He looked to John Lourdes. "Your note ... it may well have made the difference for us."
Doctor Stallings ordered Jack B to get the women organized. He then asked John Lourdes how they managed the Sierras. He walked around the truck while John Lourdes explained. The father watched Doctor Stallings intently. When finished, as an afterthought, John Lourdes said, "We lost a few crates before we had the cars braked."
The doctor listened silently. He told Jack B to get the women to the field cafeteria. "Except this one and this one." He singled out Alicia and the girl Teresa.
He then ordered both men into the truck and joined them. As John Lourdes slipped behind the wheel, Teresa signaled him as if to say goodbye. Doctor Stallings directed them to drive up along the Panuco. He sat with arms folded and offered no conversation until he began to point out the tank farms that lined the river. The Aquilla ... National Petroleum ... Waters-Price ... Standard Oil ... East Coast Gulf ... The Gulf Coast ... The Huasteca ... and those were only the northern fields.
"Gentlemen," he said, "this has become its own nation."
Amidst an array of boiler stacks and paraffin plants and refineries was a garrison of long, low huts and a corrugated warehouse. A sign posted above the gate read:
AGUA NEGRA
OIL FIELD SECURITY
The men there were of the same lot as those on the train and they drew up and became attentive when they recognized it was Doctor Stallings in the truck. They pulled up to the warehouse garage. Rawbone and John Lourdes followed Doctor Stallings to his office. It was Spartan: a desk, a half-dozen phones. Both men were asked for their security cards. When Doctor Stallings had them in hand, he tore them up.
"You no longer work for Agua Negra."
He waited for either man's response. Something seemed to pass between the father and son. An unspoken sense to remain silent. Doctor Stallings took petty cash from a drawer. He slid the stack of bills toward John Lourdes. "You're cut loose. Go to the Southern Hotel. Get a room where the both of you can bunk. Take the motorcycle. If anyone asks, you're not working for us."
John Lourdes took the money and pocketed it. He glanced at the father.
"He's staying," said Doctor Stallings.
When they were alone, Rawbone took out a cigarette and lit it. He removed his derby and set it on a wood filing cabinet. He went and sat in a chair by the window.
"Those oil fields," said Doctor Stallings, "they're not as big as Texas, but they stand to have a lot more influence. The companies here will be thought of as a country in the near future. And they are beginning to learn how to be one. The practicals and priorities."
Rawbone set a leg up on the chair and rested an arm on his knee. "You made a point of referencing Texas."
"Your legal situation."
"As Mr. Stars and Stripes is fond of saying ... this ain't Texas."
"And that is the point."
They heard motorcycle gears shifting and an engine whine. Rawbone could see out the window and past the wire fencing John Lourdes taking to the road through burned and trampled weeds.
"Do you fully trust him?"
Rawbone laughed inwardly. "I fully trust myself."
"You will ultimately have to come to a decision about that. You'll be given the truck. You can hire out. Someone I know will contact people on your behalf. I'll tell them they can reach you at the Southern Hotel. You're an independent contractor now."
"To what end?"
There was not a blank in his thoughts, nor a gap in the response. "An assassination," he said.
Rawbone walked out into the fucking light with the foretaste of death thick in his mouth. He knew, now, with an absolute clarity that Doctor Stallings meant to see him and John Lourdes dead.
TAMPICO, THE OLD town, was built during the time of the colonial viceroys. Arches and wrought-iron balconies, French scrollwork and imported English brick. The town reminded Rawbone of New Orleans, right down to the pure honey of satisfying the most private of pleasures.
The Southern Hotel was a five-story affair with elevators. It was a money house with a mahogany bar and cafe tables where you drank cocktails from real Tom Collins glasses. Businessmen stayed there, politicos, reporters from magazines like Colliers and Saturday Evening Post, men from the Klondike gold rush who came to wildcat for oil along the Panuco.
A key had been left for Rawbone at the hotel desk. When he entered the room, he was intensely troubled. The room was empty, but he could hear the shower running. He threw his bindle down on a bed. On the other was John Lourdes's shoulder holster, his carryall, his clothes ... and that notebook.
In a flash of anger and resentment at having been gamed he grabbed the notebook and flung it. He did the same with the holster and carryall, even John Lourdes's clothes.
He realized that John Lourdes was besting him without even being in the room, without even being aware, just by being, just by ...
His silhouette in the lamplight stiffened. He could hear himself warning: Remain indifferent, dammit. Lay it out for him. Doctor Stallings ... all you sense. Mr. Lourdes could write it all down in that sorry notebook.
He gathered up John Lourdes's things and put them back on the bed as they were. Walk away from this and everything that went with it, that was one possibility. Or find a way, a swift, sure way, to sacrifice John Lourdes and so save himself.
As he threw the pants on the bed, the wallet fell from the back pocket to the floor. He cursed as he bent to retrieve it. Spotting this sliver of gold visible from between the leather flaps, he spread the wallet open to be contemptibly sure it was what he thought it was. What lay on the cracked and dry leather surface-an insignificant trinket of a crucifix with one broken cross beam.
How long had it been since anything had savaged his being or left him bare? But there it was.
Was it possible—
He slipped the cross back and closed the leather flaps and put the wallet back in the pant pockets. He stood in the midst of upheaval knowing ... he had been undone by his own hand.
IN THE ROOM, alone, John Lourdes dressed in clean clothes. He took his wallet from the other trousers. He made sure his mother's cross was there before tucking it into his back pocket. He slipped on his shoulder holster. He sat at a desk and prepared a wire to justice Knox, then a letter to Wadsworth Burr.
Night had come and he motorcycled back out to the Agua Negra field offices to find out what had happened to Rawbone, but no one knew. While he was there John Lourdes did learn the women had been taken to a cafeteria for the guards down the road. That was to be their station. There he was told that Teresa and Sister Alicia had been brought to the mayor's house to work as part of the kitchen crew. He motorcycled to that address, which was by the Laguna del Carpintero.
The turreted house stood three stories in the moonlight. It was an ill-conceived spectacle of iron grillwork and marquees and Moorish porticos. In the huge lot behind it were two oil derricks, and where the ground declined toward the laguna was a foul black soup. There were piles of rotted lumber and a wrecked barge at the edge of the shore and supply shacks and chalans and a rusting truck with a fence around it for horses and mules and a battery of goats.
The house burned with light when John Lourdes rode past. In the great room with sconces and braided scrollwork were a dozen men. They were deep in conversation while drinking. One of the men was Doctor Stallings, another Anthony Hecht. John Lourdes parked the motorcycle against a tree and shadowed the darkness to get a better view.
The mayor, who was of Mexican descent, seemed to have much of the conversation directed at him, though there was one other man who appeared to be of central importance. He wore a near-white suit and favored a mustache much like John Lourdes. He was older and had a cultured face and often he would clip his thumbs inside his suspenders when he spoke.