Wild Country tq-3

by Dean Ing

  The caller had chosen that dubok for precisely that reason: San Antonio Rose would almost certainly visit the drop in daylight.

  Next morning, after a sidewalk breakfast of huevos con chorizo and a bottle of Negro Modelo beer in the barrio, San Antonio Rose paid a visit to a tiny, parklike, street-corner cemetery; knelt with hat in hand at a flat headstone boasting polyethelyne tulips in a brass vase. He casually rearranged the plastic blooms, then palmed a vial no larger than a thimble and leaned back as though satisfied with his decorating talent. His guess — that the vial contained some illegal drug to be analyzed for purity — was perfectly correct. He did not guess that the cocaine sample was merely bait, sacrificed so that he would not wonder why he had been lured into the open on a fruitless errand. The man remained there for a few moments and then, satisfied that he was not to be challenged, walked away.

  The challenge, when it came, was the commonest type to be met there in daylight. The boy who materialized at his side had done so with no more noise than a mouse, on bare feet with soles tough as horn. "Watch your car, shine your shoes, find a virgin, only a dollar," he chanted in locally accented English.

  The man shook his head, irked because the little cabrdn had nearly made him jump.

  The boy had not kept his belly off his backbone by being shy. "Ever'body needs something, mister." He danced ahead of the man, now skipping backward to match the long strides, and waved his hands for attention. "What you doin' here, anyway? You lost? You look like an Anglo to me."

  San Antonio Rose stopped, reached out casually with one hand, then swiftly with the other, grabbing the lad by the collar of a jacket much too large for him — but perhaps the right size to hide a loaf of bread. The man rattled off, in local Spanish dialect, an ugly suspicion concerning a relationship between the boy's mother and a small hairless dog. Then in English he added, "I see a cornshuck in your pocket, so you already stole your tamales for lunch. You love Anglos so much, go find one." He turned the boy around with ease, released him, moved as if to whack his rump.

  Of course he swept thin air, as he had expected. Nimble as a mountain goat, the boy darted away and was instantly swallowed between the small, close-packed houses of the barrio. San Antonio Rose smiled to himself and walked on to Fredricksburg Road, where he caught a bus, once more anonymous.

  But not destined to remain anonymous for much longer. The boy hotfooted it over fences and between chickencoops to arrive back at a street corner a block from the tiny cemetery. The slender fellow with the soft voice and the scarred face was there, as promised, with a crisp fifty-dollar bill, also as promised. The boy gravely withdrew the little tape recorder from the depths of a jacket pocket; exchanged it for the reward.

  They spoke in Spanish. The boy: "It was hard work to make him talk with me. Dangerous. Worth more money."

  The adult: "I watched. You were well paid." Then the little recorder went into a tattered shopping bag, next to the camera with the excellent four-hundred-millimeter lens.

  The boy had seen the results of knife fights before; surmised that this fellow with the soft voice, badly cut hair, and uncallused hands had met with a broken bottle, and recently. Noting the boy's interest, the fellow turned away, hitched the shopping bag up under one arm, and strode off. The boy thrust the money out of sight and watched his benefactor for a block, wondering what was odd about that stride. Probably a homosexual, thought the boy, and dematerialized into the alleyways. He would break that bill and give only twenty to his mother. She would, in any case, never believe he had earned fifty dollars from a swishing maricon merely by provoking a stranger to curse him.

  You could get many, many things in SanTone Ringcity with cash. With cash and close connections of long standing in the legal system, you could get almost literally anything. With several good telephoto close-ups of a man standing on a sidewalk in broad daylight, and a voiceprint of that man in two languages, you had a fair chance of discovering much about him. Especially if he had any criminal record since the war.

  The owner of the recorder had everything it took to learn the real identity of San Antonio Rose. Including the burning will to trace his connections, using any means whatever. Now, if San Antonio Rose was known in any capacity by the legal system, he would be revealed by modestly illegal record checks. And from there, Marianne Placidas knew she was not far from locating Felix Sorel.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Sandy's journal, Wed. 25 Oct. '06

  Ted looked much better this trip. At least that awful scab is disappearing from his forehead. He was sore as a boil over his tongue-lashing from Mr. Marrow but said he was able to pay for the cycle he lost. Refused to borrow from me. Borrowing from Marrow, or did he really quit that deputy job? I refuse to think he would divert money from that amulet that is owed to me.

