3. / Wretched Business
Two vehicles bump along the dirt road to the compound near Culiacan. Lisiado drives the sedan, Esteban Gomez sitting beside him looking more anxious by the kilometer. The work truck, driven by Philomena, with Marisol and Ché in the back, follows them.
Lisiado slows at the sight of the car sitting in the middle of the road. Eduardo's scarlet Ferrari has been abandoned there, the red lacquer of the hood discolored by a coolant leak. He pulls past it and stops, gets out to examine it more closely. Philomena parks the truck behind him and gets out. The youngsters hop out. Ché darts over to his father, following a few paces behind him, looking at everything Lisiado looks at and mimicking his reactions with a solemn face. There is a bullethole, only one, just behind the wheelwell on the driver's side. Judging by the angle of the car on the road, it spun out when the bullet hit it.
"He was over here, Señor Lisiado," says Philomena, pointing. "We took him back to the hacienda. It didn't seem right to leave him here." Marisol stands beside the truck, tears running down her cheeks. She stares at the dusty ground as if her father is still lying there. She manages to look heart-broken and blood-thirsty at the same time, which is quite a feat.
The blood-stained ground isn't far from the car. He was pursued; the assassins, whoever they were, managed to catch up and disable the Ferrari. Probably went around him when the car stopped. Eduardo would have gotten out of the car - no use being a sitting duck, the damned thing wasn't armor-plated, after all - and in the ensuing struggle, had been stabbed to death. Had he taken the knife from the kitchen on the way out to the garage? Or had one of Philomena's mysterious intruders brought it along for some reason?
The scene at the hacienda is horrific; the reek of death and the buzzing of flies is worse than anything he's envisioned. Almost, he wishes he hadn't brought Ché, or that he'd had the foresight to suggest Philomena stay in town with the children until he gave the go-ahead. He curtly orders them to stay in the truck as he tours the grounds with Esteban, who begins puking almost at once.
The limousine has fish-tailed onto the front walk - the tire marks streaking the white granite - and Tomas is slumped over the steering wheel with half his skull gone. God, they're everywhere, inside and out, some of them men he's known for as long as he's been with Gomez...what's left of them. Before fleeing to Guadalajara, Philomena and Marisol placed Eduardo into one of the chest freezers. Thankfully, the generators are still working, so at least what they've been sent to retrieve is intact.
Two people, Philomena said? Impossible. Lisiado looks around at the carnage and shakes his head. Ten men in the house alone, and at least four of them he knows were tough fighters. Felix lies out near the workers' quarters, his head dented like an eggshell. Out back, in the infirmary, Danny has a tight cluster of bullet wounds in his chest. There is no sign of the purported prisoner, but on the floor lies a shock collar, as if discarded, while the remote rests on a countertop. It would seem, if there was a prisoner, that the invaders took her. Was she one of them, or was she the CIA operative Eduardo believed her?
"Jesus, Lisiado, what are we going to do?" asks Esteban. He's pale, shaking slightly; today is surely the first time he's ever seen a body that wasn't laid out in a casket, let alone wholesale carnage like this.
"A mass grave for the others," he says, determined not to let his friends rot. "There's some heavy machinery they used to clear away the buildings that were destroyed in the fire last December. It's the decent thing to do," he says at Esteban's half-formed protest. "No, it's not going to be easy, it's not going to be pleasant, but I am going to do it, and you are going to help me." Since Lisiado is, technically, old enough to be the boy's father, Esteban accepts his judgement with a wince and a nod.
"First, you and I need to get the bodies out of the house so Philomena and the children can come in. I saw a wheeled table in one of the outbuildings. We can use that to move them."
There are another dozen men crumpled in and around the garage, the labs, the workshops. Lisiado is in shock, and Esteban fell behind a while ago. More than two dozen good people, dead, and for what? For another cartel to steal a prize? To put the Gomezes out of business? It wasn't the CIA, he knows that much. They would still be occupying the place, collecting evidence; Philomena and Marisol would be in custody.
All he can do is what he must: bury the dead and bring Eduardo home. The infirmary becomes a morgue. He and Esteban shuttle bodies back there for nearly an hour, retching, gagging, but doing their grim duty nonetheless. Philomena puts the children to work cleaning. Ché does as he is told, his round face screwed up with disgust. Marisol tries to get out of it, but surprisingly, Esteban is stern with her. She wanted to come? Then she must work as the rest of them are working. She is no princess to sit in her room and paint her nails while the rest of them slave. By the time the two men leave the house to gather up the bodies around the perimeter, Philomena has organized cleaning supplies and has the children saying the rosary with her.
The bodies that were outside are even worse than the ones from the house. Lisiado and Esteban both have repeated dry heaves at the corpses, most of which show signs of having been scavenged by animals. "There's diesel fuel," suggests Esteban, looking at a pitiful tangle that was once a man named Rogelio. "We could burn them..."
Lisiado shakes his head. Rogelio still owed him money from their last poker game. A trifling amount - they'd laughed about it, since Rogelio so rarely lost a bet. "I'll win it back from you later," he'd joked, but this was no man's idea of victory. "If we burn them," he says with careful patience to the young man, "there will be smoke. Outsiders will know someone is here. Do you want the people who did this to come back?"
Esteban is horrified. "No, of course not! You're right, I wasn't thinking, I just thought it would be faster..."
"There's still some risk in using the backhoe," sighs Lisiado, "but even I am not willing to dig such a grave by hand."
By late afternoon, all the bodies are in the "morgue". Esteban is scouring the hacienda for all confidential information, while Lisiado has found a blueprint of the compound and studies it, trying to decide the best location for the burial site. In the event that his employer wishes to revive this thrice-cursed operation - it has been raided twice within the past half year and its former occupant, Señor Barillo, was also brought down violently, allowing for their take-over - it must not interfere with the wells, or the drainage field for the septic system. It should, ideally, not be too far from the improvised morgue; this chore is painful enough as it is.
The kitchen is tolerably clean and odor-free by the time Philomena calls them to supper. None of them has much appetite, even Ché, who his father has always jokingly accused of having a hollow leg. Esteban's having a hard time swallowing; probably thinking of the body they carried out of here, its face black. Someone smashed the man's windpipe and let him choke to death, right over there by the laundry room...
He's taken the precaution of throwing the breakers on everything at sundown - except the freezer. The less obvious it is that they are occupying the hacienda, the less chance of having unwelcome company. Lisiado doesn't trust Marisol not to disobey and turn on the lights, or one of the others, including himself, to forget out of habit. He and Esteban will take turns standing guard, for what good that will do. Two men against a force that slaughtered two dozen? It's going to be a long night.
Numerous guns were scattered around the bodies. Lisiado collected them during the clean-up, and now checks each of them for ammo. How long has it been since he made a habit of carrying a gun? Oh, he practices enough to be able to hit a target, but targets don't shoot back. Targets hold still while you ready your weapon.
"You can shoot, can't you?" he asks Esteban, wishing there was time for a practice session.
"We had those contests on Sunday afternoons, remember?" Of course, he remembers, now that he thinks of it. How can he forget the memory of Dolores, eight-and-a-half months pregnant with Ché sneezing so hard from cordite fumes that she wet herself? She'd made a nice grouping in the center of the target, though. Eduardo and Ernesto stopped laughing about her accident when she demanded her winnings before going to change. After Ché was born, they'd gotten out of the habit - after all shooting was a noisy business, and Nestor didn't want to disturb his youngest grandchild's sleep.
"Good. Take this, Esteban. It's loaded - and for god's sake, make sure you know who you're shooting at."