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Payne pushed the key on-screen that read CALL BACK.

Jim Byrth answered on the first ring.

“Howdy, Matt. Thanks for getting back so quick. You must be sitting around bored to tears. How are things in Philly?”

“Hey, Jim. On the contrary, I wish I was bored. Look, I may have to break off this conversation, but I wanted to at least return your call. What’s going on?”

“I just walked out of a titty bar—”

“Lucky you. Congratulations,” Payne interrupted, sharply sarcastic. “You called to tell me that?”

Byrth was quiet a moment, then said, “What’s crawled up your ass, Marshal?”

“Sorry. I am a little pissed right now.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Not right now. I have to get back to dinner. You go.”

“Okay, I’ll make this quick. Can you run some Philly names and addresses through your system for me?”

“Sure. What’s it in regard to?”

“I reckon it’d be a long shot if I asked you if you knew what Pozole was,” Byrth said, and before Payne could reply, he added, “It’s a Mexican stew.”

Payne grunted. “So you called to talk about food?”

“You remember your buddy El Gato?” Byrth said, ignoring that.

The Cat.

Payne’s memory flashed with an image of a defiant Delgado, his hands and feet taped to a chair in a hellhole of a Philly row house.

Having just found Amanda captive there and cut her free, Matt had put the muzzle of his .45 between Delgado’s eyes. He wrestled with the impulse of blowing Delgado away, if not as payback for kidnapping Amanda, then to honor all the young Hispanic girls he had raped and tortured—including cutting off the head of one teenaged Honduran. In the end, Payne had decided against “shooting them all and letting the Lord sort them out,” and allowed the Cat what turned out to be at least his ninth life.

“Where’s this going?” Payne said. “The bastard’s dead. You saw to that.”

You tossed a black bean at Delgado’s bound feet—then turned a blind eye when our informant put a bullet in his head.

Not that the sonofabitch didn’t deserve what he got. Especially considering what he no doubt was going to do with Amanda, whether or not he got a ransom for her.

You’re probably tumbling another bean across your knuckles as we speak.

Is it white—or black?

—

Byrth had told Payne, also on their way to the airport for Byrth’s flight back to Texas, about the Mier Expedition, led by Texas Ranger John Coffee Hays in the 1840s.

Hays and Big Foot Wallace had pulled together a group to invade Mexico. South of the border, however, they found that they’d severely underestimated their target.

They were captured.

“The order came down to execute every tenth man,” Byrth explained.

Black and white beans were put in a pot to determine who lived and who died. A man drawing a black bean was shot. Those who drew the white beans lived to carry the tale back to Texas.

Byrth had then explained why he had no remorse for the informant’s “self-defense” killing of Delgado. Beyond the unspoken fact that it had been what Payne considered payback for all those whom the brutal Delgado had harmed, it also eliminated paying for courts and prisons.