El Gavilan (11 page)

“Neighborhood, you’re thinking? Community?”

“Acreage, I’m thinking,” Tell said, smiling and sipping his drink. “Solitude.”

She tipped her head to one side. “How much solitude?”

“Just me and mine.”

Patricia smiled. “Sounds wonderful.” She shivered.

“We can go in if you’re cold,” he said.

“No, I’ll just slip in and grab a throw.”

Patricia came back with a Navaho-pattern blanket. She freshened both their drinks. “You cold too, Tell?”

“I’m just fine.” It was the first time in memory he could say that with conviction.

“You’re supposed to say that you’re cold, Tell.”

He searched her dark eyes again. “It
is
a little brisk, Patricia.”

She smiled and pulled her chair alongside his and closed the blanket over them. The sun was nearly down and the first fireflies flitted in the branches of the softly moving willow.

“I’m going to be direct one more time,” Patricia said.

Tell’s right arm was wrapped around her shoulders. “Sure, do that,” he said. He said it with stomach flutters. This was all a little fast for his taste. And so soon after … ?

Patricia said, “A man loses as much as you did, he might not want to put himself at risk for that kind of hurt again.” She hesitated, said, “Could you imagine yourself maybe wanting family again someday?”

He hugged her closer. “Family is very important to you, isn’t it, Patricia?”

“Very much. I want my own family to be just as strong and safe-feeling as what I grew up with.”

That was a kind of gut shot. But at the same time, Tell had tried to keep his family safe, and he’d sworn to himself he’d never repeat any of the mistakes that had cost him his first wife and child. Tell took his left hand from under the blanket and stroked Patricia’s hair behind her ear. “Me too,” he said, leaning in to a kiss.

* * *

Across town, Shawn lay in his bed, bathed in sweat, his mind racing. The murdered woman’s roommate, Carmelita, knew Shawn’s first name.

They’d left Shawn’s ill-fated lover’s own car back at the club. It was just a matter of time until cops positively identified her and started asking questions that would lead to Shawn.

If he ran tonight, he could be in Windsor within four or five hours, be safely across the Canadian border before dawn.

Did Canada have extradition agreements with the States?

Mexico didn’t, Shawn was pretty sure of that. But it would take days of nonstop driving to reach and cross
that
border.

Shawn hadn’t worn a condom, drunk as he was; drunk as the woman had been. What the fuck was her name? Thalia? Could the cops compel Shawn to give them a DNA sample to compare against whatever they found inside Thalia’s dead body? Might they go back and draw some sample from his stale vomit back at the crime scene once they’d identified him as a suspect?

Shawn got out of bed and flipped on his computer, intent on searching for information on extradition laws, DNA tests.

Cursing, Shawn shut down his computer before logging on, realizing how such searches could be made to look later in court, if it came to that.

Frantic, pacing naked now, he punched the numbers for Patricia’s home phone. Patricia had called him on his phone earlier Friday morning—just a few minutes after he’d arrived back to shower and change following his night with the murdered woman. She had said she was no longer interested in seeing him; Shawn hadn’t put up much of a fight then. But he didn’t need Patricia then like he felt he did now. Now Shawn figured maybe he could smooth things over from their last conversation. Maybe Patricia could at least be persuaded to say they’d been together for a few crucial hours.

No answer. He checked the clock: one
A.M.
She must have the ringers off. But her answering machine hadn’t kicked on, either.

Jesus. Patricia had moved on quickly, the bitch.

Shawn surveyed his options.

Wait?

Run?

Maybe take himself out before they put him in jail?

THIRTEEN

Tell was bent over, his hands on his knees, panting.

“It’ll come back,” Patricia said. “You’ve just been a while away from it. This is only day three.”

But Tell’s lungs were on fire. He had stitches in his sides. He stood up, heart pounding and sides aching. He squinted up at a billboard planted on New Austin’s western-most borderline. Arresting gray eyes stared off across the Horton County landfill above a warning:

Beware Illegals!

El Gavilan

is watching you!

Bathed in sweat, ripe and dark and beautiful to Tell’s eyes, her hand still resting on his shoulder, Patricia said, “Suppose someone had to take that space after old Doc Eckleburg finally officially turned up his toes.”

