Hawke's Target

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “You workin’ yet?”

  “Naw, just pulled in. What’s up?”

  “Call me back.”

  “Yessir.” Tanner hung up and opened the console. He plucked a burner phone from the empty console and dialed a number he’d memorized.

  Jimmy Don immediately answered his own burner. “Good. Listen, I don’t trust these others with this part, so here’s what I want you to do. There’s a couple of feds in Jasper. Get with Willy and y’all go make ’em disappear.”

  A cold chill went down Tanner’s spine. “What kind of feds?”

  “DEA, I guess. Maybe AFT if they got wind of the old man’s dumbass plastic explosive idea. What difference does it make?”

  “A lot. How do you like, know they’re agents, and if they’re here for us?”

  “They’ve been snooping around, asking questions.”

  “It could be anybody.”

  “They’re federal agents for sure. They checked into the Holiday Inn, went by the sheriff’s office in Jasper, then came over here to Newton County and talked to Buck, and that’s worryin’ the old man.”

  “But, Dad.”

  “This ain’t all my idea. It came from Daddy Frank this morning. We gotta move faster than we expected. He called y’alls names to do it.”

  Tanner shivered. He was as afraid of that old man as he was of a bear. When he was a kid and when Daddy Frank wasn’t around, stories about the old man made the rounds and were sometimes used to frighten misbehaving children, warning that if they didn’t straighten up and fly right, Daddy Frank was gonna come get ’em.

  One story he knew for the truth. Once two strangers came out to the house late one night with pistols in hand. Competitors in the drug trade nearly fifteen years earlier, they met Daddy Frank in front of the barn and shot him three times in the stomach. The tough old man staggered backward, shirt becoming slick with blood, and pulled the ever-present .38 from his back pocket. Two shots in each man dropped them to the ground, and one each to the forehead anchored them for sure.

  He sat down on a bench beside the barn door and waited for his relatives to come running from the house. Holding his stomach with both hands, he ordered the two bodies to be disposed of in the nearby bayou where the gators would finish the job. Only then would he get in the car and go to the hospital where he wove a story about a highway shooting that no one believed, but what the hell, he was kin to the sheriff even back then, so the issue was dropped.

  Tanner rubbed his suddenly greasy forehead with shaking fingers. “Daddy, I done told you I’d do everything else, but I can’t make myself be part of killing people nose to nose. How ’bout I help out pulling a camper? You know I can drive fast. Hell, I’ll go set the charges on that pipeline if that’s what you want. How about that?”

  Jimmy Don sounded as if Tanner’d suggested they go fishing. “No, you do what you’re told. ’Cause you don’t look like the rest of us, I believe you can get close to those guys without ’em knowing what’s happening. Get out there and watch for a little bit. You’ll get a chance at some point, even if you have to knock on the door.”

  “Then what?”

  Jimmy Don sighed in frustration. “Then take ’em somewhere out of town and make ’em disappear. Damn, son, this ain’t rocket science.”

  “You want me to shoot them my ownself?” His mind raced, trying to think of a way out. “Willy’s done that kind of work before. I’ll back him up.”

  “No, Daddy Frank says it’s time for you to start taking more action in the family business. That’s how he got me ready to take over when the time comes.”

  “That old man’s too mean to die, and I ’magine you’re not gonna be taking over for years.”

  “No matter. He said to send Willy with you, and he’s still running things around here, but you do the trigger work so’s it’s done right.”

  “Donine’s getting pretty close to her due date. I don’t think I should . . .”

  “She’ll domino just fine whether you’re there or not. She can get her mama to take her to the hospital, but I doubt it’ll happen tonight. Now you do what I say.”

  Already numb with fear and dread, Tanner knew better than to argue. He felt a glimmer of hope. “Well, I don’t have nothin’ to use. I can’t just go carrying rifles around town without people noticing. Willy has some, but I bet he won’t want me using them.”

  “Go by the house when you get off. There’ll be two revolvers in a bucket out by the shed.”

  Tanner’s stomach sank. “Revolvers? Dad, if they’re federal agents, they’ll likely have us outgunned. You know they’re carrying Glocks or something.”

