C
HAPTER
T
WO
The sleekly groomed and coiffed news anchor on the TV screen was saying, “This bloody shooting was merely the latest violent incident in which Mr. Stark has been involved. Known for his clashes with drug smugglers several years ago, which resulted in the death of his wife, and then later for his involvement with the so-called defense of the Alamo, Stark has been a lightning rod for controversy.”
The shot cut to pre-recorded video footage of a handsome Hispanic man saying, “Given Mr. Stark's history of violence directed toward minorities, the refusal of the police to carry out more than a perfunctory investigation of this incident is an outrage.” A graphic at the bottom of the screen identified him as Victor Martinez, attorney for the three young men charged with assault. Martinez went on, “I think it speaks volumes that my clients are the ones being prosecuted here, and yet they're the ones who are in the hospital while Mr. Stark, hale and hearty, walks free.”
The live shot of the news anchor replaced the footage of Martinez. She said, “Representatives of the Justice Department in Washington have indicated that they will also be looking into the matter with an eye toward determining if any hate crimes occurred during the incident outside a local doctor's office.” A bright smile lit up her face as the expression of grave concern vanished. “In other news, there are further indications tonight that the administration's efforts to bolster the economic recovery are succeeding as the national unemployment rate plummeted last month from 16.3 percent to 16.2 percent. This dramatic decrease in unemployment, coupled with the recent announcement that the national debt rose by only 1.2 trillion dollars in the first quarter of the year, prompted an administration spokesman to say that this is tangible evidence the country is on the right track.”
Chief Dennis Feasco used his foot to nudge a trash can toward Stark. He pushed the button on the remote control that turned off the TV and said, “If you're going to throw up, do it in that, not on my desk.”
“Why would I throw up?” Stark asked.
Feasco jerked a thumb toward the now-blank screen.
“Isn't that enough to make you sick?” he asked.
Stark chuckled.
“If I let the swill coming out of Washington bother me that much, I'd have been throwing up for the last ten years. I'm too busy with other things to get that worked up over it.”
Feasco sighed and said, “You'll be busy making license plates and trying to protect yourself from the Hispanic gangs in prison if Martinez has his way.”
“He won't,” Stark said. “The district attorney's got the testimony of Bonita and half a dozen patients and employees from Dr. Browner's office that those three jumped me when I tried to stop them from stealing my pickup.”
“That's not the story that Martinez is telling to anybody who'll listen. The way he tells it, his clients were just walking peacefully by the parking lot when
you
attacked
them
. He's getting plenty of sympathetic ears for that version in Washington. The Justice Department is liable to bring federal civil rights charges, regardless of what the DA does here.”
Stark shrugged.
“I reckon I'll deal with that when the time comes, if it does.”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up on this, John,” Feasco said.
“Well, I appreciate that, Chief.” Stark reached for his hat, which was sitting on the corner of Feasco's desk. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Except . . . you'd better keep an eye on your back. As far as we know, there are no direct ties between those three and any of the cartels. They're just local punks, about as far down on the totem pole as they can get. But Martinez getting involved in the case worries me. He doesn't come cheap. Whoever's paying him to jump in may be somebody who has a grudge against you.”
“There are plenty of 'em out there who fall into that category, I suppose,” Stark said as he stood up.
Feasco grunted.
“Yeah. All the way from here to the White House.”
“I never caused any trouble for the fella who's in there now.”
“No, but you made his side look pretty bad a few times, and you know how those bastards hold a grudge.”
Stark inclined his head in acknowledgment of the chief's point. He put his hat on, lifted a hand in farewell, and left the office. As he walked out through the police station, several of the cops who were there smiled and nodded to him. As a general rule, police officers didn't have much use for anybody who could be classified as a vigilante, but these cops, who had to deal every day with the increasing lawlessness along the border between Texas and Mexico, couldn't help but respect the way Stark had stood up for himself and others.
His pickup, the pickup that had started this trouble, was parked out front. Stark wasn't sure why those three had wanted it so badly. Sure, he kept it in fine condition, but it was old and wouldn't have brought much from a chop shop. Enough to buy some drugs, though, he supposed.
He got in and started the engine, listening to its well-tuned purr for a moment before he put the truck in gear. A few minutes later he was rolling out of town toward home.
Once, home had been the Diamond S ranch, a successful spread a hundred miles west of here. Following his wife's death in the war against the Mexican drug cartel that had tried to take over the ranch, Stark had kept the place going for a while. His sons, David, a Navy pilot, and Pete, a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, had come home for a while to help out, but eventually they'd had to return to their duties. David was on a carrier in the Indian Ocean. Stark didn't know exactly where Pete was, but he suspected Afghanistan even though American troops supposedly had withdrawn from that troubled country.
