The Creed of Violence

SEVENTEEN

NTHONY HECHT HAD no idea whatsoever about this unshaved and slightly filthy rough calling him by name. Looking at a business card held up like a cigarillo between two fingers told him even less.

Hecht took the card. Saw what was scribbled on the back. He had been in dialogue with the consul and excused himself.

"You are?"

"Rawbone, Mr. Hecht."

"And the card means to me?"

"I saw Merrill two days ago outside El Paso. He told me to meet him here. Introduce myself to you. Said there might be some work for me with him."

"Two days? Where again?"

"A roadhouse near Fort Bliss. He was with a couple of gents."

The old man rubbed his lower lip with the tip of his finger. Was that worry or doubt in those fierce old eyes?

"How do you know James?"

Rawbone laughed. "You ever see that photo he carries in his wallet? Manila Harbor. The China. Him and members of his squad. The one on the far right is yours truly. 'Course I was younger." He winked. "And more brash."

He could see the old man was taking the trap. "Is Merrill back?" he asked.

"He is not."

"Oh," said Rawbone. He'd edged the word in disappointment. Then, with a hint of worry himself, said, "I thought he would be."

"I thought he would be, too."

The son watched the two men from the street. They might look like a curious pair, but stripped down, the son had a feeling they were brothers of necessity. The talking went on for a while, though it was mostly Rawbone, who seemed appropriately toned down and serious. The son-of-a-bitch even got to the point where he was showing Hecht the automatic he carried in his belt, the old man regarding it deferentially.

THE BOY FOUND Anthony Hecht easily enough. He had been working the Customs House rally with a gang of other boys, running to get buggies for tips, sprinting to the tobacconist or the saloon around the corner for beer and liquor.

"I was asked to deliver this to you, sir." He held out one of the ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS fliers. It had been folded in half.

Rawbone watched as the old man read. The shill was being applied to him alright, and hard. Hecht's eyes grew enormous and wild, and that but for an instant, otherwise the old man was as self-contained as a can of processed meat.

"Who asked you to deliver this?"

"A fella outside."

Hecht followed the boy as best he could, but he was already amongst the night crowd on the sidewalk when Hecht caught up with him.

"He was here," said the boy.

"Was he driving a truck?"

"No. He was standing here. And he pointed at you."

JOHN LOURDES WALKED back to the funeraria to wait. It was quiet when he arrived. Upstairs was an apartment. Panes of light emanated from the adobe walls where a hulking shadow leaned into the porch railing above. It was McManus. He called for John Lourdes to come upstairs.

The apartment was filthy. Wash hung from a line in an area by the stove. A near-hairless mongrel drank from drip puddles that had accumulated on the floor. There were reels of film everywhere. An old ratty couch was literally buried under them. McManus sat at a table strewn with beer bottles. He was rolling what looked to be a cigarette when he told John Lourdes to sit and steal himself a Single X.

Rolling that cigarette with just one hand, he was dexterous as some dancing fancy. "You were asking about the Alliance for Progress and Anthony Hecht." He licked the paper closed and pointed it at a reel of film lying on the table. "I've got something to runup on the projector. If you find it valuable, maybe you'll toss a little extra goodwill my way."

John Lourdes thumbed open the beer cap. "Why not." He drank. "It's not my goodwill I'll be handing out."

McManus raised his prosthesis with its oddly spread fingers. "There we go."

"You lose your arm in the war?"

McManus lit up, and when John Lourdes got a scent of that tobacco he knew what it was. McManus offered the young man a draw.

"I'll stick with the beer."

"Too bad Rawbone's not here. He's partial to the reefer. It's a little something we all picked up in Manila, besides the clap." McManus set the cigarette down on the edge of the table. He reached inside his stained shirt and pulled out a necklace. Resting in his palm was this enormous snow-white human front tooth, root and all.

"I got into a stupid fight with a stupider drunk. I hit him so hard his tooth embedded in the bone of my middle knuckle. Right to the root it went. The fool must have had rabies or something 'cause I got an infection and the arm had to come off. I wear it to remember-don't never do anything stupid."

He slipped the cigarette in his mouth and stood. He tucked the reel of film up under his arm. "Let's go see about some goodwill."

McManus threaded the projector in the dark. A charge of smoky light shot past where John Lourdes stood. Out of the dark a world opened. He was suddenly a traveler on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. From a sandy ridgetop a vast panorama of oil fields. Moments cut from one to the next-plumes of charred air rising from refineries, a legion of worker huts, a train moving off into a seared wasteland.

"These are newsreels President Diaz had filmed to show off the country. Prosperity and publicity. But mostly they're about him."

He held the cigarette near his nose and snorted in the smoke. "I like the world better in black and white. It seems closer to the soul of things that way. What say you, Mr. Lourdes?"

The scene shifted again. El Presidente in all his aging pomp and splendor was flanked by an array of dignitaries and businessmen and generals. He stood with hand on saber gesturing for the viewer to come and witness for himself a burgeoning world.

The camera cut from oil-soaked men at a huge derrick to an army of laborers constructing a pipeline to a tanker waiting at sea. The men smiled for the camera, but they were a poor, tired lot.

It was when the entourage with the president began to move that John Lourdes noticed Anthony Hecht. And who should be there just back and behind him?

The scene shifted again and John Lourdes asked, "Can you stop the film. And go back. Just, I saw someone."

The moment froze. The screen went white. McManus reeled back the film and as the scenes replayed John Lourdes stepped into the light and his arm's shadow reached out to point. "There's Anthony Hecht. Do you know him?"

"Only by name ... Alliance for Progress."

"And that man. Just behind him. Do you know him?"

"I do not."

"Ever seen him?"

"I have not. Who is it?"

"James Merrill."

In the film, Hecht leaned around and said something to Merrill, who nodded. As they moved past the camera, another man was revealed with Merrill.

Only this was no ordinary man. He had a nighthawk face that seemed at odds with his snowy white hair and mustache. He wore a gray suit and, in fact, was rather young. Somewhere in age between Rawbone and John Lourdes.

"I know the one with Merrill," said McManus. "The white-haired fellow."

John Lourdes studied the man on film. He walked with his hands folded behind his back. He was polished and erect and he moved with an economy of motion and gesture.

"He used to be a Texas Ranger. College-educated. Washington, or a place like that. Was a professor before. Doctor Stallings is how he's called."

The last of the film rattlesnaked through the sprockets. John Lourdes disappeared somewhere in that empty screen chasing yet what he did not know.

"The Ranger ... what does he do now?"

"Private security."

McManus turned off the projector. The room went dark.

Sometimes there is only the vague outline of a thing moving through an uncharted obscurity. What John Lourdes had suddenly was a sense of pure exhilaration he was hunting down a truth that would hold all this together. Yet, he also experienced a sense of pure dread. It seemed unremitting and without cause, but it was there.

When light from the doorway fell long upon that room John Lourdes saw he and McManus were not alone. The little man who'd been sleeping on the desk who Rawbone had roughed up entered and was carrying a shotgun. He made a wide berth around both men, keeping close to the wall. Where he was pointing those double black barrels was clear.