“So this is Plan B?” I asked Sughrue as he cracked a beer.
“Goddammit,” he hissed, “that skinny fucker could be the brother of the asshole who shot me.”
“We couldn’t be that lucky,” I said, but Sughrue didn’t hear me. He was long gone into his private madness.
The yuppies, who dressed like male models but who had the eyes of fundamentalist linebackers, flanked us on the overlook while the cowboys struggled with the knee-high brush. I didn’t see Sughrue move. Nobody saw him move. But the nearest yuppie’s head flew back as Sughrue broke his jaw with a short uppercut. The big kid was unconscious when he flopped over the low rail to hit the downhill slope.
“What did you say!” Sughrue screamed after the fact. Even crazy, the fucker was still smart. If we needed it, the college kids would remember the scream, then the punch.
—
The other yuppie had seen too many Bruce Lee movies. Sughrue blocked his sweeping sidekick with his left elbow, then kicked him on the offside knee. Behind me one of the girls puked as the bone and cartilage exploded with a wet crack. Except for that, their whole group stood, stunned, motionless as Sughrue popped the bank guard in his swollen nose and hooked in the gut.
Thanks to their vanity, the cowboys still hadn’t made it to the overlook. I slapped the first one in the middle of his forehead with the sap, then dropkicked him in the chest. He rolled downhill in a cloud of dust. But the other grabbed for a piece under his denim jacket. I had to leap downhill to whap him on the elbow with the sap. Then we got tangled in each other’s limbs and rolled down the hill, too, the poor cowboy’s broken arm flapping and grinding all the way to the parking lot.
Where, goddammit, Hangas had come back, crouched in his immaculate chauffeur’s uniform, the shotgun-cane across the hood of the limo, covering me as I lifted the Glock from under the cowboy’s Levi’s jacket, unloaded it, and threw the rounds one way, and the pistol another. The pistol bounced off the asphalt in the wake of the first cowboy, who was busy cutting thuds into the waning light down the road. I had lost sight of the two Hispanic guys. I thought I saw one of them following the cowboy along the brushy edge of the roadway.
“Sughrue!” I shouted. “Look out for the skinny guy!”
“Cuidado!” Hangas shouted, aiming the cane into the darkness behind me.
I dove behind a low stone wall just as two silenced rounds skipped off the pavement behind me, then I rolled and caught a glimpse of the skinny guy bounding through the shadows like a deer. Brake lights flared down the road, and a car roared away. Just about then Sughrue came down the steps, the sick yuppie over his shoulder.
“Looks like this is our guy,” Sughrue said, then dumped him into the backseat of his rental. “At least this is the one in the best shape. And I got all the plate numbers. So let’s hit it before those college kids call the cops.”
“Hangas,” I said, “thanks. Now disappear.”
“Not with my grandbaby, you don’t,” came a nasal woman’s voice. Grandma stepped into the light, a hit man’s special—a silenced Colt Woodsman .22—locked in a combat grip. Nobody suggested that she didn’t know how to use it. Or that she wasn’t ready to pull the trigger. “He’s just hired help,” she whined, “he don’t know shit from wild honey.”
But Sughrue had already spun, the Browning appearing in his hand. I knew he wouldn’t wait for conversation but would depend on a head shot to prevent her from pulling the trigger. So I stepped between them.
“Nothing here worth dying for, Granny,” I said, holding out my hands.
“Get out of the fucking way, Milo,” Sughrue said flatly.
“What the hell are you doing out here, Granny?” I asked her. “Playing cops and robbers? You oughta be home in the rocking chair with your knitting.”
I knew Sughrue wanted to put a round into her. Through me, if necessary. And the old woman nearly pulled the trigger when I called her Granny.
“Knitting, my ass,” she said. “I oughta put one right in your eye, dipshit.” Then she lost heart, let her hand drop. “You boys just fucked my retirement, you know. They don’t have much social security in my line of work.”
