Were there no guns here? he said.
McIntyre adjusted his hat and stood looking at the trucks. Are the rangers coming out here?
He took the lamp from beside the bed and jerked the cord free and climbed up onto the dresser and stove in the grate with the metal lampbase and pulled it loose and looked in.
Bell walked back into the livingroom. He sat on the sofa. Wendell stood in the doorway.
Im just waitin to hear your description of that, the clerk said.
The man was lying in a spreading pool of blood. Help me, he said. Chigurh took the pistol from his waist. He looked into the mans eyes. The man looked away.
He took the screwdriver and got the chair from the desk and stood on it and unscrewed the airduct grille and stepped down and laid it dustside up on the cheap chenille bedspread. Then he climbed up and put his ear to the duct. He listened. He stood down and got the flashlight and climbed back up again.
The DEA agents name was McIntyre. Bell knew him slightly and liked him about well enough to nod to. He got out with a clipboard in his hand and walked toward them. He was dressed in boots and hat and a Carhartt canvas jacket and he looked all right until he opened his mouth.
Yes.
Bell leaned back in his chair to read, tapping his lower lip slowly with his forefinger.
All right.
Funny place to take a kid.
I dont know. He ought to. He seen the same things I seen and it made a impression on me.
Hunting accident?
He emptied out the bag and put the shotgun in and zipped it shut and took it together with the satchel down to the desk. The Mexican whod checked him in was gone and in his place was another clerk, thin and gray. A thin white shirt and a black bow tie. He was smoking a cigarette and reading Ring magazine and he looked up at Moss with no great enthusiasm, squinting in the smoke. Yessir, he said.
I thought these vehicles were all shot up.
Who cut the tires?
People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.
He didnt feel anything. The bullet snapped at his shirt and blood started running down his upper arm and he was already at a dead run. With the next shot he felt a stinging pain in his side. He fell down and got up again leaving Chigurhs shotgun lying in the street. Damn, he said. What a shot.
Moss paid the driver and stepped out into the lights in front of the motel office and slung the bag over his shoulder and shut the cab door and turned and went in. The woman was already behind the counter. He set the bag in the floor and leaned on the counter. She looked a little flustered. Hi, she said. You fixin to stay a while?
After a while he put the report down. He didnt look at Torbert. I know whats happened here, he said.
When he reached the gatehouse there was no one there. He pushed through and into the town of Piedras Negras, State of Coahuila.
Moss pulled into Eagle Pass at a quarter till two in the morning. Hed slept a good part of the way in the back of the cab and he only woke when they slowed coming off the highway and down Main Street. He watched the pale white globes of the streetlamps pass along the upper rim of the window. Then he sat up.
Blood?
The nightclerk took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it over a small glass ashtray and tipped the ash from the end of it with his little finger and looked at Moss. Yessir, he said. I can do that.
He unfolded it and flattened it out and studied it.
Half way he met a party returning. Four of them, young boys, maybe eighteen, partly drunk. He set the case on the sidewalk and took a pack of the hundreds from his pocket.
An old man was coming along pushing a broom. He paused. Then he moved on.
Moss nodded and went back upstairs.
What do youwant?
I aint askin you to do nothin illegal, Moss said.
Yessir.
McIntyre nodded. I guess the people waiting for their dope have probably figured out by now that its not coming. What about the Border Patrol?
Nobody got out. They were waiting for the dust to blow away. Bell and Torbert watched the rotor winding down.
Whats this on it?
They walked through the rooms. What do you think, Sheriff?
McIntyre looked toward the chopper and he looked down the bajada toward the other vehicles. Can I get a ride down there with you?
He left the office with the key in his shirtpocket and got into the Ramcharger and drove around to the side of the building and parked and got out and walked down to the room carrying the bag with the receiver and the guns in it. In the room he dropped the bag onto the bed and pulled off his boots and came back out with the receiver and the battery pack and the shotgun from the truck. The shotgun was a twelve gauge Remington automatic with a plastic military stock and a parkerized finish. It was fitted with a shopmade silencer fully a foot long and big around as a beercan. He walked down the ramada in his sockfeet past the rooms listening to the signal.
Rival party.
Puede caminar? He made walking motions with his fingers, his hand hanging loosely at the wrist.
Yep.
