BBH01 - Cimarron Rose

by James Lee Burke

  'Felix Ringo, a Mexican drug agent?' I repeated.

  'Yeah, you know that name, man? Is gringo. My ancestor, he was a famous American outlaw,' he said.

  'Johnny Ringo?' I said.

  'Yeah, that was his name. He got into it with guys like, the guy there in Arizona, was always wearing a black suit in the movies, yeah, that guy Wyatt Earp.'

  'Felix is jalapeño and shit on toast south of the Rio Grande. You fucked up his bust, Billy Bob,' the sheriff said.

  'Oh?' I said.

  'The guy you drug up and down, man, I been following him six months. He's gonna be gone now,' the Mexican said.

  'Maybe you should have taken him down six months ago. He hurt a little boy this morning.'

  'Yeah, man, but maybe you don't see the big picture. We take one guy down, we roll him over, then we take another guy down. See, patience is, how you call it, the virtue here.'

  'The guy I pulled out of that bar isn't the Medellin Cartel North. What is this stuff, sheriff?' I said.

  The sheriff rolled his cigar in the center of his mouth and looked at the Mexican drug agent.

  'Billy Bob used to be a Texas Ranger, so he looks down on the ordinary pissant work most of us have to do,' he said.

  'That's a bad fucking attitude, man,' Felix Ringo said.

  'Get out your fingerprint pad or I'm gone, sheriff,' I said.

  He dropped his cigar hissing into the spittoon.

  'There's the door. Don't mistake my gesture. Stay the hell out of what don't concern you,' he said.

  Felix Ringo followed me outside. The light was hard and bright on the stone buildings in the square, the trees a violent green against the sky. I could see Mary Beth Sweeney outside her cruiser, writing on a clipboard in the shade. She stopped and stared across the lawn at me and the man named Felix Ringo.

  'You want something?' I asked him.

  'I seen you somewhere before. You was a Ranger?' he said.

  'What about it?'

  'You guys did stuff at night, maybe killed some people that was fruit pickers crossing the river, that didn't have nothing to do with dope.'

  'You're full of shit, too, bud,' I said, and walked toward the cab stand across the street.

  I stepped off the curb and waited for a car to pass.

  Then I heard her voice behind me.

  'Hey, Billy Bob,' she said.

  'Yeah?'

  She gave me the thumbs-up sign and smiled.

  The next morning I drove along the fence line of my property to a section by the river where Lucas and Vernon Smothers were hoeing out the rows in a melon patch. I walked out into the field, into the heat bouncing off the ground, into Vernon's beaded stare under the brim of his straw hat.

  'I want to borrow Lucas for a couple of hours,' I said.

  'What for?' he asked.

  'Take a guess,' I said.

  He propped his forearm on his hoe handle and smelled himself. He looked out over the bluff and the milky green flatness of the river and the willows on the far side.

  'I don't want to lose my melons to coons this year. I aim to put steel traps along that ditch yonder. That's where they're coming out of,' he said.

  'I need Lucas to help me with the case, Vernon. You're not putting any steel traps on my property, and you can forget about poisons, too.'

  'You ever see how a coon eats a melon? He punches a little hole, no bigger than a quarter. Then he sticks his paw in and cleans the whole insides out. All he needs to do is get his paw in the hole and he don't leave nothing but an empty shell for anybody else.'

  His mouth was small and angry, down-turned on the corners, his stare jaundiced with second meaning.

  'Let's go to the movies, Lucas,' I said.

  Lucas sat on the back steps and pulled off his boots.

  'You don't have to do that,' I said.

  'I'll track your house.'

  We went into the library and I switched on the VCR that contained the videotape of Roseanne Hazlitt dancing. Lucas's face went gray when he realized what he was being shown.

  'Mr Holland, I ain't up to this,' he said.

  'Who are the other kids in that woods?'

  'East End kids messin' around. I don't know them too good.'

  'I don't believe you.'

  'Why you talk to me like that?'

  'Because none of this will go away of its accord. You played in the band at Shorty's. You knew the same people Roseanne knew. But you don't give me any help.'

