The Perk (37 page)

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Authors: Mark Gimenez

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BOOK: The Perk
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"Four hundred each? That's six
thousand a month. They could rent the fanciest house in town for that."

Julio wrote:
No, they could not. The city
would not allow 15 men to live in one home north of the creek, but looks the
other way here, so there are workers for the plant.

Old cars were parked in
the yards or jacked up on cement blocks. Chickens and goats were in pens like
backyard pets; a Hereford bull grazed in one yard. Junk was piled everywhere.
Neat rows of tall green cornstalks grew in one vacant lot, agave plants in
another. Julio wrote:
Pedro makes homemade tequila, from the agave.

Appliances sat on porches, and furniture—couches,
recliners, rocking chairs—sat in small yards, arranged as if they were in a
family room but the walls had blown away. Clothes hung from lines and blew in
the breeze. The people here lived outside, except apparently when they watched
TV: most houses and even the trailers had satellite dishes attached to the
roofs.

They were only five blocks south of the glitz
and glamour of Main Street, but they were no longer in Fredericksburg. They
were in Mexico. Beck's senior class trip had been to Nuevo Laredo. He had
seen the same living conditions there. Looking around now, it was as if an
entire neighborhood from Nuevo Laredo had been set down whole in the middle of Fredericksburg: Mexicans living in the same third-world conditions, albeit with more TV
channels.

They walked the streets of the barrio: Buena
Vista, Santa Rosa, St. Mary's, St. Gerelda. Just down the road stood the
turkey plant, a gray windowless building with white steam rising into the blue
sky above it and a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on top surrounding
it. The plant looked like a prison.

Julio pointed at a
trailer. And he wrote:
At that trailer, you may obtain the fake ID cards,
social security numbers, driver's licenses, so you can work at the plant.

"It's
done out in the open?"

Julio wrote:
Sure. The plant managers, they send new workers
to that trailer, so they can tell the government that they did not know they
were hiring illegals. It is a game.

The new Milam Road extension provided a
shortcut around downtown and cut right through the barrio, like the interstates
in urban areas always cut through the poorest parts of town. Milam was a wide roadway
with the only curbs and gutters in the barrio.

Julio wrote:
When it rains, the water runs
to the creek, but not fast enough. The houses and trailers are often flooded.

Beck had never been in the barrio. He wasn't
sure there had even been a barrio twenty-four years ago. But maybe they had
always been here, these people who lived and worked just a few blocks from Main Street but don't come onto Main Street or eat at the restaurants on Main Street or shop
in the stores on Main Street. Walking down Main Street, you would never know
this place or these people existed. Julio was right: they were invisible.

And the boy sleeps in a bathtub.

"Two million to the Mexican boy," Quentin McQuade
said. "And curbs, gutters, and paved roads for the barrio? What do I
look like, the public works department? Curbs and gutters don't come cheap,
Judge. You're talking two, three million. I offered one million, you counter
with five. That's not fair negotiation."

"Like you said, Quentin, life's not
fair."

Quentin shook his head and chuckled. "And
for that Slade's case is dismissed?"

"Yes. And ICE stays out of our town."

Quentin smiled. "You've got a lot of
hard-ass in you, Judge. I like that. When the Germans vote you out of office
next year, maybe you'll come work for me."

"Maybe not. Besides, you've already got
the biggest hard-ass in the county working for you."

"Yeah, but Bruno's got the loyalty of a pit
bull. He'll turn on me if it suits his purposes."

"How do you know I wouldn't?"

"Because you're one of those rare
creatures, Judge—an honorable man burdened with the need to do the right thing.
My secrets would be safe with you."

"Do we have a deal?"

Quentin McQuade stood, looked Beck directly in
the eye, and said, "Yep, we sure do."

Quentin stuck his hand across Beck's desk. Beck
started to reach out, but hesitated. He felt as if he were making a deal with
the devil. Maybe he was. But that's what lawyers do. He just wasn't sure a
judge should. They shook on it.

"Oh, I'll need that tape recording, Judge, from
the examining trial," Quentin McQuade said. "Can't have that played
on ESPN."

