The Best American Mystery Stories 2011

Who Stole My Monkey? by David Corbett and Luis Alberto Urrea

FROM Lone Star Noir

Port Arthur

Can you really make it stink?

– Beau Jocque and the Zydeco Ht-Rolkrs

LOOKING BACK LATER, Chester could not convince himself he'd heard the sound at all, not at first, for what memory handed up to him was more sensation than sound, the tight sawtooth grind of a key in a lock, opening the door to hell.

They were midway through a cover of "Big Legs, Tight Skirt," Chester caressing the custom Gabbanelli Cajun King he used for the night's first sets. Saturday night at the old Diamond 21, some of the dancers in western getup, down to the Stetsons and hoop skirts, the rest in the usual Gulf Coast duds-muscle shirts, ass-crack jeans, shifts so cellophane-tight a blind man would weep-the cowboy contingent arrayed in three rows for the line dance, the others rocking to their own inner need, women holding the hair off their necks, men combing back damp locks, the band double-clutching but bluesy too, John Lee Hooker meets Rockin' Dopsie with a tip of the hat to Professor Longhair. Yeah- fess, chile. Midnight in East Texas, the music savage and hip, the band hitting it good, the room steamy, the dance crowd punchy from the beat but craving more, always more.

But the sound. It came from outside, no denying it now, that distinctive growl, like the sulfurous thunder-chuckle of the devil himself-a rear-mounted diesel, rebuilt Red Diamond in-line six. Chester even caught a scent of the oil-black exhaust and the muffled scattershot of spewed gravel as the bus tore out of the parking lot.

No, he thought, blinking like a man emerging from a silly dream. Two-toned copper and black, a perfect match not just for the gear trailer but his ostrich-skin boots-100 percent personal style, that bus. Last gasp of the days when oil money ran flush, when Chester had a nice little stilt home in Cameron Parish (before the hurricane took it to Belize, that is), when the clubs were paying sweet money and Beau Jocque was still alive and touring the country and a good two-step chanky-chank band could make beaucoup cash dollars. That bus was just about it for the Chester Richard empire, the final signature on a bleak dotted line.

But that wasn't what broke his heart.

Lorena, he thought.

His fingers stopped their flight across the mother-of-pearl buttons as a drop of sweat, fat as a bumblebee, splashed onto the accordion's Honduras rosewood. He wore a tight leather apron-vest, cut and sized in Lafayette so the bellows didn't pinch his nipples. Underneath, his chest was a swamp.

The rest of the band, oblivious, pushed on, the dancers unfazed too, a whirlwind thrall of spins and dips and shuffles. He glanced into the mold-speckled mirror above the stage as though the smile of some last hope might reveal itself. Fog hazed his reflection.

Turning his back to the dance floor, he waved the band to a stop. Geno, his frottoir man, lost the rhythm with his spoons. Skillet, the drummer, faltered when the rubboard did. The tune stumbled and fell apart.

"You didn't hear that?" They stared at him gape-eyed. "Someone just stole the motherfucking Flyer."

Two hours later he sat in a nearby diner, waiting for Geno and Skillet to return with a car, the night pitch-black beyond the screens. One fan hummed in the doorway to keep out the wasps and skeeters, another sat propped on the ancient counter to whip the soupy heat around, the air thick with the smell of sweet crude off the ship channel. The cook was in back puzzling out the walk-in's condenser. A plain bare bulb swam overhead in the breeze, casting a dizzy light.

Chester, craving a pinch, leaned back in his chair, shirt clinging to his skin as he pretended to listen. The woman did go on. If he only had some Red Man. Hell, any chaw at all-he'd take gas station rubbish right now if it had some mint in it. All the other club patrons had trudged on home, demanding their cover charge back, getting half, everybody ripped off one way or the other. But this woman here, she'd elected to stay.

He remembered her from the first set, waltzing with the others in the grand counterclockwise circle, her partner a doodlebugger wearing throwback pomade. Small wonder they'd parted. Coppery freckles dusted her cleavage, which from time to time she mopped with a white paper napkin. Her hair was the color of bayou amber and she wore it swirled messily atop her head, strands curling down like so many afterthoughts, a pair of chopsticks holding it so. Another time and place, he could imagine himself saying, I bet you taste just like rice pudding, sha.

Chester had suffered three marriages, survived as many divorces, more time spent with lawyers, it seemed, than in love. He had a wandering eye and a ravenous crotch and a Category 5 temper, his love life a tale of wreckage-one judge had nicknamed him Hurricane, given his knack for sheer, mean, indifferent destruction. No woman could endure him for long, but few could resist him neither. Like fortunetellers staring into a glowing ball, they could sense within him a tragic, beautiful, lonesome soul. Hell, he was the crown prince of lonely; open his heart you'd find a howling wasteland, make West Texas look like Biloxi. And the ladies could not resist that- I'll soothe you, sugar Save you. But no bride, no groupie, no rice-pudding blonde with chopstick hair had ever honored his longing, or yielded to his touch, like Lorena.

