The Devil's Bag Man

by Adam Mansbach

  Time up.

  He snapped the first one’s neck between his palms, spun away from him, grabbed the other by the arm and tossed him off the porch. The two sentries landed simultaneously, one crumpling lifeless and the other landing shoulder-first in the sound-muffling sand. Galvan leaped after him, foot connecting with the side of the sentry’s face as he tried to stand and knocking him flat. Galvan grabbed a handful of hair, yanked the head backward until he heard a crack.

  Two down.

  Galvan froze, ears cocked for any hint of movement from inside the house. Nothing.

  Go time.

  He crept back onto the porch, glanced at the rifles. They might as well have been alarm clocks, for all the racket they would make. Galvan walked past them and through the front door.

  He looked left: a dining room, stacked high with broken chairs.

  Right: check-in desk, two couches, two dudes asleep beneath thin blankets.

  Galvan stared down at them, hands flexing at his sides, hypnotized by the syncopated rhythm of their breath, and felt all the resolve drain from him.

  They are no less guilty asleep than awake, Cucuy hissed. Give them what they deserve.

  Galvan clenched his jaw and shook his head. Not like this.

  More false morality, the monster sneered. A man lives because he sleeps and dies because he wakes? Understand, Jess Galvan: there need be no reason. No law but your own.

  He shook his head again, heart beating faster now than it had in the thick of combat.

  A shout from outside broke the stalemate. Galvan whipped toward it just as the report of a rifle split the air like lightning.

  An alarm clock after all.

  This was about to get interesting.

  He dove off the porch and found a third sentry standing over the body in the sand, firing rounds into the air.

  For a dude pounding a panic button, he wasn’t very attuned to the presence of danger. Galvan hit the ground three feet in front of him, rolled, stood, and as the guy scrambled to lower the barrel of his rifle, Jess plowed into him, shoulder to gut, a nice clean football hit. The rifle flew from his hands as the guy went down and Galvan snatched it in midair, momentum carrying him forward; he pump-loaded the next round single-handed and shot the guy in the sternum.

  You didn’t have to be a sniper at that range.

  The first window to light up was on the top floor. Galvan beelined for it, be the last place they’re expecting.

  A standing leap, and he was back on the porch railing; another, and his hands gripped the ledge of a second-story balcony. He swung himself up, leaped again, fucking King Kong shit, and by the time a shirtless torso leaned out that lit window, right arm terminating in a pistol, Galvan was propelling himself upward again. He grabbed the dude’s arm like a gymnast on the uneven bars, and a couple heartbeats later Galvan was standing where the guy had been, holding his gun, and the guy was facedown in the sand below.

  Four rooms on the top floor, two men per room. Galvan cleared them all in less than thirty seconds—head shots until the clip was empty, these dudes clumsy-stumbling from their beds, half of them too confused to shoot straight and the other half too far from their guns to even do that much.

  He ran out of bullets, dodged a knife, heard it thwang into the door frame beside him, pulled it out, returned it to sender. Found the last dude, roommate of the first, cowering in the bathroom, a porno mag still spread across his lap, and kicked him backward through the clapboard wall, taking out half the toilet in the bargain.

  Footfalls on the stairs, a clatter of them like a sudden monsoon. Whatever confusion there might have been about the attacker’s location had burned off; the twelve or fifteen Sinaloans left were ready for a fight.

  Might as well keep ’em guessing.

  Galvan swung himself out a window, made a lateral jump onto an aluminum drainpipe, and shimmied down to the first floor.

  The rifles were right where he’d left them. Galvan grabbed one in each hand, set up shop behind the welcome desk, and trained his sights on the staircase. Sure enough, the herd reversed direction a few moments later.

  Might’ve sounded like buffalo, but they were sitting ducks.

  He picked off ten without moving more than his trigger finger, the bodies logjamming the stairs and the final gaggle of soldiers tripping over the fallen, some reversing course and others planting their feet, making a last stand, jockeying for a sight line, finding nothing to aim at but a banquette.

