The Perk (45 page)

She laughed. "Stars never wear
rubbers."

"Jump up and down," Wes said.

"
What?
"

Wes motioned with his hand. "Jump up and
down. So gravity can do its work. I want those little Joes."

"You really are sick."

"Three hundred."

She jumped up and down.

He timed her for fifteen seconds, then said,
"That'll do."

He pulled out another hundred and held the three
bills out to her. She snatched them out of his hands. He reached to his back pocket
and removed the plastic baggie. Freezer-sized. He didn't want to touch that
thing. Thong.

"Give it up."

She reached under her skirt and pulled down her
thong, then stepped out of it. Wes held out the baggie.

"In the bag."

She dropped the thong
into the bag like she was making a donation to the Salvation Army Santa at
Christmas, then she walked away. He sealed the baggie and went over to his
Mustang up on the street. He placed the baggie in the FedEx overnight box with
Beck Hardin's address on it, wrote
Joe Raines
and $500 on the back of
his business card, and dropped the card into the box. He then drove to the
nearest FedEx drop-off and sent Joe's DNA to Texas.

Only two weeks before, the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Division of the United States Department of Homeland Security had
come into Fredericksburg and conducted a raid, arrested eight hundred
thirty-nine Mexican nationals residing in town, and deported them to Mexico. Families had been torn apart, lives disrupted, and businesses shuttered.

But high school football in Texas went on.

When they walked into the Gallopin' Goats
Stadium for the final game of the season against arch-rival Kerrville, Beck
knew this game was going to be different. A big banner announced the
"Nike High School Football Game of the Week." Television cameras
were perched on portable towers positioned around the field. The field was lit
up like high noon.

High school football on national TV.

From the conversations he overhead on the way to
their seats, the national exposure the game would give Fredericksburg was
viewed as a major stroke of luck: more shoppers for Thanksgiving weekend. No
one spoke of the deported Mexicans.

They took their seats. Judge Hardin was again
an accepted member of the community, so he was greeted with smiles and
handshakes from nearby spectators. Jodie and Libby swapped seats with a
coach's wife and joined them.

The Goats took the opening kickoff. On the
first play on offense, Slade ran around right end and didn't stop running until
he crossed the goal line seventy-six yards away. He walked over to the
sideline and kicked over the Gatorade cooler, then stood alone ten yards away
from the rest of his team. Aubrey turned toward Slade; before he turned back
to the field, he looked up to where Beck was sitting. He turned his palms up.

With every touchdown Slade scored, four in the
first half, his anger escalated and two words haunted Beck: homicidal rage.
When Slade scored again in the second half to put the Goats up 35-0, he stood
in the end zone and pounded his chest like Tarzan. He was flagged for
unsportsmanlike conduct. The game was a rout, so Aubrey tried to remove Slade
from the game, but Slade refused to be taken out. He scored again; this time
he threw the ball at an opponent. He was ejected from the game. He walked to
the sideline and kicked the team bench over. On national TV.

Beck found Quentin McQuade a few rows over. His
son had scored five touchdowns, but the look on his face wasn't that of a proud
father. Quentin looked like an investor watching the stock market plunge.

Eddie Steele was thirty-five years old
and married with three children. The young blonde sitting at the table next to
him, whose lovely right hand was rubbing Eddie's left leg, wasn't his wife or
daughter. She was his girlfriend. Eddie lived with his wife in L.A., but he screwed around on her in La Jolla.

A week after collecting Joe Raines' DNA, Wes had followed Eddie Steele down the Pacific Coast highway. Eddie had gone to his
girlfriend's condo and taken care of his base desires, so semen would not be
the source of his DNA. Wes went to Plan B.

Blood.

The restaurant had open-air seating on the deck
overlooking the ocean. It was a small private place where you could dine with
your mistress without being mugged by photographers. Wes had taken a table across
the deck from Eddie and the girl. He now pulled out a large bill and stood.
He walked toward Eddie and the girl and just as he was next to their table he
dropped the hundred. It floated to the ground. The girl spotted it and
instinctively dove for it. Wes squatted quickly so his face was almost
touching hers when they simultaneously grabbed the bill.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "Is
this yours?"

