Strong Justice

by Jon Land

  “Well, this stunt might buy him a little time, but that’s it.”

  “Maybe that’s all he figures he needs.”

  Tepper smoothed an eyebrow with his index finger and slid his chair closer to them until a candle jar set in the middle of the table cast a flickering glow across his face that got lost somewhere in the furrows. “One of you wanna explain to me how these murders on the Riverwalk are connected to fake cops taking over Albion?”

  “Frankie Branca told me a scientist with a gambling problem slipped him a field report to pay off a debt,” Masters told him.

  “Contents of that missing briefcase?”

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “It’s all tied up tighter than a drum,” Caitlin chimed in. “Tunga County, Albion, the Brancas. Bottom line being we stepped in some pretty mean shit here. Something’s poisoning the water in Albion, turning folks there crazy just like it turned those pioneers who drank from Deadman’s Creek crazy in my great-granddad’s time. And whatever it is, it’s clearly worth plenty to somebody.”

  “I think we’re agreed on that much,” Tepper told them both. “Question being what the hell we’re supposed to do about it?”

  “I say we keep up our own investigation into Tunga County, Captain,” said Caitlin.

  “Need grounds for that.”

  “Already got it: Las Mujeres de Juárez. Our suspect was spotted on Hollis Tyree’s worksite and expected to return.”

  “Well, that comes as close to working as we’re likely to get.”

  Tepper fished a pack of Marlboro Reds from his jacket pocket and popped a cigarette up with a smack of its bottom. Caitlin recognized the pack as the same one stowed not so permanently in his desk drawer from the matchsticks wedged into the plastic. He plucked the cigarette from the others around it, stuck it in his mouth, and fired a wooden stick match to light it.

  “How’s it feel to be on the right side of things for a change, Mr. Masters?”

  “I always felt I was on the right side of things, Captain. Everything being relative and all.”

  “True enough, I suppose,” Tepper nodded, turning his gaze on Dylan and Luke. “You got a couple fine boys there. You have my sympathies things have been so difficult for them. And I appreciate you having my back this morning.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  Tepper gave him a longer look. “What you said about being on the other side of those kind of hits . . .”

  “Service to country, Captain, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Didn’t need a three-shot burst against those I came up against back stateside. I believe you busted my father up in a bar fight once, by the way.”

  “Son, I’ve busted up a lot of people’s fathers in bar fights and, you ask me, that’s what we’re in the middle of right now.”

  “Ever lose one?”

  “Don’t know a man who ever won one, all things considered.”

  “My father said you and Jim Strong were the toughest men he ever came up against.”

  “That’s only because he never met Caitlin’s granddaddy Earl. But I’ll still thank you for the compliment.”

  The table slipped into silence, the only sound in the otherwise empty space that of Dylan and Luke blasting away at space aliens. Tepper’s cell phone rang and he pushed his chair back a bit before answering it. Caitlin watched his features tighten, the flickering light from the candle barely reaching him now, leaving the flat parts of his face as dark as the furrows. He just listened, not speaking again until a final, “Thank you very much. I do appreciate the courtesy.”

  He flipped the phone closed and looked back at Caitlin and Cort Wesley across the table.

  “That was our friend Captain Alonzo at SAPD. Seems one of her patrols responded to a call at the Walmart Supercenter over on De Zavala about a suspicious customer. Suspicious on account of he was near seven feet tall and left without taking his change from a hundred-dollar bill when a cruiser drove by.”

  “Guillermo Paz . . .”

  “Back in town for sure, Ranger.”

  “This just keeps getting better.”

  69

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “Whether or not Paz saved your life in Casa del Diablo,” Captain Tepper said to Caitlin, “he’s still wanted for two murders in the city.”

  “SAPD wants Paz, they better call in the National Guard, Captain,” she told him.

  Tepper frowned, looking as if he’d just swallowed something rotten. “This just makes a big mess even bigger, Ranger.”

