Steven Havill: Heartshot

I guess I was standing far enough away that the mother, blond and fat herself, thought I hadn’t heard. She bent down and patted the little brute’s stomach and murmured, “Watch the parade, Jerry. He’s just old, that’s all.”

I turned so I could ignore them both, and after five minutes gave up on sucking in my gut. Hell, 210 pounds for five feet eight inches wasn’t that bad. It’s just that the extra pounds tended to collect immediately behind the Sam Browne belt. I crossed my arms and stood comfortably, leaning against the gleaming white fender of the county patrol car. In a minute, I felt a hand on my elbow.

I turned and saw Benny Fernandez, a blocky man shorter than me by a foot. “You ought to get some business out of all this,” I said. Benny owned a fast-food joint down the street that would be mobbed after the parade broke up.

“Hey, maybe,” he said. “How you doin’, Bill?”

“All right.”

He joined me in leaning against the car. “How’s that boy of yours?”

“Which one?”

Benny looked puzzled. “Don’t you have a boy who’s out on the Coast or something?”

I laughed. “I got one on the West Coast, and one down in Corpus. And a daughter in Flint, Michigan, and another one in New Britain, Connecticut.”

“Hey, that’s something,” Benny said, having already forgotten what I’d said. “I got relatives all over this state, man, and when we all get together…” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Hey, and talkin’ about parties…”

“Were we?” I lifted a hand in casual salute as two New Mexico State Police units rolled by, their grille lights pulsing.

“You know what I heard?”

“What did you hear?” I smiled and waved at the Eastern Star ladies, one of whom was particularly attractive, even if silver-haired. She was perched on a hay bale in the back of a new pickup truck, lending moral support to someone pretending to be the Statue of Liberty. I caught her eye, and she threw a handful of penny candy my way. I reached up a finger and tipped my Stetson…and ignored the candy.

“I keep hearin’ about a party tonight.”

“So what?” I remembered then that Benny’s boy had been nailed a month or so ago by the state cops for driving while intoxicated, and that had just about turned Benny’s nice little conservative, parochial world inside out. Somehow it was all right to sneak the twenty miles south, cross the border to raise all kinds of hell in a little cantina somewhere, and return home without disturbing the old folks in Posadas. “It’s summer. A kegger or two goes with the territory.”

“Well, maybe,” he continued lamely, “I just thought I’d mention it to you, you know? I mean, the kids at the restaurant, they were talkin’, you know. I thought I’d just mention it.”

“We’ll keep an eye out, Benny. We’ll check up at the lake.” Our “lake” was just a seepage-filled mining pit up on the mesa, adjoining the National Forest. The water there was clear, cold, attractive, and dangerous as hell.

“I’m still worried about the boy, you know? Ricky, he’s pretty headstrong.”

And DWI-prone, I thought. Keep the little bastard home, then. I said, “Tell you what, Benny. I’m going to be out and around tonight. I’ll pass the word to the other deputies, too. If I see Ricky, I’ll throw him in jail for you until morning.”

“Hey, now, you don’t have to do that, Bill,” Benny protested, grinning. “He’s not a bad kid, I mean. But I thought maybe I should talk to you. Then I saw you here, and I just thought…” He fluttered his hands. Nothing like convenience when a man has a problem.

I straightened my shoulders and hitched up my gun belt as I painted on my best public servant’s face. “Tell the kid to keep ’er slow.” Benny sidled away with a halfhearted wave of his hand, eager to be back in his restaurant slinging burgers.

I could see the last unit of the parade, the antique fire engine owned by the Posadas Volunteers, and figured it was time to beat the crowds out. I started 310, and as I waited for the fire engine, saw the fat little kid who’d tweaked my mood with the comment about my gut. When I pulled 310 out onto Bustos Avenue, I glowered at him, waved an index finger, and said, “Eight points.” The patrol car’s window was up, but I think he understood me. He jumped back up onto the curb, seeking Mama.

By dusk, I’d had enough of parades, crowds, and noise. I drove up the smooth macadam of County Road 43, away from Posadas. The crowds would be gathering in the village park for the July Fourth fireworks display. The peace and quiet of the mesa top would be a good place to watch the rockets…not that I was in the mood for fireworks.

The road wound through the foothills that hid Consolidated Ore’s abandoned mine from casual view, and then passed within a quarter mile of the lake, one of the county’s most popular party spots. I turned off onto the dirt road and kept it slow and easy, windows down, radio turned low. There wasn’t much to listen to except the crunch of the big LTD’s radials on gravel.

The lake covered about three acres, and its attraction was obvious. Sheer rocks formed most of the perimeter, leaving only a hundred yards of semi-smooth, approachable shoreline. If you don’t think it was fun to stand on those sheer palisades on a hot summer night and dive off into the deep, cold water, then you ain’t never been a kid, as they say. Consolidated Ore had fenced the lake off and posted threatening signs every fifty feet. The Forest Service, whose land abutted Consolidated’s, had fenced it from their side. Most of the fences still stood, wires gleaming. The posted signs that remained here and there still carried portions of their original messages. The fences and signs served no useful purpose. Kids just parked outside the wire and slipped through. Or they cut it to make gates. Or just drove through it with four-by-fours until the wire was a useless snarl.

Along the short stretch of shoreline, dark smudges marked previous campfires. A favorite spot was over where the south palisade started, under a rock outcrop that protected the fire from winds and casual view. The rock was smoke-smudged from years of kids watching the embers pop while they worked up courage to do more entertaining things. Part of the attraction, I guess, was to see if you could get plastered before someone came along and told you to scram. Not many kids had drowned in the lake…there was enough of an aura about it that they were careful, even when drunk.

From where I parked, I could see that the shoreline and palisades were deserted. I figured that if I checked back around ten that night, I’d nail any party in the early stages. I headed away from the lake and the mine and spent an hour or so cruising the back roads. I left the busy state highways and county roads to the other two deputies…they were thirty-five years younger than me, and eager. Had it not been for Baker’s pregnant wife, I wouldn’t even have been working. Todd Baker was a nervous Nellie. I had offered to sit his shift for him, and he’d jumped at the chance. It was no sacrifice on my part. We rarely had three deputies working anyway…just on a few busy holidays. The extra coverage almost always turned out to be a waste. I figured to catch up on paperwork later on.

Deputy Bob Torrez jabbered away on the radio, passing license plate numbers to our dispatcher. He was working radar hard, keeping the tourists honest on the state highway. The other deputy, big, slow-talking Howard Bishop, kept quiet. He hated paperwork more than any man I knew, and wrote fewer traffic tickets than I did. If it had been up to him, our combined county files-enforcement, assessor, clerk, highway, everything-would have totaled about two papers. I was constantly on his tail, but it didn’t do any good. Bishop had aspirations toward the FBI, but he wasn’t going to make it, not with his allergy to pencilwork.