Starr County Line Read online

  He woke on the couch at the station house the next morning when Roe and Sadie arrived. He related to them the events of the night before. He left out the part about finding a spent shell casing in the roadway and standing in the middle of the blacktop like a damned fool. He called Ange and told her he’d stop by the Wagon Wheel after a while.

  He sipped his coffee and listened to the rebroadcast of the farm report. More bad news about the drought and the price of feed. No rain was coming and everyone could look forward to paying more for everything. The phone rang and he almost didn’t answer it. Roe stared at him curiously as he just let it ring over and over again.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” he said as he finally picked up the receiver. He listened for a moment.

  “Sure, Albert, sure. We’ll be on our way directly,” he said and hung up the phone.

  “Roe, grab your hat. Albert’s doin a ride along with the DEA, says they got a couple spots for us if we wanna go,” he said.

  He’d no sooner gotten the words out of his mouth when Roe appeared in front of his desk, standing ridgepole straight with his hat squared and his chest puffed out.

  “Yes, sir, ready to roll,” he beamed.

  “Well, I reckon you ought to drive then, J Edgar,” he said, tossing him the keys.

  They arrived in Roma and Roe practically jumped from the Blazer before putting it in park. He eagerly introduced himself to the agents from the DEA, whom JD had seen once or twice before. They were always a bit standoffish, throwing out a general air of mistrust for border area lawmen, as if they might all be on the take.

  After some perfunctory handshakes, the DEA briefed a group of heavily armed men in vests who then got into Border Patrol vehicles. JD, Roe and a spotter loaded into a helicopter and buckled up and adjusted headsets. The spotter sat upfront in the cockpit with the pilot. The small craft lifted off and kicked up a dust cyclone. The pilot followed overhead as the vehicles down below headed straight south to the Rio Grande.

  The pilot maintained his low altitude as the men in the trucks disembarked and fanned out along the river. Roe enthusiastically pointed to a group of men on the Mexican side of the river as they abandoned a makeshift raft with large wrapped bales on board and began to try and disappear into the surrounding brush. JD watched Albert run to the river’s edge and wade into the water and throw a grapple hook attached to the end of a long rope, trying to snag the craft. After a few unsuccessful tries, he finally hooked it and began to laboriously pull it to the American side.

  The men from the vehicles bounded into the water at several places and emerged on the Mexican side of the border. They ducked in and out of the mesquite and tasajillo, chasing the elusive smugglers. The spotter would communicate the location of a man in the brush to the agents below, the agents would attempt to close on the man’s position and the man would run and the action repeated itself. Roe’s eyes were glued to the window.

  The spotter pointed excitedly to something in the brush. JD looked out the window in time to see a man aiming a long gun at the helicopter. There was a puff of smoke from the muzzle and he could hear the bullet ricochet off the steel exterior. The pilot jerked the stick and the chopper dipped left and down and swung out wide and away from the gunman’s location. The headset lit up in JD’s ears.

  “That sonofabitch’s done it now,” the pilot said, “Richards, find that piece of shit and kill him.”

  The pilot guided the helicopter back around.

  “I’m gonna take you right to him,” the pilot said. “I’m gonna sit goddamn right on top of him.”

  JD looked at Roe, whose eyes were wide as quarters. He leaned forward. The pilot looked over his right shoulder at him.

  “Sit back, Sheriff. Enjoy the show,” he told him.

  The helicopter ran so low over the brush JD thought if he were on the skids he could stick his hand down and touch it. He could see a small antelope hiding in a thorny bulwark. It leaped the barrier and ran out beneath the helicopter. The pilot pulled back on the stick and the chopper settled over a small grove of trees. JD could see a man beneath them, struggling to reload some kind of long rifle. Best he could tell, the first shell had not ejected and now the gun was jammed.

  “Bad luck for this pendejo,” the pilot laughed.

