The Second Saladin

21

Trewitt was down to $11.56 and some traveler’s checks he didn’t dare cash. And ten bucks bought exactly one night in his current quarters in scenic Nogales. The accommodations consisted of a straw bed in a hovel clinging precariously to the side of one of the hills. His roommates were chickens. At least the water ran — through the roof, into his face, and down into the straw, producing, in mixture with assorted animal droppings and liquid eliminations, an odor unlike anything he could describe. The view was breathtaking: across a chasm of reeking poverty to another dusty hill, on which sat — more hovels. But he was not without a beacon in this hopeless situation. At night, if he dared, he could creep halfway around the hill — being careful, for the drop was sheer on that side, one hundred feet down — and make out in a notch between the infested other slopes a wonderful symbol of the motherland: on a pedestal, high above the cruel barbed wire and metal mesh of the border, the golden arches of McDonald’s.

Trewitt would have killed for a Big Mac — el Grande, they called them down here.

He would have killed for a shower too, a shave, a new shirt, clean fingernails. Had there been a mirror available he wouldn’t have had the nerve to look into it, guessing what a week in a chicken coop will do to any man, turning him into a pitiful mock Orwell, down and out in Nogales, in a dirty costume of his own skin and rumpled summer suit. He’d lost his tie — when? Probably in the long running climb up Calle Buenos Aires. He had seemed to climb forever, up, up, still farther up, through chicken yards and goat pens (tripping once on the wire fence and sprawling into the dust). He was also sure he’d knocked down several people, but his memory wasn’t terribly distinct He remembered dodging in and out of big-finned cars, racing by small shops in which Mexicans lounged, drinking beer. Up one hill, down another. He ran aimlessly in the dark, in great heat, under a smear of moon in a foggy sky.

Near dawn he sought shelter in a structure whose purpose he could not quite divine. Its main recommendation was that it was deserted. He tried to get some sort of grip on himself. He was shivering miserably, almost sniveling (it was so unfair, it always had to happen to him) when a boy found him.

“Who are you?” the boy asked. He wore dirty jeans and black gym shoes and a dirty white T-shirt whose neck was all stretched out.

“A crazy gringo,” Trewitt answered in Spanish. “Go away or I’ll give you a smack.”

The boy’s scrawny chest showed in the exaggerated loop of the shirt’s neck.

“This is my mama’s.”

“Where’s your daddy?”

“Gone to America to be rich.”

“You want to be rich?”

“Sure. In U.S. bucks.”

“I need a place to stay. No trouble. Something quiet.”

“Sure, mister. You kill some guy in a fight?”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“You can stay here.”

Trewitt looked around without much enthusiasm. Bales of hay stood against one wall and shafts of sunlight fell through chinks in the roof. The place was built of corrugated metal. It smelt dusty and shitty all at once. Chickens wandered about, pecking at the ground.

“You got a bath in the house? A shower?”

“No, mister. This is Mexico, not Los Estados Unidos.”

“I noticed. Look, it’s a big secret, okay? Don’t tell anybody. Big secret, you understand?”

The boy vanished quickly and returned with his mother, a huge, ugly woman with eyes of brass and a baby in her arms.

“I can pay,” Trewitt said.

“Ten bucks, U.S.”

“Ten’s fine. Ten a week.”

“Ten a night. Starting last night,” she said, her brass eyes locking on to his. The baby began to squeal and she gave it a swat on the rump.

“Ah, Jesus,” said Trewitt.

“And no cursing,” she said.

Mamacita came with the meal — cold tripe in chili sauce. He fought the gag reflex; he could see the brown sauce crusting on the loops of gut. But it was better than yesterday’s fish-head soup.

“Money,” she said.

Trewitt forked over his last ten.

“How’s my credit?” he asked.

“No credit,” she said, handing him the plate. “Tomorrow you get some more money or you go.”

He attacked the food ravenously, because he had not eaten since yesterday.

What now? Trewitt contemplated alternatives. Could he find a way to make contact? Take a chance, ring up the people at headquarters? Maybe then somebody could bring him in — somebody good, somebody who’d been around, a Chardy? But he knew the waiting would kill him. It had already been two weeks since Bill got killed. So should he try the other alternative: take the risk, try and bust the border himself? It was a fairly simple proposition, a tollbooth plaza, like the George Washington Bridge. Just an easy stroll; head for the gate. It was wide open, no Berlin-style Checkpoint Charlies, no Cold War wall to cross like some existential husk of an agent out of Le Carré. For Christ’s sake, you just walked up, following the sign. Entrada en Los Estados Unidos. What could be easier?

But then he remembered Bill Speight in the sewer. He remembered he was being hunted.

He rolled over and faced the scabby tin wall, waiting for inspiration. He had to do something. His mind was full of bubbles — a good deal of commotion and light and very little substance. He had a sudden blast of insane, giddy optimism. But it collapsed almost as quickly as it peaked and the downward trip was a crusher.

He heard a noise and turned.

“Oh,” he said glumly, “it’s only you.”

