by Ben Rehder
Billy Don continued to watch the show. He acted as if he wasn't listening to Red's conversation, but he heard the words “Mr. Swank” and tried to catch what he could. Red was doing more listening than talking. A few minutes later, Red returned to the living area and smiled broadly at Billy Don. “Guess who that was. Swank wants to talk to us again, and he's ready to spit out some more cash.”
Now Billy Don just nodded. Money had that effect on him.
On TV, Danny Jones was lining up his rifle sights now, getting ready to take a shot. “You don't get many opportunities like this” Danny whispered.
“You goddamn right you don't,” Red agreed.
Marlin lay back in bed and watched Louise grooming herself in front of his bathroom mirror. She was wearing red thong panties and a matching lace bra, C cup. Definitely Victoria's Secret. God bless Victoria, whoever she was.
Louise ran a brush through her long blonde hair and looked in at Marlin. “You're quiet tonight.”
He smiled back at her, trying not to appear lost in thought. “Sorry.”
“What are you thinking about?”
Marlin ordinarily hated it when a woman asked that question. But when Louise asked it, it was different. He didn't have to be thinking about her or the sex they just had—and, in fact, she always knew he wasn't thinking about those things. She was just being a friend, wondering what was on his mind. “Oh, you know, the season coming up and everything,” Marlin said. “Gonna be a busy one. Lots of rain this spring, so everyone's expecting a great year.”
Louise walked into the room pulling on her floral skirt. The skirt fell to midthigh, showing off her great legs. She was an avid jogger, logging about twenty miles a week. Couple that with the hours she spent on her feet at the diner and her legs were as trim and sculpted as young pine trees.
“You met someone, didn't you?” She looked at him with affection in her eyes. Women had a way of knowing.
“Yeah.” Marlin tried to smile, but he was a little uncomfortable. He expected Louise to ask, Who is she? But then he realized she wouldn't. Not her style.
She sat down on the bed next to him. “I think that's great, John. You deserve it. Lord knows I've had enough experience with this relationship business, so I know how important it is…to find the right one.” She reached out and caressed his cheek.
Marlin nodded back at her, feeling awkward, a little embarrassed. Even though his relationship with Louise had always been casual, he still felt a sense of loss. Unspoken between them was the fact that this was their last night together. Marlin wondered if he'd miss the talks with Louise—the refreshing, open, honest discussions—more than he'd miss the sex. It was entirely possible.
At one-thirteen in the morning, a small rented sedan rolled west on Highway 290 through the quiet streets of Dripping Springs.
The driver, Julio Olivares, was a stout, squat man with a thick, droopy mustache, bushy eyebrows, and pockmarked skin. He was fifty-three years old and looked every day of it. He had yellow teeth from smoking, but it wasn't a problem because he never smiled.
Next to him was an expatriate American, Tyler Jackson. Former Marine, dishonorably discharged. Twenty-nine years old, six foot two, with a crew cut and a torso sculpted from iron. He was a monstrous man. If you looked closely, you could see needle marks in the crook of his arm. That's where the steroids went in. Jackson had a criminal record so profound he had been forced to flee the States three years ago.
Luis Ramiro, a tiny man in his mid-twenties, was in back, dozing. Luis was like that—laid-back—the kind of guy who could fall asleep with federales banging down his door. In fact, he had done exactly that on one occasion. Unlike Jackson, Luis didn't need brawn. He could shoot a fly off a horse's rump at a hundred meters.
They followed Highway 290 to the intersection of Highway 281, took a right, drove about two hundred yards, then crossed over to Miller Creek Loop. Six miles later, they saw the impressive granite entrance to the Circle S Ranch.
“SO YOU WANT us to be, like, your bodyguards?” Red said. He and Billy Don were once again meeting with Roy Swank in the lobbyist's imposing den.
“Not bodyguards, exactly. More like my right-hand men…sorta look after things…be there if I need you.”
Red didn't know what being a right-hand man entailed, but he was sure it involved a lot of cash. He looked around the sumptuous surroundings. Hell, the place practically reeked of crisp, new currency, especially small, untraceable bills that the IRS would never be privy to. Red hiked up his jeans and asked “What kinda money are you prepared to spend for our services?”