* * *

Shawn paced his room again. He was going to have to cover the story of the woman’s death for the next edition of his own weekly. No way around that as a one-man band at the
New Austin
Recorder
.

But what might that trumped-up, loaded story mean for him later? What could it cost him—writing a news story about a woman brutally attacked and murdered probably just minutes after Shawn had left her bed? After he had left his DNA sprayed inside her most private places?

* * *

Able called the county coroner and leaned hard into the old man again.

“I get first word, right, Doc?”

“Begging your pardon, Sheriff, but it was a New Austin crime, according to all paperwork sent me,” Casey Parks said.

“That’s an open question, Doc,” Able said. “This happened at the Three Corners. Hell, Chief Lyon agreed with me at the scene we’d have to hire a fucking surveyor to determine precisely whose jurisdiction this fucking abominable discovery was made in. For all I can tell, this case may really belong to Sheriff Walt Pierce and Vale County.”

“Perhaps Pierce should get first call then?”

“Don’t play games, Doc. Start of business day, when you know,
I
get that first call. Otherwise, I remind you that I have a long memory and a wicked imagination.”

THEN

Tell, barely two weeks on the border and already deeply disturbed by what he was seeing, was in a south-of-the-border bar with Seth Alvin the night that Tell met the woman he’d marry.

Seth was a Bush One–era veteran … “Desert fucking Storm” as Seth was given to putting it.

The cantina they’d selected for their post-shift drinking that night was stocked with familiar faces—ones who’d tried to bribe “cherry” Tell and Seth to allow them across. More of those whom the pair of Border Patrol agents had caught and sent back, and some of those more than twice. There was already enough of the latter ilk that Tell was beginning to think it was high time to commence confining after-hours carousing to the other, safer side of the border.

About the time he was contemplating that, a covey of comely Latinas drifted in, setting heads to turning. There were three of them, all young and pretty. They looked like college girls who’d decided to stray across the line for a look at wicked old
Meh-hi-co
… at the distant homeland that was in their genes but far from their actual experience. They struck Tell as treacherously fetching prey for a certain kind of man.

Seth whistled low and stood and cracked his back. He said, “The one in the little black dress, with her hair up? She needs to meet me,
now
.”

Tell shook his head, tearing at the damp label on his sweating bottle of Modelo Negro. He watched Seth make his approach on the young woman and her slumming friends.

Willie Nelson on the jukebox: “Across the Borderline.”

The girl in the little black dress seemed all too receptive to Seth’s company. One of the other young women, one with a tattooed rose on her ankle, was soon enough talking with another off-duty border patrolman. That left the last of the trio—by far the prettiest to Tell’s mind, and certainly the most reserved—standing between her flirting friends, looking alone and very uneasy. A target of opportunity for every man in the place.

She saw Tell watching her and frowned. He held up a hand and smiled. Tell came out of his chair as he saw two hard-looking men starting to drift her way. He scooped up his white Stetson from beside his beer bottle and placed it on the seat of his chair to hold his place.

Tell approached her, smiling. He said, “Listen, ma’am, this bar—this town—is not the best place for tourists. You should talk your friends into leaving, right now. Failing that, if you need quiet, secure company until your friends are,
er
, free? Well, I’ve got plenty of room at my table. Might at least spare you some approaches from those others.”

Those others
: more Border Patrol agents and feral civilians. Men waiting to see if she’d shoot Tell down and so give
them
an opening. Tell could see she was thinking the same thing.

He hesitated and said, “My name’s Tell Lyon. I’m only offering some company and conversation until your friends are ready to push on. If you’d prefer an escort back to the other side right now, I can get you back there too. Just a friendly offer … with no strings.”

Tell smiled again and returned to his seat.

The young woman took another look to either side, evidently decided her friends were committed, and sighed. Shaking her head, she approached Tell’s table and said, “I think I’d better take you up on that offer for a place to sit.”

Tell rose and half bowed. “Absolutely. What are you drinking?”

She thought about it, looked at his beer, and said, “How about a tequila sunrise?”

