The traceable bloodline ended there, because Agent Nelson’s mother found herself pregnant with Frank after a one-night stand with a man she never saw afterward. Unwilling to be saddled with a child that would cut into her time cruising the Houston night clubs, she left the baby at the front door of the Jacinto City fire station.
Freed from a lifetime of living with a sorry-assed mother who lived for men and liquor and not necessarily in that order, he grew up in foster homes. For five years he passed from one household to another without ever bonding with the families that took him in.
A middle-aged couple named Ruby and Edward Nelson adopted him on his fifth birthday. He lived with them until Ed passed away from a heart attack. An island unto himself, he drifted away right after graduation. He married once, divorced two years later.
Now, with the exception of his now eighty-eight-year-old widowed foster mother and her eighty-five-year-old spinster sister, Harriet, who lived with her, Frank had no one. He hadn’t seen the old women in nearly twenty years, receiving only an annual Christmas card that arrived like clockwork on December twenty-fourth.
That made it easy for the cartel to bend him to their will after forcing the half-drunk agent into a guard rail on a remote West Texas road one night six months earlier. Agent Nelson had some of his birth-mother’s same failings, and fought a near-continuous battle with alcohol, keeping it under control for the most part until he sometimes found himself driving home when he should have called for a ride.
On the night in question, Nelson was driving five miles under the limit to stay out of the local police department’s radar when a car appeared from nowhere and caught up with him in less than sixty seconds. The sedan driven by Incencio and Geronimo cut in front of Nelson’s sedan, forcing him to yank the wheel in an effort to miss their rear bumper. Reactions slow and erratic from four hours in The Spot, a club on the outskirts of Midland that catered to roughnecks just in from the oil fields, the rattled off-duty Border Patrol agent overcompensated, hitting the guard rail and coming to a stop just off the bridge over a dry wash.
Dragging the stunned man from behind the wheel, Incencio and Geronimo went through their familiar routine, beating him and threatening the officer and his family with death if he didn’t cooperate. Slightly disoriented from the booze, shock, and pain, Nelson fought to regain his wits that starry night. As the minutes passed, his mind cleared and he understood what Incencio was telling him.
Nelson felt his now-grown daughter was safe, with half the Pacific Ocean between them and the mainland cartel, so he agreed to their demands to save his life that night . . . and found that a large payment of cash every six weeks made it easier to swallow his pride after he’d chewed it long enough.
He even came to grips with the odd rationalization that even if the cartel’s sicarios, or hitmen, decided to take his adopted mother and her sister out for some unanticipated misdeed, the old gals had lived full lives. They might even see it as a blessing, if such things were considered up in Heaven.
Growing up hard had given him a dark sense of right and wrong, which had ultimately put him in place for the cartel’s brief use.
That is until one night when he failed to intercede on a routine violation stop on Highway 67, with Agent Trevino driving. Inside the vehicle, they found a kilo of cocaine and one well-known gangster who’d been deported four times for illegal entry into the United States. That man, Hugo Nunez, was on his way to Dallas with a personal message and delivery from the Devil Woman. Because the mule wound up being arrested and deported, the Mujer Malvada lost nearly a million dollars in an interrupted transaction.
With Nelson dead, Mujer Malvada was making good on her promise to wipe out his entire family. She had the name of Frank’s mother in Del Rio. It was nothing to find the address of Miss Harriet’s tiny bungalow where she lived with her sister Ruby, not four hours from Frank’s house in Midland.
Under orders from the Devil Woman, the sicarios meant what they said when they told Frank, and then Trevino, that their families would be exterminated. At approximately the same time Geronimo nearly severed agent Nelson’s head from his shoulders, four heavily tatted Mexican soldiers drove down a dark, quiet street in a 1972 Barracuda, looking for the address.
Chapter 5
Miss Ruby Nelson and her spinster sister sat in matching floral Sharan rocking chairs in their Del Rio bungalow, facing an old tube television perched on top of an even older console Admiral TV. The television housed in a Mediterranean cabinet died only two days after Walter Cronkite signed off the air for the final time as the most trusted newsman in the country.
