Chapter Five 2

I spared a cup of water to rinse off the healing furrow. Now that I could touch it directly, I could feel a slightly puckered new scar. I used a little more water to brush my teeth, and that made me feel more myself. I'd been told (mainly by Tarken) that I was almost extreme about being clean, but the two grigoris spent more time on grooming than I'd ever known adults to do. That night Paulina brushed her hair, and then washed her face with our precious water, before getting into her sleeping roll. First thing in the morning, Eli shaved, though his face hair was light enough that he could have waited another day. He, too, brushed his hair thoroughly. Before he tied it back, it hung over his shoulders in a light curtain. I'd never seen a man who wore his hair that long, except for the Indians. I stopped myself before I could run my hand over my head again. I'd remembered my last look in the mirror. I could tell my hair had already grown some. Soon it would be long enough to curl. Then there'd be the damn ringlets. They made me look like a child. But now I thought it was lucky I had thick hair; when it grew back, maybe the scar wouldn't be visible. That was vanity, and it was ridiculous to think about my hair when I faced so many more challenges. I forced myself to get busy packing up the few things we'd used. We got an early start, there being nothing else to do. I wasn't as familiar with this part of the country, but from my crew's previous visit I remembered that the terrain would get rougher. To reach a town sizeable enough to have a hotel by that night, we needed to make good time. We were able to gas up early at an isolated garage. I imagined the big trade there was fixing flat tires and taking care of overheated engines. As the day went on, we sighted people less and less. When we did, they were almost always on foot and staying parallel to the road, but not on it. We were close to the Texoma-Mexico border. From time to time, to get a better view, I stood up on the floorboard of the back seat with my head out of the air-roof, or whatever it was called. This annoyed Paulina, but I didn't care. Danger had sidled up to me and given me a nudge and a wink. About an hour after noon—we'd had a quick lunch—we were driving on a dirt road that wound through low, rocky hills. There were stands of oak and some boulders on either side of the road. Great cover. I thought of the last ambush, on the Corbin road. My nerves were strung high and tight. I looked up to see a buzzard riding the air, wings broad and beautiful against the clear blue, as we were rounding a bend. So I got knocked around a little when Paulina put on the brakes. There was a tree lying across the road, leaves still green. I could see the fresh cut on the trunk. "Ambush," I yelled, and here they came. I was standing up on the rear seat, shooting through the air-roof, before I finished saying it. I shot two of them with Jackhammer, and they went down like bags of sand. That left two. I winged only one of those, due to a lurch of the car. I could see him squirming on the ground and got off a second shot, which killed him. I had swung around to drop the last bandit when Eli popped through the hole alongside me. He was reaching into one of his vest pockets, and pulled out a stone, which he clutched. He said a few words. Before I could shove him to get him out of my way, Eli made the man's blood leave his body. It was an eye-catching way to kill someone, that's for sure. Eli dropped into the car like his feet had vanished from under him. Scared the shit out of me; I thought he'd gotten shot somehow. Turns out doing death magic takes a lot out of you, and some grigoris feel it sooner than others. Eli felt it sooner. A fifth bandit popped up from behind a boulder and began to run. I was so distracted by Eli that my quick shot just creased the bandit's shoulder. Paulina was out the passenger door and after her like a bullet looking for a body to hit. Paulina brought her down and left her moaning, by some means I couldn't see. Maybe she'd just tackled her hard. Then Paulina strolled back to turn off the car. I climbed out. Though the surprise was still making my hands quiver, I had brought down our attackers. While Paulina's and Eli's help had been nice, I could have done everything myself. After the disaster on the Corbin road, my relief was enormous. I let out a deep, shuddery breath, and I smiled at Paulina. Out of sheer surprise, she smiled back. Between us, we hauled Eli from the car and laid him under the shade of a tree. I was sitting by his side, my back against the tree trunk, when he came to, some ten, fifteen minutes later. Eli's broad face was a bad color, sort of gray, and his green eyes rolled toward me, checking who I was. I could tell he recognized me. "Listen, wizard," I said. "Don't