  “Only way I can see to clean it up,” said Caitlin, “is to find out what got loose in Albion’s water supply.” She looked toward Cort Wesley. “And that means we pay a visit to Hollis Tyree’s fields in Tunga County.”

  “They’ll likely be tied up tighter than a drum,” said Captain Tepper. “Don’t see what we gain from the effort truthfully, ’sides risking a run-in with more of the kind pulled you over outside of Albion.”

  “We go in after dark and just see what we can see without starting a shooting war.”

  Cort Wesley’s eyes had drifted to his sons again. “Not until I know my boys are safe.”

  “Been thinking on that,” said Tepper, clearing his throat raspily. “About the Mexican girl too. I was planning on moving her to the care of the men I trust most in the world, those smart enough to get away from this before the writing dried on the wall.”

  “Ex-Rangers,” Caitlin concluded.

  “Not just any either. Men as ornery and tough as your dad who preferred the old school methods fit enough for what we’re facing here. Hell, one of their daddies was taught to shoot by Wyatt Earp and another by Bat Masterson themselves.”

  “Whatever their price,” Cort Wesley told him, “I’m paying.”

  Tepper stifled a laugh. “Hell, outlaw, they’ll pay us for the privilege. Since giving in to retirement, none of them’s done much else besides hunt, though one was a bouncer in a roadhouse until he hit seventy.”

  “Finally retire, did he?” asked Cort Wesley.

  “Busted up a couple bikers and quit to avoid a lawsuit.”

  Caitlin’s cell phone rang and she interrupted her smile to raise it to her ear. “Hello.”

  “Remember me, Ranger?” greeted Guillermo Paz.

  70

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “You got the same phone number,” Paz continued.

  “I heard you were in town, Colonel Paz.”

  “It’s nice to leave an impression. How’s your outlaw friend?”

  Caitlin’s eyes darted between Captain Tepper and Cort Wesley, neither of whom was moving. “He’s right here, if you’d like to say hello.”

  “No, I called to speak with you. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “I never got the chance to thank you, Colonel. For Casa del Diablo.”

  “There’s no need. It’s I who should be thanking you.”

  Caitlin remained silent, waiting for Paz to continue to make some sense of his words and reason for his return to San Antonio. “Who you working for this time?”

  “No one. I’m here on my own to settle our debt.”

  “Last time I checked you saved my life, not the other away around.”

  “Along with the outlaw and his sons.”

  “He’s thankful too.”

  “Enough to forgive what I did to his woman and garage friend?”

  Both Cort Wesley and Captain Tepper were trying to get Caitlin’s attention, but she waved them off. Even Dylan and Luke had stopped playing their video game. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “It’s important to me that he understand I was a different man then. He saw my new self in Casa del Diablo and that man bears him no ill will. You’ll tell him that?”

  “I will,” Caitlin said, eyes fixed on Cort Wesley now. “So what do you want, Colonel?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Police know you’re in town.
I don’t recommend staying any longer than need be.”

  “I’ll stay as long as it takes to save your life.”

  “Save my life?”

  “You’re in danger.”

  “From who?”

  Paz looked down at the cigar box resting between his legs on the church pew Rosario Nieves had given him in the village of Majahual. “A question better answered in person, Ranger.”

  71

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “I’m glad you came,” Guillermo Paz said, without turning toward Caitlin’s approach down the center aisle of the San Fernando Cathedral on west Main Plaza.

  “It’s good to see you again, Colonel,” she said, sitting down next to him in the pew and noticing the cigar box resting on his lap. “Never thought I’d be saying that.”

  Paz turned to look at her. “La vida está llena de sorpresas.”

  “Life really is full of surprises,” Caitlin agreed. “Now what’d you mean about mine being in danger.”

  “I’m not sure. But it has something to do with Earl Strong.”

  Caitlin felt herself stiffen. “What do you know about my grandfather?”

