Starr County Line Read online

  “Smart move, boy,” JD whispered. “No sense gettin your ass whipped in front of all your friends.”

  The young agent retreated. Albert left his vehicle to help the woman. Flores stood staring at the burned grassland while Roe scoured the barn. He emerged with a few empty water jugs and small bundles of clothing tied with leather belts. There was a badly distressed little doll that belonged to one of the children. Roe handed it to a border agent and the agent threw it carelessly in the floorboard of his truck.

  JD sat in the Blazer and hung his head as the vehicles headed back towards the main road. He watched the sun dip below the horizon as the last one disappeared from view.

  He rode home in the dark with the windows down, listening to the gospel show on the radio. The preacher talked about forgiveness and divinity and he tried to take it all in. He stopped in the roadway a moment and blinked tears from his eyes.

  He parked in the driveway and walked slowly to the house. He ate dinner with Ange and told her about what happened at the Jesuit place. He pushed his plate back when he was finished and got up to go sit in the front room. She followed him, shaking her head.

  “You want to watch some TV?” she asked. He sat in the recliner and turned on the window unit.

  “No, just let me set here a minute and listen to the AC,” he told her.

  “You’ll just fall asleep,” she said.

  “You know me pretty well,” he replied.

  “I should, after ten years,” she told him.

  She sat on the arm of the recliner and ran her fingers through his short hair. He closed his eyes.

  “Can we go to Galveston for our honeymoon?” she asked him.

  “I was thinkin along the lines of South Padre,” he answered.

  “Oh, we’re gonna live it up,” she said.

  On the backroads of Comales, Mexico, eight men gathered in a limestone building that looked as old as the flat prairies that surrounded it. They said nothing as they busied themselves cleaning and loading automatic weapons. Stacked neatly on the table were several gleaming machetes.

  Each one placed a machine gun in a black duffel bag along with several boxes of bullets and sheathed a machete and laid it inside and zipped the bag closed. On their way out, each grabbed a bulletproof vest and set it atop the bags they were carrying and walked out onto the dusty road.

  They stopped near two identical black Suburbans and one pulled a map from his hip pocket. He unfolded it and flattened it on the hood of one of the vehicles. He pointed a stubby finger to the map and ran it along a thin yellow line that snaked north by northwest to Pinto, Texas.

  “¿Está en la cárcel, sí?” he asked.

  One of the others nodded his head.

  “Si, si. He’s in the jail.”

  The next night, JD sat on the barstool at Charley’s Social Club and sipped a longneck. Six empty bottles sat nearby as he stared beneath the brim of his hat into the mirror behind the bar. He couldn’t remember why he’d not gone home. He just didn’t want to go.

  “JD, how you comin along?” the bartender asked. “You been here a while. Want me to get Ange to come and get you?”

  “I’m all right, Pete,” he told him. He tipped the beer and took a drink, setting it back down in the myriad pattern of wet and dry bottle rings on the bar.

  The door opened and three men walked in and sat at a table in the back of the bar. He could see them in the mirror as they sat and two of them lit cigarettes. He wondered how many men the dead man from the Wagon Wheel had brought with him to get his dope. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and took another long drink.

  He watched the waitress take their drink order and watched them engage in small talk and conversation. He’d never seen them before but that was nothing new out here at Charley’s on 83. Folks from all over came here to drink every night, on their way to and from wherever and whatever they were doing. He watched the waitress bring back three beers and set them down. They each took a long drink and looked around the bar.

  Some patrons in the back were shooting pool. A girl he recognized from the trailer park was picking songs on the juke. She played If We Make It Through December by Merle Haggard. He tried to remember the lyrics as it wafted through the bar room. One of the men at the table got up and walked to the bathroom. JD swallowed the last of his beer and got up to follow. The man walking ahead of him moved slowly, with a slight limp. He wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt. JD couldn’t tell if he was carrying a gun or not. He stayed back a few feet and instinctively reached his hand down to his right hip, then remembered he’d locked the Magnum in the glovebox.

