corn bread, chili, and tri-tip steak.
Close to the restored camp, bare wooden shacks were still occupied by migrants-Hispanics, not Okies- tending nearby onion fields. The shacks weren't as nice as the freshly painted Weedpatch barracks. Payne wondered if anyone noticed the irony.
A roadside sign announced the dusty little town of Arvin, the 'Garden in the Sun.' They found a sporting goods store with a rest room in the back. While he waited for Tino, Jimmy bought two baseball gloves, a big- webbed, Wilson brown steerhide for himself, and a Mizuno black pigskin youth model for Tino. Then he grabbed two handfuls of Pony League balls.
Payne was already in the driver's seat, engine running, when Tino hopped in and found his new glove waiting. 'For me?'
'You look like a shortstop to me. Lots of range.'
'Oh, man!' A smile rippled across the boy's face like a cool breeze on a mountain lake. 'After those cabrons stole my glove, I didn't know when I'd ever get another one.'
'Once we find your mom, we'll play some ball, see what you've got.' Payne thinking of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams saying, 'You wanna have a catch?'
They drove off, Tino running his fingertips over the raised red seams of one of the balls. Then he pounded the ball into the pocket of the glove, over and over. Payne imagined the boy sleeping with the ball and glove.
They passed Bakersfield and Delano, Pixley and Tipton, the temperature soaring as they drove deeper into the valley. With the Mustang's top down and the hot air enveloping them, Payne was reminded of his college job in a pizza shop, manning the ovens.
In nearby fields, cows lazed under shade trees. A few lonely oil wells pumped endlessly to their own rhythm. Neat rows of grapes formed straight lines across finely tended vineyards. Fat, round peaches dangled heavily from tree limbs. Hispanic men in hats and long-sleeve shirts hauled honeydews, big as volleyballs, to waiting wagons.
There were almond trees and melon fields and berry patches. Lettuce and tomatoes, asparagus and artichokes, all soaking up the sun, crystalline water exploding in great plumes from rotating sprinklers, rainbows dancing in the mist.
Towering silos of grain stood like missiles alongside railroad tracks that paralleled the highway. Warehouses and pallet yards and fertilizer tanks and billboards with the reminder, Crops Grow Where Water Flows.
There seemed to be nothing here that wasn't devoted to the soil and its bounty. Could migrants be blamed for believing that America was paved, if not with gold, with tasty treasures ripe for the picking?
The Dodgers game was lost to static, and Payne twirled the old-fashioned radio dial. He found a Spanish- language station and another in Portuguese, then stopped when he heard Los Lobos belting out 'Good Morning Aztlan.' He remembered how much Sharon loved the up-tempo song and how she once told him to listen carefully to the lyrics. All about not trying to run and hide away. 'Here it comes, here comes another day.'
He was never much for drawing philosophical lessons from music, be it 'Margaritaville' or 'Ave Maria.' But who could argue with that message? He had been running. Ever since Adam died. Running from his grief, hiding under a mountain of pain. Not caring about the next sunrise or the new day.
Helping Tino had energized and focused him. He anticipated the pure joy of the boy's reunion with his mother and his own joy of helping them, asking nothing in return. But then what? Sharon's words came back to him. 'You'll wake up the next morning, and Adam will still be gone. And you know what? Tino will be out of your life, too.'
With that thought tormenting him, Payne saw a billboard along the road. It would have been hard to miss.
Dominating the sign was a three-story-high likeness of Simeon Rutledge, a crooked smile on his craggy, cowboy face. And this greeting: Rutledge Ranch and Farms, Inc., Welcomes You to Kings County. Drive Carefully.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Detective Rigney answered the phone in his Parker Center office. Surprised to hear Deputy Sheriff Dixon calling from his piece-of-shit trailer outside Calexico. Rigney could practically smell the ratty boar's head on the wall.
'Just got a call from a waitress at the Park 'n Eat,' Dixon told him. 'A diner up by Thermal. Technically, that's in Riverside County, out of my jurisdiction, but-'
'Get to the point, Dixon, before global warming fries our asses.'
'Payne and the kid were there. Had breakfast this morning. Want to know what they ate?'
'She's sure it's them? She's absolutely sure?' Excitement bubbling up like the oil at the tar pits.
'She I.D.'ed them from a TV report. Said the guy was a real smart-ass.'
'That'd be Payne.'
'He used the pay phone. Twice. One call out, one call in.'
'You gonna subpoena the numbers?'
'Don't need to. My sister-in-law works at the phone company. I'll have everything in an hour.'
'Can't wait to see that bastard's face when I bust him.' Thinking the A-Form would report that the subject resisted arrest, resulting in his subsequent injuries.
'They left in a hurry,' Dixon said. 'An old blue Mustang convertible. The waitress couldn't make out the plates, except they were out of state. Car headed north toward an entrance to the I-10.'
A physical sensation, Rigney's skin tingling, like the anticipation of sex. 'You did great, Dixon. Sorry for busting your chops.'
'It's okay. I just want a piece of that shyster.'
'You got it, pal. You can have whatever's left when I'm done with him.'
FIFTY-NINE
The teenage girl with the black curly hair threw her head back and made a sound somewhere between gargling and drowning.
Her idea of an orgasm, Simeon Rutledge thought. Probably watched too many telenovelas on Univision. Taking her doggie style over a bale of straw, he continued thrusting, but his heart wasn't in it. He slapped her butt once, twice, three times. Firm as a honeydew.
She looked back over her shoulder, her tongue darting out and licking her lower lip. 'Ride me, jefe! Fuck me hard!'
Where was she coming up with this shit? His mind wandered to the broken pump on Irrigation Culvert Number Three.
Jesus, was there anything more pathetic than a lackluster fuck?
He didn't blame the girl. She moaned and whooped and wailed and chanted, '?Dios mio!?Dios mio!?Dios fucking mio!'
Put a lid on it, chica. Nobody's that good. Not even me.
Not that he wasn't damn proud of his virility. Funny thing about sex, the more you do it, the more you want it. The less you do it, the easier it is to do without.
That panocha pie he'd been breaking in at the club had stirred up the juices. Marisol. Passive when drugged, she'd turn into a hellcat, he figured, given enough time.
Just now, his member was barely at half-staff, but Ana or Anita or Angelita-he never quite caught her name-was caterwauling like a coyote.
This morning, Rutledge had not planned on a barn-banging. But Beatriz, the girl's mother, an assistant crew chief who'd been working for him for twenty years, brought her around when he'd been checking out the south peach orchard. Elegant Ladies, fat and firm with a pink blush, were at their peak in the summer heat. Rutledge