  “This is for you,” Paz said, handing the cigar box to her.

  “What is it?”

  “Letters your grandfather never got and letters he wrote that were never read.”

  “To and from who?”

  “A young Mexican woman named Juanita Rojas.”

  “From Sweetwater,” Caitlin said, recalling that part of her favorite bedtime story. “My grandfather saved her life.”

  Paz continued to hold her gaze. His eyes were the biggest she’d ever seen, dark and sure. Full of emotion that seemed at once reflective and melancholy.

  “There’s more,” he said.

  72

  GLADSTONE, TEXAS, AND MAJAHUAL, MEXICO; 1931

  The letters had dried to the texture of parchment, the paper yellowed and the writing faded, some of it lost to the dampness that had penetrated the cigar box’s flimsy structure. Caitlin handled them gingerly, unfolding each like a skilled surgeon while imagining she could smell her grandfather’s aftershave baked into the letters he’d sent. The ones he’d never received were written in a scratchy scrawl that reminded her strangely of her own writing, evoking memories of the criticism she’d received at the hands of teachers grown weary of penmanship that seemed written on a whim.

  As Caitlin read the letters, trying to recover the Spanish needed to make sense of Juanita Rojas’s writing, the world around her dimmed, time converging as the present and the past became one.

  According to his first series of letters, Earl Strong returned to Sweetwater only long enough to give Hollis Tyree back his Plymouth and learn he’d been reassigned. With the criminal element under control and Sandman Sanchez firmly in charge, Earl was dispatched thirty miles up the road to Gladstone. At that point the town was in similar straits to Sweetwater when Earl had climbed off the train and Austin was hoping history could repeat itself.

  His first night in Gladstone, he was making his rounds, getting the lay of the land when he saw a trio of men surrounding a barmaid who was dumping the trash in a back alley adjoining one of the saloons.

  “Come on, bitch, this don’t have to be so tough.”

  Earl watched that man strip off her blouse and then go to work on her skirt, while the others watched, chuckling. He stopped at the head of the alley, took out one of his pistols, and fired a shot into the air.

  The three men swung, the one just about to force himself inside the barmaid still with his pants down.

  “You boys wanna be getting back inside now.”

  “Mind your own fucking business.”

  Earl stepped forward into a thin shaft of light that just caught his cinco pesos badge. “It is my business. And if you’re not gone before I blink next, I’m gonna shoot off your dicks.” He drew his second Colt to further enunciate his point.

  The three men crowded through the door back inside, their spokesman’s belt left behind.

  Earl headed down the alley to where the barmaid stood trembling with arms covering her exposed breasts. He made a point not to look directly at her and fished her bra and torn blouse from the alley floor, brushing the grime off them.

  “Name’s Earl Strong, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat to her as she dressed herself as best she could.

  “I know who you are, everybody in town does. You coming here’s all anybody’s been talking about. I’m Molly Finlaw.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m not nearly as mean as people say, but I’m even tougher than they think.”

  “Thanks for what you just did,” she said, trying to fluff her hair back into shape. “And the name’s Molly, by the way. Ma’am makes me feel old.”

  “Wish we could’ve met under better circumstances, Molly.”

  She brushed her hair back with her hands, revealing a softly contoured face and flawless complexion. Her skin tone was light for these parts, making Earl figure she was one of those who pulled up stakes to come to Texas and join the boom.

  “Think I’ll hop a train back home tomorrow,” Molly said, as if reading his mind. “I’ve had enough of this place.”

  “No need to do that now, Molly. Once I put the bad element disrupting things on the chain, Gladstone’ll be the safest town you ever saw in your life, and that’s a promise.”

  “On the chain? What’s that mean?”

  “You’ll see,” Earl grinned.

