooter fond of the customized assemblies known as “race guns” in the trade. Their relationship was one of mutual gunslinger respect, and they did not pry into each other’s biz. There were a few others: Karlov, an old-school gunsmith; Sirius, a jolly ex-cop who was fun to drink with. Most everybody else was take-or-leave as needed; sketches, not people. Background extras. To shut out the noise of their lives was to assist Barney’s lifelong quest for a kind of technical purity.

The women he remembered as shades, reduced to one-liners: Jessica, long burnished hair and long of leg, a coffeehouse songstress. Kyrie, another ex-cop, tough as a cement nail. Brianne, his bombshell, too perceptive and destined to be damaged by the world, thus fostering dangerous notions of protection. Geneva, sharp and too smart for him, with centuries of turbulence in her mixed mocha bloodlines. Kate, who pulled him out of his shell long enough to teach him how to dress and otherwise fake human function in public. The Other Kate, who had fooled herself into believing she loved him. Whenever he felt the tendrils of another human being’s needs begin to form a chrysalis around him, Barney reversed polarity and repelled them, concentrating on how to simplify his life. Whatever was supposed to emerge from that chrysalis would never be. Barney contented himself with becoming the best possible caterpillar, because it was hard, not convenient, not easy, and therefore not a path most ordinary people would willingly choose. The most rewarding personal effort is always the most difficult.

Such mandarin focus might constrict most lives, which was perhaps another reason Barney had taken on Carl’s wild-card proposition. Or maybe it was the arrogance of ego — Barney to the rescue. Maybe it was because he had wired his body for momentum, and stasis could drive him buggy, stir-crazy inside the safe walls of his world.

Whatever the reason or rationalization, Barney would not quit. He was committed to the tactical clarity of eradicating mystery — perfectly in character, for him — and answering these new and unbidden questions, especially the ones he was now asking himself.

Cocooned in his stolen, air-conditioned car, in the company of his guns and jerry-rigged equipment, Barney tailed Carl into an even worse part of town.

Driving in Mexico City is not recommended for the inexperienced (or for that matter, anyone without a death wish), but for Barney it was no worse than, say, Beirut.

The brown brick building had no title. No address. Heavily barred windows; sepia shades drawn. Welded plate steel over the ground-floor ingresses. It looked vaguely industrial, like a sweatshop or piece-goods mill, or the self-contained microcosmic hives where indentured laborers fabricated merchandise for American deep-discount chains. It was three stories tall and Barney noted that fire escapes had been removed from the exterior. It was a lost structure amid the chaos surrounding it — obvious whorehouses, night spots with glowering security thugs, rave space and drinking dens, the traffic mortared to gridlock by sidewalk commerce, tented night-market stalls hawking everything from bootleg DVDs to brown heroin (abundant and cheap), assorted losers unconscious or dead in gutters and door archways, viper-mean street denizens cruising for meat, disenfranchised lunatics pinballing about, religious pamphleteers, more bored cops, everybody jostling everybody else in that cultural denial of personal space that is peculiarly Mexican. The people here seethed. Here you could smell the food, the flavors, the populace, the perfume of the city. It was nasty, exhilarating and more than a little bit lethal.

Carl unfolded himself from the back of one of the city’s omnipresent green-and-white classic VW Beetle cabs called vochos — the kind not advised for tourists due to the ebb-and-flow trend of robbery, yet cheaper than hotel-assigned taxis and perfect for anonymity on the go. He had a big satchel with him, the type of briefcase used to carry bulky files, with a fold-over latched top. If that satchel contained money, then Carl had to be packing at least one firearm, meaning he had stepped out of character as soon as he thought himself unobserved. He moved to an iron door, was eyeballed via a peephole, and was admitted to the murk of the nameless brown building.

Dusty street brats banged on Barney’s window, trying to sell him chewing gum — known brand names with slightly modified ingredients best left unspecified. The BMW was an advantage in this ‘hood; locals would assume it was just another drug exec making rounds or extorting protection, but it would also attract urchins and beggars, first the Artful Dodgers, then the kids huffing paint or zoned out on crystal meth. Barney kept his window up and his focus on the building. Some of the kids thumped the car but it was just a show of bravado, a test to get a rise out of the gringo. No sale.

