We drove up in Cesar’s yard at about eight-thirty. When we got out of the car a cold feeling went over me. Something was out of kilter.
I said, “Something sucks.”
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “But what is it? It doesn’t look any different.”
Jim Bob stared at the house for a moment. “Yes it does. The blinds are closed. They haven’t been closed before.”
“Maybe they wanted them closed,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Crushed shells up by the porch are pitted. Like maybe there was a struggle there. See, there’s shells on the porch. More than would have come off someone’s shoes. It’s like they were rolled in them, got dragged on the porch and the shells fell off their clothes. Screen door is unlocked and it’s slightly open.”
Jim Bob strolled to the rear of the car, opened the trunk. He popped one of the suitcases. He took two nine mils from the case and gave one to me, one to Leonard. He got the shotgun parts out of the other case and put it together. He gave us ammo clips, took a fistful of shells and stuffed them in his shirt pocket. He loaded two in the double-barrel.
“I’ll just stroll around back,” Jim Bob said. “You and Leonard take the front.”
Jim Bob trotted off. I said, “Brett, you get behind the wheel. You see anyone come out of the door you don’t want to see, you back out and go. Go away fast.”
Brett nodded, climbed in behind the wheel, closed the door softly.
Me and Leonard moved toward the front door.
I thought: It could be they wanted the shades closed. Maybe Cesar or Hermonie fell in the drive, brushed themselves off on the porch. Went in and didn’t close the door well. In a hurry. It could be that.
I moved the door with my foot. It swung open with a sound that would have made a can of WD40 cry.
Easing inside, crouching, the gun held before me, I saw why things were quiet, and I felt my knees wobble. I kept the gun at ready, but I knew I wouldn’t need it.
Leonard came in behind me about the time Jim Bob reached the back patio glass. I strolled over and let him in, using my shirttail to work the latch.
I went around what was on the floor, stepping carefully, eased to the bedroom, pushed the half-open door the rest of the way with my foot.
The room was empty, of course.
I checked out the bathroom, just in case Hammerhead might be using the commode, found nothing, went back to the living room.
I sat down on the brick ridge of the fireplace and looked at what was before me.
Hermonie was dressed in her white pants suit, seated on the couch, looking pretty much the way she always looked, except one side of her head poked out in a funny way. That was because a bullet entering the other side had come out on the side facing me, splintered the bone, lifted her hair. Where her hair was lifted it was slick, as if she had been hit with a tomato. Her right eye had moved a little too far to the right and was almost hidden. The left looked straight ahead. A splotch of blood like another shot from a tomato was splattered on the right shoulder of her outfit. There was red on the wall and the back of the couch.
Cesar lay on the floor. He had been tied to a chair. In his final agonies, most likely, he had turned it over.
His fingers had been chopped off close to the knuckles, and I could see the skin on his hands had been filleted all the way to his elbows. He was shirtless and there were burns on his chest. His eyes were open, as if he had just discovered he had gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas, but his mouth was wide and gummy and his tongue poked out of it, fat and gray as an old piece of liver. His pants had large globs of blood on the knees where they had dripped off the chair when it was upright. His shoes were gone. So were his toes. The skin on his feet had been peeled all the way to his calves, and his pants were cuffed high to allow it. There were little bits of crushed shells from the drive stuck to his clothes and on the floor around the chair.
Leonard leaned against the wall and let the nine mil hang by his side. Jim Bob bent over Cesar, stood up, looked at Hermonie.
“You have some intuition,” I said to Jim Bob. “You were right about there being a struggle in the yard.”
“Intuition is really just the unconscious mind learning to talk to the conscious.” He gestured toward Hermonie. “One for her and it’s over with. Cesar, not so easy. What’s that tell you?”
“He didn’t talk,” I said. “So they gave him hell.”
“Shit, he talked. I would have. I tell you what happened. Hermonie here, she called Juan Miguel and told where the girl was.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Because she wanted what she thought Juan Miguel could give her,” Leonard said.
“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “Leonard, you aren’t as dumb as you look.”
“Thanks.”
“I never really trusted her,” Jim Bob said, “but I didn’t think this. I didn’t think she was this stupid. I just thought she was a shit and a bad pick for Cesar. Goddamn, Cesar didn’t deserve this.”
“Who the hell does?” Leonard said.
“You actually think she called Juan Miguel?” I said.
“They finished her easy,” Jim Bob said. “No torture. They just popped her. That tells me she thought maybe she could make the big money. Maybe Ileana talked Hermonie into it. Said I’ll see you get paid good. I’ll get you in good with Juan Miguel you get me out of this.”
“Who did she think she was dealing with?” I said.
“She had no idea,” Leonard said.
“No,” Jim Bob said, “she didn’t. She didn’t like us, and according to Cesar, she didn’t like him much either. But I don’t think this is what she expected. Maybe she thought Cesar would get his, but she figured she was doing Juan Miguel a favor, so she thought she was all right. Would make some big money out of the deal. Get a chance to end up with what she thought she deserved. Juan Miguel had other plans. He decided to thank her by not torturing her. He gave her what he thought she deserved.”
“So now Juan Miguel knows we were going to ambush him?” I said.
Jim Bob nodded. “I’m sure Cesar said what he had to say.”
“And now,” Leonard said, “we don’t have our bargaining chip. And we aren’t going to get any money, and we aren’t going to surprise him… Ferdinand… where is he?”
“Out back,” Jim Bob said. “They took him out there and hacked him to pieces. I wish he’d had a machete. I wish he’d had his chance… Probably that goddamn giant did it.”
“What now?” I said, and was surprised at how hoarse my voice was.
Jim Bob took off his battered hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, three things occur to me. Let’s wipe our fingerprints up, and hope there aren’t too many old ones. They come up, we get hauled in, we were visiting Cesar. He’s a friend of mine, so maybe we can swing it. I doubt anything’s missing. I don’t thing Juan Miguel would give a shit about anything Cesar owned.
“Second thing is we get the hell out of here quickly. Third thing is Cesar might have told him we were staying at the hotel. Since we got everything we own in the car, I say we check in somewhere else. We don’t go back.”
We wiped down what we knew we had touched, eased out of there, and with Brett at the wheel, we drove briskly away.