  Jerome G. paid me a visit today, with 3 of his bravos for company, & I decided not to whistle for help. He pretended to take his welcome for granted, full of false cheer and chickenshit, but I noticed the contents of his armpit holster as he nursed my coffee. Asked me slyly about Ted, and, giving him my best dose of baby blues, I lied and enjoyed it. As if I knew nothing of their enmity I said we had agreed to disagree, & that T. had intended to see about a job in Austin, where they need heavy equipment operators to help clear old UT campus. Hope Jer chases my wild goose to Austin: The big buffoon is now a wanted man in some quarters. But not by me! Rather than send him to T. at WCS I would stir rat poison in his coffee. I forbore asking why he no longer grins so much, because I could see the gap where 2 teeth used to be.

  After Jer left, I called Lufo. No one else to turn to, if T. is correct about Jer having protection inside the marshal's office. Of course Lufo asked why I didn't call T. I said he's not a hired gun anymore & I didn't want him fetching up against those men anyway. Should I try Marshal Teague in SanTone?

  Lufo quickly shooed me away from that. Said he could leak the news without involving me. Made me repeat entire farce with Jer. Told me Jer would be crazy to show up in Austin, but he would pass the word without involving me.

  God blast me, I played the weak female for Lufo but had no other weapon. Begged him to swear he would keep me & T. out of it. Only when he called me "chica" was I satisfied. Poor Lufo, I love & despise him so…

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Lieutenant Alec Wardrop helped fit the armored blankets to his mount, cursing the weight of each piece, admiring the work of Jess Marrow's saddlemaker. The mare accepted her synthetic hide with the patience of a saint.

  Marrow pointed to the great shoulder pads that hung across a wooden railing in the tack shed. "Ted. see if you and Wardrop can adjust the buckles to fit that to the mare's breastplate."

  Quantrill hefted the kapton blanket with the hard nylon plates sewn between its layers. "My God, Jess, have you weighed all this stuff?"

  "About sixty kilos. Should be no problem for a draft horse. Easy, Rose," said Marrow, patting the mare as she swung her head around. Rose was a deep roan in color, weighing nearly a metric ton and standing fully eighteen hands at the withers. She was a beautiful creature with the Roman nose of a Clydesdale and the smooth, untufted fetlocks of a Percheron. A trained eye could readily identify her bloodlines as those of the "great horse" first bred in northern Europe as a draft animal. Wardrop had bought her from a circus wintering near Galveston, depending on her calm and familiarity with exotic animals for the job he had in mind. Wardrop knew the history of the "great horse"; it had carried crusaders with massive armor into battle centuries before. This one. Rose, might do it again. She had proven herself very nimble and willing when harrying smaller boars during the past few days. Wardrop felt that, this time, he had the right mount.

  He also had paid for different equipment. His hardware now included a night-vision helmet, a longer and thicker assegai spear, and a saddle-mounted socket pivot for it. His saddlebags were the size of mule packs, stocked for a week's travel in Wild Country. That polymer armor, however, was the result of a blistering argu
ment with Jess Marrow. Old Marrow would stable the mare with pleasure, sweet-tempered rarity that she was, but remained aghast at Wardrop's use of her. She was Wardrop's property, so he couldn't forbid the man to hunt boar from her back — a broad platform that seemed the size and stability of a tennis court. He could refuse to equip her for armor, though; and he did, until Wardrop took her out to flush smaller boars.

  When it became obvious that Wardrop was going to put Rose up against Ba'al in any case, Marrow agreed to supervise the crafting of her armor. As he had-put it, "It'd be a shame to make this pore noble beast pay for what you got comin'." Now, with the unwilling help of Quantrill, they were making the final fit of Rose's armor pads. From knees to neck and even passing under her ample belly, Rose's armor would stop a hurled lance. It would not stop the ridicule of Wardrop's quest.