ever put your head between me and my shot again. I coulda blown your skull away." "Sorry," he said, but he didn't sound sorry. He, too, almost smiled. "I wanted to try the spell." "Yeah, okay." I handed him a canteen with the screw top removed, and he raised his head with some difficulty to take a swallow. I took the canteen and had a swig myself. "You needed a rock for that?" "I invoked the spell with the rock. It was residing in the stone, I'd put it there, and I said a word of power to make it active." "Quite a spell." "Extreme," he agreed. We had some shade from the bright sun. The landscape around us had woken up since the gunshots had faded. I could hear bugs moving and birds making their little noises. A few yards away I saw a quick movement. A very large spider was making its way to the west, getting away from us with good speed. It was kind of peaceful, now that our enemies were dead and we were not. After a moment Eli said, "Where's Paulina?" "Interrogating the one left alive." I had just learned "interrogating" was another word for torture. "Oh. Just a bandit, surely? Not after us in particular?" He turned his head to one side as if he was looking for her. "Yeah, well. She seems to want to make certain sure." A voice rose and fell, babbling like a child's. "Is that who's talking?" He looked at me. "I think the gal's telling Paulina what she had for supper five years ago. Your friend can make people talk." "Not you, though." "I'll talk when I got something to say. Want some more water?" I said. "Please." Eli lifted his head a little and I unscrewed the canteen again. This time he propped himself up on an elbow and took a bigger drink. He sighed and lay back down. "How much longer you got to stay flat?" I said after a while, though I wasn't anxious to be in the car again. "A little while." Eli's eyes closed, so I shut up. After a minute he said, "You see how bright the sun is?" "Yeah." "But we are in the shade right now. Not just the tree shade, but we're in the shadow of the cloud overhead." "Yeah. What of it?" "Sometimes I feel like that," he said, sounding almost drowsy. "I serve the tsar, and he's the sun. The people who turn and twist in their politics under him, they're the clouds. And we're the people who get caught in the shadows." "That doesn't make a lick of sense," I said, but I knew what he was talking about. They had their mission, I thought with a lot of grimness. I had mine. I wondered what would happen to me if they discovered I'd deceived them about who my real father was. Eli lay silent for a while after that. The breeze picked up a strand of his hair and blew it across his face. With a little hesitation, I brushed it to the side. He didn't move. Good. The natural sounds of the land were interrupted only by the distant rise and fall of the bandit's voice. From her Spanish, she'd come across the border from Mexico. I'd checked the pockets of the others. One had Mexican papers, the others were Texomans. The next time I looked down, Eli's eyes were open. "You've had to do this often?" I said. "Stop bandits? Only once or twice. You did very well." "It's my living," I said. "How long?" "How long have I been a gunnie? Since I got out of school. At first with whoever needed an extra hand, and then with Tarken and Martin and Galilee." "Your mother didn't have other plans for you?" "Did your folks have other plans for you?" I said. He laughed, just a little, and then winced. "Not this," he admitted. "But it was my talent, and the best service I could offer my tsar." A shriek rose in the air and was abruptly cut off. After a moment Paulina came into view. She was wiping off a knife on the kerchief I'd last seen on the wounded woman's neck. Guess "wounded" wasn't the correct term anymore. "Random bandit," she said. "If there was some kind of targeting, she didn't know anything about it." The idea that they'd been waiting for us, just us, to come along . . . I'd wondered about that. This was a good place for an ambush, out in the middle of nothing, no witnesses. If I had been a thief, I'd have picked this spot. But you might wait for days for a good enough target to pass through. On the other hand, if you knew someone was very likely to use this road because it was the obvious route to Juárez . . . We might not be the only people who'd talked to Becky Blue Eyes about the death of Oleg Karkarov. That was a question I'd never thought to put to her. I'd used up some of Eli's unconscious time—while Paulina had been interrogating the former surviving bandit—by tying a rope to the tree and then to the hitch on the rear of the car. Very carefully I'd pulled the tree out of the way. Paulina seemed surprised to find the road cleared. "You did that?" she said, looking down at me. I nodded. Who the fuck else would have done it? "You know how to drive?" "Part of a smuggling crew," I reminded her.

