C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-ONE
The punch might have torn Ben's head off, but it was too slow and ponderous. Before it could land Ben ducked under it, stepped in, and hooked a powerful punch of his own to the man's midsection. The man doubled over, turning a little green as his eyes bugged out, and Ben hit him again with blinding speed and enough force to send him sprawling under the feet of the men who had come into the park with him. They had already started toward Ben, yelling and cursing, but the ones in front stumbled over their fallen comrade.
That slowed down the charge long enough for Stark, Reuben Torres, Nick Medford, and several other men to meet it.
They got between the troublemakers and the entrance to the community center. Stark ordered, “You men back off!”
They ignored the command and started throwing punches. Stark blocked a fist coming at his head and coun-terpunched, slamming his fist into the man's midsection. The man staggered back, looking as green as if he'd been kicked in the belly by a mule.
The fight didn't last long. Deputies ran up and got between the Shady Hills residents and the men who claimed to come from Dry Wash.
“They're frauds,” Ben said. “Check their IDs and their voter registration cards. The cards are phonies.”
“That's a damned lie!” one of the men blustered. “You're just tryin' to disenfranchise us!”
“What's that? What's that?”
The excited cries made Stark look over his shoulder. Justice Department observers and ACLU lawyers were practically stepping on each other in their eagerness to reach someone who claimed that their rights had been violated. A couple of the deputies were having a hard time keeping them back. One man shouted, “I'm from the federal government! Get out of my way! A disadvantaged citizen needs help!”
Stark's mouth twisted in disgust.
One of the deputies asked wearily, “Can somebody who actually knows what he's talking about tell me what's going on here?”
The election judge who had challenged the first man's voter registration card spoke up, pointing to the offender and saying, “That man attempted to vote with a fraudulent card. If I can examine the cards of the other men, I can tell you whether or not they're legitimate.”
“You heard the man,” the deputy told the men. “Let's see those cards.”
“We don't have to show 'em to you,” a man insisted.
“You don't have to vote, either. You can turn around and go back where you came from.”
Across the street, the protesters began to chant, “Disenfranchisement! Disenfranchisement!”
Stark wondered just when and how he had wandered into an insane asylum without noticing.
Or was it just that the whole country had gone crazy over the last few decades as the government and the news media had force-fed the population one perverted idea after another? Those perversions didn't have to do with just sex, either. Everything, from schools to business regulations to courts, had been twisted almost beyond recognition in the pursuit of so-called progressive ideas that didn't add up to anything except class warfare and taxing the “rich”âwhich included practically every small businessman and entrepreneur in the countryâinto oblivion, while at the same time spending so much and regulating so much that the national economy was always in danger of crashing down in flaming ruins. None of it bore any relation to anything resembling good old common sense.
It was all just plumb loco, as the old Westerners would say, and anyone who tried to change it ran the risk of being crushed. Stark had seen it time and again. He had been the victim of it himself.
And he greatly feared that nothing short of violent revolution would be able to change it now.
But that didn't mean he and those who believed like him were going to quit trying. Not as long as they believed in the ideal of America.
That was never going to change.
The deputies weren't backing down, Stark had to give them credit for that. After a moment, the leader of the group of poll-crashers sneered and said, “None of this matters anyway. Let's get out of here.”
“Yeah,” another man said. “I didn't want to vote anyway.”
Still casting hostile glares at the deputies and the Shady Hills residents, the men turned and walked back to their pickups. They got in and drove away, tires squealing on the pavement.
Stark turned to Ben LaPorte and clapped a hand on the smaller man's shoulder.
“Glad you were here to step in and stop those fellas, Ben,” he said.
“Like I told you when I first came down here, we may not be fancy in Dry Wash, but we're law-abidin' folks,” Ben said. “I don't like it when trash like that claims to be from my home.” He smiled. “I guess after today I can tell people my hometown is Shady Hills.”
“And we'll all be proud for Shady Hills to claim
you
,” Stark told him.
With the skirmish over, the election proceeded. After a while the protesters got bored with shouting, “Disenfranchisement!” and went back to their other chants and slogans. Stark had learned how to pretty well tune those out, the same way he did with the rap music from the Black Panthers' sound truck. He and his friends went back to escorting voters to the community center.
One thing worked in the residents' favor as the day went on: not many things were more boring than an election. There was nothing glamorous or exciting about watching voters troop in and out of the community center. The reporters and cameramen withdrew to their satellite trucks. Some of the protesters put their signs down and sat on the ground under the few shade trees along the road. Even though the day could have been a lot hotter, once the temperature hit eighty degrees and the sun was shining brightly, standing around out in the open got pretty warm, pretty fast.
Sheriff Lozano showed up again in the middle of the afternoon. He said to Stark, “I got a report that there was a little fracas out here this morning.”
“It didn't amount to much,” Stark said. “Your deputies did a good job of stepping in to break it up before things got out of hand.”
“I'm glad to hear it. How's the turnout been so far?”
“Good,” Stark said. “I think most of the people who live here in the park have already voted.”