Some people were worth a million bucks. Some were not worth spare change, like Estrella, who had probably been plucked from a stable of a dozen just like her and aimed at Carl with the surety of a cruise missile. She had been butchered for no more than dramatic impact. Point: If Carl only had some back-alley deal cooking, nobody would have bothered to lay Estrella out in a bloody-rare buffet back at their first lodging house. If nothing else, it proved the opposite side was deadly serious.

On the hit list of Mexico’s most profligate crimes, kidnapping came third after theft and homicide, and was considered more serious than drug trafficking. In theory the act carried a 30- to 50-year prison sentence. Mexico City accounted for more than half the abductions in the entire country, with the death ratio of victims actually murdered about one in ten. It became so dire that in 2004 a quarter-million citizens protested in Zocalo Square, where the sinking Basilica was located. They called for political reform, they decried police corruption, they called out for implementation of the death penalty. The following year, Mexico City was reported to have the highest kidnapping rate in the world... and the highest percentage of money paid to kidnappers.

So much for Rudy Giuliani and zero tolerance, thought Barney. Giuliani had collected over four million dollars for his consultancy on how to clean up Ciudad Mexico, a place one does not, cannot, “clean up.”

In the interests of public service, someone conducted a study that reached the prim conclusion that four percent of the kidnappers down here were cops. The real percentage they did not dare suspect out loud.

It was a growth industry in more ways than one. Five thousand separate personal security firms in Mexico City easily billed over a billion dollars per year.

The middle class had imprisoned itself inside walled compounds, requiring bars, latches, locks, codes, dogs, cameras, and beefy enforcers to run it all. It was not unfair, and certainly not gratuitous, to call Mexico City a completely paranoid freefire zone most of the time.

But the contradictions waited to hard-slap you at every turn. You could encounter the kind of aching beauty only noticeable when contrasted with eye-watering squalor. Small kindnesses loomed much larger here. Love was amplified as much as hate, and could broadside unsuspecting outsiders just as completely. There was more dignity in a wizened old man plying a watchmaker’s trade in a hole-in-the-wall shop than in all the ostentatious skyscrapers in the richer districts. Folks living in borderline poverty were more honestly generous than their supposed betters. More honor among common people, because to them the lessons had come gruelingly hard. Heads you live and tails you die, and Mexico City was the edge of the coin.

You could fall in love or become a killer, no preamble. And fall back just as quickly. It all depended on how the coin fell, and the coin was forever in mid-air. In lesser men this might be a source of nerve-wracking stress.

To Barney, it was other people’s noise, and he could click it all off, could wait with an almost conscienceless patience.

Carl emerged from the fortress building with fresh sweat on his temples. His gaze swept the street, and his manner was the manner of a man who was certainly guilty of... something. He started physically when the BMW skidded up beside him and he found himself staring down the bore of Barney’s .45.

“Get in the car,” said Barney. “Right fucking now. Not a word.”

At least thirty people saw Carl climb meekly into the car at gunpoint. It did not matter to any of them, and was forgotten even before the dust of departure had settled.

“I almost called you on the cell,” said Barney. “That might have been a nice little surprise. But it might have gotten you in trouble.”

“Thank god you didn’t,” Carl said, practically mumbling.

The gun was stowed. It had made its point, and its threat was implicit.

“You want to tell me what the hell is really going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t. Do. That.” Barney’s tone was as serious as a nuclear core meltdown. “I want to know what you’ve mixed me up in, and what you have to do with it. Not the story. The truth. Start anytime, because I’ll keep your ass in this car for a week until you come clean.”

Carl fumbled, hands uselessly grasping the air before him, trying to twist nothing into some sensible shape.

“Start with your drop-off at the building back there.”

Still nothing. Where to begin?

“All right, try something simpler. What’s your cut?”

