The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Miguelito! Jorge?”

  “Capitán? Capitán?”

  Where the alley ended, the moonlight began, and into this the two men stepped. Ozburn crouched, peering at them around the flank of the drum. One of them glanced into the darkness but did not see him. When the third man joined his fellows on the open ground, Ozburn rose from behind his cover and cut them down in a long, steady, back-and-forth burst. He braced the gun against the muzzle rise with his left hand. There was the clatter of the weapon and the whack of the bullets into the men and the pinging of the brass on the alley dirt, and blood and arms and blood and hands and blood and gasps thrown up into the night. In a moment Ozburn had stepped past them and into the dark alley, where he traded out for a fresh magazine, then secured his weapon close to his chest again and snapped the windbreaker shut.

  He walked to the main street and saw the people loping excitedly for the alleys that would lead them to the dead men. These people looked as if they were participants in some game they didn’t quite understand but were told would be fun. He realized they had little idea what had happened or what they might find in the dirt road behind the buildings of their village. They were hopeful. They were innocent. They were who he was doing this for.

  Ozburn walked the other way, stopped and set the duffel down and bought a pack of Chiclets from a vendor with a tray of confections and cigarettes slung over the back of his neck. He continued down the nearly empty street and back to Josefina’s, where the taxi was waiting for him, as requested. Same driver, and a brief smile for the big payday of hours ago. Ozburn heard frantic yelling from the direction of the massacre. He held the door open while Daisy jumped in and then he climbed in beside her.

  Twenty minutes later he was in the air, Daisy beside him, the few and scattered lights of Puerto Nuevo opening before him as the little airplane roared into the sky. What sound, what tremendous, singular sound! Ozburn buzzed above the village and he could see the tiny figures down in the dirt road in a ring of light, and they seemed to be coming and going with a purpose indiscernible.

  He guided Betty over the black Pacific and climbed the breeze as up a soft-runged ladder, higher and higher until he banked north by northeast and headed toward the border. Flying east, he could see jovial Ensenada to his left and the great, violent sprawl of Tijuana beyond it.

  Ozburn listened to the musical whine of the Piper engine, finally giving himself over to the sound. Melodies within melodies. He looked down at the lights of coastal Baja diminishing into the un-lighted blackness of the desert. At night his vision seemed to come alive. He saw none of the steady glare and the sharp reflections of daylight. He felt tears running down his face, tears of relief, tears sent by God to clear his eyes for the work ahead. He felt the return of the pains that had beset him for the last four weeks. They came upon him suddenly, like pigeons returning to their roost. Substantial, undeniable pain—the arches of his feet, joints, muscles, glands, teeth, even skin. And the ferocious ache for sexual release. He breathed twice, deeply, then held in the third breath for a count of three. Twice more. Better. Maybe.

  He steered north toward Lake Arrowhead in California.

  He circled three times, then landed Betty in a meadow between stands of lodgepole pine and spruce. He taxied under a metal cover and tied down the plane. His feet and knees quaked in pain but the air was cool and clean and smelled of conifers. He walked to the Red Squirrel Lodge, where he had stayed with Seliah last spring for a wonderful weekend. They had neat little cabins with Wi-Fi and a free breakfast.

  He asked for cabin eight because that was where he had stayed with her. When he let himself in and turned on the light their stolen hours came surging back on him like a rogue wave. He steadied himself on the door frame. Daisy flew past him and jumped on the couch. Ozburn went back to the porch and got the duffel and lugged it inside. He found his health supplements and vitamins and shook out a stronger dose than usual. Unwilling to drink or even look at a glass of water, he saved up his spit and swallowed them down. He was amazed how much saliva he could produce in just a few seconds. He chased the pills with a good, big shot of tequila.

  He kicked off his boots and set the Love 32 beside him on the bed while the e-mails downloaded to his laptop.

  There it was:

  From: Seliah [seliahoz@zephyr.net]

  Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 5:45 p.m.

