Antonio shook his head and said, “No. Nacho told me we had to teach Jimmy a lesson. Make an example of him so nobody else would try to do what they thought he was doing. So he told me I was going to beat Jimmy up.”
“You work for those monsters?” Aurelia asked, unable to keep the horror out of her voice.
“No . . . yes . . . I don’t know! I thought Nacho was my friend. He kept trying to get me to work with him. . . . He said I could make a lot of money. . . . So finally I agreed to help them out with this job. It was going to be the first thing I did for the hombres. I thought it would be all right as long as I didn’t have to hurt anybody too bad . . . But then when we got there, Nacho gave me his gun. He wanted me to . . . shoot Jimmy.”
Aurelia covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes were wide with shock and disbelief.
“I wouldn’t do it,” Antonio said. “I dropped the gun. And then Nacho went crazy and Jimmy tried to run and Jalisco shot him . . . While that was going on I ran out into the brush and headed for the highway. . . .”
He let out a long, shuddery sigh, unable, for the moment, to go on.
The four of them sat in silence for several long seconds. Finally Stark asked, “When was this, last night?”
Antonio nodded.
“I hitched a ride with a trucker, but I had him let me off before we got to town. I know the cartel has eyes and ears everywhere. They even have little kids, schoolkids, working for them! I remembered this little creek with a deep gully, so I hid out there during the day. I knew they’d be looking for me. Then when it got dark I came across country to get here. I hoped I could get some money, maybe a little food, and catch a bus up north to someplace where they couldn’t find me.”
“You didn’t think about the fact that they’d probably be watching your grandparents’ place?” Stark asked.
“I was too scared to think. I just wanted to get away.” Antonio looked back and forth between Fred and Aurelia. “I’m sorry. I never meant to bring trouble down on you.”
“It’s all right,” Aurelia told him. She looked shaken but resolute. “We’ll call the law now, talk to the sheriff—”
“No!” Antonio shook his head emphatically. “I can’t risk that.”
“Surely the sheriff can keep you safe,” Fred said. “They can put you in protective custody.”
“The sheriff’s department is full of people who work for the cartel. I wouldn’t last a day in protective custody.”
“That can’t be true,” Aurelia said.
“It is,” Antonio insisted.
Fred looked over at Stark and asked, “What do you think, John Howard?”
Stark drew in a deep breath and let it out.
“I think the boy’s right,” he said. “Maybe it’s not quite as bad in the sheriff’s department as he makes out. I’m convinced George Lozano’s an honest man and tries to run an honest department. But these hombres, as he calls ’em, are bound to have men in there. And they can bring a hell of a lot of pressure to bear when they want to. It’d be dangerous for Antonio to turn himself in.”
“You see?” Antonio said. “I need to run.” He laughed humorlessly again. “That’s how all this started, with me running. That’s how it’ll end.”
“No, you’re gonna stay put right here until we figure out what to do,” Stark said.
“Here?” Fred asked.
“You may get tired of being cooped up, Antonio, but they can’t be sure you’re here,” Stark went on. “If you stay out of sight, maybe they’ll get tired of looking for you and figure you already left the country somehow.”
“That’s what I should have done,” Antonio said bitterly. “I should have hitched a ride on a truck and not stopped until it was a long way out of Texas.”
“That’s no way to live,” Stark told him. “Just hunker down for a while. I’ll talk to a friend of mine. She’s a lawyer, and she’s pretty smart.”
“What if Nacho and the others come back? They’re not gonna give up, you know. And now they’ve got even more of a reason to want to cause trouble. They’ve got a grudge against you, Mr. Stark.”
Stark chuckled.
“If I lost much sleep over everybody who’s got a grudge against me, I’d be mighty tired,” he said. He looked meaningfully at the guns on the coffee table. “If they come back, I guess we’ll just have to be ready for them.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Señor Espantoso walked over to a large fancy table with a map spread out on it. Paperweights held down the corners. From the looks of it, the señor had been pointing out things on the map to his visitor, Nacho thought.
Nacho had never seen the man before. He was large and balding, though the hair he had left was thick and dark, only lightly streaked with silver. The same was true of the man’s mustache. He stood to the side as Señor Espantoso motioned for Nacho and Jalisco to join him.
Chuckie wasn’t paying attention to anything inside the room anymore. He was staring out through the glass doors at the naked women around the pool with a lustful expression on his face, totally enraptured by the sight. Since he was busy with that, Nacho didn’t interrupt him. Besides, Chuckie wasn’t really bright enough to grasp whatever it was Señor Espantoso intended to tell them.
“Look,” the señor said as he jabbed an elegantly manicured fingernail at the map. “What do you see, Ignacio?”
Nacho leaned over slightly to study the map, proud that Señor Espantoso evidently was going to ask his opinion about something. He looked at the markings on the map and after a moment said, “Those are the routes we use to transport the drugs.”
The señor drew his fingernail around an area on the map northwest of Devil’s Pass where there were no marks.
“And this?”
Nacho’s jaw tightened. He answered, “Shady Hills Retirement Park.”
