One of Us. Michael Marshall Smith
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first appears, way off down the other road. I didn't notice it the first time, and she never does. She just stares at him, waiting. A generic smile isn't enough. We want him to know who we are. The bond operates in two directions. She cannot break it alone.
‘Help you?’ he asks eventually, peering at her. He stands by the car, back straight. He's not frightened, sees no need to be, but he's beginning to sense this is not a run-of-the-mill encounter. All he sees is a skinny woman in a good coat, a confidence too often used as something to hide behind. But there's something about us which disturbs him, reminds him of someone he used to be.
‘Hello Ray,’ she says, and then nothing else, waiting for him to remember.
Maybe it's something in her face that does it, puts him in mind of a grin long ago. His eyes open wider and some measure of confidence returns, his face relaxing a little. A picture of reliability. They look at each other for a while, but by now my attention is on the sound of the car. I know it's coming, big and silver and fast.
‘It's Laura, isn't it?’ Ray asks eventually. Her name is still there, near the front of his mind. Maybe it always has been, the way his has been in hers. He nods. ‘Yes, it's you.’ He gives a short, bewildered laugh, sticking a cigarette in his mouth. ‘I never forget a face.’ His left eyelid droops slowly, a little uncertainly. He clicks the wheel of his lighter and starts bringing it up to his face.
The wink is like returning to a childhood playground, and finding a swing still rocking as if you had only just this moment climbed down. It's enough.
The first shot goes straight through his left eye, blatting a baseball of shit out of the back of his skull. He's still trying to back away as the next bullet tears through his groin, and as another splashes through most of his throat. But then he's on the ground, legs spastically twitching, as we step forward to stand over him.
The dog watches it all, from its patch by the wall, but it's got problems of its own and Ray's going to die anyway.
She doesn't stop firing until the gun is empty. The body is still by then, and has nothing worth speaking of above the neck. The cigarette alone is almost intact, clamped between lips which look like something out of an autopsy wastebasket. She decides to leave it that way.
I put my hand in her pocket, and pull out another clip. Her hands are trembling a great deal by then, and I think she already knows she has failed. While she's still fumbling to reload, she finally notices the sound of a car hurtling towards her. Her head jerks up.
I know immediately that it's not the cops, and that I've seen the car somewhere before. Laura doesn't. She doesn't know what to think. Her mind is too empty and fractured to make a decision, and her body makes it for her.
We back away, stumbling over our feet and dropping the gun. Then we turn and run, expecting to die and asking only why it has taken so long.
We glance back for an instant, and see the car has pulled to a halt in the middle of the crossroads. The doors are open, and two figures are standing over Ray's remains. The men are of identical height, wear matching light grey suits, and have eyes that don't look right.
One picks up the gun; the other shouts ‘Shit! Shit shit shit!’ in a voice so deep and loud that I wonder how the buildings around us remain standing. He turns slowly towards us, a streetlamp directly behind his head casting a nimbus of yellow light.
We disappear round the corner before he sees us, and run until we fade into black.
I was in a bar in Ensenada, drinking a warm beer quickly and trying to remind myself that I hadn't murdered anyone, when my alarm clock caught up with me. Little bastard.
Housson's was full to the rafters and noisy as hell, and not just because everyone was talking very loudly. Two local alfalfa barons had come into the bar to celebrate some deal, perhaps a merging of their cash-crop-related dynasties, and an eight-piece mariachi band had joyfully latched onto them and settled in for the night. The rest of the bar was a Jackson Pollock of local colour: seedy photographers trying to charge tourists for pictures, leather-faced ex-pats peering around the place like affronted owls, and Mexicans setting about getting drunk with commendable seriousness. The bar looks like it was last redecorated about forty years ago, by someone who had the more functional end of the Wild West in mind: dusty floorboards, walls painted with second-hand cigarette smoke, chairs stolen from some church hall. The only nod in the direction of decor are the fading sketches of ex-barmen, renowned alcoholics and similarly distinguished local characters which adorn the walls. One of these had already come crashing to the ground, the casualty of a bottle hurled by a disgruntled drunkard, and all in all the atmosphere was just one step short of chaos.
I was tired and my head hurt, and I shouldn't have been there in the first place. I should have been out on the streets, or checking different bars, or even heading back to LA. Anywhere but here. She was nowhere to be seen, and as I hadn't had the time to go to a coincidence dealer before I left LA, I didn't expect her to just wander in. I was still pretty confident the Chicago lead was a deliberate false trail, but didn't have any particularly good reason to believe she'd have run to Ensenada either. I was just there to drink beer and avoid the problem.
The older of the two businessmen looked like he consumed a fair amount of his alfalfa personally, but he'd obviously done a bit of singing in the distant past and was now working steadily through his repertoire, to the delight of the assembled henchmen and underlings. One of these, a slimy little turd I pegged as the accountant son-in-law of one of the principals, was busy eyeing up a group of young local women who were cheerily clapping along at the next table. As I watched I saw him signal to the non-singing baron, who turned and clocked the girls. His smile broadened to the kind of leer which would make a werewolf look bashful and charming, and he beckoned the leader of the band over, more money already in his hand.
I was sitting to one side of a table crammed with tourists, the only seat that had been free when I'd entered over two hours before. The girls were red-faced from the day's sun, and fizzing with Margarita-fuelled bravado; the guys sipping their Pacificos sullenly and panning their eyes around the bar, probably trying to work out which of the locals was going to come and try to steal their women first. I could have told them that it was much more likely to be another American, probably one of the boisterous frat rats who were in town for some damnfool motorcycle race, but I didn't know them and couldn't be bothered. In fact, they were getting on my nerves. The girls were dancing in their seats in that way people do when they're letting themselves off a very short leash, and the nearest one kept banging into my arm and causing me to spill beer and cigarette ash onto jeans which hadn't been that clean when I'd pulled them on two days ago.
When I felt the tap on my shoulder I turned irritably, expecting to see the waiter who was working that corner of the room. I like attentive service as much as the next man, but Christ, there's a limit to how fast a man can drink. In my case that limit is pretty high, and yet this guy was still hassling me well before I'd finished each beer. It was good that the waiter was there, because the only way I could have gotten to the bar was with a chainsaw, but I felt he needed to calm down a little. I was in the middle of deciding to tell him to go away – or at least to do so after he'd brought me another drink – when I realized it wasn't him at all, but a fat American who looked like he'd killed a dirty sheep and glued it to his chin.
‘Fella asking for you,’ he shouted.
‘Tell him to fuck off,’ I said. I didn't know anyone in Ensenada, not any more, and didn't wish to start making new acquaintances.
‘Seems pretty insistent,’ the guy said, and jerked his thumb back towards the bar. I glanced in that direction, but there were far too many people in the way. ‘Little black fella, he is.’
In those parts this could mean the guy was actually black, or an indigenous Mexican Indian. Didn't really