The boy eyed him from the doorway, unimpressed. Trewitt had the terrible sensation of failing another test. Yet the boy liked him and in the two weeks Trewitt had spent in the barn, on most days the boy had visited him.

“You sure never kill no one in no fight,” the boy said.

“No, I never did. I never said I did. Go away. Get out of here.”

“Hey, I got some news for you.”

“Just get out of here.” It occurred to him to take a swat at his tormentor, but he didn’t have the energy.

“No, listen, man. I tell the truth.”

“Sure you do.”

The truth, Trewitt knew, was bleak. He had failed utterly in his dream of unearthing information on Ulu Beg’s journey through Mexico, in finding out whether the Kurd came alone — or with others. What he had succeeded in doing was inserting himself in the center of a Mexican mafia war.

Unless the one was part of the other.

Trewitt’s mind stirred for just a second.

But he had to face reality. Reality was that he now had to turn himself in to the Departamento de Policía. The whole story would come out. CIA AGENT NABBED IN MEX, the headlines would say. Phone calls, official protests and denials, embarrassments, awkwardnesses of all kinds.

“I found him,” said the boy.

Trewitt could see Yost Ver Steeg. He could imagine himself trying to explain.

See, we thought we found the guy who brought the Kurd across. We thought we could learn from him if —

Ver Steeg had no capacity for expressing emotion. The rage would be inward. Trewitt would sense it in constricted gestures, tightly held lips, a cool handshake.

You went into Mexico?

Uh, yes.

He could blame it on Old Bill.

See, Old Bill said that —

But Ver Steeg would have a hundred ways of letting him know he’d screwed up.

What were you doing there?

Well, uh —

Didn’t you cover Speight?

No, I sort of lost track of him.

And Chardy would look and see a hopelessly incompetent kid. And Miles, that seedy little dwarf, would glow. Another rival x-ed off the list, another potential competitor screwed, shot down in flames. Miles would smile, showing those brackish teeth, and clap his tiny hands.

“You found who?” Trewitt said.

“The guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know a goddamn thing. Who, you little—” He lunged comically at the boy, missing. The boy laughed as he danced free.

“Him, man. Him. The bartender, Roberto.”

“Roberto?”

“Roberto, the bartender. Who would not shut up. Remember?”

Sure, Trewitt remembered. What he couldn’t remember was laying his sorry story on this kid here.

“I told you?”

“Sure. You come from the bar. Oscar’s. Stay out of there, you say. A bad place. The bartender, a bad guy, an evil man.”

Maybe Trewitt did have a vague memory of the conversation.

“So now you can go kill this guy Roberto. With a knife. Come on, I’ll show you where he lives. Cut his belly. My brother done that to a guy once and is still in prison.”

“You watch too much TV.”

“Ain’t got no TV, man. What you gonna do? Cut that cocksucker?”

“I don’t know,” said Trewitt.

The boy pointed in the dark.

“There. That’s the one.”

Trewitt traced the arc indicated by the small finger until he could see a certain house among a group of four of them, neither more nor less prosperous than its neighbors, a cinderblock shanty of flat roof and no windows.

“You’re sure now?”

“Sure? Sure I’m sure.”

The moon smiled above through a warm night. He and the boy were across a muddy lane in southern Nogales, miles from Trewitt’s homey barn. They crouched in a gully, which Trewitt had come to believe contained sewage. But perhaps not; his imagination again?

“You better be right, amigo.”

“Sure I’m right. You have a nice tip for me, okay? For Miguel, a little money?”

“Right now I couldn’t afford an enchilada,” Trewitt said.

He checked his watch. Nearly five, sun coming up soon.

“And Roberto,” said Miguel. “Soon Roberto. You’ll see.”

The light began to rise, revealing eventually a familiar landscape — the shacks on the muddy street, some shuffling chickens, sleeping dogs, puddles everywhere, pieces of junk strewn about. Into this still composition there at last came the figure of a man — a youth really — strolling along.

“He’s late,” said the boy. “You ought to kill him.”

“I just want to talk to the guy.”

“You should have seen what my brother did to this guy. He got him right in the guts. He—”

“Shhhh, goddammit.”

The bartender approached, picking his way among the puddles. He looked familiar to Trewitt, though thinner, more delicate than the American remembered. His hair was pomaded back and he had the thinnest moustache over his upper lip. He wore a leather coat over his jet-black pants and white ruffled shirt. He looked to be about eighteen.

He walked, hands in pockets. Trewitt had studied judo, though he had never earned a belt, and when the boy paused at his gate, directly across from him, Trewitt lunged from the gully in two muscular bounds, got his arms on Roberto, and quickly and savagely broke him to the earth.

The youth squealed, but Trewitt gave him a squirt of pressure through his pinned arm which calmed him fast; then he shoved him into the gully and leaped after. He punched him twice, hard, in the ribs, and got him into a wristlock. Trewitt was far too brutal, for Roberto offered no resistance and only yelped as the blows landed, but Trewitt was working off weeks of rage and frustration. He sensed the wrist he was gripping give, and saw the fear bright in Roberto’s eyes — and felt at once ashamed.

