Sinclair didn’t reply.
“Sometimes, Daddy likes to punish me by making me wear the makeup.” She held a finger up to her lips. “But it’s our secret. Don’t tell no one.”
“I won’t say nothing.” Sinclair clutched his side against a tiny spasm of pain. “Did you see what kind of vehicle the Mexican lady was in?”
“They asked me to go with them.” Sadie closed her purse. “But I couldn’t leave Mama and Daddy.”
“Who?”
“Them that was here. The Mexican lady and her friends.”
Sinclair waited but nothing else was forthcoming. The girl was positively ate up with the stupid syndrome.
“Where you from, Sadie?”
“Near Waco,” she said. “My daddy’s a preacher there.”
Sinclair nodded. “Tell me about the people that were here.”
A whip-poor-will cried out from one of the live oaks by the hotel. Sadie sighed loudly and shifted her position on the tailgate, clearly agitated.
Sinclair looked at the casket but didn’t say anything.
“There were three of them.” She rubbed her nose. “In a white truck.”
Sinclair nodded, tried to contain his excitement.
“Can I tell you another secret?” She looked both ways even though the town was deserted.
“Sure.”
“I never knew my real mom. This here’s my stepmother.” She tapped the coffin. “And she was mean to me.”
The girl’s eyes, just a little bit too far apart, took on a sheen, a glow from somewhere deep inside. Neither spoke for a few moments.
“You seem like a nice person,” Sinclair said. “Why would anybody be mean to you?”
Sadie blushed.
“How long ago were the people here?” Sinclair said. “The ones that asked you to go with them.”
“You’re lucky if you know your real mom.” Sadie giggled. “That’s what I always say.”
Sinclair started to speak but stopped as a wave of pain rippled through his abdomen.
“They was driving a Chevy.” Sadie fluffed her hair. “One of them Tahoes.”
Sinclair nodded.
“Two ladies and a man. One of the ladies shot them people in the hotel while the other two were in the dance hall.”
Neither spoke for a few moments. The sun grew brighter. Shadows on the road dissipated.
“Do you know which way they went?” Sinclair spoke softly, afraid any extra movement would disrupt his insides.
“Daddy and me was real close,” Sadie said. “That’s why my step-mama didn’t like me, you see.”
Sinclair nodded.
“Maybe them people in the Chevy know where Daddy is,” Sadie said.
“Maybe so.” Sinclair peered down the road. “If we knew which way they went, then we could ask them.”
“You got a map?” Sadie stood. “I could show you.”
- CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN -
I jerked upright, wide awake but utterly disoriented. An unpleasant, where-the-hell-am-I sensation clattered through my mind.
Threadbare sheets and a polyester comforter slid down my chest. I was naked from the waist up.
A wood-paneled motel room. Worn carpet the color of spoiled avocados. A rumpled bed next to mine. The air smelled like pine cleaner and several decades’ worth of stale cigarette smoke.
Running water hissed from behind a door on the far side of the room, next to a counter with a sink under a cracked mirror.
I blinked. Sunlight filtered through the blinds over the air-conditioner.
Piper stood at the foot of the bed, dressed.
“I’m gonna get us breakfast,” she said.
The events of the previous night slowly came into focus. Slivers of time drifted back.
After the fire, Eva drove, Piper next to her in the front. Hours and hours into the night on the side roads, putting as much distance as possible between us and the burning dance hall.
Three, maybe four in the morning, we stopped at a motel somewhere past Sonora, on the highway out of Del Rio, a border town that we’d avoided. The vastness of the night had been overpowering. An endless sheet of stars, like glitter from the wings of angels, anchored by the pale wedge of a moon.
“The witness is in the shower.” Piper stepped to the door. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I nodded and looked at the bedside table.
My Glock rested by a cream-colored ashtray marked with a faded stagecoach and the lettering BUENA VISTA MOTOR HOTEL, SOTOL CITY, TEXAS. There was no phone.
