by Lynn Shurr
The first bad vibe came when he found the front door open, the alarm unset. If anything, Tommy was more conscientious than Dean about such matters. Joe called out his son’s name and heard it echo through the vastness of the large house. No answer. He turned on his heels and checked the barn, a favorite sulking place as the animals always offered a sympathetic nuzzle, especially if offered a treat. No sign of a red-haired boy inside or up in the loft. Joe shouted outside using the same voice he drew upon when he called an audible and the other team’s fans tried to drown out his commands and cause confusion while the play clock ran down. No answer.
He returned to the house and took the steps upstairs two at a time. Maybe the kid had been worn out and come home to take a nap away from the noisy crowd of Billodeauxs gathered to eat crawfish on Good Friday. He knew the feeling of wanting to get away from his relatives sometimes. They could be overwhelming. Good thing Nell had proved to be tough enough to stand up to his four sisters and especially his mother, one of the many reasons he loved his wife.
No Tommy asleep in the bed, but the laptop on the desk burst into life when he jostled the chair. Strange it was turned on. Joe saw the note, a white piece of paper propped on the pillow sham depicting a palomino horse’s head, neck curved, ears pricked, wild, white mane flying. A short, clear message and all wrong to his way of thinking. He pulled out his cell phone and poked in a number.
“Knox, sorry to disturb you when you’re with your people, but we have a problem. Seems Tommy has run away from home. He got into snit over someone making fun of his red hair and freckles and took off.” Joe roved the room as he talked to his ranch manager and security officer. “Yeah, lots of his clothes are gone and that Sinners duffel he uses for sleepovers and camping. Seems like way more than a small boy would take along or could carry. Yes, he left a note, but I don’t like the looks of it.”
“How so?” asked the man on the other end of the conversation.
“Well, he says he is going to find his real dad, and he spelled Mexico right. You think a six-year-old could do that?”
“Spell check? All the kids use it.”
“Maybe, but all the kids would use I M instead of typing out ‘am’, too.”
“Good point. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. We’ll check the security tapes, but I wouldn’t worry too much. A boy his age toting a big duffle won’t get far. We’ll probably find him hot and tired and sorry sitting under a tree. How long you think he’s been gone?”
“No more than an hour, probably less.”
“Notify the sheriff’s office. They might find him before I get back to the ranch.”
“Say, don’t tell Corazon yet. No sense in upsetting her or Nell right away.”
“She’s helping my nieces decorate Easter eggs. I’ll tell her some stock got out and we have to round ’em up.”
“Thanks. As quickly as you can, okay?”
“Roger that.”
Joe placed the call to the cops who assured him good-naturedly they’d probably have the boy back in no time. After all, how many red-haired, freckled kids did a Cajun town like Chapelle have or even the whole area of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc parish? The boy would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
Joe paced the bedroom. He had that same prickling feeling he got when a tackle came from behind to sack him during a game and took him down with a heavy thud. No sense wasting time. He knew inevitably that Bijou had come back. He placed another call to Toledo Bend and got an answer in two rings.
“Joe Dean, what a nice Good Friday surprise. Just a second, let me get my gardening gloves off. You know how I believe in planting on holy days. If you want your uncle, he’s out on the lake.”
He imagined his elderly aunt with a big floppy gardening hat covering her tightly-permed blue-gray curls, the knees of her stretch pants dirty, her large breasts covered with a flowered muumuu top. Hal had given her one of those phones she could program to identify the caller for an anniversary gift. Despite playing for the Sinners, he knew she’d chosen When the Saints go Marchin’ In for his I.D. For Tommy, she’d picked the theme from the rock opera by the same name. Despite his own anxiety, he did not want to alarm her. No better people on earth than Flo and Hal. How they had produced a rotten apple like Bijou, no one knew. All their other kids turned out fine. No reason to pass time with pleasantries.
“No, Aunt Flo. You can tell me what I need to know. Where is Bijou hiding out these days?”
His aunt hesitated. “Why do you need to know? You promised you wouldn’t send him to jail if he stayed in Mexico.”