"Mr. Richard," she whispered, pronouncing it richered, like something that happened when money landed in your lap, "I have been a hopeless fan ever since that night at Slim's Y-Ki-Ki Lounge in Opelousas, that first night I heard you, heard you and your band." Her hand rushed across the table like a hawk toward his. "I've been on my share of tailrides and I've been not just to the Y-Ki-Ki but Harry's Club over in Beaux Bridge and Richards Club in Lawtell, the Labor Day festival in Plaisance…"

Chester, cocking an ear for sounds of the car, shook himself from his thoughts. "Let me stop you, darlin' dear."

She clutched his hand as though afraid it might escape, her eyes a pair of low-hanging plums; their skin a telling contrast, hers creamy and white like egg custard, his the shade of caramel.

I must be hungry, he thought.

"I have never," she intoned, "never heard a man play as wild, as free, as hard as you."

He could no longer see her face. His mind's eye conjured Lorena.

She was a custom Gabbanelli, not unlike the one he'd been playing onstage when the music stopped, but finer, older, one of a kind. Handmade in Castelfidardo sixty-five years ago, during the war, she'd been bought by his granddad for twenty dollars and a pig.

Chester thought he'd seen one of the Cheniers play one just like her at the Acadiana music festival, and the prospect had coiled a skein of fear around his heart. But no, theirs lacked the purple heart accents, the buttons of polished bone, much more. And sure enough, Lorena proved her royalty that day. An accordion war, oh yes, him and Richard LeBoeff at the end, Chester taking the prize with a fiery rendition of an original he'd penned just the night before, titled "Muttfish Gumbo." Next day, the local headlines screamed, "The Jimi Hendrix of the Squeezebox," and there she was, in the picture with Chester: Lorena. Who else was worthy to share his crown? He grinned, in spite of himself. What would Granddad think of that?

He'd been a marksman in the 92nd Infantry, the fabled Buffalo Soldiers, moving up the Italian peninsula in '44 while most white troops got shipped to Normandy for the push to Berlin. He hefted Lorena on his back like a long-lost child as the Mule Pack Battalion marched up alongside Italian blacksmiths and resistance volunteers, South Africans, Brazilians, trudging across minefields and treadway bridges, scaling manmade battlements and the Ligurian hills toward von Kesselring's Gothic Line.

He endured the march up the Serchio Valley, survived the Christmas slaughter in Gallicano, suffered the withering German 88s and machine-gun fire as the 92nd crawled across the Cinquale Canal. Throughout his boyhood, Chester sat beside his granddad's rocker and listened to his tales, enthralled, inspired, and each one circled back to guess who? The accordion became his granddad's prize, his lucky talisman, his reason for fighting, and he named her Lorena, same as his girl back home, the one who refused to wait. In time, the beautiful box with all that luck inside became the real Lorena, the one who was true.

And she was a stone beauty-pearl inlays, seasoned mahogany lacquered to the color of pure cane syrup, the grille cut lath by lath from brass with a jeweler's saw, double reeds made from Swedish blue steel for that distinctive tremolo, a deep mournful throbbing tone unmatched by any instrument Chester had ever heard. She had the voice of a sad and beautiful thrush, the tragic bride of a lost soldier. And yes, Granddad had come back from that war lost. The accordion became a kind of compass, guiding him back, at least halfway.

In time, Granddad passed her on to Papa Ray and he in turn handed her over to Chester, the prodigy, the instrument not so much a gift as a dare. Be unique and stunning and wise, she seemed to whisper, like me. And that was the full shape of the inheritance, not just an instrument but a sorrow wrapped in warrior loneliness. Chester treated her like the dark mystery she was, never bringing her out until the final set of the night, queen of the ball-which was why she'd been in the bus, not onstage, when the Western Flyer got jacked.

Chester glanced down at the table, saw the woman's fingers lacing his own, felt the nagging heat of her touch. "Darlin' dear," he repeated, snapping to. "As I have told you at least twice now, and which should be obvious to a fan as devoted as you claim to be…" He lumbered to his feet as, at long last, the headlights of Geno's Firebird appeared in the lot. "The name is pronounced Ree-shard."

She cocked her eye, a dark glance, the rice pudding curdled. "Oh, boo."

"Adieu."

"Boo!"

He tipped his hat and hustled into the night.

Inside the car, Chester collected a pearl-handled Colt.45 from an oilcloth held out to him by Skillet, who kept for himself a.44 Smithy and a buck knife big enough to gore a dray. Geno carried a.38 snub-nose and a length of pipe. You play enough bayou jump joints and oil-coast dives, you habituate your weapons.

Geno, sitting behind the wheel, glanced over his shoulder at Chester, who straddled the hump in the backseat. "I'm guessin' there ain't no guesswork to who took the bus."

"No." Chester dropped the magazine on the Colt, checked to be sure it had all seven rounds, plus one in the pipe, slammed it home again, then tucked the pistol under his belt as Geno slipped the Firebird into gear and took off. "I think not."

