The Carrion Birds (3 page)

Burnham was halfway out the door when Gil Suarez
made a run for it, the gun up out of Ray’s belt as he came around the cab
looking for a clear shot. Gil keeping low, angling toward the protection of the
locust thicket at the side of the road. Burnham up out of the cab now, his arms
outstretched and going for the pistol in Ray’s hand. Ray shoved the old man to
the ground and came forward along the truck looking for his shot. Gil almost at
the thicket. There wasn’t anything else to do, Ray squeezed down on the trigger
and the muzzle flash lit the truck cab up like a yellow flare, the bullet
ricocheting off the metal roof and caroming into the early-morning gray.

At the sound of the shot, Gil ducked and kept
running. Ray was aiming too low. He didn’t know if Gil had a gun, or what he
might be carrying. Burnham now up out of the dirt and making his own escape
around the back of the pickup, keeping low in his stride as he tried for the
thicket. Ray fixed his sight on the old man and came around the side of the
truck.

He didn’t want to shoot Burnham, but he knew he
would if Burnham didn’t stop. Ray was almost around the edge of the truck when
the big boom of the shotgun caught Burnham midstride. He saw the old man fly
sideways and disappear over the edge of the road. When he turned he saw Sanchez,
up out of the Bronco, pump the twelve-gauge once and then fire again toward the
running figure of Gil. Gil fell in the dirt ten feet out from the road. Splatter
of buckshot all through the dirt where he’d tripped.

Lucky son of a bitch, Ray thought.

Sanchez pumped the shotgun a second time as the kid
got up and ran forward across the sandy wash between the road and the wall of
brush, half falling as he disappeared into the thicket of green-brown
locust.

Ray stood there with the Ruger pointed into the
bushes. The sound of the shotgun fading away down the valley as the wind
clattered through the dense roadside growth all around them.

He turned and looked to where Sanchez stood next to
the Bronco. “Get that rifle out of the back,” Ray said. He sheathed the Ruger in
his belt, turning to mark the place the kid had gone from sight. Trying his best
to discern a path through the locust. He waited with his hand held out for the
rifle.

Sanchez leaned back into the Bronco and came out
with the hunting rifle. He was holding the rifle and he one-handed the shotgun
to Ray over the open passenger door. “I’ll take the younger one,” Sanchez
said.

Ray held the shotgun in his hands. He’d caught it
high on the barrel and he could feel the hot metal on his skin, the sulfur scent
of gunfire fresh in the air. “You hit him anywhere?” Ray asked.

“Not that I saw.”

Ray stood looking at the place Gil had gone into
the thicket. He didn’t think the kid would get far, knew he would run out of
cover in the lowlands after a few hundred meters, where the highway cut north
along the valley floor. Still, it was nothing but shadow in there and dense
brush. Light seeped up off the horizon to the east and bled into the sky.
Everything above a gray-blue haze and their own shadows stretched away long and
skinny to the west. “If he gets out of the bush, he’ll see the valley
highway.”

“Nowhere to hide on that bottomland.” Sanchez held
the rifle in one hand and with the other he dug out three shotgun shells from
his pocket. Cupping them in his hand, he gave them over to Ray.

Sanchez pushed the bolt back on the rifle, looked
into the chamber, and then pushed the bolt forward again. The rifle took .308s,
almost two inches in length and shaped like miniature missiles. Each of them big
enough to take down a four-hundred-pound mule deer, and powerful enough to rip
through skin and muscle and snap bone. “Did you see me wing the old man?”

“I saw it,” Ray said.

Sanchez took a few steps toward the ditch where
Burnham had fallen and the soft gurgle of his breath could be heard. “He’s still
alive.”

“I can see that, too,” Ray said, following Sanchez
to where Burnham lay.

Sanchez turned around, looking for approval.
“Pretty good, eh?”

“You better get going. That kid’s just out there
running and you’ve got less than a thousand meters on that scope,” Ray said. He
was holding the spare shotgun shells in his palm, and he started to feed them
down into his pocket, waiting to see what Sanchez would do. “Memo wanted me on
this job because he wanted Burnham to recognize me, didn’t he?”

Sanchez nodded. He was looking toward Burnham where
he lay in the dust.

“I told you it was going to be a mess,” Ray
said.