  JD watched as three agents circled the grove and raised their assault rifles to their shoulders. There was no way they could call out to the man to surrender. He’d never hear the order over the sound of the rotors. The man in the grove realized his situation was dire and threw down the gun. JD could see him raise his hands. The agents opened fire and riddled him with bullets.

  “Jesus,” JD said.

  “How you like that, Sheriff?” the pilot cackled.

  The pilot took the chopper to a higher altitude. They could see the agents continue to push through the brush, rounding up the other smugglers. None of the other men appeared to be armed, though an agent found a small cache of firearms not far from the site. JD realized in the confusion the smugglers had lost its location. If they’d found it, the situation could have become desperate. After a half hour or so, the Mexican authorities arrived to tidy up the scene and take the suspects into custody.

  Back in Roma, JD and Roe got out of the helicopter and walked to the Blazer, parked just off the tarmac. Albert ran behind them, trying to catch up.

  “JD,” he called out, “where you going, man?”

  JD stopped and turned around.

  “We gotta get, Albert. I figure we seen enough for one day,” he said. Albert laughed, a strange look on his face.

  “The game’s changing, my friend,” he told JD. “The only way these people will understand we mean business is if we start showing them we mean business, you know? We just stopped over a half million dollars in heroin from reaching the streets, man.”

  JD just looked at his boots.

  “Oh, I see,” Albert said. “You know there was an RPG in that cache of weapons, JD? If they’d gotten to it, you think they would have hesitated to blow that helicopter out of the sky with you in it? That piece of shit they killed took a shot you, man.”

  JD nodded his head.

  “That young man over there,” JD said, pointing to Roe, “is still tryin to find a way this all makes sense, Albert. He thinks these boys is ten feet tall and bulletproof. Everything he thinks about these boys is gonna change after today and that can’t be undone.”

  He turned to walk to the Blazer.

  “Don’t ask me on no more of these ride alongs of yours,” he told him.

  The black Suburbans parked in Boles’ driveway, one behind the other. The men inside got out and went into the house, carrying with them black duffel bags. Two men came out and got in the vehicles and drove them deep into the trees behind the house and then walked back. They shut the door tight and after a few minutes, a window unit hummed to life. One of the men sat in a windowsill at the front room of the house, watching the road. The cicadas were thick in the trees and the heat beat down on the ground, sending shimmering ribbons skyward.

  After a short while, an old Ford pickup drove by and slowed a little before continuing on. It pulled into a drive in front of a similar house further down the road. After a few minutes, a man came walking through the bushes along the property line with a shotgun in his arms. He heard the sound of the compressor kicking in on the window unit air conditioner and stopped. He started to turn around.

  He heard a strange sound, like someone poking a hole in plate glass. He jerked a bit and looked down at his grain mill coveralls. There was a hole in the front and blood spurted out. Something burned in his back like someone had stuck a lit match under his skin. He reached for it as he sank to his knees. He fell over in the yard dead.

  The men in the house waited. They took up positions at the front windows and left the curtains closed. They did not speak as they looked over their matte black automatic rifles. Laid out neatly in a row in front of one of the gunmen were four mugshot photographs. Three of the men in th
e photos were expected to arrive any moment. The fourth man had recently been killed by the local sheriff. After a short while, they heard the sounds of a vehicle making its way down the road. They watched as it turned into the drive and eased over the bad ground.

  One of the men in the house eyed the dead body in the weeds. He absently wondered how easily it could be seen. Not that it mattered. The three men parked the old Chrysler they’d recently stolen and got out and looked around. The men in the house glanced at one another. Nothing needed to be said. They watched the men in the yard smoke cigarettes and remove guns from their waistbands to ready them. The men in the house smiled grimly.

  They opened up on the men in the yard in unison, the suppressed machinegun chatter breaking the old pane glass in the windows. The men in the yard never knew what happened. Eighty rounds tore into them and they fell where they stood, eyes staring vacantly at the heavens or into the dirt. Blood pooled in the overgrown yard around them. After a moment, the birds in the trees resumed their conversations and the cicada began to call out again.