"Then it doesn't make any difference what we do with the body," I said to Jim. "You got no beef with me killing him, I take it." "He wasn't shooting at none of us," Jim said, and there was a lot of wise head nodding. This had been our problem to solve, the people of Mil Flores agreed. How I'd solved it was my business. "Where can we take the body?" Paulina was looking around like a funeral parlor would pop up in front of her. "I need to look at him more closely." This plan did not make a good impression on the people of Mil Flores. Of course, Paulina didn't care, if she noticed at all. The plain woman had drawn near. She was wearing a flower-patterned dress that came to the middle of her calves, and now she'd thrown on a hat. It was a broad-brimmed straw hat with a white ribbon around the crown. Other than the ribbon, and the rose and pink of the dress, she was as blank a woman as I'd ever seen. Medium everything: looks, build, coloring, age. "I've got a wagon out back," she said. "You just want a gander at this fella, you can use it to get him off the ground and out of the view of these good people." "Thank you," Eli said. "I'm Eli Savarov, my companion is Paulina Coopersmith, and the gunnie is Lizbeth Rose." "Belinda Trotter," the woman said, but her voice got drowned by a few exclamations of surprise. "You're Gunnie Rose?" Manda said, her voice rising with every word. My traveling companions stared at her. Then at me. I nodded, hoping it would stop there. But of course it didn't. "I've heard of you," Jim Comstock said slowly. "Is it true that—" Manda was dragging me to disaster. "I don't care to talk about my living," I said, turning to look directly into her eyes, to share my dislike on the way this talk was going. To give her credit, she stopped dead. "Of course not," she said. "Your business." "Where's that wagon, Miss Trotter?" I wanted to get the conversation going in another direction. "Through the alley and turn right," Miss Trotter said. "Horses are in the stable, but the wagon is standing empty." Eli stepped into position to pick up the dead man's feet, so Paulina made a move toward the head, but a man (surely the blacksmith, from his arms and shoulders) leaped to the task to spare her. Paulina tried to seem pleased and grateful, but she looked more like she'd sucked on a salted lemon. Paulina liked to carry her own bodies, I figured. I trailed behind the little parade, keeping an eye out, which is what I do best. I'd checked my ammo, of course. The rooftops were clear. The sidewalks were clear. Even Manda had left, after a last longing look at me. The alley lay between the hotel and the whorehouse. The prostitutes were at their windows, woken by the sound of the gunplay. It was still a bit early for their working day to be beginning. This late in the spring, the sun would go down around seven thirty. They had the time and inclination to have a good look-see. There were three women and one young man, two more than I would've guessed for a place the size of Mil Flores. I could feel their eyes on us as Eli and the blacksmith made their way to the back of the hotel, where an open yard contained a couple of wooden chairs and a table and Miss Trotter's empty wagon. The two men swung the body up onto the flat bed of the wagon. The dead man's head was at the rear. His shirt was spread wider now. It's always something to recognize, how still the dead are. Ten minutes ago he'd moved and breathed and thought and wanted, and he'd done his best to kill us. Now all that didn't matter to him. I spared another look around, checking the crowd for intent and weapons, in case anyone else wanted to get that way. But the people of Mil Flores had had enough of the drama, and they were melting away. Unless the whores were hostile, and they sure didn't seem to be, or the blacksmith went crazy, we were secure this moment. I scanned the back windows of the hotel and saw only the man who'd been sharing the dining room earlier. He scowled when he saw me mark him, and he turned away right quick. I made a note in my head to find out who he was. Paulina appeared to expect Miss Trotter would leave once she'd escorted us to the wagon, but that didn't happen. Donating her wagon had been the price of admission, apparently. The woman stood waiting for whatever would happen next, and her silly, flowery dress made her look even more out of place. "Need me anymore?" the blacksmith asked Eli. Eli thanked him and slipped the man some coins. The smith made his way back to whatever he'd been doing before, glad to leave us with the dead man. Paulina looked at Miss Trotter, and I could see Paulina hoped Miss Trotter would profit from the smith's example. Not going to happen. Miss Trotter met Paulina's gaze with a bland look. The wagon bed was high for me, so I used a