TWENTY-FOUR

The time bomb was defused on Monday
morning.

Julio Espinoza signed a settlement agreement
that included a release of all claims against Slade McQuade and a
confidentiality clause. Quentin McQuade wired $2 million to Julio's new bank account
and signed an agreement to construct roads, curbs, and gutters in the barrio. Judge
John Beck Hardin signed an order dismissing all criminal charges against Slade
McQuade and turned over the only copy of the tape recording from the examining
trial to Quentin McQuade. Everyone was happy: the victim and his parents, the
offender and his father, the D.A. and the Germans, Main Street and the Latinos.
Everyone except the judge.

"Hi, Judge Hardin."

Beck nodded at the woman. Julio's parents could
now afford a few acres and a nice house. Julio and his siblings would go to
college. Main Street would have a booming holiday shopping season. The old
Germans would get their state championship and their money from building homes on
Quentin's golf course. The Mexicans would not be deported; the barrio would
not flood again.

"Judge."

Beck nodded at the man. But had he done the
right thing? Had he misused the law? Had he abused his power? Was the black
robe the only difference between Quentin McQuade and Beck Hardin?

"You did a good thing, Beck," Jodie
said.

Beck was running on the treadmill next to Jodie
at the gym.

"Hi, Beck."

Gretchen was suddenly standing between Beck and
Jodie and casting those blue eyes up toward him.

"You sure you should be seen talking to
me?"

"Oh, you're safe … for now. No telling
about tomorrow in this town."

"How are y'all doing without Ms.
Rodriguez?"

"No one's speaking Spanish at the primary
school. But I'm still fighting for my kids." She shook it off, then
smiled at him. "So, Beck, how about that dinner, Saturday night?" Gretchen
leaned in close to Beck—and Jodie leaned over so far he thought she might fall
off her treadmill—and whispered, "I still have needs."

Jodie cleared her throat loudly enough to
get the attention of a walker three treadmills away. Beck looked at her over
Gretchen's head. She was giving him the look. He sighed.

"Gretchen, I'm too old for you."

She looked him up and down.

"You're in pretty good shape for an old
guy."

"Oh, thanks. I've been working out again
and …"

Another loud throat-clearing from Jodie. He
looked at her and then at Gretchen.

"But I'm still too old for you."

Gretchen shook her head. "Call me if you
change your mind."

She walked off. That butterfly. That bottom.

Jodie cleared her throat again. He turned to
her. Again the look.

"You're staring at her butt."

"It's a nice butt."

"Yeah."

She increased the speed on her treadmill.

J.B. said, "Took Luke fishing down at the river after school."

"He wouldn't go with me."

"I'm safe. He knows I didn't kill his
mama. He figured you could save her. You were his hero and that's what heroes
do. His mother dying for no better reason than she had the bad luck to get
cancer, that's a hard thing for a boy to get his mind around."

Beck nodded. "Did he talk?"

"Yep."

"About what?"

"Matters of the heart. His heart's broken,
Beck."

"I don't know what to do for him."

"He needs a woman in his life."

"He's too young to date, J.B."

"I'm thinking Jodie."

"You want him to date a lesbian?"

"She's a woman, she's smart, and she's a
mother. Figure maybe he should spend a little time at the bookstore, seeing
how this is the slow season down at the winery."

"You think Jodie would be up for
that?"

"She said yes."

Beck scanned through Annie's emails over the summer months
when she had had a chemo treatment every three weeks and then six weeks of
radiation, every day. He found an email from September:

 
Dear J.B.,

I'm still fighting. Trying another
kind of chemo. My bones hurt. And I'm gaining weight. I can't eat but I gain
weight because I'm on steroids for the nausea now. How stupid is that? This
is the dumbest disease I've ever had. And the only disease I've ever had.

The kids are back in school,
Beck goes to work, and only my hard-core friends come around now. The others,
it's like when they look at me, it scares them.

And one from October:

 
J.B., they can't stop this
shit! It's pissing me off!