Any pretense to standing fast collapsed, as though Carl’s face had been unscrewed. “Half.” He spluttered. “Look, it ain’t broken... I can fix this. I can pay you. I was going to pay you anyway. A lot. More than your trouble, because you came to help me. I can pay you—”

Barney pulled the pistol back into sight to shut him up. “What I want, old buddy, cannot be paid in dollars or pesos or doubloons. You are a world-class fuckup, Carl. You got yourself conned into a scam too big for you, and it could still backfire and blow your dick off. Worse, you involved your wife, and even worse, you took advantage of a friend. It’s long past the time to shrug and go oh well. Frankly, I’m not amazed you’re that gullible. I am amazed that you’d come up with such a cowboy idea and throw your wife into the pot.”

“That’s why I have to tell you about Erica,” Carl said. Contritely. “It was her idea.”

Carl had saved Erica (so he related) from a stalker boyfriend with a history of vague threats and backhanded harassment. She would get flooded with junk mail based on credit card offers or find her parked car keyed, but nothing ever tracked back to the ex, one Rafe Torgeson. By Erica’s account, Rafe had been one of those sexy, seems-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time diversions who become dysfunctionally possessive/obsessive once they graduate from cheap thrills to what desperate people call a “relationship”... once they start clinging, fighting more than fucking, struggling for air, slamming down ultimata and grabbing for some kind of illusory life preserver that was never there to save them in the first place.

By Erica’s account.

And if you’re Erica, who can you get to believe your account? No one who’s known you long enough to see you go through this cycle before. No one at all — unless, of course, you meet someone new, with whom you have no history, who will believe virtually anything you tell them. Clean slate. Refreshed story to tell. Modify as you go.

Erica was the sort of woman, said Carl, who refused to believe she was not important enough for everyone to obsess over. She needed a history of epic betrayals and close calls in order to curry her next host, like any decent parasite. To say she was a drama queen was to undervalue her wiles. She was not interested in hot gossip so much as fundamental blackmail material.

Picture it: God, Carl, I don’t know where to turn, this guy has made my life a living hell, I’m not asking you to save me, just let me stay the night. Great in a movie, awful in real life because it reminds you of the real meaning of awe. All that is needed is a few pheromones, an auto-response sense of protectiveness for those of whom you have grown fond, and time for the whole stew to rot.

Carl had come to realize that the epically evil Rafe Torgeson, along with most of the other disaster exes cited by Erica, were her idea of confections. There was not a shred of actual proof of any of the thousands of crimes against poor, innocent Erica, who only wanted to help people... with the exception of her victims, like Rafe Torgeson and whomever else was back-dated on her dance card.

Carl logically concluded that sooner or later, he would become the next evil ex, just as soon as Erica had adequately prepped a fresh host full of new, unpolluted blood. Every disagreement, every conflict, every suggestion of hers not scooped up with a military sense of command, was another notch off Carl’s clock.

Erica, in turn, had smelled that her latest host had passed his spoilage date early, and to demonstrate her skill at manipulation she preemptively proposed the Plan.

Then she screwed Carl’s brains to mush, just to show there were no hard feelings. Predators never hang onto to devalued marks, and prefer quick exits, except in the case of vendetta, where they opt for the slow, lingering demise — gangrene instead of amputation.

“I knew I was outplayed,” said Carl. Anonymous streets whizzed past the closed windows of the BMW. “But damn it, I still loved her, or thought I did. You know? She came along right when I had decided not to cut and run from relationships so easily. I had decided to work at the next one... and she came along as the next one. I was ripe and she could smell it.”

“That’s really touching,” said Barney. “I assume you have a point floating around in all that self-pity.”

“The Plan. Erica knew about Felix Rainer, in New York. I had confided enough to her for her to know that Felix was a financial exposé waiting to happen. How much do you know about the Mexican economy?”

“I’m getting impatient, Carl, goddammit.”

“No, wait!” Carl locked eyes with Barney. “It’s relevant and it’s the truth. Please.”

Barney waited.