Skillet, true to his nature, remained quiet. Black as Houston crude and wiry with cavernous eyes, he'd been hit with a fry pan in '77, still had the telltale dent in his skull. Geno, plump as a friar with slicked-back hair, kept up a low, tuneless hum as he drove. He was the band's gadfly mystic, always wandering off on some oddball spirit craze, and he'd recently read somewhere that you ought to chant "Om" to get right with the cosmos. Apparently, though, he'd snagged some cross-signals, for the effort came out sounding like some rural Baptist dirge, hobbling along in waltz time. Chester almost asked for the radio, then reconsidered. Who knew what sort of ass-backward mojo you'd conjure, stopping a man midchant?

They pulled over for food at an all-night canteen on the Port Arthur outskirts: crawfish étouffée, hush puppies, grilled boudin sausage. Using his fingers to scoop the food from its white cardboard carton, Chester dug in, reminding himself that vengeance is but one of many hungers.

"Boudin," he said. "Proof that God loves a Creole man." To himself, he added, Let's hope some of that love will hold.

They took Route 73 to catch I-10 near Winnie, figuring the thief was heading west. He'd mentioned home was El Paso, just across the border from Ciudad Juárez, murder capital of the planet.

His name was Emigdio Nava but he went by Feo, the Ugly One. The handle was not ironic. Small and hunched but muscular, arms sleeved with tats, he had a scrapper's eyes, a mulish face, the complexion of a peach pit. He'd approached Chester about two weeks back, at a private party they were playing out on the levee road in East Jefferson Parish. He invited himself back into the greenroom between sets and sat himself down, a cagey introduction, smile like a paper cut. Everybody in the band figured him for a dealer-except for a few old locals too big to unseat, the Mexican gangs ran practically everything dopewise now-but he made no mention of such.

He did, though, have an offer.

"Want you to write me a song," he said, whipping out a roll of bills. He licked his thumb, flicked past five hundreds, tugged them free, and handed them out for Chester to take. "For my girl."

Chester glanced toward Skillet, by far the best judge of character in the band. He'd played up and down the coast for over thirty years, headliners to pickup bands, seen everything twice. It took a while, but finally Skillet offered a nod.

"Tell me about your girl," Chester said, taking the money.

Her name was Rosa Sánchez but everyone knew her as La Monita, Little Monkey. Again, Chester learned, irony was not at issue. Feo showed him snapshots. She was a tiny woman with unnaturally long arms. Her small round face was feathered with fine black hair. An upturned nose didn't help, though the rest of the package was straight-up fine. And being clever and resourceful, or so Chester surmised from how Feo told it, she turned misfortune to her advantage. A hooker who worked near the ship channel, she gained the upper hand over the more attractive girls by, more or less, outfucking them.

Geno, catching a glance at the picture, muttered, "Ain't we funky."

Chester cut him with a look.

"We got this tradition in Mexico," Feo said, ignoring them both. "Ballads. We call them corridos. It's how we sing the praises of the outcasts, the unlucky ones, the tragic ones, but also the bandits, the narcotrafficantes, the pandilleros. Anyone who understands what it means to suffer, but also to fight." The dude had picked up a bit of a Texas accent, and it was weird, hearing the Mexican and the Texican wrestling in his voice. Gave him a case of the mush-mouth.

Skillet watched him like a cat perched beneath the hummingbird feeder.

"You people," Feo continued, "have such a tradition also, no?"

"Called raconteur." Chester too could be a man of few words. You people, he thought. "When do you need this by?"

Feo rose from his chair, that slashing smile. "How hard can it be?"

Harder than Chester thought, as it turned out, but he'd taken the money and so was stuck. The problem was simple: how to pen something apt that wasn't at the same time offensive. It proved the better of him-he put it off, scratched out a few sorry lines, cast them aside:

Only the homely

And the angels above

Know how to suffer

The pain called love

Mama would shoot me dead onstage, he thought, if I dared sing that out loud. She'd been a torch singer famous up and down the bayou country, Miss Angeline her stage name. She'd died when Chester was seven, the cancer setting a pattern for women he'd lose.

Seeing that Chester was suffering over the lyrics, and sensing in that the chance for some clowning, Geno tried his hand too, singing his version over lunch, a plate of fried chicken and string beans with bacon:

She is my monkey

I'll make her my wife

Gonna be funky

For the rest of my life

Chester glanced up from his own plate, jambalaya with shrimp and andouille. "You looking to get me killed?"

Geno veiled his grin with a shrug. "Not before payday, no."

Two nights later, Feo showed up unannounced at the club they were playing, gripping an Abita beer, working a path through the crowd to the bandstand. He offered no greeting, just gestured once with a cock of his head.

Desperate for an idea-something, anything, quick-and unnerved by the small man's stare, Chester turned to the band and counted off the first thing that popped into his head:

My monkey got a cue-ball head

A good attitude and them long skinny legs

No sooner did the lyrics escape than he felt the sheer disastrous lunacy of what he'd done. And the band hadn't played the tune since forever, execution falling somewhere between rusty and half-ass, a dash of salt in an already screaming wound. The gleam in Feo's eye turned glacial. The bottle of beer dropped slowly from his mouth, and the mouth formed an O, then reverted to slit mode as he vanished. Chester thought maybe that would be it, a feeble wish, but then he spotted him at the bar between sets, and at the end of the night, like a bad itch, he turned up again, drifting across the parking lot as they loaded up the Flyer.

