'You murder my son, but I am not to seek revenge? The Muslims, they murdered your sons and daughters on nine/eleven, and you sought revenge. You invaded their countries and killed tens of thousands of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, spilling innocent blood to quench your thirst for revenge. Oh, but you are the Americans. You are the righteous avengers. The holy Anglos. They were only the unholy Muslims, and I am only the stupid Mexicano who feels not the sun on my back or the pain in my heart. Who is a manual laborer but not a man. Whose son's life is not worthy of revenge. Who does not deserve justice.
'Is that what you think, Governor?'
He stepped over to the wall rack and removed his prized machete. He returned and raised the blade to the governor's image on the screen.
'Am I not a father? Do I not love my son? Are your sons worthier of revenge and justice than mine? Because I am Mexican and not American? Because my skin is brown and not white? Because I speak Spanish and not English? Because I live south of the river and not north?
'Is that what you think, Governor?'
Enrique de la Garza, Mexican, father, dispenser of justice in Nuevo Laredo, and now seeker of venganza — the man known to the world as El Diablo, head of the notorious Los Muertos drug cartel-said only two more words to Hector Garcia.
'Kill him.'
THIRTEEN
'Mandy! These kids are running around the Mansion like they're at a goddamned McDonald's.'
'Bo- de,' Mandy said, her face contorted in that familiar pretend frown. 'Don't talk like that in front of the kids.'
The Mexican children had brought out the mother in Mandy. She was prepping them for the cameras, smoothing the boys' hair and fixing their clothes, wiping syrup from their pancake breakfast off their faces, and generally having one hell of time corralling the kids into their positions on the floor around Bode. She bribed them with donuts.
It was just after seven the following Monday morning, and Bode Bonner sat on a stool in the living room of the family quarters in the Governor's Mansion surrounded by the thirteen kids. The last forty-eight hours had been a whirlwind. They had remained in West Texas Saturday night. Bode gave statements at the scene that ran on the network evening news and cable outlets. With the majestic Davis Mountains as the backdrop and the governor of Texas holding a high-powered rifle and standing over three dead Mexicans-political candidates always established their manly bona fides by taking reporters on hunting trips, but they only shot ducks-his first national media exposure had garnered the Professor's approval.
'Hell of an introduction to America,' Jim Bob had said.
They wrapped up their post-shooting interviews at the scene with the FBI and the DEA and the Texas Rangers and even the Jeff Davis County Sheriff, a good ol' boy named Roscoe Lee whose county morgue now held the three Mexican hombres on ice. The on-the-ground ruling was 'defense of a third person'; the killings had been justified in order to save another person's life, being little Josefina. No criminal charges would be filed against the governor of Texas. Point a gun at another human being and pull the trigger, and you're either a murderer or a hero. It's a fine line.
Bode Bonner was on the hero side of the line.
After the interviews, they transported the children back to John Ed's lodge in the Hummer like school kids on a class outing. Mandy the madre sat them around the big dining room table, and Rosita fed them beef tacos, refried beans, and guacamole. They ate as if they hadn't eaten in months-until federal agents with 'ICE' in bold white letters on black jackets and big guns on their hips arrived to take them into custody pending deportation. The kids- like every Mexican-knew ICE meant Inmigracion, so the appearance of the agents threw them into a frenzy. They screamed'?Corren! '
— then tossed their tacos at the agents and bolted from the dining room table and scattered about the lodge looking for hiding places; Bode later found little Josefina curled up in a small cabinet beneath a bathroom sink. He had tried to get the ICE agents to calm down, but refried beans and guacamole splattered across their black jackets didn't sit well with the Feds.
'We're taking these Mexicans into custody!'
Bode got in the head ICE-hole's face.
'The hell you are! I found them! They're in Texas-and I'm the goddamned governor of Texas!'
'I don't care if you're the fucking king of Canada! Those kids are coming with us!'
'Prime minister,' the Professor said. 'Canada has a prime minister, not a king.'
The ICE agent gave Jim Bob a 'fuck you' look then said to Bode, 'These kids belong to the federal government.'
'The hell they do,' Bode said.
Governors of the fifty states hate natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires that tear a swath of destruction across the land, and man-made disasters like an offshore oil rig blowout that dumps millions of barrels of oil into pristine waters, and Wall Street gamblers who play high-risk games with the world's economy and lose, busting state budgets in the process; but they reserve their highest degree of hatred for the most arrogant, self-righteous, and overbearing bastards to walk God's green earth.
'Fucking Feds,' Bode said.
Texas Governor Bode Bonner and Texas Ranger Hank Williams put their big bodies between the Feds and the kids. They remained in a Mexican stand-off until Jim Bob made a few calls to Washington. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security worked for a politician, so she sided with politics. The last thing her Democratic president (who wanted Latino votes in the next election) needed was thirteen Mexican kids shown on the national news being perp-walked out of the lodge like criminals by ICE agents under her command. She ordered the agents to stand down. They weren't pleased, particularly when Bode gave the head agent a parting, 'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.' ICE departed in defeat, Bode, Jim Bob, and Hank shared high-fives all around, and Rosita and Pedro searched the lodge calling out to the kids in Spanish: 'Please come out, children. ICE is not going to take you away. The governor is going to take you on the airplane to Austin. You will live in the Governor's Mansion. La mansion del gobernador de Tejas.'
Legal custody of thirteen Mexican children was now vested in the governor of Texas.
The Professor's idea. He said the political lesson learned from Kennedy was that if you surround a handsome politician with cute children the voting public will form a favorable impression of him even if he's screwing Marilyn Monroe on the side. The man didn't have a Ph. D. in politics for nothing. So they had all flown back to Austin Sunday morning in the Gulfstream. They put the kids in the spare bedrooms in the Mansion, but the boys kept running outside to pee on the south lawn. Turns out, they had never before used an indoor bathroom. Bode gave them a Toilet 101 lesson; fortunately, there were no bidets in the Mansion. Once the boys discovered the kitchen-'?Cocina interior! '-and learned that the chef would cook whatever they wanted upon request, they had eaten around the clock while watching Mexican futbol on cable. Mandy signed on as camp counselor, and Lupe adopted them like the children she never had. They laughed and smiled and seemed like normal kids who didn't speak English, not kids who had been held captive for a year on a remote marijuana farm in West Texas.
Except Josefina. She did not laugh or smile.
They were now scrubbed clean and sporting new clothes from the Gap. Mandy and Hank had taken them shopping the day before and charged $3,000 on the campaign credit card. But the kids would look nice on national TV. Because the governor of Texas was about to do what you do in America when you win the lottery or lose a reality show or claim a politician sexually harassed you or get banned from the prom for being a same-sex couple or kill three bad-ass hombres in West Texas: you go on television and tell the nation how you 'feel,' that being critical information all of America needed to know before breakfast-along with that Kardashian girl's latest love fiasco, of course. Bode had always experienced the urge to puke his oatmeal at the pathetic people parading their emotions on the network morning shows, desperate for their fifteen minutes.
Now he was about to join the parade.