Not as many as there should of been. We got two pieces in evidence.
He could see the dragmarks in the dust. He climbed down and stood there. Hed got blood and matter on his shirt from off the wall and he took the shirt off and went back into the bathroom and washed himself and dried with one of the bath-towels. Then he wet the towel and wiped off his boots and folded the towel again and wiped down the legs of his jeans. He picked up the shotgun and came back into the room naked to the waist, the shirt balled in one hand. He wiped his bootsoles on the carpet again and looked around the room a last time and left.
You show your face at the head of these stairs and Ill shoot you.
Sheriff Bell, he said.
Bell passed his hand over the plywood of the room-divider. Heres where it hit at, he said. He balanced the piece of brass in his palm and looked toward the door. You could weigh this thing and measure the distance and the drop and calculate the speed.
I dont either. Now I just need to eat my breakfast here. I got kindly a full day ahead.
A Mexican in a green guayabera had sat up on the bed and was reaching for a small machinegun beside him. Chigurh shot him three times so fast it sounded like one long gunshot and left most of the upper part of him spread across the headboard and the wall behind it. The shotgun made a strange deep chugging sound. Like someone coughing into a barrel. He snapped on the light and stepped out of the doorway and stood with his back to the outside wall. He looked in again quickly. The bathroom door had been shut.
Agent McIntyre.
Yessir. Pretty good speed.
What about one forty-two?
I believe theyve done lit a shuck.
Look at me, Chigurh said.
Sure you can.
McIntyre continued writing. Dont worry, he said. I know you didnt get it.
The bedroom door was still open, the shower still running.
Tiene dinero? The sweeper rubbed his thumb and fingers together.
Its right here.
He came back to the room and stood in the open door under the dead white light from the parking lot lamp. He walked into the bathroom and turned the light on there. He took the measure of the room and looked to see where everything was. He measured where the lightswitches were. Then he stood in the room taking it all in once again. He sat and pulled on his boots and got the airtank and slung it across his shoulder and caught up the cattlegun where it swung from the rubber airhose and walked out and down to the room.
He went over and stood with his ear to the door, the shotgun in one hand. He went in the bathroom and pulled back the plastic showercurtain where it hung on rings over the tub and turned on the tap and pulled the plunger to start the shower. Then he pulled the curtain back around the tub and went out and closed the bathroom door behind him.
Rangers are comin. Or one is. DPS drug unit.
The old man looked him over. He clucked his tongue. He looked away toward the dawn.
He went to the far side of the bed and dropped down and pushed himself underneath it and lay there on his stomach with the shotgun pointed at the door. Just space enough beneath the wooden slats. Heart pumping against the dusty carpet. He waited. Two columns of dark intersected the bar of light beneath the door and stood there. The next thing he heard was the key in the lock. Very softly. Then the door opened. He could see out into the hallway. There was no one there. He waited. He tried not even to blink but he did. Then there was an expensive pair of ostrichskin boots standing in the doorway.
Yessir.
Somebody must have got away.
Right there, Moss said. Dont you take another step.
In the room he sat on the bed with the map spread out. He got up and went into the bathroom and stood in the tub with his ear to the wall. A TV was playing somewhere.
You take this hundred and let me hold the coat. Then Ill give you the rest.
Ill give you five hundred dollars.
A shotgun clattered to the floor. Moss pulled himself up. Get your hands up, he said.
They walked toward Torberts truck. The agent looked at Bell and he tapped the clipboard against his leg. You dont intend to make this easy, do you?
Did you just come on?
In the center a wrought-iron gazebo or bandstand. He collapsed on one of the iron benches with the bag on the bench beside him and leaned forward holding himself.
Four or five days.
Moss crossed the room and took hold of the footpost of the bed and swung the bed sideways with one hand. The document case stood there in the dust. He picked it up.
He went over and walked around the truck. He wrote on his clipboard. He looked inside.
The door was blown into shredded plywood hanging off the hinges and a thin stream of blood had started across the pink bathroom tiles.
Yessir. I believe so.
Yep.
