“To get rid of the evidence, so nobody'd find 'em. Better than buryin' bodies could be dug up. Cruz was a hustler up in Houston, and a junkie, but he wasn't a liar. The dope killed him. He made it with a priest, who told him that a nun who had a baby was made to eat it herself, as a punishment. That turned Juana off from wantin' to be a bride of God. She married that fucker Tony instead.”
Perdita laughed. “Juana woulda done better,” she said, “even if she'd had to eat her own kid. Might be she'd still be alive.”
THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT
Woody Dumas, special agent in charge of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration's regional office in Dallas, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. He tore open a jumbo bag of salted peanuts and cracked and ate them as he spoke.
“I'm hearin' you, Doyle, loud and clear,” Woody said into the telephone cradled between his left cheek and shoulder, “no need to shout. Don't take no whiz kid to figure out Santos is involved at the top of the deck, either. This the first you FBI geniuses heard of him? Okay, okay, Mr. Cathcart, sir! Soon as I got a bead on these tree squirrels, you'll know about it. My guess is they got some
maquila
around El Paso, but could be they're movin' the goods all the way to the West Coast. I got my best bird dogs on hunt, so don't take a header. You bet, Doyle, good buddy.
Adios
for now, huh?”
Woody hung up, cracked open another peanut and popped it into his mouth. He'd turned fifty the day before but looked ten years younger. He still had a full head of thick, sandy brown hair and a mostly unwrinkled face. Woody Dumas had never married and never been tempted to. At six-two and one-eighty-five, he moved at a leisurely pace, took a multivitamin pill daily with his orange juice, didn't eat sweets or drink coffee, worked out three times a week on a LifeCycle and with weights at the Downtown Health Club, and got at least six hours of sleep each night. His favorite reading material was the sports section of the newspaper. Woody did not believe in cluttering up his mind with a lot of unnecessary information. Life was complicated enough, he felt, without mixing in a bunch of half-baked ideas.
Woody knew that Crazy Eyes Santos was behind the skin business, just as he was behind virtually every other major illegal enterprise across the South and Southwest. The Mexicans had tied him to most of the cocaine and marijuana being smuggled across the border, and Doyle Cathcart, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Houston, was certain that Santos was using his dope network to transport experimental cosmetic materials. There was some
ugly shit going on down around the border, too, that Woody had been hearing about, all kinds of so-called religious garbage, including animal and even human sacrifice.
At precisely four-thirty P.M., Woody Dumas swung his maroon and white Tony Lama boots to the floor, tossed the bag of peanuts on the desk and stood up. He brushed himself off, picked his white Stetson from the hatrack and placed it firmly on his head. There was more sickness in the world today, Woody believed, than at any time in history. Walking out of the Federal Building he thought of an incident he'd read about in the
Morning News,
something that had taken place in San Francisco shortly after the recent earthquake there. A man named DeSota Barker had been directing traffic at a busy intersection after the city-wide power failure knocked out the spotlights, and an impatient, probably cracked-out motorist had shot and killed him. Barker was subsequently listed among the victims of the earthquake.
“The more things there are to figure,” Woody thought, “the more things there are get figured wrong.”
He climbed behind the wheel of his brown 1978 Malibu Classic and cranked it up. Woody sat in the car, letting the engine idle, thinking about Salty Dog, the Airedale he'd had when he was a boy. When Woody was fourteen and the dog was four, Salty had bitten two old ladiesâone while she was watering her lawn, the other as she was walking up the steps to her houseâwithin a week. He'd never bitten anyone before that, but the county took Salty away and put him to sleep. Woody didn't understand why he thought about Salty Dog almost every day at this time. It had been thirty-six years since they'd gassed Salty, Woody realized, and the world just hadn't been right since.
THE BIG DAY
“Didn't you tell me you used to live out here?” Romeo asked Perdita.
They were at the Rim City Truck-o-Rama, fueling up. It was not quite six o'clock of a new day. Perdita looked around. A sharp wind came up and blew sand into her face. She put on her sunglasses.
“Not too far,” Perdita said.