  Don’t matter, he thought to himself. He’d take this old boy and his friends and he’d take on all the others that came after. He sucked in a breath and walked in the bathroom after him. He leaned against the wall as the man stood in front of the urinal and unzipped his pants.

  “How you boys doin tonight?” JD asked.

  The man didn’t reply right away. He waited a second and then looked back over his shoulder.

  “You talkin to me?” he asked.

  “You know I am,” JD said.

  “We’re doin all right,” he answered.

  “Where you boys from?” JD asked him.

  The man zipped his pants and turned around.

  “I don’t see how that’s any business of yours,” the man said.

  He moved to the sink to wash his hands. He turned on the water and watched JD in the mirror.

  “You boys think you’re gonna put a scare in me, I guess,” JD said.

  The man continued to wash his hands. “Mister,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin about.”

  He grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and dried his hands. He turned around and started towards the door. JD positioned himself between the man and the exit.

  “Mister, are you drunk or something?” the man asked.

  “You’re gonna tell me what you’re doin here,” JD told him.

  “Get outta my way,” the man said, reaching past JD for the door handle. JD put out his right hand and shoved the man. The man reared back and punched JD hard in the face, knocking him against the door with a loud bang.

  JD swung wildly at the man and missed, and the man punched him in the stomach and doubled him over. His hat fell off. The man grabbed him by the head and slammed his head into the stall. JD fell in a heap.

  “Dumbass,” the man muttered as he walked out.

  JD came tearing out of the bathroom and tackled the man from behind, and tried to take him to the floor. The man wrapped his right arm around JD’s head as they both fell and JD’s chin smacked the carpet with a thud.

  “JD!” Pete yelled from the bar. “What the hell are you doin?”

  The man’s friends rose from the table and ran over. One of them helped their fallen companion off the floor while the other stood over JD with his fists clenched. Pete ran out from behind the bar with a well-worn wooden billy club.

  “Get back, all of you, right now,” he told them. The men stepped back and he bent to examine JD, who was still trying to gather himself up off the floor. He helped him to his feet and leaned him against the bar. Blood flowed freely from his chin and his head. He turned to the three men, each of them now ready to fight.

  “You boys get outta here. Now!” Pete yelled.

  The men stood for a moment, and then retreated, cursing under their breath. Pete watched them walk out the door and into the parking lot. He turned to JD, who wobbled on buckling knees and fell to the floor and passed out.

  He woke up fifteen minutes later in Pete’s office on the couch, the waitress holding a towel full of ice to his chin. The cut was a half inch long and it needed stitches.

  “You’re gonna have to do this,” she said. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

  She put his hand to the towel and got up to leave, stopping over the trash can for a moment. She reached to grab it, then stopped, then walked on out. Pete came in shortly thereafter, an angry look
on his face. He sat at the desk and took his pistol out.

  “JD,” he said, “what in the hell were you doin startin a fight in the bathroom?”

  JD tried to speak, but his jaw didn’t want to move.

  “Ange is on her way to get you, JD,” Pete told him. “And I don’t want you comin back here for a while, you hear me?”

  He picked up the pistol.

  “Otherwise,” he said, “I’m likely to take a shot at you on account I don’t know if you’re gonna attack another one of my customers.”

  JD worked his jaw back and forth painfully.

  “I’m sorry, Pete,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinkin.”

  Pete got up and sat on the edge of the desk.

  “You’re goddamn right,” he said. “Lord only knows why you’d be out drinkin after you shot that boy at the Wagon Wheel. You ain’t in your right mind.”

  “Who were those boys?” JD asked, still working his jaw back and forth.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Pete told him. “Farmhands. Oil field workers. Sons of bitches. Who knows? I just know they ain’t comin back and that’s money out of my pocket, JD.”

