“So you work for Scorpino?” I asked.
The man shook his head. “Not steady. I just do special jobs for them every now and then.”
“How about your friends. Either one of them on Scorpino’s payroll?”
“Not regular.”
“So it was Tresca who contracted you for this job?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did they pick you rather than some of their own people?”
“I guess they think we’re good at what we do.”
“Not any more you’re not,” I said with a cold laugh. “Why do they want the girl dead, anyway?”
“Mister, they didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask.”
“Alonzo, get the iron again.”
The old vaquero reached down and pulled the branding iron from the bucket.
“I know you’re afraid of Scorpino,” I said. “And I certainly understand why, but you need to consider that I’m here now, and he isn’t.”
The man’s teeth chattered and his voice quavered. “For God’s sake, you gotta believe me, mister. I can’t tell you a thing more than I already have.”
I regarded him speculatively for a few moments. “What do you think, Alonzo?” I asked.
Alonzo motioned for the tequila bottle, then pulled the cork and drank, all the while staring into the intruder’s eyes. At last he nodded and said, “I believe this man is telling the truth, Señor Virgil.”
“I think so, too,” I said in agreement. “It fits what I know of the girl’s problems. Besides, I don’t believe he’s smart enough to dream up a story like this.” I turned to Ralls and asked, “How much did they pay you and the others?”
“Two grand apiece.”
“Where’s your car?
“We couldn’t get in the gate, so we left it there and walked down to the house.”
I looked down. The man’s fancy alligator shoes were scuffed and the cuffs of his pants were covered in dust. Just then my aunt appeared in the barn’s doorway. “Well?” she asked.
“According to this guy, they were sent by some hoods down in New Orleans.”
“New Orleans?”
“Right,” I said. “Supposedly that Salisbury guy I told you about is fronting for somebody down there.”
“I see,” she said. “So what do you think we should do now?”
I considered for a few moments. It would be easy enough for three bodies to vanish. I hadn’t been joking when I told Ralls the Rio Grande turtles were always hungry. As for their car, Pablo’s nephew ran a body shop in Laredo, a place where stolen vehicles sometimes went in one color and came out another, their engine numbers changed, their registration papers brand new and beautifully forged. But to take that course meant murder. Even though Ralls was undoubtedly a killer himself, I didn’t find the idea of slaughtering a helpless man appealing.
“Call the law,” I told her. “Then have somebody go up and unlock the gate.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The law arrived thirty minutes later in the person of Matador County Sheriff Dalton Polk. He was a tall, thin fellow in his midfifties, with a weathered face and the tired, world-weary eyes of a man who’d already seen it all and expected to again. Dressed in khakis and a fine western hat, he carried a worn old Smith & Wesson .44 in a battered leather holster as a sort of afterthought. He was the first member of his family in living memory to earn his living through anything other than the hardest of physical labor, and his initial instinct in any situation was to protect his job. It also meant that he was a willing tool of the county political machine, as adept at rounding up Mexican voters on election day as he was at tracking down the occasional fugitive that invaded his bailiwick. Of both necessity and gratitude, he acknowledged Tía Carmen’s position as virtual dictator of the county. Indeed, it had been she and my father who had approached him twenty years earlier and induced him to run for the office with their backing. He won overwhelmingly, of course, just as he’d done in every election since. Nevertheless, he was a reasonably competent officer, one who preferred diplomacy to force as a means of keeping the peace. Strong-arm he left to his three deputies, chief of whom was the man he brought with him that night, my old nemesis from high school, Stubb Martindale.
Stubb was now a stocky, iron-hard man whose face held a pair of dark, smoldering eyes and a perpetually sour smirk. And he still clung to his bullying ways. He didn’t like Mexicans and lorded it over them every chance he got. But his prejudice didn’t keep him from extracting frequent favors from the handful of bar girls in town who supplemented their wages by occasionally turning tricks. Even then, he was needlessly rough with them and verbally contemptuous of their race.
The man loathed me thoroughly, and not just because of the beating I’d given him when we were kids. Three years earlier when I was still with the U.S. Marshal’s Service, Pablo had taken the truck into town to get some supplies for the ranch, just as he often did. On the way home he stopped at a cantina on the edge of town to buy a case of beer. Martindale accosted him in the bar’s parking lot and slapped him around on the bogus pretext that he was drunk and disorderly. Though there was no arrest, the old man’s pride had been deeply wounded.
Alonzo learned of the incident and came to me the next time I was home. A couple of nights later, another deputy marshal and I took Stubb for a midnight ride a few miles out into the brush, where we gave him a sound drubbing along with a lecture on the proper treatment of La Rosa vaqueros. Since then none of our people had had any trouble from the man. Twice since the incident I’d spoken to Aunt Carmen about getting him removed from his job, but for reasons of her own she’d put me off.
I greeted them at the front door. Polk shook hands and Martindale gave me a look that was pure venom. I led them up the stairs.
“Damn,” Polk said calmly as he surveyed the carnage on the landing. “And who killed him?”
“I did,” my aunt replied calmly. “It was me or him.”
Polk squatted down and retrieved the intruder’s weapon.