He climbed down and sat on the bed and wiped the dust from the case and unfastened the latch and the straps and opened it and looked at the packets of bills. He took one of them from the case and riffled it. Then he fitted it back and undid the length of cord hed tied to the strap and turned off the flashlight and sat listening. He stood and reached up and shoved the poles down the duct and then he put back the grid and gathered up his tools. He laid the key on the desk and put the shotgun and the tools in the bag and took it and the case and walked out the door leaving everything just as it was.
I dont know.
But not this one.
When Bell walked into the office Torbert looked up from his desk and then rose and came over and laid a paper down in front of him.
All right.
The headlights picked up some kind of a large bird sitting on the aluminum bridgerail up ahead and Chigurh pushed the button to let the window down. Cool air coming in off the lake. He took the pistol from beside the box and cocked and leveled it out the window, resting the barrel on the rearview mirror. The pistol had been fitted with a silencer sweated onto the end of the barrel. The silencer was made out of brass mapp- gas burners fitted into a hairspray can and the whole thing stuffed with fiberglass roofing insulation and painted flat black. He fired just as the bird crouched and spread its wings.
Have you got a map of the motel?
There was nothing that could happen that would have surprised him. He felt as if he weighed nothing. He felt as if he were floating. The man didnt even look at him. He seemed oddly untroubled. As if this were all part of his day.
Theres somebody lookin for me. All Im askin you to do is to call me if anybody checks in. By anybody I mean any swingin dick. Can you do that?
Theyre in a world of trouble, aint they?
You goin across the river? the driver said.
That man behind you. The one in the long coat.
They walked in and stood. Wendell would have holstered his pistol but Bell stopped him. Lets just keep to that careful routine, he said.
Hell, McIntyre. Im just messin with you.
I think that was it.
By Wednesday half of the State of Texas was on its way to Sanderson. Bell sat at his table in the cafe and read the news. He lowered the paper and looked up. A man about thirty years old that hed never seen before was standing there. He introduced himself as a reporter for the San Antonio Light. Whats all this about, Sheriff? he said.
There was a stand of tall carrizo cane growing along the American side of the river below him and he set the zipper bag down and took hold of the case by the handles and swung it behind him and then heaved it over the rail and out into space.
He looked at Bell. Im happy to know that, he said. White in color.
He stepped into the doorway and fired two more rounds through the bathroom wall and then walked in with the shotgun leveled at his waist. The man was lying slumped against the tub holding an AK-47. He was shot in the chest and the neck and he was bleeding heavily. No me mate, he wheezed. No me mate. Chigurh stepped back to avoid the spray of ceramic chips off the tub and shot him in the face.
The money was slick with blood. He wiped it on his trouser-leg and peeled off five of the bills and put the rest in his back pocket.
The man didnt answer. He could have been a mute for all that Moss knew.
Kindly in a hurry about it, too.
Everbodys comin as far as I know. We expect it to get right lively. Might could be a bigger draw than the flood back in 65.
Now it was open. He stepped into the room and fired two loads through the standing door and another through the wall and stepped out again. Down toward the end of the building a light had come on. Chigurh waited. Then he looked into the room once more.
Yessir. Be here till ten in the mornin.
He didnt answer.
Moss nodded. A wave of blackness came over him. He waited till it passed.
He climbed down and got the shotgun and went to the door and turned off the light at the switch there and stood in the dark looking out through the curtain at the courtyard.
Then he went back and laid the shotgun on the bed and turned on the flashlight.
It appears to be a huntin accident.
Dont turn around, he said. You turn around and Ill blow you to hell.
I need another room.
He took Wendell with him and they drove down to the Desert Aire and stood at the door while Wendell knocked.
He studied Moss, holding the broom handle in both hands. He shrugged his shoulders.
He did. Moss picked up the mans shotgun and threw it onto the bed. He switched on the overhead light and shut the door. Look over here, he said.
He stopped. Moss backed to the stairs and took one last look at him standing there in the dull yellow light from the wallsconce and then he turned and doubled down the stairwell taking the steps two at a time. He didnt know where he was going. He hadnt thought that far ahead.
He put out one hand on the bench beside him. Nausea. Dont lie down.
He took the nylon bag from the chair and slung it over his shoulder and he got the shotgun with its huge canlike silencer off the bed and put it under his arm and picked up the case again. Lets go, he said. The man lowered his hands and walked out into the hallway.
The clock on the motel office wall said twelve forty-two. The television set was on and the woman looked like shed been asleep. Yessir, she said. Can I help you?