"Yes."

Wes waited. The girl waited. Finally Eddie
leaned over them, and when his shadow blocked out the light, Wes abruptly rose,
driving the top of his head directly into Eddie's surgically perfected nose.
Which, combined with his regular cocaine habit, made for a nasty nosebleed.

Eddie cried out—"Shit!"—and cupped his
nose. Blood appeared on his fingers. Wes was quick with the new white cotton
handkerchief; it was out of his pocket and onto Eddie's nose before Eddie could
say "shit" again.

"Man, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Eddie pushed him away. "Get off me!"

Everyone was looking now, and waiters hurried
their way. Wes walked away with Eddie's blood sample and the hundred-dollar
bill. He glanced back. The girl was searching both sides of her chair for the
bill.

"Look at these pictures of little
kids with big guns and dead animals," Jodie said.

She held the paper up for Beck to see. During
hunting season, the local paper printed a special section with photos of kids and
the deer they had killed.

"There's actually a program called 'Take a Child
Hunting'? Is it just me, or is that kind of creepy?"

"It's just you," Aubrey said.

"That's supposed to teach a kid character?
Why don't they call it 'Teach a Kid to Kill'? Maybe they should have 'Take a
Child Bar Hopping' or 'Take a Child to a Crack House'. I've seen this every
year for ten years and it's still disgusting."

"Jodie," Aubrey said, "hunting's
a tradition in the country."

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammo. All
those fat guys in camouflage outfits—Main Street looks like an NRA convention.
And why do the schools let out for the stock show but not for Martin Luther
King Day—it's a national holiday, for Pete's sake."

"Maybe 'cause there's thousands of
livestock in the county but no black people … except for Gil."

"Yeah, they're afraid of being deported back
to Africa." She shook her head. "I still can't believe all those
people are gone, kids still without their parents." Back to the paper:
"Oh, look, they printed the bag limits on deer, wild boar, Mexicans …"

Aubrey shook his head. "Girl, you are
fired up today."

J.B. called from the kitchen: "All right, boys
and girls. Let's eat our Thanksgiving chicken."

The Hardins had always eaten turkey on Thanksgiving.
But not that Thanksgiving. Beck had stood in the frozen food department at the
grocery store staring at the birds, but he couldn't bring himself to buy one. So
J.B. had barbecued chicken instead. Thanksgiving chicken. J.B. said,
"Well, it don't make much sense, but it eats good."

Jodie, Janelle, and their kids had brought sweet
potato casserole, fruit salad, and pumpkin pie. Aubrey had brought beer.

After lunch, they found spots around the
big-screen TV and watched the Cowboys play the Colts. Fredericksburg was geographically
closer to Houston than Dallas, but the Cowboys were the overwhelming team of
choice among the locals, even though the Cowboys had a Mexican quarterback. Of
course, he didn't call the plays in Spanish.

No Spanish was spoken in the Cowboys' huddle or
on Main Street in Fredericksburg, Texas, that Thanksgiving weekend. No
Mexicans marched in the street or on the sidewalks. Those who had not been
deported remained invisible. Only white shoppers from the city crowded Main Street. Sales were booming. All was well in Fredericksburg, Texas. But not with
Aubrey.

"Don't hold back on me, Beck. Tell me what
you know."

The sun was orange and low in the sky. They
were sitting on the front porch watching the llama named Sue chase the pot-bellied
pig down the caliche road. Aubrey turned his head and spat a stream of brown
tobacco juice straight through the white porch spindles five feet away.

"I'll tell you one thing I know, Aubrey.
If you miss and spit on J.B.'s porch, he's going to take that cane of yours and
beat you stupid."

"He'd do that, wouldn't he?"

"You damn right he would."

Aubrey pushed himself up and limped to the
railing. He spat out the wad of chewing tobacco then returned to his chair.

"Tell me what you know, Beck."

What did he owe his old friend? Did he owe him
the truth about his daughter? Or just his leg? The life he could have had or
the life he had had? Beck didn't know.

