Ted Bell - Spy

“What are you, Caparina? Some kind of spy or something?”

“I keep my eyes open.”

“Good. We’ve got something in common. Now, let me go. Okay?”

There was noise coming up the steps beyond the door. Caparina hopped off the bed and pulled her flowered blue cotton dress over her head and smoothed it down over that spectacular body. She was one of those women who look almost as good dressed as they do naked. She stepped into her pale blue panties, wiggled her butt as she hiked them up under her dress, and smiled at Harry.

Harry lifted his head and stared at the door. “Shit. They’re coming up the steps. Get me out of these cuffs, will you? Hurry up.”

“I can’t. No key.”

“No key? What?”

“We were playing a game. ‘Who’s the prisoner?’ You lost when you swallowed the key, remember?”

“Aw, shit, Caparina, they’re at the door. Can you at least throw the damn sheet over me or something? Jesus. This is embarrassing.”

“Say please.”

“No.”

“Harry?”

“Please.”

“Good boy, Harry.”

She was bent over picking the sheet up off the floor when the wooden door swung open and a man stepped inside, looking at the scene on the bed with a bemused smile.

“Harry?” the man at the door said.

“Saladin?”

“You two know each other?” Caparina said.

“Of course we know each other,” Harry said. “Jesus.”

It was Wellington Saladin Hassan. Few months ago, he’d paid this man a small fortune for finding Alex Hawke and returning him safely to England.

“Who’s got the key?” Saladin asked the two of them, a big smile on his face.

25

PRAIRIE, TEXAS

S unday morning just before noontime Franklin was in the cold barn mucking out the stalls. He had just about finished when he heard an automobile driving too fast up the long dirt drive from the highway. He leaned his pitchfork against the wall and moved over to the open window facing the road. It was Homer in the department’s new Crown Vic Interceptor, barreling up the deeply rutted road at about fifty, kicking up a big rooster tail of dust behind him.

Franklin looked up at the cloudless blue sky, any prayer of a quiet Sunday afternoon sliding away from his mind. He walked out of the barn just as the deputy skidded to a stop between the barn and the house.

“Easy, Homer, no fire out here, son.”

Franklin walked over to the car wondering what was so all-fired important on a Sunday. It had been nine days since the incident at the Wagon Wheel. Homer had been beat up pretty bad. Still and all, he’d been back on the job for three days now and, mercifully, things had been quiet since all the hoopla of the week preceding. He’d even had a few afternoons to finish correcting all the errors in that Texas border presentation he was set to give down there in Florida in a week’s time.

Mostly it was quiet because Rawls and a few bike riders had been locked up down at the courthouse. He’d put them there for a few days until everything cooled down. He’d let most of them go. He’d wanted to hold Rawls longer, based on a tip he’d gotten about six months ago.

A paid informant had told the Laredo PD that Rawls was suspected of involvement with some kind of border smuggling operation. Drugs, guns, and even automobiles coming through tunnels under the border. According to the snitch, Rawls was in bed with corrupt Federales and narcotrafficantes and had been for a long time.

But, they couldn’t prove it yet. Franklin just didn’t have enough to hold him. So he’d released Rawls on his own recognizance, as June called it.

Homer climbed out of the car and put his hat on, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, I been calling you on the phone.”

“When they get the kinks out of those cell phones, maybe I’ll get one. How can I help you, son? I’ve been out here in the barn all morning. Daisy went to church services and then to her prayer group lunch right after. I was just going inside to make a ham sandwich and some ice tea. You want to join me?”

Franklin started for the house and Homer followed.

He said, “What I’ve been calling you about? Somebody’s fixing to get their selves lynched here later on today.”

“Lynched? Who?”

“I don’t know their names. Three Mexican boys, is what I hear.”

“Come on over here on the porch and set in the shade, Homer.”

Franklin was tired. He stepped up on to the porch and went over to the far end and sat in his rocker. There was a tupelo tree at that end of the porch. He and Daisy had planted it as a sapling when they first bought the place. It gave off pretty nice shade this time of day. He pulled out his bandanna and wiped all the sweat off his face. There was a pitcher of lemonade with all the ice melted sitting on the table and he poured two glasses. Then he leaned back against the old rocker and started rocking, scuffing his boot heels across the dusty floorboards.

He said, “Start at the beginning and tell me.”

Homer took off his hat, tilted his head back, and drained his glass. “Like I say, it’s three Mexican kids.”

“Kids?”

“Teenagers, I’m pretty sure. The banditos apparently broke into Sadie Brotherwood’s place last night, looking for liquor in the ranch house. She came home and surprised them.”

“She lives over there on the river, right? What’s it called?”

“The Lazy B. She stayed on the place when Woody died last spring. She didn’t call anybody about the break-in. She got the drop on the boys, put a shotgun on them, and locked them up overnight out in the tool shed. This morning, here about an hour ago, she didn’t hear any noise coming from the shed and she called her brother-in-law, old Ed Parks. Ed apparently came over with a couple of his boys and told Sadie not to call you, said they’d take care of this themselves.”

“These Mexicans are local boys?”

“No, sir. Illegals. Roy Steerman went over there to Brotherwoods with Ed originally, but didn’t want anything to do with it after he got there and left. Been out there in the desert a while seems like. Skin is burned black, Roy said. All of them dehydrated and probably dizzy from drinking their own urine out there. He said when they got there one of them was swimming in the dirt like he thought it was a stream. Like his brain was baked in his brain pan, Roy told me.”

Dixon looked away. How many times in his life would he have to hear this same sad story? The law was the law. But children locked in a shed and dying of thirst was a painful way to enforce it.

“Maybe they weren’t looking for liquor, Homer. Maybe they were just looking for water.”

“That’s just what I told Roy Steers here not half an hour ago. He said, ‘Nobody over at Sadie’s cares two hoots in hell about that. These damn kids are here illegally, broke into a woman’s house to steal her property, and they’re going to string ’em up.’ That’s a direct quotation.”

Franklin got up without a word and went inside the house. A minute later the screen door opened and he came out with his hat on. “Let’s go, Homer,” he said.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER they turned off on the state road that led to the Brotherwood ranch. Homer took a right on to an unpaved stretch and they drove another two miles of barbed wire on either side before they came to the Lazy B. There was a heavy aluminum gate at the entrance to the drive and somebody had closed it and locked it with a length of chain. Homer pulled over on the shoulder across from the gate and got out of the car. He looked both ways and then crossed the baking asphalt to open the gate.

Franklin saw he was having trouble with the lock and started to climb out of the car. That’s when the two big fellas stepped out from inside a dense stand of pecans just inside the gate.