  “I’m sorry, Pete,” JD repeated. He tried to sit up.

  “You already said that,” Pete said. “You owe me six bucks for their beers. And twelve for yours.”

  JD pulled out his wallet and removed a twenty dollar bill. He offered it to Pete, who spit in the trashcan and then took it.

  “You’re the goddamn sheriff, JD,” he snapped. “It’s embarrassin, you actin this way. I don’t understand it. You wait in here for Ange to come get you. And remember what I said. Don’t come back for a while. You hear?”

  He nodded his head and stared at his boots.

  They rode home in silence, JD holding the towel to his chin and looking out the window at the black scenery blurring by. Ange gripped the wheel with both hands and kept shaking her head every few seconds. He’d like to know what she was thinking, but he didn’t dare ask. She rounded a curve without slowing down and his head hit the window.

  “Damn, Ange,” he cursed.

  She slammed on the brakes and her old Chevy skidded on the asphalt. It sat sideways in the road, the engine gurgling.

  “You lookin to get yourself killed, JD?” she asked. “Is that what you want? Let’s just set right here til one of them K-Mart trucks comes along and hits us and it’ll all be over. Will that suit you?”

  He looked at her and thought he might cry, but no tears came.

  “First the talk about marriage and your pension if you was to get killed,” she went on. “Then that Wild West show you put on at the Wagon Wheel. Now this…bullshit at Charley’s. What in the world is goin on with you?”

  His head sagged, like it was too heavy to hold up.

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “I can’t come up with nothin.”

  “I know what’s goin on around here scares you,” she said. “Lord knows it scares me. Boles and then Lyle and then that man you killed, and what’s been happenin to the town.”

  She reached out for his hand. He looked at her nails, rough and cracked from years of waitressing.

  “The way I see it,” she told him, “you got two choices. You can stop actin this way and face it or you can quit and if that’s what you wanna do, I’ll support you in it. But I don’t know who this man is that’s doin this stuff I’m seein right now. I like things that make sense. Like me and you, we make sense. But what you’re doin don’t make no sense and you need to stop it. Do you understand that?”

  He nodded his head. There was blood running down his shirt.

  “You need stitches,” she told him. He sighed heavily. She took her foot off the brake and drove him to the doctor’s house.

  He walked by his Blazer sitting in the parking lot the next morning and went inside the office. Sadie was typing up reports with a stack of files on her desk. Roe was on the phone, talking with a local who’d had a cow stolen last night. Neither of them said a word as he sat down at his desk and peeled the large bandage from his chin and threw it in the trash.

  Sadie got up and poured him a cup of coffee and walked over to set it on his desk.

  “I figure after the first beer you’da taken him, JD,” she cracked, “but six is kinda pushin it for you.”

  He gave her a look and then started laughing. She was the only one besides Ange who could get away with calling him JD while he was on duty. He winced from the pain in his chin.

  “Did you at least get one good shot in?” she asked.

  “Not a one,” he told her.

  She patted him on the back and walked back to her desk. “Your budget come back from Austin,” she said.

  “That’s a might bit early,” he commented. He picked up a telegram from the desk and read it.

  “It got rejected, JD,” she said.

  “Did it have his doctor bill in it?” Roe joked. Sadie laughed in spite of herself, but stopped when she saw the concerned look on JD’s face.

  “That’s not funny,” he told them. He got up and walked back to the jail cell.

  Miguel Terlingua sat on his cot, playing solitaire. He had the look of a man who was on holiday.

  “Roe give you them cards?” he asked.

  Miguel laid a card down in a row.

  “What happened to your chin?” Miguel asked him without looking up.

  “That ain’t none of your affair,” JD told him. “I thought I’d let you know I got a telegram here says the DEA’s comin to get you next Thursday.”

  Miguel laid another card on the row.

  “You should let me go,” he said.

  “Now why’s that?” JD asked.

  Miguel slammed the deck of cards on the cot and stood up. He walked to the bars and grabbed them.

