It was no use trying to feel bad. I couldn’t work up any sympathy for a drug dealer, and the only emotion I had for Maureen was hatred. She’d taken my son away and turned him into a meth fiend. She deserved what she was going to get.
I pulled the manila envelope from under my arm and dropped it over the side. The yellow paper fluttered slightly on the way down, winking in the fading light of the day. Then it splashed into the river, was pulled below and was gone forever.
The pacifists in this world ask fate to take a hand in matters. What goes around, comes around, they’d say. Karma, they’d say, and I think some of that’s true.
But sometimes you have to be the one to bring it around. Sometimes, you have to take a hand.
La Sombra
In The Shadow Of El Paso
We all lived together, but separate, white and brown, in the strange border land north of the Rio Grande. It wasn’t Mexico and it wasn’t the United States, but rather pieces of both and some of neither. We lived in La Sombra, in the shadow of El Paso.
I never got too involved in the politics of it, anyway. I wasn’t supposed to ask whether a person was legal or not, unless I really had to know. I learned that shortly after coming to La Sombra. If they were legal, asking was an insult. If they weren’t, the question was met with distrust. So most times, I just didn’t ask. There was work here and people wanted to do it. They worked hard, they drank hard and they loved hard. I liked their food, their music and their rapid language.
But I loved her.
Living here was tough enough. Being a lawman was almost impossible. How could I enforce something as abstract as laws written by some rich, white men who lived two thousand miles away? How do those laws apply in a town that only recognizes the most basic and the most extreme of human laws?
Things can get a little blurred along the border.
Isabella served drinks at Tres Estrellas most nights. I made a point of doing a walkthrough there at least once a shift, sometimes twice. Part of it was professional. A little police presence went a long way towards deterring trouble. But I would have gone anyway, just to see her. I think dozens of men in town felt the same way.
Tres Estrellas was the only place in town where white and brown mixed with little trouble. Music played on the jukebox. The songs on the juke were an eclectic mix of classic rock, old and new country, Tex-Mex and full-on Mexican. The polished wood floor creaked a little when I walked across it in the dim light. A few customers were scattered in small groups throughout the main room. An old Mexican ballad twanged from the speakers.
“Morena de mi corazon,” the man’s voice sang sadly. And that was Isabella. Dark-haired woman of my heart.
She smiled at me from the corner of the bar, where she’d been chatting quietly with Pete Trower. When she flashed that smile, the world stopped and sound diminished. The light in her eyes sent an electricity through my chest and out to my limbs. It was that way every time. A twinge of regret fluttered in my chest along with the other emotions banging around in there. I wished, not for the first time, that I could sit at the bar for the next few hours and drink her in along with my tequila.
“Carlos,” she said playfully, using the Spanish equivalent of my name.
I touched the brim of my hat and grinned stupidly. “Everything okay tonight?”
She shrugged. “Oh, si, everything is fine. Just slow, sabes?”
I did know. Tuesday was usually dead.
“You mind if I walk around?” I asked. I didn’t need permission. I had the authority to walk anywhere I wanted to in a drinking establishment. But it didn’t hurt to have manners.
“Por favor,” she said, and moved down the bar a bit. From there, she leaned forward, resting her elbows onto the bar. The position pushed up her breasts and accentuated her cleavage. She beckoned me with a head movement. My mouth went a little dry and I stepped closer to the bar. Her perfume hinted at oranges and spice. She reached out and tapped my badge with a tapered, red nail. Her voice lowered to a husky, conspiratorial whisper. “It is nice to have the law around to keep things from getting loco.”
My face grew warm. “Now you’re teasing me.”
A smile played on her full lips. I looked into her dark, smoky eyes and held her gaze.
“Tal vez,” she cooed.
“Perhaps,” I repeated back.
“But you’ll still look around, won’t you?” she said, and turned to leave.
I watched her go, gliding around the end of the bar and to a table in the corner. Two young Hispanic cowboys, whom I didn’t recognize, sat in the booth and followed her with their eyes, just like I did.
“I hate them,” muttered Pete from his barstool.
“Aw, they’re just having a couple of beers,” I told him.
He shook his head. “They look at her.” The word dripped off his tongue like poison.
“Everyone does.” I pulled a five dollar bill from my pocket and put in on the bar next to Pete’s beer.
He turned away from the cowboys and regarded me. “What’s that for?”
“Next one’s on me, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“I gotta have a reason?”
Pete’s expression remained hard and he didn’t answer.
“Who bought me my first beer in La Sombra?” I asked him.
“Dunno.”
“Hell you don’t. It was you, right here at the Tres. My hair hadn’t even grown out from the Army yet.”
Pete shrugged and flicked his eyes back at the cowboys as they bantered with Isabella. Her laughter tinkled through the air like tiny bells.
“Pete,” I said.
He shifted his gaze to me. “What?”
I smiled my best Texas grin. “Just enjoy your beer. All right?”
He stared at me for a few moments, then lowered his eyes to the beer in front of him and nodded. Tres Estrellas was famous for its potent Mexican tequila and weak American beer. I was glad Pete was drinking the latter. He spent too much time on that barstool, night after night, dreaming about what he could never have. I knew, because I sometimes dreamed the same foolish dream.
I left Pete and strolled toward the back rooms. One contained three pool tables and two dartboards. On a busy weekend night, I could barely jostle through and smoke would hang in the air like a thundercloud. Tonight, Jack Talbott shot a game of nine ball, alone except for his newest girlfriend, a platinum blonde. She might have been twenty-two and with an IQ to match. Instead of cigarette smoke, the air was full of her perfume.
“Carl,” he said, chalking the tip of his cue.
I gave Jack a neighborly nod and stepped into the back room.
At first, I thought it was empty, but then I saw two Mexicans in the nearest booth, hunkered over their drinks. Neither one made eye contact. One pulled the bill of his dirty ball cap low over his eyes. The other squeezed further into the corner.
“Buenas noches,” I said.
They muttered the words back to me with thick accents. One cast a quick, wary glance up at me before returning his eyes to his tequila.
I thought about it for a second, checking them over. Dirty clothes, rough hands. Hard workers, I figured, and not likely to be any trouble. I touched the brim of my hat, turned and headed back to the main bar.
“You check them two for green cards?” Jack asked me as I strode past. “’Cause my money says they’re wetbacks.”
Miss Twenty-two giggled at his witty word choice.
“They’re legal workers,” I said, and kept walking.
Jack wouldn’t let it lie. “Bullshit. You weren’t in there long enough to check.”
I turned back to face him. “What’s that?”
“You heard me, Carl. Ain’t no way you checked them boys for green cards or any other damn thing.” His jaw jutted out, challenging me.