Verdugo Dawn

by Blake Banner

  Then I saw the Sig Sauer P226. That had been my weapon. It was like seeing my own hand in a photograph. It had been like a part of my own body. I could feel the grip, solid, heavy, well balanced. It was favored by… I sat up, swung my legs off the bed. Favored by…

  I stood, pulled off my shirt and my boots and stood in front of the mirror. I was in good shape. I knew that, but I could see it, too. I had scars, more than seemed normal. A couple I recognized as bullet wounds. I knew my weapons—more—I had specialized knowledge.

  Military? A soldier? I shook my head. That was wrong. It was a different kind of discipline and knowledge. A mercenary? It felt closer to the truth.

  And the hunger to kill.

  That troubled me. More than that, it aroused a deep grief and sickness inside me. Yet I could not stop. I stepped closer to the mirror, staring into my own eyes and seeing death. A serial killer? Serial killers select a particular victim profile. That was what I did. I had a particular victim profile, and when I encountered them, I had to kill.

  I looked at my hands, my arms, down at my bare feet. They were weapons. I was aware that my body wanted to move. I was aware that there were memories contained in my muscles that my brain had forgotten. I allowed them to surface. The moves came fast, violent but controlled. The breathing was automatic, the punches fast, centered, focused. The kicks were low, a few high, effortless, like whiplashes.

  I finished and sank slowly to the floor in a half lotus position. A voice in my head told me I was not good, I was exceptional. I ignored the voice and closed my eyes. My body quickly relaxed.

  I could feel the freezing air through my feathers. My head twitched from side to side, scanning the earth far below. But I was not the eagle, flying by night. I was within the eagle, looking through its eyes. I was formless, without identity. I was just the observer.

  In the darkness, a mile below, was the body, coiled like a snail in agony, weeping, vanishing into the desert sand.

  I opened my eyes. It was dark. Through the window, dim, orange light made a limpid halo on the drapes. I stood and went to the bedside table. My burner said it was eleven thirty. I had slept five hours.

  In the bathroom, I stripped and had a long shower, alternating between hot and cold. Finally, I stepped out, dried myself and got dressed.

  Outside, there was no moon. The light from the town had blinded the stars, and there was just the spray of the Milky Way. I climbed in the Jeep, closed the door and found myself in a muffled, dark place. I put my hands on the wheel and stared through the windshield. The glass cut me off from the world. I wondered if I was losing my mind. I had lost my memory, now I was losing my mind.

  I pressed the starter and the silent engine came to life. I spun the wheel and eased out of the lot and onto the road. After less than five minutes, I was out in the desert again. I lowered the windows and let the cold air batter my face. Now the stars were brilliant, sparkling shards of ice in an infinite void. I pressed the accelerator and felt the surge of power hurling the steel body into the night.

  Past Alamogordo, I floored the pedal for three seconds and felt the one thousand horsepower hit the rear wheels and propel the car from seventy to a hundred and twenty miles per hour, crushing me into the seat. Then I eased off, slowed to forty and took the corner onto the 506, and rolled slowly down to the intersection Puñal had described as the Devil’s Crossroads. I pulled into the shadows of the left-hand bank, which rose some seven feet above the road, turned the car around and settled to wait.

  One o’clock came, then ten past one, then fifteen minutes past one. At seventeen minutes past one, I saw a light ahead on the road. It bobbed and weaved, then morphed and split and became two headlamps, and then four. Their spacing said it was two trucks and not four bikes. Soon, I heard the whine and grind of their diesels, and after a couple more minutes, a Jeep and a Dodge RAM emerged from the gloom and closed in on the crossroads.

  I climbed out of the car and stood looking at the two trucks, dark shapes behind the glaring headlamps. The passenger door of the Jeep opened and a body leaned out. “Gringo! You got the cash?”

  “I ain’t that stupid, Puñal. You get the cash when I get my dope. Where are the girls?”

  “Follow me, pendejo! I’ll show you.”

  They turned onto the track that led to Luke’s shrink, and I followed.

