The Mexican Tree Duck

  “Ideas, hell, I got a place,” he said, “the perfect place.”

  Like all successful smugglers, Barnstone always had trouble accounting for his money. The pecans were good—he could fudge weights and the costs of maintenance and capital improvements—but the damned trees kept making so many nuts he couldn’t make them lose money every year. Then he discovered water. Or perhaps water discovered him.

  Barnstone bought an old chili farm in New Mexico, between Las Cruces and Hatch, put in a small processing plant, then drilled a water well. That’s always a great loss. Except Barnstone discovered a mineral hot springs with water that stunk so badly it had to be good for your health. So he started a small hot springs resort, which grew successfully into a motel-restaurant-golf-course-destination resort, a place so expensive he flinched every time he acted like a paying customer, a place so popular it overwhelmed its orginal purpose.

  So he drilled another well. This time he hit clear, cold artesian water, perfect water, just about the time Americans decided designer water was the way to go. This time he had the perfect money laundry. Nobody could account for water. And Stone Wash Springs also gave Dottie a perfect cover and another career, as she worked her way from bartender to bar manager to running the lodge.

  As the sun topped the San Andres Mountains, all of us, except for Carney, who stayed behind to watch the place, were clean and sober, tucked into huge rooms with stone fireplaces and even larger bathrooms complete with Jacuzzis and saunas and showers as large as small dance floors. Then we met for breakfast and a council of war.

  Dottie gave us a private dining room, had breakfast with us, then gathered up Baby Lester and retreated so she wouldn’t have to listen to our compounded felonies. Wynona had the floor, but before beginning she stared at Norman, who was trying to look as normal as possible, for a long time, then said tartly, “You don’t look a thing like Sarita, man.”

  Norman blushed and stared at his coffee. Mary came to his defense. “It ain’t his fault,” she said. “Them niggers in Leaven-worth worked him over pretty good …”

  “That’s a jolt I didn’t know about,” I said.

  Norman blushed again, then said, “I got popped in Crystal City, Texas. Right in front of the statue of Popeye. With a trunk full of Mexican brown. I pled on the federal charge so I didn’t have to do life in Huntsville.”

  “Good choice,” Solly said.

  “Well, he still don’t look nothing like Sarita,” Wynona said, then without further preamble, she launched into her story.

  “Sarita was always sweet to me, you know, ’cause I think she knew that Joe Don was always sucking around me, ever since I was a nubbin. My mother wasn’t too swift. I hate to speak badly of my mom but, truth is, she was a couple of cans short of a six-pack. She was sweet, man, but she wasn’t quick enough to stay away from Joe Don. Sometimes I think that’s why he murdered my pop …”

  “If it’s any help,” I said, “Dottie agrees with you. She says they had a line on the deputy who did it, then covered it up, but he got shot by his brother-in-law down in Parras before they could make a case. And they could never trace the money back to Joe Don.”

  “The son of a bitch,” Wynona muttered. “If Baby Lester wasn’t such a sweetie I could almost hate him, I hate his daddy so much …”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Oh, fuck, my mama died,” she admitted, “and after the funeral I let Lenny talk me into having a drink with the son of a bitch and his pissant mother …” Wynona paused. “I guess I shouldn’t be talkin’ down my mom. Sometimes my elevator don’t go all the way to the top floor, either. Joe Don put something in my drink, and when I came to I was covered in sweat, spit, cum, my twat so sore I couldn’t hardly walk. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was pregnant.”

  “You could have gotten rid of it,” Mary said softly, reaching over to touch Wynona’s arm. Then when Wynona began to cry, Mary gave her a shoulder.

  “I guess I just ain’t built that way,” Wynona sobbed.

  “I can understand that,” Mary said, then looked at the men around the table as if all this pain had been our fault. We, all five of us, stared at the floor as if we agreed.

  Finally, Wynona sat up, scrubbed her face with her napkin, then continued. “And I think Sarita knew, too. She was especially sweet to me when we ran into each other up at Snowy Lake, and when she found out I was heading for Aspen, she asked if she could hook a ride …”

  “Nobody kidnapped her?” Solly said, bent over his leg to remove his prosthesis and scratch his stump.