  Galvan pressed himself flat, crept around the far side of the desk, and was back on the porch before they’d even noticed he was gone. He sprinted around the back of the hotel, nabbing a pistol along the way, courtesy of the dude he’d tossed from the window.

  They were still arrayed along the staircase, firing at the desk; he could see them clearly through a busted window. He wondered how long they’d do that. Decided to find out.

  Until they ran out of bullets, was the answer.

  And then, the silence was deafening. Smoke, blood, terror filled the air. Somebody’d shit himself, too. There was also that.

  Galvan closed one eye, lined up a head shot, squeezed. The man fell over the staircase railing, head over heels, and the last four broke in all directions: upstairs left, upstairs right, downstairs left, downstairs right. It would have looked choreographed, if it weren’t so ugly.

  Galvan watched them go. He’d made his point. And somebody had to tell the Sinaloa higher-ups what had happened. Might as well let them sing the story in four-part harmony.

  He turned on his heel, figuring he’d grab a Jeep and find his way back to Louis’s in style, and found himself face-to-face with one of the runners, a young kid with a busted nose.

  Both their eyes went wide, and then the kid threw it in reverse, twisted an ankle in the sand, and landed on his ass.

  Galvan shot him a grim look and started to walk away. But wait.

  He’d seen this kid before.

  The busted nose.

  He’d done that.

  Who’s we, junior?

  Azteca, maricón.

  Bosco, you sly motherfucker.

  Galvan trudged toward him, until his body bathed the kid in shadow.

  He raised a hand, thrust it up into the space between them, shook it frantically.

  “I told them, man. Just like you said to. ‘There’s a new monster in town.’ I said it just like that.”

  Galvan sighed and threw Bosco a grudging imaginary head nod of respect.

  Well played, pendejo. Hope you took my advice and went home to your kids, because if I see you again I’m gonna rip off your head and feed it to your asshole.

  Good thing Galvan didn’t give a fuck which cartel he’d just slaughtered.

  Six of one, half dozen of the other.

  He looked down at the kid. “Well, junior, I guess you’d better tell somebody a little higher up the food chain, me entiendes?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Sherry sank onto the couch, a pint of ice cream in one hand, a spoon in the other. She wasn’t even hungry. Just bored. No wonder everybody in this country was fat. They sat in their stupid houses watching moronic shit on television and shoveling garbage into their faces. It anesthetized them to the tragic pointlessness of their own lives somehow, this endless parade of girls who didn’t know which tattooed loser had knocked them up and wanted to find out before a live studio audience, and then fight the guy’s wife.

  Cooking. Home renovation. Hillbilly shitheads. The same five news stories. The same five baseball highlights. Click. Click. Click. It was amazing how fast your will seeped out of you and into the cushions.

  The weight of everything Sherry tried not to think about was like a roiling storm cloud, and she expended tremendous energy shooing it away—keeping the horrific, the unfathomable at arm’s length, the death and loss at bay.

  Ruth had work to make the house bearable. She brewed her coffee, poured it into a travel mug—that was rich—carried it to her home office, fifteen feet awa
y, and shut the door. Sherry could hear her in there, the tapping of her fingers on the computer keyboard almost as loud as her voice on the phone. She broke for lunch, slapped together sandwiches for them both, then went right back to it. Evenings were better. Normal-ish. Nichols brought home groceries. The three of them would collaborate on dinner, maybe watch a movie together. But now that he was gone—for what he promised would only be forty-eight hours, though Sherry had her doubts—the nights would be an extension of the days. The same stale air circulating between them without so much as a hint of a breeze.

  Sherry had begun the morning with a resolution to read, marched over to the bookshelf and picked out a proper hardcover novel. But she couldn’t focus, didn’t have the attention span to get through chapter two. She’d tossed the book aside by eleven, scooped up the remote. Her phone lay beside her, and she checked it reflexively every few minutes for messages, even though the volume was on.

  Closest she’d come to exercise.