  “I know it don’t make much difference if you catch ’em with their britches down. It’ll only take two shots.” Jimmy Don’s voice softened. He was a master of manipulation and had worked the boy his entire life. “The Old Man wants to know this is done tonight when he gets home. He wants to see us at the house after you’re finished.”

  Tanner shivered, both from the thought of facing the Old Man and what he was told to do. He tried to stay as far away from his hard-faced granddaddy as possible. “Daddy Frank’s back?”

  “Yep. Now, do what I told you, unless you want to explain to him and Boone why you ain’t interested in helping.”

  Chapter 14

  I followed Sheriff Cameron Davis from Castro County to a farm road between Tulia and Dimmitt. It wasn’t long before we splashed through a mud puddle bisecting the drive, then rattled across a train track before pulling up to a tiny white co-op office fifty yards from a peeling white grain silo.

  Pumpjacks, sometimes called nodding donkeys or thirsty birds, rocked slowly in the scrub-covered pasture out back, their horse-like heads pushing and pulling sucker rods, pumping oil from the ground at a lazy, almost hypnotic pace.

  Manuel Guzman, the Swisher County Sheriff, and two deputies were already waiting beside their cars in the dirt parking lot with a highway patrol officer in a “Texas tan” uniform.

  I detrucked into the steady south wind I hate with a passion and ground my teeth, wondering how anyone could live in a place where it blows twenty and thirty miles an hour from that direction and the next day at the same velocity from the north. I asked a grizzled old farmer at an Amarillo gas station when I was about twenty-five how he stood it, and he studied on the question while his gas tank filled.

  “Well, son, it’s pretty aggravatin’ for the first fifty years or so, then you learn to tolerate it.”

  The youngest of the deputies brightened up when he saw my badge and gunbelt. His starstruck eyes locked on my .45’s Sweetheart grips, and I hoped he wouldn’t make a big deal of it. I checked his name tag. Deputy Rivera had that puppy-dog look of excitement you see in freshman officers who want nothing more than the next adrenaline rush. I made sure to shake Rivera’s hand after Sheriff Guzman, holding on for a heartbeat longer to look into the man’s eager face and settle him down.

  Sheriff Guzman looked as dried out from the wind and sun as a piece of beef jerky. He introduced the other two officers. “Deputy Acevedo and Officer Friedman.” Guzman nodded his straw hat toward the east and unconsciously adjusted his blue tie. “The house is about a mile that way. This is nothing more than a knock and talk, but these Smith boys are crazy as shithouse rats.” He smoothed his salt-and-pepper mustache as if deciding what to say next. “Three brothers, Mark, Gary, and Patrick. They were as nuts as their daddy before they started sampling the crap they’re selling, but now they’re worse.”

  Sheriff Davis chewed the unlit cigar stub in the corner of his mouth. “There’s no tellin’ who’s there, so take it easy. Me’n Manuel just want to ask a few questions, and he’ll take the lead since this is his county. Y’all are here to make ’em think and behave themselves.”

  Deputy Rivera inclined his head in my direction. “I’ve never heard of a Ranger used as backup for a little home visit.” He adjusted his Clarion duty belt around his waist and rested his hand on the butt of his Glock. His eyes
were bright and glassy. “But I’m glad you’re here. These guys might be dangerous.”

  Sheriff Davis grunted and bit down on his cigar. “Everybody’s dangerous, whether we think they are or not, and he’s not backup. He’s working a case.”

  Rivera’s eyes flicked to me. “I guess you guys see a lot of action.”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.” I noted the highway patrol officer Wayne Friedman and the other deputy Juan Acevedo were experienced men, calm and professional. It was another day on the job, and another duty. They listened without expression, men to stand beside in any altercation.

  Sheriff Guzman had said enough. “Let’s go.”

  Deputy Rivera popped the trunk on his cruiser and took out a rifle. Guzman waved him off. “Naw, we ain’t carryin’ them. It’ll look like SWAT’s showed up. This is just a visit.”

