It was an unpleasant experience to repeat - a hasty exit from Culiacán, with Sands in his passenger seat and neither of them inclined to talk.
El drove steadily and at the speed limit, nothing to distract him from his thoughts.
He'd been under no illusions about Sands; he'd known men in some ways like him. He was a poisonous enemy and a highly uncertain ally.
Knowing what he now did, it was no surprise that he had shot Ramírez. He might even have done the same. But the way he'd chosen to do it - seeing him talk with Ramírez so easily, and then kill without warning - it made him reflect back over his time with Sands, and wonder if he'd done anything that Sands would hold a grudge for when he considered him to be of no more benefit. Sands could justify killing over very little, and El had used him and drugged him when he was alone and suffering.
He hadn't thought back to that in recent weeks, but he was left looking at it now.
Sands often made him look at himself in ways he usually chose not to.
When he had agreed to take Sands along three months earlier, he had planned to be rid of any further threat from the remnant Barillo clan, and then be rid of the man.
That was still his plan now.
They would stay overnight in Mazatlán again before he faced the long drive back to the village tomorrow. It was one of Sands' requested 'decent-sized towns', and he would leave him there, get the man out of his life and that of his people.
And maybe find out if he intended to kill him. El had no immediate concerns over that, since it had been tried by better killers than Sands.
Though if Sands did want him dead, he would most likely wait a month or longer, and then dissolve in out of the night. Sands preferred to fight only when he had an advantage.
He had more than a few qualms about leaving Sands to roam loose around Mexico. He knew too much about him, far more than just the name of a village.
His only choices were to live with the risks, or to shoot him now, and that he wouldn't do.
But the idea of just leaving Sands in Mazatlán filled him with a vague, slithering guilt he knew of old he couldn't ignore. It would perhaps be unfair to abandon Sands in the same town as Honaker. Sands might also see it as further reason to consider El an enemy. He could easily take Sands to a different town before he went home, Durango or Tepic.
Though Sands had enemies in Lázaro Cárdenas too. He probably knew unsavoury people in every city in Mexico.
Shit.
His guilt was irrational, that was the biggest frustration. Sands would survive on his own, at least for as long as either of them was likely to.
He decided to just ask him where he wanted to go, and then Sands would be leaving through his own choice, and not because El pushed. He didn't look forward to the idea of a possible drive to Yucatán, but it was a solution his conscience would let him live with.
The journey to Mazatlán was fast, routine, and he headed for a different area of the city, away from where they had stayed before. It was better to avoid any possible connection with their earlier visit.
He booked them into the second hotel he tried, then returned to the car for his case and his passenger. Sands followed him as easily as ever into the hotel and to the bottom of the stairs, then stopped dead as El took the first two steps. "Where's the desk?"
El stopped too, only half-turning back. "It doesn't matter."
"I need to get the key to my room."
"You don't have a room. You're in mine."
Sands reached out a hand to find the stairway wall, and propped himself against it, head back to the plaster and his feet crossed at the ankles. His hair slid over the plastic, glimpse of polished scar-skin and darkness beyond the frame that curved back to his ear. "Well, I'm more than a little disappointed in you, El. I kill just one guy for my own personal reasons, and rather valid ones I have to say, even by your odd standards, and suddenly you don't trust me to be on my own again."
"Shut up!" He was fairly sure Sands knew there was no-one close enough to overhear, but it still wasn't a discussion he wanted to have in a hotel entrance.
"Is there a problem? You sound like you might be a little nervous." Sands stayed exactly where he was, smiling faintly, a stark black and white contrast under the fluorescents.
El chinked his room key against the chains on his cuff a couple of times, then started back up the stairs again, his steps steady and even by habit as he watched over his shoulder.
Sands had ignored the deliberate sound, but his head tilted towards him the instant he moved, and he slid himself away from the wall to follow.
El looked to the stairway again before he reached the corner, the footsteps echoing clear behind him continuing to reassure.
He had thought Sands would come with him, rather than take the annoying alternative of trying to find out for himself which room his personal driver was in later, but it was hard to assume anything about him. His cane was in the bag he carried, he could have booked and found his own room. But having Sands tapping his way around the hotel would defeat the point of this.
He let himself into the room on the second floor, and dropped his guitar case heavily onto one of the beds. "If you want to get your own room, you find another hotel."
Sands stood by the door in silence, his head slightly angled, perfect mimicry of someone watching him, thoughtful. "My old acquaintances really do have you rattled, don't they?"
El sat on the bed alongside the case, opening it and taking out the cleaning kit. "The CIA don't care that El Mariachi came out of hiding to attack more cartel," he said. "They will only be interested in me if they hear that I'm linked to you."
