The Contractors Page 21

“Morales,” I said. “The guy on trial in Marfa. You know him?”

  “Did you know they actually have almost half of the Laredo Border Patrol on their payroll?” she said. “I took a briefcase full of money over a couple of times.”

  We drove in silence for a while.

  “Lazaro Morales, the guy on trial,” Eva said. “He’s in charge of the Texas routes.”

  I looked in the back.

  “He throws good parties, too.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?” I said.

  “He’s my husband.” She folded a blanket into a pillow, stretched out. “I think I’m gonna sleep for a while.”

  Piper looked at me. She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t say anything.

  Our passenger was married to the number two guy in the cartel. And she’d turned state’s witness.

  I debated another diet pill to fight the exhaustion. The excitement that had come from the revelation of Eva’s relationship to the trial had faded.

  The sun was almost behind the mountains, a bare sliver of yellow still visible on the horizon.

  Piper was driving. She blinked a lot, shook her head, trying to stay awake. A while ago, she’d turned on the radio but couldn’t find a station. Now a low hiss of static from the speakers filled the vehicle. Eva was still asleep in the backseat.

  Popoosh. A muffled sound like a balloon breaking.

  Eva sat upright.

  The Tahoe rocked, one side tilted down.

  Piper swore. Jerked the wheel.

  A steep drop-off to the right, a wall of rock to the left.

  Sweat had erupted from Piper’s forehead by the time she’d wrestled the Tahoe to a stop in the middle of the road.

  A switchback turn was a hundred yards ahead. At the bend was a gravel shoulder on the slope side. She idled forward, the remnants of the tire slapping against the road.

  “You have a spare?” Eva said.

  I nodded, tried to slow my heartbeat, no longer exhausted.

  Piper pulled onto the gravel and stopped. The three of us got out.

  The tire was shredded, beyond repair.

  “You think Triple A can find us out here?” Piper got a bottle of water from the backseat.

  I headed to the rear of the truck but stopped.

  A chugging noise echoed down the road in the direction we’d just come. Piper and Eva came up behind me. We hadn’t seen a car in miles.

  A hearse appeared. It had to be at least forty years old, but the condition was hard to discern underneath the layer of road grime. The Texas license plate, muddy as well, looked like the style that hadn’t been used in decades, plain black and white.

  I slid a hand under my shirt, reached for the Glock.

  The vehicle stopped about twenty yards behind the Tahoe and a man in his late fifties got out. He wore a week-old beard and a black suit. White shirt, no tie. Dusty black boots.

  “May I be of assistance?” He smiled and walked toward us. His hands were empty except for a small black book.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said. “We’re not dead yet.”

  He held up the book. “Perhaps then I could say a prayer for you?”

  - CHAPTER FORTY-ONE -

  I got the jack out.

  Piper leaned against the back bumper, bottle of water in one hand, Glock in the other.

  Eva sat on the guardrail a few feet from where I was.

  The guy in the black suit stood between our vehicle and the hearse. He paid no attention to Piper’s weapon. He opened the slim book and read a few lines silently. Then he closed his eyes and murmured.

  The passenger door of the hearse creaked, slowly swung away from its moorings. The waning light and dirt on the window must have been playing an optical trick, because the seat looked empty.

  Piper paused with the water halfway to her mouth. I shifted the jack to my left hand. My right reached for the pistol.

  “It’s all right.” The man opened his eyes. He looked at us, then back to his vehicle. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Neither Piper nor I replied. Eva got off the guardrail and moved back, clearly nervous.

  A young woman exited the hearse and approached. She was in her late teens or early twenties and wore a gingham dress that reached to her ankles and wrists, like one of the girls from Little House on the Prairie.

  Except for the overbite and ears that stuck out too much, she was pretty. She had blue eyes in the middle of a long, angular face, pale skin. Her blond hair was pinned back with a bow that matched the dress.

  “This is Sadie, my daughter.” He put an arm around the girl’s shoulder. “We mean you no harm.”