“I don’t doubt that,” he said, handing me a heavy revolver. “Bastard was carrying one of them new .357 Magnums that come out a few years back. Damn thing will shoot through an engine block.”
He rose to his feet. “And you said there’s another one dead in the kitchen?” he asked.
“Right.”
“Let’s have a look at him,” he said.
I led him downstairs and into the kitchen. He pushed his hat back on his head as he squatted down to peer at the bullet hole in the man’s forehead. “Good shooting,” he said. “Who plugged this one?”
“One of the vaqueros,” I replied casually.
“Which one?”
Neither my aunt nor I said anything. After a few seconds Polk nodded. “I see,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been that old ghost who lives out here, would it? What’s his name? Alfredo?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, Sheriff,” I said.
Martindale giggled.
“Shut up, Stubb,” Polk said without rancor. “Make yourself useful. Go out to the car and get that flash camera, then take a couple of pictures of each body so we’ll have something we can call crime scene photos. And I’d like to talk to the one that survived. You said he was in the barn, is that right?”
I nodded, and as soon as Martindale left the room I led Polk through the kitchen door. “Is that what you keep Stubb on the payroll for?” I asked as we walked across the backyard. “To take pictures?”
“Well, that’s one thing he can do. He’s awful proud of that camera.”
“You ought to get rid of him.”
“Why?” he asked rhetorically.
“He’s a disgrace to law enforcement.”
Polk sighed. “Your aunt got on my butt about that deal with old Pablo, but she didn’t tell me I had to fire him. I did have a talk with him, though, and told him to let up on the Mexicans.”
“And?”
“He has.”
“Good, but he needs to go. One of th
ese days he’s going to hurt somebody bad if he keeps carrying a gun and a badge.”
“Well, Virgil, now that we’re on the subject of abuse of authority, that beating you and that other federal boy gave him wasn’t exactly legal either.”
“So what?” I asked. “Half of what we do down here in South Texas isn’t legal, strictly speaking. That includes stuffing ballot boxes, and you’ve done your share of that.”
“I don’t need you to remind me,” he said. “But I kept him on because his daddy was half paralyzed from his last stroke, and the boy was his only means of support.”
“The old man’s dead now, so let him go.”
“Stubb ain’t all bad. He did a fine job of taking care of the old fellow, and loyalty like that is worth something.”
“Then let him get his reward in heaven. You don’t owe it to him, and neither does this county.”
He shook his head. “If Tía Carmen tells me to fire him, then I will. But until she gives me that direct order, I’m going to leave him be and keep after him about how he treats Mexicans.”
“Look, Dalton,” I said, making my voice as sincere as I could, “I’m not asking for any special treatment for my people, and you know that. If one of them is drunk and out of line, then any officer in this county is free to handle it. But I expect it to be done in a civilized manner because they’re all good men, drunk or sober. Besides, nobody ought to have to eat shit off some peckerwood deputy just because of the color of his skin.”
He stopped walking and turned to look at me. “That’s mighty decent of you, Virgil,” he said. “Mighty selective, too. There’s many a colored man from the Brazos River all the way back to Virginia who’d love to hear a white man say something like that, but I don’t notice you standing up for them.”
I shook my head in exasperation. “I can’t fix the world, Dalton,” I said. “But I can take care of my little corner of it. And maybe I’m just a little sensitive on this particular subject because I’m part Mexican myself. You did know that, didn’t you?”
“Sure I did,” he replied. “And personally, I like Mexicans. I ain’t never understood why guys like Stubb—”
“One other thing. I want you to know that I’m moving back home in a few weeks to help run this ranch. And in the coming years, I’ll be getting more involved in the political side of things, too.”
“I hear you, Virgil,” he said tiredly. “But for now he stays.”
We dropped the subject and walked on out to the barn. Inside, three of the old men still stood guard over the intruder, but Alonzo was nowhere to be seen. Polk ambled over and greeted them as if they were long-lost brothers, inquiring about wives and children and grandchildren and schmoozing with a practiced ease. When this dismal little ritual was finished at last, he turned to examine the man tied to the wall. “Looks like he burned his leg,” he said to no one in particular.
“Sí, Señor Sheriff,” Pablo said. “He fell on the branding iron.”
“I reckon that’s why you strapped him to the fence, then,” Polk said. “So he wouldn’t fall no more, I mean.”
“Sí,” came the laconic reply.
“You got to help me, Sheriff,” the man wailed. “They said they were gonna burn out my guts.”
Polk ignored him. “Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked me. “I can charge him with attempted murder if that suits your fancy. For that matter, he’s guilty of second degree murder already.”
“What?” the man gasped.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Little-known quirk of Texas law,” Polk explained. “If you and your buddy go out to commit an armed robbery, and it blows up in your face and he gets killed, then you’re guilty of his death. Life sentence is the maximum penalty on second degree. And in this county? Breaking in on you folks?” He shook his head. “Ain’t no way in hell he’ll avoid getting it.”
“God help!” the intruder exclaimed. “What are you trying to do to me? I want a lawyer.”