“Exactly.” Señor Espantoso smiled. “You see how sometimes events converge? You want revenge on Antonio Gomez because he let you down, because what he did was tantamount to a betrayal of us and our cause. You want revenge on this man Stark because he defied you, and the hombres in Mexico City would like him dead as well because he has been a great annoyance in the past. And I . . .” Señor Espantoso tapped the map again. “I want this land. It sits in the middle of a corridor that is already mostly under our control. With it we could move our product more swiftly and efficiently. Do you follow what I’m saying, Ignacio?”
Nacho licked his lips. He thought he knew what the señor was getting at, but he wasn’t sure. . . .
“Of course, señor,” he said anyway. It wouldn’t do to let this man know that he didn’t understand.
“The people who live here in this . . . Shady Hills . . .” Espantoso’s lip curled in contempt. “They are all old, true?”
“A few younger ones, I think, who take care of elderly relatives, but mostly yes, señor, they are old.”
“Old and easily frightened. So that is your job, Ignacio. Frighten them.” The señor’s hand clenched into a fist and smashed down on the map. “Make of this Shady Hills Retirement Park a living hell so that its residents will flee. Those who survive, anyway. Can you do that?”
“Of course, señor,” Nacho answered without hesitation. “What about Antonio?”
Espantoso waved a hand dismissively.
“Antonio Gomez means nothing anymore. Kill him if you find him. He makes a good excuse. But there are two things I really want.” He pointed again. “This land.” His hand clenched once more into a fist. “And John Howard Stark’s head, so I can put it in a box and send it to the hombres who lead our cartel. Give me those things, and great will be your reward.”
“It will be done, señor,” Nacho breathed.
Or he would die trying.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After Stark went back to his mobile home, he spent the rest of the night in his recliner, dozing in the sort of light sleep that allowed a man to rest while he still remained fairly alert. The shotgun was in easy reach on the floor
beside the chair, and he had loaded his own .45 like the one Fred had and placed it on the table close at hand.
If Nacho Montez and his compadres came back, Stark was ready to give them a warm welcome.
The rest of the night passed quietly, though, for which Stark was grateful. As dawn was breaking the next morning, he put some coffee on and then took a quick shower while it was brewing.
He was sitting on his front porch, appearing unarmed though he had the .45 tucked into the back of his jeans under the untucked tails of his shirt, when Hallie Duncan pulled up next door at her father’s mobile home. She waved to him as she got out of the car.
“Hallie,” he called to her, “can you come over here a minute?”
She walked across the yard—there was no fence between the properties—and leaned on the railing beside the porch steps.
“Good morning, John Howard,” she said. “You’re up bright and early.”
“It was sort of an interesting night,” Stark said.
Hallie’s carefully plucked eyebrows rose.
“The sort of night that I might be interested in spending?” she asked.
“Not really.” Stark paused. “The fellas who left those heads in Dorothy’s garden came back.”
Hallie’s gaze darted around. The park appeared to be tranquil and quiet this morning, so Stark knew what she was thinking.
“Most folks don’t know about it yet,” he went on. “They were after Fred Gomez’s grandson, Antonio. They were gonna break in to get to him, but Fred and I managed to stop them. The rest of the park thinks it was just an attempted robbery.”
“So why are you telling me different?” Hallie wanted to know.
“Because Antonio’s holed up inside Fred’s place, and he’s got some legal troubles. He could use a lawyer.”
Hallie drew in a breath. She glanced along the front of Stark’s mobile home toward the Gomezes.
“You know I have just a general legal practice, don’t you, John Howard? I draw up wills, set up trusts, handle lawsuits and settlements, that sort of thing.”
“You do some defense work, too,” Stark said.
“Yes, but there are people who specialize in that. I don’t.”
“Antonio needs a lawyer he can trust. I trust you, and I think he’ll listen to my advice if I tell him you should represent him.”
“I just came by to fix breakfast for my dad.”
“Alton would want you to help if he knew what was going on.”
“That’s my condition,” Hallie said. “I’ll consider taking the case, but only if you tell my dad what’s going on, too. He has a right to know that he’s living next door to trouble.”
Stark couldn’t argue with that sentiment. He nodded and said, “All right, if you want to bring him over here, we can talk about it.”
“I have a better idea. Come with me over to his house, and I’ll fix breakfast for all three of us.”
Stark smiled.
“That’s an offer I’m sure not gonna turn down.”
As he stood up to go down the steps and join her, she asked, “Are you carrying a gun, John Howard?”
“Yep. Got a permit to do it, too.”
“I know you do. I just like to know when people around me are armed.”
A bad feeling had been growing in Stark ever since the trouble the night before. He said, “If you’re gonna be coming to visit your dad on a regular basis, I think you’d better get used to it.”
The smell of bacon and pancakes filled the mobile home. That was one of the sweetest perfumes in the world, Stark thought.
But to tell the truth, whatever scent Hallie was wearing smelled pretty good, too. Of course, he wasn’t the sort to tell her that, especially not now.
As they sat at the kitchen table and ate, Alton said, “This is nice, John Howard. You should come over for breakfast more often.”
