Spy (15 page)

“No. I mean, yeah. I sort of knew. I guess I forgot. All mosques look pretty much the same to a guy like me.”

“You want to kiss my titties, Harry? This one? Or, this one?”

“Yes. Both.”

“Beg me, Mr. Brock.”

“Please. I beg you. I’m not kidding. I am sincerely begging here. This could be it for me. The swan song of Harry Brock.”

“There. Happy?”

“Oh god, yes. Now the other one.”

“Be gentle, Harry. That’s a good boy.”

W
HEN
H
ARRY WOKE
up for the second time that morning he realized he had a cigarette in his mouth and involuntarily took a puff. Nothing in recent memory had ever tasted so good. The girl reached over and plucked it from his lips so he could expel the smoke. Shit. He was still cuffed to the damn bed. He must have dropped off for a couple of minutes. The girl took a drag herself and then she said, “I know a joke.”

“Yeah? What?”

“A man is in bed with a woman. After they make love, the man says, ‘Do you smoke after sex?’ and the woman smiles at him and says, ‘I don’t know, I never looked.’ ”

Harry burst out laughing.

“That’s pretty good,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Fell asleep, huh?”

“For about twenty minutes.”

“Did you call?”

“Mmm.”

“You called? Holy shit. Aw, Christ, Caparina.”

“Calm down, Harry.”

“Calm down?”

“I didn’t call who you think I called.”

“The number on the poster. For the reward.”

“No.”

“Ah. Well, okay, who did you call?”

“My ex-husband. He’s on his way.”

“Your ex-husband is coming here? Now?”

“What are you doing down here in Brazil, Harry? You’re obviously an American. You have no identification. No passport. Nothing. Only this gun and a few thousand pesos. You don’t speak Portuguese. Or even Spanish.”

“I’m a tourist.”

“You came all this way to buy those shitty Nikes? Six hundred tourists die every year in this crappy town. And that’s only the reported number.”

“That’s why I’ve got the gun.”

“I’ve got the gun, Harry. Last night, when you were drunk, you said something about
las Medianoches.
”

“Really? What’d I say about them?”

“That the
jihadistas
had your friend. You came down here to look for your friend, Harry? Who is your friend?”

“Why is this important to you?”

“Hassan can help you I think.”

“Hassan? Who the hell is Hassan? Every second guy you meet around here is called Hassan.”

“My ex-husband. He’s a good guy, speaks perfect English. Very tough. Not everyone in this country is intimidated by the Mafia-Araby.”

“How can he help me?”

“You can help him.”

“Why the fuck should I do that?”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, who’s your enemy?”

“The enemy of my people. The jihadists in the jungle who call themselves
Las Medianoches.
This bastard Papa Top.”

“What are you, Caparina? Some kind of spy or something?”

“I keep my eyes open.”

“Good. We’ve got something in common. Now, let me go. Okay?”

There was noise coming up the steps beyond the door. Caparina hopped off the bed and pulled her flowered blue cotton dress over her head and smoothed it down over that spectacular body. She was one of those women who look almost as good dressed as they do naked. She stepped into her pale blue panties, wiggled her butt as she hiked them up under her dress, and smiled at Harry.

Harry lifted his head and stared at the door. “Shit. They’re coming up the steps. Get me out of these cuffs, will you? Hurry up.”

“I can’t. No key.”

“No key? What?”

“We were playing a game. ‘Who’s the prisoner?’ You lost when you swallowed the key, remember?”

“Aw, shit, Caparina, they’re at the door. Can you at least throw the damn sheet over me or something? Jesus. This is embarrassing.”

“Say please.”

“No.”

“Harry?”

“Please.”

“Good boy, Harry.”

She was bent over picking the sheet up off the floor when the wooden door swung open and a man stepped inside, looking at the scene on the bed with a bemused smile.

“Harry?” the man at the door said.

“Saladin?”

“You two know each other?” Caparina said.