So he told Aubrey about Heidi's dream of being a
star (but not about her nude photos or her abortion); he told him about Heidi
going to the film festival and the black limo in Austin and the black limo in
Fredericksburg that same night (but not about Heidi's clothes or that she had
sex with two men); he told him about the shoe he had found but that no fingerprints
had been found (but not about the two different DNA samples that had been found
on her body); and he told him that Heidi had been with a movie star that night.

"A movie star killed her?"

Beck nodded.

"Which one?"

"I'm getting DNA samples."

"How?"

"Don't ask."

"We've only got thirty-nine days to find
him."

"I know."

And he told Aubrey about Randi's house.

"How could she afford that kind of
house?"

"I don't know," Aubrey said. "Hell,
she didn't want a dime in the divorce. She just wanted out. But she's a
good-looking woman. I didn't figure on her waiting tables." He paused,
then said, "Did she ask about me?"

The pig was now chasing the llama named Sue back
up the caliche road. Jodie stuck her head out the door. Beck winked at Aubrey
and said, "Jodie, did you vote for Reagan in eighty-four?"

"Eighty-four? No, I was only …"
She shook her head. Beck laughed. "Almost," she said. "Where's
Luke?"

"Down at the winery."

"J.B. just came up from the winery, said he
wasn't there."

"Maybe he's on the baseball field."

"He's not. I checked."

Beck stood.

"He's not inside?"

"No."

Aubrey stood.

"Jodie, did J.B. drive the Gator up
here?"

"Yeah."

"Aubrey, take the Gator and go down to the
west pasture. I'll go down to the river. We're losing light."

"Yep."

Aubrey limped across the porch. Beck jumped the
rail and ran in the opposite direction. He ran around the house and past the
baseball field and down the sloping land, picking up speed. His cowboy boots
thudded loudly on the wood planks of the bridge across Snake Creek. Once
across the creek, he ran full out down to the river. He broke through the
cypress and willow trees at the river's edge, and he saw Luke. He was standing
on the rock bridge on the far side of the river, pinned against the limestone
bluff by three coyotes.

Beck saw the fear on his son's face.

And he felt that familiar surge of adrenaline
hit him, the human body's fight-or-flight response. He was fighting. His boots
would give him no traction on the rocks, so he ran into the shallow river
without slowing. The coyotes heard him and turned on him. He waved his arms
and screamed at the animals; one cut and ran. The others didn't. They were
hungry. They turned and bared their teeth at him; they lunged at Beck and he at
them.

He drove his fist into the first coyote's head,
but the second one hit him hard and they went down into the water. The coyote
went for Beck's neck, but he threw him off and got to his feet just as the
other one came at him. Beck grabbed the coyote by the neck as it kicked at him
with its rear legs; he stared into those yellow eyes and felt the claws dig
into his skin and bring blood and all the anger that had burned inside Beck
Hardin for the last twenty-nine years to the surface. He grabbed the coyote
with both hands and screamed as he swung it around and slammed its head onto
the flat rock that Luke was standing on.

The animal's skull cracked like a pecan.

Beck heard the other coyote's growl and spun
around just as it lunged for him. He reached out to grab the animal but heard
an explosion, and the coyote was knocked out of the air and into the river. It
didn't move. Beck looked to the riverbank: J.B. lowered a rifle from his
shoulder; Jodie was standing next to him, and Aubrey was sitting in the Gator.
Beck turned to his son. Luke took a frightened step toward him, then dove into
his arms. Beck slumped down onto the rock, suddenly spent. He hugged his son
hard. The boy was sobbing, and his body was shaking.

"Are you okay, Luke?"

"Are they dead?"

"Yeah. They're dead."

"They came up the river, behind me. I never heard them. I
turned and they were there. I didn't know what to do."

"You did good."

His son cried.

"Why couldn't you save Mom, too?"

"Cancer's not like coyotes, Luke. I
couldn't fight it for your mother. I couldn't get my hands on it. I wanted
to. I wanted to kill it before it killed her. But I couldn't."