  Five

  We rolled and bumped down the track, the Jeep in front of me, grinding in low gear, and the big RAM behind me, flooding the cab with his spotlights. After half a mile, we came to an intersection. Left led back up to the road, right led deeper into the desert. The Jeep turned right, I followed and the RAM stayed close behind me. We rolled on for another three hundred yards till the headlamps picked out a big corral on the right, with a round water hole that was faintly luminescent in the starlight. The Jeep stopped and maneuvered so it was across the road, and the RAM did the same behind me.

  I was trapped, like a rat in a barrel. I killed the engine and climbed out. Puñal swung down from the Jeep and the fat kid got out of the driver’s side. I heard the doors of the RAM slam like gunshots behind me. I listened and heard two pairs of boots in the dust. He figured he only needed four guys to deal with me. Maybe he was right, but it doesn’t pay to be overconfident.

  There was that familiar rattle of semi-automatics being cocked. I raised my hands.

  “I’m unarmed. No need for the show of force. I know who I’m dealing with.”

  Behind me, a voice said, “Keys!”

  I smiled at Puñal. “That car has no keys. It answers to my thumbprint, and mine alone.”

  He nodded a few times. “Yeah? That old piece of shit?” Then he nodded some more. “OK. So that’s easy to fix.”

  “You think so? You ever cut somebody’s thumb off, Puñal?”

  He took a couple of steps toward me in the cold, floodlit dust. The desert behind him was a black wall. “Plenty,” he said. “Other bits, too.”

  “Then you know that the thumb bleeds profusely, the skin loses its tone and the thumbprint warps. That car looks beat up, but you’ve heard it and seen it move, and you should know that the technology in that vehicle is sensitive to that kind of change.”

  “So we…”

  I was getting bored and I cut him short. “You got the dope?”

  He frowned. “Yeah, it’s in the…”

  “’Cause I got the money. If you have the dope and I have the money, what the fuck are we talking about opening my trunk for?”

  “That’s the second fockin’ time you disrespected me, gringo.”

  “Yeah? I apologize. Now, it seems to me I have a hundred and forty-eight grand that you want. You assume it’s in the trunk. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe I have a special compartment for that kind of thing, or maybe I’m smart and I hid it under that chitalpa over there. Or maybe I didn’t bring it at all.”

  He dropped his hands down by his side and looked up at the sky. “Hijo de puta…”

  I frowned. “Did I look stupid to you?”

  He looked back from heaven, looked me straight in the eye. “You gonna tell me where the fockin’ money is, pendejo, then you gonna…”

  “You’re boring me, asshole. Give me the dope and I give you the cash.”

  He came in fast and low, the way I knew he would, but he had the problem of reach. By the time his blade was approaching my belly, the blade of my hunting knife was buried deep in his shoulder joint, and my left hand had slipped behind his back to find his Glock. I heard his strangled screech of pain and I heard his knife drop. I gripped his neck with my right arm and swung him around so he was between me and the two goons at the trunk of the Jeep while I shot Fat Boy through the head with my left hand.

  Puñal screamed in his throat with the pain and his left hand clawed at my shoulder. I switched the Glock to my right hand and gripped Puñal in a chokehold with my left forearm, squeezing hard on his windpipe. The two goons at the trunk had stepped forward with their weapons drawn, but they h
ad no target, and nobody to tell them what to do. I snapped, “Don’t move!” and they seemed almost grateful for the guidance.

  It took me half a second to take aim, then I shot each one in turn just above the bridge of the nose.

  I dropped Puñal on his back. He screamed again and his body convulsed, thrashing and kicking his legs. The pain must have been excruciating. I watched him from high above and wondered why I felt nothing. I dropped and knelt with my right knee on his belly. I was aware of the damp patch on his jeans and the acrid smell of urine.

  “They can still save your arm, with emergency surgery. The cartilage is badly damaged, but they can put in a prosthetic joint. And the pain will stop as soon as I pull out the knife.” I jerked my thumb at the Jeep. “I have whiskey and painkillers.”