mounting block to finish unbuttoning the body's shirt before Paulina could tell me to. I unbuckled his belt, too, and slid it out of the loops. It was a good piece of leather, and undamaged. I rolled it up and put it aside, catching Eli's look of surprise from the corner of my eye. Paulina pulled the corpse's boots off, which didn't surprise me. I climbed down from the block to take them from her, and I set them aside to examine later, along with the belt. When Paulina grabbed a leg of his pants, I waited to see if Miss Curious Trotter would take the other—she was standing right there—but she just waited with the same bright-eyed curiosity. So I obliged with that, too. I'd never taken the pants off a dead man. Wasn't pleasant. Then Paulina did something I actually enjoyed. She reached into one of her vest pockets and withdrew some dried herbs. She tossed them over the corpse and said something in a tongue I couldn't make out, and the smell vanished. That was a very useful spell. I wondered if I could learn that one. But most likely, I wasn't qualified. While I was appreciating the nicer air, I went through the dead man's pant pockets. "His name was Marcial Montes," I told whoever wanted to listen. The grigoris shook their heads at the same time. Not a name they knew. Miss Trotter didn't blink. Paulina leaned over the wagon on one side to study Montes's tattoos in more detail. Eli stationed himself at the other side. They muttered to each other (in Russian, I guess) and pointed to this or that. The whores, crammed in two windows, were fascinated. The young man came out onto the porch and beckoned to me when no one else was looking. After a glance around I went over to him. He was maybe seventeen, slim and blond, and cute enough I was surprised he wasn't somewhere busier. "Andy," he said after he'd had a good look at the healing furrow on my scalp. "Lizbeth Rose." "The Lizbeth Rose? The one who shot her—" "Big ears here," I cautioned him. "Ohhhhhhkay. So, what are the grigoris doing?" I shrugged. "The dead man tried to kill us. They're looking at his ink. Means nothing to them. As you can tell if you look at Paulina's face." "She's a tall drink of vinegar," Andy said after he'd had a look at Paulina. I guessed he had to be a good judge of character in his profession. "You ever seen the dead man before?" I asked. "Montes, his name is." Andy shook his head. "The woman who owns the wagon, she's been in Mil Flores two days," he said. "She didn't bring anything in on it. No one knows what she's planning on taking out. Had to bring it along with her for some reason. Why?" This was good information. "I appreciate your taking the time to tell me," I said politely. "Please let me give you something for your trouble." I handed Andy a couple of the Holy Russian coins Eli had given me for expenses, and the boy slipped them into his pocket with a happy smile. Paulina glanced over our way once and looked back at the body with no change of expression. "She'll be over tonight," Andy said. "No!" I said, truly surprised. "For you or for the ladies?" "Me," he said with the same certainty. "She'll act like she's in charge, but she'll be glad when I let her know I am." Well, he'd be the expert. But before I went back to join my little corpse-stripping party, I said, "Andy, you watch out for her. She's a killer, and she can do some gruesome shit." Andy looked at me and smiled. "Well," he said, "you oughtta know. I'd be happy to see you later, if you want to come over." I was real popular in Mil Flores. Maybe I should move here, after this was over. I laughed and bid him good-bye. Now that the two grigoris had backed off, I had a look at the dead man myself. I wanted to be sure what I'd noticed earlier was true. Montes did have tattoos, and one of them looked similar to the wizards', but the ones on his chest had not been made by the same hand. They were colorful, and they consisted of animal figures. The blue one, the one that looked grigori-like, was a symbol, and Paulina had already identified that one. "Eli, Paulina. Look here. Lobo Gris," I said, tapping the snarling canine head in the middle of his chest. They turned from their quiet conversation to join me at the wagon. The Trotter woman was still observing with bright-eyed interest. I had to show them this. It was hard to ignore her. Paulina gave me the look I was coming to know, the dog-is-talking look—wonder crossed with irritation. "What do you mean?" she asked. These HRE grigoris didn't know shit. "Lobo Gris, Gray Wolf. It's a criminal crew in Mexico, where gray wolves live. Marcial Montes was a member." "Gray wolves are different from the wolves in Canada?" Eli looked down at me with nothing but interest, at least that I could tell. "They're smaller. But their size doesn't make them less dangerous, 'cause they hunt in big packs. Which