The Creed of Violence (23 page)

The ash on the tip of the cigarette branded the dark intensely but
never moved, never wavered. It held steady as a star in the night sky.

"I wouldn't answer, myself, Mr. Lourdes. A Chinaman is right.
Silence is golden. Except, of course, when you're broke."

They went back to waiting amongst the brittle dry weeds. Each
man alone in the wilderness of his existence. From the laguna came the
sound of an engine. They could hear it turn into the canal.

"Tom Swift and his motor boat," said the father, "on lake whatever the hell it was."

John Lourdes flung away his cigarette. He got out of the truck. He
turned the flashlight toward the canal. A voice in Spanish called out,
"Jefe."

John Lourdes answered and the engine cut off as it slipped to
shore.

John Lourdes approached the canal with Rawbone a few paces
off his flank. From the boat one man came ashore, another remained
onboard. The man introduced himself. His name was Mazariegos. He
had a pointed face and whittled eyes and he spoke the king's English.
John Lourdes let the beam drift over the boat long enough to recognize
the man onboard as being the mayor, and that fact he whispered to
Rawbone.

Mazariegos carried a lantern. Before he started discussing an arrangement he wicked up the flame and held the light aloft. From beyond the tramway bridge three horsemen came forward out of the
reeds. They disappeared into the shadowline of the canal, then lifted up
out of the willows on the near shore, their horses snorting and shaking
off the wet. The men were rurales and heavily armed.

Mazariegos was there to oversee the discussions, but since both
John Lourdes and Rawbone spoke fluent Spanish the talks became direct and unshaded. The price of the munitions had been settled by others, this was about where and when. "Where" was determined to be the head of the laguna at the place it fed into the canal. The campesinos
would bring boats, as boats would give them ample routes of escape
should there be trouble.

"When" was the following night. John Lourdes was in the process
of agreeing when Rawbone interceded. He wanted it to be three nights
from now, as extra time was imperative to ensure a safe delivery. Both
sides were adamant, so it was left to Mazariegos to bring about a compromise of two nights hence.

"THE MAYOR DEMANDS protection," said Rawbone. "So Doctor
Stallings guarantees his security against the very people the mayor is
dealing munitions to."

They were by the truck after all had left, son and father. What one
could not surmise, the other was sure of.

"Mr. Lourdes, you're either not seasoned enough or not cynical
enough."

"Given enough selfishness and disdain I'm sure I can measure up
to your standard."

"You're missing the point, Mr. Lourdes."

"Am I?"

The father came to him. He took the son by the vest collar in a
scornful but gentlemanly way. "Mr. Mayor . . . I can solve both our
problems. I want you to put out the word. I'll get you weapons. You
get those campesinos to think you're quietly on their side. Put on your
best political face. After you deliver them, we'll cut their fuckin' heads
off. How does that sound, Mr. Lourdes?"

"It sounds ... possible."

"If only the turkey could read a calendar, there'd be no Thanksgiving.
Mr. Lourdes, you told me you heard the mayor making veiled threats
out of one side of his mouth while asking for protection out of the
other. He's a walking conflict of interests. I say they have the mayor in their gunsights. The practical application of strategy ... they mean to
have order and they're making a case for intervention. The oil fields are
too valuable to the future."

Rawbone drove back to the Southern while John Lourdes sat beside him in silent council with his thoughts. Along the tramway, when
they'd pass the occasional light from some roadside building, Rawbone
would study the man who was his son. The child he'd squandered had
defied the crime of chance. He had not been despoiled or destroyed by
the laws of a vile gravity.

They entered the Southern lobby. It was down to the nighthawks
now and the couples tucked away in quiet corners. A gentleman played
piano softly in the bar. Rawbone stopped halfway through the lobby
and took John Lourdes's arm so they could talk a moment.

"Walk out of here. Away from this. You've done it. All that was
required and more. This is a quagmire, Mr. Lourdes. And it will never
end like you think. Whatever I am, I know the world."

Rawbone went to the bar and ordered 100 proof drinkin' whiskey.
He sat alone in the moody dark. He had come to a place in his own life
he could not have fathomed. A place he could neither admit nor exceed.
The son would never acknowledge him and he would not break faith
with that. He would prove himself, he would hold to it, not because
it was right or wrong, but because John Lourdes had willed it and he
would match him will to will.

As a water glass with a lethal dose of liquor was placed before him,
money was thrown upon the bar. He looked to find John Lourdes easing onto the seat beside him. The father looked furrowed in a manner
the son had not seen before.

"We could have made tomorrow night," said the son. "Why did
you want the extra days?"

The father sipped at the whiskey. Then, setting the glass, said, "I
was hoping to buy you time to change your mind."

The son crossed his arms on the mahogany bar. He looked at the
father through the glass behind the bottles.

"Mr. Lourdes, a hundred years from now there will be two gents
sitting like we are now. One may be a federal agent for the Bureau of
Investigation like yourself, the other may be a common assassin like
yours truly, and they'll be in another Manila, or another Mexico. And
they will be facing the same poison we are.

"There are two governments now, Mr. Lourdes. There is one that
controls the White House, and there is one that controls the rest."

John Lourdes half turned. He reached for the father's glass. He
drank.

"Mr. Lourdes, do you think they'd actually let the munitions be
delivered?"

"Not on their lives."

John Lourdes set the glass down. The father had picked up an attitude in the son's voice, a glimmer in the way he stared. Aye, Rawbone
recognized it, alright. It was a piece of himself. The piece meant to defy
the laws of men, it had somehow broken through the birth canal and
made its way into John Lourdes's soul. "They have a name for what
you're thinking ... you could call it madness ... you could call it intervention ... but it sure is not what justice Knox had in mind."