The newer “portable” TV that was heavier than a heifer calf was tuned to Little House on the Prairie on COZI TV, because that was their favorite television program outside of the more recent Big Bang Theory that both old women absolutely adored. They both wanted a Sheldon for themselves, a genius, OCD narcissist who was both quirky and loveable . . . in their view.
The house was furnished with hand-me-down furniture they’d owned for decades. Hardwood floors clean enough to eat from were smooth under their fuzzy pink house shoes Miss Ruby still called mules.
Both blue-haired ladies suffered from bad feet. Miss Ruby struggled for breath twenty-four hours a day after smoking for more than six decades, while Miss Harriet suffered from congestive heart failure kept at bay with half a dozen pills a day. Because of their inactivity, the television and crocheting occupied most of their time, after cleaning house each morning, of course.
Content with each other’s company, the elderly ladies mostly talked during the commercials in the evenings while turning out a startling number of brightly colored chemo caps they donated to a variety of charitable organizations that provided the headwear to cancer victims.
After dark, the only lights on in the house were two floor lamps, carefully positioned beside their rockers, though neither really had to see what they were doing most of the time. Two small night lights, one in the kitchen and the other underneath the telephone niche in the short hallway leading to the only bathroom, provided enough illumination for safe shuffling.
At nine o’clock that evening, they were already in their nightgowns after hand washing and drying the supper dishes, feeding their four cats, and locking up for the evening. Cold natured due to their age, they didn’t use the window unit air conditioners during the day or evenings. The windows gaped wide to capture the dry eighty-five-degree breeze coming across the river from Mexico.
Being the elder, and the sole owner of the 850-square-foot bungalow, Miss Ruby sat closest to the front door. A Viagra commercial came on and she stopped crocheting to drop both hands into her lap, disgusted. “My lands. How can they put something like that on the air this time of the night? It’s indecent. You never saw this kind of thing back when I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke shows first came on.”
Miss Harriet paused in her rocking. “I wish I knew a man who took it.”
“Harriet!”
“I wonder if old Dick takes ’em ever now and then. He’s gettin’ on up there.”
“Harriet!!!”
“Well, I just wonder. It’s been so long since I been to the well, I’d like to see how that stuff works.”
Miss Ruby burst into laughter. “Honey, you beat all I ever seen.”
“Well, I like to keep things spiced up.” Miss Harriet set her jaw, either from laugher or mild irritation.
Miss Ruby couldn’t tell. “I reckon.”
Their calico cat, Miss Cooney, shot from the kitchen and froze in the middle of the living room rug.
“I swear.” Miss Ruby stared into the dark kitchen. “What’s got into that old cat tonight?”
“Maybe she likes our conversation.”
“Honey, I can’t believe you think these cats understand what we say.”
Miss Harriet tugged at the dangling blue strand leading from her twisted fingers down to a skein resting on top of a basket full of yarn. Getting a comfortable amount of slack, she
went back to the Bella Knotted cap she was working on. “Well, don’t they come whenever I call?”
“Of course they do, because the tone in your voice tells them they’re gonna get fed.”
“Well, they sure pay attention whenever I’m talking to them, instead of you.”
“That’s because you’re looking right at ’em.”
The cat sat up straight on top of the oval rag rug covering most of the living room floor, her ears cocked toward the kitchen door.
“You think there’s another rat in the house again?” Miss Ruby glanced over her shoulder at the open window between them. “I told you we need to get them screens back on.”
“I don’t like to look through ’em. My eyes are bad enough as it is, and looking through that wire makes it hard to tell what I’m looking at.”
“They aren’t wire anymore, honey. They use aluminum or vinyl mesh. And them open windows just invite rats inside.”
“That’s why we have cats, and besides, you’re watching way too much of that HGTV these days.”