“Do you have any idea what a hot pot it is down here? More journalists are gunned down in Latin America than in Iraq, man! There are fourteen hundred municipalities down here that don’t even have access to banks — that’s how backward things are. Meanwhile the United States is getting ready to exploit eighty percent of Mexico’s natural gas resources — and do you know what they’re paying with? Water. Access to water. Water from the United States, which also buys four-fifths of the petroleum here, and it’s all owned by two companies, Petroleos and Pemex, and guess who owns them? And it’s not just oil. It’s trucking contracts, guys buying tanker ships, drivers, loaders, storage, all of it heading for America, baby. Along with stuff like genetically contaminated corn, for which the environmental reports were shoveled under; poultry and processed eggs with phytosanitary problems, pesticide-infected cherries — all of which winds up as your chicken Caesar or in your Manhattan. A dozen wars are going on, between Mexican sugar and American fructose, between milk companies in Coahuila and Jalisco. Beer distribution here has been taken over by Heineken and Coors, and they paid over a billion dollars for the privilege: Tecate, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca and Bohemia — even the Sol we’ve been drinking. Yet guerillas blew up seven oil and natural gas pipelines last week; that’s hundreds of millions in lost production. The whole system down here is caving in on a daily basis. It’s Wild Wild West time for opportunists, and that’s where Felix Rainer’s dirty money comes into the picture.”

If Carl had been looking for an opportunity to unburden himself, he had definitely been pacing and rehearsing.

“When cellphones liberated common people — when they allowed people who had never seen phones to have phones, just like in China — the telecommunications companies flooded Latin America with networking technology. Down here, people kidnap each other for ransom. Up there, in the rarified air, executives are cutting each other’s throats over satellite placement but it’s just as gruesome. And every single company suffers skyrocketing costs, due to guess what? Security. The paranoia that keeps security a big issue is important, because that, too, translates as money.”

“Cellphones?” What the fuck was Carl talking about? This was not just babble to buy time, or misdirection. Carl sounded as though he was honestly losing his mind. “You need to start making some sense. Now.”

“Listen. Illegal systems hijack billions of call minutes per year. That’s just one of the ways Felix collects his pennies. And no matter how many Cayman Islands accounts you try to hide, the Feds will notice a huge pile of money sooner or later, and you’ve got to move it around. If you can’t launder all of it, you redistribute it.”

“So the ransom Felix supplied you with goes to the kidnappers, who aren’t really kidnappers, and trickles through into dozens of ancillary business interests down here, legal, illegal and ‘other.’”

“I’m not sure exactly how. I don’t know all the details. But the kidnappers are real. They have to be real.”

“Or no one will buy the kidnapping?”

“Nobody cares about little meat-market hostages. But if it is big-ticket enough, it’s going to attract businessmen the same as the drug trade. So, point two: the score has to be big.”

“Two million big.”

“And that’s just one grab. Felix knew a corrupt Captain in the Judicial Police down here, and made a few calls, and then a few trips.”

Barney could smell rotting strawberries, or maybe rotting psyche. The stench of gone-over bouquets in rancid gray water.

“So they set up high-priced kidnappings,” Barney said, “and Felix is able to transfer money from his legitimate accounts to ‘save’ his amigos — probably under a variety of names — and that frees up shelf space for his less-legitimate money?”

“Something like that.”

Barney briefly considered resigning from the human race, turning his back on the world, and perhaps leaving civilization for the maggots to consume. No wonder he felt like an isolationist. He tried to shuck off the weight that had settled onto his shoulders. “So how’s good old Felix making out with this scam?”

“Way too successful,” said Carl. “So successful, in fact, they’re thinking of diversifying out of Mexico. Grabbing their hostages in the States and smuggling them down here for ransom.”

The gargoyles had really taken over the cathedral. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find a red button and nuke the whole planet.

“Is the goddamned kidnapping real or not, Carl?”

“Yes and no.”

“Please don’t make me start hitting you.”

“It has to pass muster as a genuine kidnapping.