  “Not then,” Wynona said, with a wide-eyed stare at Solly’s foot, which he held in his hand as if it were as mundane as a shoe.

  “When?” I said.

  “In Sun Valley, silly,” Wynona said, “at Joe Don’s place. I told you about the gunfight.”

  “You did,” I said, “but I guess I didn’t understand what you were telling me.”

  “You were looking at my tits,” Wynona said, “instead of payin’ attention.”

  “Sughrue’s like that,” Solly said.

  “So excuse the fuck out of me,” I said, “and tell me again.”

  “Well, there was these Mexicans,” Wynona said breathlessly, all memory of her tears seemingly gone, “those pendejos from the Quirky Arms waiting at the house …”

  “Who the hell are those guys?” Frank said suddenly.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Wynona said, “but they acted like her friends but they had guns and wouldn’t let her go. Seems they had some business with Joe Don. And Sarita, too.”

  “Cocaine?” I said.

  Wynona thought for a moment, sweeping the froth of blond hair out of her face, then said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. My Spanish ain’t the best, but from what I could tell they spent most of the time talking about Mexican politics.”

  “Politics,” several of us said at once.

  “Sorry,” Wynona said, “but that’s what it sounded like.”

  “Fuck a duck,” I said as I stood up, knocking over my chair. “Excuse me—I forgot about Annie,” I said to Barnstone, “but I’m flat-ass running blind.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Jimmy said softly, then we all laughed.

  “Anybody else want a beer?” Frank said, then ambled toward the exit and the bar beyond it.

  “Fuck a duck?” Barnstone said quietly, then the laughter broke out again.

  “You guys are nuts,” Wynona said as she stood up. “Where’s my baby?”

  “I’ll get him,” I said, then followed Frank out of the room.

  I caught him at the bar where he was filling a tray with cans of Coors. “Hey, Officer Vega,” I said, “you okay with Solly being here?”

  Frank thought about it for a minute, then opened two beers and shoved one toward me. “Look, man,” he began, “I know you two guys got tight coming out of the bush, and give him this, when we got hit crossing the river, he stood there toe-to-toe with fucking Charles and went to the ground with him, and I know you two were back-to-back when it was over and up to your asses in dead Cong. That’ll make asshole buddies out of anybody, man, but I just never trusted the son of a bitch, okay, and nothing I saw while he was practicing in Denver did anything to convince me otherwise.

  “There’s something dirty about him, Sughrue. He was a fucking spook officer in the bush, part of the problem, and as far as I’m concerned he still is.” Then Frank paused to hit his beer. “But he’s your bro’, man, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Okay,” I said, “just asking.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said, “but why in the hell does he want to know about Willie?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, then drank some of my beer, too. “It’s funny, though.”

  “Funny?”

  “We told the same lie.”

  “It’s a good lie,” Frank said. “I just wish it was true.” Then he sipped his beer, staring out the glass walls of the bar where a guy started a riding mower and began to cu
t the lawn grass. “That ain’t all the bad news, either,” he said.

  I turned all the way around for a good look. “I don’t like that worth a shit,” I said. It was the phantom road guard from our night ride across the desert, the one keeping company with the crashed DC-3 and the numerous bales of marijuana. “Maybe one of us should take a look around instead of a nap.”

  “Okay,” Frank said, then he carried the beer toward our dining room, and I followed him toward the sound of Baby Lester’s laughter.

  Dottie, hard-core, longtime undercover cop, lay on her back in her office, holding Lester up in the air so he could play flying baby. She stopped laughing long enough to hand him to me, then bounced up like a gymnast, her tight, agile body completely under control.

  “What is it about babies that makes fools of grown people?” Dottie said.

  “I don’t know any grown people,” I said as Baby Lester tried to tear off my nose.

  “She’s way too young for you, Sonny,” Dottie said, smiling, “but you two make a pretty couple.”

  “I don’t think we’re exactly a couple,” I said.

  “You’re sweet, Sonny,” Dottie said, touching my cheek, “but sometimes you’re dumb as rock.”