“Of course we know each other,” Harry said. “Jesus.”

It was Wellington Saladin Hassan. Few months ago, he’d paid this man a small fortune for finding Alex Hawke and returning him safely to England.

“Who’s got the key?” Saladin asked the two of them, a big smile on his face.

S
unday morning just before noontime Franklin was in the cold barn mucking out the stalls. He had just about finished when he heard an automobile driving too fast up the long dirt drive from the highway. He leaned his pitchfork against the wall and moved over to the open window facing the road. It was Homer in the department’s new Crown Vic Interceptor, barreling up the deeply rutted road at about fifty, kicking up a big rooster tail of dust behind him.

Franklin looked up at the cloudless blue sky, any prayer of a quiet Sunday afternoon sliding away from his mind. He walked out of the barn just as the deputy skidded to a stop between the barn and the house.

“Easy, Homer, no fire out here, son.”

Franklin walked over to the car wondering what was so all-fired important on a Sunday. It had been nine days since the incident at the Wagon Wheel. Homer had been beat up pretty bad. Still and all, he’d been back on the job for three days now and, mercifully, things had been quiet since all the hoopla of the week preceding. He’d even had a few afternoons to finish correcting all the errors in that Texas border presentation he was set to give down there in Florida in a week’s time.

Mostly it was quiet because Rawls and a few bike riders had been locked up down at the courthouse. He’d put them there for a few days until everything cooled down. He’d let most of them go. He’d wanted to hold Rawls longer, based on a tip he’d gotten about six months ago.

A paid informant had told the Laredo PD that Rawls was suspected of involvement with some kind of border smuggling operation. Drugs, guns, and even automobiles coming through tunnels under the border. According to the snitch, Rawls was in bed with corrupt Federales and
narcotrafficantes
and had been for a long time.

But, they couldn’t prove it yet. Franklin just didn’t have enough to hold him. So he’d released Rawls on his own recognizance, as June called it.

Homer climbed out of the car and put his hat on, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, I been calling you on the phone.”

“When they get the kinks out of those cell phones, maybe I’ll get one. How can I help you, son? I’ve been out here in the barn all morning. Daisy went to church services and then to her prayer group lunch right after. I was just going inside to make a ham sandwich and some ice tea. You want to join me?”

Franklin started for the house and Homer followed.

He said, “What I’ve been calling you about? Somebody’s fixing to get their selves lynched here later on today.”

“Lynched? Who?”

“I don’t know their names. Three Mexican boys, is what I hear.”

“Come on over here on the porch and set in the shade, Homer.”

Franklin was tired. He stepped up on to the porch and went over to the far end and sat in his rocker. There was a tupelo tree at that end of the porch. He and Daisy had planted it as a sapling when they first bought the place. It gave off pretty nice shade this time of day. He pulled out his bandanna and wiped all the sweat off his face. There was a pitcher of lemonade with all the ice melted sitting on the table and he poured two glasses. Then he leaned back against the old rocker and started rocking, scuffing his boot heels across the dusty floorboards.

He said, “Start at the beginning and tell me.”

Homer took off his hat, tilted his head back, and drained his glass. “Like I say, it’s three Mexican kids.”

“Kids?”

“Teenagers, I’m pretty sure. The banditos apparently broke into Sadie Brotherwood’s place last night, looking for liquor in the ranch house. She came home and surprised them.”

“She lives over there on the river, right? What’s it called?”

“The Lazy B. She stayed on the place when Woody died last spring. She didn’t call anybody about the break-in. She got the drop on the boys, put a shotgun on them, and locked them up overnight out in the tool shed. This morning, here about an hour ago, she didn’t hear any noise coming from the shed and she called her brother-in-law, old Ed Parks. Ed apparently came over with a couple of his boys and told Sadie not to call you, said they’d take care of this themselves.”

“These Mexicans are local boys?”

