by Mark Gimenez
‘Professor Bookman,’ she said. ‘Sam Walker called, said you were heading my way. I’m Sadie Thomas. I think you should be on the Supreme Court.’
‘You should take my Con Law class first.’
She was a middle-aged woman with a sweet face. Which face appeared in the funeral photo.
‘So what brings you to our courthouse?’
‘I need some information.’
‘About what?’
‘Whom. Billy Bob Barnett.’
Her smile disappeared.
‘I understand he filed lawsuits against landowners?’
‘Pipeline condemnation cases, about two dozen so far.’
‘Who represents him?’
‘The Dunn Law Firm.’
‘What lawyer?’
‘Nathan Jones. But he died in a car accident last week.’
‘He was my intern four years ago. Did he file lawsuits for any other clients?’
‘As far as I know, Billy Bob was his only client. He always joked about being a one-client lawyer. Too bad his only client was an asshole.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘You’ll hear it more. Condemning folks’ land for a pipeline, it’s legal, but it’s not right. Landowners got together, hired the same lawyer out of Santa Fe, but they always lose. Billy Bob’s got the law on his side. Folks are fighting mad.’
‘Mad enough to kill?’
‘Him, but not his lawyer.’ Sadie exhaled heavily. ‘He was a sweet boy, Nathan. Brought me a red rose on my birthday. Every year. He was really excited about becoming a daddy.’
Book thanked her and turned to leave.
‘Professor—’
He turned back.
‘I wouldn’t get in the middle of this fight. Might not be healthy.’
* * *
‘They killed Nathan, Professor.’
At half past seven, Book and Nadine rode over to Nathan Jones’s house on Austin Street north of the railroad tracks. It was a neat frame house with a black 4×4 Ford pickup truck parked out front. The large young man with curly blond hair who had stood next to the wife at the funeral met them at the door. His name was Jimmy John Dale. He and Nathan had been best friends since childhood. He smelled like a brewery.
‘Why do you say that, Ms. Jones?’
‘Brenda. Because they said he was speeding, but Nathan never drives fast.’
Only five days after her husband’s death, she still spoke of him in the present tense.
‘He was a boy scout?’
‘Eagle.’
She was due in three weeks; it was a boy. She sat uncomfortably in an armchair. Book and Nadine sat on the couch; Jimmy John paced the wood floor with a beer in his hand and a frown on his face, as if he had something on his mind and that something had irritated him. A wedding portrait of Nathan and Brenda hung on one wall of the small living room. She wore a white wedding dress, he a black tuxedo.
‘Wow,’ Nadine said. ‘He’s James Dean’s identical twin.’
‘That’s what everyone says,’ Brenda said.
Several other photos of Brenda and Nathan showed them walking a beach, lying on a picnic blanket, and dancing at a party. They were an odd couple, physically. Brenda was a cute girl with a round face who would struggle with the baby weight after giving birth, the same as Book’s sister was now struggling. Nathan Jones looked like a male model in one of those glossy fashion magazines; his features were sharp, his eyes dark, and his body lean. He seemed almost too perfect to be a real man, just as he had seemed too introverted to be a lawyer; next to him, Ms. Roberts seemed like a talk show host. He made an A in Con Law; he often drew in a small sketchbook he carried.
‘Check out his crazy photos,’ Jimmy John said.
On another wall were framed black-and-white photos, all of the stark West Texas landscape. One showed cowboys on horseback herding cattle across the dusty plains, but in the foreground as if observing the scene was a perfectly clothed Barbie doll, its vivid color a sharp contrast to the black-and-white scene. Another was of the open land and a low mountain range in the distance with a tall red rose stuck in the dirt in the foreground. A third showed a drilling rig standing tall above the land, roughnecks working on the deck, and in the foreground pink lacy lingerie. Nadine stood and examined each photo as if she were an art critic.
‘I know,’ Brenda said. ‘They’re weird. I didn’t get them either. But Nathan loves to take those photos. It’s his passion.’