is the point of naming a crew after them." Eli should have been concentrating on what I was saying, because it was important, but I felt his eyes wandering to my scalp. Was he sidetracked by the puckered scar? It was healing well, but it wasn't pretty. Miss Trotter said, "I've heard of them." A second later she was exchanging remarks with Paulina, who was trying to be subtle about persuading the woman to leave the yard. They looked good to talk at cross-purposes for a few minutes. "Ask Trotter what she has the wagon for," I said on the quiet. "She must have brought cargo in on it," Eli said, as if I was missing something real obvious. "No, she didn't," I said. "One of the whores said it came in empty." I didn't look up to get his reaction. He'd believe me, or he wouldn't. I stepped away from him to spend a little more time looking at the body of Marcial Montes. I identified not only the crew tattoo, but a few more. "This is his nagual," I told Eli, who was sticking with me instead of doing what I'd asked. I touched one outline. "That is?" I would have thought a grigori would know this. "His spirit animal, in the old language. In Spanish, zopilote. That means vulture." "The spirit animal gave him special talent? Protection?" "He might have believed so." He'd been mistaken. "I don't know what . . . attributes . . . go with each animal.El chamán tells you. He figures out your spirit animal by using your birth date. It's not cheap." When you're in my business, people talk about protection a lot. "So what does this tell you about this Marcial Montes?" Eli asked, as if he really wanted to know the answer. "He was hired help. Someone approached his crew and asked to hire someone for a murder, and the crew boss picked Montes for the job. See? He's got the death symbol." I touched the skull on his left shoulder. "So he was okay with killing. He'd done it before. And he'd made a decent amount of money doing it. The tats and his clothes and his rifle were expensive. He was good." I glanced over at the rifle, another Winchester, newer than my grandfather's. I was pleased to have it in my little arsenal. "You're better." "So far," I said. "Maybe Montes hired the bandits from this afternoon, too. He himself would be the fallback, in case the bandits didn't stop us." "Who do you think he was trying to kill?" Eli asked. "You and Paulina," I said, trying hard not to sound like I thought that was a stupid question. "The bullet came mighty close to you." "Because I would have sworn he was trying to kill you," Eli said in a calm and conversational way, and I felt a shiver down my back. "I think you hit him enough to make his aim go wide." I had. I just hadn't looked at it that way. "Don't know why he would be aiming for me, unless he thought that'd leave you unprotected," I said, trying to cast off that creepy feeling. "What are you going to do about fixing the car? It's getting on to dark." I needed to give him something else to chew on before I walked away. We'd ventured into dangerous territory. If Eli was right, someone knew everything about the grigoris' mission, and everything about me. If that was so, I'd have to tell the grigoris everything, too. I sure didn't want to have that conversation. Eli took the hint and headed off to the only local mechanic's shop, hoping to talk to the man before it turned dark. I left Paulina and Miss Trotter still talking, though Paulina was looking very impatient. I got the rifle and took it in with me. Jim Comstock was sweeping the lobby. He stopped when he saw me. "Good with a gun," he said, by way of greeting. "My job. You know why that Belinda Trotter is here?" He wasn't surprised I was asking. "She says she's on her way to Juárez to pick up a load of medical supplies for her clinic." That was a believable reason for her trip. Medicine was cheaper in Mexico. The only other major manufacturers of medicines were in Canada and Britannia, so it had to travel a far way, which jacked up the price. Of course, those medicines were purer. "Where is it? The clinic?" "In Texoma, north of here," Jim said. He was smiling. Everything in Texoma was north of here. "But she's lingered," I said. "Says her mules were tired out, needed a rest." Which Jim didn't believe any more than I did. "You all going to stay the night, or are your friends spooked?" "Depends on them," I said. "I'm just the help. I guess they'll tell me before I start to climb in bed." Jim nodded and went back to his sweeping. The lobby was clean. I figured he'd been waiting for me to come in to see if I had any questions. I glanced out the door again, to see Eli and a dark man I figured for the mechanic standing beside the Celebrity Tourer. The dark man had looked under the car, I could tell by the dust on his jeans. Eli looked pleased at whatever the mechanic was telling him, so I figured