CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“We’ll hear something from Walsh soon,” I told my aunt over our midmorning coffee. “Either that or they’ll attack the ranch. Which I can’t see them doing since the guards are lawmen.”

“You feel sure he’ll try to contact you?” she asked.

I gave her a thoughtful nod. “The fact that I haven’t gone to the Rangers with the journal should tell him I’m willing to deal.”

“But why haven’t you gone to the Rangers? Not that I think you should, you understand. I’m just curious since you’ve always trusted them.”

“Because we don’t have any idea who’s behind Walsh. Hell, it could be the governor for all I know. Going to the state boys right now might just dig us in deeper. My hope is that I can give him the damn thing and be shut of the whole mess. Like I told Jack Amber, the coast’s problems aren’t our problems, and I want to convince Walsh of that. I hate to see Sam and Rosario put on the spot, but there’s nothing I can do about it. At the moment they’re under guard and at least as safe as we are. In the long run, it might be in their best interests to make a deal, but that’s not my decision to make. I just want out.”

“But you know as well as I do that the journal may not satisfy him,” she said.

“If that’s the case, then we’ll have to deal with the problem ourselves.”

*   *   *

The call came on the last day of the year, and it came from an unexpected source. Tía Carmen picked up the phone when it rang, then after speaking for a few moments, handed me the receiver. I listened, then said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

My aunt looked at me inquiringly.

I nodded. “Monday at the Windmill Café in San Diego.”

“Is Walsh going to be there?” she asked.

“No, but he’s sending me a proposition.”

“Can you drive?”

I shook my head. “I’ll get one of the vaqueros to take me over in the truck.”

She nodded. I leaned down to kiss her forehead. “What do you think will happen?” she asked.

“I think there’s a chance Walsh will take the diary and call it quits. If not…”

“If not, it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

*   *   *

The man who’d just come through the door of the Windmill Café stood five feet eight inches tall. He had a sturdy, compact body and wore a well-cut double-breasted suit of blue wool, a fine white cotton dress shirt, and a silk tie of mottled reds and golds. His thinning brown hair had been carefully combed straight back from a broad forehead that loomed above a pair of mischievous brown eyes behind rimless glasses. To all the world he looked like a prosperous small-town banker. But this man was no banker. He was El Patrón—George Berham Parr, the Duke of Duval, the Boss of Bosses in South Texas politics.

As always, he was guarded by a trio of deputy sheriffs. All three were Mexican-American men in their midthirties, and all three were dressed in cheap gabardine suits, scuffed boots, and ratty Stetsons. Two of them were tall, and thin to the point of emaciation. They wore Colt pistols slung low on bullet-filled belts, while the third, a short, stolid individual with a jailhouse swagger, carried a sawed-off pump shotgun and stared out at the world with the dead-fish eyes of a cut-rate mortician.

They were but three of a hundred or more similarly armed and hard-bitten border men he could call on in times of need. Now forty-two years old and nearing the peak of his career, Parr was preeminent in a group of ruthless political bosses that included—besides my own aunt—such individuals as Ed Lloyd, the virtual dictator of Jim Wells County; the Guerra family of Starr and Hidalgo counties; and Judge Manuel Ramon of Laredo, a figure so spectral and illusive that it was joked that not even his own wife recognized his voice. Through these interlocking alliances, he controlled an enormous bloc of votes, a bloc large enough to make his support the deciding factor in any closely contested statewide election. Consequently, all the state’s major politicians, even silver-haired patrician senators from the old cotton counties, eventually found themselves waiting hat in hand in the anteroom of his fortress-like office a block from the decaying courthouse in San Diego.

Parr came over to the table where the kid who’d driven me to the café and I sat while the two skinny deputies took up positions near the door. The shotgun man followed his boss and stood nearby the whole time we talked. “Virgil,” Parr said, his voice high-pitched and happy. “How you doing?”

“I’ve been better, George,” I replied, shaking his hand.

“So I heard. You gotta be more careful.”

“I plan to once this business is all over.”

He stared at me quizzically. “Just what the hell’s going on?” he asked.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Sure,” he said firmly. “But let’s have a hamburger while we talk. Best burgers in the state.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Parr motioned for the waitress, then turned to Juan, my driver, and broke into a stream of fluent Spanish. “I need to talk to your patrón privately,” he said. “Why don’t you go on back in the kitchen and eat?”

“Sí,” the man said with a shy nod and rose to his feet.

“Order anything you want,” Parr told him. “And have them put it on my ticket.”

“So you want the whole story?” I asked once Juan was gone.

“Hell yes. I want to know as much as I can about everything. Half of mastering politics is just learning to listen and knowing how to use what you hear.”

“And the other half?” I asked, still grinning.

He made motions with his hands like a man dealing cards. “Spread that moola around. But you know how it works as well as I do. By the way, how’s Tía Carmen?”

“As bossy as ever.”

He cackled and slapped his hand down on the table. There was a boyish exuberance about the man that made you like him despite what he was. Which was as crooked as a snake. Two years earlier he’d bought the famous Dobie Ranch, making the first payment with a check he simply drew on the Duval County treasury. But in politics his word was good, and he was loyal to his friends.

The waitress appeared and took our orders. When she’d left, Parr leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Like I told you on the phone, this concerns Milam Walsh. What I didn’t tell you is that he came all the way over here to see me, and asked me to arrange a meeting between the two of you. Said he had something you needed, and you had something he needed, and he was willing to trade.”

“Is he still here?” I asked in surprise.

“No, he went back home.”

“Why didn’t he just call and tell you what he wanted on the phone? Why go to all the trouble of driving down here?”

Parr smiled coldly. “My guess is that he doesn’t entirely trust the security of the telephone system.”

“Oh,” I said. “I get it. He’s worried about the Feds?”

“Maybe,” Parr said with a shrug. “Or maybe he was just unsure of himself and wanted to look me in the eye. But anyhow, I thought the whole thing was pretty strange since he’s the big dog over there in Jefferson County, and you’re really just a private citizen. And why come to me? I’ve never even met the guy before.”

“He’s smart, George,” I said, “and he knows how things work. Which means he realizes that you’re the man to see if you want to get something done in South Texas.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t he just drive out to the ranch if he wanted to talk to you?”

I gave him an offhanded shrug. “I guess he just didn’t feel free to.”

“Oh? Have the two of you had some trouble?”

“You might say that,” I replied with a sour smile. “The bastard tried to kill me.”

His eyes widened but he remained silent while the waitress poured our coffee. Once she’d left the table he leaned forward and said, “Maybe you need to tell me the whole story…”

*   *   *

We parted an hour later, shaking hands on the sidewalk in front of the café. “You sure this is the way you want it, Virgil?” Parr asked.

I nodded. “This is the way it has to be.”

“I could do better by you if you’d let me,” he said.

I shook my head. “Just call Walsh as soon as you can, and convince him that I jumped at his offer. And tell him to come out to the ranch three days from now, in the late afternoon, about five—and somehow manage to let him know all the out-of-county deputies have gone home. Tell him we were having to pay for them, and that I’m glad to get out from under the expense or something like that.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry. I can manage it. Anything else?”

“Forget we ever had this conversation.”

“Sure.”

As Juan drove off up the street I looked back and saw El Patrón gazing after us, a troubled frown on his face. I didn’t blame him; I didn’t feel too cheerful myself.