“Same as before,” Swank said, sipping from a mug. “Ten thousand in cash. I'll need you for one week, max. You'll stay in one of my guest bedrooms.”
Red looked over at Billy Don and noticed a gleam in his eye. The same kind of gleam Billy Don got when he sat down to eat a sixteen-ounce rib eye. No question, Billy Don was in. But Red was thinking he could get even more. “Well, it's not exactly the same as before. That time, it was for one night's work. And if I do say so myself, we performed splendiferously.” Red thought he would impress Swank with that two-dollar word. Red had heard it just yesterday, uttered by a scientist on cable TV. Or maybe it was Martha Stewart. In any case, Swank just sat there, unimpressed. So Red pressed on: “The money part is good, but I sure could use a new set of wheels.” Red was dreaming of chrome rims, complete with new Kelly tires. He got even luckier, because Swank thought he was angling for a whole new vehicle.
“I just bought three new Fords for the ranch,” Swank said with an edge, like he was losing his patience. “Pick one out and I'll sign the pink slip over to you—one week from today. But that's all the slop that's in the trough, boys.”
Red stood and grinned. “Mr. Swank, sir, you got yourself a deal. Now tell me a little more about that Meskin I seen runnin’ around here.”
“He's not Mexican, he's Colombian. And now there are four of them.”
Bobby Garza had never been involved in a case—or cases, really—quite like this. One thing just kept leading to another, and that led to another. If what the bookie, Virgil Talkington, had told him was true, Garza was on to something that could nail a couple of the county's most highly regarded citizens.
As Garza pulled into the Exxon parking lot precisely at eight A.M. as planned, he saw Bo Talkington's large sport utility vehicle parked around the side. All of those new SUVs looked the same to Garza, but this one was easy to remember. It was green, the color of money, and it had a bumper sticker on the rear window that said, BANKERS DO IT WITH INTEREST.
Garza saw Bo inside the store, dressed in a lightweight suit, getting his regular morning cup of coffee and a bag of sweet rolls. Moments later, Bo walked out, proceeded to Garza's cruiser, and climbed in. After a handshake, Bo Talkington began telling Garza the details of the story his cousin Virgil had first relayed.
“I'm putting myself on the line, talking to you like this,” the bank vice president said. “So you didn't hear it from me.”
Garza nodded.
“You know Claude Rundell, my boss down at the bank?”
Garza nodded again.
“Then you probably know his wife Kelly.”
Kelly was a redhead with runway-model looks, about twenty years younger than her husband. Garza had pulled her over on several occasions and always had to remain professional while handling her bold flirtations. One time, Kelly had commented that Garza looked “good enough to eat” in his uniform. He wrote her up for going sixty-five in a fifty zone, but had to laugh when she pulled away. “I've met her,” Garza said.
“I'm telling you, her husband is a first-class horse's ass. Never pays her any attention, won't let her have the kids she wants, just a real all-'round S.O.B.” Bo paused to chase a wad of sweet roll down with steaming black coffee. When he finished smacking, he continued. “So you can't really fault a woman for wanting more of a man than that.”
Garza knew precisely where this was headed, but he let Bo tell i
t in his own time.
“One time last year, she came into the bank to talk to Claude about something, and when she came outta his office we kinda made eye contact, and well…” Bo trailed off and let the silence explain the rest. “It don't really bother me telling you about me and her, ’cause she's fixin’ to divorce him anyway. But as I's saying, Kelly told me something that Claude had told her a few years ago, right after they got married.” Bo took another bite of sweet roll, then realized he was being selfish with the rest in the package. “Roll?” he said, offering one to Garza.
“No thanks, I had breakfast.” Garza just gritted his teeth and wished Bo would hurry up with the story.
Bo gulped some coffee and then took a dramatic pause, as if he were about to tell Garza where to find the Holy Grail.
