by Don Winslow
“Sean, I have to go back.”
He nods. “I’ll take you to Keller.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
That night they lie in bed in the dark, listening to the sound of crickets outside and to each other’s breathing. In the distance a pack of coyotes launches into a cacophony of yips and howls, and then it’s quiet again.
Callan says, “I was there.”
“Where?”
“When they killed Parada,” he says. “I was part of it.”
He feels her body tense beside him. Her breathing stops. Then she says, “For God’s sake, why?”
It’s ten, fifteen minutes before he says a word. Then he starts with being seventeen years old in the Liffey Pub and pulling the trigger on Eddie Friel. He talks for hours, murmuring softly into the warmth of her neck, and tells her about the men he killed. He tells her about the murders he did in New York, Colombia, Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico. When he gets to that day at the Guadalajara airport he says, “I didn’t know it was supposed to be him. I tried to stop it, but I was too late. He died in my arms, Nora. He said he forgave me.”
“But you don’t.”
He shakes his head. “I’m guilty as hell. For him. For all of them.”
He’s surprised when he feels her arms wrap around him and pull him tight. His tears fall on her neck.
When he stops crying she says, “When I was fourteen . . .”
She tells him about all the men. The johns, the jobs, the parties. All the men she took in her mouth, her ass, herself. She looks into his eyes for the revulsion she expects to see but she doesn’t find it. Then she tells him about how she loved Parada, and how she wanted revenge, and how she went with Adán, and how it led to so much killing and how it hurts.
Their faces are close, their lips almost touching.
She takes his hand and puts it under her denim shirt and on her breast. His eyes open, he looks surprised, but she nods and he brushes her nipple with his palm and she feels it get hard and it feels good and when he lowers his mouth to her breast and licks and sucks it’s like she blossoms in his mouth and she feels herself getting soft and moist.
He’s hard. She reaches down and opens his jeans and feels him and his moan vibrates on her breast. She frees his cock from his pants and strokes him and he tentatively unzips her pants and reaches in and touches her pussy with one finger and she says It’s good so he dips his finger into her wetness then rubs it gently on her bud and feels it swell and get hard and after a while her back arches and she groans and cries and he slides his mouth down and sucks her and licks her like he’s healing a wound and her body tightens and arches and she grips his hand as she comes and he strokes her neck and her hair and says It’s okay, it’s okay and when she stops crying she bends down to take his cock in her mouth but he says I want to be inside you, is that okay and she says Yes and he asks again Is that okay and she says I want you in me.
She lies back and takes his cock and guides it to her and he gently pushes and she wraps her legs around him and pushes him in harder and then he’s all the way in and he looks down at her beautiful face and her beautiful eyes and she’s smiling and he says God, that is so beautiful and she nods and tilts her hips up to take him deeper and he feels this sweet place inside her and he slides out and then back in again and she is all sweet slippery heat to him, she is shimmering silvery wet, she strokes his back, his ass, his legs and moans So good, so good and he reaches for that spot with his cock and touches it and there’s sweat on her lips and he licks it off, sweat on her neck and he licks it off, he feels the sweat running between her breasts onto his chest, from her thighs onto his thighs, a sweet sticky wetness between her thighs she’s wrapped around him so tight, he says I’m going to come and she says Yes, baby. Come in me, come in me, come in me and he pushes into her as deep as he can and holds himself there and then he feels her pussy squeeze him, grip him in place, and she pulses on him and he comes, screaming, and then screams again, and then crumples onto the warmth of her shoulder and she says I love feeling you inside me.
They fall asleep like that, with him on top of her.
He gets up early, while she’s still asleep and goes into town to get groceries so that he can wake her up with the smell of blueberry pancakes, coffee and bacon.
When he comes back, she’s gone.
**
- The Crossing
This train carries saints and sinners.
This train carries losers and winners.
This train carries whores and gamblers.
This train carries lost souls . . .
—Traditional
San Diego
1999
A rt meets Hobbs at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. Rows and rows of white metal chairs in a broad semicircle inside the amphitheater slant down toward the stage. Hobbs sits reading a book in the second-to-last row. Sal Scachi sits above him, two seats to the left.
It’s warm out. The beginning of spring.
Art sits down next to Hobbs.
“Any news on Nora Hayden?” Art asks.
“We’ve known each other a long time, Arthur,” Hobbs says. “A lot of water has gone under the bridge.”
“What are you telling me, John?”
Oh, Christ, is she dead?
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Hobbs says. “I can’t let you take Adán Barrera to trial. You will hand him over to us immediately.”