  To: Gravas, Sean

  Subject: our plan

  My Dear Sean,

  Okay, I give up. I have to be with you. I have no choice. My body and soul demand you and I was not given this life to play some extended game with the man I love. I would go to the ends of the earth for you, Sean, to the gates of heaven or even hell. You cannot know the ache I am for you. More on that later.

  I realize that you can’t write me without all of ATF intercepting your words, often before I even get them. But I can make plans with you, dear one, and they don’t know unless I tell them.

  So here goes.

  First, here’s a way for you to know if my email to you has been ordered or doctored by your criminal enemies or not.

  If my salutation reads “Dear Sean,” you will know that the email has been compromised by them.

  If my salutation reads “My Dear Sean,” then you will know that I’ve written it in private and no one will see it, ever, but you.

  As a back-up, if my closing ever reads “Your Loving Wife,” then you will know that the email is somehow compromised.

  Simple.

  So here is my plan. Meet me in the main bar at Rancho Las Palmas in Palm Desert tomorrow evening at seven o’clock. If I’m wearing sunglasses propped up in my hair get out of there as quickly and casually as you can—I have been followed or otherwise found out. I’ll have our suite waiting for us.

  If you agree to this plan, mention Daisy in your next email to me but mis-spell her name as: Daisey. I expect to see that name mis-spelled, Sean. Oh, please mis-spell it!

  Sean, we had such a good time at that hotel a couple of years back, before all of this. I will see you there and love you there as you have never been loved before. After that, you and Betty will have to make room for one more. (I assume you’re with her!) I’ll pack very lightly. I’ll have just enough with me to follow you to the end of the earth. Sean, we tried. We tried to follow the rules and walk the straight and narrow and do the right thing and all that blind obedience they drill into your brain from the time you can focus your eyes. All it did was make us crazy. Enough. It’s all a crock. We’re lighting out for the territory ahead, Sean. Strange new worlds. Infinity and beyond. You and me and Daisy. I hereby close this book I’m writing, and begin another.

  In love and passion and the absolute knowledge that we will be together again.

  Your Forever-Insane-For-You-Lover, who is about to send then delete this message,

  Seliah

  PS—When can I get baptized?

  Ozburn read the e-mail three times. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate through the noise and the aches.

  The plan seemed so good.

  So simple and workable.

  So much like something Blowdown would think up.

  He forced himself off the bed and dug out kibble for Daisy and got her some water. He went outside and stood for a while as the moon hung in the treetops and the pine trees hissed in the wind.

  Fifteen minutes later Ozburn got another e-mail from Seliah. It was seven pages long, impassioned, anguished, mostly logical. He could hear her voice. He read it three times, too.

  Sounds like something I’d write to her, he thought. He addressed another note to her but he couldn’t figure out what to say. He walked outside and looked at the mountains again. Daisy came with him, then seemed to forget why. She sat and watched Ozburn stare out.

  He went back into the cabin and paced the little room for a few minutes, trying to unknot his thoughts. He wanted so badly to see her but he knew it was dangerous. Maybe perilous. He smelled Blowdown behind this, smelled them stro
ngly. He decided his answer would have to be no.

  But after walking a few more lengths of the cabin, he realized that with a simple yes he would be holding her close to him this time tomorrow, showering her with all the splendid gifts he had waiting for her. And after that, they would be on his mission together, husband and wife, for better or worse, for life. Seliah, Betty and Daisy. All he loved. How could he refuse her? And himself? After all this?

  Finally he hit the reply command and wrote back.

  Dear Seliah,

  I just had a walk outside. Beautiful night. I love October. I love you. Daisey says hello and together we say GOODNIGHT. I wish you were here so we could tuck each other in.