“No, sir. Illegals. Roy Steerman went over there to Brotherwoods with Ed originally, but didn’t want anything to do with it after he got there and left. Been out there in the desert a while seems like. Skin is burned black, Roy said. All of them dehydrated and probably dizzy from drinking their own urine out there. He said when they got there one of them was swimming in the dirt like he thought it was a stream. Like his brain was baked in his brain pan, Roy told me.”

Dixon looked away. How many times in his life would he have to hear this same sad story? The law was the law. But children locked in a shed and dying of thirst was a painful way to enforce it.

“Maybe they weren’t looking for liquor, Homer. Maybe they were just looking for water.”

“That’s just what I told Roy Steers here not half an hour ago. He said, ‘Nobody over at Sadie’s cares two hoots in hell about that. These damn kids are here illegally, broke into a woman’s house to steal her property, and they’re going to string ’em up.’ That’s a direct quotation.”

Franklin got up without a word and went inside the house. A minute later the screen door opened and he came out with his hat on. “Let’s go, Homer,” he said.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
they turned off on the state road that led to the Brotherwood ranch. Homer took a right on to an unpaved stretch and they drove another two miles of barbed wire on either side before they came to the Lazy B. There was a heavy aluminum gate at the entrance to the drive and somebody had closed it and locked it with a length of chain. Homer pulled over on the shoulder across from the gate and got out of the car. He looked both ways and then crossed the baking asphalt to open the gate.

Franklin saw he was having trouble with the lock and started to climb out of the car. That’s when the two big fellas stepped out from inside a dense stand of pecans just inside the gate.

“Hey,” one of them said. Franklin recognized him as one of the boys from the Wagon Wheel he’d locked up. Had the same sleeveless leather vest and the prison tats covering both arms. If he remembered the arrest record correctly, these two gentlemen’s names were Hambone and Zorro. William Bonner, Hambone, and Bernie Katz, Zorro represented a whole lot more trouble than they were worth.

“Howdy, Hambone,” Franklin said to Bonner. He saw that the gate was padlocked with a big Master lock.

“Can we help you?” Bonner asked.

“You can open that gate.”

“No can do, Sheriff. Private party.”

“Homer,” Franklin said, “take your sidearm out and shoot that lock off, will you please?”

“Yes, sir.”

Homer removed his weapon and fired two rounds into the heavy padlock. The thing blew apart, wide open, which surprised Franklin because he’d seen an old commercial where a slow motion bullet goes right through a padlock without any effect. He reached over and pulled the chain out of the gate rungs and dropped it to the ground. Then he started to swing the right gate inward. Hambone stepped into the path of the gate and crossed his lodgepole arms over his chest.

“Like I say, it’s private.”

“Mr. Bonner, you boys just got out of my jail. If one of those Mexican boys is harmed, you’re going back. If one of them dies, you’re going back inside the system for twenty years as an accessory to murder. How do you want to handle this?”

“It ain’t murder to kill no illegal alien.”

“Murder is murder, Mr. Bonner.”

Bonner didn’t respond. Just looked over his shoulder and spat on the ground.

“C’mon, Billy,” the one named Katz said. “Let it go. We don’t need any more shit from this particular asshole.”

Bonner looked at Dixon and did his best impression of a man staring daggers into somebody’s eyes for a couple a seconds and then he kicked the ground and walked away from the gate.

“Where are your bikes located, Bonner?” Franklin said to the man’s back.

“Over there in the pecan grove,” Katz said, pointing at the trees. You could see pinpoints of chrome back in there among the dark trunks.

“I suggest you fellas mount up and git. I don’t want you in my county any longer. You understand what I’m saying? If you’re still here when I come back this way, I’m going to impound your motorcycles and lock you up again. We clear?”

The two outlaws didn’t say anything, just turned and headed for the pecan trees.