“The polls close at seven o'clock?”
Stark nodded.
“That's right. In accordance with Texas election law.”
“Did you have any advance voting?”
“Weren't required to,” Stark said. “Today is the whole shebang.”
“All right. I'll have deputies on hand as long as the polls are open and until all the votes are counted.”
As it turned out, that wasn't really necessary, although Stark was glad to have the law enforcement personnel around. By six o'clock, with still an hour of voting left, the protesters had trudged back out to the buses and driven off. The Black Panthers had shut down their sound truck and likewise disappeared. The actual voting had slowed down to a trickle. Stark and his friends gathered on folding chairs outside the community center to wait for everything to be over.
“It went pretty well, I think,” Jack Kasek said. He looked at Hallie. “Nothing happened that can be used to challenge the results in court, did it?”
“Not that I saw,” she said. “Those people from the Justice Department and the ACLU have been in there all day, watching everything like hawks. I can tell by their expressions that they're frustrated because they haven't seen anything they can pounce on. It's driving them crazy.”
“So now we just hope for the best on the vote count,” Stark said.
“I don't think we have anything to worry about,” Reuben Torres said. “Earlier some of those reporters were interviewing voters when they came back out, doing what they call exit polls. Nearly everybody was willing to answer when the reporters asked them how they voted, and I didn't hear a single person say that they voted against incorporation.”
“I'm sure some people did,” Hallie said. “But I think the question is going to pass in the affirmative.”
Aurelia Gomez and some of the other women showed up with sandwiches and iced tea, and there were soft drinks in ice chests. It was sort of like an old-fashioned church supper on the grounds, Stark thought, and that put a good feeling inside him. No matter how crazy the world got, no matter what personal trials he went through, he still had his friends, the good people who surrounded him now. He still had beautiful Texas evenings like this one. And he still had hope that everything would turn out all right.
Night had fallen and it was close to ten o'clock when the Justice Department observers and the ACLU lawyers trudged out of the community center looking depressed. That was enough right there to tell Stark the outcome of the election. But a moment later one of the election judges came out and announced, “Here's the final tally, folks. Four thousand three hundred and sixty-seven in favor of the incorporation of Shady Hills as a legal town, and five hundred and ninety-eight against.”
Several hundred people had gathered in front of the community center by now. As they heard those results, a loud, excited cheer went up. People slapped each other on the back in congratulations. Husbands and wives embraced. Reuben Torres and Antonio Gomez, who had been talking to each other most of the evening, high-fived.
Hallie threw her arms around Stark and hugged him.
“We did it, John Howard,” she said. “We won. Shady Hills is a town now.”
“That it is,” Stark agreed. He wasn't sure how much real difference the election's outcome would make, but it was a symbolic victory, for sure, and a first step in the right direction to restoring law and order in the area.
“So, don't you think you could unbend enough to share a victory kiss with me?” Hallie asked as she looked up into his face.
Stark wasn't sure it was a good idea . . . but how the hell could a man refuse a suggestion like that one?
Good idea or not, he kissed her.
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-TWO
No one paid any attention to the man standing toward the back of the crowd. Despite being very fit, he looked old enough that he might be retired. As the people around him whooped and cheered at the announcement of the election results, he was more restrained. But he smiled and applauded, just so no one would notice a lack of reaction and think it odd. People tended to remember things that were odd.
From where he was standing, from time to time he caught a glimpse of John Howard Stark through gaps in the crowd. His smile widened as he saw Stark kissing a tall blond woman who looked considerably younger than him.
“Why, John Howard, you old dog,” Ryan murmured to himself. “I guess you're not in mourning for your wife anymore.”
In fairness, it had been several years since Stark's wife died, and anyway, Stark's personal life was Ryan's business only to the extent that it might affect the job that had brought him back here to Texas. If he could use Stark's relationship with the woman to help him accomplish his goal, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.
But what, exactly,
was
his goal? Over the past few days Ryan had been forced to ask himself that question. He knew what he'd been paid to do, of course: kill John Howard Stark.
So why hadn't he done it before now? Ryan couldn't answer that, unless it was simply that he was curious to see what Stark would do next. The man was unpredictable, a wild card, just the sort of loose cannon that Ryan's employers hated.
But a game with a wild cardâor twoâin it was the most interesting and exciting kind, wasn't it?
Ryan smiled and clapped softly and bided his time.
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“What is it?” the president asked in a surly voice. He was in his residence quarters now, not downstairs in the Oval Office, but when the word had come that the attorney general wanted to see him, the president had said to send him on up. His children were all grown, and the first lady had long ago stopped giving a damn whether he spent his evenings with her or not.
“We just got word from Texas,” the AG said. “Stark and his friends won their election. That trailer park of theirs is now a separate town, along with some of the surrounding area. I'm not sure exactly what the boundaries areâ”
“That doesn't matter, does it?” the president interrupted him. “What's important is that they won. Didn't you have people there to watch for voting irregularities?”
