Once Victor shut the door behind him, Garza finally spoke to one of his soldiers. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Very good,” the man said. “We drove around in circles before coming back here.”
“Nice,” Garza said. “Go ahead and keep watch on this man. I want him in complete isolation until we are ready to move.”
“Yes, Jefe,” the soldier said.
Garza watched the men leave. He went behind the bar and placed two shot glasses on the counter. While pouring mescal into the glasses, Victor returned to the basement, the door shutting solid behind him.
“He is in the observation room,” Victor said, holding up a cell phone. “I took this from him just in case.”
Garza handed one of the glasses of mescal to Victor and they toasted. Victor threw the shot down his throat then slammed the glass back down on the bar, blowing out a short breath. Garza swirled the clear liquid and took a sip, savoring the flavor in his mouth.
“We have a new delivery we must make tonight,” Garza said.
Victor squinted. “Tonight?”
Garza nodded. He took another sip of mescal while Victor poured another shot and threw it back.
“We are going to make two different deliveries?” Victor asked.
“No, we will combine them. Valdez insists on moving the product tonight. He believes we are transporting another cartel’s product and he will not have us give anyone priority over the Zutons.”
“But it is not another cartel we are working with.”
“Yes, but I cannot afford to let him know that,” Garza said, gesturing toward the device by the elevator. “The less people with knowledge of this delivery, the less chance for a mishap.”
They both stared at the bomb. In the stillness of the room, Garza imagined he heard a ticking sound.
“The American called,” Victor said. “He believes the FBI agents are going to Denton.”
This caused some concern for Garza. He tipped the remainder of the mescal down his throat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He considered the amount of people he had on payroll in the border town.
Garza grinned. “Then we will just have to give them a nice reception, won’t we?”
Tommy drove down Main Street and thought he’d entered a time warp. One long strip of storefronts covered each side of the road with a wooden overhang protecting shoppers from the sun. The hardware store had a statue of a cowboy whipping a rope over his head about to lasso some unsuspecting cow, and the movie theatre actually showed just one movie. What struck him was the pace people moved. Women gradually made their way to their parked cars with the groceries. Men walked on the sidewalk with their heads down. A morose death walk. The one thing he’d noticed missing were kids. There wasn’t one child visible. Not even a stray bicycle.
He parked in the street amidst the pickups and Jeeps. The mid-afternoon heat hit him as soon as he opened his door. As he walked past the storefronts along the street, he peeked into each business and saw the same bleak expression on the faces of the employees.
Tommy found the Denton Bar and Grill and decided it might be the best place to acquire information. When he entered the grill, it seemed every head in the place turned his way. He sat at the end of the bar, closest to the waitress stand. It wasn’t a random choice.
There were several round tables scattered around the room pretending to be restaurant tables, but nobody came to this place for the food, Tommy was sure of that. From the two speakers behind the bar, some old-time country singer was croaking about a lost love. The steel guitar whined like a hungry puppy.
A deputy sat around one of the tables gripping a longneck bottle and chatted with a couple of buddies. Of the fifteen or so patrons in the place, only one wouldn’t let go of his gaze. The guy had a thin frame with a bowling ball gut and he leaned back so far in his chair the front two legs were airborne. The guy joining him seemed to take up the sport of eyeballing Tommy as well.
A lanky, pimple-faced bartender came over to Tommy and raised his eyebrows.
“Bottle of Bud,” Tommy said, hoping the guy was there to take his order.
The bartender left. That was a good sign. Maybe he was getting a beer.
A perky waitress in a T-shirt and blue jeans passed Tommy and gave him a smile as she dropped her tray on the counter next him and waited for the bartender.
“Hola,” Tommy said.
“Hi,” she beamed.
She was only nineteen or twenty so it appeared she was too young to be contaminated by the town’s glum disposition.
“You seem happy,” Tommy said. “Something happen?”
The girl seemed to consider this. “I don’t understand.”
Tommy glanced around the room at the gloomy patrons. The bowling-ball gut was still glaring at him. “I mean, why aren’t you suicidal like everyone else?”
She seemed to catch on and smiled. “Oh, well, they’re just stuck here. I’m here by choice.”
“Ah, I get it. They all work at the mine and can’t leave because the pay is too good. That what keeps them here?”
“Exactly.”
“So what brought you here?”
The girl shrugged. “My parents are both writers. They like small towns.”
“Yeah? What kind of stuff they write?”
The bartender returned with an open bottle of Budweiser and put it in front of Tommy. No glass. No coaster.
While Tommy fished out a twenty, the bartender looked at the girl, which removed the smile from her face. She told him, “Dirty Martini for Bill.”
The bartender took the twenty, then lingered a moment.
“Didn’t I see you at Lonny’s Comedy Club in Baltimore last year?” Tommy deadpanned.
The bartender kept his eye on Tommy as he turned and left.
Tommy looked at the girl. “He’s probably a blast at the Christmas party, huh?”
“You’re not afraid, are you?” she said.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Chizek?”
“Who’s that?”
The girl’s eyes widened. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“No. Why don’t you tell me about him?”
“Well, he’s, uh, he sort of runs this place.”
“This bar?”
“No, silly, he runs the whole town.”
“Get out,” Tommy said. “He’s like the mayor?”
“Maybe.”
“He must live in a nice place, huh?”
“I don’t know. I think he moves around. Nobody ever knows where to find him except Doug.”
“Doug?”
“Yeah, the owner of the bar. He’s one of his. .”
The girl grabbed a bar rag and began wiping imaginary spills on the bar. Tommy sensed a shadow cross his shoulder. He turned to see the bowling-ball gut guy standing over him. He had a short stubbly beard and a lump of chewing tobacco in the side of his cheek.
“You two know each other?” the man asked.
The waitress busied herself with the order pad on her tray and flipped through the pages as if checking any outstanding orders.
“I was just talking to her about her parents,” Tommy said, sensing the fear in the girl’s actions. “They’re both writers. Did you know that?”
This didn’t seem to impress the guy. He craned his neck and drooled a long stream of tobacco juice onto the floor by Tommy’s feet.
Tommy cringed. “That’s disgusting,” he said. “You’d better not let Doug see you do that.”
The man showed Tommy a toothy, brown grin. “I am Doug.”
Great, Tommy thought. Now he had to reexamine his tactic. He didn’t want to cause a scene.
The deputy seemed to notice the conversation. He and his drinking buddy stood up and waited cautiously by their table. The waitress grabbed her martini from the bartender and swiftly left the bar.
“What brings you to Denton?” Doug asked.
“You kidding?” Tommy said. “This is like Vegas without the casinos, the pretty women, or the stage shows. Who wouldn’t want to visit this tropical paradise?”
Doug gestured toward Tommy’s beer and said, “Why don’t you take your drink to go?”