cowboy riding shotgun on a stagecoach through Comanche territory. The California crowd cheered Bode Bonner. But there was no cheer inside Lindsay Bonner.
'Does it get any better?' she said.
'The Leno show?' Jesse said.
'Being a doctor and a nurse in the colonias.'
The child down by the river had been killed by a stray bullet. She was only four years old. The doctor had explained to his nurse that men in Nuevo Laredo often fired their guns into the air, the same as she had seen men do in news reports from the Middle East, as if the bullets do not come down. But they do, often with great force. Enough force to kill a child. The girl was not the first such victim, and she would not be the last. Twenty-four hours later, they both remained shaken by her death. Holding the child on the riverbank and feeling the life that was no more, it had hurt her in a way she had never before experienced.
'No. It does not get better.'
She sighed.
'I wish he wouldn't do that.'
'Go on the Leno show?'
'Make jokes about killing those Mexicans. I have a bad feeling about that.'
FIFTEEN
'Esta el medico? '
A young girl had stepped into the clinic but spoke to Lindsay from the door.
'No.' Lindsay spoke Spanish. 'But he should be back soon. Can I help you?'
The girl dropped her eyes and shook her head. She wore too much make-up and a yellow tube top that revealed her torso and the top of her red lace thong above her low-slung jeans.
'What's your name?'
'Marisol Rivera.'
'That's a pretty name. How old are you?'
'Fifteen.'
'How old is your boyfriend?'
'What boyfriend?'
'The one who got you pregnant.'
'I did not say I was pregnant.'
'But you are.'
The tears came now.
'Why do you come to the doctor?'
'I want an abortion.'
Two hundred thirty-five miles north in Austin, Carl Crawford ate his whole grain muffin and drank his fair trade coffee and watched the morning news and thought, Bode Bonner is the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
The governor's arrival at the L.A. International Airport the day before was the feature segment. The crowd- Californians, for Christ's sake! — hailed him like a conquering king home from the crusades against the Mexicans. Sure, they were cartel gunmen, and yes, they were operating a marijuana farm, and true, they had raped the girl and held those kids as slaves, but… Carl sighed. Anyone else, and he might be cheering, too. But Bode Bonner? Carl had spent the last eight years of his professional life chasing down every scent of scandal emanating from the Governor's Mansion: shady land deals, state appointments to cronies and campaign donors, misuse of campaign funds, even the execution of an apparently innocent man. But nothing stuck to the governor of Texas.
And now he's an American hero.
The only silver lining in Carl's dark cloud of a mind was knowing that no one fell harder or farther than an American hero exposed by scandal. So Carl would continue his search for scandal in the Governor's Mansion, scandal that would drive Bode Bonner from office. The governor's staff was loyal to a fault-but there was always a fault line, a crack in the loyalty of every politician's entourage, one follower who stopped following. He would find that person. He would use that person. He would bring Bode Bonner down. Unless that Mexican drug cartel killed him first, as some drug war experts on the cable talk shows had suggested might happen.
Carl could only hope.
Jesse Rincon had never before had a colonia woman ask him to end a life. These women had nothing in life, yet they desperately wanted to give birth to life. But this girl sitting across his desk now pleaded for an abortion.
'If my employer learns I am pregnant, he will fire me,' Marisol Rivera said in Spanish.
'You work in a maquiladora? '
'Yes. Across the river.'
'What do you make?'
' Un dolar la hora. '
One dollar an hour.
'No. What kind of product do you make? Televisions, toasters, clothes…?'
'Underwear for the gringos, panties and thongs.'
She stood and turned to show her backside. She reached back and pulled the top strap of her red thong up for him to see.
'I take a few from time to time. What they call, a perk.'
'Not as good as health insurance.'
'I save my wages so that one day I might live beyond the wall, perhaps when I am twenty years old.'
She dreamed of living beyond the wall, but she was destined to be yet another pretty chica whose life is derailed by a child before she is sixteen. And Jesse had no doubt that in fifteen years, her daughter would be sitting before him begging for an abortion so that she might live beyond the wall.
'But that dream will not come true, Doctor, if I am fired for being pregnant or if I have this baby. Will you do it?'
'Marisol, I cannot.'
'Why not?'
'I am Catholic.'
'And I am fifteen and pregnant.'
'What are you going to do?'
Marisol Rivera had left. Jesse now shook his head.
'I do not know. It is easy to say a woman should have a right to an abortion, but it is something else to perform the abortion. To end a life. What if my mother had chosen an abortion?'
'She thinks the baby will ruin her life.'
'If I perform the abortion, one day she might live beyond the wall. If I do not, she will surely live out her life on this side of the wall.'
'Is there a doctor in Laredo who will do it?'
'No. There might be one in McAllen, perhaps as far away as Brownsville.' He exhaled. 'Two lives rest in my hands.'
She could tell he needed to think, so Lindsay went over to Inez's vacant desk and updated her medical histories. Jesse sat quietly for a long time. Finally, he stood and began assembling surgical tools by the examining table.
'Find her,' he said.
'Your dad's on Oprah,' Darcy Daniels said.
Becca Bonner lay sprawled on her bed in their dorm room. Asleep. They always napped after volleyball practice. Darcy rolled out of her bed, stepped over to Becca's bed, and gave her a shake. Her eyes opened.
'Your dad's on Oprah.'