‘He had an eye for the landscape,’ Book said. ‘Did he ever try to sell his photos?’
‘No. It’s just a hobby. He’s happy being a lawyer. Was. Which was good, because he works … worked a lot of late nights.’
‘What else did he do? When he wasn’t working?’
‘Nothing. He works at the firm and spends the rest of his time with me. And Jimmy John.’
‘What did you and he do?’
She shrugged. ‘Normal stuff. Sundays after church, we’ll pack a lunch and drive the desert looking for landscape for him to shoot. We’ll put out a blanket, and he’ll take hundreds of pictures from different angles. He’s got some great photos from up in the Davis Mountains.’
‘Did he hang out with anyone else?’
‘He doesn’t have a lot of friends in Marfa.’
‘But he grew up here.’
‘He wasn’t a cowboy,’ Jimmy John said.
‘Any siblings?’
‘He’s an only child,’ Brenda said.
‘So how’d you two meet?’
‘We all grew up together, here in Marfa. Nathan and I, we’ve been sweethearts since grade school. After high school, we went to Tech together. I got a degree in education, he majored in English. I came home, been teaching kindergarten in the public school seven years now. Nathan went to UT for law school. You were his hero, Professor. He talked about you a lot. We always watched you on TV.’
‘You really got a black belt in kung fu?’ Jimmy John said.
‘Taekwondo.’
‘When he got his law degree,’ Brenda said, ‘he came home, we got married, and he hired on with the Dunn firm. That was right when they opened the office here.’
Book addressed Jimmy John. He had a red face and a thick body. His jeans dragged the ground in the fashion of cowboys. Given his obvious state of inebriation and irritation, Book decided not to pepper him with questions but to just let him talk—and he seemed anxious to talk.
‘So, Jimmy John, what’s your story?’
Jimmy John took a swig of his beer then swiped a sleeve across his mouth.
‘My story?’ He snorted as if amused by the question. ‘My story is, Brenda and Nathan went off to college, I stayed here. I only got a high school education, so I was low man on the totem pole for jobs around here, right below the Mexicans ’cause they’ll live twenty to a trailer so they can send money back home to Mexico. You know they send thirty billion dollars back home every year? But they ain’t taking money from American workers. Yeah, right. So I worked the cattle, dug holes and laid asphalt for the city, whatever work there was. Then this place becomes some kind of hot spot for art and all of a sudden every goddamn homosexual in New York City is moving to Marfa, artists with more money than sense, paying too much for homes, driving up the prices, now locals like me, we can’t afford nothing but trailers on the Mexican side of town. Biggest employers in town were the tomato farm and Border Patrol. I applied, but they want agents who can speak Spanish.’
‘You could learn.’
‘We shouldn’t have to speak Spanish to work in America, Professor, especially not for our own government. But we speak English on the rigs.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘Billy Bob Barnett. He don’t hire wets.’
‘You like the work?’
‘I like to work. Never had a regular job till fracking came to town. Give people like me a chance.’
‘For what?’
‘A life.’
The economy had left the Jimmy Johns of
America behind. Manufacturing jobs had gone offshore to Mexico and Asia, and the oil and gas business had gone to the Middle East. Twenty-three million Americans were unemployed; most felt betrayed by their country. Bitter. Angry. Most had no hope for a steady job. Ever. Until fracking came along. But it came with a price. Jimmy John pulled out a white handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. Blood stained the white cloth.
‘He gets nosebleeds,’ Brenda said. ‘And headaches. From working the rigs.’
Jimmy John shrugged. ‘Lot of chemicals and gases coming up the well hole.’
‘You have a doctor check you out?’
‘No doctor in Marfa.’
He dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a small container and swallowed two pills then chased them with the beer.
‘He takes Advil like he’s eating candy,’ Brenda said. ‘Nathan begged him to go to Alpine, see a doctor there.’
Jimmy John waved off her concerns with his beer can. ‘Ain’t like I’m gonna quit my job.’