  Rivera pointed. “I thought we might need a show of force.”

  “That’ll make ’em bow up right off the bat. And leave that shotgun in the rack, too.”

  Disappointed, Deputy Rivera closed the trunk. Guzman led off and Sheriff Davis slammed the door to follow. Rivera dropped into the seat and spun out.

  I followed, glancing into my rearview mirror, Acevedo and Friedman pulled into line behind me.

  A mile later Sheriff Guzman turned into a dirt drive and bounced over those same railroad tracks toward what looked like a thick, square grove of tall cedars. Large piñon pines served as anchors on all four corners.

  He turned into a gap in the hedge and pulled up to a sagging trailer propped on cinder blocks. It occupied an old house place inside three rings of mature cedars planted closely together as a sound barrier from the trains and nearby four-lane highway, and for a windbreak in the wide-open country.

  The original house had obviously burned not long before, evidenced by the still scorched earth around the weathered mobile home. Bits of heat-warped metal stuck up from the ground like roots broken with a plow. Two oaks planted for shade had recovered from the fire, though the large branches reaching over the roof still showed scars from the intense heat. Someone had raked a pile of unburnable debris against the western edge of the windbreak, on the opposite side of the drive’s entrance, making that end look like a dump site. Beer cans, scattered like chicken feed across the yard, reflected the sunlight.

  I killed the engine just inside the opening, as far away as possible from two cars and a peeling, dented pickup parked beside a ramshackle porch built on to the front. Made from raw, warped lumber, it was crowded with an assortment of buckets, boxes, and a gaping avocado-green clothes dryer they’d been too lazy to move into the yard. Every window was blocked with tinfoil.

  The others drove closer to the battered trailer and stopped with their cruisers parallel to the decaying structure. The older deputy and highway patrol officer left considerable distance between their vehicles and turned their front wheels out from habit. Deputy Rivera pulled up close to Sheriff Davis’s back bumper.

  By the time I joined them, Sheriff Guzman was on the warped, unpainted wooden deck, knocking on the peeling hollow-core door. Puffing on the ever-present cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, Sheriff Davis stayed between his car and the three-foot-high porch, watching. Acevedo, Friedman, and Rivera stood off to the side like they were waiting for instructions.

  It took everything I had not to tell them to spread out. No one was watching the ends of the trailer, and I especially wanted Deputy Rivera to stay back since he wasn’t wearing a vest, but then again, I wasn’t, either. The guy was probably an excellent officer, but he was too damned eager, swaying from foot to foot with his hand resting on that big Beretta M9. It wasn’t my place to order professionals around, so instead, I eased to the left, creating more space between me and the others.

  No one answered and Guzman pounded even harder on the flimsy hollow-core door. “Sheriff’s department! Open up!”

  Concentrating on the trailer and the areas around us, I was conscious of other sensory inputs. Doves peeped past overhead. A truck passed on the highway beyond the cedars that blocked the wind. It was almost calm inside the yard.

  Movement caught the corner of my eye. There it was again, that niggling thought in the back of my mind that I couldn’t get a handle on.

  A blue jay flicked from one of the large piñon pines. Two white-wing doves flew from behind the trailer and disappeared over the trees. A quick scan of the twenty-foot-deep hedge revealed nothing, but my senses jangled with a worry I couldn’t identify.

  Sheriff Guzman stood to the side of the door. “I hear someone moving in there.” He beat on the metal exterior wall with the flat of one hand. “Open up! Sheriff’s department.”

  I threw a glance toward my end of the trailer. Nothing.

  The door finally cracked, and a shirtless man with a pale face over a thick beard peeked out. “What do you want?”

  “Which one are you?” Sheriff Guzman squinted. “You’re Gary.”

  “Yep. What do you want?”

  “We need to talk to you.”

  The door opened wider and Gary Smith slipped outside wearing only a pair of faded jeans. Leaving the door open, the skinny barefoot young man in his late twenties crossed his tattooed arms with the nervous look of a tweaker. “What do you want?”

  “Where’re your brothers? They inside?”

  Gary tilted his head to look down his nose. His longish brown hair hadn’t met a comb in weeks. “Why?”

