If El was good enough to drag himself out of bed for dinner, he was good enough to get the hell out of the apartment, and the next day Sands relocated them all to a hotel. It was one of the places they'd scoped and rejected for the intended meet with Salinas. Not flash, but not too cheap, and not too far – even with the drugs, El wouldn't be feeling like a lengthy trip. That hadn't stopped El from hauling a doped up Sands half way across the country when it suited him, but Sands wasn't looking for an opportunity to repay.

As a bonus, Sands figured this way he'd get a little more time to himself without the sidekicks hanging around, but the mariachis banded together and insisted on rooms with connecting doors, just in case. That meant the three of them stuck to the familiar pattern of congregating in one room for endless sessions of tedious prattling. Sands took the only victory he was going to get by insisting on having the door locked when he didn't want to be disturbed.

Lorenzo disposed of their been-around-the-block-a few-times-too-many-now Chevy, switching it out for another battered vehicle of dubious providence, but otherwise they stayed inside, keeping out of sight. They had food delivered from a variety of places so nobody outside the hotel staff figured out they were set for the long-stay package. Sometimes they sent Fideo to collect their orders instead, as the least likely to be picked out of a crowd, and he came back reporting the area clear, no obvious watchers.

Sands didn't even get out to the end of the hall, his days spent trapped with laptop and radio and the brain-sucking zombies that inhabited daytime TV, and his boredom level was spiralling by the hour. He turned his attention back to some of those old, lingering questions about the sidekicks, passing time lazing quiet in the background beneath the games and the chatter, testing theories against observation. Well, he had to take his entertainment where he could find it.

And it was still worth his while trying to figure out exactly what angle the kid was planning to hit from when they announced they were leaving. After a week, El was a long way from healed, but he was a whole lot more mobile.

Sometimes the mariachis sat around and played cards to waste the hours beneath their chatter. Sometimes they plucked at their guitars instead, rolling through tune after tune or playing around with whatever patterns of notes dropped into their heads. Those times the music wandered oddly, and while the tempo stuck tight, the mood wasn't always headed the same way from each player. They didn't sing too often, thank fuck, not since the evening some neighbour got pissed and banged on the walls. Now they mostly kept it to the early afternoon, when there was nobody much around to annoy but the cleaners pushing carts up and down the hallways.

Sometimes they stole Sands' laptop.

It always started with El, which was fine, but then the sidekicks would invite themselves to join him, which was not so much, even though any files Sands considered important were in hidden folders locked down with passwords.

Sands didn't think El had spent a whole lot of time online before the two of them became acquainted – during most of the onward march of home computing, El had been hiding away in his desert dustbowl, where cable and wireless weren't exactly standard features of a des res – but regular exposure to technology had apparently convinced him of its benefits. El still wasn't an avid user, though, and he'd wander away once he had what he wanted, leaving the sidekicks to poke around out of boredom.

"Hey, El, you seen the stats on the new Para Lite Hawg? Forty-five sub-compact, ten plus one with a tac rail and only a three inch barrel."

El was stretched out along the bed, and he didn't bother to go take a look. "Forty-five is too much power for a small handgun, they get snappy. They should make it a nine millimetre with a few more rounds."

"Reviews say the grip's better, easier to handle," Fideo said, huddled up next to Little Lori by the screen.

"Have they fixed the reliability too?" Sands drawled past the rim of his coffee cup. "The old P10 had a nasty little reputation for feed jams. Not something I'd want to bet my life on." He stopped huffing breath over the liquid, and took a cautious sip. It flowed over his tongue with just the right burn, but he was wishing for the thousandth time he had his old AeroPress here. Coffee tasted like shit out of styrofoam.

"Never picked up a Para new," Lorenzo said with a grin. "Always let somebody else work through the manufacturing glitches."

"But you won't find too many law enforcement types carrying Paras. They pay the extra couple hundred for a Glock or a Sig." Sands raised his eyebrows obvious above the cup. "I try to avoid direct disagreements with the police."

"Good habit." The kid tossed the words back over his shoulder, light. "So how about a lasergrip instead? You seen the Crimson Trace sights for those Glocks of yours, El?"

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to tell me I can't shoot straight," El said, dry.

"Well, going by the latest evidence, maybe not," the kid teased. "When d'you last get your eyes checked? Maybe you could have used a little help."

"I could have used a few less people shooting at me," El said. "That would have been helpful."

"Or maybe you should just stay further away," Fideo said, fingernail tapping on the touchpad. "Take a look at the latest Leica range-finder here – it's the same inside as the 1200, but this one fits in your pocket."

"That would work, with a bazooka to get all those annoying walls out of the way." El's voice clung to his deadpan humour, but he was interested enough in that piece of kit to slide off the bed and check out the site.