  He swallowed. His palms were cupped on his knees.

  'I grew up in the West End. I don't like those kind of guys.'

  'Good. So give me the names of the other boys she went out with.'

  He fingered the denim on top of his thigh, his knees jiggling up and down, his eyes fixed on the floor.

  'Anybody. When she was loaded. It didn't matter to her. Three or four guys at once. Same guys who'd write her name on the washroom wall,' he said. He blinked and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.

  We drove into Deaf Smith and parked on the square and walked down a side street toward a brick church with a white steeple and a green lawn and a glassed-in sign announcing Sunday and Wednesday night services.

  'Why we going to the Baptist church?' Lucas asked.

  'We're not,' I replied.

  Next door to the church was the church's secondhand store. An alley ran along one wall of the store, and at the end of the alley was an overflowing donation bin. The pavement around it was littered with pieces of mattresses and mildewed clothing that had been run over by automobile tires. As soon as the store closed at night, street people sorted through the bin and the overflow like a collection of rag pickers.

  Lucas's eyes fixed on a waxed, cherry-red chopped-down 1932 Ford with a white rolled leather interior and an exposed chromed engine parked in front of the store.

  'You know the owner of that car?' I asked.

  'It's Darl Vanzandt's.'

  'That's right,' I said, and pointed through the glass.

  Darl was sorting a box of donated books by pitching them one at a time onto a display table. When the box was empty, he opened the back door and flung it end over end into the alley.

  'We need to have a talk with him,' I said.

  'What for? I ain't got no interest in Darl.' The rims of his nostrils whitened as though the temperature had dropped seventy degrees.

  'It'll just take a minute.'

  'Not me. No, sir.'

  He backed away from me, then turned and walked back to the car.

  I got in beside him.

  'What's the problem?' I asked.

  'I don't fool with East Enders, that's all.'

  He twisted at a callus on his palm.

  'All of them, or just Darl?'

  'You don't know how it is.'

  'I grew up here.'

  'They look down on you. Darl knows how to make people feel bad about themselves.'

  'Like how?'

  'In metal shop, senior year, he was making Chinese stars in the foundry, these martial arts things you can sail at people and put out an eye with. Darl was hogging the sand molds, and this kid says, "I got to pour my mailbox hangers or I won't get my grade," and Darl goes, "You got an S for snarf. Get out of the way."

  'The kid says, "What's a snarf?"

  'Darl says, "You don't got a mirror at home?"

  'After school Darl catches the kid out in front of everybody and says, "Hey, a snarf is a guy who gets off sniffing girls' bicycle seats. But I had you made wrong. You don't get an S. You get an F for frump. That's a guy cuts farts in the bathtub and bites the bubbles."'

  Lucas's cheeks were blotched with color.

  'Would Darl beat a girl with his fists, Lucas?'

  'My father needs me back in the field,' he answered.

  That evening I opened up all the windows in the third floor of my house and let the breeze fill the rooms with the smells of alfalfa and distant rain and ozone and dust blowing out of the fields.

  The house se
emed to resonate with its own emptiness. I stood by the side of the hand-carved tester bed that had been my parents', my fingers resting on the phone, and looked out over the barn roof and windmill and the fields that led down to the clay bluffs over the river. Lightning with no sound quivered on a green hill in the west.

  I punched in Mary Beth Sweeney's number.

  'You mind my calling you?' I asked.

  'I'm happy you did.'

  The line hummed in the silence.

  'I know a Mexican restaurant that serves food you only expect in the Elysian Fields,' I said.

  'Let's talk about it tomorrow.'

  'Sure,' I said.

  'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be like this… That Mexican narc you were talking with? He's a bucket of shit. You watch your butt, cowboy.'

  Watch your own. You're working for the G, Mary Beth, I said to myself as I put down the receiver.

  That night I heard the doors on the near end of the barn slamming in the wind. I rolled over and went back to sleep, then remembered I had closed the doors on the near end and had slipped the cross planks into place to hold them secure. I put on a pair of khakis and took a flashlight from the back porch and walked through the yard, the electric beam angling ahead of me.