  He was sweating heavily, though the night was cold enough that I could see the condensation from his breath. His pupils were dilated and I was worried I was going to lose him. I pulled out the knife and he whimpered and clawed at my chest with his left hand.

  “Help me, por el amor de Dios…”

  “I’ll do a trade. Information for your life.”

  “What…? Please, help me…”

  “Who supplies you?”

  He shook his head. I placed the point of the kitchen knife over his left shoulder. His eyes were wild and he was shaking his head. “No, no, no, please, Ivan, Ivan Ivanovich. He buys it from Mexico. He sells to us. Please…” His face twisted, his lower lip curled in and he started to weep. “Duele mucho…”

  It hurt a lot. “Where can I find Ivan Ivanovich? What does he look like?”

  “He live in Alamogordo. I don’t know where.” He was sobbing. “Please, help me, please… por caridad…”

  “How old is he? Is he short, tall, fat, thin, clean shaven, a beard…?”

  His head sagged to the side. His mouth was wet, the lips drawn back and wet with spittle. His left hand went to his face, he made an ugly, guttural noise in his throat and he begged me, for charity, to help him.

  “Answer my questions, Puñal, and I’ll make it go away. But if you aren’t talking in five, I won’t give you a necktie, like you were planning to give me, I will cut your hamstrings, the tendons at the backs of your knees, and leave you to die out here in the desert. I am counting, two, three…”

  He screamed, reaching up for my collar with his left hand, his face contorted with pain and fear. “Por favor! Tall! Tall! He is very tall! Bald, no hair! Expensive clothes! Forty! Please help me! Please!”

  “That’s not enough. I need more. How can I locate him?”

  Hope flared suddenly in his eyes and he smiled through his pain. “He’s gay, man! He hangs out at the Pink Lagoon, on East 1st.”

  “Good, that’s good.”

  I shot him twice in the head, once in each frontal lobe. I made the pain stop. I wasn’t surprised to find there was no dope in the trucks. This had been intended to be a simple, opportunistic theft with murder. I didn’t doubt they would have tortured me before killing me.

  I checked their weapons and found they were a Glock, two Taurus and a Desert Eagle. I stuck that in my belt. They could keep the other trash. I found just over two grand in their wallets, which I kept, and took the keys to the RAM from one of the goons lying by my trunk. I brought the RAM around and parked it next to the Jeep, then I opened the gas tanks of both trucks. In the back of the Jeep, I found two gallons of gas in spare canisters. I doused the bodies and the trucks, then pulled away a hundred yards and stopped.

  A hot bullet won’t ignite gasoline. But the spark from a bullet hitting the steel chassis of a Dodge RAM will. There was a loud, flat report. I shied away from the thud of hot air from the blast wave and the mushroom cloud of coiling, infernal flame that climbed into the dark. I watched it a moment, then climbed back into the Jeep and made my way toward the highway.

  I took my time going back to Alamogordo. The windows were down and I let the icy night air cool me as I drove. I played the killing over again and again in my mind, like a movie, watching it from different angles. I slowed down the action as each one died. I looked into their faces, tried to feel something, but felt nothing. This was what I did. I didn’t know why, I just knew that this was me.

  I was a killer.

  After half an hour of cruising through the dark, I turned onto White Sands Boulevard, headed north, and at Burger King turned right into East 1st Avenue. I cruised past one vast, empty parking lot after another, each one dead and flooded with limpid yellow light.

  After Samon’s DIY store, I passed South Florida Avenue and there was the Pink Lagoon, set in another huge parking lot, but this one was full. I pulled in and did a slow circuit of the lot, taking in the cars, looking for something special. I found it. It wasn’t as special as I had expected, but it was nice. It was a genuine, right-hand drive, convertible E-Type Jaguar, in fire-engine red with spoke wheels. I pulled up and got out to have a look. I didn’t know it for a fact, but I figured it was late ’60s or early ’70s, and a car like that was going to be worth anything from one hundred to a hundred and fifty grand.