Sands was more interested in the kid's newly-developed tolerance, and just how far it could be pushed. Among other things, the entertainment level over the last week had dropped off in an unfortunate way.

He left his experiment till the drunk had passed out for the evening, and El was tucked away in the bathroom, cleaning up before bed. El was still sleeping more because of the drugs.

Sands stretched himself relaxed over the armchair, wriggling back into it to swing Lorenzo's eyes around his way, and lighting himself a cigarette for that extra touch of provocation. "Shouldn't you be trying to talk him out of playing with guns, instead of encouraging him?" He breathed smoke out slow through his nose, dipped his head a little so he could almost be staring over the glasses. "Isn't that what a 'friend' would do?"

Lorenzo only shrugged. "He wouldn't do it if he didn't want to."

Sands smiled crooked around the filter between his lips. "That doesn't stop you lecturing the dipso when you feel like it."

Lorenzo swung the chair around away from the laptop, to look straight at Sands. "El likes it as much as you do, as much as we all do," he said after a pause. "He just won't say it."

Sands wasn't sure they all liked what they did quite equally; he was certain they didn't all like it in quite the same way. But it was interesting to see those flashes of a brain that came through when the kid flipped the off switch on his temper.

Sands thought the kid might actually be starting to like him, instead of just tolerating him. Well, that would fix itself fast enough - Little Lori still hadn't figured out how this was gonna work.

Sands didn't bother himself with the alco-drain's opinion; if the trend held, he'd drink himself right back into a stupor inside a couple of days and not give a goat's balls what went on around him. But poking into the why of that was at least a little more brain-stimulating than the TV zombies.

There wasn't much point asking the dipso direct. When he was half-way sober, he was defensive of his personal back-story, and when he was a few bottles down, he passed out. He never turned into one of those babbling, rambling drunks – if he did, El would likely have ditched him years back, and if not, Sands would have killed him already. Asking the kid wouldn't work either – Lorenzo didn't like him quite that much.

That left Sands with one other source to tease at, though El wasn't always entirely forthcoming either.

Sands waited till El finished brushing his teeth before he led the conversation around that way, because giving El an excuse to stop and think before he answered was always the wrong choice.

"So what's his deal with the bottle, anyway? What exactly is he running from?"

El half-turned, still patting at the water round his mouth with the hotel facecloth. The towels in this place were cheap and worn, but that wouldn't bother El. "Why do you assume he is?"

Sands lifted an eyebrow. "Everybody you know's running from something, El. Even that priest confessor of yours back in muletown was hiding from a world he didn't want to know about, from the guys who'd shoot one another for money." He twisted his lips, obvious and wry. "He must've been ecstatic when you showed up at his door."

El swung back to the sink, to the mirror that wouldn't have hidden him from anyone, and didn't hide him from Sands. The facecloth dropped to the counter with a soft flump. "What makes any of us who we are? His father liked to drink too much, his life has been difficult, and now he does the same."

"So that's how it is for you? Everybody doomed by their genetics, no free will?"

"No." El didn't answer slow, but the words were careful all the same. "I'd say more that we all live with what we've learned."

"So what have you learned?"

"To survive."

Sands raised his eyebrows, exaggerated and deliberate. "That's it? Will the last man standing please turn out the lights? Nothing more edifying to add?"

El reached out, hanging the facecloth back onto the hook on the wall. "There's more, but... that seems to be most of it."

And that was most of what Sands got that night too, because El wouldn't be sucked in any deeper.

The days in the hotel crept by with no sign of pursuit.

The kid started slipping out for food sometimes instead of the drunk. Sands was left with the walls of the two rooms, unseen and mostly untouched, the trap in his head as confining as the one around his body.

The days merged into the passing of weeks, quiet and slow and frustratingly similar.

A few weeks was more than long enough for Sands. And long enough for certain lingering loose ends to be cleared up.

He chose his evening for the weather, for the direction of the breeze, not too strong, and tied his timing to the sun. Sands had hung out his strongest 'do not disturb' signs through the late afternoon, and the mariachis' voices rippled through the door behind him, crashing and overlapping and settling back into murmur.

He pocketed the pay-as-you-go he'd had the dipso pick up for him on one of his food trips, and let himself out of the hotel room. He wasn't enthusiastic about his visibility for this part, but he didn't want interested ears listening in on his end of this conversation, and he sure as fuck didn't want any unfortunate background chit-chat leaking over the line the other way.

El would hear him leave, and be curious, but he wouldn't interfere.