The son's fingers brushed against his stubbled chin. His mind
was tracking some private reserve. "What is required ... but to do
justice."

"Mr. Lourdes, take the Lord's Prayer and tie it around your neck
and you'll find out it won't keep you from hanging."

The son leaned in close now to the father, so close they were near
to being one. "I heard you by the canal," he said.

The father felt his guts cinch.

"And I heard you when we were sitting outside earlier slip around
answering what Stallings talked about after I left."

"That."

"I'm going to hurt you in a way you could never imagine."

"Well, Mr. Lourdes, that would be a feat."

John Lourdes stood. "I'm going to put my faith in you. Not as an
agent for the Bureau of Investigation ... but as a man. That's how I'm
going to hurt you."

John Lourdes took the father's glass and drank it empty then set
the glass upside down on the bar. "Finito, jefe."

He took up his carryall and shotgun and started out.

"Mr. Lourdes."

He turned.

"You've never once called me by my name. I've kept mark. Never
once."

"And I never will."

The father nodded. "Fair enough."

STORM BLEW IN from the Gulf that night. By the next morning the tide swept over the breakers and sandbars and the river
turned too rough for traffic. Down from the Southern, along the Panuco
wharfs, was an open-air market that went on for blocks. Many of the
stalls were covered with corrugated roofs. Rawbone stood out of the
rain by a vendor who sold coffees and teas that could be laced with
home-brewed mescal. He was waiting on Doctor Stallings, who now
approached down that muddy causeway.

He wore a long black slicker and his umbrella was angled against
the sheeting rain. Rawbone was leaning against a post and sipping from
a steamy cup when Doctor Stallings joined him. Neither man spoke.
Stallings shook the wet from his umbrella and then closed it up. He
asked, "Are you going to tell me about last night?"

Rawbone drank but did not answer.

The rain came down in sheets across the corrugated roof, creating
that hard drum echo, and from the fires to heat the coffee and fight the
damp the air was misty and flueish.

Rawbone finally answered Doctor Stallings. "Back at the train you
said something that stayed with me."

"We're here to talk about-"

"Grandeur and finality," said Rawbone. "That was it. Yeah. We'll
cover last night. But first ... let's talk finality."

JOHN LOURDES SAT at his hotel room desk and folded up a letter for
the man who was his father. He looked out upon the riled waters of the
Panuco as he awaited Rawbone's return. That morning he had taken
to the motorcycle, challenging the rains. He'd driven the oil fields with
their soaking and grime-stained laborers, and their women in tarpaper
cafeterias and stifling warehouses, and Indians on rickety carretas and
junker wagons relegated to the lowest scraps of work. They existed
under the guidon of imposed fealty. A stranglehold of the futile and the
feudal that was, in fact, what had brought his mother to America. It
was why she'd ridden boxcars and walked bleached wastes to cross the
Rio Grande and stand naked in that fumigation shed all to reach the
promise of freedom and opportunity.

He was thinking of his mother as he sat on that idling motorcycle in
the rain atop the same rise where Diaz and his surrogates stood in that
film, and used it to lie to the world about the state of their nation. And
John Lourdes, under a rolling thunder, came to see how much he was
his mother's journey. He was not only the agent of her hopes but the
eternal argument of her trials toward that freedom and opportunity.

Lightning flashed across the window as John Lourdes slipped his
notes into the envelope with the letter, then set it down on the desk.
He drank a beer and smoked and watched the harbored storm until the
door lock turned.

Rawbone took his sodden hat and put it on the bureau. He hung
his coat on the closet door. He went and sat in a cushioned chair in the
far corner, all without a word.

"Is it the mayor?" said John Lourdes.

The father answered in a guarded tone, aware of the effect what
he was about to say would have. "We are to pick up the munitions at
dusk. We are to deliver them to the appointed place at the appointed
time. We are to kill the men who come for them. We are then to go to
the mayor's house. I am told there is a carriage barn on the property.
We are to put the munitions there-"

"What?"

"We are to put the munitions there. The mayor will be at home.
We are to kill him. We are to kill anyone and everyone in the house, to
leave no witness to that fact."

They sat now with the knowing. Rain spattered across the window. Drops that seemed to carry the weight of time.

"I believe Doctor Stallings sent those women to work at the house
knowing full well what he had in mind. Their actions in the desert
marked them. And you also. Our friend the doctor asked if I could fully
trust you."

John Lourdes sat back. "And what did you say?"

"That I could only fully trust myself."

John Lourdes thought through the situation. "You were giving him
clearance to put a bullet through my head."

"Would you have handled it any differently?"

John Lourdes shook his head no. It was, after all, a practical application of strategy.

"If the girl's welfare means something to you, get her out. Then
strike it from here, Mr. Lourdes. You've exceeded what's expected."

John Lourdes stood. He took the envelope and walked across the
room and set it on the bed against the father's bindle.

"What is that?"

"A letter to justice Knox. I had it notarized so there'd be no question as to its authenticity. My notes are in there also."

The father took a long breath. He eyed the letter.

"I put the film I took from the funeraria in your bindle."

"My bindle?"

The father leaned out from the chair and took the envelope but hesitated opening it. Rather, he looked up at the son with a frank stare.

"The letter says you've earned your immunity. I need to make sure
my notes get back. I'm leaving that to you."

The father tried to absorb and understand. "Last night in the bar.
I get it now."