“But you were to give him to someone else? Is that true?”
“Yes. We were told it would be peaceful. No need to be alert. No need to be suspicious.”
“But who were you going to turn him over to?”
Antonio is thinking through even more. Yes, if he reveals the details to this woman, then he can still find a way to use it to his advantage.
The deal was supposed to be peaceful.
It didn’t happen that way.
That certainly wasn’t Antonio’s fault. In fact, the jefe will be pleased to know that he has survived, to tell what really happened. Or at least what happened that would put Antonio into the jefe’s favor.
“A man,” he says. “We were to turn him over to a man, after he told us a code word. Then…we would leave and go back over the border.”
Antonio moves his hands a few centimeters. Close. He could still slap away the woman’s weapon and take charge.
“Who is the man? Do you know who he is?”
Antonio shrugs. “An American. Named Tom Cornwall.”
CHAPTER 65
ROSARIA KEEPS her face firm and placid, but she blinks hard at hearing those two words.
Tom Cornwall.
“Who’s Tom Cornwall?” she asks, although she certainly knows who he is. “Why were you to hand over this old man to him?”
The cartel gang member just stares at her with hate and contempt. “I told you before. Can’t you hear? We do our job. That’s it.”
That’s it.
Rosaria thinks that’s the perfect phrase for now.
That’s it.
She draws back quickly, kicks the door open, and is now outside, holding her pistol on the man with one hand, her Galaxy phone with the other.
“I’m out of here,” she says. “You were cooperative, so I’m not calling the police. But you better get going…”
He sits there, slowly lowers his hands, and mutters a long, nasty string of expletives, and Rosaria says, “I never knew who my mom was, so that’s a waste of breath.”
Then she backs away from the truck and does her best to move quickly in reverse, keeping an eye on the vehicle. She scrambles inside her rental car and drives out, remembering only five miles later that she’s still terribly thirsty.
Antonio goes to the driver’s side, starts up the truck, and then runs into the brush, looking for his revolver. He kneels down, scrambling around, scratching his hands, until yes, there it is.
He grabs it and then starts back to his truck. Get in and get out.
That’s all.
Then call his jefe, but only after he’s back over the border.
“Hey!” comes a sharp voice.
Standing to either side of his truck are two cops, wearing white cowboy hats, neckties, and white shirts, both holding pistols in their hands.
“Drop the weapon, buddy, drop it!” the one on the left says.
Antonio smiles, thinks, Just like Clint Eastwood, then quickly brings up his heavy revolver. Before he can get a single shot off, he’s hammered hard in his chest and falls back, everything going dark in seconds.
CHAPTER 66
CLOSE TO two hours after I’ve driven out of Three Rivers, Texas, I’m just past the city of Victoria, and I’ve pulled off Highway 59 at some scraggly motel with half of the neon letters on its sign burnt out, and I know when I drive out at dawn, I’ll have forgotten this little place of refuge within ten miles of driving.
It’s a typical one-story stretch of motel rooms, and in the small office, a chubby young Pakistani man holds a controller in his hands and is playing some sort of shoot-’em-up video game. He pauses the game only twice: once to pass over a registration card and key, and then to take my American dollars. I fill out the card with a fake name, address, make and model of vehicle, and license plate number, and the young man doesn’t even give the card a glance before going back to his game.
I step out into the thick night air and go to my Wrangler, which is parked in front of the office and where I could keep a close eye on things, and my older charge is calmly sitting there, slightly wrinkled hands folded in his lap, seat belt still in place. I get in and drive my Wrangler down to the end of the bumpy parking lot and park in the rear. My headlights pick up a scrawny creature that races into the underbrush, a starving dog or coyote, I can’t tell.
The room has two twin beds, worn-down green carpeting, a small bathroom that smells of bleach, and a television on a low counter, kept in place by a thick chain and combination lock.
I drop my bag on the floor, motion to the bathroom. “All yours. Have at it.”
He nods and goes in, shuts the door, and I hear water running.
I sit on the edge of the bed, lower my head into my hands.
The shakes begin.
A cool, comforting voice tries to tell me, You didn’t go in there to kill, you went in there to get this old man, you went in to save your family. It was bloody, horrible, and awful, and you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life, but what choice did you have?
What choice?
I could have gone to the police. I could have gone to my superior officer. I could have gone to the CID. I could have gone to the FBI.
But I have no time.
No time.
The shakes continue.
The smell of burnt gunpowder, the yells, grunts, the way the pistol jumped in my hand, the frantic run through the small house…
The run to the Wrangler, dragging this old man along with me.
I’ll never, ever forget it.
It’s in my memory, my skin, and my bones. And it’ll be there forever.
What choice?
I hear the toilet flush, more running water, and then the slight old man comes out into the motel room, looking at me.
“Still not talking, eh?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a gesture. He sits down on the edge of the other sagging bed, his hands on his knees.
“How long were you in that house?”
No reply.
“Who was keeping you there?”
Silence.
“Why are you so important to someone on the Gulf Coast of Florida?”
Quiet.
I notice my hand is throbbing deeply, and I can’t figure out why, until I remember punching that big tattooed guy twice in the throat while holding an empty metal canister of pepper spray.
“Do you know my husband, Tom Cornwall? He’s a journalist.”
Stillness.
I shift around on the bed. It’s sagging deeply in the middle. I’m thinking I might take a blanket out of the Wrangler and sleep on top of the covers, leave my charge to his own devices.
I say, “Why me, and why you? I have nothing to do with Texas, Mexico, or drug dealers. No offense if you’re Mexican, but the two men back at that house didn’t look like Mormon missionaries from a small town in Utah. And Tom…I don’t think he’s ever been to Mexico. Or Texas. He covers the Middle East. Saudi Arabia. Syria. Iraq. Parts of Africa and Afghanistan.”
Something whispers to me there, some sort of idle fact, and I try to think it through and it slips away.
“But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
I can only hear the drone of the traffic from the nearby interstate. In between our single beds is a scratched and dinged-up nightstand with a lamp and a telephone. There’s a drawer underneath and I slide it open, revealing a Gideon Bible and a very thin phone book. I pull the phone book out and show it to my new friend.