The Governor's Wife (54 page)

"Are you troubled, Jesse?"

"Yes."

"Is it about the governor's wife?"

Lindsay had told Jesse that Congressman Delgado had recognized her at the
Cinco de Mayo
festival.

"She is not my trouble."

"Perhaps not yet. So what is now your trouble and how may I help you?"

"Mayor Gutiérrez and his Mexican Mafia want me to run for governor."

The congressman leaned back in his chair. "I have heard this. Jorge called me and asked me to intervene with you. I said I would not."

"Why?"

"Because the decision to run for public office, to become a politician, is not made by committee or coercion. It is made in one's heart. A man must have the drive and the ambition and the heart to make a life of politics. You must make your own decision."

"What is your advice? Should I run?"

"No."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because your heart is here, on the border, with these poor people. You save lives every day in your clinic. Forty-five years, I have yet to save anyone in Congress."

"But you do much good."

"No. I do little good. Politics is no longer about good or bad, right or wrong … it is only about red and blue, winning and losing, profits and losses. Money. Some men are wired for politics and money, most are not. You are not. You are wired for love and hope. You love this land, and you hope for the people. Your heart is here, Jesse Rincón. Not in the Governor's Mansion."

Just a mile south of where the congressman now sat, Enrique de la Garza spoke on the phone with Hector Garcia in Austin.

"The wrong ranch?"

"Yes."

"How many did you kill?"

"Five."

Enrique sighed.

"I will pray for their souls. But why did you not shoot the governor during his speech? On national TV?"

"I was there,
jefe
, but I could not get into the building. Security was very tight. I was almost detained. Six Texas Rangers now guard the governor."

"Come home, Hector. We will be patient. But the governor will die."

"I will not be governor."

"Good."

"But you must leave. It is too dangerous here. If El Diablo ever learns—"

"He won't. And I won't leave you."

They sat on the back porch. Jesse leaned to Lindsay and kissed her. This time, she kissed him back.

"That love child would've been the end of the boss," Eddie Jones said. "But Mandy takes the bullet instead, and his problems are gone. He's one lucky son of a bitch."

Jim Bob's office again smelled like a fast-food joint. Eddie sat on the couch eating his Egg McMuffin.

"I'd rather be lucky than good," Jim Bob said.

A month after the fact, Mandy Morgan was a distant memory, forgotten as fast as her body was cremated. She wouldn't even be a footnote to Bode Bonner's life story. John Ed Johnson's death had eliminated another scandal along with fifty million from the Super PAC. But Jim Bob had replaced that sum twice over with two phone calls. Bode's speech at the governors' conference had been hailed as groundbreaking in American politics. His polls climbed even higher. He now sat on top of the political world.

Bode Bonner
was
the wave.

"Course, you still got two problems to worry about," Eddie said. "One, that drug lord might get lucky and kill the boss, and two, that Mexican doctor might get lucky and win the election for governor. You figure the boss can still be president if he loses the election for governor?"

Jim Bob dropped five sugar cubes into his coffee cup.

"You up for another trip down to the border?"

"What for?"

"Because, Eddie, it's time to use your skill set to solve that particularly unpleasant problem for me."

"Which one—the drug lord or the doctor?"

Dr. Jesse Rincón touched his nurse's sanitized hand.

"I am afraid for you. Lindsay, you should go home until this passes."

"You mean, until El Diablo kills Bode?"

"I do not want that to happen."

"I know."

"But El Diablo, he will not stop."

"I know that, too."

"Lindsay, you must go home."

"This is my home."

"It is no longer safe for you here."

"I'm safer than I would be in Austin. I'm hiding in plain sight."

"Plain sight?"

"Yes. In Austin, everyone knows me. Here, no one knows me. No one knows I'm the governor's wife. Not even Inez."

Inez Quintanilla strolled the sidewalks of the San Agustín Plaza in downtown Laredo that Sunday morning in early September as freely as an American citizen. Of course, she was not. She was a Mexican national residing illegally in the U.S., just like every other resident of the
colonias
. So she seldom ventured beyond the wall. She never came into town. But she was desperate to get out, to live beyond the wall, to have a life in Laredo. So she had ventured beyond the wall that day.

Not for a better life, but to pick up her kid brother. He had gotten into trouble the night before; Inez did not ask for the details. She did not want to know. He ran with a bad group of boys who fancied themselves gangsters. They desired the fast cars and faster girls that the drug money bought. But it also brought trouble. He had called that morning and asked her to come into Laredo and pick him up in the plaza at noon. So she had borrowed the neighbor's beat-up pickup truck and driven through the gate in the wall—the Border Patrol did not patrol on Sundays, so the doctor gave her the key code—and carefully into town. She had arrived early and decided to walk the plaza. Laredo seemed like heaven compared to the
colonia
. She dreamed of one day living this life, going to restaurants and nightclubs, buying nice clothes from the stores, becoming a wife and a mother, perhaps even obtaining a green card and working in a Wal-Mart and having a good life like—

She stopped.

Something had caught her eye.

A photo in a newspaper displayed on the newsstand.

A color photo of the governor of Texas. And the governor's wife. At a funeral. She wore a black dress and a black veil over her face. Her face was concealed but not her left hand when she had reached up to adjust the veil. And on one finger she wore an unusual ring. Two bands, one silver, one gold, twisted together at the end to form a lovers' knot. A wedding ring.