Skip Farrell, the widely read columnist and senior editor for Texas Outdoors magazine, was the ultimate schmoozer and wheeler-dealer, a man who had managed to turn his hunting hobby into a lucrative career. His columns highlighted premier hunting ranches and leases, innovative new hunting products, the latest weaponry, ammunition, camouflage, and outdoor gear, the most rugged sport utility vehicles and all-terrain vehicles, even the best restaurants and hotels in Texas’ most popular small hunting towns, such as Llano, Mason, and Carrizo Springs.
Years ago, before his career in journalism, Farrell had had to pay for things like rifles, taxidermy, and butchering, just like any other hunter. Not anymore. A few kind words in his column could make product sales boom, lease fees skyrocket, and coffers in small towns overflow. So Farrell was indeed a popular man among the hunting community across Texas. Hunting invitations flowed to Farrell's mailbox like bucks to a doe in heat. Farrell had not been at all surprised when Roy Swank had called him the past summer and told him about an opening-weekend extravaganza he was having this year at the Circle S. Wanna really show off what I'm doing with game management these days, Swank had said. Gonna be senators, congressmen, CEOs from around the state. Farrell had gladly accepted. Swank had recommended that Farrell show up a couple of days early, plenty of time to see the ranch and take photos of Swank's prize bucks.
Now, as he drove up the winding dirt road to Roy Swank's house, Farrell was reflecting on how fortunate he was. In fact, he was so lost in his own good fortune, he almost didn't see the battered red Ford pickup careening around a curve on his side of the road. Farrell swerved onto the grass and cringed as the red truck barely missed the left front fender of his brand-new Chevy Suburban.
He looked in the side mirror and saw the redneck driver flip him off as he scooted down the road.
“Fuck you, too,” Farrell said to himself.
“According to Kelly,” Bo Talkington said, “Claude told her that he had taken a bribe from Roy Swank in exchange for turning Phil Colby down for a loan. ’Parently, Colby needed some cash to pay county taxes because they were right at the point of taking his ranch away. He went to Claude, Claude promised him a big loan, but then Swank approached Claude and gave him a hundred grand to turn Colby down. But the trick was to keep stringing Colby along, telling him he'd get the money, until the county was really banging on his door. Then, the day before Colby's very last deadline to pay up, Claude turned him down flat. Really fucked him over.”
“So that left Colby with nowhere else to turn,” Garza said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah, and I also heard rumors that Swank spread a little money around the county tax office, too, to prevent them from giving Colby another extension on his taxes. From what I heard, they had given him several extensions already…. He owed taxes from several years back, plus he was in hock with the big boys, too.”
Garza raised his eyebrows.
“The IRS,” Bo explained. “Man, it's like getting your nuts caught in a vise with those guys. You can put them off for a little while, but not nearly as long as the county. So Colby had to choose between losing the ranch to the county, or screwing up the rest of his life with the feds. I'd say he made the right choice.”
“GRAB SOME A those pretzels, and those tater chips,” Red said. Billy Don was pushing the shopping cart ahead of him, cruising the narrow, dimly lit aisles of the grocery store. So far they had six cases of beer, a box of Slim Jims, assorted snack cakes, a dozen cans of Vienna sausages, a bag of miniature chocolate donuts, and a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
They made their way to checkout, asking the teenage girl at the counter for an entire box of Red Man chewing tobacco. Twelve three-ounce packages. Enough for a week, Red thought. If they were going to be holed up for seven days at Swank's, better be prepared.
They left the grocery store and then swung by Red's trailer to grab a few sets of clothes and lock up tight for the week. On the way back to Swank's, Red bounced his thoughts off Billy Don. “The way I figger it,” Red said, “we'll have plenty of time to sorta snoop around, see what Swank is up to. He can't keep an eye on both of us all the time, so we'll just see what we can come across.”
Billy Don came forth with a chocolatey belch of approval. He had already broken open the donuts. He chased the loose crumbs in his cavernous mouth with a swig of Bud Light. It had been on sale.
Red looked over. “Don't be eatin’ all a those at once. Save some for me.”
Billy Don dug back into the box, grabbing two of the brown, waxy-looking rings this time.
