states had ordered what little National Guard they had left to help the Border Patrol out with skirmishes. The president had ordered 6,000 more Guardsmen down to the border. He just hoped all this wasn’t a case of too-little- too-late. The Border Patrol, the agents he knew personally, were plumb wore out. It was a thankless task.
God help them if it got any worse.
He had a bottle of good bourbon over on the bedside table. His eye lit on it, but he didn’t even feel like getting up and pouring himself one. Ever since he’d spoken to Daisy on the phone here about ten minutes ago, he’d felt kind of let down. Sad and lonely wasn’t a feeling he was all that familiar with.
Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.
That’s what Daisy had said before she hung up the phone. When he was home, that was always the next to the last thing she said before she fell asleep with her long perfumed hair all spread out on the pillow.
Sweet dreams and leave your problems behind you, that was the very last thing she’d say.
He missed her so bad his heart hurt.
He woke with a start and realized he must have dozed off in his rocker. It was dark outside, and rain was blowing in. The window shades were flapping so hard he was afraid they’d bust off the rollers. He got up to shut everything down and realized what woke him wasn’t the wind. It was the phone ringing off the hook on the bedside table. He picked up, wondering who in the world would call him here besides Daisy.
“Sheriff Dixon,” he said out of habit.
“Sheriff ! I’m so glad I got you! Lord, you’re not going to believe this one!”
It was June Weaver, who ran the courthouse switchboard. She sounded all out of breath.
“June, after two days in Key West, I’d believe just about anything anybody tells me. What’s going on?”
“Well, you know today was my son Travis’s big football game? The play-offs for the State Championship?”
He’d forgotten, but he said, “Yep.”
“I was driving home after the game, just minding my own beeswax, you know, like I do, and I said, I saw, I mean, I saw—”
“June-bug, slow down. You sound like you’re about to have a heart attack. Where are you?”
“Yes, sir. I’m home. Just ran in the door.”
“Sit down and tell me what you saw.”
“Well. I was on the highway headed home. I saw something moving on my right. Over where the river makes that lazy loop, you know, where nobody should be that doesn’t have a perfect right to be there.”
“I know where you mean. No Border Patrol around?”
“No, sir. Well, I slowed down fast just to see. At first I thought it was big trucks coming across the river. But that didn’t make sense so I stopped and got out of the car. Luckily, I had my video camera, from taping the football game, laying on the front seat of the Olds. When I got out of the car, I took it with me just in case, it was something, you know, interesting.”
“What was it, June?”
“What I think it was?”
“What you think it was.”
“I think it was Mexican Army units in military Humvees crossing the Rio Grande, that’s what I think.”
Dixon took a deep breath and said, “Why do you think that, June?”
“I know what they look like, Sheriff. You know that. I was with you a few years ago, when you got that award citation from Mexico down in Laredo. These men were in Mexican Army uniforms. Real ones. And they were heavily armed. The Humvees were definitely Mexican Army vehicles. That’s what I think.”
“Did they see you?”
“Are you kidding me? No, sir, they did not! I crept up though the bushes. But, Sheriff, I got them on tape! Filmed the whole thing. I just looked at the cassette on the TV. You can see them plain as day. I swear.”
“Who’d you tell about this, June?”
“Sheriff, I drove over a hundred miles an hour to get home and call you on the telephone. Only thing I did before calling you is stick a chicken potpie in the oven. I’m half starved to death after all that excitement.”
“All right, June, now listen. Here’s what you do. Eat your supper. Then I want you to go back to town. Go to the FedEx machine and overnight me that cassette. Got a pencil? Send it to the Green Pelican Hotel, 11 Duval Street, Key West. 33040. For a guaranteed ten-thirty a.m. delivery tomorrow morning. You’ll need a FedEx envelope. You still keep some at home?”
“Yessir, I do. I got the address. Wrote it down.”
“Good. And don’t tell anybody word one about anything until you hear from me. Understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Go do it now. I’ll call you soon as I get that envelope in the morning.”
“This is pretty important, isn’t it?”
“It could be. I appreciate your vigilance and courage. Good-bye, June.”
HE HUNG UP the phone and stared at the floor. Things were happening pretty fast now. He felt like he was at the eye of one of those famous Key West hurricanes. Evidence of a military incursion by uniformed Mexican Army troops, if that’s what was on the tape, would turn this conference upside down. Turn everybody upside down. His presentation was right after lunch tomorrow. Hell, he could skip his damn jibber-jabber. He’d just show June’s home movies of invading Mexican troops. Couldn’t beat pictures like that with a thousand words.
He sat back down and realized he was about starving. Lunch had been some fancy little finger food and some really bad shrimp quesadillas. He wanted a hamburger, rare, and some French fries. Not to mention a cold beer. Maybe two.
He stood up and pulled his brown oilskin duster off the coat rack. He shouldered into it and then he put on his hat, trying to remember where he’d hidden his wallet. He checked under his shirts in the bottom drawer of the dresser and then remembered putting it under his pillow while he was talking to Daisy lying on the bed. She told him you couldn’t be too careful of your money in a place like Key West. Of course, she’d never been here, only been out of Texas once in her whole life, but she was probably right. She usually was. He stuck his billfold in the back left pocket of his jeans, locked his door, and headed downstairs to the street.
There was a man sitting in the lobby he thought he recognized from the conference. At least he recognized the suit, a very wrinkled white suit and very shiny black shoes. You couldn’t see his face because he had it buried in the local newspaper. On his left hand was a big gold nugget of a ring with a large diamond. The paper he was reading was the Key West Gazette, a paper Franklin had read, cover to cover. It featured mostly Help Wanted ads and real estate. Which was strange, he thought. The stranger didn’t seem the type to be buying himself a house or hiring any short order cooks.
“Howdy,” Franklin said on his way out, since he was polite, but the man didn’t even have the courtesy to look up when he walked by.
He got a funny feeling walking out the front door. He felt like he was in one of those old black and white spy movies during the war. High Noon in Havana, something like that.
Life was funny what it threw at you sometimes. He’d never pictured himself setting foot in a peculiar place like Key West, Florida. Back home, even around folks he didn’t know well, he could at least identify with them to one extent or another. They all pretty much wore the same clothing. Talked about the same things. They were all related somehow, either by blood or by marriage.
Well, what could you do? That was America for you.
Times were strange. People were stranger. Especially the strangers you saw around here.
But, like Daisy always said, strangers were people too.
Who was he to argue with that?
45
M argaritaville was chock full of interesting characters. Just walking up Duval, you came across more unique