Polk paid him no heed. “What’s this mess all about, Virgil?” he asked.
I pulled him aside and quickly gave him an abbreviated version of Madeline’s story and the attack in San Gabriel. When I’d finished he asked, “You say the boy that forced his way into your room works for Milam Walsh, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You know Walsh?”
“No, but I’ve heard a lot about him, and none of it was good.”
“Same here.”
“What do you plan to do now?” he asked.
“I need to get Madeline away from La Rosa. Otherwise they’ll just send somebody else out here to try again.”
“They may do that anyway, even if you’re gone.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m going to call Salisbury as soon as I can and set up a meeting with him in a couple of days. That’s the only way to work this thing out.”
“How’s that gonna help?”
“It will at least keep his goons away from the ranch and my people.”
“But why Salisbury?” he asked. “I mean, you said this guy here claimed somebody named Tresca was behind it all.”
I shook my head. “Tresca works for Angelo Scorpino. Madeline says the talk is that Salisbury is up here trying to get a foot into the gambling rackets down on the coast for somebody in New Orleans. That has to be Scorpino.”
“But how does Walsh factor into the deal?”
“He doesn’t,” I said. “Except that Sam and Rosario Maceo over in Galveston have been paying him off for years to let their clubs in Jefferson County operate. And so has anybody else who wanted to run a gambling joint.”
“So you don’t think he’s hooked up with this Salisbury guy?”
“I doubt it,” I replied with a shake of my head. “That’s not Walsh’s style. If there’s a move on to displace the Maceos, he’ll just stand back well out of the way of any falling bodies, and then collect his tithe from the winner after the smoke clears.”
“I see,” he said with a troubled frown. “But you shouldn’t go see this Salisbury all by yourself. I mean, me and you have had our disagreements over the years, but I wouldn’t want to see nothing happen—”
I gave him a pat on the arm and a reassuring smile. “I’m not going alone. I plan to take Jim Rutherford with me, or maybe one of the Rangers.”
“Okay,” he said doubtfully. “I guess you know what you’re doing. But what do you want me to do about this mess here?”
I shrugged. “I’d like for it to stay out of the papers, if possible. You got any ideas how we can handle that?”
He stood in thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think we can manage to keep it quiet unless there’s a jury trial. Let’s just suppose this old boy here could be induced to plead guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful entry of a domicile. That’ll get him five years, which is pretty good, considering the alternative is fifty to life. He’ll probably be howling for a lawyer even before we get him to the jail, so I’ll call Frank Mendoza and have him explain the realities of life down here in South Texas. I think Frank can make him see the light.”
“Good,” I said with a nod. Mendoza was a capable attorney from Zapata County, which lay just to the north. The descendant of an old aristocratic land grant family, he had a thriving law practice that took him into courtrooms all over South Texas. He was also something of a kingpin in the political apparatus, one who wasn’t given to loose talk.
“I think it’s our best course,” he agreed. “Then we can get the judge to convene court kinda private-like and accept his plea tomorrow or the next day. After that I can have him in the pen in less than a week. That way we can keep it all nice and quiet, no stories in the newspapers or anything like that.”
“Will the DA go along with it?”
He gave me a smile that was full of sad irony. “Hell, Virgil. You know as well as I do that the DA will go along with just about anything Tía Carmen tells him to go along w
ith, the same as me.”
“Then call Frank,” I said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sheriff hauled Lew Ralls away in handcuffs, and I don’t think I ever saw a man happier to get into a nice warm cop car. The funeral home in town sent its hearse out to collect the two bodies. After everybody left we all went to work cleaning up the mess. The upstairs landing was the worst. It seemed as though the man had bled at least a gallon onto the floor. By the time we’d finished the sun was up, and we were completely worn out.
Helena made breakfast. Before we all sat down to eat I got the bourbon bottle out of the cabinet and spiked everyone’s coffee. Nobody objected. I half drained mine in one pull, then splashed a couple more inches in my cup. I looked across the table at my aunt. Her age and the night’s events told on her face. She looked old and tired.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” I asked her tenderly.
She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve felt better and I’ve felt worse. I’ll get by.”
“I mean about…” I let my voice taper off, not knowing how to say it.
“You mean that son of a bitch I shot? Don’t you waste a minute worrying about that.”
“You’re sure about that?”
She regarded me with a smile that bordered on contempt. “You don’t think that’s the first man I ever killed, do you, Virgil?”
Nothing she could have said would have surprised me more. I could only shrug in confusion while Madeline gaped.
My aunt calmly sipped her cup and watched the two of us with amusement. “I was only sixteen at the time,” she finally said. “It was the summer of 1888, and he was a drunken cowboy, an Anglo with a reputation for meanness. He was after something I was determined to keep a little while longer, so he just decided to take it. I shot him in the throat with a little derringer my daddy had given me. It didn’t bother me then, and it doesn’t bother me now.”
“My God!” I said. “Sixteen? I had no idea.”
“No reason for you to. We never talked about it.” She smiled at Madeline. “The world only appears civilized, dear,” she said. “Underneath the surface it’s all savagery, and if you don’t fight back, you’ll go under.”
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