Bell shook his head. He didnt look up.
In the lobby the nightclerks feet were sticking out from behind the desk. Moss didnt stop. He pushed out through the front door and down the steps. By the time hed crossed the street Chigurh was already on the balcony of the hotel above him. Moss felt something tug at the bag on his shoulder. The pistolshot was just a muffled pop, flat and small in the dark quiet of the town. He turned in time to see the muzzleflash of the second shot faint but visible under the pink glow of the fifteen foot high neon hotel sign.
There was a changewindow and a turnstile on the American side of the bridge and he put a dime in the slot and pushed through and staggered out onto the span and eyed the narrow walk ahead of him. Just breaking first light. Dull and gray above the floodplain along the east shore of the river. Gods own distance to the far side.
I expect you could.
She laid an old brochure on the counter. It showed a car from the fifties parked in front.
No. Right there where the sign is.
By the time he got to Grande Street a pandemonium of gunfire had broken out behind him. He didnt think he could run any more. He saw himself limping along in a storewindow across the street, holding his elbow to his side, the bag slung over his shoulder and carrying the shotgun and the leather document case, dark in the glass and wholly unaccountable. When he looked again he was sitting on the sidewalk. Get up you son of a bitch, he said. Dont you set there and die. You get the hell up.
I think I went once when I was a kid.
Yeah.
Lets go, Brian.
Bell nodded. You need to put that in your files.
The small box that held the transponder receiver was standing in the floor just outside the door. Moss left it there. He had the feeling hed already taken more chances than he had coming. He backed down the hallway with his shotgun trained on the mans belt, holding it in one hand like a pistol. He started to tell him to put his hands back up but something told him that it didnt really make any difference where the mans hands were.
You can have one next to yours if you want it. One-twenty aint took.
You speak english?
He paid and picked up the bag and walked out and turned down the walkway at the rear of the motel. She leaned over the counter watching him go.
Bell nodded. Theres another body about a mile north of here.
What?
I WAS SHERIFF OF this county when I was twenty-five. Hard to believe. My father was not a lawman. Jack was my grandfather. Me and him was sheriff at the same time, him in Piano and me here. I think he was pretty proud of that. I know I was. I was just back from the war. I had some medals and stuff and of course people had got wind of that. I campaigned pretty hard. You had to. I tried to be fair. Jack used to say that any time youre throwin dirt youre losin ground but I think mostly it just wasnt in him. To speak ill of anybody. And I never did mind bein like him. Me and my wife has been married thirty-one years. No children. We lost a girl but I wont talk about that. I served two terms and then we moved to Denton Texas. Jack used to say that bein sheriff was one of the best jobs you could have and bein a ex-sheriff one of the worst. Maybe lots of things is like that. We stayed gone and stayed gone. I done different things. Was a detective on the railroad for a while. By that time my wife wasnt all that sure about us comin back here. About me runnin. But she seen I wanted to so thats what we done. Shes a better person than me, which I will admit to anybody that cares to listen. Not that thats sayin a whole lot. Shes a better person than anybody I know. Period.
He went back and sat and unzipped the bag and took out the shotgun and laid it to one side and then emptied the bag out onto the bed.
They didnt stop till they were past him. Then one of them turned. Whatll you give? he said.
He paid the driver the fifty dollars theyd agreed on and picked up his bags off the curb and walked up the steps to the porch and went in. The clerk was standing at the desk as if hed been expecting him.
What we need is to get these bodies out of here.
McIntyre stood looking out down the bajada. He tapped the clipboard against his leg.
Cylinder out of the lock.
Nine millimeter parabellum, said Torbert.
They had a knocker straddled the chute and theyd let the beeves through one at a time and hed knock em in the head with a maul. He done that all day.
Let me have the money.
How long you think theyve been dead?
He walked over and picked up a small brass slug off of the carpet and held it up.
When he limped out into the street one of the men hed shot from the hotel porch was crawling toward the curb. Chigurh watched him. Then he shot him in the back. The other one was lying by the front fender of the car. Hed been shot through the head and the dark blood was pooled all about him. His weapon was lying there but Chigurh paid it no mind. He walked to the rear of the car and jostled the man there with his boot and then bent and picked up the machine-gun hed been firing. It was a shortbarreled Uzi with the twenty-five round clip. Chigurh rifled the dead mans raincoat pockets and came up with three more clips, one of them full. He put them in the pocket of his jacket and stuck the pistol down in the front of his belt and checked the rounds in the clip that was in the Uzi. Then he slung the piece over his shoulder and hobbled back to the curb.