  Yesterday, Eric sent her one of his periodic puppy-dog-hopeful, poorly punctuated texts—hey I’m here if you wanna talk we can still be friends at least right?—and her heart soared at the mere prospect of human contact. All the reasons she’d stopped seeing him seemed shortsighted and childish now; who else but Eric would ever, in a million years, understand even a fraction of what she’d gone through?

  Sherry had been about to invite him over when she caught herself. What could she tell that sweet boy? That her life continued to be a roller-coaster ride through shit fields? That she was about to be a fucking high school dropout? That it wasn’t safe to leave her house, between the kidnappers, the mysterious plots, her psycho father? That she needed him to bring over some weed, because she was all out and couldn’t cope without it?

  At some point even gentle, loyal Eric would have to conclude that Sherry attracted drama, just like these gross fucking women on TV.

  At some point, she’d have to conclude the same.

  Let’s grab coffee next week? she’d texted back at last, some fourteen hours later, figuring that by next week things would have either calmed down or she’d be willing to risk her life to leave the house.

  Midafternoon, Ruth sashayed out of her office, all fucking radiant. This pregnancy thing was a real trip: wake up looking like a seasick crackhead, progress to glowy earth goddess by noon, pass out at eight thirty, repeat.

  “Do some yoga with me,” she said, flashing a Prenatal Poses DVD in her hand and heading for the TV.

  “No thanks. I’m prenatal by, I dunno, about ten to fifteen years.”

  “Ah, who cares? It’s good to move a little.”

  The doorbell rang, as if to signal the end of round one, and both their faces lit up. It had come to that: Boggs letting them know that he was clocking out and Hildebrand was taking over had become the highlight of their day.

  Sherry beelined for it, with Ruth a pace behind, pulling her hair out of its ponytail so Boggs could fully appreciate its new bun-in-the-oven luster.

  “Check the peephole first, Sher,” she cautioned.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sherry peered through it, saw the uniform, Boggs’s back turned to them, the cruiser parked curbside like always, the whole tableau fish-eyed, distorted.

  Just like her life.

  She flicked the first lock, undid the chain on the second, and pulled the door wide.

  “Hey, Russell.”

  Right away, even before he turned, Sherry knew it wasn’t Boggs. Or Hildebrand.

  And she knew something was very wrong.

  She tried to slam the door, but he was too quick: boot to the jamb, the big slab of wood shuddering on its hinges.

  And then his fat red face and massive body filled the threshold, blotted out the world beyond.

  “Hello, Sherry. You remember me.”

  She did.

  All too well.

  Kurt Knowles threw his shoulder against the door and forced his way inside. Slammed it behind him and stood looking at them both, hands hipped, grin wide, teeth like jagged gravestones in his enormous mouth.

  “Howdy, Doc.”

  The chest of his uniform shirt was soaked with blood, and there was a two-inch rip in the fabric stretched across his barrel chest.

  He followed her eyes to it. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. That ain’t mine.”

  He jerked his thumb toward the street, the car. Toward Boggs.

  “That’s his.”

  He took another swaggering step into the living room and tapped his hand against the knife strapped to his thigh, the blade still red with blood.

  “I’m not here to hurt y’all,” he said. “But I am allowed to, if you don’t cooperate.”

  Sherry looked at Ruth, found her frozen in place, the color drained from her face, both hands splayed protectively, unconsciously, over her stomach. She wasn’t going to be doing any fighting; there was too much at stake for her, too much to lose.

  Sherry, on the other hand, really didn’t give a fuck anymore.

  And this was on her. She was the one he’d come for.

  “What do you want?” she blurted.

  “The three of us are gonna take a little drive.”

  “Where are we going?” Sherry asked, mind racing. “Do I need my passport?” There was a gun in a box in the bedroom closet. Nichols kept it loaded. If she could get to it, she wouldn’t hesitate.

  “You’ll see when we get there. Now let’s go.” He grabbed her by the elbow, yanked her toward the door.

  She yanked back, wrenched her arm free. “Just take me,” she said. “I’m the one you came for, right?”