I checked the pistol. Loaded, a round in the chamber.
The running water stopped. The bathroom door opened. Steam billowed into the room.
Eva—hair wet, skin damp—stepped out, a towel wrapped around her torso.
“Nice place.” My voice was hoarse. “Are the cockroaches friendly?”
“It’s the only motel we could find.” She ran her fingers through her hair.
I visualized the map, remembered the scuttlebutt from a couple of immigration officers I knew. The road ran parallel to the border a few miles north of the Rio Grande. After Del Rio, the only crossing point—legal or for the most part otherwise—was Presidio, hours away and directly south of Marfa.
The road between here and there was barren and empty, like the surrounding terrain. Safe, for our purposes, as long as our transportation didn’t have a breakdown.
I glanced at my watch as Eva pulled a hand towel from the rack by the sink and rubbed her hair. A little after eight in the morning. I’d slept maybe four hours. My eyes were raw. They ached, lids gritty. My limbs felt leaden.
“You had a nightmare last night.” Eva looked at me in the mirror. “Shouted something about your father and ‘save the child.’”
I had no recollection of anything. I debated calling Tanya to see how Dad was. But I realized the best thing I could do for him was to keep going and get the money.
“This life.” Eva stopped drying. “It’s no good for any of us.”
“How much farther?” I got out of bed. Joints creaked; muscles ached.
My jeans and T-shirt were on the floor. Wallet and phone in the correct pockets. The cell indicated a weak signal.
“We are perhaps four hours away if we take this highway,” she said. “How do you say, a straight shot.”
I nodded. That was doable. Fill up the tank and eat now. Then don’t stop for anything. We’d be there right after lunchtime. I went to the sink, drank a tumbler of lukewarm tap water. Brushed my teeth with one of the tiny brushes we kept in the back of the Tahoe.
“You should see this, though.” Eva flipped on an old Magnavox bolted to the dresser.
I walked back across the room, lifted a slat on the blinds, peered out.
The Hill Country had given way to an area that lay between the coastal lushness of the Rio Grande Valley and the mountainous Big Bend region, our ultimate destination.
A high, arid plateau that straddled Mexico and Texas, the Chihuahuan Desert. Rocks and cholla cactus on either side of a dusty two-lane road. Across the street was an old adobe building, a café called the Lonesome Dove Diner.
I turned.
The television warmed up, sound growing louder. The picture was fuzzy, jagged horizontal lines across one of the national morning news shows.
“It will be on in a moment.” Eva sat on the bed I had just vacated. She crossed her legs and leaned back on her elbows, the towel riding up her thighs.
The show paused for a commercial break—a guy in a shark costume yakked about the lowest car prices in Del Rio—then cut to the local news.
The anchor wore a green plaid sports coat, brown shirt, and purple tie. His words were muffled due to a faulty speaker on the TV. Something about a double homicide and the Texas Rangers investigating because a law enforcement officer had died.
Then the video ran.
Ambulances and DPS squad cars were parked at the Alamo General Store where we had stopped the day before. Yellow crime
scene tape was everywhere.
“The attendant and a deputy sheriff,” Eva said. “They were killed about an hour after we were there.”
I didn’t say anything.
“They are tracking us, yes?”
I looked back out the window.
Piper emerged from the diner across the highway. She held a paper sack in one hand, a cell phone in the other. She walked to the edge of the road and stopped. Placed the phone to her ear.
“The narcos are always worried about satellites.” Eva stood. She approached the window. “Maybe the CIA or somebody is watching us from outer space.”
Tracking a particular vehicle by satellite was doable but obscenely expensive, even by the money-doesn’t-matter standards of Homeland Security. This was one reason the RFID tags for batteries and the Loose Juice Amendment had come about. I didn’t want to tell Eva any of that, however.
“Yes.” I let the blinds drop. “They must be using satellites.”
My mind was a swirl. How were they following us? Could they have traced the purchase of the new auto battery in Plano to our Tahoe this quickly? And who was Piper talking to?