  The car next to it was a dark blue Audi A8. I parked and made my way to the door of the club. There was a black guy there who was as big as two big black guys. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with parrots on it, Bermuda shorts big enough to pipe petroleum, and Havaianas. His face said he didn’t want to be there, and he didn’t want me to be there either.

  I smiled at him. “Maybe you can help me.”

  His voice was like a geothermal disturbance. “I doubt that.”

  “A C-note says you’re wrong.”

  “I say your C-note is right. What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for a man.”

  His smile was a very humorless thing. “You come to the right place, if you are using the term ‘man’ in the most flexible sense of the word. There’s about two hundred of them in there, all waitin’ just for you.”

  I met his humorless smile with an equally humorless short laugh. “I am looking for one particular man. I figure he might own that Jaguar. He’s Russian, tall, bald…”

  “I know the man, and all the C-notes in Fort Knox ain’t gonna be enough to convince me to tell you he is inside and that is indeed his car. That is one dangerous man, and he is always accompanied by two gorillas who have Russian special ops written all over their ugly faces. So if you lookin’ for him, you best turn around, get in your blue Toyota and get the hell out of here.”

  I sighed and looked away. “Fine,” I said quietly. “Have it your way, but make it look good for the CCTV.”

  I made an angry gesture and went to push past him. He grabbed my arm, I slipped him three C-notes and he pushed me away. I stumbled and fell. He came after me, shouting at me to get the hell out of there. I struggled to my feet and returned to my car. There, I climbed in and drove out onto 1st Street, traveled a hundred and fifty yards west and pulled into the desolate, empty lot of Samon’s DIY. There I found a dark corner and settled to wait.

  The eastern horizon was turning pink-gray when he finally stumbled out of the club. I checked my watch and saw it was five to six. There were five of them altogether: him, tall, lean and athletic in build, but stumbling with his arms around two young boys with haircuts borrowed from a Judge Dredd comic. With them were two guys in suits. One of them got in the Jag. The other opened the back door of the Audi and Ivan and the two boys got in the back. The other suit got in the front and the two cars took off, with the Jag accelerating away fast, going east.

  I slipped out after them and followed the Audi. It stayed on East 1st until the intersection with Scenic Drive, where it turned north. I fell back and kept my lights off. The roads were empty and it was going to be too easy to spot me. He stayed on Scenic Drive until 10th Street, where he turned east, and suddenly I knew where he was going. I accelerated and turned into 10th just as he was approaching the Marble Estates. I pulled over, killed the engine and sat thinking for a while. Then I turned the Jeep around and
made my way slowly back to the motel.

  I left my car out of sight, let myself into my room, poured myself a shot of Bushmills and fell on the bed. My mind was racing and I switched on the TV to anesthetize my brain. It was set to a local channel and there was a young reporter standing in the dawn light in the desert, with two smoldering wrecks behind him. I could see a fire truck and a couple of firefighters moving about. There was also a truck from the Sheriff’s Department and a couple of deputies. The reporter was talking into the camera.

  “The sheriff has just confirmed, Marsha, that these are the bodies of Luis Gomez, el Puñal, Juan Gomez, his brother, Alvaro Romero and Felipe Gonzalez, all known members of the notorious Chupacabras motorcycle gang. Cause of death will have to be confirmed by the medical examiner, but an initial inspection suggests they were all shot in the head with very great accuracy, suggesting an execution of some sort. And, Marsha, following as it does the killing of Ivory Jones just a couple of days ago, and the torching of his house, some sources, which I cannot name at this point, are beginning to talk about a vigilante, possibly with a background in Special Forces, and they are calling him the Verdugo, from the Spanish word for executioner…”

  It went on. I took another slug of whiskey and closed my eyes. Outside I could hear the birds’ dawn chorus. My mind began to drift. I thought of the girl at Castaneda’s diner. Now I could tell her I knew who I was. The birds had told me in their dawn chorus, the chorus for the executioner. The wild chatter of crazy birds heralding the arrival of the killer, the executioner, the Verdugo. All hail the killer. Long live the bringer of death. This was the dawn of the executioner.