“Pay attention,” Hallie told Stark.
Alton took a sip of his coffee and said, “Somehow, though, I don’t think this is exactly a social get-together. This is about what happened last night, isn’t it?”
Stark nodded.
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
“It was more than what you told me.”
“I hated to lie to you, Alton, but at the time I didn’t really know what was going on. I figured I’d better find out before I started spreading rumors.”
“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” Alton said with a shrug. “It wasn’t that you didn’t trust me or anything.”
“Not at all.”
“So now you’re ready to tell us?”
“He’d better be,” Hallie said, “if he wants us to help him.”
“It’s not me that needs help, exactly,” Stark said. “It’s Antonio Gomez.”
“Fred’s grandson?” Alton asked with a frown.
“That’s right.”
Stark told them the whole story. Hallie looked horrified when she heard about Antonio’s connection to the two human heads that had been found across the street. Alton seemed to take it in stride, although his expression grew grim as he listened.
“The boy’s there now?” he asked when Stark was finished.
“I suppose. I haven’t been over there to check.”
Hallie said, “He needs to turn himself in to the law. I can go with him to the district attorney—”
“He won’t do that,” Stark said, “and I don’t blame him. If he’s locked up in jail, like for drug dealing, the cartel can get to him like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And who should he trust in the sheriff’s department? If he guesses wrong, he’s dead.”
Hallie thought about it for a moment, then said, “All right, how about the Border Patrol or the DEA? Or even the FBI? You don’t honestly believe that the cartel has infiltrated those agencies, do you, John Howard?”
“Probably not to any great extent, although you could have some renegade agents here and there.”
“It’s just that you don’t trust the federal government.”
“With good reason, I’d say,” Alton put in. “Remember all the trouble they gave him before. Hell, they even sicced the IRS on him! You can’t get any more inhumane than that.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” Hallie asked Stark.
“I thought maybe you could talk to your friend in Washington,” Stark said. “Find out if there’s somebody we can trust who can do something for Antonio.”
Hallie’s blue eyes narrowed in thought.
“Anybody who can do us any good is going to want something in return,” she said. “What can Antonio testify to?”
“He can pin the murder of those two kids on the Montez brothers and their buddy Jalisco.”
“Yes, but how far up the ladder are those three?”
Stark grimaced and shook his head.
“One rung, maybe.”
“In other words, they’re nobodies. Dangerous, maybe, but in the larger scheme of things, nobodies.”
“That’s probably right,” Stark said.
“And Antonio doesn’t know who they work for?”
“You’d have to ask him, but that’s the impression I got.”
“Nobody’s going to be interested in such little fish, John Howard. I hate to say that, but it’s true. Even if they could use Antonio’s testimony as leverage to flip this Nacho Montez, maybe, it’s doubtful that anybody would want to invest the resources to do so. The payoff is too uncertain.”
“So what can be done?” Alton asked. “Just throw Antonio to the wolves?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t make any calls,” Hallie said. “I’ll do what I can. But for now it looks like it may be up to friends and family to keep Antonio alive.”
Stark nodded.
“That’s usually what it boils down to,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Stark and Hallie walked over to the Gomezes’, where Hallie spent an hour talking to a visibly nervous Antonio. She had already called her office and told her secretary
she would be running late again this morning. She didn’t have any court appearances scheduled today, she told Stark, so her secretary was able to rearrange her appointments.
Antonio didn’t have much money in his pockets, so Fred had given him a hundred dollars to hand to Hallie as an attorney. That made their conversation privileged. She’d chased Fred, Aurelia, and Stark out of the room so that they couldn’t be forced to testify to anything Antonio told her.
Of course, all three of them had already heard Antonio’s story, but that constituted hearsay, she explained, and it was likely that she could get any such testimony suppressed if things ever came down to a trial.
Just hearing mention of a trial made Antonio look more nervous, Stark thought. As well it should. He had been loco to get mixed up with a bunch like that. Kids did loco things sometimes, though.
As did adults, Stark added to himself with a wry smile as he thought about some of the things he had gotten himself into. Holing up in the Alamo and fighting the dang Mexican army . . . nobody could call that sane.
But he’d had to do it anyway.
When Hallie finally came out of the house, she joined Stark, Fred, and Aurelia in lawn chairs on the porch.
“Can you do anything for him, Hallie?” Aurelia asked anxiously.
“I don’t know, but I can certainly try. When I get to the office I’ll call a friend of mine in Washington.”
“Washington,” Fred repeated with a note of scorn in his voice. “Do you really think any of those people are interested in helping anybody but themselves?”
“Some are,” Hallie insisted. “Unfortunately, they’re greatly outnumbered. But all we can do is try.”
“And stay alert for trouble,” Stark said.
“Do you think those men will be back?” Aurelia asked.
“I think there’s a darned good chance of it.”
Fred reached across his belly to tap the butt of the pistol that was snugged into a cross-draw holster at his waist, under his shirt.
“That’s why I’m going to be armed from now on,” he said. “I’m thinking about taking this .45 of mine into the shower with me.”
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