Sorry. I scream and curse now,
when I'm alone. I've been reading about treatments in Mexico. Coffee enemas. (Never thought about doing that with my espresso!)

Beck can't raise my children
alone. He doesn't have a clue.

TWENTY-FIVE

By the next morning, Beck had put the
Slade McQuade case out of his mind. The papers had been signed, the money
paid, the case closed. Justice had been done for Julio Espinoza, or as close
to justice as the law allows. Heidi Fay Geisel now occupied his mind. There
were only seventy-six days to find her justice.

She haunted him.

Maybe because of the debt he owed her father … maybe because of his fear that his own daughter might end up in a ditch …
or maybe because there had been no justice in life for his mother or his wife.
Whatever the reason, Heidi Fay Geisel was part of his life now.

So Beck was driving to Austin to see Randi
Barnes. He drove down a Main Street still vacant at eight-thirty and
accelerated to fifty-five when Main became Highway 290 East and crossed over Baron's
Creek—but he abruptly braked and pulled over onto the grass shoulder at the
city limits sign. Aubrey had already been out with fresh flowers for the white
cross.

Beck got out.

He walked down into the low ditch where Heidi's
body had been found. He squatted and ran his hand over the grass. Four years,
nine months, and sixteen days before, a girl had died here. But the grass beneath
her body had not. The grass had continued to grow, the sun to rise and set,
the world to turn. Life had gone on without her. Just as life had gone on
without Annie. But he knew how Annie's life had ended.

How had Heidi's life ended?

Beck ran through the likely scenario of that
night again: Kim and Heidi go to the brew pub. (Grady had interviewed the
wait staff, but no one recalled seeing them.) Kim leaves and Heidi has an
encounter with the first guy, then she meets the second guy, maybe a college
kid from Austin here for a New Year's Eve party. They drink, snort cocaine, and
have sex in his car. She passes out. He tries to wake her, but discovers that
she's dead. He panics. He wants out of town fast, so he drives out 290 toward
Austin. He's got a dead girl in his car, and he wants her out. It's late
and raining hard now. When he comes to the first desolate stretch of highway,
he pulls over. He runs around to her side. He checks for traffic, then pulls
her from the car. He rolls her down into the ditch. Then he jumps back into
his car.

Beck got back into the Navigator, started the
engine, and drove east again.

Just as the guy had that night, trying to think
clearly: Could the cops tie her to him? Would anyone at the pub remember seeing
him with her? It was crowded, and he had paid with cash, so they couldn't
trace him through his credit card. No, they would never connect her to him.
He's home free. He smiles and reaches over to turn up the radio and … he sees
her purse and shoes there on the floorboard. Evidence that puts her in his car
and him in prison—that connects her to him.

He panics again.

Seventy miles lay between him and Austin; state
troopers are out patrolling for drunk drivers on New Year's Eve. What if he's stopped?
They'll give him a breathalyzer; he'll fail miserably. They'll arrest him and search
his car. They'll find her purse and shoes. They'll find her. He'll be
charged with her murder. He pulls over again.

Beck pulled over again.

Directly in front of him was the bridge over the
Pedernales River, two miles east of the ditch where Heidi had been found and
Baron's Creek, where Grady's men had searched and found nothing—because there
was nothing to find. The guy hadn't thrown Heidi's shoes and purse into
Baron's Creek; he had thrown them into the Pedernales River. He was an
outsider, so he wouldn't have known about the drought. It was raining, so he probably
assumed the river ran deep and the current strong. But in a drought, it would
have taken more than one rainy night to fill the Pedernales.

Beck cut the engine and got out. He walked down
to the embankment. Except for a sliver of water flowing twenty feet below the
bridge and down the center of the riverbed, both bed and bank were dry and rock
hard, baked like a desert by the drought.

He was now glad he had opted for jeans and boots
instead of a suit and tie. The bank was steep, and he slipped and fell twice
as he worked his way down to the riverbed. He slapped the dirt off his jeans
and got his bearings with the bridge; he figured how far the guy might have
thrown a purse and shoes. He walked south to that point and turned around. He
slowly walked back toward the bridge down the west bank, searching.

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