Edge of Battle

another one of his rantings.”

“I don’t think so, Bob. This one was broadcast live all over the world on Mexico’s largest radio network, streamed live on the Internet, and broadcast by shortwave—it wasn’t secretly taped and delivered anonymously to a few news outlets like the other messages. I think the government is somehow supporting Veracruz now. What if folks start to do what he tells them to do?”

“What—leave here and start heading back toward Mexico?” he asked incredulously. “First of all, if they want to leave, fine—it’ll save us the trouble and expense of deporting them. But they won’t leave. As much as they may not like living the life of an illegal alien, that life is a million times better than life in Mexico. Wages are ten times higher here than in Mexico, even for undocumented aliens, and that’s if they can find a job down there. Here there’s work, and if they keep their noses clean and stay out of trouble, they can have a good life. Heck, some states give them every benefit and entitlement citizens receive—they have everything but citizenship. They get all the perks but none of the responsibilities.”

“I’m not talking about all that, Bob. I’m talking about what might happen if the people do listen to Veracruz and start leaving,” Kent argued. “Latest numbers are that there are almost two hundred thousand illegals in Clark County alone. If half of those are of working age, and only ten percent of them do what Veracruz says, that’s ten thousand workers walking off the job! What do you think that would do to Las Vegas?”

“Granted, it would be inconvenient and chaotic right off,” O’Rourke said dismissively, “but eventually the system would adjust. The casinos, restaurants, and hotels would immediately start hiring; wages would go up to attract more workers; things would eventually return to normal—except the prices, of course, which would stay high after folks got accustomed to paying them.”

“Do you really think everything would just go back to normal? I think…”

“Listen, Fand, we can discuss all this at the station, when I can take some notes and we can get our facts and figures carefully researched,” O’Rourke interrupted, finishing his coffee and grabbing his car keys. “I gotta talk to Lana and tell her to do the shopping after she gets done cleaning, and my tux is still at the cleaners; she has to pick it up before the Friday night fund-raiser thing. Talk at you later.”

O’Rourke was taking his cowboy hat, leather jacket, and sunglasses out of the closet when he heard the sound of something metallic hit the front door. He immediately unlocked and whipped the door open…to find his housekeeper, Lana—he didn’t even know her last name—walking quickly down the front sidewalk toward her Dodge Durango SUV. He looked down at his doorstep and saw a bundle of keys lying on his doormat. “Lana?” She didn’t respond. “Lana! Hey, I’m talking to you! ?Como esta usted hoy?” That was just about the only Spanish he knew except for Otra cerveza, por favor. “It’s time to go to work.” Lana turned, clutching her purse protectively in front of her, but said nothing, looking down at the ground in front of her. “What’s going on? Why are my house keys lying here?”

“I am leaving you now, Mr. O’Rourke.”

“Leaving? What for?”

“I am no longer welcome in this country. I go back to Mexico.”

“What do you mean, ‘not welcome’? You have a good job, a nice car, a place to live.” Actually he didn’t know where or how she lived, but he figured with all the money he was paying her, she had to live somewhere decent. “You’re not leaving because that Veracruz guy told you to leave, are you?”

“We leave because we are not welcome,” she repeated. O’Rourke looked past Lana and saw that her Durango was filled with women, and the rear cargo area crammed with luggage. “We go back to Mexico until America wants us to return.”

“Now wait a minute…that’s nonsense,” O’Rourke stammered. He trotted down the walkway toward Lana’s SUV. “Don’t believe that militant propaganda crap Veracruz is feeding you people. He wants to stir things up for his own reasons. He doesn’t know you people and doesn’t care about you one bit.”

“No. We go.”

“Wait a minute!” O’Rourke said, raising his voice perhaps a bit louder than he intended. “You can’t just leave! I’ve got a whole list of stuff for you to do today.” Lana ignored him. He lunged at her, grasping her left arm. She twisted her arm free with ease. “Listen, you, if you leave without thirty days’ notice, I’m not paying you for last week.” She kept on walking. He didn’t see one of the other ladies step out of the SUV. “I’m going to have that Durango repossessed. You still owe me four grand on it, after I was nice enough to lend you the money at below-market interest rates!”