  Hugs and more,

  Sean

  13

  Hugely distracted by her evening plans, Seliah worked half of the following day at the Aquatics Center. Sundays were busy when it was hot. It was three and a half hours of near-blinding sunlight, and three and a half hours staring at the water, which made her nervous and nauseous. The water that had always been so beautiful to her, pliant and sensual, was now an alien thing. She hoped she wouldn’t have to touch it. The sight of it made her throat ache. A cold coming on? Maybe.

  Then, just as she had feared, little Amy Leitman staged a mid-pool panic. The girl screamed and gasped histrionically, threw herself around. Fourth time since July. Seliah knew that she was expected to strip off her hat and shirt and sunglasses and jump in and pull the girl to the side. Amy wouldn’t touch the life buoy. She was an attention-starved fifth child and she openly worshipped Seliah and thrived on this ritual.

  Seliah cursed under her breath, stripped down, and dove in and felt the terrible water close around her. She was only moderately claustrophobic but her sudden envelopment in the liquid felt like being buried alive. It was! She came up and drew a deep breath and looked through her stinging eyes at Amy, who was thrashing dutifully just a few meters away.

  When Seliah was upon her she turned the girl and hooked her strong arm around Amy’s chin from behind and drew her elbow firm. She sidestroked across the pool, trailing Amy out behind her. After just a stroke or two, the girl stopped struggling and let Seliah pull her through the water. Seliah could see the little girl’s face turned to the sky, eyes big, and her mouth drawn back in a grimace of alarm so fake it would have been funny if Seliah’s heart was not pounding viciously against her rib cage and her lungs weren’t working so hard and getting so little air. Her skin felt as if it were crawling with something—fleas, flies, worms?

  She came to the stainless steel ladder and manually clamped both of the girl’s hands to the curving handles. Then gave her fingers a good hard squeeze.

  Amy spit up some pool water, but not much. “You . . . saved . . . me. Seliah. Seliah.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Amy. Climb the goddamned ladder.”

  “You hurt my hands.”

  “Get out.”

  Seliah hoisted herself to the deck and stood. She reached down and took Amy’s hand and pulled her from the pool. Amy stood trembling on the deck and spit up another small load of water, then started crying.

  “You don’t like me anymore.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I want Mom.”

  “She won’t be her for half an hour. Cry all you want.”

  Amy looked up at her, bawling. Seliah registered the heartbreak in the girl’s face but was unmoved by it. By then a small crowd had gathered. Some of the open-swim kids had seen this before but many had not, and some of the moms came over to comfort Amy, and the dads to size things up.

  Seliah looked at the gathered faces, then down again at Amy, whose blubbering was gaining momentum, and she walked back to her stand and gathered up her things and walked toward the exit.

  The Aquatics Center director intercepted Seliah at the gate. He was a former butterfly All American with wide shoulders and an easy manner.

  “Sel? You okay? What’s up?”

  She stopped and looked at him. “I quit, Dave. As of right now.”

  “Well, wait a minute . . . Why?”

  “I can’t stand the sight of this place.”

  “What happened out there?”

  “Amy again.”

  “You were always good to Amy.”

  “Not anymore. Mail the check.”

  “I thought you liked it here.”

  “I can no longer stand it here, Dave.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “I changed.”

  Dave crossed his arms and nodded. “Okay. But if you change again, I’ll hire you right back. I mean, I think I will. What’s . . . what’s wrong with you, Seliah? I noticed this at least a week ago. You’re not yourself.”

  “I’m too much myself. See you around, Dave.”

  “You okay?”

  She shook her head and pushed through the gate and strode toward the parking lot and didn’t look back.

  At home she found a yearningly sweet e-mail from Sean waiting for her. She forwarded it to Charlie, then answered it with a slightly longer one—how strange to not even mention the secret that was devouring both of their minds right now! It felt almost good. She thought she might be starting to get the feel of being undercover—its heady deceptions and secretive powers. No wonder Sean had gone half-crazy. Full crazy?

  She packed, lightly, as she had told Sean she would. Three days of clothes, the ruby choker and earrings he had given her, toiletries, a floral nightie he liked.