Eva stepped close to me to get to the window.
I could feel the dampness of the shower on her flesh, smell the soap. Her skin was the color of cinnamon, shoulders dusted with freckles.
She reached for the blind, arm brushing mine.
“So do you love her?” She peered outside.
I didn’t reply. I looked away from the swell of her breasts under the thin towel.
“There’s a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty for me.” She moved closer to get a different viewing angle. “How long would that money last you?”
Her bare shoulder brushed against my bare chest.
“Long enough.” I tried to ignore the feel of her skin as it grazed mine.
“Even if we make it to the courthouse,” she said, “they will come after you. Revenge is their code.”
“I’m gonna get dressed,” I said. “We roll in ten minutes.”
“There are people above the jefes,” she said. “Even if you kill the snake by cutting off the head, they create another one.”
We were both silent for a few moments. She looked away from the window and stared into my eyes. We held each other’s gaze, neither of us willing to break away.
“Do you trust this Piper person?” She pointed outside.
I had no reply, just a sense of weariness and the pinpricks of anger that seemed perpetually close to the surface. A smoky aura floated through my mind, the feeling that always preceded regretful decisions.
“I’ve hidden some money,” she said. “There was so much, it was easy to take some here and there.”
I continued to stare into her eyes, felt myself drifting away from reality. She was a beautiful woman, vulnerable yet tough, my favorite blend. I tried to ignore the desire that rose inside me like a river freed from a broken dam.
“They’ll give me a new identity after I testify.” She caressed my arm with one finger. “But they don’t know about the money. No one does.”
Her fingers were damp, the feel of her skin electric. The need to touch her flesh ached inside me, a junkie craving the needle-dip into the bubbling spoon.
My weakness, my curse, the darkness deep inside.
Eva leaned closer, pressed her lips against mine. I kissed back, grasped her shoulder.
Noise from the door, a key rattling.
I pushed Eva away. She stepped back, smiled.
Piper stepped inside.
“Am I interrupting anything?” She dropped the bag on the table.
- CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT -
I hosed off in tepid, rust-colored water, dressed, and scarfed down a chorizo-and-egg burrito, all in seven and a half minutes.
Eva was ready. From inside the room, I chirped open the Tahoe, told her to get in the back while we threw our few things in a duffel bag.
After she left, Piper looked at me, a sly smile on her face.
“A hot tamale, that Eva.” She went to the sink and ran some water over a toothbrush. “You looked like a dog in heat when I came in. Maybe next stop, you can tear off a piece.”
I strode across the room. Knocked the toothbrush from her fingers.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” I pointed outside. “Across the street when you came out of the diner.”
“You bastard.” She pushed me away and cursed, several new phrases involving the sex act and small farm animals.
I pushed back. Then we stopped, both breathing hard.
In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of each of us. Dark circles under our eyes, drawn skin, lines in our faces. Fatigue and stress were taking their toll, making us punch drunk. But I didn’t care.
“You haven’t answered the question.” I nodded to the phone in her pocket.
“Has it come to this?” she said. “We’re this far out of the bell curve?”
“They’re tracking us,” I said. “They took out the place we stopped at yesterday.”
“No kidding, Mannix.” She shook her head. “Who do you think saw that first?”
I didn’t reply.
“I was calling that Texas Ranger from Amarillo, the guy who owed those shylocks the twenty K.”
I nodded, understanding now.
A cop with a gambling problem was a bad, sometimes deadly combo. A few weeks before, we’d found the Ranger at a dice game in the back of a Mexican restaurant on Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff, trying to make a payment to a small-time hood who owed us several big-time favors. One conversation led to another and, presto-bingo, the Texas Ranger owed us a chit.
“I was trying to find out how hot we are,” she said. “Trying to get us to Marfa in one piece.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I had to leave a message.”
Neither of us spoke for a few moments.
“I, uh, I’m sorry.”
