The Devil's bounty

Seventy

Eyes wet with tears, Hector’s finger traced the outline of the girl’s face. She had been seventeen when she had died. She had worked in a maquiladora owned by one of the businessmen Federico funded. She had been the prettiest girl in a place where there were many pretty girls. When Managua had made a campaign visit to the factory, she had caught his eye. A few days later, she had been held back after her shift ended, ostensibly to talk to the factory owner about a promotion. He had kept her so long that when she had left the bus that would have taken her home had gone. She had walked to catch a regular city bus, which had given Hector his opportunity. He had known she would miss her bus home.

He had done his job as best he could, reassuring her that everything would be okay. He had driven her to the ranch. There had been no American bounty hunters to stop him. After Managua and the others had finished, Hector had taken her to a plot of waste ground a half-mile from the factory and ended her life. Then he had driven home and got so drunk that he had severed a tendon in his left arm: a shard of glass from the tequila bottle he had thrown at the wall ricocheted back towards him. Her name had been Maria Sanchez, and sometimes she visited him in his sleep. She was girl number seven in Rafaela’s book of the dead, but girl number twelve of those he had either delivered, killed or disposed of. Rafaela’s book was an abridged version of the complete story. There were others, some who hadn’t had families to miss them, or whose families were in the south and didn’t have the money to travel to the border to find out what had happened when the letters and the money stopped.

He had almost been here once before. A year ago, in a drunken state, he had lurched into a cathedral in Mexico City and crawled into confession. But he hadn’t known where to start. He hadn’t been to church since he was a boy. And he had been scared, as he was scared now of what was facing him. As the tears of contrition poured out of him, and his body heaved, he didn’t know how to make them stop. It was as if his heart had merely been storing blood rather than circulating it through his body, so that when a valve was opened, it didn’t flow in a stream so much as exploded outwards all in one, flooding through him.

As the red light of the recorder glowed, and Rafaela sat across from him and listened, Hector poured out his stories. They were all endings. Bad endings. Tragedies. When he finished each one, Rafaela turned off the recorder and gave him the beginnings and, where the women were a little older, some of the middle. Hector listened, and sometimes he wept. Rafaela didn’t comfort him but neither did she tell him to stop crying. She didn’t seem to take any pleasure from his distress but she didn’t pity him either. It was what it was, a man recounting the terrible things he had done, and they both knew there was no way to excuse it.

The light outside began to change as the afternoon settled into evening, but Hector kept on talking until his throat was hoarse. Rafaela got him a glass of water. She took the gun with her, although they both knew they were past all that now. He wouldn’t wait until she dropped her guard and attack her. That part of him was gone for ever. He had seen what he had done for what it was. He was finished. A sicario had to be able to do one thing and it had nothing to do with killing. He had to be able to close his mind to the consequences of his actions. That part was over for him.

He sipped the water and went on. As darkness fell he reached the final photograph and then he was done. He snapped the blue folder closed and placed it next to him on the couch. He rested his hand on top of it, and felt the spirits of the girls as he closed his eyes.

Rafaela reached over and turned off the recorder. When Hector opened his eyes, she was staring at him, as if to say, ‘What now?’

Hector got up. She didn’t raise the gun, or say anything, or make any attempt to stop him as he walked to the door of the apartment. He turned the locks and stopped. He shifted around. She still hadn’t moved from her seat.

‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done,’ he said, and walked out, closing the door behind him.

He went slowly down the stairs, his legs so weak that he clung to the banister. Down he went, not stopping to look back. He was wrung out. Exhausted. Tired beyond any fatigue he had ever known.

On the ground floor, he pushed the door open and stepped out on to the street. There was a chill in the air. He had been inside for six or seven hours, long enough for them to realize that there had been a problem, that he had failed in his mission. Long enough to make other plans.

Rafaela’s car was parked down the street. His car was parked around the corner, but it was her car he walked towards. When he reached it, he looked up at her balcony to see if she was watching, but it was empty and the doors leading out to it were closed, the curtains drawn. That was good.

He grasped the handle of the driver’s door as hard as he could. Hard enough that he could feel the car’s body move. It was enough. The blast lifted him off his feet and he was thrown high into the air, his eardrums bursting under the pressure as he left his body.

Looking down, he saw himself fall back to earth, his limbs interlaced with pieces of metal, his torso and head coming to rest at the far end of the empty street.

Curtains flapped through blast-shattered windows like black crows’ wings but no one else screamed. He was gone. Everyone was safe. Safe now that he was no more. That thought, which seemed to come with his last breath, brought him peace.