  Knowles cackled—whether at the defiance or the question, Sherry wasn’t sure—and a toxic bouquet of blood, sweat, and motor oil billowed toward her.

  “What, are you fuckin’ kidding me? Me and the doc go way back. Ain’t that right, Doc?”

  “Get the fuck out of my house!” Ruth snarled. She looked like a cornered dog, Sherry thought, and then No, like a mother dog, defending her young.

  Sherry had been wrong—a hundred and eighty degrees wrong. Ruth had too much to lose not to fight.

  No sooner had she thought it than Ruth turned and dashed from the room.

  She’s going for the gun, Sherry thought. But no. The bathroom; she heard the door slam, the lock click into place.

  “I’m calling the police!” she screamed.

  Sherry felt a drop of sweat slide down the inside of her arm as she braced to run: in an instant Knowles would make a move, storm over there and kick in the door, and when he did she’d break for the bedroom, grab the gun—

  But no.

  This wasn’t his first rodeo, and Knowles wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. He grabbed Sherry by the back of the neck, his arm like a steel cuff, and half dragged her over to the bathroom. Slammed her up against the door and called to Ruth.

  “Put it down or I start breakin’ bones, Doc. That what you want?”

  He twisted Sherry’s arm behind her back until pain shot through it, hot and sharp, and she screamed.

  Ruth opened the door, face blank with fear, cell phone in hand.

  Knowles grabbed it and released Sherry. She crumpled into a pile on the floor, cradling one arm in the other, and cursed herself for being weak. Fragile.

  So fucking human.

  “Hey, asshole,” she said, blinking back stars.

  Knowles looked down at her, and Sherry lifted her face, threw everything she had into the biggest shit-eating grin she could muster.

  “You know my father’s gonna kill you, right?”

  Knowles shoved the phone into his pocket. “Your father’s already dead. Now stand the fuck up.” He grabbed her by the arm he hadn’t just nearly snapped and pulled her to her feet.

  And then, for the first time in days, Sherry was outside, squinting in the sunlight as Knowles paced them toward the cruiser, hands manacled around each of their wrists.

  Sherry cast around for anybody who might help—a neighbor, a passerby, a lands
caping crew, a fucking dog—but the block was empty of all life. Folks were at work, or they were someplace air-conditioned. She got off half a scream anyway, Hel —before Knowles shoved them both into the backseat and the locks clicked shut.

  He opened the driver’s door and rolled Russell Boggs’s shirtless, bludgeoned body into the gutter.

  Sherry gasped, the sound huge in the hermetic, airless car.

  Knowles fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb.

  The cruiser cruised. Down the block, full stop at the sign, two-second pause, left onto Edmund, right on Bristol. The police radio babbled anodyne mundanities, no big action in Del Verde County this afternoon.

  Ruth grabbed her hand, squeezed. Whether she was the beneficiary of comfort or its dispenser, Sherry was not sure.

  Except, neither.

  “You know, Doc,” Knowles said after a few blocks, half turning toward the grated metal partition that separated the backseat from the front, the criminals from the cops, “Aaron Seth was like a father to me. And my club, well, they were like my brothers.”

  He put the monologue on hold and made a looping left onto Old Ranch Boulevard. They were coming up on the highway.

  “What would you do if somebody took away your family, Doc?”

  All Sherry could see of him were huge fists, choking the black leather steering wheel.

  “If I’ve done something to hurt your family, I’m sorry,” Ruth said, and Sherry could tell she was trying to keep the quaver out of her voice, inject the therapist into it. “That was never my intention.”

  “Don’t you fuckin’ lie to me. Mr. Seth told me all about you, Doc. You’re a meddling little cunt. He’d be alive, it wasn’t for you. Well, guess what?”

  “You’re a fucking psychopath,” said Sherry, for no better reason than the fact that it was true.

  Knowles cackled. “Guess again.”

  He turned far enough to look them both in the eye. “Give up? Well, Doc, you got a real special treat coming. Seeing as how you spent so much time up Mr. Seth’s ass about what was happening to all them girls, you’re gonna get to find out for yourself where they ended up.”