  “Because out there I’d have a chance,” he bristled.

  “A chance against what?” JD asked, taking a step back.

  Miguel pushed himself away from the bars and paced in the cell. He shook his head and wrapped his fingers around the back of his neck.

  “You wanted to know about Agualeguas. Well, I’ll tell you about it.”

  JD pulled up the same metal chair and sat down.

  “I was a mule for the Gulf Cartel,” Miguel began. “I fell in love with a girl and she told me she would not marry me if I was mulo. So, I quit. We ran away. To try and come to America.”

  He sat down on the cot to face JD.

  “The cartel found us in Agualeguas. They killed my Rosa first. They stabbed her in the belly with the machete. You know why? Because she was carrying our child.”

  JD winced as Miguel went on.

  “I tried to kill myself, with the booze, but I could not do it. Every day I woke up still alive. I was filled with rage. I wanted those bastards to pay for what they did to my Rosa. For what they did to me.”

  “So you agreed to testify,” JD interrupted.

  “Yes,” Miguel answered. “I turned myself in. I agreed to testify. The police chief in Agualeguas, he promised he could protect me. I believed him.”

  “What happened?” JD asked.

  “You know the price for the traitor in my profession bears the mark of death,” Miguel told him. “The cartel put a large bounty on my head. They sent a hit squad. Ex-army and ex-Federales. They killed the police chief. They killed his wife. They killed his son. Then they set fire to the jail with me inside.”

  “How’d you get out?” JD asked.

  “An old man who tried to put out the fire helped me escape,” Miguel answered. “He drove his truck through the back wall.”

  “That still don’t tell me how you ended up here, in Boles’ living room with a .45 and ten grand in your pocket,” JD said.

  Miguel picked up the playing cards again.

  “I have a cousin,” he said. “He works for a big dope dealer in Midland. Some cabron named Bannon with yellow hair.”

  “Got a dead eye?” JD asked.

  Miguel stopped turning the cards.


  “You’ve seen him?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I seen him all right,” JD said. “I shot him dead two days ago.”

  Miguel spat and laughed.

  “He was here to retrieve his product from the man who was holding for him. My cousin told me where this man lived. He said he would have ten thousand dollars. He said he would be easy to rob.”

  “And you found Boles dead,” JD said.

  “Yes,” Miguel said. “The gun was lying on the floor. The money was in a coffee can in his cupboard. So, I took it.”

  “But you stuck around too long,” JD said.

  “Yes,” Miguel told him. “Your deputy arrived before I could make my escape.”

  “You think about drawin that .45 down on Roe?” JD asked.

  Miguel looked shocked.

  “No, no,” he told him. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “Well,” JD said, “that was a smart decision. Because I woulda found you and killed you.”

  Miguel laid another card. It was the ace of spades.

  “You trust everyone, don’t you, Sheriff?” Miguel asked.

  JD looked him in the eye.

  “Not everbody,” he said flatly.

  “But I told you I didn’t kill your man,” Miguel said, “and you believe me.”

  “I like to think I got a good read on folks,” JD said. “Most of em you can tell right away what’s what.”

  Miguel pulled the Joker card from the deck and flipped it out to the end of the cot.

  “Do you trust your friend at the Border Patrol?” he asked.

  “Albert? I guess I trust him as far as I’ve known him,” JD answered, “and that’s been goin on ten years now.”

  “Do you think he has a price?” Miguel asked.

  “A price for what?” JD countered.

  Miguel laid another card down.

  “What if,” Miguel said, “someone came to him with a bag of money and asked where I was?”

  JD thought that over for a moment. Albert had a nice little house in Roma and three kids. Mortgage. Car notes. Debt. JD based everything he thought he instinctively knew about people on seeing them every day and interacting with them. He’d see Albert once every couple of months and mostly talked to him on the phone. He didn’t like the seed of doubt that had just been planted.