Show of Evil

'I've worked for Martin Vail for ten years. You get to think that way after a while. It's the way he thinks. He hates surprises.'

'So if she ain't here and she didn't leave, where the hell is she?'

Stenner did not answer. He continued his boring chore in silence.

'Sometimes I wish to hell I never heard of Miranda,' St Claire said. 'Sometimes I yearn fer a little Texas justice.'

'What is Texas justice?' Stenner said, and was almost immediately sorry he asked. He was carefully sorting through the stacks of opened mail on the desk. He had piled the day's delivery, unopened, on the opposite corner of the desk.

'Back when I was in the US Marshall's, this was, hell, eighteen, twenty years ago,' St Claire started, 'I got sent down to the Mexican border to sniff out a runner named Chulo Garciez, who got himself busted for running illegals across the border and selling 'em to migrant farms. Two of my best friends were carryin' him up to San Antonio and what they didn't know, Chulo's girlfriend had smuggled him a watch spring in a candy bar. Was a Mars bar, I think, or maybe a Baby Ruth.'

Stenner looked up at him dolefully for an instant and then went back to the mail.

St Claire went on, 'Chulo secrets this here spring in the back of his belt, knowing he would be cuffed behind his back in the back-seat of the car, and he picks the cuffs with the spring, reaches over the front seat, hauls out Freddy Corello's .45, puts two in his head, and empties the other four into Charley Hinkle, who was driving, jumps over the seat, kicks Charley out, pulls onto the verge, kicks Freddy out, and heads back to the border in the government car. They find it about ten miles from Eagle Pass right on the border. So I go down to the Border Patrol station in Eagle Pass and that's where I met Harley Bohanan, who was about six-seven and weighed two-fifty and made John Wayne look like a midget. Carried an old-fashioned .44 low on his hip, like Wayne.'

'Uh-huh.'

'I tell my story to ol' Harley and he says he knows Garciez and he is one bad-ass Mex and maybe he can help me and he puts me up in this awful goddamn adobe motel outside a town with roaches as big as wharf rats and no air conditionin'. Has a damn ceiling fan so big it'd suck yer eyeballs out. You had to keep your eyes closed when you laid under it.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Two nights later Harley is bangin' on my door at four in the mornin' and we drive out towards Quemado and right there on the river in a little boxed canyon there's a dozen wannabe wetbacks, all shot in the back of the head, stripping clean, even had their gold teeth knocked out. Harley is snoopin' around and suddenly he says, 'One of 'em got away.' Sure enough, we pick up some barefoot tracks and we follow them for a couple hours and finally come on this illegal cowerin' in a little cave in the desert. Poor son-bitch dyin' a thirst.'

'Uh-huh.'

'He tells us they were set up by a federalee captain name a… hell what was his name?… uh, Martino, Martinez, something like that, and a guy named Chulo, who was supposed to pick 'em up at the border and take 'em to find work on this side, only instead Chulo and the federalee started shootin' them. This fella just lucked out. Harley knows who this federalee is. That night we ford the Rio Grande - it's about a inch deep there - in his Jeep and the federalee is drinkin' in a cantina. We wait till he comes out and Harley grabs him like you'd grab a puppy by the back of the neck and throws him in the back of the Jeep and we drive back down to the river and he throws the Mex out into the river and then pulls down his pants. He pulls out that .44 and it don't have any front sight on it. Filed off. He goes into the chest on the back of the Jeep, takes out an old, dirty can of ten-weight motor oil, dips the muzzle of the .44 in the can, and then shoves this federalee down on the knees and bends him over and, as I stand here, swear't'God, sticks the muzzle of the pistol about an inch and a half up the federalee's ass and says, 'Where's Chulo? I count't'three and I don't know, I'm gonna blow your brains out the hard way.' '

'Uh-huh,' Stenner said, still examining the mail.

'An hour later we're outside a cantina on the US side. There's Chulo's truck and he's inside drinkin' beer and playin' with some little hot-stuff senorita and Harley pulls out a knife the size of Mount Everest and carves a hole outta the rear tyre on the truck. I stroll into the bar and order a Corona and I say, in Mex, 'That truck out there's got a flat.' Chulo gets up and stomps out the door, me kinda amblin' behind him. He goes to the back a the truck and he's leaning over examinin' the damage and Harley steps around from behind it with his .44 drawn and says, 'Garciez, yer under arrest fer draft dodgin',' and Chulo jumps up and makes th' mistake of reachin' under his arm and kaBOOM, ol' Harley blows a hole through that sorry son-bitch you could drive his truck through. And y' know what ol' Harley says? 'Costs twenty bucks a day to house a US prisoner and Chulo was lookin' at twenty years. Hell, Harve, we just saved the taxpayers about a hundred grand.' That's what I mean by Texas justice.'