  In the ensuing days, she and the entire town did indeed see. Earl’s job was made substantially simpler by word of his exploits in Sweetwater, especially chasing Al Capone’s boys back to Chicago. Much of the bad element fled Gladstone upon getting word he’d hit town, and those that stayed moderated their behavior substantially to avoid the chain that had made Earl famous even before the shootout in the freight yard. Folks were calling it the most well known gunfight since the Earps and Doc Holliday battled the Clantons at the O.K. Corral. For his part, Earl listened to the substantially embellished versions of the tale, patiently and humbly responding to each.

  He walked the streets of Gladstone with the same resolve and presence he had in Sweetwater, albeit with a new appreciation of the world that was changing around him. Earl had always held the true heroes of his time in the highest esteem and frankly didn’t think he measured up against the Rangers who’d protected the whole of the Texas frontier from all manner of Mexican bandits and Indian renegades. Compared to their exploits, cleaning up a town or two was nothing. He slept each night with a roof over his head, communicating daily with Austin via telegraph and enjoying the security that came with a Browning automatic rifle as opposed to the Colt five-shooters the original Rangers carried into battle.

  Earl also found himself quite happy to see Molly still at work in the saloon when he stopped in there for breakfast a few mornings later.

  “You convinced me to stay, Earl Strong,” she said, pouring him a cup of coffee.

  “That makes it a good first week, it does,” he smiled, toasting her with his mug.

  Earl wasn’t sure if that was the moment he’d fallen in love with Molly Finlaw, but it was pretty close. She was the first thing that took his mind off Juanita Rojas to whom he’d sent three letters now, while receiving not a single one back. He had an early dinner in the saloon that night and was there when the place opened for breakfast the following morning yet again.

  “You keep looking at me like that, Earl Strong, and I’m gonna have to charge you extra.”

  Normally shy around women, Earl found himself smiling. “You charging me extra, Molly, means I might have to propose marriage to avoid going broke.”

  “I’m listening,” she grinned back.

  The first letter Juanita Rojas wrote to Earl Strong from Majahual was to confess she was pregnant from their night in the motel room. She started the letter by apologizing profusely for being such a burden after all he’d done for her, and finished it with a plea to come and get her so the
ir child could be raised north of the border.

  Caitlin pictured Juanita’s mother dutifully promising to mail the letter, while keeping the truth from Juanita’s father and working feverishly to rectify the situation by finding her a Mexican husband fast. If she bore a child out of wedlock, to an Americano no less and el Rinche to boot, she would be shunned, she and her child both left to live out their lives as outcasts.

  The solution was to find a man who’d never know the child wasn’t his and swear Juanita to secrecy about the whole sordid affair. She was a beautiful young girl and her mother felt terrible believing the men who’d taken her away with a promise she’d come back with riches gleamed from prosperous work across the booming border. Rectifying this situation would be her way of making that up to her daughter, while not compounding the problem she had created.

  Juanita’s letters indicated she’d grudgingly agreed, hosting an assembly of men even as she kept penning letters to Earl Strong in virtual diary form, not once questioning whether he could read Spanish or not. She never for a minute suspected the letters were going no farther than her mother’s desk and continued writing them, even as she found a husband and Earl’s baby inside her began to grow.

  . . .

  As marriage was being forced on Juanita Rojas with a man she barely knew and didn’t love, Earl Strong’s letters to her indicated he was finding quite the opposite with Molly Finlaw. She became the first real woman in his life and, just like his Ranger father and grandfather, Earl figured he needed look no further for a wife.

  He was smart enough to know she’d stayed in Gladstone because of him, but not too smart to take her for granted amid the notoriety and platitudes thrust his way. The new West had been without a hero since men like Wyatt Earp had faded from memory of the old. To many, the booming resurgence of Texas in the early 1930s was more a step backward to the frontier times that had spawned gunfighters and outlaws than a step toward the future. Earl found himself with a foot firmly planted in either world, an old-fashioned hero in a newfangled time as Texas struggled to hold its own against the vast forces converging upon it.