A wedding ring Inez Quintanilla had seen before.

"So, to summarize, we have killed two Texas Rangers, a college coed, the governor's mistress, and five innocents on the Double V Ranch—but we cannot seem to kill the governor. Why is that, Hector?"

The summer sun stood high in the sky and baked the earth brown. But the border was always brown. The land and the people. Enrique and Hector stood on the balcony overlooking the
Río Bravo
. Julio's piano notes drifted through the open courtyard windows. Chopin. Hector had returned to Nuevo Laredo because security around the governor in Austin had been increased to presidential levels and the Border Patrol had locked down the border. Apparently their attempts to assassinate the governor had proved an embarrassment to the
gringos
. So Hector needed to lay low for a while and allow things to die down, so to speak. Fortunately, Enrique de la Garza was a patient man. But justice and
venganza
would soon be his.

"The governor," Hector said, "he is a very lucky man."

"His good luck will soon turn bad."

"
Sí, jefe.
"

"Hector, did we also kill those people on the ranch where the governor murdered Jesús?"

"No. Manuel Moreno did."

"The ranch foreman?"

"
Sí
."

Enrique held up the Laredo newspaper.

"But they blame me."

He sighed.

"So it was an employment matter?"

"
Sí.
"

"Good. That was unnecessary."

"But I am afraid we also have an employment matter."

"Another termination?"

"I am afraid so."

Enrique walked inside and removed the machete from the wall rack.

That night, Bode Bonner sat on the couch in the family living quarters of the Governor's Mansion watching
Shrek
with the kids. They were laughing because Becca had changed the language to Spanish. Bode couldn't understand the movie, but it didn't matter. He was thinking about his life. About the people left in his life. Each day, there seemed to be fewer. For the last eight years, he had thought politics and power defined his life, but he now understood that his life was defined by the people in his life. These kids. His daughter. His wife. He wanted her back. Becca leaned into him.

"Daddy, call her. Get her to come back. Beg her if you have to. If you won't beg her for yourself, beg her for me."

He kissed her on the forehead then pushed himself up. He went down the hall to his bedroom and called his wife.

"Hello."

"It's Bode."

"I have caller ID."

"And you still answered."

"How's Becca?"

"She's good. We're watching
Shrek
with the kids."

"You're watching movies with the Mexican kids?"

"Movie night."

"How are they?"

"Better."

"How are you?"

"Better."

"I liked your speech at the governors' conference."

"You watched?"

"Of course."

"I did a lot of thinking out at the ranch. About the old times. The way we were. The way I want us to be again. Come home, Lindsay. You don't have to come home to me. Come home to Becca. Just come home."

"Bode, these people here, they need me."

"We need you, too. And you're not safe on the border."

"No one here knows I'm the governor's wife."

"Your doctor knows. And if your true identity ever gets out …"

"It won't."

"Just so you know, we're going to fully fund the K through twelve budget."

"For me?"

"For the kids."

"Do you still love him?"

"I'll always love him."

"And me? Will you ever love me?"

"I already do."

They were on the back porch. The night air was warm, but the breeze off the desert made Jesse's arm around her shoulders feel good.

"One woman in love with two men," he said. "That usually does not have a happy ending."

Lindsay slung her satchel over her shoulder. She had stocked it with medicine, supplies, and hard candy for the children. She would make her morning rounds before the summer heat set in. It would top 115 degrees that day outside and even hotter inside if Jesse was unable to repair the generator. Early September, but it was still summer on the border. Inez had not yet arrived, so Jesse came to her and kissed her, like a husband kissing his wife goodbye for the day. She felt like a married woman and she was; she was just married to another man.

"You look beautiful," Jesse said.

She wore a white lab coat over a bright yellow peasant dress and pink Crocs. She draped a stethoscope around her neck. She tucked her red hair under a green scarf then pushed the wide-brimmed straw hat down on her head, to conceal her identity and her light complexion from the sun's rays.

"I will be out back working on the generator," Jesse said. "Inez should be here soon."

Inez Quintanilla woke at seven. She had dreamed vividly of life beyond the wall. It was a colorful and wonderful life with pretty things and nice people. She had so enjoyed the dream that she closed her eyes and lay there a few minutes longer trying to recapture the moment. But she could not. The moment was gone. So she climbed out of bed. It was a work day.

She and her brother lived in a converted travel trailer. The wheels had been removed, so the trailer sat flat on the ground. Well, almost flat. Anything dropped on the floor would roll to one corner, but at least she knew where to find things. She had the small bedroom to herself; Roberto slept on the couch since he always came home late. She washed her face in the bathroom with the bottled water and applied her make-up carefully in case the television cameras came that day for the doctor. Two work outfits hung in the closet. She decided on the one she had not worn the day before. Once dressed, she would have Cheerios without milk for breakfast and then walk to the clinic.

She opened the thin metal door quietly so as not to wake her brother. She stepped out and froze. Her brother was not sound asleep on the couch as he usually was at that time. He was sitting and staring up at three men standing over him. Two held big guns. The man in the middle held a machete. The door behind them was open to the outside. The morning breeze blew hot and dusty.