Certain his aunt stayed in touch with her worthless son, Joe guessed Bijou’s ring tone might be Chain Gang. “Tommy is missing.”
“Oh, no! Bijou can’t be involved. He’s settled down on a ranch south of Nuevo Laredo and has a beautiful Mexican wife and a pretty little daughter the same age as your girls. He trains racehorses, you know. He’s reformed, Joe.”
“Sounds like you stay in touch. He ever talk about Tommy?” He kept his voice calm and casual like he did when the Sinners were down two touchdowns, no big deal. They could catch up. He did not want to scare or hurt her anymore than Bijou already had, but could he catch up with Bijou if he’d taken the boy?
Again, that hesitation in her voice. “At first, he didn’t show much interest in his son. You know lots of men don’t care about babies, not the way you do, doting on them and all. But lately he asked me how Tommy was doing. He said Pilar couldn’t have more children, and Tommy would be his only son. He asked for a picture so I sent him one of the school photos from this year. Was that so bad? A man should be able to recognize his own son.”
“Sure, Aunt Flo. Look, I need the name and location of that ranch in Mexico just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case I need to go there to get my son.”
Flo heaved a sigh into the phone so heavy he knew it came laden with tears like a raincloud about to burst. “I’ll get that information for you. Don’t hurt my boy, Joe.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself. I promise not to kill him.”
He listened patiently as his aunt made her way inside, measuring her progress by the slam of a screen door, the tap of her athletic shoes crossing the hardwood floor to the kitchen. He took a piece of paper from the computer printer and wrote out what she told him, where she’d sent the school picture.
“Thanks, Aunt Flo. I hope this turns out well for all of us. Happy Easter.”
“And to you and your family. Tell Nell and Nadine, I pray every day for those little frozen babies to survive.”
“I will. Bye.”
Joe heard Knox Polk arrive driving the big-engined farm truck. He raced to join him in the surveillance room designed to look like all the other cottages on the ranch but smaller and always locked. As efficiently as he’d carried out military missions, Knox already had the images of the last hour up on the screens. The ranch manager’s disconcerting green eyes set in the mahogany-colored skin of his face scanned the progress of the breakin while Joe watched over his shoulder. Here the culprits came: dog, boy, and man crossing the fence, approaching the house, no attempt to hide his face, flaunting that gold tooth, giving Joe the finger. Damn fuckin’ Bijou!
THIRTEEN
Ignoring the whining of both the pup and the boy, Bijou didn’t stop for food until they crossed the Texas border two hours after leaving the vicinity of Chapelle. He should have resisted the temptation to stick it to Joe Dean and snuck in and out of Lorena Ranch. That would have given him more time to escape, but he figured they didn’t have his license plates, carefully obscured by mud, just another Cajun off-roading to celebrate the holiday. He felt safer in Texas. Hell, the Great State had thousands of big-ass double cab trucks on the road even if his cousin did recognize this one as the same stolen from him six years ago along with Cassie.
As darkness fell, he used a drive-up window at a restaurant just off the interstate to get a burger and fries and a cheap toy for the boy, a
cheeseburger for the dog, and a quarter-pound burger for himself. He stopped for gas at a convenience store with no other customers in the lot, let Tommy use the bathroom, and put the puppy down in a patch of weeds to piddle. Tanking himself up with one of those energy drinks and buying a few extra bottles because he planned to drive all night, Bijou made a bed with a blanket in the back seat and told his son to take a nap since with night coming on there wouldn’t be much to see outside.
He let the pup curl up on top of the blanket, too. “Aww, ain’t that cute.” That’s what the border guards would say when he approached the bridge in Laredo crossing over into Mexico, father and son going home after a trip to the states. Thanks to that school photo his always gullible mother sent, he had a passport for Tommy. It bore the name Thomas Charles Deaux, son of Juan Deaux. Age, birth date, place of birth, color of hair and eyes, all true. Shouldn’t be any trouble to gull the authorities while the Barney Fifes of Ste. Jeanne Parish ran around tripping over their own feet and shooting off toes.
