Chapter 8 #2
The music kicked back in and the lights shifted. Rex walked back to the center of the arena and launched into the next bit, some story about Billy's first bank robbery, told with dramatic flair and sound effects.
I sat down hard.
My hands were shaking. I put them under the table where Winston couldn't see them.
Winston sat down across from me and picked up his milkshake like nothing had happened. "Well," he said quietly, just for me. "That was interesting."
Do all Texas Rangers have a screw loose, or is it specifically him?
We'd been made. In front of hundreds of witnesses. Rex knew we were here. Rex knew I was with a Ranger. Rex had called us out, put us on display, and now he wanted to "talk" after the show.
We were fucked. We were so fucked I wasn't going to be able to find a word for the kind of fucked we were until tomorrow when the dust settled and I had a quiet minute with a beer.
"Drink your Coke," Winston said, still smiling, eyes sharp, scanning the arena, Rex, the security along the walls. "We're fine. We're just two guys on a date who enjoy a show."
"We're not fine," I said.
"We are." He took a long drink of his milkshake. "Because now he thinks he's got us rattled. Thinks he's in control. And maybe he is. But he's also going to talk to us, and when he does, we're going to find out exactly what he knows about Roy Castillo."
He said it like it was simple. Like we hadn't just walked into the lion's den and had the lion point us out to everyone watching.
Billy arrived with our food. The Outlaw Experience turned out to be two platters the size of hubcaps, loaded with burgers, fries, onion rings, and something fried I didn't recognize. He set them down with a flourish.
"Courtesy of Mr. Rawlins," he said. "Enjoy!"
Winston picked up his burger and took a bite.
"Eat," he said around a mouthful. "We've got a show to watch."
I picked up a fry and frowned at it. "What're the odds the kitchen spat in our food?"
Winston reached across the table and took two fries off my plate without looking at me. "Don't taste like spit to me."
"I need to use the bathroom," I said.
Winston glanced at me, then nodded. "I'll hold down the fort."
I stood up and made my way toward the back of the theater, past tables of families eating and watching the show, past servers in costume carrying trays of food. The bathrooms were marked with wooden signs: OUTLAWS and SALOON GIRLS.
I walked past them.
The hallway opened up into a wider space near the entrance.
Part lobby, part trophy room. And there, covering the entire west wall, were the photos of the people who'd finished the Billy Burrito challenge, each picture dated, framed, mounted in neat rows under a hand-painted sign that said "LEGENDS WALL" in dripping red letters meant to look like blood.
I started scanning and found the picture of Judge Roy Castillo, grinning at the camera with his arms spread wide in victory. A massive, empty plate in front of him. The date stamp in the corner read two days before we'd found his body.
The man who'd put up the photo had killed him within thirty-six hours of taking it, and was selling t-shirts about it ten feet from the spot where I was standing. Jesus Christ, Rex. You are a sick son of a bitch.
I pulled my phone out and took a picture. Then another, zooming in on the date.
"See somebody you know?"
I looked up.
Otis Peabody stood at the end of the hallway.
We'd crossed paths twice over the years, once at a livestock auction in Las Cruces and once at a gas station outside Hatch, and neither time had we said a word to each other.
We hadn't needed to. Otis worked for Rex the way I worked for Rafe, and men in our position recognized each other without paperwork.
He stood six-three and went two-forty, broad enough through the shoulders to take up most of a doorway.
His hands hung loosely at his sides. They were big and scarred across the knuckles and used.
A toothpick rode the corner of his mouth.
"Just looking," I said.
"At Roy Castillo." Otis didn't move from the end of the hallway. He didn't have to. "They found him out on Pae Saco land."
"That right?"
"That's right." He worked the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. "Funny coincidence. The judge eating at Mr. Rawlins's table for six years and turning up dead on your boss's fence line. The kind of coincidence makes a man wonder which fence line he wandered across last."
"I wouldn't know."
"I would." He let that sit. "Mr. Rawlins is gonna want to talk to you and your Ranger friend after the show."
"We'll see."
"You'll see what I tell you to see, son. Don't leave early," he said. "Be rude."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
He took the toothpick out of his mouth, flicked it onto the floor at my feet, and walked back toward the theater entrance.
I stood there in the hallway, looking at Castillo's picture on the wall, at his grin, at the date stamp that put him here hours before somebody dragged him to death. Sorry, Roy, I thought, and I meant it. You ate the burrito. You earned the wall. You did not earn the rest of it.
Then I went back to the table.
Rafe needed to know we'd been made. And Rafe needs to explain a couple of things, I thought, which he's not going to enjoy.
Winston was halfway through his burger. He looked up when I sat down, took in my face, and set the burger down.
"We're leaving," I said. "Now."
"What happened?"
"Got the picture. Castillo's on the wall. Dated two days before we found him." I kept my voice low. "One of Rex's guys intercepted me in the hallway. Told me not to leave early."
Winston cut a look to the security along the walls, then back to me.
"Then we stay," he said. "We don't give them a reason to cause trouble."
"No." I stood up. "We're not doing this on their terms. We're leaving."
"Ransom."
"Now."
I walked toward the exit without looking back to see if Winston was following. Every instinct I had was screaming to get out, get to the truck, get back on Pae Saco land where I knew the terrain and the people.