“No mess,” Sanchez said. The flash of a smile and
the brief pride Ray hated to see on the younger man’s face. “My uncle set this
up pretty good, didn’t he?”

Ray paused, letting that sink in.

“There’s a shovel in the back of the Bronco.”

“Why would there be a shovel?” Ray said, refusing
to believe what he was hearing.

Sanchez didn’t seem to register what Ray had said.
He was already moving away toward the edge of the road and the high thicket of
locust, with the rifle in his hand.

Ray raised his voice; loud enough that Sanchez
couldn’t ignore him. “Why would there be a shovel in the back of the
Bronco?”

“For messes,” Sanchez said over his shoulder,
taking the bank feet first, sliding down till he came out on the wash.

The truth was that as soon as he’d seen Burnham,
Ray had known this would be the way it would go. There never was going to be a
talk on the side of the road. He’d pushed that all away now. He’d pushed it deep
down inside of him along with everything else.

All Memo’s talk had been just an excuse, a way of
getting him here so that he could do what he did best, what he hated to do, and
what he’d thought he was done with. They weren’t there for a simple shakedown.
They were there to get rid of the competition. Now he watched Sanchez go,
disappear into the brush with the rifle held out in front of him like some sort
of divining rod, chasing down Gil’s path.

Ray turned and looked at Burnham’s truck. Both
doors hung open and the light from the flashers pulsed over everything. The old
man lying in the shadows at the edge of the road. His body thrown out along the
ditch, turned over on his back, the air in his chest barely moving his lungs,
still alive. Blood pooling slowly beneath him in the dirt. It’s a terrible way
to die, Ray thought, buckshot like that.

Ray knew this man. He’d known him almost his whole
life and he crouched next to Burnham and watched the old man’s wet eyes begin to
cloud over. The slow labor of Burnham’s breath ticking away at Ray’s feet as the
focus went out of his face. Ray shifted to one knee, watching Burnham where he’d
landed after being blown a yard off his feet, little gurgling sounds coming up
out of his throat. Buckshot all down the right side, he held one of his hands
tight to his body, trying to hold back the blood. And with the other he gripped
the earth near his hip as if he might lose his hold and spin loose.

The old man must have been nearing his seventies.
Blood showing on his face where the wound in his cheek leaked a deep ruby color
into the white of his beard, his face tight with the pain as he tried to move
and the skin of his forehead drawn white and clean as fresh paper.

Burnham closed his wet eyes and then opened them
again in a slow blink. “Times have changed,” the old man said, blood on his lips
where he’d put them together to speak.

“Times are the same, viejo, it’s just you that has
changed.”

Burnham looked up and found a focus. Ray knew the
man recognized him, knew it just as surely as he knew his own face in the
mirror. They were kin in some strange way, connected by who they were and what
they did, and it was a sickening realization. Somehow through all this, years
before, Ray had thought perhaps their relationship would end just the way it was
now. There were no surprises and nothing to spare Ray from the future he had
imagined all those years before.

Ray didn’t know how long the old man had been
working this area, but it was over now. From the pocket of his shirt Ray removed
his pack of antacids. Resting his weight on the one knee, he chewed at the
bitter pill while the old man lay dying on the ground.

“Times have changed,” the man said again. “You
think they haven’t, but they have. You’re old enough. You should know it.”

Ray didn’t want to be like this man, not at all. He
stood, trying to put some space between them, but watching the old man the whole
while. In his hand he held the shotgun loose in his palm, the chalk taste of the
antacid in his mouth. With one hand on the stock of the gun, he fished the spare
shells from his jeans pocket and began to load them into the belly.

“All this used to be open country,” Burnham said.
“Just like you can still find some places down south. Now it’s all parceled up
and sold off and you can’t go anywhere without someone knowing.” Burnham leaned
his head to the left and spat blood into the dirt, then turned his head back up
so he could see Ray. The ball of shot that had caught him in the cheek looked
deep and dark as a well in the man’s face. “I used to ride all over this land
with my family, with my brother and my father, but that’s all gone now, you
understand?”

The pool of blood beneath the man, an outline in
the dirt, was gradually expanding. His eyes drooped once, then again. Ray let
him speak, let him get it out. It was what Ray knew he’d want when the time came
for him, when he had his final say and tried to make right with the world. When
he tried to tell how he’d gotten down this path, and how he regretted it every
day, but didn’t know how to turn back.