He crossed the border regularly hauling racehorses belonging to his boss to various tracks. Many of the guards knew him. He hauled other stuff as well. Funny how no one wanted to search steaming piles of manure for illegal substances. Since the nasty job of uncovering the plastic sacks full of white powder and wrapping the bags again in brown paper to make them less noticeable fell to him and a pair of rubber gloves, Bijou figured Esteban Miro owed him more than a paycheck and a place to live. He skimmed a little from each of those white sacks and made up one to sell through his own contacts, a small gratuity considering he took the risk of being arrested while the boss stayed safe in Old Mexico. Still, he suspected the drug lord greased palms on both sides of the border because he’d never been stopped or questioned. This would work in his favor, too, when it came to Tommy.
Dawn lit a furtive glow in the eastern sky and sneaked over the horizon by the time the three of them reached Laredo. Bijou skipped the commercial bridge with its lines of big rigs since he was hauling nothing back into the country but his very own son. He’d never signed over any parental rights to Joe Dean either. Damn Cassie for handing the child over to his cousin who had everything. If she didn’t want the kid she’d refused to abort, she should have kept it or given the baby to someone else.
No harm would come to Tommy if Joe Dean played along and delivered the ransom, no, call that a voluntary donation—to help out a relative in need—in need to get out of Mexico. He’d mailed the letter with his demands and directions in some no-name Texas town with a post office drop right on the main street when the gas guzzling truck needed refueling yet again. Tommy woke when he stopped, but went right back to sleep with a vague, “That’s nice” when he told the kid he’d just sent a postcard home to his parents so they wouldn’t worry. Couple of days, Joe and his smart little wife would know for sure where Tommy was, but until then, he hoped they both sprouted as many gray hairs as he had. Life had not been kind: he wanted the rest of his to be nice and easy.
Bijou had a gut feeling Esteban was on to his skimming, and bad, bad things happened to people who crossed the boss. They ended up beheaded, their bodies dissolved in acid if not left as an example to others. Time to turn in his resignation and take off for Brazil with Pilar and Xochi. Now, that country had some righteous bull riders, and he knew a few who’d made it big back in his day and owned vast ranches and fine restaurants now. Could be they’d give a job to one of their kind who hadn’t made a fortune on the circuit like them. He was near to topping off his latest bag of white powder, and the sale from that should buy his family first class plane tickets to Rio and keep them in style for a while. Too bad he’d frittered away the cash from earlier scores on rings with real jewels and then lost them gambling. No big deal. With Joe’s contribution, they could live for years on the cheap if he didn’t feel like working, but a man liked to be busy.
Bijou glanced back at Tommy still fast asleep on the back seat. The shadows of morning dulled his son’s red hair and obscured his freckles. The guard wouldn’t get a good look at the boy. The puppy, however, scrambled down and lifted an unpracticed, wobbly leg against the front seat where he sat. Jesus God, he should throw the animal out a window before the kid woke, but then the boy might howl when he found it gone, and they were too close to crossing the border now to create an attention getting ruckus.
He’d picked the pissant little cur from a cardboard box of mongrel pups bearing a sign saying, “Free to Good Homes.” Two kids, a boy and a girl almost as cute as his own, sat beside the container under an oak tree and looked up hopefully at every passing car. Far as he knew, Bijou Billodeaux took the only pup that day.
The girl with tearful blue eyes and a quivering lip told him their dad would give the pups to the animal shelter if no one took them. “They might be put to death, mister.”
Youngsters, so gullible. He could have taken the whole box and sold them to Mexican dogfighters for bait to train their animals, but he didn’t have the time or want the trouble. Just one would lure his son to him. He made sure he chose a male. No red-blooded boy wanted a bitch—until he turned into a teenager. His wit made him laugh. Only now, he had a problem. Often enough, he’d brought back pit bulls and fighting cocks for his boss on a return trip. No law against transporting them to other countries so long as you had a health certificate from a vet. This dog had none. He knew Tommy would wail if he woke to find his puppy gone.