Winston fell into step beside me, his hand close to his hip where his sidearm was holstered. We pushed through the double doors into the gift shop. A few tourists browsed the merchandise. Cassidy looked up from her podium, surprised.
"Y'all leaving already? Show's not over."
"Emergency," Winston said, smooth. "Thanks for everything."
We walked out into the night.
The parking lot was half-empty. Most people were still inside to watch the finale. Our truck sat under a light at the far end, right where we'd left it.
Otis stood at the driver's door with two of his men flanking the truck.
The other two were big, and armed. Otis pushed off the door when he saw us, and he put his toothpick back in the corner of his mouth like he'd been waiting for us and intended to enjoy the wait.
"Well," Winston said quietly. "Guess they got the message."
We walked toward the truck. My heartbeat was loud in my ears, but I kept my pace steady. Winston stayed beside me, his hand still near his gun.
The damage showed as we got closer. There was a long key scratch down the passenger side. The driver's side mirror bent at the wrong angle.
"Leaving early?" Otis said.
"Got what we came for."
"That right?" He worked the toothpick across his mouth. "Shame about the truck. Parking lots are dangerous."
"We'll get it fixed," Winston said calmly. "If you boys could just step aside, we'll be on our way."
Otis ignored Winston and stared at me. "Mr. Rawlins wanted to talk to you after the show," Otis said.
"We'll catch him next time."
"He's real busy."
"I'm a Texas Ranger investigating a murder," Winston said. "So I hope he's not too busy to answer a summons."
Otis glanced at him for the first time, slow, like Winston was a fly that had landed near his plate.
"Texas Rangers don't have jurisdiction in New Mexico." He didn't smile when he said it. He didn't need to. "Makes you a tourist with a gun. We get tourists with guns out here from time to time. They don't usually leave with their guns."
The two behind him drifted wider, quiet, hands near their weapons.
I clenched my fists.
"We don't want trouble," Winston said.
Otis stepped closer. "We're just having a conversation. Making sure you boys understand that Mr. Rawlins is a respected member of this community. A pillar. And when somebody comes sniffing around his business, asking questions about a dead judge..." He shrugged. "Well. People notice."
"Noted," Winston said. "Now, if you'll excuse us."
Otis stepped in close enough that I could smell the chew under his lower lip and the bay rum on his neck and the gun oil on his hands.
"You tell Rafe," he said, quiet now, just for me, "that he should be more careful about who he lets onto his property.
Pae Saco's a beautiful piece of land, son.
Wood-frame bunkhouse. Old wiring in the main barn.
Be a damn shame if a hot wind came through and somebody's space heater decided to misbehave around two in the morning.
" He kept his voice cold. "You wouldn't even make it out the back door.
" His eyes flicked past me, toward the building, toward the table we'd left.
"And your boy back there in the hat. Be a shame about him too. "
A man threatens what's yours, you put him down.
That was the rule. Rafe had a hundred operational doctrines and one of them was that the ranch did not absorb threats to the base, ever, not from neighbors and not from cops and not from cartel and not from a man in a Bonney Ranch tactical vest in a parking lot where people were watching.
But it wasn't the bunkhouse that moved my hand.
It was your boy back there in the hat, said in the same voice he'd used about the space heater, and Winston was sitting at our table with a milkshake and a chocolate revolver, not knowing he'd just been added to the list.
I cocked my fist back and punched him square in the jaw, and he fell into the dirt.
The others went for weapons and somebody shouted. Somebody grabbed my shoulder, and I spun, ready to swing again.
Otis was already getting up. Blood ran down his chin where his lip had split on his teeth, and he wiped it on the back of his hand and looked at the smear.
"All right," he said and came at me swinging.
His fist caught me in the nose, and the world went white. The crack came sharp, then the hot rush of blood. Then I was on my back in the dirt with the taste of copper in my mouth and somebody yelling.
A gunshot split the air.
Everyone went still.
I blinked through the blood and the pain. Winston stood over me with his service weapon drawn, pointed at Otis.
"That's enough." Winston's voice was dead calm. "He got you. You got him. We're done."
Otis stared down the barrel of Winston's gun.
"Put the gun down, Ranger," one of the others said. His hand was on his own weapon. "You just pulled on private security in a public lot."
"I pulled on a man who broke another man's nose." Winston didn't lower the gun. "I don't care what color your vest is. You step toward him again, I put one in you. We're going to walk. You're going to let us walk. And then you're going to tell your boss whatever story keeps you employed."
Otis spat blood into the dirt. He didn't take his eyes off Winston while he did it. "Stand down," he said to his men, without looking at them. "Mr. Rawlins is gonna want to hear about this. About all of it."
Slowly, carefully, they stepped back.
Winston didn't lower his weapon. "Ransom. Get up."
I rolled onto my side and pushed myself up. I found my feet, and the world tilted sideways. Blood poured from my nose. It felt like somebody had split my head open.
Winston grabbed my arm and steadied me. "Keys."
"What?"
"Give me the keys. You're not driving."
I pulled them from my pocket and held them out.
Winston's palm closed over mine and held a beat longer than it had any reason to.
Then he let go. The keys came with him, and I felt the absence of his hand in a way that had no business being a feeling I had.
Winston backed us toward the truck, gun still out, watching all three men.
"Pleasure meeting you boys," Winston said. "We'll be going now."
He opened the passenger door and shoved me inside, then went around to the driver's side. He climbed in, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot with the headlights cutting through the dark.