the mechanic had the right part to fix the car, or it hadn't been bad broken. Dark fell soon after that. The grigoris and Miss Trotter came in and joined the single man, who was sitting in the parlor. There were some lamps on. The electricity was steadier in Mil Flores than I'd expected. Several things about Mil Flores were not square with the appearance of it. The well-stocked stores. The number of barbers and whores. The presence of a full-size hotel. I was thinking about that while I sat in a corner chair in the parlor. I didn't want to talk myself, but to listen. In my opinion, these four new friends were doing enough chitchatting for seven or eight people. Miss Trotter talked about the hospital in Juárez where she bought her medical supplies, and about her clinic. Though she never pinpointed the location of this clinic. Mr. Parsons, the single man, talked about the notions he had in his sample bag: needles, thread, thimbles, patterns, scissors, shears, powder compacts, perfume, fancy writing paper. He was trying hard to interest Paulina, but soon Paulina looked even more bored than I was. Mr. Parsons didn't seem to be a very good salesman, if he was targeting Paulina as a woman who needed a thimble. Belinda Trotter told us she'd already seen Mr. Parsons's wares. For a minute I thought the woman was making a bawdy joke, though not a very funny one. But Belinda went on to tell us she'd bought a pattern and a pair of scissors. She turned to smile brightly at me, as if she expected me to get excited about her purchases. I gave her a flat stare. She looked away right smart. But before long Miss Trotter was back in the conversation again, asking about our plans. She tried to find out when we were leaving Mil Flores. Neither Paulina nor Eli gave her a definite answer, and I had to admire the way they dodged the woman. The two grigoris were so smart in some ways, so scary. But they were so dumb in others. So far I'd done well by them, though I was on my own personal mission. It would take only one big mistake, like Manda blurting out my most notorious act, for the grigoris to find out more about me than I wanted them to know. I was walking a tightrope with my employers. I would never forget Eli making the blood leave the man's body this morning. I'd never forget Paulina's interrogation. After one of the longest hours I'd ever spent in my life, Eli and Paulina decided we'd turn in. As I'd expected, they didn't give me a hint of what they'd decided to do the next day, or what they wanted done with Marcial Montes's body. Paulina didn't tell me anything even when we were alone in our room, and I was irritated enough to not ask a single question. Usually, when my head hits the pillow, I'm out, but this night I stayed awake a little while, thinking about Lobo Gris and the vulture nagual. I made myself relax and breathe evenly. That usually worked, the few nights I didn't drift off quick. My roommate must have believed I was deep asleep. She got up and left our room, quiet as a shadow. I heard the back door of the whorehouse open and a voice bid her welcome three minutes later. Sounded like Andy's. He was right,I thought. And somehow the fact that Andy had found it easy to read Paulina made it easy for me to sleep. I didn't hear Paulina slip back into our room, but she was there in the morning when I got up and washed. She didn't move as I dressed and left the room. I hoped she needed her rest, that her night of pleasure had softened her a little. Or something. Made her happy for a few seconds. I was surprised to find I was very hungry, and to my pleasure I could smell that breakfast was ready. Jim had just served Mr. Parsons and Miss Trotter, who were sitting together. They invited me to join them, but I said, "You'd be sorry. I'm not a morning person," and set myself at a table on my own. That was a flat-out lie; I was a morning person, for sure. But I'd listened to them talk enough the evening before to last me for a good long while. I ate some eggs and some bacon and some pancakes. I didn't know Jim Comstock's true purpose, or what he was doing in Mil Flores, but he was a truly great cook. Right up there with my mom. Paulina and Eli came down together a few minutes later. Sure enough, Paulina looked very relaxed. They sat with me, and Jim hustled in with some plates for them, and some coffee. They were quiet. I got to enjoy that for too short a while. "What will happen to the body?" Paulina asked out of the blue. "Good morning to you, too," I said. She ignored that. "I begged an old sheet off our host and covered Montes last night." So Montes's body was still lying in the backyard on Miss Trotter's wagon. Interesting that Miss Trotter hadn't insisted on his removal. "I doubt Mil Flores pays a gravedigger," I said. "And no one does that for free. I reckon they'll throw him out