Read Saint Death - John Milton #3 for Free Online

that it’s time to leave.”
    The boys snorted with derision. “That’s not what happened,” one of them said.
    Plato nodded to the boy’s bloodied face. “And his nose?”
    “He didn’t want to go, I guess. He threw a punch at me, I threw one back, I hit, he didn’t.”
    “Bullshit!” the boy with the bloody nose spat out.
    Plato looked at the two of them more carefully. They were well dressed, if a little the worse for wear. They had that preppy look about them: clothes from Gap, creases down the trousers, shirts that had been ironed, deck shoes that said they would be more at home crewing up a regatta schooner. Plato recognised it from the university at El Paso. A little too much money evident in their clothes and grooming, the supercilious way they looked at the locals. He’d seen it before, plenty of times. A couple of young boys, some money in their pocket and a plan to take a walk on the wild side of the border. They usually got into one sort of scrape or another. They’d end up in a rough, nasty dive like this and then they didn’t like it when they realised that they couldn’t always get their own way. On this occasion, Plato knew that the boys had just been unlucky or tight. There was plenty of touching in Eduardo’s, and a lot more besides that, if you were prepared to pay for it.
    He shepherded them towards the Dodge. As they reached the kerb, one of them––blond, plenty of hair, good looks and a quarterback’s physique––reached out and pressed his hand into Plato’s. He felt something sharp pricking his palm. It was the edge of a banknote. He turned back to the boy and grasped it between thumb and forefinger.
    “What is this?” Plato asked, holding up the note.
    “It’s whatever you want it to be, man.”
    “A bribe?”
    “If you want.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re trying to buy me off?”
    “It’s a Benjamin, look! Come on, man!––there’s no need for all of this, right? A hundred bucks makes it all go away. I know how things work round here, I been here before, lots of times, I know the way the land lies.”
    “No,” Plato said grimly. “You don’t. You just made things worse. Turn around, both of you.”
    Garcia gave out a deep rumble of laughter. “They don’t know who they’re talking to, right, Jesus? You dumb fucks––I know this man, I worked with him, I doubt he’s ever taken so much as a peso his whole life.”
    “Come on, man, I know we fucked up, what do we have to do to make it right? Two notes? Come on, two hundred bucks.”
    “Turn around,” Plato said, laying his hand on the butt of the Glock.
    “Come on, man––let’s say three hundred and forget all about this.”
    “Turn around now.”
    The boy saw Plato wasn’t going to budge and his vapid stoner’s grin curdled into something more malevolent. He craned his neck around as Plato firmly pressed him against the bonnet of the car. “What’s the point of that? If you won’t take my money I know damn straight one of your buddies will. You Federales are so bent you can’t even piss straight, everyone knows it. You’re turning down three hundred bucks bonus for what, your fucking principles ? We all know it won’t make a fucking bit of difference, not when it comes down to it, we’ll be out of here and on our way back to civilisation before you’ve finished your shift and gone back to whatever shithole you crawled out of.”
    “Keep talking, son.” Plato fastened the jaws of his cuffs around the boy’s right wrist and then, yanking the arm harder than he had to, snapped the other cuff around the left wrist, too. The boy yelped in sudden pain; Plato didn’t care about that. He opened the rear door, bounced the boy’s head against the edge of the roof and pushed him inside. He cuffed the second boy and did the same.
    “Later, Garcia,” he said to the big man as shut the door.
    “Keep your head down, Jesus.”
    “You too.”

 
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    8.
    THE LEACH HOTEL in Douglas,