“I have no money, I have no money,” wailed Roberto.

“I don’t want money, goddammit,” screamed Trewitt in English.

“Cut him,” yelled the other kid, Miguel, watching from above with great, cruel joy.

“Shut up, you. Silencio!”

“Let me go, sir. I have only money for my sister and my mama and my two brothers and our dogs. Do not hurt me.”

“Why was the old gringo killed? Come on, talk, goddammit!”

He gave the wrist a quarter twist to the right.

“Ow! Oh! It hurts so. Ouch. No more. He went for the wrong woman.”

Trewitt tightened up on the wrist.

“The real reason, dammit.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Of course I’m hurting you. Come on, goddammit, talk.” He squeezed.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

A cock crowed and Trewitt looked nervously about and saw no movement, though a goat in a pen down the way seemed to stir. He knew he’d better get on with it. In a few minutes this place’d be crawling with people.

“Why, why?” he bellowed in righteous fury.

“Ahhhh. Let me go, please. Don’t hurt me no more.”

Trewitt relaxed his grip a bit. “Next time I break it. Why’d they kill the old man? Why?”

“He ask after Ramirez.”

“Okay. So?”

“The story they tell is that Oscar Meza set Ramirez up to take over his place. And here’s this old gringo asking questions. And Oscar no like the gringos and he no like the questions.”

“Oscar?” said Trewitt.

“Yes. Let me go. Oh, please, mister, it hurts so bad.”

Trewitt almost did. He was exhausted and he was running low on energy and purpose. But his fury boiled up again darkly.

“No, goddammit, there’s more.” There had to be. He gave the Mexican another jolt.

“Ohhhh. No, I swear. On Jesus, on the Virgin. He kill me if he finds out.”

If there wasn’t any more, then Trewitt was in big trouble. Next step? He had no next step. This wasn’t an intelligence operation, it was a gang war. He’d stumbled into the middle of it, and now the whole Mexican underworld was after him. Or was the youth lying?

He tried to think of what one of the old cowboys would do in his place. Chardy, a hero, a pro, an operator’s operator. What would they do? Maybe the kid was lying; maybe he wasn’t. There’d really only be one way to make certain, and that would be to take him all the way. Put him on the black edge of death and see what he said.

Trewitt knew in an instant that Chardy would be capable of a higher brutality here, for wasn’t the other side of bravery just the numb capacity to hurt and feel no guilt? Suppose now, suppose a Chardy broke the kid’s fingers, both hands, then his kneecaps, then his nose, all his teeth, then his wrists, and finally the kid broke. And this Chardy-type then used the dope he got from the kid and turned it into a real coup. Became a hero. A legend would grow, a reputation; maybe a career would blossom. But nobody, least of all Chardy, would remember the hurt youth, humiliated, debased, raped almost, in a gully in a scabby Mexican slum; the boy used, tossed away.

Weariness suffused Trewitt. His will vanished. “Ah, Christ,” he muttered, knowing he could hurt his victim no more. He felt the youth slip away.

“Go on. Beat it. Scram,” he said.

The young bartender fell back, rubbed his mouth and then his aching wrist and crossed himself quickly for deliverance.

“You should not do this,” said Miguel, perched on the lip of the gully. “You should make him talk.”

“Shut up. I cut your throat, little shit,” said Roberto, making a listless lunge that sent the younger boy scurrying.

“Go on, get out of here. Both of you.” For now Trewitt could not stand the sight of either of them.

Trewitt sat back in disgust and exhaustion. Next step? Departamento de Policía. And damned quick, before somebody from the mafia blew him away over the ownership of Oscar’s. Still, he dreaded it; it meant the coming to an end of a phase of his life. For surely he was done at the Agency; that much was clear — after a mess-up like this, there’d be no future.

It was also clear to him that he deserved to be done at the Agency. He simply was no good at this sort of thing — he hadn’t the hardness, the cunning, the fury. They never should have sent him; they should have sent somebody who knew what he was doing. He hadn’t even taken the Clandestine Techniques course out at The Farm in Virginia, a basic intro to the dark side of the Agency.

He wondered where the nearest Federal Police station was. Enough adventure for one day, and it was not even 6:00 A.M. He treated himself to a last smile for his own dumb folly — it was kind of funny, except for poor Bill — and set off in search of saner possibilities.

“Hey, mister,” somebody called — Roberto — “I tell you a lie.”

Trewitt turned. The youth stood with a taut look of defiance on his face. What, did he now want to mock Trewitt, or even, out of some Mexican macho thing, to fight him?

The younger boy lurked close at hand, eyeing the two curious antagonists, still hoping for a little action.

“Hey, mister,” said Roberto, “you got some money for Roberto?”

“Kid, I ought to—”

“’Cause, mister, Roberto thinks Reynoldo Ramirez is still alive. And he thinks he knows where he is.”