The same old, same old, Art thinks. First with Tío, now with Adán.
“He’s a terrorist, John! You said so yourself! He’s in bed with FARC and—”
“I have been given assurances,” Hobbs says, “that the Barrera pasador will do no further business with FARC.”
“Assurances?!” Art asks. “From Adán Barrera?!”
“No,” Hobbs says calmly. “From Miguel Ángel Barrera.”
Art can’t say anything.
Hobbs can. “This was all getting out of hand, Arthur. Serious men had to step in before it got any worse.”
“ 'Serious men.’ You and Tío.”
“He was appalled at his nephew’s dalliance with terrorists,” Hobbs says. “Would have put a quick stop to it had he known about it. He knows about it now. This is a good solution, Arthur. Adán Barrera could be an invaluable source of intelligence, if given reason to cooperate.”
It’s bullshit, Art knows. They’re terrified of what Adán might say on the stand. With good reason. I wouldn’t take his deal, but they will. They’ve already figured it out. They’ll give him a new face, a new identity, a new life.
The hell they will.
“You can’t have him.”
Hobbs’s voice has some anger in it as he says, “May I remind you that we are in a war on terrorism.”
Art tilts his face toward the sun and enjoys its heat on his skin. He says, “A war on terrorism, a war on Communism, a war on drugs. There’s always a war on something.”
“That is the human condition, I’m afraid.”
“Not for me, not anymore,” Art says. “I’m out of it.”
He gets up.
“It has to end,” Art says. “It has to end somewhere.”
Hobbs says, “May I further remind you that we’ll be pulling your fat out of the fire as well. Your sanctimonious air of moral superiority is frankly unbearable. And insupportable, I might add. You have been complicit in—”
Art holds his hand up. “He already offered me the deal. I turned him down. I’m going to take Adán Barrera to the DA and let justice take its course. Then I’m going to tell everything. About what happened in Condor, about Cerberus, about Red Mist.”
Hobbs goes pale.
“You will not do that, Arthur.”
“Watch me.”
If Hobbs looked pale before, he looks ghostly now. “I thought you were a patriot.”
“I am.”
Art starts to walk away.
It really is spring—the gardens in the park are exploding with new co
lor and the air is warm, with just enough of a residual trace of winter to still be refreshing. He looks down at the amphitheater, where little knots of schoolkids on field trips are gathered around their teachers, and young couples sit over sandwiches, and tourists with cameras draped around their necks study maps of the park and point, and old people walk slowly, enjoying the air and the new warmth of spring.
Just then an airliner flies low overhead to land at San Diego’s short airstrip, and the noise is deafening and he can just hear John Hobbs say, “Nora Hayden.”
“What?”
“We have her,” Hobbs says. “We’ll trade her.”
Art turns around.
“You couldn’t save Ernie Hidalgo,” Hobbs says. “You can save Nora Hayden. It’s very easy—bring me Barrera. Otherwise . . .”
He doesn’t need to finish the threat.
They’ll put a bullet in her head.
“The Cabrillo Bridge,” Hobbs says. “Midnight is melodramatic. Let’s say three a.m.? After the homosexual assignations are concluded but before the jogging commences. You bring Barrera from the west side, we’ll bring Ms. Hayden from the east. And Arthur, if you still feel this pathetic urge to confess everything, may I suggest you go to a priest? If you think that anyone else will believe or even care about your 'truth,’ you are sadly deluded.”
Hobbs goes back to serenely reading his book.
Behind dark shades, Scachi stares off into infinite space.
Art walks away.
“You want me to set it up?” Scachi asks.
Hobbs nods. It’s sad. Art Keller is a good man, but it’s axiomatic, and true, that good men have to die in war.
Art goes back to the secure location where he has Adán.
“You got your deal,” Art says.
One last job.
Is what Scachi tells Callan.
Yeah, it’s always one last job.
But you got no choice but to believe him, Callan thinks as he walks through Balboa Park.
Do it, or they’ll kill her.
He buys a ticket for a production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at the Old Globe. At intermission, he steps outside to grab a smoke and walks around the back of the theater to an alley between it and the Zoological Hospital. He walks down the alley to a chain-link fence under some eucalyptus trees on the slope overlooking the highway and, to the left, Cabrillo Bridge. He’s shielded from view by the back of the theater on one side and the back of the hospital on the other, and some storage trailers below the hospital mask him from the highway. He takes out the detached rifle scope and sights in on Scachi standing on the bridge, smoking a cigar. The range is .02 miles.
It’ll be an easy shot, even at night.
He goes back and sits through the rest of the play.