  “We want to talk to them, too.”

  “Well, they ain’t here.”

  “You alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Took you a while to open the door.”

  “I was asleep.”

  The sheriff studied him. “You look pretty bright-eyed to me. Not like someone who was asleep.”

  “I just dozed off.”

  “I see. Well, do you know Eric Lang?”

  “No, why?”

  “He died last night, and we’re just checking on folks who might know him.”

  Gary shrugged. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Didn’t say you did.” Guzman nodded, thinking. “Can we come in?”

  “You got a warrant?”

  Still beside his car, Sheriff Davis grunted and chewed his cigar. “We can get one.”

  Head down and watching from under his eyebrows, Gary shifted from one foot to the other. “No, you can’t. You ain’t got no reason to come in here.”

  Sheriff Guzman glanced over his shoulder and into the dark trailer. “Where are your brothers?”

  “I don’t know.” Gary’s attention flipped back and forth between both men. “What do you want with ’em?”

  I was close enough to see letters tattooed on all of his fingers. More ink was scattered across his emaciated torso. One tattoo started on his chest, expanded upward under his chin, and widened out to both ears.

  “You sure are breathing awful hard.” Sheriff Guzman backed to the top step and rested his hand on the splintered rail. His heel bumped an empty beer can and it fell off the deck with a clatter. “You scared or something?”

  Crossing his arms, Gary rubbed his skinny biceps. “I ain’t scared of shit.”

  “Um humm. Listen, you’re making me nervous breathing hard like that. Why don’t you come sit here on the steps and talk to me for a minute, tell me how you know Lang was killed.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”

  “I told you he’d died. You said he was killed.”

  “Y’all don’t come to a stranger’s house if somebody just dies.” Gary’s eyes skipped from one thing to another without resting. “We don’t need to talk. I don’t know who that feller was and don’t intend to talk to you about it no more.” He quit rubbing his arms and took a deep breath, sticking his hands in his back pockets. “I wanna go back inside and go back to sleep.”

  “I know you do, and I’d like to take a nap myself, but me and these guys need a few more answers before we can leave. The faster you co
operate, the faster we’ll get gone.”

  Sheriff Guzman’s attention was on Gary, but I saw something I didn’t like through the still open door, a flicker of movement in the darkness behind him. “Gary!”

  The skinny guy’s eyes flicked to me, and I was glad the sheriff didn’t turn around. “Huh?”

  “Who’s in the house with you?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “I thought you said you were alone?” Guzman’s voice hardened.

  “I said my brothers weren’t here.”

  “Is there somebody inside?”

  “Well.” Gary shrugged again and glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, my brother’s girlfriend.”

  “Which brother?”

  “Mark.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “I done said no.”

  “Then why is she?”

  “She was taking a nap, too.”

  That didn’t make any sense at all. I kept my hand near the .45 on my hip. “Call her out here.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he said so.” Sheriff Guzman sniffed. “Is that pot? Sure is. That changes things. I believe I see some right there on the coffee table. Are you high?”

  Gary smirked. “High on life.”

  “You boys hear him admit he’s high?”

  The four lawmen around me agreed. “Now I don’t need a warrant.” Sheriff Guzman pressed harder. “Have her come out or we’re gonna come inside.”

  Gary looked at his bare feet as if an answer was tattooed on them. “Fine. Karen, get your ass out here.”

  We waited until a young girl appeared in the doorway. She wore cut-off jeans so short they left little to the imagination, and a crop top that stopped barely below her breasts. The hair on the back of my neck tingled.

  Sheriff Guzman tilted his head. “What’s your name?”

  “Karen.”

  “Karen what?”

  She looked at Gary. “I really don’t want to say.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixt . . . eighteen.”

  A low roar filled my ears as internal alarm bells jangled. She was far from eighteen and to me looked younger than sixteen. Young girls with older men never set right with me. I’d been to training called Interdiction for the Protection of Children, or IPC, while I was on desk duty following a little escapade I had down in Mexico, and a number of warning signs were clicking into place.