She ignored my apology. “What were you and Eva talking about when I came in?”
“Nothing.” I had never lied to Piper before. It was a white lie, just to keep peace in the Tahoe for the rest of the trip.
Piper didn’t reply. She picked up her toothbrush, ran water over the bristles.
I paced the small room. “How did they find us?”
“The tag on the battery?” She shrugged, brushed her teeth, spit. “Who the hell knows?”
“We’re about four hours away. One last push.”
“So says your map.”
I picked up my duffel bag.
“My map says we’re dead, and we don’t even know it.” She headed to the door.
The motel where we had stayed was like something from a bad slasher movie but not as upscale. Crumbling adobe the color of the sand surrounded the parking lot. A one-eyed attendant in an Iron Maiden concert T-shirt came out to watch us fill up at the service station next door.
“He’s gonna remember three people in a white Tahoe.” I slid the hose back into place.
“Yep.” Piper pulled a handful of cash from her pocket. “That he is.”
I got in the driver’s seat as she went to pay. When she returned and was ensconced in the passenger side, I put the truck in gear and pulled onto the highway.
Eva said, “Wait.”
I idled to a stop and turned in my seat.
“I just wanted to offer my thanks.” She touched my arm. “To both of you.”
I nodded. Piper didn’t move, face blank. She stared at the spot where Eva’s fingers had been on my flesh.
“I appreciate the sacrifice you have made,” Eva said. “To get me this far.”
“It’s not about you.” I shrugged. “We’re in this for the money.”
“Yes, of course.” Eva nodded. “The money.”
Piper turned in her seat. “Tell us how you came to be bumping uglies with both a DEA agent and a cartel bigwig.”
I put the Tahoe in gear and drove west.
Eva stared ou
tside at the desert. “You are interested in my sex life now?”
“No.” Piper held up a pair of cuffs. “But if you don’t tell me a good story, I’m gonna use these on you.”
Eva met the man who would become her husband, Lazaro Morales, at a disco in Monterrey four years before. She’d been twenty-seven at the time and cut off from her family because of what her mother called “poor life choices.”
Eva’s mother, a longtime fan of Dr. Phil, lived in West Houston, working as a life coach and Mary Kay sales associate. Eva’s father lived in Cuernavaca, a devout Catholic who refused to grant a divorce. The father had all but given up on his youngest child, calling Eva a mujerzuela, a slut.
Eva, a free spirit like her sister but without the artistic talent, had moved to Monterrey because a girlfriend was there. She had a vague notion she would work as a nurse, despite no education in that particular field. Plans and goals weren’t a big priority with Eva Ramirez. Parties and good times, these were the important things to her. Enjoy your life and youth, your beauty. Live every day like it might be your last. Because in Mexico, you never could tell. Today might be the final tomorrow.
Unfortunately, nursing jobs for young women with no nursing experience were hard to come by. Money had been tight and expenses high, so Eva, always the prettiest girl in the room, had taken to dating people who had a lot of cash, dashing young men who carried chrome-plated guns in their waistbands and drove late-model Escalades and Suburbans.
The disco where she met Lazaro Morales had a mirrored ball that hung from the ceiling and a lighted dance floor. A DJ played 1990s pop music, techno tracks from the eighties, and the occasional conjunto rap tune, everything loud and rhythmic for the throngs of attractive young people who filled the club. Everywhere, there were martinis and whiskey drinks, champagne in silver buckets, and tiny crystal bowls of caviar.
She’d been dancing with her boyfriend, an up-and-coming lieutenant in the organization that controlled the city.
The boyfriend was her age and owned seven houses. He wore gold Rolexes, three different models, and had a driver for his GMC Denali. He paid the rent for Eva’s apartment and gave her a small stipend. Some weekends, always without warning, he whisked her across the border to see her mother in Houston. There, they stayed at the nicest hotels and went shopping at the Galleria for whatever she wanted—Neiman’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Crate and Barrel.
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