Stark didn't hear from either of them very often, and that was fine; they both had their own lives to live, and they were doing important work. Somebody had to help hold the line against an increasingly savage world, even when those in power in Washington seemed determined to kowtow to every two-bit, crackpot dictator on the other side of the globe in the name of “international cooperation.”
Eventually, even though he hated to do it because the land had been in his family for generations, Stark had been forced to sell the Diamond S. He couldn't keep it up by himself, and people didn't want to work for him because they were still worried about possible retaliation from the cartel. He'd had to sell the place for much less than it should have been worth, but he'd been lucky to find a buyer at all. Most real estate within a hundred miles of the border was virtually worthless now because of the drug smugglers who had taken over. Even on the Texas side of the border, the gangs ran things. It was a pitiful state of affairs.
After selling the ranch, Stark had moved east along the Rio Grande, settling near the medium-sized city of Devil's Pass. He had a nice mobile home in Shady Hills Retirement Park.
At first he had wondered what in the world had prompted him to buy a lot there. The place was full of old geezers.
But then he realized that he fit right in there, and for the past few months he'd been relatively happy. Without Elaine, he knew he would never be completely content again, but he had his books, a satellite dish for the TV, and he'd even discovered that the Internet wasn't as bad as he had thought it would be. He'd even had a Facebook page for a while before he'd had to shut it down because of all the people who'd posted their liberal vitriol there. To a lot of folks he was a villain, a symbol of everything that was wrong about America as they continued their quest to transform it into a European-style welfare state.
He shook those thoughts out of his head as he reached the arched gate in the white picket fence that enclosed the twenty acres of the retirement park. He was home.
C
HAPTER
T
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Located in South Texas, the Shady Hills Retirement Park was neither shady nor hilly. The former came closer to being true than the latter, because at least there were some small trees growing here and there among the mobile homes and modular housing that made up the park's residences. Those trees provided a little shade. But there wasn't anything resembling a hill anywhere in sight on these plains. You had to go farther west along the border to find that.
It was evening when Stark reached the park, a little after supper time. His doctor's appointment had been at one o'clock, he had come out of the office a little before two, and after the dust-up with Chuy, Angel, and the third would-be pickup thief, he had spent the rest of the afternoon being questioned by the police and the district attorney.
Then Chief Feasco had caught him on the way out of the station and asked to talk to him for a minute. Dennis “Fiasco,” as he was sometimes called (as opposed to “Feesko,” as he pronounced it), was a good man. Stark didn't know him all that well, but he was confident that Feasco was honest and did his best in a thankless job.
By now the sun wasn't quite down yet, but it hung big and red and low above the western horizon, and the heat of the afternoon was beginning to give way to the slightly cooler temperatures of evening. Some of the residents were sitting out on their covered porches and decks, sipping iced tea and getting some fresh air after supper. Others strolled up and down the neatly paved roads that divided the park into a grid. The park was owned by a retired aerospace engineer and his wife, and they did a good job of keeping it well cared for.
Stark pulled up in the parking area next to his gray doublewide. The mobile home was bigger than he really needed, but after living all his life on the Diamond S, he liked to have some room to spread out when he wanted to.
His neighbor to the right was Alton Duncan, who had been an insurance claims adjuster before retirement. The mobile home to the left of Stark's was occupied by Fred and Aurelia Gomez. Fred had taught high school math and Aurelia had been a bookkeeper, so they had a love of numbers in common. The Gomezes were sitting in folding lawn chairs on the little patch of grass in front of their home while Alton Duncan had the hood of his '64 Mustang raised and was doing something with the engine.
Fred was on his feet by the time Stark got out of the pickup. Even though Aurelia called after him, “Now, Fred, don't be a nuisance,” he hurried over to Stark.
“John Howard, are you all right?” he asked. “We heard about you on the news.”
“You and half the county, I expect, Fred,” Stark said. “I'm fine. Didn't even muss my hair.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn't have to worry about that, no matter how much trouble I got into,” Fred said as he ran a hand over his head and grinned. Except for bushy gray eyebrows, he was bald as an egg, and shaped about like an egg, too.
Alton Duncan came over to join them, wiping his hands on a rag as he did so. His hairline had receded quite a bit, but he still had a lot more hair than Fred. He said, “You shouldn't have put those punks in the hospital, John.”
“Oh?” Stark said.