“Give her the kid, Sonny,” I said, and heard him huff as he propped the yuppie over his shoulder again, carried him to the old woman, who let the boy lean on her shoulder as they walked away.
Just at the edge of the light, though, she stopped and gave us something. “Everybody in this shit is hired help,” she said. “Even me and Leon. Everybody but Rogelio. He’s a bordersnake. He belongs to the Baron.”
“What fucking Baron?” Sughrue shouted.
But the old woman just shrugged.
—
So after a couple of chores, we fled Austin with its pink capitol building and hard-skinned old women. Carver D fed our information back in to the police department the next morning, but the Firth family had cleaned out the bank and, unlike Sughrue and me, fled to quieter climes where extradition could be a problem. I thought about trying to convince Carver D to pick up Sheba from the vet clinic, but he shuddered so deeply I decided on an anonymous cash contribution to the Humane Society in Sheba’s and Dr. Porterfield’s names and another, smaller one to the emergency vet clinic.
As we drove away, I watched them in the rearview mirror, Carver D rolling his great soft body into the backseat of the Lincoln limo as Hangas closed the suicide rear doors.
But Sughrue never looked back, not once, all the way to Rocksprings, where we paused to establish a base camp from which to investigate Ana Navarro’s past before pressing on to El Paso to dig in the remains of Ray Lara’s.
—
While Sughrue tried his border Spanish on Ana Navarro Lara’s widowed father in Del Rio, I examined the silver-framed photographs propped on the crude shelves. Like the rest of the tiny tin-roofed adobe house, the pictures were immaculately clean and polished. A wedding photo that looked as if it had been taken in the previous century sat next to a snapshot of what I assumed was Señor Navarro as a young vaquero, straddling an uncovered saddle tree cinched to a piebald hip-shot pony. His sockless feet were encased in huaraches with spurs strapped to them and stuck into bare wooden stirrups. This old boy had been the real thing. Several double sets followed the progress of two girls: confirmation; quinceañeras and proms; high school graduation; then nothing, nothing more.
I looked over at the old man. He squatted on the rough tile floor, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips, his knotted fingers braiding a rawhide lariat, and his milky eyes trying to follow Sughrue. When Sughrue finally got the formalities over and mentioned Analise’s name, the old man popped the finished end of the leather rope against the tile. It rang in the small room like a gunshot. Then his eyes filled with tears. A fine mesh of deeply cut wrinkles etched his Indian face, a maze of arroyos that scattered the tears to salty mist before they floated to the red tile.
There was plenty. This might be life or death for us, but Señor Navarro’s sorrow seemed more important. We apologized our way out the door, then we stood like fools in the dirt street just outside the rickety gate, without a clue again.
As far as I could tell, Del Rio was a third-world country, peopled by the very rich and the very, very poor. And none of our usual sources of information existed in this world. We’d found the old man almost by accident, because he did not exist on gringo paper: no telephone, no city directory listing, no voter registration.
But we had found an Ana Navarro in the high school yearbook collection in the tiny local library. Luckily, the part-time librarian remembered that she had grown up down by the tracks. Of course, not many trains troubled the tracks these days, but they still divided things. So we found a taxi driver, Tony Vargas, who couldn’t believe we didn’t want to cross the border to Ciudad Acuña. But he found the right neighborhood eventually. Perhaps it took longer because he seemed to enjoy the notion of being driven slowly around town by two gringos in an Eldorado. While he sucked down free cans of Tecate beer.
“Sí, but who?”
“I’ll give you another fifty-dollar bill to find her,” Sughrue said, “and give her two fifty-dollar bills to talk to us.”
Tony shuffled in the dirt, oddly reluctant suddenly. “My friend, why should this person who perhaps does not even exist,” he mumbled, “receive more money than myself, who you know is your friend?”
“Okay,” Sughrue said softly. “Two fifties if you find her. Nothing for looking.”
Tony grumbled like a man who had been outbargained. “Nothing for looking?”
“Nada,” Sughrue said, “not one fucking penny.”