  Charlie wrote back a moment later, asking after her, his usual polite and understated self. This must be hard for you, Seliah. Please know that I am here for you as a friend. I know we both want what is best for him. She imagined having sex with Charlie, something long and exhausting, animal-like, then rebuked herself for it, then forgave herself because she could barely control her own actions that way, let alone the thoughts that swarmed up from inside her. She’d given up on controlling those two weeks ago! Not much she could do when she saw the cute mailman in his little blue shorts; or her hot, hunk, bachelor neighbor who had a different chick every week; or the barista at her favorite coffee place, who couldn’t take his black eyes off her. She had varied her routine to avoid them. She had stayed home all day to remove temptation. But that was worse, because all she had thought about was Sean, hundreds of miles away, and the Flexi-Dong, a nominally fleshlike device she’d bought online, which was right there under her bed. Enough.

  She endured a long shower and felt better when she stepped out and dried herself. In the mirror she saw a beautiful woman in her prime, shapely and fit, with a pinched expression on her face. But it was uncomfortable to look at her own reflection—it seemed . . . ghastly. What next, she wondered. She flung back her hair and blasted away at the roots with the blow-dryer and forced a smile. She thought of Sean. Pictured him walking into the bar at Rancho Las Palmas. Better.

  She gassed the Mustang and circled the block a few times looking for Charlie or Janet or some other cagey little ATF agent trying to follow her. Nothing. She widened her circle up and down El Camino Real and saw no one, then made a series of arbitrary turns and U-turns that finally led her to Interstate 5. It was four fifteen P.M. She punched the Mustang V-8 down the on-ramp and hit the freeway at eighty miles an hour.

  She sat at the R Bar, nursing a Bordeaux in an oversize goblet. She’d taken a circuitous route to the resort hotel, then walked the grounds casually for nearly half an hour to make sure she hadn’t been followed.

  When Sean walked in, her breath caught in her throat. It took most of her self-control to remain seated as she watched him walk toward her. He’d traded out the biker gear for something more soulful—tight black leather pants and soft black boots and a cotton jacquard Robert Graham shirt open over a black tee. His leather messenger’s pouch was slung across his right shoulder and hung down low on his left. A weapon, she knew. When he got closer she saw his cross and iron cross and the SEL on stainless steel chains around his neck. His hair was just washed and it flowed nearly to
his back. It looked like it had grown two inches in the two weeks since she’d last seen him. The gunslinger mustache couldn’t hide his smile.

  He sat down beside her and set his sunglasses on the bar top. “I’m Sean.”

  “I’m Seliah. Let me buy you a glass of wine.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “You look very good, Sean.”

  “So do you, Seliah.”

  “You look like all of heaven squeezed into a man.”

  “You I won’t even try to describe.”

  They leaned toward each other and kissed briefly. Seliah felt the rush of blood in her eardrums.

  “Please once more,” she said.

  They touched lips again and she inhaled his smells into her when it was over. She saw the bartender glance at them.

  “Where’s Daisy?”

  “In the Rover. In the shade. She can’t wait to meet you.”

  The bartender brought the wine and Seliah paid for the round with cash. They pivoted their stools to face each other and she could see his whole front side now, his blue eyes and the wrinkles at the edges of them, his lightly freckled cheeks and his good strong chin and neck, the funny slope of the right shoulder he’d had his whole life, even in the boyhood pictures she’d seen. They drank the wine quickly and Seliah could see the wildness coming into her husband’s expression, the same thing she’d seen in him two weeks ago. She understood it now. Or at least she knew how it felt to experience it. It was hers now, too, whatever it was. She heard the bartender talking quietly with a customer at the far end of the bar, the air conditioner humming, a mockingbird trilling from a lemon tree outside the building, heard the splashes of the swimmers in the distant pool and even the faraway pop . . . pop . . . pop of tennis balls being hit on a court she couldn’t see. The sounds blended and separated and merged again as a new sound, melodic and nimble.