Sands knew a little about the area round this hotel from their earlier investigations, enough to know where to head for and to make it there with the cane. He turned west, into the sun, the soft rays still warming over his cheek along the length of the street. Easy to follow the herd for a few blocks, crossing intersections when the people around him did, guided to avoid obstacles as much by feet and voices as by the cane. The cane just told the cattle on the streets not to go crashing into him, because he wasn't gonna be moving out of their way.

He headed south now, the sun fading from his skin in the long shadows of the buildings, and when the breeze stirred again he caught trees and green and open space through the ever-present burn of gasoline. He let the air tug him on, adjusting the rough street map in his head to the reality as he walked, detail and numbers adding layers, depth, to keep the trip back to the hotel simple when his nose would be no help.

The park was growing quieter as the sun lowered, most of the feet headed the other way past Sands, the natural distrust of the human species for deepening gloom.

Sands didn't give a bat's fart if it was dark in there, and that had been almost as true when he could still see.

The breeze steered him towards a grove of bigger trees, leaving the path for soft grass over hard soil, tracking the thick rustle of leaves with each sweep of air. The cane found him a good thick trunk among them, Sands invisible from the path now if anybody else was roaming the park at sunset, and his ears would know if someone was around.

He peeled off his glove, propped a cigarette between his lips, cupping a hand round the lighter as he touched it to the end and flicked up the flame. Heat flared on his skin, that bit too close and biting, but he sucked the burn into the smoke before he pulled his palm away.

The best lies worked because they were the truth, with all the evidence there to back them up.

He flipped open the cell and dialled the number.

He didn't get the silent delay this time, only the answer. "Figured it might be you. You're later than I thought."

"I wanted to give you plenty of time, make sure I'm getting the right answers."

"I got answers for you. Not sure if they're what you'd call the right ones." Her tone, light and easy, didn't much care what he thought.

"So spill and find out."

It wasn't going to go that fast, and the smile in her voice was no surprise. "You're not the only one who wants to know things, Sands. And since I'm doing you a favour here, I thought you might like to give a little in return."

Sands didn't like to give anything, but this was the price for dealing with Foreman. The smarter they were, the harder they'd screw you when they had you dangling.

He widened his own smile across the line. "What's your line of interest, sugarcheeks?"

Foreman's grin grew just as bright in return, and she'd always had the orthodontist-special teeth behind those barely-painted lips, stretching and parting in his head. "There's a lot of talk doing the rounds up here – I wanna know how much of it's for real."

Sands laughed, pure amusement he had no reason to hide. "I'm not sure there's a whole lot you could have heard that wouldn't be the truth, or close enough to it."

"You really ran some deal with that headcase vigilante out there? Hit the old Barillo clan, took out that Honaker fuck?"

Sands shrugged, the bare disinterest of old news filling his words. "A lot of people were annoyed at the both of us. It seemed prudent to pool resources until they were gone."

"Yeah, you finally found somebody else who matches your talent for pissing people off." She laughed across the line, genuine, or real close. "So which one of you actually killed the devious old bastard?"

"Oh, that was all El," Sands said, breezily. "Something of a short fuse, that one, not always the most reliable ally. I wanted Honaker alive a week or two longer myself, while he supplied me with the same information you're about to give up."

"So that's why you ditched him," she said, amusement tangling with curiosity, rich and thick across the line.

"I departed for less hostile climes," Sands said simply, smoke slipping out with the words. The best lies worked because they were the truth.

"So did you ever find out who he really was?" Foreman was way too smart to fall for the folk hero bullshit, but too persistent not to poke at a good mystery.

"He didn't say, and it didn't seem to matter." It really didn't, which was almost odd; Sands was a compulsive gatherer of information, and it should have been munching on his toes this whole time. But what the hell, he already knew most of what there was to know about El, a name wouldn't give him anything more.

And Foreman was just too fucking smart not to catch the anomaly. "You must be slacking off some, Sands, that doesn't sound your style at all." Her voice had dropped darker, instincts pricked, circling and seeking.

"I was planning to use his skill, not ghost his bio." Sands drawled the words long, bored. "There were a few other things tying up my lines of inquiry at the time."

"Yeah, I guess you had enough going down to keep you busy." Her voice light again, the hunter gone, and she bought it because that was the truth too.

"That's all you're asking this time, a little local colour for the prize?" It might not be the wisest move, taunting Foreman before she leaked his info, but Sands made a habit of playing it smart, not wise. "Your price is dropping like a junkie whore's, sweet cheeks." If it pissed her off, well, it would steer her back the way he wanted her.

But he got nothing from her except that crooked smirk she loved to turn on when she was winning. "Sorry, Sands, but I don't think you've got a whole lot left to offer me."