  Piper took a drink, watching both father and child.

  Sadie held up one hand in a timid wave. She kept her gaze to the side or down, careful not to look anyone in the eyes.

  I relaxed and headed to the damaged tire at the front of the Tahoe.

  “Why did you stop?” Eva asked the man.

  “You were in distress.” The man followed me. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  I slid the jack under the front wheel well.

  “My name is Angus.” He knelt beside me. “Where you headed?”

  “Please don’t take offense, Angus.” I stuck the handle in the jack. “But you need to get away from us.”

  The man had collar-length blond hair going to gray, slicked back. His eyes were blue like his daughter’s.

  “Here, let me help.” He slid the base of the jack a little straighter under the truck.

  I didn’t reply. Turned the crank instead.

  “Pretty country, ain’t it?” Angus stood, patted dust from his knees. “Where y’all from?”

  I didn’t say anything, continued to work the jack. The front of the Tahoe slowly rose.

  “We’re trying to see as much of Texas as we can,” Angus said. “A family trip.”

  “In a hearse?” I kept cranking. The damaged tire slowly cleared the ground.

  Piper rolled the spare over. “We may have a problem.”

  Even with no weight on it, the new tire appeared to be low on air.

  “Won’t make it far on that.” Angus clucked his tongue. “I’ll follow you to the next town.”

  “There is no next town.” I jammed the lug wrench into place.

  The GPS showed virtually nothing for the next seventy-five miles, at least on our present course. We could go back and hit something, but even that would take a long while. This section of Texas was as big as a lot of countries but devoid of people, towns, and roads. Only a couple of ways to get to the Big Bend region and Marfa.

  “Then we’ll follow you to your destination,” Angus said.

  Piper shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  The daughter, Sadie, wandered over.

  “You don’t by any chance have an air tank in your, uh, vehicle, do you?” I glanced at the man as I spun the wrench. “Maybe a can of Fix-A-Flat?”

  Piper melted away from the group. I was the only one who noticed.

  “No.” Angus shook his head. “We have food though. Do you need supplies?”

  “Just air.” I removed the last lug nut. Looked at my new cell. No signal.

  “Where were you and your daughter planning to stay tonight?” Eva said.

  I nodded. Not a bad question.

  “Wherever we stop.” Angus brushed back his hair. “God provides.”

  Sadie spoke for the first time. “We have a tent.”

  Her voice was monotone, like the kid in school everybody knew was slow but hadn’t scored bad enough to go to the special-ed classes.

  “There’s a town up ahead not too far.” Angus pointed west. “We’re gonna stop there for the night.”

  “That’s strange.” I wrestled the spare into place. “Didn’t see anything on the map.”

  “It’s not on most maps,” Sadie said.

  The sun was just a sliver over the western mountain range. An instant later, it was gone. The air was cooler
and smelled of juniper and freshly tilled earth and, oddly enough, candle wax.

  Piper sauntered back over, eyebrows arched.

  “There’s a casket in the back.” She looked at me. “Which makes sense, seeing as how it’s a hearse.”

  I quit tightening lug nuts, stood up, stared at the new arrivals. Eva took a half step away from the father and daughter. She bumped into me and grasped my arm, a fearful expression on her face.

  Piper cocked her head at Angus. “You got a vampire in there?”

  “That’s my dearly departed wife.” He pressed his lips together. A long pause. “It’s a family trip, like I said.”

  “Mama always wanted to see West Texas again.” Sadie stared at the spot on the mountains where the sun had been.

  Piper whistled softly and sat on the guardrail.

  “You mean she’s in there now?” Eva said.

  I finished tightening the wheel, uncranked the jack.

  “Mama’s folks are from Balmorhea.” Sadie nodded. “We’re gonna take her there.”

  The jack was fully down. The spare tire crumpled, maybe a quarter full. Safe for a few miles if we didn’t go too fast, say no speedier than a three-legged armadillo. We were gonna be in bad shape if there wasn’t a town up ahead.