Believe it or not, even down here there are police reports, genuine investigations, paper trails. It has to look, smell, act, and shit real. Whole food chains of players who must be convinced. If kidnappers diversify, the guys above them have to believe they haven’t gone soft, aren’t cheating the system in any way. You can’t just pay off everyone to lie. The snatchers have to think they’ve abducted a real victim. The keepers have to believe they are watchdogging a legitimate hostage. The money men have to believe they are trafficking at the potential cost of a real human life.”

“I can just keep driving north until we’re at the border,” said Barney, hoping his warning was clear as distilled water.

“Yeah, yeah, okay... Erica talked to Felix. Felix talked to me. Then Erica talked to me. We invest three days, a week, tops, and walk away with a million to split, fifty-fifty. We allow Erica to be kidnapped and ransomed. We make it look so real that we get the payout doubled, and nobody on the outside suspects it’s anything but crime as usual, what a damned shame. We rescue Erica, but only after the money has changed hands. Bang — everybody’s safe, everybody’s richer, and Erica goes her own way with her new bank, and I get to go mine.”

“Wait a fucking minute,” said Barney. “That drop at the bridge. Are you telling me you knew those scumbags? They were shooting live ammo at me, Carl!”

“No! I... I... didn’t know them, personally, I mean. It had to be real. If you bought it, as an outside agent, then it would look watertight, and—”

“And you didn’t have the balls to do it yourself,” Barney overrode.

“You asked me for the truth,” said Carl. “I’m trying to give you that. You don’t have to make me feel like a shit. I’m already doing a great job of that myself. If you want to punch me out, go ahead. Yell. Shoot me. But don’t give me that child-molester look, like you’re not going to be my best friend at school anymore. I have to get free. I conned you. I’m sorry, but there you were — all capability and no connections. Certainly no connections like Erica, who I have to get free of. You see?”

“No, I do. Not. See. Carl.”

A gruesome silence settled between them. Carl had raved. Now he needed to think up something else to say — anything else to reacquire Barney’s sympathy. Carl was jabbering himself into a hole...

... which should have made the rest brutally clear and simple for Barney: Abandon Carl. Free Jesús, who was a blameless gunner needing a hospital and a few days off. Barney no longer trusted Carl to do that. Then: Get to the airport. Use another of his stack of blind credit cards. Leave. No luggage, no souvenirs. Pitch the gun so its tainted memories would not hang around. Forget Mexico. Resume being a ghost. As the Old Assassin had told him: “Between missions, I cease to exist.” Barney would be okay until he found a worthier mission. Or worthier friends.

But what Carl decided to say was the wrong thing.

“It’s not personal, man. It’s just business.”

Barney might have forgiven, though not forgotten, all of Carl’s transgressions if he had not uttered that last. It was the weaseldick rationale of the serial coward. It was the free ride clause big money could buy. It was the price for which your friends sold you out when they decided to exchange your friendship for a bargain.

“I’m out,” said Barney. “I’m already gone. Keep your money. Clean up your own mess. And after that you are never to speak to me again.”

“No, hey — wait, man, we can fix it, I swear!”

“Carl.” Barney spoke softly, motioning Carl to lean closer for a confidence. Then he crossed with his left and plowed his fist into Carl’s hopeful half-smile, dialing his lights down to dreamland. Carl flopped back against the passenger door with a busted nose and one tooth perched on his shirtfront.

“Shut up,” Barney said.

Jesús was gone.

In fact, all traces of Barney and Carl’s base of operations at the motel were gone. Fresh linens, squared sheets, the chair back at the desk and the bible back in the drawer, no blood anywhere.

Barney’s body pricked to high alert. He pulled out the .45, knowing a slug was already chambered.

“No way he could’ve gotten out alone. I taped him up myself.” He wheeled, murder in his eyes, which were now looking directly at Carl.

Carl actually backed off two paces. One of his front teeth was in his shirt pocket and his face was already swelling from Barney’s punch. He stammered, “I don’t know what’s going on. Not me.”

Footsteps. Concealed soldiers breaking cover and rallying.

A lot of men with a lot of guns — street sweepers loaded with devastating shredder rounds, machine guns with mags of fifty-plus — were boxing them in from both sides of the breezeway. Their safeties had never been on.