Art stands on the front step and rings the doorbell.
Althea looks great.
Surprised to see him, but great.
“Arthur . . .”
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
She leads him to a sofa in the living room and sits beside him. This could have been my home, Art thinks, should have been my home. Except that I threw it away to chase something not worth catching.
I threw you away, too, he thinks, looking at Althea.
Some few women get prettier with age. Her laugh and smile lines complement her; even the worry lines are lovely. He notices that she’s had some highlights put in her hair. She’s wearing a black blouse over jeans and a gold chain around her neck. Art remembers that he gave her the chain but can’t recall whether it was for her birthday or Valentine’s Day. It might have been Christmas, he thinks.
“Michael’s not home, I’m afraid,” she says. “He went to the movies with some friends.”
“I’ll catch him next time.”
“Art, are you okay?” she asks, suddenly looking concerned. “You’re not sick or—”
“I’m fine.”
“Because you look—”
“A long time ago,” he said, “you wanted me to tell the truth. Do you remember that?”
She nods.
“I wish to hell I had,” Art says. “I wish I hadn’t thrown you away.”
“Maybe it’s not too late.”
No, he thinks. It’s way too late. He gets up from the couch. “I better be going.”
“It was good to see you.”
“You, too.”
She hugs him at the door. Kisses him on the cheek.
“Take care of yourself, Art, okay?”
“Sure.”
He goes out the door.
“Art?”
He turns around.
“I’m sorry.”
It’s okay, he thinks. I really only came to say good-bye.
He knows that he’s walking into an ambush. That they’re going to kill him and Nora on the Cabrillo Bridge.
They don’t have a choice.
Nora gets into the backseat with John Hobbs.
He’s very courtly to her—an old gentleman wearing a suit with a white shirt and a bow tie and an overcoat, even though the night is warm.
She looks beautiful tonight and she knows it. She’s dyed her hair back to blond and they bought her a black dress that fits like a sheath. She wears diamond earrings and a diamond choker and heels. Her makeup is perfect, her eyes large, her lips glistening red.
She feels like a whore.
You play the part, she thinks, you dress the part.
Hobbs goes over everything with her again but she already understands it. Sal Scachi laid it all out for her. All she has to do is meet Adán in the middle of the bridge and walk back to the car with him.
Then she’s free to go and so is Sean Callan.
New identities and new lives.
He’s waiting for her back at the safe house, a hostage to her fulfilling her part of the deal. They needn’t have bothered, she thinks. I’ve done my bit so far. What’s a few more seconds of pretended love?
The only thing that bothers her is that Adán’s going to get away with all of it. The CIA, as these men doubtless are, will keep him and hold him and take good care of him and he’ll never be punished for Juan’s murder.
It’s wrong and she hates it but she’ll do it for Sean.
And Juan will understand.
Won’t you? she thinks, sending the thought to heaven. Tell me that you understand, tell me you want me to do this. Tell me you forgive me for the sins I’ve committed, and for the one I’m about to commit.
Sal Scachi looks at her in the rearview mirror and winks. He can easily understand how a man could become obsessed with her. Even Callan’s in love with her now, and Sean Callan is the coldest motherfucker who ever walked.
Well, I hope you got her on your mind tonight, Callan. I’d prefer you a little distracted because I’m the one who’s got to pop a cap in you. It’s too bad, sonny boy, but you gotta go. Can’t take the risk of you ever running your mouth about this.
It’s all been set up. A drug shoot-out on the bridge tonight, then the media starts the official public mourning for the hero Art Keller and a day or so later they break the story that he was a dirty cop on the Barrera payroll who got greedy and got his. Shot by one of Barrera’s hitmen.
The notorious Sean Callan.
You do get a new identity tonight, Sean boy.
This time you die for real.
John Hobbs inhales the woman’s perfume.
Old men, he thinks, take their fading pleasures where they can. In days past, quite past, he might have tried to seduce her. If, indeed, one can be said to “seduce” a prostitute. Now, alas, all he requires of her is for her to fulfill her obligation.
Bring Adán Barrera peacefully into our hands.
Hobbs has no qualms about it, none of the regret that he feels for the unfortunate but necessary sanction of Arthur Keller.
Ah, well, the next world is perfect; this one, considerably less so.
He inhales the woman’s perfume.
Art
drives his own car to the rendezvous.
Adán sits beside him, his hands cuffed in front of him. There’s no traffic on the streets at quarter to three in the morning. Art takes Harbor Drive because he likes to see the sailboats and the moon shining on the water and the downtown skyline.