  “We’ll follow you.” Angus headed to the hearse.

  - CHAPTER FORTY-TWO -

  I drove slowly, creeping along the narrow road.

  It was completely dark when we arrived nearly an hour later. The headlights reflected off a weather-worn road sign that read SCHWARZEMANN, TEXAS.

  The town was not a town, more like a flat spot where two narrow roads intersected. Maybe it had been a town at one point. It certainly wasn’t now.

  Three buildings total that I could see, clustered around the intersection.

  On one corner a mercury lamp hummed on a pole, illuminating a stone farmhouse with a tin roof.

  Next to the house sat a three-story brick building with a front porch that ran the length of the structure. The building was old, too, and looked like an office or a hotel. A couple of lights were on inside. Three or four cars were parked in front.

  On the opposite corner was a large wooden structure that looked like a barn. Moths buzzed around a bare bulb over the double front doors, lighting a sign that read SCHWARZEMANN HALL in an angular Gothic script.

  Eight or ten vehicles were parked on one side of the hall, mostly pickups and a sedan or two.

  The Texas Hill Country had been settled in the middle of the nineteenth century by central European immigrants, adventurous young men and women from Slovakia and Poland, sausage makers and brewers from Germany and Bohemia.

  They brought with them strange customs. Lederhosen and lager. Pumpernickel bread. And dance halls for their oompah bands, evidently what this barnlike structure was.

  We weren’t really in the area most maps referred to as the Hill Country at this point, however, more in the mountainous region no one ever visited between there and the Big Bend area. Of course, most maps didn’t have any reference to a Schwarzemann, Texas, either.

  I stopped in front of the home. The hearse parked beside us.

  “Anybody else creeped out?” Piper looked around. “A town that doesn’t exist and the McWeirdo family cruising around in the middle of nowhere with mom in a casket.”

  “They are grieving.” Eva leaned forward. “Why does this make you uneasy?”

  “Did I say I was uneasy?” Piper cranked her head. “I said I was creeped out.”

  “I do not understand the difference.” Eva frowned.

  “Let me whip out my pocket version of Rosetta Stone and find the right term in Spanish.”

  “Piper,” I said. “Let it go.”

  “Grief is a strange thing,” Eva said. “That’s all I was saying.”

  “You calling me strange, bitch?” Piper balled her fists.

  “No.” Eva shook her head. “‘Annoying’ would be the term I’d use.”

  Piper became very still. Her lips twitched.

  “Let’s all settle down,” I said. “Everybody’s tired from being on the road all day.”

  “Settle down?” Piper looked at me. “Did you just tell me that?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t stop here,” Eva interrupted. “I think I’ve heard of this place.” She paused. “From some people on the other side of the border.”

  Piper took a deep breath, recovered control.

  “Cartel people?” I said.

  “We should just keep going.” She hugged herself, hands under her arms. “Please, Jon.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said. “The tire won’t make it anywhere else.”

  “The sicarios.” She frowned. “They come here, I think.”

  “Hit men for the narcos,” I said. “Here?”

  The word sicario derived from a Latin term for “dagger men” and meant hired assassin. The cartels employed a lot of sicarios.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “To rest and hide. It’s out of the way.”

  I didn’t say anything. Her statement made sense.

  In the mountains at the intersection of two narrow roads, the town that wasn’t a town served as the very definition of out-of-the-way. But, like an old camping spot in the middle of the wilderness, out-of-the-way places that had resources—water, shelter, a flat spot in the otherwise rocky terrain—tended to attract travelers.

  Piper twirled a set of handcuffs around one finger. “The cartels have hit men living on this side of the border?”

  Eva looked at both of us strangely like we were slow in the head.

  “The narcotraffickers have people everywhere,” she said.

  Across the street, the door of the dance hall swung open and a figure stepped outside and lit a cigarette.

  Knuckles rapped on the driver’s window. All three of us jumped.