He called out her order and they sat back down. She said, “You said your name is Tell?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that short for something?”

“Nah, just some character in a series of Western novels my old man favored.”

“I’m Marita Delgado.” She hesitated and said, “How’d you know I’m not native Mexican?”

“The sense I had. And nobody dresses like you and your friends are dressed to come to places like this one. You’re all dolled up for a Saturday night in Austin, or San Diego or someplace like that. Not for this dive, and not even for this corner of Mexico.”

“Good point. We crossed on a silly whim. Never have seen it, though I’m first-generation American. You’re Border Patrol?”

“Yeah, coming off duty.”

Marita nodded at their server and combed a wave of black hair behind one ear. She sipped her drink and said, “And how is that work?”

Tell didn’t hesitate and he didn’t couch it. “Mostly brutal. I’m fairly new to it, but feel like I’ve been here for years already. Hard to see some of the things we do. And, hell, if I lived here, in these conditions, I’d want to run North too. There are at least seven in here tonight I’ve sent back across the line in the past week.”

Marita looked around, bit her bottom lip. “Yes, it’s not like back home at all, is it?”

“Nothing at all like home,” Tell said.

* * *

The wooing of Marita’s friends was continuing apace—looked headed to some certain end. Blushing, and appearing a bit put out by what she was seeing, Marita squeezed the bridge of her nose and sighed. She said, “Think I might need that escort back across you offered. We left a bachelorette party that was going nowhere fast.” She nodded at the two young women she’d come in with. “They’re from out of state. I hardly know them. Sorry I let myself be dragged along, now.”

Tell said, “I’m ready to head back across too. You should tell your friends, such as they are, that you’re leaving. Then I’ll see you across the border.”

Marita nodded, managed a half smile. “The line going both ways is a pretty long one tonight. Will your uniform help speed that crossing?”

Tell smiled, said, “Like nobody’s business.”

She nodded at the two women she’d come in with. “Will they be safe?”

“They’re with armed American law enforcement officers,” Tell said evenly. “In that sense, anyway, they’ll be safe enough.” That was about as good a way as he could put it, he figured.

* * *

The walk back toward the border checkpoint stretched into a dinner invitation: Marita asked Tell if he was hungry.

They stopped in an Americanized version of a Mexican restaurant. Lowly lit, it provided maybe more the romantic atmosphere than Marita had bargained for. Tell took it easy, until, emboldened by a couple of Texas margaritas on the rocks, he let his hand drift, closing over the back of hers. Her silky skin was two shades darker than Tell’s own tanned hand. Marita’s black eyes searched his, then she smiled and turned her hand under Tell’s hand so their palms were touching. She squeezed his hand back and began moving them in time to the music: Marianne Faithful’s cover of Kristofferson’s “The Hawk.”

Marita’s parents, she confessed, were both teachers; became legal in the early 1970s. Marita was close to completing her own degree in English literature and, “Trying for the life of me to figure out what on earth I’ll do with that.”

A bit tipsy, Marita scooped up Tell’s white straw Stetson and put it on; the tips of her ears kept the cowboy hat from falling down over her eyes. She pushed it back a bit on her head and said, “What do you think?”

Tell reached across and tilted it to a slightly more rakish angle and said, “I think anything would look perfect on you.”

She smirked and took a last sip from her straw. “It’s getting late, Tell Lyon. We should cross that line now, don’t you think?” Her voice was naturally husky; he couldn’t tell yet if she meant it in more than one way.

“Sure we should.” Tell settled up and took her arm. They were hardly twenty paces out the front door when the man with the knife fell upon them.

* * *

Later, Tell would learn the man was named Enrique Zambada, a Lerdo-born scrap of nastiness suspected in the death of at least two Mexico City whores.

The bastard hadn’t asked them for money, hadn’t asked them even to raise their hands.

No, Enrique had just come at them, taking a slashing pass at Tell’s throat with a fearsome buck knife while reaching for Marita’s purse with his other hand.

Tell fell back, reaching for his gun and knowing a positive shit-storm would ensue if he shot a Mexican national on the south side of the border. Tell’s being off duty and greased with tequila wouldn’t help matters any.