  The men in the house filed out the back door and got back in the Suburbans. They rolled slowly down the drive. One of the men rolled down his window and spat at the dead bodies. The drivers eased the lumbering vehicles over the bad ground and turned onto the blacktop towards Pinto.

  JD sat at his desk and watched Roe try to finish typing the report on the shooting of the man called Bannon. This was another one of those times when he didn’t know what to say to the young man.

  “Roe,” he said, “you know what happened today…”

  “Listen, Sheriff,” Roe interrupted, “you ain’t gotta explain. I understand what’s happenin. The situation for those agents is sometimes real dire. Maybe they make a call and maybe it’s a bad call, like you’re thinkin. I can’t help but think maybe they made the right call today.”

  JD’s eyebrows rose.

  “I mean, who’s to say?” Roe went on. “Sumbitch took a shot at a DEA helicopter. Just like that old boy took a shot at you while you was up in Boles’ attic. Albert’s right, Sheriff, the game has changed. Maybe the way our boys is playin it ain’t exactly the right way to play it, but it might be the only way to play it, you know what I’m sayin?”

  “I guess I was thinkin you might not of liked seein them shoot that old boy,” JD said.

  “Hell, Sheriff,” Roe told him, “I ain’t twelve years old watchin Dragnet. You need to stop thinkin of me that way.”

  He put on his hat and walked out of the office.

  He followed Roe to the parking lot. It churned up in his gut a bit, being wrong. But, the more it happened, the more he got used to it. Roe was leaning against his cruiser, watching the sun hang low in the afternoon sky.

  JD studied him for a moment. He knew when he looked at Roe it was the only real chance he had to look into the future. To see where things were headed. Trying to hold him back and protect him like he was still eighteen years old was like trying to push back on the hands of time.

  He walked over and picked a spot on the fender next to him and leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. He watched Freddie Rodriguez’s boy bounce up and down as he rolled across Main on 4 street on his daddy’s green tractor. Pulling a trailer full of kids. They had balloons tied to the short rails. It was someone’s birthday.

  “Remember,” JD began, “that time we rolled up on old Ermey’s place and I sent you in first? On account he knowed me but didn’t know you and he might not shoot at you? On account of you bein just a kid?”

  Roe nodded his head.

  “I forget them days is past,” JD confessed. “I do, Roe, and I’m sorry, son. You’re pert near twenty-eight years old now. But a man like me who ain’t got no kids tends to adopt those that come along. And ten years ago when you hired on, I guess I did that with you.”

  Roe leaned his head back and stuck his chin out.

  “It’s all right, Sheriff,” Roe told him. “I know you didn’t mean nothin by it. Truth be told, I didn’t like seein em do that old boy that way today and if it was me in charge, I wouldn’t of done it that way neither.”

  JD nodded in agreement.

  “I remember when I used to play football in the lot behind the Woolworth in Roma,” Roe told him, “when momma would take me to work with her on Saturdays.”

  “On account of your daddy,” JD said, “not bein around.”

  Roe nodded in agreement.

  “One of them boys you used to play with,” JD said, “he’s the fire chief over there now.”

  “Yep,” Roe told him. “Another one of em is down in Huntsville on death row. You could look at them two when they was kids and think they’d been cut from the same piece of wood. But twenty years later, theys as far apart as two folks could get, I reckon.”

  “You never can tell why things turn out how they do,” JD said.

  “I used to think it was on account of the Edgett boy not havin a daddy, like me,” Roe said. “But I found out later that Robert didn’t have no daddy either. And he turned out all right.”

  “Fire chief is doin all right, I guess,” JD offered. “So’s Deputy Sheriff, way I see it.”

  Roe laughed a little to himself. The sun was almost down now, blood orange and sinking into a nest of blue gray clouds on the western horizon.

  “What I come up with is there really ain’t no figurin it, not at the end of the day there ain’t,” Roe said. “What I’m drivin at is, I appreciate you lookin out for me all these years.”