“But I have no coat, señor,” he said in a great imitation of a waif.
“Then you should hurry.”
Tony grinned, then trotted away on his short legs like a man who knew exactly where he was going. After a moment, he came back with a middle-aged woman who was trying to untie her apron. “Perhaps if we could sit in the lovely car,” he said, “so Señora Alvarez…”
Sughrue laughed as I hadn’t heard him in days. “Tony, my friend,” he said, “Why don’t you drive us around the barrio while we talk to Señora Alvarez.”
Tony’s smile came like a sunburst into the cold, blustery afternoon, so we mounted my Dark Cherry steed.
—
Afterward, Tony would have it no other way than that Sughrue and I meet his wife and children and his momma. Then Sughrue had to drive the family around the block. Five or six times. Then we waited while he let Tony drive his family, including his ancient mother, around the block.
“Mr. Sughrue,” I pointed out, “you’ve just given my brand-new and damned expensive Cadillac to a Mexican cab driver who reeks of marijuana, tequila, and chicanery…”
“Chicanery?”
“Like you,” I said. “What if he doesn’t come back?”
“Where the hell’s he going to go, Milo?” he asked, half-pissed. “He lives here. Like that old vaquero this afternoon. He fucking lives here. What? Are you becoming a bigot in your old age? I’ve seen you take puking, dying winos home to lie with you for months at a time.”
“Okay,” I said, “but sometimes they were you.” Down the block, Tony turned the corner and drove toward us gently. “I give up.”
But it wasn’t quite time yet. There was some drinking with Tony’s friends, who looked as much like criminals as he did. And some singing with some other friends. Then an encounter with the local police, who wanted to know about the strange gringos in the Caddy. But Tony handled that for us. Since we had left most of the cash, all of Sughrue’s firearms, and the smoking dope back at the motel in a little town called Rocksprings, I wasn’t too worried, so I let the two Mexican-American cops search the car, after they asked politely. They were just doing what they thought of as their job.
Lately the goddamned government had decided to suspend due process for the duration of the war against drugs. Given the right set of circumstances and the proper narco shitheel, if they found a roach in the ashtray of my ride, left there by a hitchhiking hippie deep into bad karma, they could confiscate all my goods without a hearing, a charge, a conviction, or recourse.
I couldn’t see walking one hundred twenty-three miles back to the motel. Driving was quite enough. I was very happy to see the little motel when we finally got there just before daylight. I woke Sughrue and told him that I liked him a lot better when he was morose. He laughed, agreed with me, and staggered out of the car toward his room.
“Goddammit, Milo,” he said at the door. “Remember the old days?”
“What?”
“When you were serious and I had all the fun?”
“What’s changed?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said happily, then he stumbled to bed.
I poured a drink and stepped outside to watch the sun try to burn through the clouds to expose the place these Texans called the Hill Country. I’d seen bigger snowdrifts, I thought, and just about that time a blast of freezing rain slapped me in the face. I could have sworn it was seventy degrees when we’d checked in.
—
Señora Alvarez had told us that Ana’s little sister, Connie, sent a check every month from Kerrville, where she had married a rich old gringo who owned a motel and a ranch and some other things, she didn’t know what. Señor Navarro hadn’t spoken Connie’s name since she married the old gringo. Señora Alvarez didn’t know anything about the troubles between the old man and his daughters. She just cashed the checks and took care of Señor Alvarez. As she had promised.
—
So with that knowledge firmly in hand and four hours’ sleep behind us, Sughrue and I checked out of the motel in Rocksprings and drifted east again, easing down back roads as the cold rain, which threatened to become sleet again, hammered the Beast. Sughrue, suffering the deserved pangs of a tequila hangover, slumbered in the backseat, leaving me to myself.
Truth be told, I really liked being on the road. Even if it was Texas. I had folding money in my pocket, a great ride under my ass, and a fucking purpose.
