Part 28 (2/2)

Every pair of eyes in the diner s.h.i.+fted toward him, but Zeke kept his focus on Enoch.

The little man did not smile. He nodded, just once. ”Yes, Mr. Prater. It is Mr. Prater?”

”I'm Zeke Prater,” he confirmed. Though how you knew that, I'd like to know.

”Here it is, then, Mr. Prater,” Enoch said, then took in the others with a sweeping glance. ”I know a way to have my revenge on the Matamoros cartel and if you will all cooperate, you can have your revenge as well. Revenge and more.”

”What do you mean, 'more'?” Lester asked, arms crossed.

A chair squeaked across the floor as Arturo Sanchez s.h.i.+fted to look at Enoch directly. ”The Lord has a poor opinion of revenge, Mr. Stroud.”

”Not in the Old Testament he don't,” Linda Trevino said. ”Go on, Mr. Stroud. If there's a way to fix these sons of b.i.t.c.hes, we're all ears. It won't bring my son back, but it'll ease my soul when I go to bed at night.”

Enoch looked at her, head bowed slightly, dark shadows beneath his eyes. ”Interesting that you should put it that way, Mrs. Trevino.”

”What way?” she asked, and Zeke could see she was unsettled. ”And how do you know my-”

Enoch clapped his hands on his thighs, still seated on the stool by the counter-so tiny in comparison to Vickers and yet somehow the focus of all attention.

”That's enough of what Mr. Vickers called 'preamble,' don't you think?” Enoch said, nodding as if in conversation with himself. ”I think so. There's only one way you folks are going to listen to the rest of what I've got to say without laughing me out of town or maybe stoning me in front of the town hall, and that's if you see what I can give you with your own eyes.”

Zeke frowned. His skin p.r.i.c.kled with a dark sort of antic.i.p.ation that he didn't like one bit.Whoever Enoch Stroud was, Zeke didn't want anything to do with the man. But when Enoch nodded to Vickers and Vickers produced the object he'd been fiddling with from his pocket, Zeke couldn't turn away. Several people muttered and Zeke saw the same unease he felt ripple through the diner.

”What the h.e.l.l's that supposed to be, some kind of tin whistle?” Lester asked.

”I don't-”Vickers started, a strange combination of apology and relief flooding his face.

”Just play the tune, Mr. Vickers,” Enoch said. ”Just play the tune.”

With a hitching breath,Vickers put the yellowed instrument to his lips and blew into it, one finger s.h.i.+fting across a trio of small holes on top. It was a kind of flute, strangely carved and with little streaks of dark brown along its shaft like war paint. The sound it emitted could not rightly be called music, but Vickers managed a sequence of discordant notes that had a certain melody when he repeated them a second and third time. It was one of the strangest displays of incongruity Zeke had ever seen, but something about the tune tugged at the base of his skull as if part of him remembered it, down in what Lester always called his lizard brain-the part that hadn't changed in people since cave days.

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