in the desert." The two grigoris stared at me. I wouldn't say they were horrified. It would take a lot to horrify these two. But they were for sure taken aback. "What?" I said. "The dead from the ambush are out there. You never asked about burying them." I'd made a point, I thought, even though I'd had to do it in a whisper. "In fact, since the body on the wagon is there because of us, we should do the disposing of it, I figure." I could see both of them, especially Eli, struggle to come up with some kind of sensible reply that would end up in Montes's being magically buried by someone else. But in the end neither could find anything to say. "Hold on a minute," I said, and swung my legs free from the bench. I went to the door at the back of the passage and opened it to look out. Andy was getting water from a pump behind the whorehouse, and we waved at each other. I returned to the dining room. "He's gone," I said. "What?" Paulina didn't keep her voice down. "He's gone. They came and got him in the night." "Lobo Gris?" So she had been listening. "Yeah, I reckon it was them. I don't guess he got up and walked away on his own." "That means . . ." Eli stopped while he thought. "That means someone here told them one of their members was here, dead." I nodded, ate some more pancake. "Yep." "Could have been anyone in the crowd," Paulina murmured. "Someone else who belongs." "Could have been whoever hired him," Eli said. "That, too. You talked to the mechanic last night?" We were all keeping our voices very low, but it was time to change the subject. We couldn't know who had tipped off the crew that Montes was dead, and might not even want to know, I suspected, at least right now. "How is the car?" Eli said, "Mechanic says that only a cap was loosened, and he replaced the oil and tightened it. He was going to come over this morning and take a slower look to be sure. I'm going to talk to him as soon as I finish eating." I nodded. A good precaution. Eli added, "With the car parked in front, it seems unbelievable that no one noticed the man fiddling under the car." "It all ties in," Paulina whispered. "The car out front, any number of people could have seen whoever was trying to sabotage it." I didn't really believe everyone in Mil Flores was willing to ignore such a strange thing because they were all in a criminal crew. That was possible, but not probable. "Most likely some people did notice, but it wasn't any of their business. Why would they be on your side?" I said with some reason, considering Paulina and Eli were openly grigoris. Even I didn't necessarily think grigoris were good guys, but they were not criminals. Maybe. And they were the ones who were paying me. As scary as Paulina and Eli were, and lethal as they were, I had to stick with them until we found the remaining Karkarov brother in Juárez. That ended our conversation. After I'd gone up to brush my teeth, I went out to the car, since Paulina and Eli were lingering over their coffee. The hood of the Celebrity Tourer was up. The dark man from the evening before was scrambling out from under the car. When he'd gotten to his feet, he lowered the Tourer's hood. "Good morning. I hope you got some good news?" I said. "Yeah, I'm Desmond. Morning, gunnie. And yes, I got good news." "I'm ready for it." And that was God's truth. "I just had to put in some more oil and screw the cap back on the pan. Might have been a little problem if the asshole had made off with the cap, but it was lying on the ground under the car. Couldn't be bothered, I guess. And the engine looks fine to me. No interference there." "That simple. Great. How much do we owe you?" "Couple of dollars will do me." I handed it over, plus a little more. "We'll probably come by to fill up as we're leaving." "If I'm not there, my wife can pump the gas. Or either of the kids." Desmond was a man who stuck to business. I wished more people were like him. While I was outside, I strolled between the whorehouse and the hotel. I noticed the fresh footprints in the dirt. Four men had walked here the night before. They'd gone in light and come out heavy. Carrying the body. Eli came out onto the porch a minute later. "What did he say?" "Car's ready to go. He's got gas if we need it. I think we should fill up." "Then we might as well start." "Okay." I went upstairs to fetch my bags. I would not be sorry to leave Mil Flores. I did not feel I could let my guard down here, not for a second. I had a gloomy feeling that the tension might not get any better when we left. It wasn't only the town that made me jumpy, it was my employers. If I could have been back in Segundo Mexia just by wishing, I would have been home. At the same time, I thought more and more about the chance that I had a half sister. I didn't know if I wanted one or not. I wondered how it would feel if I did.