Franklin swung the two aluminum gates inward while Homer went back for the car. After a minute, he heard the deep popping noise of the two Harleys cranking up in the woods as Homer drove through and came to a stop. He climbed inside and they continued up the drive to the ranch house proper.

Homer was staring straight ahead, driving as fast as he could over the uneven ground. He spoke to Franklin without looking at him.

“You recall seeing those fires at Yellowstone on the TV, Sheriff? Burning out of control? Threatening all those little tinderbox towns.”

“Yeah. I remember that.”

“Sometimes I feel like the border is one long tinderbox. Like Prairie is nothing but a tiny oasis in the middle of a dried up pine forest. It’s baking hot day after day and folks are walking around knee deep in pine needles. Bone dry. And everybody on Main Street is striking matches.”

“Some folks think those big fires are natural remedies, Homer. Just nature taking care of itself.”

Homer looked at him. “I have a real hard time believing that, Sheriff.”

“Well, you better slow down, son, there’s the ranch house right over there.”

There were four or five pickups pulled up outside the house. Homer hit the brakes and they got out and knocked on the front door. They waited a minute but nobody came and so they walked around the side of the house and down to the dried up river bed about five hundred yards away.

There was a big live oak tree standing at the bend on the other side of what used to be the river. It had been dead for years, but still had a lot of its lower limbs. Even from a distance you could see that somebody had looped three ropes over the lowest and biggest branch and tied a noose at the end of each one.

“Looks like we’re just in time,” Franklin said to Homer.

The men were standing at the base of the tree and Franklin could make out three small boys on the ground. They were sitting with their backs to each other, probably all tied together at the wrists. The local men, and one woman, were standing in a circle, just looking down at the boys.

“No need for you here, Sheriff,” Ed Parks said, stepping forward as the two lawmen crossed the dusty riverbed.

Franklin said, “Good afternoon, Ed. Boys. You, too, Miz Brotherwood. I hear these kids broke into your house last night.”

“That’s right they did,” Sadie Brotherwood said. “I caught ’em red-handed trying to steal my whisky.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Dixon said, brushing past two of the men and squatting in the dirt beside the boys. Their sun-blackened skin was bloody in places and their mouths were crusted with salt. Their black eyes were glazed with fear and exhaustion.

“Police? No need of calling anybody,” Parks said. “Waste of taxpayers’ money. We call the police every time we catch a bunch of these
pollos,
you wouldn’t have time to hand out parking tickets. No, we like to take care of this business ourselves out here. I told these boys we didn’t need no grass cut either. Hell, they’re just tonks. I reckon that’s why they’re here, brought in by coyotes and looking to cut grass up in Houston.”

“Goddamn
pollos
ain’t hardly human anyhow,” Mrs. Brotherwood said. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

Franklin looked for some sign of grief in the widow’s eyes but only saw hard-bitten hatred and the dull gleam of self-righteousness. He un-screwed the cap from the canteen he’d brought and held it to the lips of the first boy. After the boy had drunk some water, he moved to the next one and repeated the process. The last boy, the smallest, was too weak to lift his head and drink.

“He’s mighty thirsty, Ed,” Franklin said. “You didn’t give them any water?”

“Why waste good water?”

“Que pasa hombre?”
Franklin said to the oldest of the three after he’d gulped down some water. “Where are you from?”

“Nuevo Laredo,” the boy said, his voice a parched whisper.

“How many of you come across?”

“We were fourteen. We walked until we fell. My brothers and I, we are the last ones.”

“What is your name?”

“Reymundo.”

“And your brothers?”

“Jorge and Manuelito.”

Franklin stood up and looked at Parks and Sadie Brotherwood.

“All right, then. Here’s what we’re going to do. Mrs. Brotherwood, I’d like you to apologize to Mr. Parks here for bringing him all the way out for nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” she said, “It was three more wetbacks needed a good hanging.”

“Ed, you and the boys go on home. Homer and I will see these children get medical attention and then we’ll turn them over to the Border Patrol.”