They are.
No reason not to be careful.
Brian looked at them and he looked at Moss. Lets see the money, he said.
He loped wincing down the sidewalk past the Aztec Theatre. As he passed the little round ticket kiosk all the glass fell out of it. He never even heard that shot. He spun with the shotgun and thumbed back the hammer and fired. The buckshot rattled off the second storey balustrade and took the glass out of some of the windows. When he turned again a car coming down Main Street picked him up in the lights and slowed and then speeded up again. He turned up Adams Street and the car skidded sideways through the intersection in a cloud of rubbersmoke and stopped. The engine had died and the driver was trying to start it. Moss turned with his back to the brick wall of the building. Two men had come from the car and were crossing the street on foot at a run.
Thats the Maverick County Courthouse.
Excuse me.
I do too.
Excuse me I wondered if you all would sell me a coat.
How could it be a hunting accident? Youre pulling my leg.
Id say white. Yes.
You are downtown.
He took two steps back and stood, his hands at shoulder level. Moss came around the end of the bed. The man was no more than ten feet away. The whole room was pulsing slowly. There was an odd smell in the air. Like some foreign cologne. A medicinal edge to it. Everything humming. Moss held the shotgun at his waist with the hammer cocked.
I aint worried.
People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if theyre lucky theyll get it anyways. Me I was always lucky. My whole life. I wouldnt be here otherwise. Scrapes I been in. But the day I seen her come out of Kerrs Mercantile and cross the street and she passed me and I tipped my hat to her and got just almost a smile back, that was the luckiest.
It flared wildly in the lights, very white, turning and lifting away into the darkness. The shot had hit the rail and caromed off into the night and the rail hummed dully in the slipstream and ceased. Chigurh laid the pistol in the seat and put the window back up again.
No sun. Just the gray light breaking. The streets wet. The shops closed. Iron shutters.
Its a 72 Ford pickup.
They walked around in the bajada looking at the shot-up trucks. McIntyre held a kerchief to his nose. The bodies were bloated in their clothes. This is about the damnedest thing I ever saw, he said.
Last year nineteen felony charges were filed in the Terrell County Court. How many of those would you say were not drug related?
Two. In the meantime I got a county the size of Delaware that is full of people who need my help. What do you think about that?
Whats that? said Wendell.
They turned and went on. There were only three of them. He shoved at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He tried to see where the fourth one had gone. Then he realized that there was no fourth one. Thats all right, he said. Just keep puttin one foot in front of the other.
Bullshit.
He joined the others and they went on. Then they stopped. They were talking together and looking back at him. He got the coat buttoned and put his money in the inside pocket and shouldered the bag and picked up the leather case. You all need to keep walkin, he said. I wont tell you twice.
I know, said Bell. I knowed what youd say fore you said it.
The man turned his head and gazed at Moss. Blue eyes. Serene. Dark hair. Something about him faintly exotic. Beyond Mosss experience.
Whitehot pain. He held his side and watched the bag turn slowly in the diminishing light from the bridgelamps and drop soundlessly into the cane and vanish. Then he slid to the pavement and sat there in the puddling blood, his face against the wire. Get up, he said. Damn you, get up.
He looked in the freezer.
Thats all right. What about one forty-two?
Youd know it if you had.
What vehicle is this?
How much?
He stood making notes on his clipboard. He paced distances and made a rough sketch of the scene and he copied out the numbers off the license plates.
Pretty good speed.
Let me see it.
The man hed shot in the back was lying there watching him. Chigurh looked up the street toward the hotel and the courthouse. The tall palm trees. He looked at the man.
So when was he here, Sheriff?
You know what you could do for her? Not a damn thing. Lamar had never lost a man in twenty some odd years. This is what he would remember. This is what hed be remembered for.
The man looked and looked away again.
He crossed the street and went up Jefferson keeping to the north wall of the buildings, trying to hurry and swinging the bound leg out at his side. All of this was one block from the Maverick County Courthouse and he figured he had minutes at best before fresh parties began to arrive.