  One door fluttered and squealed on its hinges, then sucked loudly against the jamb. I started to push the other door into place, then I looked down the length of stalls, out in the railed lot on the far side, and saw my Morgan trotting in a circle, wall-eyed with fear, spooking at bits of paper blowing in the moonlight.

  'What's wrong, Beau? Weather usually doesn't bother you,' I said.

  I got him into the barn and stroked his face, closed the door behind him, and unscrewed the cap on a jar of oats-and-molasses balls and poured a dozen into the trough at the head of his stall.

  Then I saw the red, diagonal slash on his withers, as though he had been struck a downward blow by a metal-edged instrument.

  His skin wrinkled and quivered under my hand when I placed it close to the wound.

  'Who did this to you, Beau?' I said.

  The electric lights in the barn were haloed with humidity, glowing with motes of dust in the silence.

  At eight the next morning I drove to the edge of town, where Jack Vanzandt ran his business in a five-story building sheathed in black glass. His office was huge, the beige carpet as soft as a bear's fur, the furniture white and onyx black, the glass wall hung with air plants.

  I sat in a stuffed leather chair, my legs crossed, the purpose of my visit like a piece of sharp tin in my throat.

  'You want to buy some computer stock?' Jack asked, and grinned.

  A door opened off to the side and Jack's wife walked out of a rest room. I rose from my chair.

  'Hello, Emma, I didn't know you were here,' I said.

  'Good morning, sir. Where's your camera?' she said.

  'Maybe I should come back later. I didn't mean to intrude upon y'all,' I said.

  'No, no, I'm delighted you came by. What's up?' Jack said.

  'It's Darl.'

  'Unhuh?' Jack said.

  'I can't represent him.'

  They looked at me quizzically.

  'Can you tell me why?' Jack asked.

  'I have a conflict of interest. I was retained earlier by Lucas Smothers. I think your son was at Shorty's the night Roseanne Hazlitt was attacked.'

  'Probably half the kids in Deaf Smith were,' Jack said.

  'Darl could end up as a witness at Lucas's trial,' I said.

  I could see the connections coming together in Jack's eyes, his good looks clouding.

  'No, this goes beyond that, doesn't it?' He pointed one finger, bouncing it in the air. 'You're making Darl a suspect to get Lucas off the hook.'

  'Nope.'

  'Well, I personally think you should be ashamed of yourself, Billy Bob,' Emma said.

  'I'm sorry,' I said, rising from my chair. The room felt warm, the air astringent with the smell of chemical pellets in the hanging baskets.

  Jack rose from his chair behind his desk. The balls of his fingers rested on the glass top. His lavender shirt with a white collar and rolled French cuffs and loose tie looked like a cosmetic joke on his powerful body.

  'Do you want me to write a check right now, or does the bill come later for photographing my son so you can implicate him in a murder?' he asked.

  'I didn't invent your son's history or his problems…' I shook my head. 'I apologize for my remark. I'd better go now,' I said.

  'Jack, don't let this happen. We need to sit down and talk this out,' Emma said.

  'I might have some difficulty doing that. Get out of my office, Billy Bob,' he said.

  Outside, I could feel the blood stinging in my neck, my hands useless and thick at my sides.

  * * *

  chapter ten

  The next morning, when Lucas Smothers came to work with his father, he told me of the late-night visit he had received from people with whom he had gone to high school.

  The cars cut their lights before they got to Lucas's house, but through his open window he could hear music on a radio and the voices of girls. The cars, five of them, were stopped in the center of the road, their engines throbbing softly against the pavement, their hand-rubbed body surfaces glowing dully under the moon like freshly ported plastic.

  Then the lead car turned into Lucas's drive, followed by the others, and fishtailed across the damp lawn, scouring grass and sod into the air, crunching the sprinkler, ripping troughs out of the flower beds.

  One girl jumped from a car, a metallic object in her hand, and bent down below the level of the bedroom window. He heard a hissing sound, then saw her raise up and look at him. No, that wasn't accurate. She never saw him, as though his possible presence was as insignificant as the worth of his home. Her face was beautiful and empty, her mouth like a pursed button.

