Read Online Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) by Craig McDonald - Free Book Online Page B

the seat's back, fingertips brushing her bare shoulder. The tactile contact could be interpreted as an accident. "His story," the Mexican girl said, "is supposed to be over. He is supposed to have died, something, I believe, like forty years ago." She smiled apologetically and it felt like she scooted a bit closer to me. "I don't know the details."
    But I did. Legends passed along the dusty, sweltering trails during the Pershing Expedition.
    Rodolfo Fierro was Pancho Villa's chief assassin. Fierro is the Spanish for "iron," and Rodolfo was certainly that. He was also a full-fledged psychopath ... a stone cold killer of epic proportions. He was born in El Fuerte, Sinaloa in some unknown year. He was gaunt, cold-eyed and often leering. The diseased fucker favored Stetsons --- a fact that made him more the asshole in my eyes.
    After a rout of the enemy at San Andrés, Villa once ended up with several hundred inconvenient prisoners. Supplies were running low and bullets were precious. It was "take no prisoners" time. But there was the vexing issue of those precious bullets. Fierro struck a bloody balance. He arrayed men in rows of three, according to height, best it could be arranged. He made some men squat and made some others stand on tiptoes. He ordered them to embrace one another ... to press bellies to backs. He killed three men with a single shot ... over and over...
    Juárez brought another slaughter. It was a similar situation: Several hundred prisoners were being held in a corral. Fierro was feeling "sporting." He had a table set out. He had an array of guns loaded and spread out on that table. Several men stood by him to reload his empties. Fierro told the prisoners any man who cleared the fence at the back of the corral before Fierro could shoot him would go free. At day's end, Fierro's hands were cramped and bloody. He was seen soaking them in a horse trough. No Mexicans had cleared the fence that day. There were high piles of bodies with holes in their backs, left swelling and rotting in the Juárez sun.
    At the battle of Tierra Blanca, 1913, Fierro, on horseback, allegedly overtook a Federalist train. He hopped on board and single-handedly killed the entire crew. A railroad man from way back, Fierro stopped the train --- and earned a heady field promotion from Pancho Villa.
    But even el Carnicero's luck couldn't hold. His alleged end was almost too poetic to be accepted as true.
    Autumn, 1915: one of Pancho Villa's lieutenants, Tomás Urbina, something like a bastard brother to Pancho, stole a cache Villa's gold and silver --- the treasure whose location was allegedly recorded on a map hidden in Pancho's severed head.
    Villa and company rode out to confront Urbina and company. Villa got sentimental and weepy --- for a time. Suddenly, always-mercurial Villa turned on a dime. Pancho said, "Shoot him." Fierro was always eager to comply with a directive like that. Fierro dragged the execution out though --- maiming Urbina with surgically administered shots. Then Fierro and his crew loaded their horses with bars of recovered gold and silver and rode off in pursuit of Villa.
    Accounts differ regarding what happened next. One story has it that Fierro, horse heavy with bullion, drowned attempting to cross a rain-swollen stream outside Nuevo Casa Grandes. Others said he went down in a quicksand bog, screaming for help as his own men watched him sink down to hell, leaving only a hat floating on a bog.
    Either way, in mid-October of 1915, Rodolfo Fierro disappeared from history.
    Bud shook his head. "Jesus Christ. If the old bastard is alive, he'd be, what, around 80?"
    "Probably thereabouts," I agreed.
    The young poet nodded. "And Fierro's chasing Pancho's stolen head?"
    "Why not? Everybody else seems to be."
    "So what's next?"
    I shook loose another Pall Mall. My luck truly seemed to be improving --- I get to hold on to this one, too. "We head up to L.A. --- Van Nuys," I said. "I think it's time to have a colloquy with Mr.