She pulled a Marlboro out of the pack she'd stuck in the front of her Wranglers and put it between her lips but did not try to light it. Perdita walked over to where a dozen Macks and Peterbilts dozed, night sweat sparkling on their metallic hides. She kicked at a wad of red mud caked on one of the giant tires.
“How you doin'?”
Perdita turned around. It was Duane. She still had the unlit cigarette in her mouth, so Duane took a book of matches from his pocket and fired it. He watched Perdita's straight black hair fly back from her Chiricahua cheekbones like a quarter horse's tail in deep stretch at Ruidoso Downs. The weak sun brushed red streaks on it.
“We gonna drive straight through, you think,” Duane asked, “or what?”
“Romeo'll likely want to sleep during the day and drive at night. You figure you and Little Miss Poison maybe could slip out on us?”
Duane half-laughed. “I don't guess,” he said.
Perdita leaned back against the tire she'd kicked.
“You ever think that someone might be watchin' us?” she asked.
“Who someone?”
Perdita took a hard drag on her Marlboro, then flicked it away.
“I mean some kind of super intelligent bein'. Somethin' invisible, like a ghost. Someone who knows everything's goin' on.”
“Guess it's possible. Sounds like you're talkin' about God, though.”
Perdita shook her head. “This ain't no god.”
“Why can't we see him then?”
“He'll step in on his own sweet time. When the big day comes, and it's comin' quick.”
“What'll happen on the big day?”
“Snakes and spiders, rainin' on the people.”
“Heard that after the hurricane in South Carolina last month, snakes was everywhere. Moccasins, copperheads, all kinds, blown out of the swamps.”
“This'll be worse. He knows what we're doin', all of us. There ain't nobody innocent, not you, not me, not Estrellita.”
“Or Romeo.”
Perdita nodded. “Sky'll fall on him, too. Maybe especially on him.” The sun stood up and chopped the chill in two.
“Hey, you two lovebirds!” Romeo shouted from where he was pumping gas. “Let's go inside the cafe here and get some breakfast.”
The four of them sat in a booth. Bill Monroe was singing “A Fallen Star” on the jukebox. After they'd ordered, Romeo went over to the cashier's stand, bought a
San Antonio Light
, came back and sat down.
“Now here's a good one,” he announced, “about a guy named Bubba Ray Billy, a con in Angola, Louisiana, who got fried yesterday. Seems this Billy, who was twenty-six, raped and murdered by stabbing seventeen times an eighteen-year-old girl named Lucy Fay Feydaux. Bubba Ray had picked up Lucy Fay, it says, in his 1954 blue and white Oldsmobile Holiday on a country road outside Opelousas one night four years ago. âHe must of took her against her will,' said the girl's mother, Irma. Mr. Archie Bob Feydaux, Lucy Fay's father, attended the execution and told reporters that he and his wife supported the death penalty and had been waiting four years for Billy to die.”
Their food had begun to arrive while Romeo was reading, and he gulped down his orange juice and half a cup of coffee before continuing to paraphrase and quote from the paper. Perdita kept her dark glasses on and smoked her way through the meal while Duane and Estrellita kept their heads down as they ate their eggs, toast, sausages and grits.
“So the good old boys over to Angola strapped Bubba Ray Billy into Gruesome Gertie,” Romeo said, “the big oak electric chair, and ended Archie Bob and Irma Feydaux's vigil. Billy was one mean cat, according to this. He'd had a Grim Reaper tattooed on his chest while in the Death House and confessed to at least two other killings in addition to the kidnapping and attempted murder of a Poplarville, Louisiana, teenager and the rape of the boy's girlfriend.
“ âI don't run from nothing,' Billy said. âPeople say I'm an animal, but they wouldn't say it to my face. I wouldn't say I'm an animal,' he told reporters, âbut I am a cold person.' Boy was a regular case, wouldn't you say, Perdita, honey? Get this: his daddy, Guinn âBoss' Billy, spent twenty-eight of his fifty-five years in the slam for cattle theft, aggravated battery and manslaughter. When queried by the press as to his reaction to Bubba Ray's impending execution, Boss Billy just told them that he would sleep through it and said his son deserved to die.”
Romeo whistled long and softly through his teeth.