He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and looked in and shut it again.
Theres heroin spilled in the back of that Bronco.
They parked a ways from Mosss truck and waited. Its ten, Torbert said.
He stood at the door listening again. He dragged out the nylon bag from where hed pushed it under the bed and set it in the chair in the corner. He went over and switched on the light at the bedside table and stood there trying to think. He realized that the phone might ring and he took the receiver from the cradle and laid it on the table. He pulled back the covers and rumpled the pillows on the bed. He looked at the clock. Four forty-three. He looked at the phone lying there on the table. He picked it up and pulled the cord out of it and put it back in the cradle. Then he went over and stood at the door, his thumb on the hammer of the shotgun. He dropped to his stomach and put his ear to the space under the door. A cool wind. As if a door had opened somewhere. What have you done. What have you failed to do.
Blood.
How did they kill the beef?
That sounds about right. They dont do it thataway no more. They use a airpowered gun that shoots a steel bolt out of it. Just shoots it out about so far. They put that thing between the beefs eyes and pull the trigger and down she goes. Its that quick.
He folded the seat forward and looked in the back.
Ive got .380s, .45s, nine millimeter parabellum, twelve gauge, and .38 special. Did you all find anything else?
McIntyre tapped the clipboard against his leg. Aint that the truth, he said.
Let me ask you somethin.
I dont know.
He untied the little nylon bag and slid the poles out. They were lightweight aluminum tubes three feet long and he assembled three of them and taped the joints with duct tape so that they wouldnt pull apart. He went to the closet and came back with three wire hangers and sat on the bed and cut the hooks off with the sidecutters and wrapped them into one hook with the tape. Then he taped them to the end of the pole and stood up and slid the pole down the ductwork.
If the heroin is missing and the money is missing then my guess is that somebody is missing.
One of them opened fire with a small caliber machinegun and he fired at them twice with the shotgun and then loped on with the warm blood seeping into his crotch. In the street he heard the car start up again.
Bueno, the old man said.
I need a doctor.
Whats that right there.
She reached and got the key off the board behind her. Youll owe for two nights, she said.
Look at the lock, Bell said.
The man didnt move. Moss was walking forward on his elbows holding the shotgun. He could see no higher than the mans waist and he didnt know what kind of gun he was carrying. Drop the gun, he said. Do it now.
Bell was standing with his hands in his back pockets. He leaned and spat. Deputy Hays here believes it was done by a rival party.
What?
Let me hold the coat.
He turned the flashlight off and pitched it onto the bed and went back to the window and looked out. Drone of a truck passing out on the highway. He waited till it was gone.
The trees and buildings taking shape. He looked at Moss and gestured with his chin.
Back up. Some more.
Puede andar? he said.
Id say thats a reasonable guess.
Hard to say. We might of just missed him.
The one in the long coat stopped with the others.
Chigurh stood with his back to the brick wall and fitted a fresh clip into the pistol. The rounds were taking out the glass in the doors and splintering up the sashwork. The foyer light went out. It was still dark enough in the street that you could see the muzzleflashes.
WHEN BELL WALKED INTO the cafe on Tuesday morning it was just daylight. He got his paper and went to his table in the corner. The men he passed at the big table nodded to him and said Sheriff. The waitress brought him his coffee and went back to the kitchen and ordered his eggs. He sat stirring the coffee with his spoon although there was nothing to stir since he drank it black. The Haskins boys picture was on the front page of the Austin paper. Bell read, shaking his head. His wife was twenty years old.
The man didnt even seem to notice. His thoughts seemed elsewhere.
Is this it? Bell said.
Lets go, Brian. Hes drunk.
Moss leaned forward with his elbows on the back of the seat.
Its ten. Deceased. We forgot about old Wyrick. Its ten.
He made his way up the street to a small park or zocalo where the grackles in the eucalyptus trees were waking and calling. The trees were painted white to the height of a wainscot and from a distance the park seemed set with white posts arrayed at random.
Yessir. That we know about.
Dont look away. I want you to look at me.
I think I went my own self. Snuck in.
He stood listening at the door. Then he punched out the lock cylinder with the airgun and kicked open the door.
Yes they are.