  Angus stood by the door, Sadie a few feet behind him.

  The extreme fatigue of the past few days must have taken its toll. I hadn’t heard their doors slam or seen them moving.

  He tapped again and spoke, words muffled through the glass. “Let’s try the dance hall.”

  I nodded.

  He and Sadie wandered across the road.

  “He’s strapped.” Piper peered through the bug-splattered windshield. “He wasn’t carrying before.”

  I stared at Angus as he walked across the road. His coat fit differently than earlier, bulked up around the torso. He held his arms pressed against his sides as he walked. His gait was off too, like he weighed more.

  “We’re gonna fix the tire. That’s all.” I opened my door. “Let’s make it quick.”

  “What about her?” Piper pointed in the back.

  “I can go with you,” Eva said.

  “That’s not what I had in mind.” Piper smiled. She held up the bracelets.

  “No, not the cuffs.” Eva looked at me. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Sorry.” I shook my head.

  “Jon, please.” Eva leaned forward. She touched my arm. Her eyes were scared. “She’s going to harm me.”

  “No, she’s not.” I patted her hand.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” Piper had rolled her eyes when I’d touched the witness. She opened the back door and held up the cuffs. “I’m just annoying, remember?”

  “NO-NO-NO.” Eva shook her head frantically. She tried to climb in the front seat. Her voice was shrill, face terrified.

  “It’s okay.” I grasped her shoulders. Pushed her back. “I know you’ve had a rough time, but we have to follow the rules from here on out.”

  She’d been held in protective custody by the US Marshals, marked for death by one cartel, kidnaped by another. “Rough time” was an understatement. She was a magazine cover for the Post-Traumatic Stress Gazette.

  Eva began to hyperventilate. She quivered like a blade of grass in a storm. Her face grew pale.

  “Shhh.” I stroked her arm, leaning between the front and the back seat
s. “It’s okay. We’re just going across the street.”

  After a few moments, she calmed down. Her breath slowed. Shoulders slumped.

  I nodded to Piper, who attached the restraints. She was quick and efficient about it, cuffs on wrists, not too tight, and a long length of chain hooked to the D-ring on the floor. She shut the door and met me at the front.

  I chirped the locks shut. “She’s a basket case.”

  “Do you think I’m annoying?”

  Angus and his daughter stood across the road, watching us. They turned and walked into the dance hall.

  “No. Of course not.” I headed toward the hall. “You got your cell?”

  Piper walked beside me. She pulled out her new, disposable phone and held it up. “No coverage.”

  I looked at mine. The same.

  “Eva is trouble,” Piper said. “More ways than one.”

  “Cut her some slack. She’s scared for her life.”

  Piper made a choking noise, a cough that tried to swallow a mouthful of words. “You’re unbelievable,” she said. “It’s like you have a damsel-in-distress fetish.”

  I ignored her.

  We reached the other side of the highway. Angus and Sadie had gone inside.

  The guy by the door flicked his cigarette butt into the dark. He was a gringo about forty, a weathered face, callused hands. Faded jeans. A starched, pearl-buttoned shirt, straw Resistol hat.

  At that very moment, there were probably a thousand more like him, smoking in front of a thousand different honky-tonks across the state, from Mesquite to Pasadena, Abilene to Longview.

  A metal sign was mounted on a pole by the front door, a Texas historical marker.

  I stopped to read the text as the thump of music cranked up inside.

  “Established in 1869 by German settlers, Schwarzemann was named for the central European mythical creature known as Der schwarze Mann, literally the black man. However, in this context, black did not mean a color. Instead it referred to darkness as Der schwarze Mann was reputed to be an evil entity that lived in the dark regions and preyed on unsuspecting travelers.”

  “Beautiful.” Piper peered over my shoulder. “We’re stuck in a town that doesn’t exist but was named for the Nazi boogeyman.”

  The smoking guy stepped back into the dance hall, the door swinging open and a thump of drums and guitars blaring out.