  Wardrop, connecting the breastplate to padding over her shoulders, did not at first notice the bright stitching Marrow had ordered across the close-woven kapton at the shoulders of the big mare. When he did, he indulged in a deep-breathing exercise. The stitching did not say "Rose"; it said "Rosinante."

  "And I," said Wardrop with a flourish but not much mirth, "Don Quixote de la Mancha. While you Philistines are falling about in glee, think of the insult you give to Rose. She's no broken-down Spanish nag."

  Marrow's own shoulders were shaking with repressed laughter as he stepped back to view the mare. "Maybe not, but you realize what this will all look like? Helmet, lance, armor, that goddamn stupid kerchief like a pennant — you're a dead ringer for a throwback out of the Middle Ages."

  Wardrop, coolly: "That has not escaped my notice."

  Quantrill: "Has it escaped your notice that you are a throwback? You admit the woman who gave you this idea hates your guts. And she's disappeared in the bargain."

  And Marrow: "Besides, if you ever told your fellow pigstickers how you got a draft horse gussied up like this, you'd be laughed out of your regiment."

  "Regiment be damned. Marianne Placidas and you two, especially you, be damned!" Grunting, Wardrop lifted his new saddle, no English postage stamp but a special affair with a "tree" high enough to provide kidney support, and swung it onto Rose's back. "I've invested many a bottle of that dogsbody's whiskey, and dissolved the lining of my throat, in hearing the local opinions. You two have been entirely too much help keeping me from my goal. I know who you are now, Quantrill: a man with a certain cachet in these parts. But I know myself as well, and I tell you before a witness that if you are trying to give serious insult, I shall give you satisfaction now, or later." He tugged at one of three broad cinches under the mare's belly. "The choice of weapons would be yours. I would sign a waiver; I believe that's how it has been done recently in this barbarous place." He stood up and waited, looking from one man to the other.

  Quantrill sighed; shook his head as he led the docile Rose into sunshine, Wardrop following with lance and helmet. To give an ex-assassin his choice of weapons was to give a shark his choice of bites. It was a long vault into the saddle, but Alec Wardrop made it with style. Quantrill handed him the reins with: "I don't know how you do it, Wardrop. You earn respect from people who are laughing their nuts off at what you do. No, I won't throw down on you or duel you — but I don't expect to see you alive again, if you keep this shit up."

  "You've given me that warning before," Wardrop replied, snapping the lance retainers, checking the saddlebags, "and here I sit. Forgive me for that lapse of mine, Quantrill. You mean well."

  Quantrill threw up his hands. "Okay, but one more thing: There's a legend says the boar can actually smell a gun — the oil, maybe, or old powder residue. If you've got one, get rid of it now. Otherwise, Ba'al will scatter your bones from here to Waxahachie."

  "No guns." Wardrop smiled. "We Quixotes only use spears."

  "Your hand, then, while it's still attached." Quantrill reached up, shook with Wardrop, then turned to see that Marrow stood near, thumbs in belt loops, listening and rocking on his heels. Wardrop gave an abbreviated form of Brit salute, eased Rose into a ponderous trot, and headed off for his hired horse van.

  "If the Lord takes care of drunks and fools," said Marrow, "I wonder if He's put aside all His other concerns for the rest of that man's life."

  "Does that mean you're for Wardrop, or against him?"

  "He's a pigheaded, spoiled rich, wasteful selfish snooty cantankerous foreign-born sonofabitch of world class, but he does have class." Marrow clucked to himself. "But whatever he has loose up here" — he tapped himself over the ear—"he makes up for it in here." So saying. Marrow put his hand over his breast. "The Brit just hasn't had his good strong sign yet. How could I be against as great an ass as Wardrop? He's one of us, Teddy!"

  Quantrill's smile was distant; sad. "Maybe somebody should root for the boar."