Approaching Chester: "Got time for a word, cabrón?"

Chester led him off a little from the others, not sure why. "Nice night-no, mon ami?" Cringing. Lame.

"You were supposed to write me a song."

The boys in the band sidled up, watching Chester's back.

Chester worked up a pained look, phony to the bone. "I thought I did."

"That thing you played?"

"It's called 'Who Stole My Monkey?'"

"Bartender tells me it's an old tune, written by some dude named Zachary Richard. Not you. You're Chester."

"He's my uncle," Chester lied.

"Still ain't you."

Chester tried an ingratiating smile. "How's about a few more days?"

"And you insult my girl too?" Feo held Skillet and Geno with his eyes, warning them that he could take all three. "You diss me twice? Know how much money you could make writing me love songs, güey?"

Got a fair idea, Chester thought, just as he knew how many grupero musicians had been murdered the past two years by cats just like this. The situation had snuggled up next to awful, but before he could conjure his next bad idea, the Mexican turned away. Chester saw a whole lot of luck heading off with him.

Over his shoulder, in that inimitable mush-mouth Texican-Mexican, Feo called out, "Fuck all, y'all!"

Inside the car, Geno broke off his solemn humming. "I'm also guessin'," picking up his thread, "that we ain't gonna call the law on this."

"If we were-" Chester began.

"We'd a done it by now."

"Correct."

You don't call the law to help you fetch a stolen bus when there's an ounce of coke on board, not to mention a half-pound of weed, a mayonnaise jar full of Oxycontin, and enough crank to whirl you across Texas a dozen times and back. Small wonder we're broke, Chester thought. They'd stocked up for the road, a lot of away dates on the calendar. Sure, the stash was tucked beneath false panels, nothing in plain view, but all it took was one damn dog.

Getting back to Geno, he said, "Long as you're in the mood for guesswork, riddle me this: think our friend the music lover, before skipping town, scooped up this chimp-faced punch he loves?"

Geno's eyes bulged. "In our bus?"

"He'll ditch it quick, trade down for something more subtle. Or so I figure. Skillet?"

As always, silence. In time, a stubborn nod.

True enough, they found the Flyer with its distinctive black-and-gold design sitting on the edge of the interstate just outside Houston. Maybe he feigned a breakdown, Chester thought, stuck out his thumb, jacked the first car that stopped. Maybe he just pulled over to grab forty winks.

"Ease up behind," he said, drawing the.45 from under his belt. "Let's see what happens."

Geno obliged, lodged the tranny in park. "You honestly think he's up inside of there?"

"That's one of several scenarios I could predict." Chester let out a long slow breath. "What say we not get stupid?"

Chester kept the gun down along his leg-wouldn't do for a state trooper to happen by and spot two armed African American gents with their fat dago sidekick sneaking up on a fancy tour bus in evident distress. They lurked at the ass end of the Flyer, waiting to see if the old in-line six turned over, a belch of smoke.

Geno glanced at his watch. "Wait too long, we'll be dealing with po-po."

Chester felt the engine panel, noted it was cool to the touch. "I'm aware of this."

"Like, Rangers."

"Indeed."

"Just sayin'."

"Duly noted."

They ventured single file along the bus's passenger side, Skillet in the lead, his crouching duck-walk straight out of some Jim Brown blaxploitation joint. Chester, lightheaded from fear, began imagining as a soundtrack a two-step rendition of the theme from Shaft.

Reaching the door, Skillet tried the handle and found it unlocked. He let it swing open easy. A glance toward the driver's seat-empty-then a glance back toward Chester, who nodded. Crouching, pistol drawn, Skillet entered, the others right behind.

The stillness was total, all but for the buzz of flies. No one there, except for the seat at the back, dead center. She wore a black miniskirt with a crimson top bunched in front, no stockings, shoes kicked off. Long skinny arms you couldn't miss.

Geno put words to the general impression. "What happened to her fucking head?"

Chester searched for Lorena while Skillet probed the hidey-holes, unscrewing the panels, bagging the dope he found untouched within. Geno kept an eye out for troopers. Chester could feel his heart in his chest like a fist pounding on a door, sweat boiling off his face, but the accordion was nowhere to be found. Thief wants me to follow, he thought, that or he's got a mind to hock her.

Despite himself, he glanced more than once at the headless corpse, sitting upright at the back, like she was waiting for someone to ask her the obvious question: Why? The woman he loved so much, Chester thought, paid five hundred cash for a song, then this. Only way it made sense was if she was just a means to an end. And the end lay somewhere west.

Geno, suddenly ashen, said, "That Mex is tweakin'," then stumbled off the Flyer and vomited in the weeds. Jackknifed, short of breath, he mumbled, "Oh Lord…"

A moment later, like a sphinx handing up its riddle, Skillet finally spoke: "'Less you wanna get us all sent up for that girl's murder," he told Chester, "might be time to make a call."