“No, you should've put 'em in the morgue. Lowlifes like that are a waste of perfectly good oxygen.”
“Better be careful, Alton,” Fred advised. “All of them were Hispanic. Racist talk like that violates their civil rights. The feds will be coming here to arrest you before you know it.”
Duncan's eyes narrowed for a second before Fred grinned and punched him lightly on the arm, saying, “Hey, I'm just screwin' with you, man. I hate punks like that even more than you do. You think it's easy being named Gomez when it seems like every piece of gutter trash in the world is trying to drag your whole race down with them?”
“Yeah, I guess you're right,” Alton said. He turned to Stark again and went on, “Seriously, John, are you gonna be in trouble with the law over this? Because if you are, I know a really good attorneyâ”
As if on cue, the front door of Alton's mobile home opened and an attractive woman with short blond hair came out onto the deck. She said, “I guess I'll be going now, Popâoh, John Howard, you're back.” Trimly built, wearing blue jeans and a silk blouse, she came down the steps and crossed the yard to join the group of men. “I heard about what happened. Are you all right?”
“I'm fine, Hallie,” Stark told her.
Alton said, “I was just saying to John that if he needs a lawyer, I know where he can find a good one.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Pop,” Hallie Duncan said, “but I think I liked it better back in the old days before lawyers were allowed to advertise.”
“Hey, that's not advertising,” Alton protested. “That's just good word of mouth.”
“Your dad's got a point, Hallie,” Fred said.
Stark enjoyed the banter, even though he wasn't really the sort to take much part in it, being more the quiet type. The strong, silent type, like Gary Cooper, Elaine had sometimes teased him.
He was aware that Hallie was watching him. She visited her father often, nearly every day, and cooked a lot of meals for him. Stark knew that she was in her early fifties, although she looked at least a decade younger than that, and that her husband, who had also been a lawyer, had died of a heart attack several years earlier. She had always used her maiden name in their law practice, Alton had told Stark, so after she was widowed she just kept on using it.
She was a pretty woman, and she looked at Stark with an interest that made him a little uncomfortable. He wasn't searching for romance, but if he had been, he could have done a heck of a lot worse than beautiful, intelligent Hallie Duncan.
But he'd been happily married for a long time, and although the pain of Elaine's tragic death had faded somewhat, he knew it would never go away completely. His memories were companion enough for him.
“I heard on the news that the Justice Department is going to investigate the incident,” Hallie went on. “Why do you suppose Washington is taking such an interest in a simple vehicle theft, John Howard?”
“You know why,” Alton answered before Stark could say anything. “The man's got some powerful enemies up there. They had to lay off him for a while because he was such a hero to people, but they figure enough time has gone by now that most folks have forgotten about what happened before. Those bureaucrats didn't forget how you stood up to the government, though, John, and they never will.”
“My dad's right,” Hallie said. “This has all the makings of a vendetta.”
“That's crazy,” Stark said. “The government wouldn't come after an innocent man that way, just to make a point.”
Hallie, Alton, and Fred all looked at him as if they thought he had to know better than that. And truthfully, he did. The politicians running things now, and their willing accomplices in the mainstream media, liked to tout their sweeping, progressive ideas, but at the same time they could be as petty, spiteful, and vindictive as five-year-olds.
They threw tantrums about like five-year-olds, too, when they didn't get their way.
“Right now, all I know is that the district attorney isn't going to pursue any sort of case against me,” Stark said. “If that changes, or if anything else comes up, I'm liable to be giving you a call, Hallie.”
“I hope you mean that, John Howard.” She leaned over and gave her father a kiss on the cheek, then told him, “I'll see you tomorrow.”
“You don't have to come over here and cook for me every day, you know,” Alton told her.
She laughed.
“If I didn't, you'd live on Vienna sausages and Froot Loops.”
“Throw in some beer and it's a perfectly balanced diet,” Alton insisted.
Laughing, Hallie waved at the other men and headed for her car, which was parked next to her dad's vintage Mustang.
“Hell of a girl,” Alton said as she drove away. He glanced at Stark. “And she likes you, John.”
“You're only about twelve years older than me,” Stark pointed out. “You wouldn't want an old geezer like me for a son-in-law.”
“Don't be so sure about that.”
“Hallie just regards me as somebody to be looked after, the same way she thinks of you.”
Alton shook his head and said, “That just shows how much you know.”
Alton might have a point there, Stark thought as he said his good nights and went on into his mobile home.
As crazy as the world was getting, he wasn't sure he knew much of anything anymore.