Red looked back at the road. “Even if we don't find anything, we'll still be ahead ten grand each. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.”
“Wat'choo think we might find?” Billy Don asked.
Red's mind had been knocking around that particular question for several days now, but he had been unable to come up with any plausible explanation. “Could be anything,” he said, letting his imagination run. “They might be playing around with generics out there…you know, reengineering some kinda perfect deer. Or maybe doing something like those ol’ boys over in Denmark who cloned that goat.”
“I thought it was a sheep,” Billy Don said around a mouthful of donut.
“Pretty sure it was a goat,” Red said, not wanting Billy Don to be more up-to-date on current events than he was. “Named Dolly.”
Billy Don tilted his head to the side as if the information was weighing his brain down.
“You know who they named her after, don'tcha?” Red asked.
“Dolly Madison?” Billy Don replied hopefully, pointing to the name on the donut bag.
Red shook his head. “Dolly Parton, on account a her big tits. You could make two tits out of each one of hers, and that's what they did with the goat…made two outta one.” Red was always happy to share his insights with Billy Don on topics such as this.
Tim Gray had started operating on Wednesday, right after talking to Swank. He had set up shop in Swank's barn, which was actually clean, well-lit, and featured hot and cold running water—more inviting than many of the homes Gray had seen in Blanco County.
Even though Gray was dealing with tremors, chills, and the occasional feeling that he was being watched by little men in the hayloft, he felt like everything was going smoothly so far. The hardest part was rounding up the deer, which Swank kept in an adjacent five-acre pasture surrounded by a ten-foot fence. Gray had to chase them around with one of Swank's trucks until they tired out, then pop one with a tranquilizer gun. Fifteen minutes later the deer would lie down like an old man going to bed. After he finished with that deer, he'd tie a piece of surveyor's tape around its neck. Had to keep them sorted out. Didn't want to be scurrying around after deer he'd already worked on.
By Thursday at noon, Gray had operated on seven of the contraband-carrying white-tailed deer. It was a simple procedure really, less difficult than removing a benign abdominal tumor or spaying a bitch. All he had to do was put ’em under, open ’em up, remove the drugs, then stitch ’em back together. He didn't have to take quite as much care with these animals as he did with his customers’ pets: If one of them died, that was Swank's problem. What did he expect, pushing Gray as hard as he
was?
Staying awake wouldn't be a problem, either. Gray had a neat little system set up. Do a deer, do a line. Do a deer, do a line. That powder Swank had given him was damn good. He wasn't even sure if it was heroin or cocaine, but he didn't really care, as long as he kept buzzing along.
So far, all of the contraband was in good shape. The latex balloons were not corroded or cracked, not aging in any way. That made Gray feel a lot better after what he had found in that other deer, the one Swank wanted to give back to Phil Colby. Granted, the balloon had been in the deer much longer than with these animals. It had been the first deer they had worked with, sort of a test subject to see if the latex would hold. When Gray had gone in later to remove the drugs, he must have missed one balloon. But he had found it Tuesday evening, just the tattered remnants, no drugs left inside. At least now he knew why that deer had been behaving so strangely. Colby's precious deer would be fine.
Gray was sitting on a milking stool, just finishing up a line, when two Hispanic men and a large white guy in fatigues and combat boots walked into the barn. They stood just inside the entrance and surveyed the surroundings, as if they expected to find more than what they were seeing.
“Hola,” Gray said, trying to be friendly.
None of the men replied. Gray stood up and began to approach them, but thought better of it. Something about them made him nervous. He simply stood there fidgeting, feeling like a kid in the principal's office, as the men spoke to each other in hushed tones. Finally, the oldest guy, short, with a droopy mustache, approached Gray. The military-looking guy—a large weightlifter type—followed behind him.
“Tim Gray,” the veterinarian said, sticking out his hand to the older man. He ignored it.
“How many deer have you operated on so far?” he asked in near-perfect English.
Gray wasn't sure who these guys were, but he figured they must be with Oscar. Probably best to answer him, he thought. “Seven.”