In Houston they phoned the Port Arthur police, reported the bus stolen, fudged a little about when and where, claimed no notion of who-they didn't want some cop getting hold of Feo before they got their chance-then dialed every local pawnshop, even called the Gabbanelli showroom, putting out word that somebody might be trying to offload Lorena on the sly. If so, a reward would be offered, no questions asked. But they got no word the Mexican had tried it yet. Still, the phone lines would be ringing all the way across the state. If he stopped to unload the accordion anywhere along his jaunt, they'd hear, unless Feo sold it to a private party.

"Which," Chester noted despondently as they resumed the trip west, "I figure he might well do."

"That'd be my plan," Geno acknowledged.

"Just drive," Chester said.

They were screaming past a little town called Johnsue when the cars showed up, two unmarked sedans, recent model, U.S. make. The men within remained obscure behind tinted glass. One car tore ahead, the other locked in behind. A window in the lead car rolled down, an arm emerged, gesturing them to the berm.

Geno glanced back over his shoulder. "What you want me to do?"

This business just ain't gonna turn easy, Chester thought. "What I want and what's wise would seem to be at odds at the moment." He let out a sigh and pushed the.45 under Skillet's seat. "Pull on over."

Skillet and Geno tucked their weapons away as well, as two men emerged from the lead car; the crew behind stayed put. The visitors wore identical blue sport coats, tan slacks, but they walked like men who spent little time in an office. The one who approached the driver's window did so almost merrily, an air of recreational menace. The other had shoulders that could block a doorway, a bulldog face, that distinctive high-and-tight fade, fresh from the Corps.

The merry one glanced in, studying each man's face, one at a time, settling at last on Chester. "You wanna un-ass that seat, big fella?" He grinned, cracking gum between his molars.

Chester opened the door and bent Skillet forward as he struggled to unfold into the sun, while Mr. Merry Menace leaned on the Firebird's fender, arms crossed. His wraparounds sat crooked on his face.

"Understand you've made some inquiries regarding a certain Emigdio Nava." A whiskey baritone. "Mind telling us what that concerns?"

Us, Chester thought. "He stole an instrument of mine."

The man cocked his head toward his partner, who just continued to glare. Turning back: "Instrument?"

"You knew we've been making inquiries, I'd guess you know about what."

The smile didn't falter. The man repeated: "Instrument?"

All right then, Chester thought. Way it's gonna be. "Accordion. Belonged to my granddad. Serious sentimental value."

A loathsome chuckle. "Sentimental value. Touching."

"Can I see some identification?" Chester said.

The man pushed his wraparounds up his nose. "I don't think so. No."

"You're not the law."

"Better than the law, most occasions."

"Such as this?"

"Oh, this especially."

The sun-baked office bore no name, just another anonymous door in an industrial park ten blocks off the interstate. Four men not much different from the first two emptied from the second car, another two waited inside. They put Chester and Skillet and Geno in separate rooms, each one the same morose beige, folding chairs the only furniture, to which each man got bound with duct tape. A silver Halliburton case rested in the corner of Chester's room, and he doubted an item of luggage had ever terrified him more.

Mr. Merry Menace snapped on a pair of latex gloves. "So you're musical."

"Look," Chester said, his mouth parched, "no need for this, I told you-"

The fist came out of nowhere and landed like a sledge, the latex chafing his face like tire rubber. He heard the hinge crack in his jaw, a phosphorescent whiteness rising within his mind, blotting out the world. When the world came back, it came back screaming-Geno, the next room over.

Chester shouted, "I'm telling them everything!" but all it earned him was a crackback blow, knuckles busting open his cheek.

"You talk to me. Not them."

Chester shook his head, gazing up through a blur. The trickle of blood over his stubble itched. "Why do this?"

"What was it like, finding your bus by the side of the road, Feo's little ape-girl inside?"

Chester shook his head like a wet dog. 'You know."

"Oh, I know. Yes."

"He said he loved her."

"Love?" The man's smile froze in place. "She stood up to him, only woman who ever did, so it's said. He put up with it. That's love, I suppose. Up to a point."

"Why-"

"Cut off her head?" A shrug. "Style points."

Chester coughed up something warm, licked the inside of his cheek, tasted blood.

"They hurl severed heads onto disco floors down Mexico way, Chester, just to send a message. It's how vatos blog."

"I don't-"

"I'm gonna make it simple, okay? There are forces at play here. Secrets. Schemes and counterschemes and conspiracies so vast and twisted they make the Kennedy hit look like a Pixar flick." A gloved finger tapped Chester's brow, tiny splash of sweat. "Bottom line, you're dispensable, you and your two wack friends. I'm doing you a favor. Whatever business you have with Señor Nava, it's hereby null, moot, done. Tell me I'm right."

"I don't understand."

An open-hand slap this time, mere punctuation. "He's a poacher. Understand that?"

Chester inhaled, his chest rippling with the effort. "I grew up in Calcasieu Parish. I know what a poacher is."