“Yeah, but them twins on that show are cute as bugs.” Miss Harriet closed her eyes for a moment. “They are something else, I wonder what twins would be like . . .”
“Harriet!”
* * *
On the dark street outside, a Barracuda’s throaty engine echoed down the street lined with simple bungalow houses. A mix of cedars, palms, and cottonwood trees provided shade and texture in the elderly neighborhood that was now almost all Hispanic.
The driver with Hollywood good looks, Esteban Barrera, pulled to the curb and pointed at the house half a block away. Yellow light spilled through half-open windows. “There. The one with the palmeras.”
The three future sicarios riding with him leaned forward, as if it would help them peer through the darkness. All had been involved in shootings against other gang members when they were teenagers and recently against rival cartels. They were gunmen in the Movie Lot Murders, and now it was time for them to break into the world of targeted individuals, executing the victims on their own. The success of this night would take them from high-level soldados to a position equal to Esteban.
“I will wait there for you to come out.” Esteban pointed to the crumbling concrete walkway leading from the curb, across the dark sidewalk and up one step. Few of the houses on that street were lit, and even fewer had porch lights. Another car approached, its headlights bright on the dark street. Esteban turned his engine off and they sat still, hoping it wasn’t the police. “Be cool.”
The voice came from a man who went by only Lopez, sitting behind Esteban. “What do we do if they stop?”
“Whatever I do.”
The distinctive front end of a vintage Cadillac Eldorado made all four of the cartel members tense at the same time. A rival gang, but then again, anyone outside of the Hidalgo were rivals.
They knew what would happen if those inside the Eldorado saw strangers on their turf. It was the one thing the hit team wanted to avoid that night, though the young men toughened by a lifetime of struggles south of the Rio Grande would welcome a confrontation any other time to prove their machismo.
Puffing up and posturing had no place in their culture. They simply shot when it became necessary and went on their way without another thought.
Luck and a few more months of life was riding with those in the vintage Cadillac that turned left at the intersection only half a block away, the headlights in front of the long hood sweeping across the parked Barracuda. Maybe they weren’t paying attention to the car, maybe there was just enough dusty haze in the air to interfere with seeing through the windshield, or maybe they were all stoned, but the Caddy continued at a moderate speed until they passed out of sight.
A collective sigh drained the tension from the car and the three hitmen exited the vehicle and disappeared around back of the little bungalow and into the night.
Esteban watched them go and thumbed a drop phone to life. It was one thing to snuff out two old women who had lived long and full lives. But there was no way his conscience would allow the murder of Nelson’s daughter and family in Honolulu. He dialed a Texas number.
The phone rang twice before a woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”
“It is Esteban. There has been a hit ordered in Hawaii. Go to this address in Honolulu.” He recited it from memory. “Remove the family as quickly as possible.”
“You want them taken to the safe house?”
“Yes. And tell the Alpha I’ve finally learned about a system engineered by the Devil Woman and others to clear the way for a new drug pipeline. Make sure they’re safe and wait for my call.”
Chapter 6
Almost indistinguishable from each other, the three heavily tatted sicarios slipped around to the back of the sisters’ house. Of similar heights, near twins Lopez and Martinez were lean and ropy. Razor sharp features born of a lifetime of hardship, constant violence, and murder more horrible than any American could imagine could have been a genetically shared trait.
Slightly heavier, the third, Mejia, was the elder by only one year.
All were mean as rattlesnakes and had no compunction against killing anyone of any size, age, or sex. Mejia, the odd one out, had recently used a fully automatic AK-47 to machine-gun an entire family down in Nueva Del Rio, right across the river from the sisters’ bungalow. The innocents were simply sitting in a car, waiting for an opportunity to turn onto a side street when he walked up to them in the intersection, stuck the muzzle into the open passenger-side window, and hosed them all down. Two men, three women, a toddler, and an infant all died in the bloody squeeze of a trigger on the order of Mujer Malvada.