Barney’s eyes quickly sussed the trap. To bolt for the car would just mean a Chinese fire drill of gunplay. No way to hole up in the room — the bathroom window was heavily barred and these dudes could shoot through the walls until the entire building fell apart. A quick glance at Carl — useless as a hostage, and honestly confused; what was landing on their heads had not been his idea. Barney had been so intent on watching Carl for the slightest new cheat that he had missed the smell of ambush, the hundred little wrong things that could tip you. They were center stage, spotlit, with no odds and no exit strategy.

Barney’s arm brought the gun around regardless, to wax the nearest oncoming gunner. Carl’s hand arrested its arc.

“Don’t,” said Carl, not looking at him.

There were at least eight men, all unafraid of wielding big weapons in broad daylight. Their team lead was a huge, vaguely Samoan monster; three hundred pounds (mostly above the belt) with a shaved head, a wooden idol face and the tiny, rapt eyes of a pit viper. His wifebeater tee revealed pale worm-bursts of stretch-marks radiating from his armpits to his shoulders — a sure sign, Barney knew, of an overdose of steroids and iron-pumping.

Nobody said a word.

In short order, Barney was divested of his armament. Both he and Carl were professionally frisked. The room was certified as clear — silently, by a guy who wore mirrorshades so thin they appeared to be growing out of his skull instead of perched upon it. Barney and Carl were marched to a waiting panel van, one badboy on each bicep doing the military-style bring-along with a vise-grip like a pit bull. They were seated roughly, heads sacked, hands cuffed, and the van door slammed shut with a crunch of finality.

The inside of the van smelled like all the guns that had been brought to bear. Humid and close. The sack on Barney’s head stunk of motor oil and acetone; somebody had used it as an engine rag. B.O. and hair pomade. Of course, somebody farted. Acidic.

Barney heard Carl’s muffled voice say, “What is this; you guys all mutes or somethi —?”

Thud.

Instantly, they were on the move.

Something was coming up, Barney knew. If nothing waited to complicate their situation, they would have been killed on the spot. So somebody wanted something from them. Maybe Jesús, spoiling for a bit of biblical eye-for-an-eye. Maybe the police, going all Gestapo to take them down for the murder of Estrella without any questions. Maybe Carl’s unknown handlers, imposing more conditions and specifications. Strictly business, amigo.

Maybe Erica, ready to yank off her human mask and reveal her true, bloodthirsty nonhuman self.

Maybe the concession on lies and made-up stories did not stop with Carl.

Barney’s battle mode was cranked full-up. First opportunity, smash faces, shed blood, obtain a weapon. If no weapon was available, use furniture, glass from a window, his own bones, anything. Walk out of Mexico with no water, naked if he had to.

The first step was to get an arm free, snatch an opportunity. Every journey starts with a first step. This one would never get started as long as Barney was cuffed, masked, blind and bulldogged. All he could do was tick off the silent minutes of their portage. No one spoke. Presumably they were communicating, unseen by their cowled captives, with nods, winks, points; implied degradation, predigested visual jokes. The crew that had taken him and Carl were hardcore professionals. A few good men. Shakespeare had said that: A few, that is eight.

To Barney, gunners were not as dangerous as bona fide gunmen. These men were gunners, but they were very good at what they did. Maximum threat potential. No slipups allowed.

They were rousted from the van — Barney had no idea whether Carl had regained consciousness or not — and muscled across graveled pavement, through a door, down a narrow hallway. Another door. An elevator.

A chair, secured to the floor. A set of cuffs for each wrist. The chair was metal, immobile.

The sack rasped off Barney’s head.

He was in a second- or third-floor room about twelve by twelve, facing a desk with several flat-screen monitors, a multi-line phone system, a bank of cellphone chargers. Little army men on one corner of the desk sorted out their toy battle plan. Painted jungle camo; tiny guns.

The huge Samoan-looking badass stood behind Barney and folded his arms. His weight creaked the floorboards like tectonic plates. Carl was not in the room.

“Who are you?” said a voice — it was the voice Barney had overheard on Carl’s hostage cellphone, back at the bridge.