"So we're back to me creeping in from the car and then lurking shut up indoors. How charming. I'm so glad you felt the urge to discuss this with me first."
He checked the levels of solvent, degreaser, oils. He had a loose idea from the morning's cleaning, but he'd been tired, distracted.
At least he felt awake now.
"I don't care what you think. I don't want those people coming to my home." He couldn't mess this up, make mistakes, not now, not when Sands would be out of his life in just another day or two.
Sands was still, standing on the edge of his vision, his shoulder to the wall. El looked up at him. "This isn't a good town for you," he said.
"So give me the name of one that is," Sands said instantly, high and saw-tooth edged. "I believe you're familiar enough with the problem. Any advice to spare?"
He was going to need some more patches.
He had never managed to hide for longer than a few years himself.
"You have to leave Mexico."
"I'll want a passport for that."
"You don't have one?"
"Several. Some are even in places where I can still get at them. And every last one of them's stamped 'Undesirable, please return to sender' in large unfriendly letters on the cover."
El had imagined Sands would know the kind of people who provided passports without questions. But maybe the ones he knew were like Honaker. No stand-in contact would work where a photo was part of any deal.
He rolled up the cleaning pouch and put it back in the guitar case, closing the lid on the familiar smells of oil and degreaser. "Who were those 'friends' of yours, in Lázaro Cárdenas?" He had asked before, and hadn't been given an answer.
Sands tipped his head forward, eyebrows sloping high above the glasses. "Thinking of helping me out there, are you, El?"
"No."
He had done this for Carolina and for Mexico, removing the last of the people who had worked with Marquez, to protect his town and its people. Now he just wanted to go home.
"That's something of a pity. They're really not nice people, you'd be doing everyone a favour."
"Especially you," El said, flat.
Sands half-smiled, a crooked tilt that only he would call humour. "Well, yes, but that doesn't change the big picture, does it?"
"You won't tell me the big picture."
"If you're not interested, then no. I never bought a ticket to the 'Sharing is Fun' show." Sands lit a cigarette, left it stuck between his lips while he bent to rummage through the bag at his feet. The heavy metallic chinks drew El's eye instantly, instinctive, but no tension in the checking.
If Sands turned on him, it wouldn't be anything so obvious.
He stood, pulling the cane from the bag. "Right now, I could just use a piss," he said, and tapped his way along the wall that didn't hold El's bed until he found the bathroom door, closing it after him with only a gentle click.
El's eyes were fixed on the door, its surface slightly cracked and peeling.
He'd forgotten. Sands had stood by the door, waiting so apparently casual, knowing nothing about the room except the location of one bed and an angry mariachi.
There was no point in apologising for it. Sands wouldn't believe he wasn't intending to be petty, that it wasn't payback, would only despise attempts to explain it.
Knowing didn't stop him from wanting to.
He pushed the shotgun under the pillow, the guitar case under the bed, and lay back, his arms folded over his head.
In another day, maybe two, Sands and his problems and this careful braking of conversations that were about to go crashing downhill would be gone, and he could go back home.
He wanted to go home.
Home was his grounding. It was his peace.
He had lived the last two years that way, and it had been enough.
It had been... odd when he returned after Marquez, when the life there refused to settle on him. Strained and careful with the people whose lives went on unchanging while his veered erratically between them. But it had been different again through the long weeks with Sands – watching the man, studying him, his determination and the speed of that driven mind.
He'd lived the last months with the basics of casual conversation, the sensation of there being someone to talk to whenever he might have something to say. Sands' words in turn were often neither pleasant nor entirely welcome, but that had proved a challenge in itself, and of late he'd been returning more of Sands' own hard verbal tactics upon the man.
That only made Sands laugh, and encouraged more disparaging comments.
It was an odd thing to have grown used to.
Maybe it hadn't been good to spend as much time alone as he had after Carolina died.
No, he'd known it wasn't good. He just hadn't liked the alternatives any better.
'He won't be here for long.' He remembered Father Ríos' silent reaction to that, and swore. Sometimes he felt he was surrounded by people who knew what he would do long before he did.
He'd never found it easy to sever his connections to people, once formed. Not even to César, not with all he had become. 'Juanito,' César had called him, the joke that still strayed over from their childhood, and he hadn't wanted to lose that; but he had been forced to choose, or have everything taken from him a second time.
Choices for him were always about loss. Every decision snipped something more away from his life, wire-cutters slicing through one of his strings, leaving him stunted and forced to wind tighter to make himself fit.
He wondered what he was losing with the choices he made now.