The Council of Ten by Jon Land Page A

us?”
    The boy’s eyes bulged with fear. He tried to mumble something.
    “I’m gonna blow your brains out! You like that idea, man?”
    The boy wet his pants.
    Marco heard the dripping sound, looked down, and snickered.
    “You fucking baby! You gonna shit next, stink up our house? You fucking baby gringo pisspants!”
    Marco shoved him against the wall, holding his hair in one hand and the gun in the other.
    One of the boys Miguel was holding started to sob. Miguel slammed him into a table.
    “You boys think you can fuck with us!” Miguel charged. “You think we’re stupid spics who can’t read or nothing? Well, we’re smarter than you asswipes. When you playin’ our game, you don’t make up your own. You want to work for us, we give you your cut, you don’t take it.”
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said the boy with one side of his face swollen.
    Miguel patted the bruise tenderly. “It’s good you don’t lie, gringo.” He slammed the boy’s head against the table again. “But bein’ sorry, it ain’t good enough for us.” He was speaking to all three of them now. “You boys worked good for us in the beginning, but if we let you out of this, word would get out that you can fuck with the Riveros, and we can’t have that. So we gotta do all three of ya. We’ll make it look like the creep on the floor over there did it. Nobody’ll know the difference. You boys should have stuck to the deal.”
    When Miguel had shifted toward the still prone stranger to make his point, he had noted something was wrong, but it didn’t seem important enough to be bothered with. The stranger’s position had perhaps shifted. Maybe his breathing had steadied.
    No matter.
    The rest happened very fast. His new position allowed an easy draw of the pistol from his armpit holster for Selinas. He had packed numerous other weapons on the chance that the Riveros would have searched him and found the gun. But the gun was what he needed now if he was going to get the boys out of this. Their presence had been unexpected and had necessitated him keeping up the ruse longer than he would have preferred.
    He went for Miguel first, not because he was charging as Selinas lurched to his feet gun in hand, but because shooting Marco now would almost assure the involuntary pulling of his trigger and the splattering of the boy’s brains across the wall. It took two bullets to halt the powerful Miguel and by that time Marco had the gun out of the boy’s mouth and was bringing it around.
    Selinas dove to the floor and rolled. Behind him a bullet from Marco blew a lamp apart. A measure of the room’s light faded. Another round exploded in front of him as he snapped to a halt. Marco was about to fire again when Selinas let go a round. The glazer bullet, composed of hundreds of tiny pellets, blasted into his shoulder and tore his arm halfway from its socket. Marco pitched backward screaming.
    Selinas rose to his feet.
    “Get up!” he ordered the three boys who had all collapsed tight to the floor. “Get up!”
    Finally, they did, slowly until Selinas lifted one bodily to his toes.
    “Get up and get out of here!”
    The one who’d wet his pants stood shaking with arms wrapped around himself against the wall.
    “Help your friend,” Selinas told the other two. Of course, his employer’s instructions would have been to kill the boys. They had seen much too much here tonight, but so long as no one else found out no complications could result. “Take their Cadillac to get home,” he continued. “Ditch it a few miles from where you all live. You can use the walk.” One of them started to speak. “No questions. Move!”
    They were gone seconds later.
    Selinas walked over to Marco and leaned over him. Marco’s eyes had gone glassy and the shock had forced his teeth to slice right through his lip. The glazer bullet had done quite a job on his shoulder. Selinas could see the sinews of ruined ligaments, cartilage, and muscle intermixed with