“Is it real?” she asked. “I mean, stupid question, is it legal?”
“It’s real, and it’s clean. But what the IRS doesn’t know can’t hurt it. Just don’t go crazy with it.”
“Don’t think I’m terrible.” She met his eyes for the first time as she idly riffled the bills with her thumbs. “I love, loved, Rick, but he was always difficult. Even before he went in the Rangers when we were both kids. He was always moving. Like a shark. If he stopped moving, he’d stop living.”
“I know,” Dwayne said, his voice just above a whisper.
“But when you called to say he was gone, it was like I already knew, and I was relieved about it. I guess that makes me sound like a bitch.”
“I understand.” And he did. Renzi was a hell of a soldier and a hell of a friend. His problem was that he sucked at everything else in life. That made it hard for anyone who tried to get close.
“Well, if you don’t think I’m a bitch now then you’ll think it when I ask if this is all there is?” she said and gestured with the envelope.
“No, there’s more,” he said. “I’ll send you an envelope like this every six months. But if I see a car newer than two years old in the driveway or find out you’ve been taking vacations in Cabo, you won’t see another dime. I don’t know you. But I know even decent people can get themselves in a shitload of trouble with this kind of cash. I owe it to Ricky. He loved his kids.”
A shrill cry broke the quiet, and a girl of eight burst in from the foyer.
“Ricky’s making French fries in the oven!” the little girl shouted with the deep satisfaction of a serial tattler.
The woman stood and put a hand on the little girl’s shoulder. She turned to Dwayne.
“So, we’re done here?”
“Ricky didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want to hear any more promises. We’re done here?”
“We’re done.”
Dwayne was walking down the sidewalk to his truck when his cell rang. He didn’t recognize the name on the screen at first:
Bernie Lowe.
3
Ranger Hard
Charles “Chaz” Raleigh was near blown out. His body ran with greasy sweat under the heavy cotton running suit. It was supposed to be protecting him from the early morning desert chill, but now it was drenched and clinging to him. His lungs hurt, and his legs were on fire. For all of that, he was feeling good. He just ran ten miles in just over an hour twenty. And he was making good on his promise to Jesus to get his black ass back in better shape.
Only a few weeks from what he called Operation Never Happened, and he’d dropped eight pounds and a couple of waist sizes. He wasn’t back in the same condition he was at Benning, but he was on his way. The first week was tough, but he pushed himself hard. He was mostly motivated by his promise to the Lord. But then there was Jimbo Smalls to answer to.
Jimbo brought Chaz back to the Pima reservation with him and let Chaz crash in the double-wide set back off the road on acreage. That’s what Jimbo thought anyway. The real story was that Chaz wanted to watch over his former Ranger amigo. Jimbo took a shot to the head from a rock thrown by one of those little man-eating motherfuckers back in The Then. He got a wicked concussion and needed some looking after to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid to do more damage to his bruised brain; at least not for a few weeks.
It was good for Chaz, too. He had nowhere to be and, thanks to the million-plus in cash stashed at the bottom of a padlocked chest freezer on Jimbo’s porch, no reason to be anywhere. He ran mornings and evenings and spent the rest of the time lifting weights, napping, and going through Jimbo’s mad collection of DVDs, mostly westerns—a big sixty-inch screen dominated one end of the largest room in the house. He promised Jimbo they’d go do some hunting next week when he was sure the Indian’s head was better.
He could smell the bacon frying even before he saw the squat mobile home through the brush. Chaz forced himself to keep his cool-down pace as his empty stomach growled.
They watched Audie Murphy hunt for his brother’s killers over breakfast. Bacon, eggs with peppers, and tortillas.
“Why in God’s name do you have so many cowboy movies, Jimmy?” Chaz said around a mouthful of eggs.
“I like them.” Jimbo was pouring fresh coffee. “If I fall asleep in the middle, I still know what’s going on when I wake up.”
“I can dig that. Good guys and bad guys, and the only rule is who’s fastest on the draw. But the Indians get the shit end of the stick in most of these.”
“I guess.” Jimbo sat on the edge of a couch upholstered in Pima pattern blanket cloth. “But at least their story gets told. What do the brothers have to look forward to? Movies about pimps and gangbangers.”
“There’s Denzel,” Chaz said.
“Yeah.” Jimbo nodded. “Indians don’t have a Denzel.”
They watched Audie Murphy punch some guys out in a saloon. The sight of the little Texan kicking the ass of guys twice his size might seem comical, but the two ex-Rangers were well aware of Murphy’s military record and even in this Hollywood-phony setting, he had the moves of a stone killer.
“Ever think of going back?” Jimbo said during a slow part when Audie was out in the moonlight with the female lead.
“The Army?” Chaz said.
“The Valley.” That’s how Jimbo referred to it. The basin of rock where they almost died a hundred thousand years before any of them was born. Outnumbered a hundred-to-one by the meanest, nastiest, most-dogged enemy they’d ever faced. They left one