"Not that kind of poacher. He's Mexican military, Teniente Nava, trains infantry, automatic weapons. When he's not recruiting assassins for the Juárez Cartel."

Chester swallowed what felt like an egg. "That's got nothing to do with me."

"Not now."

"Not never. All I want is Lorena."

The man glanced to his partner, eyebrow cocked. Perplexed.

Chester sighed. "My accordion,"

It was like he'd admitted to sex with a fish. "Damn," the man said. He barked out a laugh. "You are sentimental."

They were escorted all the way back to the Houston city limits, then the two cars broke away. Message delivered, no further emphasis required. Skillet held a wet bandanna to the gash on the side of his head. He'd about had it with being hit on the skull. Geno, glancing up into his rearview, face swollen and colored like bad fruit, caught Chester's eyes, held the gaze.

"Say the word."

Chester had never killed a man-thought about it, sure, even plotted it out once. Now, though, he felt as close as close got. Feo had to pay. Pay for the theft of Lorena, pay for what Geno and Skillet had just endured, pay for the girl in the back of the Flyer. Feeling within him an invigorating, almost pleasurable hate, he imagined it was what his granddad-tongue unlocked by a jug of corn, Lorena resting in his lap-once described as the sickness at the bottom of the mind. He confessed to killing barehanded, last days of the war, his unit charged with cutting off the German retreat through the Cisa Pass. Low on ammunition, they didn't dare call in air or artillery support; the white officers would too easily call in fire directly atop their position. When the Germans overran their front line it got down to bayonets and bare knuckles, swinging their M-is like clubs. I choked one man, stabbed two more, beat another unconscious with my helmet, then smothered him with his own coat. Lucky for me they was all starved weak. The voice of a ghost. But now Chester understood. So be it, he thought. The old man would not just understand, he would insist. I will not betray her. I will find her. I will bring her home.

"You drop me at the airport, then go on back to Port Arthur."

"That won't do." It was Skillet.

Chester shook his head. "I can't let you-"

"Ain't you to let."

"Skillet…"

"You catch your plane." The older man's voice was quiet and cold. "Geno and me, we'll turn on around, head west again. We'll check around San Antonio, see if we can find Lorena. Not, we'll see you in El Paso."

"I can't make it up to you."

"Nobody askin' that."

He slept in the terminal and caught the first flight to El Paso the next morning, touching down noonish, then a cab ride to the rectory of Santa Isabel. The pastor there was Father Declan Foley, but Chester knew him as Jolt. A boxer once, backwater champion before heading off to seminary.

A cluster of schoolgirls sat in the pews as Father Dec led them in confirmation class. Chester caught that haunting scent, beeswax, candle flame, hand-worn wood, a lingering whiff of incense, almost conjuring belief. Or the want of belief.

The priest glanced up as his visitor ambled forward. The girls followed suit, pigtails spinning. I must look a sight, Chester thought, jaw swollen and bruised, a zigzag cut across his dark-stubbled cheek.

"Father," he said, a nod of respect.

The priest told the girls to open their books, review the difference between actual and sanctifying grace, then led Chester back into the sacristy. He eyed his old friend with solemn disappointment.

"You look, as they say, like hell."

Chester tried to gather himself up, quit halfway. "Feel like I been there."

"You've still got time. What's this about?"

Chester laid it all out, something about being inside the church arousing an instinct toward candor, flipping off the switch to that part of his mind inclined toward deceit and other half measures. It was no small part.

Father Declan heard him out. Then: "The man's a killer."

"I'm with you there. I don't want no more trouble, though. Just Lorena."

"I find it hard to believe he cares about an accordion."

Chester laughed through his nose; it hurt. "Maybe he's planning a new career path."

"My point is, from the sound of things, he means to punish you."

"He's succeeded." Chester felt tired to the bone. This too, he supposed, was the church working on him. "I hope to make that point. If I can find him before he crosses over to Juárez."

"I can ask around."

"I'd be obliged. Old time's sake and all." Chester heard something small in his voice. Begging. "You know the people who know the people and so on."

"Have you bothered praying?"

The question seemed vaguely insulting. Chester tugged at his ear. "Wouldn't say as I have, no."

"Be a good time to start, from all appearances."

"Can't say I feel inclined."

"Try." The priest reached out, his touch surprisingly gentle for such a meaty hand. "Old time's sake and all."

Father Dec gave him an address for a hotel nearby where he could rest while calls were made, then led him out to the front-most pew. Chester knelt. When in Rome, he figured, the deceit sector of his brain flickering back to life.

"By the way," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the schoolgirls, 'just to settle my curiosity, what exactly is the difference between actual and sanctifying grace?"

The priest studied him a moment, something in his eye reminding Chester of the brawler he'd known before, glazed with sweat and blood, a smoky light hazing the ring, smell of cigars and sawdust, all those redneck cheers. "You know about all the women being killed across the border, right? Worst of it's right here, just over the line, Ciudad Juárez."