Step back from the door.
There was a junction in the ductwork about ten feet down the shaft and he could see the end of the bag sticking out. He turned off the light and stood listening. He tried listening with his eyes shut.
All right.
Bell nodded. That we know about, he said.
She looked under the counter. There used to be a sort of a one. Wait a minute. I think this is it.
Mexican black tar.
I want to keep the one I got and get another one.
He crossed Ryan Street with blood sloshing in his boots. He pulled the bag around and unzipped it and shoved the shotgun in and zipped it shut again. He stood tottering. Then he crossed to the bridge. He was cold and shivering and he thought he was going to vomit.
Drop me there.
They were stepping off the curb into the roadway to go around him.
Bell looked at Torbert. Torbert leaned and spat.
At that moment Moss realized that he was not going to open the bathroom door. He was going to turn around. And when he did it would be too late. Too late to make any more mistakes or to do anything at all and that he was going to die. Do it, he said. Just do it.
Pressed jeans. The man stood there. Then he came in. Then he crossed slowly to the bathroom.
Torbert was standing at the corner of Bells desk. He waited a minute for the sheriff to continue but the sheriff didnt continue. Torbert stood there. Then he looked away. I wish you hadnt of even told me, he said.
Moss laid a hundred dollar bill on the counter. The clerk put down the magazine.
Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?
There was a break in the firing and Chigurh turned and pushed his way through into the hotel lobby, the bits of glass crackling under his boots. He went gimping down the hallway and down the steps at the rear of the hotel and out into the parking lot.
Wendell drew his pistol and opened the door. Sheriffs department, he called.
The phone never rang. Something woke him. He sat up and looked at the clock on the table. Four thirty-seven. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached and got his boots and pulled them on and sat listening.
He went to the door and turned off the overhead light and came back and stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew what was coming. He just didnt know when. He got up and went into the bathroom and pulled the chain on the light over the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a washcloth from the glass towelbar and turned on the hot water and wet the cloth and wrung it out and wiped his face and the back of his neck. He took a leak and then switched off the light and went back and sat on the bed. It had already occurred to him that he would probably never be safe again in his life and he wondered if that was something that you got used to. And if you did?
He looked at Chigurh. He looked at the new day paling all about. Chigurh shot him through the forehead and then stood watching. Watching the capillaries break up in his eyes. The light receding. Watching his own image degrade in that squandered world. He shoved the pistol in his belt and looked back up the street once more. Then he picked up the bag and slung the Uzi over his shoulder and crossed the street and went limping on toward the hotel parking lot where hed left his vehicle.
He slipped out of the coat and handed it over and Moss handed him the bill.
He undid the brass latch and the buckles on the case and began to take the packets of money out and to stack them on the bed. When the case was empty he checked it for a false bottom and he checked the back and sides and then he set it aside and began to go through the stacks of bills, riffling each of the packets and stacking them back in the case. Hed packed it about a third full before he found the sending unit.
Blood.
He sat on the bed thinking things over. He got up and looked out the window at the parking lot and he went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and came back and sat on the bed again. He took a sip and set the water on the glass top of the wooden bedside table. There is no goddamn way, he said.
Excuse me, he said. Leaning against the chainlink fence. His bloody footprints on the walk behind him like clues in an arcade.
Chigurh picked up the signal from the transponder coming across the high span of the Devils River Bridge just west of Del Rio. It was near midnight and no cars on the highway. He reached over into the passenger seat and turned the dial slowly forward and then back, listening.
Chigurh drove slowly along the row of motel rooms with the window down and the receiver in his lap. He turned at the end of the lot and came back. He slowed to a stop and put the Ramcharger in reverse and backed slightly down the blacktop and stopped again. Finally he drove around to the office and parked and went in.
The old man waited for more. Moss pushed himself up. The bench was bloody. Ive been shot, he said.
She came with his eggs and he folded the paper and laid it by.
Moss handed him the bills and unshouldered the zipper bag to the sidewalk and struggled into the coat. The boy folded the bills and put them in his pocket and stepped away.
No. Just take me downtown.
Yessir.
He stood holding the bill in one hand. He looked at the blood on his fingers. What happened to you?
Not this one.
Could use a set of tires.