“Of course I did,” the attorney general said, sounding a little put out. “And there were ACLU lawyers all over the place, too. Those Texans did everything exactly the way they were supposed to. There was one minor incident where some people who wanted to vote were turned awayâ”
“There you go,” the president said excitedly. “That's voter suppression. Disenfranchisement! File a lawsuit!”
“But their registration cards were phonies, and crude ones at that,” the attorney general went on. “A suit on their behalf wouldn't stand up in court.”
The president frowned.
“I must say, I'm a little disappointed in you,” he told the AG. “When you're trying to bring about the proper outcome of an election, you can't take halfway measures. You have to be professional and competent about it.”
“I'm sorry, I couldn't find enough corpses to vote on short notice,” the Attorney General snapped.
The president pulled in a deep breath and drew himself up straighter. He glared and said, “I think you've forgotten who you're talking to.”
“I apologize for my tone, sir,” the AG forced out through tight lips. “But we can't just completely run roughshod over the election process. People still have to believe that we have
some
respect for the rule of law.”
“I suppose so,” the president agreed with a frustrated sigh, “but it's damned inconvenient. What do we do now?”
“I'll talk to my people who were there and go over every detail of the election. Maybe we can find something to justify filing a suit to overturn the results . . . but from what I've heard so far, I wouldn't count on it.”
“Didn't the national committee have protesters there? They were supposed to coordinate that.”
“Of course, and the Black Panthers were on hand, too. But those are tough old birds down there in Texas, sir. They don't frighten easily.”
“And that fellow Stark must be the toughest one of all.” The president looked sharply at the AG. “I thought you were handling that as well.”
“I don't know what you're talking about, sir,” the attorney general responded instantly.
“I meanâ”
“I don't know what you're talking about, sir.”
This time the president got it. He said, “Oh. Yes. Of course. I don't know what I'm talking about, either. Not a clue.”
“Just don't say that where the media can hear it, sir, and you'll be all right.”
The president frowned. He wasn't sure if the AG was making fun of him or not. He brushed that aside and said, “You know, I wonder if we're blowing this up to be more important than it really is. So some trailer park in Texas votes to become a town. So what? Would people even have noticed if we hadn't sent in observers and if there hadn't been protests?”
“They would have noticed, because Stark is involved,” the AG said. “If we hadn't stepped in to put our spin on it right from the start, the media would have built him up to be even more of a folk hero. This way we made him look more like a radical, a right-wing extremist.”
“Why would they build him up? They're supposed to be on our side.”
“They are,” the AG said, “but they still have to deliver ratings, too. In the end, they'll always go for a big story, no matter what it is. It's up to us to control the way it's presented.”
“I suppose you're right.” The president sighed, then brightened. “But if Stark were to go awayâ”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” the attorney general said again.
But they both knew what the president was talking about . . . and it couldn't happen soon enough to suit them.
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Like any businessman, Tomás Beredo, a.k.a. Señor Espantoso, had a lot to keep up with. The cartel's drug smuggling operation in this area consumed most of his time, of course, but there were also guns to be bought and sold, along with the recruitment of new soldiers, not only along the border but also in the major cities throughout Texas.
Human resources, the Americans call this
, Beredo had reflected wryly more than once. He was good at taking human beings and getting what he wanted out of them. Human resources, indeed.
And if those resources became used up and had to be discarded . . . well, that was the way of business, eh? There were always more resources.
On top of that, the cartel did a brisk business in taking illegal immigrants across the border. At one time, most of the coyotes had been independent operators, but now they all worked for the cartel. Sure, it was penny-ante stuff compared to the billions of dollars raked in from drugs, but it helped from the recruitment standpoint. Take a man's wife and children across the border so they could be with him, and he would be more agreeable when the cartel needed a favor in the future.
Beredo had seen the American movie called
The Godfather
. He had even paraphrased a line of dialogue from it once, telling a rival at a tense meeting, “Leave the gun. Take the enchilada.” Mobsters had been amateurs compared to his organization, but they had laid useful groundwork.
So with all that going on, it was difficult for him to keep track of everything that went on in his area of operations.
It was hard to miss the news about that damned retirement park, though. The story was all over the TV and the newspapers.
SHADY HILLS WINS ELECTION, BECOMES TOWN.
It was annoying.
It became even more so when Gabir Patel said smugly, “I thought you were going to make those old people run away so you can take our drugs through there.”
Our
drugs, thought Beredo. At that moment, it was all he could do not to take out a gun and put a bullet through the head of the arrogant Lebanese. For some reason, though, the hombres in Mexico City, the leaders of the cartel, insisted that their partnership with Hezbollah be made to work. So Beredo resisted the impulse and summoned one of his bodyguards instead.
“Bring me Ignacio Montez,” he ordered. The bodyguard went away to carry out the command. Beredo went on to Patel, “My hope was that the Americans would tear themselves apart, as they always do, and that they would be responsible for their own defeat. This time that didn't happen.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Send them a message. By now they probably think that we've forgotten them.” Beredo smiled. “Soon they will know that the cartel never forgets.”