A man rose up from behind the confusion of computer screens. Five-ten, pattern baldness, well manicured, expensive suit, inarguably Mexican but without a trace of Hispanic accent.

Barney exhaled nasally. This was how it always started. The pseudo-politeness, following by the punch in the face for emphasis. He heard the giant behind him move, cocking back for a flat-handed blow to the back of the head. He steeled himself.

“No need, Sucio,” the man said. “Not just yet.”

Barney could smell the big guy’s disappointment.

“Let’s skip the patty-cake, shall we?” said the man. “Instead I’ll ask, what are you doing here? Why have you involved yourself?”

“What’s the point?” Barney said. “Get on with it.”

“Here’s your situation,” said the man, walking around to lean on the front of the desk. “For irrelevant reasons, our friend Carl chose to make a contact outside our explicit circle, which was prohibited. No doubt he lacked the honor to conclude the deal which he himself negotiated; no matter — you are now involved. What do we do with you?” His voice had the same curious lack of inflection or accent that Barney had noticed over Carl’s cell. “Do we let you free if you promise never to whisper a word of this to anyone? Unlikely. Do we manhandle you and hope the damage serves to insure your silence? No, just look at you. Beating you up would do us no good although I think Sucio would enjoy aspects of it.”

“Carl is a shitbag,” said Barney. “He conned me. Do whatever you want to him and his accomplice wife. I just want out. I don’t care what any of you do. I made an error in judgment. I’m willing to pay for that however you like. But your operation is not in danger. I have no stake.”

“That sounds very ethical, my friend, but there is still the matter of Sucio’s cousin Jesús.”

“Mi hermano,” said the giant behind Barney, with a voice like two cinderblocks grinding together.

“Excuse me, his brother.”

“I was going back to the motel to set him free, once I found out about Carl. I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.” He noticed that the man, who had never introduced himself, seemed to have one lazy eye. Barney did not look at him directly all that much, but when he did, it was a toss-up as to which eye to follow. Bell’s Palsy, perhaps — the left side of his face seemed less active, which might account for the squint.

“It’s more than a misunderstanding, my friend. Jesús is dead. He bled to death, reading the bible. This is Mexico. I’m afraid it doesn’t look very good for you.”

“No one dies from a bullet in the ass.”

“Ah. But as I believe an autopsy will confirm, Jesús died from a brain hemorrhage caused by your other gunshot. I have a doctor working on that right now.”

“He shot at me first.”

“Mm. But Carl was not supposed to return fire, nor was he allowed to have anyone with him, much less an expert shot such as yourself.”

“I didn’t know about Jesús. It was an accident.” It was all Barney had.

“You do realize how that sounds?” said the man.

“Yes, but it’s the truth. You guys butchered Estrella just to leave a memo; you realize how that sounds?”

“Her actual name was Salvación, and she was recruited from a group that does not concern us.”

“Who was she related to? The other women you find to donate fingers?”

“Again, not your concern.”

“Listen — just get Carl and his black widow wife in here and they’ll tell you. Obviously you’re not going to believe anything I say, so stop playing the movie bad guy and jerking off with your little speeches, okay?” Barney was resigned to whatever beating or retribution was coming; it was the only way of staying level in the face of chaos.

“Unfortunately, that is not possible. Carl and his wife are on their way back to the United States. The proper funds have changed hands and our deal with them is done, which leaves you as a loose end. And there is the matter of Sucio’s brother, not to mention the difficulty you have caused by your uninvited involvement. They mentioned — that is, Carl and his wife mentioned — that you might actually have some value as a hostage yourself, that your government may be willing to pay for you. Your military record and so on. We are looking into that. In the meantime, I’m afraid you have no option but to remain here as our guest.”

Then Sucio hit him, hard, in the back of the head with what felt like an iron dictionary.

All of the lies Barney had lived by, all his isolationist maxims and misanthropy, his fables of a higher calling, the thin tissue latticework of rationalizations that he was somehow purer, better, more dedicated than ordinary humans, all the rules by which he had ordered his existence, were about to evaporate in the crucible of his pain.