That didn't seem much of an answer. "Dec-"

"Not just women. Kids. Sooner or later, it's always the kids. They're shooting up rehab clinics too, nobody's sure why. Then there's the kidnap racket. Not just mayors and cops and business-people, now it's teachers, doctors, migrants, anybody. Know what your life's worth? Whatever your family can cobble together. If that. People have stopped praying to God. Why bother? They've turned to Santa Muerte. Saint Death."

The weariness returned. "Not sure what you're getting at exactly, Dec."

"I'm trying to focus your mind."

Chester had to bite back a laugh. Like having your granddad's button box stolen, finding a headless hooker at the back of your bus, and getting punked by somebody's goon squad doesn't focus your mind. "Fair enough."

"Put your problems in perspective."

"All right."

Gradually the priest's stare weakened. Something like a smile appeared. "Sanctifying grace," he said, "comes through the sacraments. Actual grace is a gift, to help in times of temptation."

He returned to the schoolgirls, who shortly resumed their mumbled recitations, a soft droning echo in the cool church. Chester clasped his hands and bowed his head. He tried. But the churchy nostalgia he'd felt before had a weaker signal now. Nothing much came. No gift in his time of temptation.

Father Dec would phone around, every soup kitchen, every clinic, every police station, the holy hotline, calling all sinners. Someone would remember the monkey-faced streetwalker who'd gone off with the Mexican lieutenant known for his deadly sideline. Someone would know where in town the man would sneak back to. He wondered if Father Dec would mention how the woman died, mention who the killer was, playing not on sympathy but on revenge. No, Chester thought, that's my realm, and he thought again of his granddad in the spring of '45, last days of the war, knifing a man, strangling another, smothering a third, whatever it took. And why? He pictured her, the bottomless glow of her wood, the warm tangy smell of her leather straps and bellows, the pearly gleam of her buttons. Remembered the moaning cry she made in his loving hands. No other like her in the world, never. If that wasn't love, what was? Worth suffering for, yes, worth dragging all across Italy to bring back home, worth killing for if it came to that. And it had. He suspected, very shortly, it would again.

He glanced up at the plaster Jesus nailed to the crucifix hung above the altar. If you were half of who they claim, he thought, none of this would be needed. Which pretty much concluded all the praying he could manage.

He rose from his knees, let the weariness rearrange itself in his body, then ambled on out, murmuring "Thank you" to his friend as he passed, smiling at the girls who glanced up at him in giggling puzzlement or mousy fear. Orphans, he guessed, remembering what Jolt had said about the killing, knowing there were thousands of kids like this in every border town, their parents out in the desert somewhere, long dead. Some of the girls were lovely, most trended toward plain, a few were decidedly nun material. One among that last group-he couldn't help himself, just the darkening track of his thoughts-reminded him of the Mexican's tramp girlfriend, La Monita.

He was halfway down the block, thinking supper might be in order, when his cell rang. A San Antonio number. He flipped the phone open. "Geno?"

A gunshot barked through the static on the line. A muffled keening sob-a gagged man screaming-then grunts, a gasp. Geno came on the line. "Please, Chester, it's just a box." The voice shaky, faint, a hiss. "Buy yourself a new one. P-p-please?" Chester could hear spittle pop against the mouthpiece. The fact that it was Geno meant Skillet was dead. You don't put the weak one on the line to make a point with the strong one. You kill the strong one so the weak one understands.

He slowly closed the phone.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

He wandered the street for half an hour, dazed one minute, lit up with fury the next, settling finally into a state of bloodthirsty calm. In a juke joint off East Paisano he scored a pistol from the bartender, a Sig Sauer 9mm, stolen from a cop, the man bragged. In a gun shop nearby he bought two extra magazines and a box of hollow points, loaded the clips right there in the store, hands trembling from adrenaline. Feo's gonna walk the border, he told himself, and the best place to do that is downtown, Stanton Street bridge. That's where I gotta be.

He walked toward the port of entry, found himself a spot to sit, lifting a paper from the litter bin for camouflage, spreading it out in his lap, the gun hidden just beneath. An hour passed, half of another, night fell, the lights came on. He sat still as a bullfrog, watchful, eyeing every walker trudging south into Mexico. And as he did the sense of the thing fell together, like a puzzle assembling itself in midair right before his eyes. If only that helped, he thought.

A little after eight his cell phone rang again. He considered letting it go but then he checked the display, recognized the rectory number.

"Jolt," he said.

Silence. "No one calls me that anymore."

"I just did."

"I want you to come back to the church."

"Not happening."

"What you're thinking of doing is wrong."

"All I want's Lorena. There's others want him dead on principle. That's why he's running."

"He'll be back."

"I suspect that's true."

"Suspect? I know. He's been in touch."

Chester shot up straight. A vein fluttered in his neck. "Feo."

"He wants to work a trade."

"I'm listening."

"No, you don't understand. He can't… Not what he's asking. I won't."

"The girl."

Another silence.

"Chester…"

"The one I saw in the church today. One who looks just like Rosa Sánchez."

"It's just an accordion, Chester."

The rage blindsided him, a surge in his midriff like coiling fire. "Not to me. Not to my granddad."

"You can't trade a child for a thing."