  JD smiled and looked down at his dusty boots.

  “Why don’t you take the night off,” he told Roe. “Get out. Go do somethin. I see Jeannie Pruitt’s closin up the Burger Stop right now. Look down there.”

  He watched Roe’s eyes trail down Main and light on Jeannie Pruitt’s petite frame. Her long, red, curly hair hung to the middle of her back. She picked up some trash. She glanced down the street at them.

  “Go on, son,” JD told him.

  “You sure?” Roe asked.

  “Yeah, go on. I got this covered,” JD said.

  “Thanks, JD,” he said. “I mean Sheriff.”

  He stepped to the sidewalk and watched Roe back the cruiser out of the parking lot. He went inside the station house and locked the door behind him and pulled the shade down.

  He walked back to the jail cell and found Miguel pacing back and forth. He was nodding his head up and down and every so often he would scratch his arms or scratch his back.

  “You seem kinda nervous,” JD said.

  Miguel said nothing. He stopped pacing and looked up at the ceiling and laughed.

  “Don’t you understand, Sheriff,” Miguel said, “the longer you keep me in here the less time I have.”

  “Before what?” JD said.

  “Before they come to get me,” Miguel said.

  “Ain’t no one comin to get you,” JD said. “And even if they was, they ain’t gettin in here.”

  “Let me go, Sheriff,” Miguel pleaded.

  “That ain’t happenin,” JD told him. “Now, the Burger Spot’s closed. That leaves the fried chicken from King’s Market for dinner. That suit you?”

  Roe eased the cruiser across two parking spots in front of the Burger Spot. Jeannie Pruitt didn’t immediately look over at him. He tapped the heel of his hand on the horn and she acted like she hadn’t known he was there. She cocked her head and half smiled at him and stood there a moment, hands on her hips, before walking over to the cruiser.

  “Hello, Roe Robinson,” she said.

  “That’s Deputy Robinson, Jeannie Pruitt,” he told her.

  “You forget we grew up in the same trailer park,” she said. “I seen you come runnin home cryin when you busted your chin open on the swingset. So don’t be gettin all formal with me, Roe Robinson.”

  “I seen you talkin to that long haired boy the other day,” he told her. She laughed at him some more.

  “Skip Martin?” she said. “He’s seventeen years old. I’m almost twenty-o
ne.”

  “You ain’t but nineteen,” he reminded her.

  She looked at the two bags of trash that she still needed to put in the dumpster out back.

  “You come down here to remind me you’re the deputy and that I’m only nineteen years old?” she asked. “I still got some work to do.”

  He was flustered. He put the cruiser in park and opened the door and stood in it. She looked him over. She looked at his hat and his crisp white shirt and at his gold badge. She smiled at him.

  “I come down to see if you might want to take a ride with me,” he told her.

  She cocked her head again and her posture softened. Something about her seemed to melt.

  “You did?” she asked.

  He ran his fingers around on the stubble beneath his nose and around his mouth. He’d have to shave.

  “Yesm,” he answered.

  She thought it over for a moment, enjoying the agonizing eternity she’d suddenly suspended him in. He tried not to squirm.

  “Well” she said, “I spose I could go for a little while.”

  He smiled at her broadly.

  “You pick me up in an hour, Deputy Robinson,” she told him. “And you better keep your badge on or my daddy won’t let me go nowhere with you.”

  JD drove back from the King’s Market with two boxes of fried chicken. He parked out front and stood looking down Main Street. It was dead quiet and it unnerved him a little for some reason. Miguel’s words echoing in his head. He wondered if the story about Agualeguas was true. He thought about the black suburban Carl had reported.

  That feeling he was being watched crept over him and raised goose flesh on his forearms. A truck he didn’t readily recognize crossed Main down at 1, but he couldn’t ascertain the make or the model. GMC maybe. Late 60’s. Could be Watkins, heading to the feed store. Could be anybody, he thought. Could be you’re just thinkin foolish and should just stop it.