  Marrow eyed his assistant thoughtfully. "Oh, I think somebody does. God knows how it came about, but I think somebody has, for a long, long time…"

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  If the dead can watch the living, then perhaps Judge Anthony Placidas was venting hollow laughter in hell. His dying statement made Ted Quantrill suspect that a close connection existed between Jerome Garner and the Justice Department. The important connections, however, were between the department and Sorel. Garner, for all his dreams of power, was important only because he controlled the land that was a conduit for Sorel — and because that land was vast enough to hide Sorel's Anglo confederates. Garner knew he would be conspicuous as tits on a boar hog to any deputy strolling the streets of Del Rio, Rocksprings, or Kerrville. But just as you can best hide a lump of coal among a hundred thousand other lumps of coal, a wanted man in a city can hide in plain sight. SanTone Ringcity, for example; or Austin, only a hundred klicks to the north.

  And Jerome Garner knew no one who needed killing in SanTone. While checking more loose teeth and recovering from the encounter on his porch, he'd listened to his hired hands dredging up stories about the redoubtable Ted Quantrill. Sounded to Jer like the little sumbitch was on his way to being a Texas legend — and him not even a native, originally. The fact that Sam Houston and Davy Crockett had also been imports from the southeast never crossed Jer's mind. The fact that the man who shot John Wesley Hardin in the back was known by name only to historians also did not register. Jer believed what he wanted to believe: that he could gain status and discharge mortal vengeance by bagging that rattler-quick little fucker, Ted Quantrill. Sandra Grange had said Quantrill was in Austin. And when had any little bimbo ever withstood the Garner charm enough to lie to Jer? A truthful answer to that one might hurt him worse than bullets.

  Garner needed two days for his roundabout trip to Austin, with only Billy Ray for company. The old Texas U campus in Austin had suffered so much damage during the firestorms of '96 that the great university had made do with temporary quarters in North Austin for nearly a decade. But a school with more oil money than Harvard, more fierce traditions than a regimental combat team, would not abandon its ancient campus forever. Austin's Guadalupe Boulevard resounded, now, with the clangor of construction as determined Texans proceeded to rebuild every last structure as it had been before the Sinolnd War. The Littlefield Memorial, the museum, even the ad building everyone called "the Tower" — all of it would soon look as it had looked in 1995. Some said it was all being done so that those orange lights could once again bathe the Tower every time the Longhorns won a football game. Jerome Garner did not care why it was being done, so long as everyone was too busy to match his face with a "wanted" poster.

  But not quite everyone was that busy. San Antonio Rose had excellent descriptions of Sorel's people, including Jer Garner. He knew enough about Jer to approach him with care, and to watch his accomplice carefully. He spent one fruitless day scanning the heavy equipment yards, especially at quitting time when the hulking Kelley Ramscoops with their telescoping wheelbases and midchassis scoops were wheeled into their compound for the night. He was not studying the equipment operators or the bag pe
ople who picked over piles of debris for anything salable, but any big, strapping specimen who stood outside the cyclone fence to watch.

  His second day of surveillance was very like the first, until a half hour before the Kelley earthmovers were due to come rolling into their compound near the stadium. Then he noticed, strolling along Red River Street, the two men wearing bulky jackets over plaid shirts.

  He crossed the boulevard, walking slowly enough to hide his slight limp, whistling an old familiar tune. Of the pair that walked ahead, the tall blond with the big shoulders seemed to be doing most of the talking. San Antonio Rose proceeded with caution; no telling how many men in Austin would fit Jerome Garner's description.

  The men took seats at a bus stop. San Antonio Rose spent ten minutes with a cigarette, idly observing construction work on the stadium. He felt more sure of his job when the two men passed up a Congress Avenue bus. He felt almost certain when, as the big earthmovers began to whirr toward their compound, the smaller of the men crossed alone to the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare and took up a vigil, a broad-brim Stetson pulled low over his brow.

  Jer Garner was watching for a ramscoop driver who looked like Ted Quantrill and scarcely glanced at the lean fellow in coveralls who sat down, whistling softly, on the other end of his bench. Until the man quit repeating his tune and asked for a light. Jer pulled a lighter from his jacket pocket without a word. Flicking the lighter, he shared the gaze of a man whose coloring and face suggested a tough latino. A day laborer, from the look of him.