  A few minutes later we had reconvened around the table and Baby Lester had attached himself to his mother’s breast with such sounds of marvelous contentment that we were all envious. Mary leaned over to whisper in Norman’s ear, but as she did, Baby Lester detached and glanced up so we all heard what she said.

  “We could adopt …” Then Mary realized we were listening and hearing, and she blushed like a maiden.

  “So,” I said to Wynona, trying to cover for Mary, “what happened in Sun Valley?”

  “The usual,” Wynona said as Lester fell on her breast like a starving man, “she shopped, I watched. She played golf, I watched. She showed me shit, like the other house, and I watched. Ever notice that: rich people need an audience. Hell, maybe we all need an audience.”

  “Better than a crowd,” Jimmy said.

  “It was fun, you know,” Wynona said to Jimmy, “good times. Sarita is really a class act. Maybe because she’s a Mexican. Sometimes it’s like, you know, they’re raised better. Or something. I don’t know. But it was great times for a couple of days …”

  “You guys were there for days?” I said, then looked at Solly. “When was the kidnapping reported?”

  Solly thought for a second. “As far as I know, that night.”

  “This shit don’t scan,” Frank said.

  “And those guys from Aspen were there all the time?” I asked Wynona.

  “They were there when we got there,” Wynona said.

  “And when did the other bunch show up?”

  “The second night,” she said. “We were eating fajitas when they killed the two guys outside, then rolled into the house. It was a shit-storm, Sonny. Just like the fucking movies. Them that didn’t run, fucking died. Shotguns and silenced Uzis, or some such shit.” Wynona looked at us as if she expected us not to believe her. “Me ’n’ Lester hid under the cover of the hot tub. These guys were dressed like, you know, cocaine cowboys, but they weren’t right, somehow, all their clothes were brand-new and they couldn’t walk in cowboy boots for shit. They looked like a bunch of mojados fresh over the borderline. Hell, one guy couldn’t figure out how to get the safety off on his Uzi.”

  Wynona sighed so hard that Lester’s head lifted like a deep ocean swell on her chest, then continued. “And like I said, my Spanish ain’t all that terrific, but when they were looking for me and Baby Lester, they were standing out on the deck right by the hot tub and talking, and I could tell they didn’t know what it was. One of the guys thought the cover was a short table, so these dudes ain’t exactly your sophisticated world travelers.”

  Then Wynona sighed again. “We hung out under there for hours, ’til we didn’t hear nothing. There were fucking bodies everywhere. So me and Baby Lester split to the other house because we didn’t know what the fuck to do. Then I called Mel—we been friends since Telluride, you know—’cause she was always smarter and tougher than I was and now she’s …”

  We waited until she composed herself, then I said, “I don’t mean to push you, love, but you told me that you knew where Sarita was.”

  Wynona brightened in that pretty way only young girls can, then said, “Oh, sure. I heard ’em talking. Whoever those guys were, they thought it was funny to carry her someplace nobody would ever think of looking.”

  “Where’s that?” Solly asked.

  “Oh, a hunting lodge on her own ranch down in Coahuila, up in the Encantadas, you know, south and west of Big Bend,” Wynona said. “You cross at Boquillas del Carmen, on a rowboat. Lenny and I came back that way one time. He fucked up a little drug deal in Musquiz, you know, and we were running from the Mexican law. Stupid asshole tried to stiff a Rurale captain for chicken-shit money … So one of Sarita’s cousins who had the hots for me up here once, hid us out until we could get back across the borderline.”

  “How do you get there?” Norman asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Wynona said, “but I can show you.” She let that gem of information rattle around the table, then added, “In person, I mean. Not on some pissant map.”

  Lester kept sleeping while Wynona and I lounged in the sauna. She couldn’t seem to get enough of the hot dry air. While sweat poured, glistening, off her lovely body, I kept checking on the napping Lester just to get enough of a lungful of cool air to keep breathing. Finally, I had enough and quit even though she laughed at me. I showered, dried, then flopped on the bed beside Lester. Then I unwrapped my duck and set it on the night table.

