Spiral Read Online Free PDF

first trip, and he was eager to do well. He never relaxed. Despite the heat, he never undressed to his underclothes like the others; he was not going to be caught off guard. As Bias squatted down to the windowsill and carefully lifted the shade, he could feel Teodoro watching him. He knew the young man was trying to read something in his face. The adoration angered him. He had no patience with Anica's zealous eagerness to do the job.
The Indians kept their thoughts to themselves. God knew why they were doing it. They were outcasts as far as the Brigade was concerned, but the Brigade used them because they were the best at what they did. Prejudice had its practical limits. Bias himself tried not to think about it at all. It had to be done and he was doing it, so to hell with it. Teodoro, however, wore his Brigade pride on his forehead. Bias and Teodoro shared a cultural history: a criollo heritage, family wealth, staunch conservatism, fierce Catholicism, the Byzantine experience of the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, the fervent secrecy and brotherhood of the Brigade. But he felt no kinship. The boy's enthusiasm was repugnant to him.
"Binoculars!" Bias whispered, and reached back an open hand as he kept his eyes locked to the slit held open with the thumb of his other hand.
Teodoro grabbed the Zeiss glasses from a small bag by his cot and handed them to him.
"Hold the shade," Bias said. Teodoro crouched beside him and held the slit at precisely the same level. Bias put the Heckler automatic between his knees on the floor and adjusted the binoculars. "Poquito mas."
Teodoro raised the shade slightly, and Bias rested the front of the lenses on the paint-chipped sill. The weeds and matted vines were so thick he could see only glimpses of the street through the loops of brown vegetation. He saw the police cars and made out the crowd along the sidewalk. They were looking at something, and the way they were gathered it appeared that the gates were indeed the center of everyone's attention. Suddenly a man stood from behind a blur of weeds, and continued looking down at his feet, his big stomach forcing apart the loose sides of his sport coat as he wiped at the sweat on his face. Then a second man stood. He was taller, trim, well dressed. He wore a tie, a light summer suit; he stood straight and his hair was neatly combed.
Two other vehicles arrived, both vans, and Bias recognized the morgue wagon. The sweat under his arms turned cold.
"Damn!" He jerked away from the window. "Stay here. I've got to get a better look."
He didn't want to think. He concentrated on what his legs and feet were doing, down the stairs, turning, down again and into the entrance hall. At the bottom he doubled back, and burst out the door at the rear of the house that opened onto the long porch. Crouching, he followed the porch to the end of the house, paused, then stepped silently off and scrambled to the thickest undergrowth in the direction of the front gates. The cypress trees cut out the sunlight as he inched along on the spongy mat of desiccated leaves and twigs.
The scratchy transmissions of the police radios were audible now, but he still couldn't see anything. He crawled a few yards on his stomach and elbows until he came in line with the drive that led from the gates. The granular debris of dead cypress leaves stuck to his sweaty forearms and stomach and bit into his elbows as he raised the binoculars. He was fifty or sixty yards from the gates. At this distance the binoculars brought everything right up to his nose.
He twisted the focus adjustment, overcompensated, twisted it back, ignoring everything but the area at the bottom of the gates. The body came into focus, lying in the caliche. He recognized the suit first, and then Ireno's profile. Goddam, goddam. He stared hard, his eyes trying to crawl right through the lenses as he touched the eyepiece for even sharper magnification. Holding his breath, he saw the nail. He knew what was tied to it.