Even though I grew up with money and a generous father, once he was dead my mother, who beneath her East Coast affectations was a mean-spirited and miserly drunk, kept me on a short financial leash. Which had something to do, I suspect, with me quitting high school at sixteen to enlist in the Army. Although she constantly threatened to report me for the forged birth certificate I’d used to join, she never did. Not even when I went to Korea. Not even after I wished she had. So I spent most of the rest of my life scrabbling for money, or waiting for it. I took the GED before the Army turned me loose, then worked my way through college at Mountain States, doing the night shift pulling the green chains at the local lumber mill and spending summers gandy dancing for the railroad, then joined the sheriff’s department the day I graduated. After they allowed me to resign ten years later I took up my private license, scuffling for money in various legal and illegal ways, until I couldn’t carry my own weight anymore. Then another eight years working for Gene Currier, tending bar, until Sughrue loaned me the money to buy into the Slumgullion.
So I got by, but I hadn’t owned a great ride since I bought a chopped and channeled, bored and stroked ’49 Merc, Midnight Black with a white leather tuck-and-roll interior, when I got out of the VA hospital in San Francisco. A beautiful ride. Which I wrecked outside Susanville, California, showing off for a blackjack dealer from Reno. And purpose? Shit, I thought, driving through the small town of Hunt, I’d never had a purpose. Just a drifter, a saddle tramp without a horse, a bindlestiff without a blanket roll. A drunk with no good reason to drink. For a moment I was almost thankful that Andy Jacobson had lifted my daddy’s money. Then I shook my head. Maybe I wasn’t actually thankful. But he was going to be one sorry son of a bitch.
“Where the fuck are we?” Sughrue grumbled from the backseat.
“Hunt-fucking-Texas,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “Kerrville is just down the road. You’re going to love Kerrville, man.”
—
Señora Alvarez said Connie Navarro had married money, and in a town the size of Kerrville, money shouldn’t be too hard to find. But as strangers, it seemed best to sneak up on it. So we figured that the place to begin was the bar at the most expensive motel in town. Once we spotted it, a giant limestone chain outfit that looked more like an old Spanish garrison than a motel, we parked under the ramada. Sughrue wandered around the cluttered lobby as I walked over to the registration desk. Before I could finish filling out the card, Sughrue slipped up behind me, grabbed my elbow, and jerked me away from the desk.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
/> “Take a look,” he said, pointing to a corner where cowboy memorabilia had been supplanted by an African landscape, the centerpiece of which was a mother giraffe, her neck lovingly stretched down to a baby. “What kind of people would stuff a baby giraffe?”
“Same kind of assholes that would kill one,” I said.
“Let’s find another place.”
“Right,” I said. “And some new transportation, too. I don’t want to end up in somebody’s trophy case.” Suddenly Austin didn’t seem far enough away, and prudence a necessity.
We rented a storage space for the Beast, a Lincoln Town Car for me, and a Ford Escort for Sughrue. The moment with the giraffes still bothered him. So much he didn’t even complain about having to drive the smaller car. After looking at several places we finally found the Guadalupe River Lodge, another maze of stone buildings nestled deep in the cypress and sycamore shadows along the river.
Sughrue and I checked into the lodge separately about four in the afternoon, agreed to meet in the Cypress Tree Piano Bar shortly so we could pump the bartender from different directions. But the bar didn’t open until five, and the rat’s ass of a bartender, a bald-headed guy who wore a string tie and a black sliver of a moustache, was one of those little guys who had either seen or done everything. A perfect waste. But he made a great martini. So fine that I sensed destruction at the end of this olive trail. I had two, then went back to the room and called down for a steak and salad, leaving Sughrue to try his redneck charm on the little shit.
—
“The little fucker’s name is Albert,” Sughrue said when he stopped at my room about ten. “His pimp moustache is dyed. Just like his remaining hair. Supposedly, he once was the welterweight champ of the Pacific fleet. He hates niggers, pepper-bellies, Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, lesbians, faggots, Marines, and me.”
“How the hell does he keep his job?”
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