Bijou pulled to the side of the road and let other vehicles precede him to the checkpoint. He had a little observing to do and in the meantime would take care of the pup. Rummaging in the trash on the floorboard, he found one of Xochi’s red hair ribbons, forever slipping out of her curls, and used his pocketknife to cut it into three pieces. One made a tight muzzle around the pup’s nose, and the other two hog-tied its front and back legs. Cowboy skills, a man never forgot them. He shoved the shaking small dog under Tommy’s blanket, then cracked open another energy drink and swigged it down while watching the guards at work.
He selected the one he wanted, a short overweight woman with brown skin and thick, cropped black hair under her hat. By the slump of her shoulders and weary wave of her hand to drive on as she returned a set of passports, she’d been on duty all night and waited for her relief to arrive shortly. Passports ready, he got back in line.
“Your business in Mexico,” the guard asked dully as she scanned the passports.
“Vacation. Got a place south of the border. I’m taking my boy down there for his spring break. Try not to wake him now. We left north Texas last night so we could have more time together. Divorced. You know how that goes.”
She nodded as if she wouldn’t be doing this job at all if she were married to a man who made good money. “Juan Deaux, strange name,” she commented, pronouncing the last like Dew.
“I say it Doe, Juan Deaux. My mother was Mexican, my dad a randy Cajun.” Bijou honored her with a broad smile and a twinkle of his gold tooth. “Guess I am, too. Like to see my place in Nuevo Laredo when you get off? I got a taste for brown beauties.”
She handed back the passports and shook a stubby finger at him. “No flirting with the border patrol.” She liked him, he could tell. That didn’t stop her from checking the box of his truck or its undercarriage. She pawed through Tommy’s duffle, too, but very quietly. “Some girls’ clothes?” she questioned.
“Castoffs for the orphanage,” he ad-libbed.
“Nice of you. These hardly look worn.”
Bijou wished she’d hurry before the boy woke up or the puppy whimpered, but Tommy didn’t stir. Very little of his face showed with the blanket drawn up. The female guard took care to speak softly just above a whisper. Finally, the broad gave them that tired wave and let them go.
Ah! Good to be back in Nuevo Laredo, the city squatting in a hump of the Rio Grande where industry thrived and all tastes could be satisfied. He steered past the monument to mothers in front of the Crowne Plaza hotel where he never stayed and chuckled to himself. The stou
t Mexican woman portrayed in the sculpture sheltered a boy and a girl in her skirts. Could be his new family, only Pilar wasn’t so fat.
Flush with cash one night, he’d bought her from a bordello owner. Fourteen and fresh, broken in but not yet jaded or diseased, she made a good wife, not that he’d ever married her in the church, just a civil ceremony one afternoon in a weak moment. After a few months, Pilar started upchucking and complaining of sore breasts. That caught him by surprise. He figured her pimp took care of keeping his girls on the pill, but he hadn’t given a thought to birth control, not even condoms since a doctor declared her clean. Damn his sentimental heart after losing Tommy to Joe Dean and failing to get him back, he’d let her have the baby, then took care of the matter of her having another. “Tie those tubes in knots, doc,” he’d said. “No mas muchachas, comprende?”
He snaked the truck toward the very edge of the city where the land turned to arid earth and the bushes grew brittle and scrubby and often covered with thorns. Off in the distance, he could see Esteban Miro’s lavish hacienda surrounded by irrigated green fields where high class broodmares grazed with the spring foals by their sides. He’d have a say about which colts and fillies to cultivate and which to sell off as yearlings—if he hung around that long. Parking the truck in his front yard not much different from the xeriscape surrounding it, Bijou got down from the cab and took the duffle with him. The small whirlwind that was Xochi burst from the front door and engulfed his legs.
“Papi, you bring me something pretty?” his daughter asked just like all women.
He spread the top of the bag like a merry Santa Claus and took out the first of the frilly dresses. His little girl squealed with delight and rooted in the sack for other treasures.