Because of his experience, Mejia led the way onto the house’s small, concrete five- by five-foot back porch. Using the thick blade of a honed lockback knife, he cut through the screen door and reached in with two fingers to flip the simple hook and eye latch.
“Abierto, lentamente.” He gently opened the wooden screen door while Lopez reached under his elbow and removed the rusty spring that creaked once, preventing it from slamming behind them, and to eliminate any squall.
Behind it, the solid wooden door had seen better days. Mejia handed Martinez the knife and grabbed the worn aluminum knob with both hands and lifted the peeling door while at the same time pushing it back toward the hinges. There was enough play for Martinez to slide the blade into the gap and twist. The latch gave and the door swung inside.
A cat shot through the opening, startling the men and causing them to curse under their breaths. The cat disappeared into the night without a sound, and the men exchanged white smiles all around. It was time to go to work, and they looked forward to all the blood they would spill with the blades in their hands.
Inside the kitchen, Lopez stepped on a board that creaked.
* * *
The scene on their television program ended and in that silent half second before a commercial, a familiar creak reached Miss Ruby’s ears. Only one board in the pier and beam house squeaked, and it was in front of the kitchen sink. The commercial came on, and she reached down and pulled her basket of yarn closer to the chair.
Her heart pounded. Too old and slow to investigate the sound, she held her crocheting still in her lap. “Dear, do you remember when father told us about the story he heard when he worked on the King Ranch.”
“Which story is that?”
“The one where those Mexican seditionistas came across the river to raid the Norias Ranch?” Miss Ruby cut her eyes toward the other chair, hoping Miss Harriet would get her drift.
It took Miss Harriet a moment to shift her attention from the television to the topic at hand. “Lands yes. He told that story a dozen times about when that band came across on a murder raid at the Norias Ranch and bypassed a house where two women were . . .”
Located about seventy miles north of Del Rio, the ranch was the headquarters for the southernmost portion of the legendary King Ranch that encompassed more than 825,000 acre
s. In 1915, Norias was more than a simple ranch house, it was a small rural community made up of several buildings, a section house, corrals, and a small country store. The Missouri Pacific Railroad used it as a water stop at the small train station.
A rogue wave that was part of the Mexican Revolution, the incursion across the border was specifically designed to kill any anglos in the area. For some reason known only to the four dozen rebels, they bypassed a solitary ranch house containing two wives who were there by themselves and continued on to Norias to launch a surprise attack on the handful of residents. Unfortunately for the rebels, there were seventeen heavily armed men, including a local sheriff, eight soldiers, three customs inspectors, four male ranchers, and one railroad foreman who were there that afternoon. Men who were all prepared for any kind of trouble at any time.
Miss Harriet closed her eyes, as she did when they were children and she had to recite a poem. “When the smoke cleared, five Mexican bandits were dead and the survivors made a bee-line for the border and whatever safety it offered from the Texas Rangers who trailed them back down to the river. Daddy drilled it into us for years to always be aware and armed, no matter where we live . . .” She stopped and put a hand to her mouth, suddenly realizing what Miss Ruby was trying to say. “Oh.”
Though Miss Harriet’s hearing was failing, Miss Ruby could hear as well as when she was a teenager. The board creaked a second time.
Her heart was near about to burst. She reached into the basket of yarn, pulled out her late husband’s .38 caliber revolver loaded with six rounds of hollow-point ammunition. As young women, they’d lived alone in the harsh South Texas rangeland and became experts with pistols, rifles, and shotguns. She thumb-cocked the revolver and waited.
Eyes wide in fear, Miss Harriet set her little jaw and reached down to her own basket to pluck out the timeworn 32.20 pistol their daddy had carried in the front seat of his truck for years.
Miss Ruby put an arthritic finger to her lips and kept her eyes on the open kitchen door. She had a clear view of the short hallway to her left and the mostly dark kitchen was directly in front of Miss Harriet. The stove and cabinets were highlighted by the glow spilling from their floor lamps.
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