  After a bit, she joined me on the bed. We made a couple of cursory attempts at pre-foreplay, but we were both too tired, so we just lay there holding each other as our skin cooled.

  Then she saw the duck, sat up, and elbowed me happily in the ribs. “All right, Sughrue,” she chortled, “you found it.” Then she threw her arms around me.

  “And all the firepower, too,” I said. “Why did you take the duck?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know,” she said sharply. “I just wanted to hurt the son of a bitch. That’s why I stole Lenny’s twenty-two, too. He fancies himself a hired killer, you know, but he’s just a little twit …”

  “A tough little twit,” I interrupted.

  A comment with which she agreed, then continued, “And I took the Glock, too, thinking Joe Don’s metal detectors would catch the twenty-two and miss the Glock, and then I could shoot the bastard dead …”

  “What happened?”

  “He laughed at me, and I couldn’t pull the trigger,” she admitted sadly. Then brightened. “So I just picked up his lousy old duck and walked out with it. Joe Don’s such an idiot about those old things. He’s just thrilled down to his dingleberries that nobody knows what they are or where they came from. And the fact that that black, sticky shit is blood … well, that makes his pecker dance for joy. He’s not just a turd, Sonny, he’s an asshole, too. And kinda stupid. I guess he thought I’d bring the goddamned thing back.”

  “Well, it’s mine now,” I said. “He’d have to kill me to get it.”

  Wynona suddenly looked worried. “Is there some kinda curse on the fucking ducks? Jesus, don’t you go crazy on me, too, Sughrue. I couldn’t stand that.” Then she hugged me so hard it seemed to make her yawn. She lay back across the bedcover.

  I stared at her for a moment where she lay, as nakedly natural as the waxing and waning of the moon, the turn of seasons, life and death, one wrist propped against her forehead, her rib cage rising and falling in soft, slow rhythms.

  “How come you’re a-starin’ at me, Mr. Sughrue?”

  “Wynona, baby, you are lovely,” I said.

  “Time will take care of that,” she said quietly. Then she rolled over to stare at me. “Except it didn’t happen with Sarita,” she said incredulously. “She’s different somehow. She’ll be beautiful until the day
she dies, absolutely beautiful.”

  “Well, some of her children have come a little short of true beauty,” I suggested.

  “You mean that scut Norman?” Wynona scoffed. “He ain’t no more kin to her than I am.” Then she paused. “I don’t know what’s going on …”

  “Neither do I.”

  “… but I’m comin’ along ’cause I’m the only one who knows where we’re going and I promise you, Sonny, ain’t nobody looking for their mama …”

  But as if to simply prove us wrong in all our philosophies, Baby Lester whimpered in his small sleep, squirming out of the darkness of his dreams toward Wynona’s waiting arms.

  “Would you get me a towel, please, Sonny,” she said, “I’m leaking …”

  I grabbed a towel, then, when they were asleep, draped them in a cotton blanket and carefully repacked the Mexican Tree Duck. Then quietly strapped on my Browning, covered it with a loose sweatshirt, slipped into jeans and a pair of running shoes, chopped a small line of crank, and went about my dirty business.

  Even though the desert sun was as warm as a cooling brick, the air was still cut with the edge of the desert night, but Frank and Jimmy, dressed in trunks and thongs, acted as if it were still full-blown summer. As a concession to the Agent Orange acne on his back, Jimmy had thrown on a tee-shirt, but the pustules still burned like unbanked coals through the thin fabric. Jimmy had his piece wrapped in a towel; Frank had stashed his in a belt pack. We were ready for anything. Except for the ease with which we came up with the answer.

  The chili processing and packing plant sat atop a large daylight basement. Barnstone and the phantom road guard supervised the cleanup as a small group of men attacked the walls, floor, and ceiling with steam hoses and scrub brushes. A refrigerated semi and tractor sat idling outside the basement. We assumed that the bales had been transferred and were waiting to move.

  The road guard nudged Barnstone as we stepped up behind him. Barnstone turned, smiled, and shook his head. He introduced us to the road guard, then said, “Yeah, shit, he recognized the van, so I knew you guys would be poking around. Too much of a coincidence, right?”