  'What are y'all doing?' he said, his voice phlegmy in his throat.

  If she heard him, she didn't show it. Her skin seemed to flush with pleasure just before she turned and pranced like a deer into the waiting arms of her friends, who giggled and pulled her back inside the car.

  By the time Lucas and his father got outside, the caravan was far down the road, the headlights dipping over a hill.

  Lucas could see the girl's footprints by the water faucet under his window. The ground was soft and muddy here, and the footprints were small and sharp edged and narrow at the toe, and it was obvious the girl had tried to stand on a piece of cardboard to keep the mud off her shoes. Written in red, tilted, spray-painted letters below Lucas's screen was the solitary word loser.

  That same day I drove out to the Green Parrot Motel, a pink cinder-block monstrosity painted with tropical birds and palm trees and advertising water beds and triple-X movies. The desk clerk told me Garland T. Moon was next door at the welding shop.

  The tin shed had only one window, which was painted over and nailed shut, and the walls pinged with the sun's heat. Garland T. Moon was stripped to the waist, black goggles on his eyes, arc-welding the iron bucket off a ditching machine. The sparks dripped to his feet like liquid fire. He pushed his goggles up on his forehead with a dirty thumb and wiped his eyes on his forearm. His smile made me think of a clay sculpture that had been pushed violently out of shape.

  'Were you out at my house two nights ago?' I asked.

  'I got me a parttime job. I don't run around at night.'

  'I think either you or Jimmy Cole hurt my horse.'

  'I was out a couple of nights. The other side of them hills. There's all kind of lights in the clouds. You ever hear of the Lubbock Lights, them UFOs that was photographed? There's something weird going on hereabouts.'

  'I've rigged two shotguns on my property. I hope you don't find one of them.'

  'You don't have no guns. I made a whole study of you, Mr Holland. I can touch that boy and I touch you. It's a sweet thought, but I ain't got the inclination right now.'

  'Jimmy Cole's dead, isn't he?' I said. />
  He pulled a soot-blackened glove from his hand one finger at a time.

  'Why would a person think that?' he asked.

  'You don't leave loose ends.'

  'If I was to come out to your place or that pup's with a serious mind, y'all wouldn't have no doubt about who visited you… You cain't do nothing about me, Mr Holland. Don't nobody care what happens to crazy people. I know. I majored in crazy. I know it inside and out.'

  'Crazy people?'

  'I heard the screw say it in the jail. You're queer for a dead man. You're one seriously sick motherfucker and don't know it.'

  He started laughing, hard, his flat chest shaking, sweat rolling through the dirt rings on his neck, the wisps of red hair on his scalp flecked with bits of black ash.

  I picked up Mary Beth Sweeney at her apartment that evening and we drove down the old two-lane toward the county line. She wore a pale organdy dress and white pumps and earrings with blue stones in them, and I could smell the baby powder she used to cover the freckles on her shoulders and neck.

  Twice she glanced at the road behind us.

  'You having regrets?' I asked.

  Her eyes moved over my face.

  'I don't think your situation is compromised. The sheriff's corrupt, but he's not Phi Beta Kappa material,' I said.

  'What are you talking about?'

  'I think you work for the G,' I said.

  'The G? Like the government?'

  'That's the way I'd read it.'

  'I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable about this, Billy Bob.'

  She gazed out the side window so I couldn't see her expression. We crossed the river and the planks on the bridge rattled under my tires.

  'My great-grandfather's ranch ran for six miles right along that bank,' I said. 'He used to trail two thousand head at a time to the railhead in Kansas, then he gave up guns and whiskey and became a saddle preacher. His only temptation in life after that was the Rose of Cimarron.'

  'I'm sorry. I wasn't listening,' she said.

  'My great-grandpa… He was a gunfighter turned preacher, but he had a love affair with an outlaw woman called the Rose of Cimarron. She was a member of the Dalton-Doolin gang. He wrote in his journal that his head got turned by the sweetest and most dangerous woman in Oklahoma Territory.'