The old man coughed and blood erupted out the side
of his cheek. He leaned his head to the side and spat again. Then turned back
and fixed Ray like the conversation was ongoing and the man had merely paused to
allow Ray the chance to speak. “We used to rustle cattle when the land was open
and you could run them all the way down to Mexico and not see a soul.” His wet
eyes closed and then opened. “I suppose I put myself in this mess.” He paused
again, looking up at Ray. “I recognize you, you know? Gus’s kid. I always
wondered where you’d gone and I guess now I know. You still work for Memo, don’t
you?”

“Yes.”

“You know he’s playing crooked with all of us? I
worked for his father, too. A long time ago, before you even came around, but
Memo is something different. He doesn’t respect the old ways—doesn’t respect
anything anymore.” He stopped to gather his breath before going on again, pink
spittle showing in the corners of his mouth. “There used to be rules for this
sort of thing. Memo’s father knew them, but it’s not like it used to be, not
anymore.”

“Is that why you went over?” Ray said. “Is that why
you started working for the southerners?” Ray stood there looking down. The
shotgun waiting and ready at his side. He knew this man, but it didn’t matter.
None of it did anymore. He would do the job no matter what the man said. It
didn’t matter.

“Things have changed,” Burnham said. “Go on, I’m
ready. I’ve been ready a long time and just not known it. Go on now.”

Ray raised the shotgun a few inches from where it
hung in his hand. He put the barrel to the man’s heart. “Viejo,” he said, “they
don’t make them like you anymore.” And then he pulled the trigger.

Ray looked up from the dead man at his feet and
watched the wind come down through the branches and then go away again. The
lights on the Bronco still on, still flashing, leaving a pale indentation over
the land, skewing the fall of the morning light, letting it spread thin over
everything in a ghostly shade not of this world.

When he looked down at the man laid out beneath
him, he knew that it might well have been him. What Burnham had said was
probably true: the rules had changed—there were no more rules. He could see that
now. Perhaps he’d known it all along. Perhaps he’d been the one to change them.
It wasn’t hard to see. It had been a mistake to take the job. He’d never wanted
this again, not this.

He turned from the man and went to the door Gil had
left standing open. Burnham’s hat sitting there on the dust-stained floor. The
dope somewhere beneath the seat, nothing left to do but get it up out of the
bench and take it to Memo. The thought in his head that he was done with this
business, that—standing there with the dead man behind him and another on the
run—he was exposed once again, just as he’d been ten years before.

He brought out a knife from his back pocket.
Leaning into the cab he stuck the tip into the bench and ran it across the
fabric. Tufts of white padding came forward through the cut. Beneath, he saw a
red and black gym bag with the shape of the bricks visible through the fabric.
Inside he knew he would find the brown kilos of heroin.

He put the knife aside and pulled the bag up out of
the bench cushion, and set it on the seat. With the zipper undone he saw there
were twelve bricks of heroin, all of them the color of molasses.

In the ten years since he’d lost Marianne, he’d
tried to get out of this business more times than he could remember, painting
houses in the summers or filling in on a construction crew when there was work.
None of it paying anything close to what Memo would pay him for this job. But it
had been safe. And no one would die for twelve bricks of heroin.

He was burying the old man when he heard the rifle
shot far off in the valley like distant artillery. Ray knew one way or another
it was done now, and that the younger man who had been riding shotgun with
Burnham was dead, and that the job he and Sanchez had set out to do would soon
be over.

T
he
ambulance came up over the rise behind them. The dog spinning around on the seat
as Tomás Herrera pulled his truck to the side of the highway. The sound of the
siren flowing by in one complete sweep, followed only seconds later by one of
the county cruisers doing about eighty on the narrow double lane. Both gone down
the road as swift as they’d come up behind, leaving his truck rocking lightly on
its springs. The flat desert the only thing to be seen out the cab windows, the
dirt wash off to the side of the pavement where the rains came a handful of
times a year, and the dried-up arroyos farther on toward the wind-scraped peaks
of the Hermanos Range. The ambulance and cruiser gone by now, far enough along
the highway that they were distinguished from all around as only a muted pulsing
of light in the distance. His dog, Jeanie, stood stiff pawed on the bench seat,
barking after the two emergency vehicles as they went north up the highway.