‘You married?’ Book asked.
That question amused Jimmy John even more.
‘Me? Hell, ain’t no white girls in town.’
Book turned back to Brenda Jones. ‘Did you know that Nathan had written a letter to me?’
‘He said he was going to.’
‘Did you know why?’
‘He said something wasn’t right. With the water. Said Billy Bob was cutting corners. Nathan was scared to death of him.’
‘His own client?’
‘Billy Bob bullied him. He bullied everyone.’
‘Aw,’ Jimmy John said, ‘he’s all bark and no bite. Oil men are rough around the edges, is all.’
Book pulled out Nathan’s letter and handed it to Brenda. She read it then gave it to Jimmy John.
‘He asked for your help, Professor,’ Brenda said.
‘How do I help him now?’
‘Find the truth.’
Jimmy John handed the letter back to Book and said, ‘Well, Billy Bob’s the only fracker in Marfa.’
‘And Nathan’s only client,’ Brenda said. ‘If you work for the Dunn firm in Marfa, you work for Billy Bob Barnett. Nathan worried about it, having only one client. If Billy Bob got mad at him, he’d be out of a job.’
‘But he still wrote this letter to me.’
‘Professor,’ Jimmy John said, ‘them environmentalists been claiming that bullshit about groundwater contamination since we fracked the first well out here. Now they got the artists joining in, gives ’em something to do, I guess. They’re liberals who hate the oil and gas industry. They want us all to ride bicycles like they do. I’ve worked those rigs for five years, and I can tell you, there’s no contamination. I see the pressure readings on the casing. We’ve never had a leak.’
‘Then why did Nathan say in his letter he had proof of contamination?’
‘I don’t know. He asked me, I told him we go by the book. He never told me he had any proof.’
Book turned back to Brenda. ‘Did he show you any proof?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Did he tell you that he had shown the proof to his senior partner?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you know him?’
She nodded. ‘Tom Dunn. I met him once before the funeral. He gave me the creeps. He’s the type who talks to a woman’s breasts instead of her face.’
‘If Nathan had proof and went public with it, the government would’ve shut down the frack wells.’
‘Maybe,’ Jimmy John said. ‘Maybe not. This is Texas, Professor.’
‘I told him to keep quiet about it,’ Brenda said.
‘Why?’
‘Because if he went public, he’d either be out of a job or dead. He sent you that letter, and now he’s dead. That seem like a coincidence to you, Professor?’ She fought back tears. ‘They killed him. Billy Bob’s men.’
‘Why?’
‘Money.’ She pointed at the floor. ‘That gas down there is worth billions.’
Jimmy John put his free hand on Brenda’s shoulder.
‘It was an accident. Billy Bob, he’s already rich.’
‘People like him, they never have enough money.’
She could no longer fight the tears.
‘They followed me home.’
Jimmy John shook his head. ‘Nathan had her so scared she was seeing ghosts. Look, Professor, I loved Nathan like a brother. I miss him every minute. But it was just an accident. He was driving back from Midland late, and he fell asleep at the wheel.’
‘That’s what he said,’ Brenda said.
‘Who?’ Book said.
‘The sheriff.’
When they said their goodbyes, Brenda Jones gave Book a hug and whispered, ‘Professor, you were his hero. Be his hero now. Give him justice. Find his truth. It wasn’t an accident.’
He and Nadine walked outside and climbed on the Harley, but Book did not start the engine. Instead, he stared at the stars above them. He had pursued truth and justice—or as close thereto as the law allows—on enough occasions now to know that justice was more crushed car art than an act certain—in the eye of the beholder rather than an eye for an eye—and truth was found in one’s heart rather than one’s head. Maybe Justice Kennedy was correct: perhaps we are each entitled to define our own existence, our own meaning, our own truth. So he would not search for the truth, but for Nathan’s truth. He owed him that much.
‘What did we learn today, Ms. Honeywell?’
‘I don’t like riding six hours on a Harley.’