A thing?"Is it still a sin to chew the wafer, Dec? You know, because it really isn't bread anymore. Something's happened."

"Don't talk like a fool."

"Says the man who turns wine into blood."

"Her name is Analinda. The girl, I mean."

Of course, Chester thought, knowing what the priest was up to. Give her a name, she turns precious. She's alive. Like Lorena. "She's his daughter."

"She's her daughter."

"Point is, the girl's what he wants, has been all along. Why? I have no clue. Killers are vain, kids are for show. It's an itch, the daddy thing, comes and goes, maybe he felt a sudden need to scratch. The mother gave her away, spare her all that. So he paid me to write her a song, impress her, get her to ease up, forgive him, introduce him to his daughter. Then I went and screwed the pooch on that front, so-"

"He has no right."

"Who are you to say?"

"He'll sell her."

"So offer him a price."

"You said it yourself, he's a killer."

"He's not alone in that. My granddad was a killer. Killed for you. Killed for me."

"Chester…"

"God's a killer. Put some heat under that one."

The priest, incredulous: "You want to argue theodicy?"

"Not really." He felt strangely detached all of a sudden, preternaturally so, tracking the walkers bobbing past. It was no longer in his hands. "I'm just passing the time, Jolt."

"I want you to come back to the church."

"And what exactly does that mean-argue the odyssey?"

"Not the odyssey. Theodicy."

"I know," he said. 'Just messing with you."

He spotted it then, the hardshell case he knew so well, nicked and battered from the Italian campaign, a long whitish crease like a scar across the felt, left by the bullet from a Mauser 98 at Gallicano. The man carrying it walked hurriedly, face obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt. Chester felt no doubt. He flipped his phone closed, rose to his feet, and let the newspaper flutter down, tucking the pistol beneath his shirt. You've taken what belongs to me, he thought, what belongs to my family, the most precious thing we've ever owned. Two good men are dead because of you, not to mention the woman, the one you crowed over, said you loved. You deserve what's coming. Deserve worse. I'm doing your daughter a favor. I'm bringing Lorena home.

He chose his angle of intercept and started walking, not so fast as to draw attention but quick enough to get there, easing through some of the other walkers. From across the street, a second man appeared. Chester recognized him too, the shoulders, the bulldog face, that distinctive jarhead fade.

Let it happen, he told himself, and it did.

Feo caught sight of the ex-Marine, began to run but the accordion slowed him down. Drop it, Chester wanted to shout, but the Mexican wouldn't let go and then the gunman was on him and the pistol was raised and two quick pops, killshots to the skull. Feo crumpled, people scattered. The killer fled.

Blinking, Chester tucked the Sig in his pants, pulled his shirt over, moving the whole time, slow at first, cautious, then a jog, breaking into a run, till he was there at the edge of the pooling blood, the Mexican, the poacher, the Ugly One, lying still, just nerve flutters in the hands, the legs. Strange justice, Chester thought. The sickness at the bottom of the mind.

He pried the case from the dead man's fingers, gripped the handle, and began to run back toward downtown. Something wasn't right. The weight was off-balance, wobbly, wrong. He stopped, knelt, tore at the clasps, lifted the lid. Staring back at him from a bed of sheet music, the eyes shiny like polished bone, was the severed head of Rosa Sánchez.

Sometime later-hours? days?-he found himself propped on a cantina barstool, a shot of mescal in his fist, a dozen empties scattered before him, splashes of overfill dampening the bar's pitted wood, a crowd of nameless men his newfound friends, all of them listening with that singular Mexican lust for heartbreak as he recited the tale of La Monita and Feo, told them of Geno and Skillet, confessed in a whisper his unholy love for Lorena. Time blurred into nothingness, he felt himself blurring as well, just another teardrop in the river of dreams, and he wondered what strange genius had possessed him, guiding him to this place, over the bridge from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, the murder capital of the planet. Nor would he recall how or when he crossed that other bridge, the one between lonely and alone, but it would carry him farther than the other, days drifting into weeks, weeks dissolving into months, then years, more cantinas, more mezcal, till life as he'd known it became a whisper in the back of his mind and the man named Chester Richard drifted away like a tuneless song.

The ghost in the mirror of the bus terminal washroom, rinsing out his armpits, brushing his teeth with a finger, hair wild as an outcrop of desert scrub, sooner or later shambled off to the next string of lights across a doorway, entered and plopped himself down, crooning his garbled tales of love and murder and music, then begging a drink, told to get out by the owner, indulged by the angry man's wife, exiled to a corner with a glass of tejuino-no mezcal for a gorrón-and he'd wait for the musicians to appear, assembling themselves on the tiny bandstand like clowns in a skit, until once, in that endless maze of nights, a boy of ten shouldered on his accordion in the smoky dimness, and the nameless drunk criollo glanced up from his corner to see the seasoned mahogany dark as cane syrup, the pearl inlays, the purple heart accents, the buttons of polished bone, and with the first sigh of the kidskin bellows came that deep unmistakable throbbing tremolo, and he felt his heart crack open like an egg, knowing at last he was free.