When Chigurh came down the steps and out the front door of the hotel he had a towel wrapped around his upper right leg and tied with sections of window blind cord. The towel was already wet through withblood. He was carrying a small bag in one hand and a pistol in the other.
He got the shotgun out of the bag and laid it on the bed and turned on the bedside lamp.
The helicopter arrived and circled and set down in a whirl of dust out on the bajada.
Ive been shot.
You want to change rooms or you want another one besides the one youve got?
The Cadillac was crossways in the intersection and there was gunfire in the street. He stepped back into the doorway of the barbershop. The clatter of automatic riflefire and the deep heavy slam of a shotgun rattling off the facades of the buildings. The men in the street were dressed in raincoats and tennis shoes. They didnt look like anybody you would expect to meet in this part of the country. He limped back up the steps to the porch and laid the pistol over the balustrade and opened fire on them.
He paid and put the key in his pocket and climbed the stairs and walked down the old hotel corridor. Dead quiet. No lights in the transoms. He found the room and put the key in the door and opened it and went in and shut the door behind him. Light from the streetlamps coming through the lace curtains at the window. He set the bags on the bed and went back to the door and switched on the overhead light. Old fashioned pushbutton switchplate. Oak furniture from the turn of the century. Brown walls. Same chenille bedspread.
When he got to the corner there was only one man standing in the street. He was at the rear of the car and the car was badly shot up, all of the glass gone or shot white. There was at least one body inside. The man was watching the hotel and Chigurh leveled the pistol and shot him twice and he fell down in the street. Chigurh stepped back behind the corner of the building and stood with the pistol upright at his shoulder, waiting. A rich tang of gunpowder on the cool morning air. Like the smell of fireworks. No sound anywhere.
Come on Brian.
You think this boy has got any notion of the sorts of sons of bitches that are huntin him?
Do you speak english?
Thats the Hotel Eagle.
By the time theyd figured out where the fire was coming from hed killed one and wounded another. The wounded man got behind the car and opened up on the hotel.
Yessir.
When he reached the place where the river actually passed beneath the bridge he stopped and stood looking down at it. The Mexican gateshack was just ahead. He looked back down the bridge but the three were gone. A grainy light to the east. Over the low black hills beyond the town. The water moved beneath him slow and dark. A dog somewhere. Silence. Nothing.
A cat that was crossing the courtyard stopped. Then it went on again.
Globes of orange light hung from the lampstands. The world receding. Across from the park was a church. It seemed far away. The grackles creaked and swayed in the branches overhead and day was coming.
Se?or, Moss said.
The middle of the packet had been filled in with dollar bills with the centers cut out and the transponder unit nested there was about the size of a Zippo lighter. He slid back the tape and took it out and weighed it in his hand. Then he put it in the drawer and got up and took the cut-out dollar bills and the banktape to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet and came back. He folded the loose hundreds and put them in his pocket and then packed the rest of the banknotes into the case again and set the case in the chair and sat there looking at it. He thought about a lot of things but the thing that stayed with him was that at some point he was going to have to quit running on luck.
There aint nobody here.
All right.
Thats right. No reason in the world.
He walked out and stood on the sidewalk. No one there. He went back in and searched the room. He looked in the closet and he looked under the bed and he pulled all the drawers out into the floor. He looked in the bathroom. Mosss H&K machinepistol was lying on the sink. He left it there. He wiped his feet back and forth on the carpet to get the blood off the soles of his boots and he stood looking at the room. Then his eye fell on the airduct.
He was still holding the revolver in his hand. What are you thinkin? he said.
Si, Moss said. Si. He rose and stood swaying. He took the packet of bloodsoaked bills from the overcoat pocket and separated a hundred dollar note and handed it to the old man. The old man took it with great reverence. He looked at Moss and then he stood the broom against the bench.
He and Torbert drove out in Torberts four wheel drive truck. All was as theyd left it.
He stood on the chair with the flashlight in his hand. He turned on the light and laid the lens up close against the galvanized metal wall of the duct so as to mute the beam and ran the hook down past the bag and turned it and brought it back. The hook caught and turned the bag slightly and then slipped free again. After a few tries he managed to get it caught in one of the straps and he towed it silently up the duct hand over hand through the dust until he could let go the pole and reach the bag.
Lets go, Brian. Goddamn.