And that was an interesting reveal right there, even while the barb caught at his throat like cheap tequila. They really hadn't tabbed onto anything he'd been doing the last couple of years, outside of the flashiest episodes. "Maybe you just need to know the right questions to ask."

"Maybe." And the absence of any other follow-up meant she was growing as bored with the point-scoring part of this little chat as he was.

"So if you're finished with your cross-examination now, how about I get my verdict?"

"The order to let him die came straight down from heaven," she said, her tone falling easily into report style, brisk, efficient, disinterested. She was talking about El Presidente, and too well versed to say it over the line. "Way above where I can track it. And it came down in that vague, generalised kind of a way."

He knew the style. Somebody made a passing remark to a subordinate who might just pass it down another rung. No details, no paperwork and no accountability, because if it ever back-tracked to bite them on the ass, hey, it was just a lazy joke, and damn, some idiot really acted on that? "So who's the first to put anything in writing?"

"Slater." Just two steps up the staircase, the boss's boss. "No specifics, no names, just get someone in Mexico to keep a watch on Barillo. Drug guy's getting too cocky, too ambitious. Next step's Rothman who pegs you, because you're already in Culiacán and sitting on a couple of sources." Yeah, stuck on that dead end corruption detail that had been boring the fuck out of him for more than five months. That had been a big chunk of his decision to take the cash and go independent right there. "Copy says he left it to you whether to pull in the local AFN or run the watch alone."

And that could have swung either way, but when he'd run scans over the AFN he'd found someone interesting. Someone bored and bitter and perfectly corruptible, and as a side order, pretty enough to be worth a fuck.

Somehow he'd managed to miss the fact that the bitch had been corrupted from birth.

"That's all very nice to hear, candy lips, there's nothing like a bit of historical background to set things in perspective." The drawl was for show, and not designed to cover his impatience with the irrelevant sidetracking. "But what I really want to know is who the fuck sold me out?"

"Nobody."

His lips pinched hard and flat. "Meaning you don't know."

"Meaning nobody," she snapped. "There was no big conspiracy to hang you, Sands, there was just you. Maybe somebody decided to give you the extra rope down there just to see if you'd wrap it tight round your own neck, but the job was straight, and if you'd played it that way, it would've run the routine." Her voice lost the tight edge, softened into something close to sympathy. "The back-up headed in when you put out the call, but you weren't at the meet spot. And then the whole city went to hell, and looking for you just wasn't the main priority."

Sands didn't want anybody's fucking sympathy, and certainly not hers. "So now I get to be a legend all of my own, sugar cheeks." He plastered the smile on broad. "Spread the details anyplace you like, just don't go spilling the source."

She was laughing again, clear and real at his ear. "Like any fucker would believe me." Then the laughter was gone, but her humour still coloured the speculation. "Hey, since it's you we're talking about, they just might."

"So roll it on out there and find out," Sands said, his smile unconcerned. He wasn't giving her permission to do anything – he didn't have any influence over what she'd say, the choice was all her own, and that had been the gamble from the start. And if he picked up a little renewed interest from old Uncle Sam, well, the relatives would start looking in all the wrong places.

"Maybe I will," she said easily. It was laid out to be ambiguous, but Sands had something of a read on her, and if she planned on spreading it about, she'd either tell him that, flat fact, or fake him out like a thousand buck hooker. "Oh, and Sands, just one more thing."

"What's that, sweet thighs?"

"Don't call again." The phone clicked into silence by his ear as she hung up.

He flipped the cell closed, wiped it off with a cloth, and slid it into his pocket. He had no intention of getting back in touch.

Their working relationship had remained agreeable after he left his fingerprints on her little scheme only because he'd never put the pressure on. After this, she'd be poisonous, and that was never a pretty thing to watch. It had always been single use only material.

He shifted his weight into the wrinkled bark at his back, crossed his feet at the ankles and lit another cigarette, smoke trickling from his lips, sucked away with the breeze towards the buzz of the streets.

That was it. They were all dead, had been for two years, back on the Day of the Dead. No revenge to take, nothing left to chase.

And maybe it meant he could have gone back instead of running. If he really didn't have a personal nemesis waiting inside, and with most of the people who knew what he'd done conveniently dead, it wouldn't have taken too much effort to tidy up the dangling strings....

Gone back to disability and a pension, maybe a desk job typing up other people's slightly sensitive reports. Right.

He'd definitely grabbed himself the better end of that deal.

He dropped his smoke to the ground half-burned and screwed it into the grass with a boot tip. He didn't plan on decorating any particular stretch of lawn any longer then he had to, and the evening was already starting to cool for the walk back to the hotel, the last edge of sun sliding over his cheek as he moved out of the shade of the trees.

He dumped the cell in a trash can that got in the way of his cane a few blocks along.