“No…!”

“You’d better stay!” O’Rourke shouted. “You’ve still got my garage door opener…wait, you’ve got to tell me where to pick up the damned dry cleaning! I just paid for an entire year’s membership for you and your husband at Costco, you ungrateful bitch…!”

Suddenly he heard a woman shout, “?Dejela en paz, cagon!” The woman who had gotten out of the Durango hit O’Rourke right in the face with a long, full shot of pepper spray. He went down to his knees, completely blinded and disoriented. The women got into the Durango and sped away.

O’Rourke found himself on his hands and knees on his front lawn trying but failing to blink away the pain and burning. He finally half-crawled, half-stumbled back inside his house, found his way back into his kitchen, and directed cold water from his sink sprayer onto his face for several minutes. It took almost fifteen minutes before he could see again. He almost contaminated himself again trying to take off his jacket, but finally he managed to change clothes. He dialed his office as soon as he was ready to go again. “Fand…”

“Bob! Where are you?”

“Still at home. You wouldn’t believe it—that crazy bitch housekeeper of mine left, and one of her friends shot me with pepper spray! I think it was the Lewis’s housekeeper! I just barely…!”

“Bob, whatever you do, stay home,” Fand said. “A couple of the cars in the front lot just got spray-painted, and there’s a large group of people on the street. Looks like they’re going to picket the station! There are cops and TV trucks everywhere! It’s not safe.”

He heard her talking, but only the words “TV trucks” got his attention. “Well, what the hell is going on, Fand? You’re a reporter—tell me what’s happening.”

“I think it’s that Veracruz radio message, Bob.” She didn’t mention the bombastic radio show he gave earlier, in effect telling all of America to start hunting down Mexicans. “I think the Mexicans are leaving, and they’re going to stage protests and demonstrations on the way out.”

“What do you mean, ‘leaving’?” But he knew exactly what she meant—had in fact seen it with his own eyes, in front of his own home. “Never mind. I’ll be there right away. Keep me advised if anything else happens.” Fand started to warn him again, but he hung up before she could finish.

O’Rourke was heading out the door, but thinking about Fand’s last warning made him stop, then head upstairs to the safe built into the nightstand next to the massive oak sleigh bed in his bedroom. There was no combination lock to the safe—instead, he pressed a code into a recessed rubberized keypad on top of the safe, and the heavy steel door popped open with ease, revealing several handguns in ready-to-draw position.

One cool thing about living in the great state of Nevada was how easy it was to get a concealed weapon permit: one day in mildly boring classes watching videotapes, listening to lectures, and seeing a few demonstrations; a half-day in an indoor shooting range; an hour or so getting photographed, fingerprinted, and filling out forms for a background check; and then a couple hours actually shopping for a suitable gun, ammunition, and accessories like holsters, cleaning equipment, and car safes. Three months later, he was proudly carrying a pearl-handled .45 caliber Smith & Wesson automatic in a shoulder rig, very aware of the fact that most everyone could see the bulge in his jacket and knew he was packing heat.

He had learned in his semiprivate concealed-carry classes that you couldn’t carry a gun everywhere in Nevada—most casinos didn’t allow it, although he had written permission from most of the casino managers to do so; most government offices like the DMV didn’t allow guns inside, although he avoided all such offices as much as possible; guns within the Las Vegas city limits had to be unloaded (and even he couldn’t get a permit from the chief of police to get around that one); and concealed weapons in Clark County could be loaded but couldn’t have a round in the chamber. But he pretty much ignored those few restrictions. O’Rourke believed in the old saying: “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” If he was going to be the target of a kidnapping or robbery, he was going to fight.

Like one of his TV heroes, Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice, O’Rourke preferred a