“Man, the boy's daddy's an even harder case. This last part's the best. Bubba Ray apparently didn't talk much during the big day. He ate a last supper of fried oysters and shrimp, even though, as he said, he didn't feel much like eating. When a reporter commented to him that he'd nevertheless cleaned his plate, Billy smiled a little and said, âI guess some old habits is just tough to break.' ”
Romeo put down the newspaper, stabbed a pat of butter with his knife and stuck it in his bowl of oatmeal, poured half a glass of milk over it, and signaled for the waitress, who was an elderly, lame Mexican woman with one half-shut eye.
“Señora,” he said, when she limped over, “I sure would appreciate it if you could scare up some molasses for me to sweeten up this cereal. Oatmeal just don't taste the same without it.”
A VISIT TO SPARKY & BUDDY'S
“You want the usual, Mr. Dumas?”
“Maybe a little extra ice, Sherry Louise, if you don't mind. It's a warm one.”
Woody loosened his tie and arched his back. He didn't like sitting on stools but tonight, for some reason, he felt unusually tired. Ordinarily, he stood at the bar. It was a slow evening at Sparky & Buddy's; there were only two other customers in the place.
“There you go, Mr. Dumas, cranberry juice and soda with a slice of orange, two maraschino cherries and extra ice, in a chimney.”
“Sherry Louise, you take good care of me and I want you to know that I appreciate it.”
Woody slid a five dollar bill to her across the black mahogany.
“This is yours,” he said.
“It's my pleasure, Mr. Dumas. Always is.”
Woody watched Sherry Louise walk back to the other end of the bar. She undulated, like a giraffe. She must be a half-inch or so over six feet tall, Woody figured, in the green and white New Balance running shoes she wore while she was on duty. Her bright red hair was piled up on her head, adding a good three or four inches of height. Tall and
mucho
skinny, too skinny for his taste, Woody decided. Sherry Louise looked like a section of two-inch pipe stood on end with a bird's nest set on top. She was extra sweet, though, and Sparky said she was the most dependable and honest bartender they'd ever had. Her husband, Eddie Dean Zernial, a former stock car driver, was a carpet layer. Sherry Louise was always going on about how messed up Eddie Dean's back and knees were, both from collisions and rug tacking, but one night she'd told Woody that didn't interfere with their sex life any, since she preferred riding high to lying low. Woody had a difficult time imagining what it would be like to make love to Sherry Louise. It was better that way, he thought; one less thing to have to think about.
A short, stout man of about forty came in and sat down two stools to Woody's left. He was perspiring heavily and used a bar napkin to wipe
the sweat from his mostly bald head. Sherry Louise smiled at Woody as she passed him.
“What can I do you for, handsome?” she asked the man.
He held up his right hand and horizontally extended three fingers.
“Wild Turkey,” the man said, “straight. Water chaser, with plenty of ice.”
“Appears all you gentlemen need coolin' down this evenin',” said Sherry Louise. “Ain't all that hot, I don't think.”
She poured the whisky into a double shot glass, filled another with ice and tap water and set them both in front of the customer. He put his money on the bar, Sherry Louise took it, walked to the cash register, made change and brought it back.
“Just shout, you need me,” she told him, and smiled again at Woody. “You all right for now, Mr. Dumas?”
Woody smiled at her. “Just fine, Sherry Louise.”
“Sons of bitches ain't never gonna find her,” said the short, bald man.
Woody turned toward him.
“Come again?”
“Go over that border don't expect no favors, what I always say.”
“Woody Dumas,” said Woody, offering his right hand to the man.
“Ernest Tubb Satisfy,” he said, giving Woody's hand a quick, wet shake, after which Ernest Tubb picked up the shot glass and sipped noisily.
“What border you mean?” Woody asked.
“Messican, 'course. Chink counterfeiters makin' Rolexes, computer innards, that shit, government'll go after like cockstarved banshees. Let it be some poor little Texas gal gets grabbed off the street and they can't figure their asshole wipes north or south. Yesterday on the Blaupunkt in my Mark IV, I heard about G-men bustin' a Hong Kong ring of fake soy sauce manufacturers. Seized more than one hundred thousand bottles of bogus soy along with the perpetrators. Economics is what it is, pure smilin' simple. That's what I say.”