‘About Nathan Jones’s death.’
‘A, official cause of death was accidental.’
‘And?’
‘B, Billy Bob Barnett is the client in his letter who is allegedly contaminating the groundwater.’
‘And?’
‘C, he didn’t show his proof to either his wife or his best friend.’
‘Very good.’
‘And D, he was gay.’
‘Who? Jimmy John?’
‘Nathan Jones.’
Chapter 9
Border Patrol Agent Wesley Crum yelled back to his partner: ‘Angel, you run like a goddamn queer! Hurry, they’re getting away!’
It was after midnight, and Wesley and Angel were chasing wets through the desert again. Wesley wore night-vision goggles which allowed him to spot the wets running through the brush—not as good as the Predator’s ‘eyes in the sky,’ but the goggles gave him an on-the-ground advantage over the wets. He was after two males and two females, no doubt a mom-and-pop operation who brought the kids with them for a lifetime in America. A chance at the American Dream: free education, free healthcare, free welfare, free this, free that, free everything, living at the expense of hard-working, tax-paying Americans. What a deal. First thing they do is get pregnant and punch out a baby in America—an American citizen with exactly the same rights as Wesley Crum—which guarantees them an extended stay in the U.S. of A. Consequently, Wesley viewed his job as deficit reduction: every Mexican he caught and deported back across the river equaled four or five Mexican babies the federal government wouldn’t have to support. Hell, if he caught enough wets, he could single-handedly balance the fucking budget.
Wesley Crum was thirty years old and had been on the job twelve years. He had grown up in Marfa and wanted to stay in Marfa, but there were no jobs in Marfa. Most of his high school buddies had moved away to Odessa to work the oil fields. Wesley hired on with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security. That was back when agents didn’t have to speak Spanish to get hired. Now Border Patrol hired Hispanics like Angel.
His partner was an odd duck. Read books. Listened to Marfa Public Radio. Knew stuff. Liked art and the artists. Three years younger than Wesley, Angel had grown up in Presidio and went to college at Texas A&M. Graduated, but he came back to work the border. They were as different as night and day—or Anglo and Hispanic—but they had forged a partnership that had laste
d Angel’s entire five years on the job, which was five years longer than any other relationship in Wesley’s adult life. Of course, everyone liked Angel Acosta. He was that kind of guy. They worked the Big Bend Sector, which covered 165,000 square miles including seventy-seven counties in Texas and all of Oklahoma and 510 miles of the Rio Grande. Which pretty much guaranteed that they would chase wets every night. But Wesley liked the desert at night. He stopped and waited for his partner to catch up. Angel arrived; he was breathing hard. They addressed each other through the night-vision goggles.
‘Let them go, Wesley. They just want to work.’
‘Are you having one of them eccentric crises I heard about on TV?’
‘Existential. You watching Dr. Phil again?’
‘Are you?’
‘You’ve got to do something else during the day when we work the night shift.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, you could try reading.’
‘Reading?’
As if Angel had said ‘yoga.’
‘I just don’t see why we chase these people when they just want to work.’
‘So we can keep working. So we keep our jobs, that’s why we chase wets. Angel, there ain’t no other jobs in Presidio County for guys like us, especially me. We either chase wets or collect unemployment.’
‘We could work the frack rigs.’
‘Man, chasing wets is a hell of a lot easier than that. And the federal government’s benefit plan is much better than anything in the private sector.’
Angel shrugged. ‘That’s true.’
‘Okay. You got your head on straight?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Good. They’re hunkered down about a hundred yards due north. You circle around east, I’ll go west. We’ll trap these wets and deport their Mexican butts back to Chihuahua.’
They ran into the dark desert.
Chapter 10
‘Saw you out running this morning,’ Presidio County Sheriff Brady Munn said from the other side of his man-sized desk. ‘Dawn in the desert’s nice, ain’t it?’
Nadine eyed Book through her black glasses. ‘You ran at dawn? What is that, like, eight A.M.?’