Epilogue
Carrizo Springs. One week later.
In the White Star Cantina, Whicher sits smoking on a Marlboro Red. On the table is a long-neck bottle—ice-cold, condensation beading in the heat. It's early evening, the place half full—Hispanic Americans, field hands, construction workers. Beside the bottle is a tin ashtray. He flicks the cigarette. Checks the door.
Alfonso Saldana. Todd Williams. Randell Creagan.
Carmela Ramirez. Sara Pacheco.
Two more, unidentified. Non-documented, Hispanic males. Last, he thinks of Merrill M. Johnson. And District Marshal Quinton Lassiter.
He stares around the room, taking in the bar, thinks of another; Viajero, in Piedras Negras. He raises the bottle. Takes a long pull.
La zona. Everybody went there. From way back, Eric said. Great and the good.
Quinton Lassiter had been one of them.
Whicher's gaze settles on his draft report—inquest notes compiled for Dimmit County Sheriff.
Scruggs had lifted the suspension; District Marshal Riggins had him do it. But nothing broken had been fixed.
Lassiter.
At twenty, Quint Lassiter had been in Korea fighting a war. By twenty-five, stationed in Germany with 2nd Armored. Holding back the communist east.
Borders—always at the front line. Always into the Enemy.
By '57, Lassiter was in the Marshals Service, on the border with Mexico. A line crosser. Like Whicher himself.
He pictures the man in a '50s Chevy—cat houses, pretty girls, easy money. Mixing with the twilight people.
Quint Lassiter made money all kinds of ways on the border; no drugs, no guns, nothing to get on any federal radar. Just a word in the right place, either side of the line. Thirty years on, married, a family, he was a big noise. Friend to everybody—Merrill Johnsons of the world included.
But times were changing.
Carmela Ramirez.
The girl with the broken necklace.
Carmela left her home in Sabinas, Coahuila. For two years in Piedras Negras, she was practically Lassiter's own girl, his private property.
She asked her tío rico, her sugar daddy, to let her come live in the states. She'd live someplace near San Antonio, he could see her all the time.
He told her no. He meant it.
But Carmela Ramirez had her own ideas.
Whicher gazes out the window onto the street. Cars roll past the dust-streaked store fronts, cars and trucks, the sidewalks empty. At one corner of the bar room, a group of Hispanics bet on a pool game. A guy sinks four off of two rails, only calling three. Shouts start up, the player flips the bird. Whicher takes another sip.
Carmela Ramirez. A girl like her, working la zona, it took her no time.
It took her no time to hook into the coyotaje. No time to hook up with a bunch of campesinos looking to make the trip north. She could surprise her sugar daddy, show up, what was Lassiter going to do? He probably thank her for it, no time. Didn't she always make him thankful?
She talked a girlfriend into going with her. Sara Pacheco.
Whicher taps the ash from the end of the cigarette. Runs a knuckle up the side of the bottle.
For days, Quint Lassiter couldn't find her in Piedras Negras. He asked his friend Merrill Johnson to try.
And Merrill Johnson had obliged.
Merrill Johnson knew everybody. Not just in freight, in all the trade along the border. Brinco people included; pateros—boat men, guys making river crossings, with wets.
One of the boat men in Piedras Negras said he knew of a group making the trip with two young women. They were crossing downstream, out in the brush. Across the river, a norteno would get them through. The norteno's name was Williams.
Todd Williams from Catarina—Merrill Johnson knew him.
He knew he worked with Creagan.
They'd likely come up through the Tutton land.
A half hour passes. Whicher buys another beer. The barkeep is a woman, middle-aged, bee-hive hair, a smoker's face. Whicher takes the beer back to the table, lights another cigarette. He'd quit. He told Eric he'd quit. But Eric had to quit too, go see the professor down in Brownsville. That was the deal.
Him and Karen finally split. Eric said he was alright, it didn't come as any surprise. The army looked like being the next thing to go from his life—they were talking about a medical discharge. Only thing anybody could see to do.
From the corner of his eye, Whicher sees the street door open. Benita Alvarenga walks in. She's wearing uniform, olive pants, tan shirt, her hair pulled back. She walks to the counter, all the men in the place turn to look.
She says something to the woman at the bar. Then crosses the room to Whicher's table.
“I get you a drink?” He stands, pulls out a chair.
She nods at the bar. “Got it.” She sits.
He looks at the uniform she's wearing. “Figured you might be about done...”
“We have a lot going on,” she says. “Did you bring the inquest notes?”
He gestures at the folder on the table.
The barkeep brings a can of diet soda, a glass, a napkin. Benita Alvarenga takes a sip, eyes dark, feline.
“I was thinking,” he says.
She glances at him.
“I don't know. Dinner?” He clears his throat.
Her eyes cut away.
Neither speaks for a moment. He takes a hit off the Marlboro. Feels the hint of color at his face.
“Miguel Carrasco called,” she says. “He's been doing a lot of asking around.”
Whicher taps his cigarette in the tin ashtray.
“He has the best informers. He's hearing Johnson was making money from wets riding loads he brokered.”
Whicher nods.
She flicks an eyebrow. “Looks like you got that right.”
“Plenty I got wrong.”
She puts a hand on the folder of notes. “You talked to Gale?”
Jim Gale.
Gale had seen enough. Year on year he'd seen things, noticed things. He'd started looking for something on Lassiter. Couldn't get what he wanted.
He started talking to fences, snitches, giving out his number to the low-life. Pimps and racketeers. The likes of Randell Creagan. FBI caught wind of something going on, something bad in the district. Suspicion fell on the Marshals Service. Dane Vogel had been the result.
Everything Whicher saw, he saw it backward.
Benita Alvarenga swirls the ice in her glass. She picks up the folder. “You get it all figured out?”
Whicher gets a shot of whiskey and the taco plate at the bar. He orders rice and black beans, pico de gallo, stewed chicken.
She won't eat.
“Miguel Carrasco says it was him called Lassiter.” She sips her drink. “The sweep was short-handed, he thought of Jim Gale, thought to clear it with Lassiter first.”
He meets her eye over the table.
“That's how come Lassiter heard about it,” she says. “All of those people might still be alive.”
Whicher chews on a mouthful of chicken. “If la migra got a hold of Carmela Ramirez, she'd likely sing. He would've known that.”
“So he came down.”
Whicher nods. “He called Merrill Johnson. Had Johnson call the Tuttons.”
“They're co-operating?”
“Moving them to Huntsville scared the shit out of them.”
“Sheriff says they'll go accessory to murder.”
Whicher takes a knock of whiskey. “Way it breaks.” He puts down the glass. “Tutton told Johnson the wets were headed up in groups, in relays. Todd Williams getting them to the Channing Ranch—Jug Line Harris from the ranch to Creagan's trailers. From there, they'd move up to the farm. Quint Lassiter drove out to the trailers—nobody was there...”
“They were still at the ranch?”
“He didn't know that. He drove to the Tutton place, they told him the wets were on the move—but Zach could radio. So Lassiter had Zach radio Creagan, to tell him—'get rid of the girls'.”
Benita Alvarenga looks at him.
“He probably never meant 'kill them'. He probably only meant; 'take 'em back'.”
Whicher finishes up the plate of food. He runs a fork around the last of the black beans, the pico de gallo.
“Creagan lost it,” he says.
“You believe what Harris said about him?”
“I believe him. He started shooting, didn't stop.”
She shakes her head.
Whicher looks around the bar room; filling up with the evening crowd. Guys like Creagan, working guys in ball caps and battered Western hats. “Jim Gale was pressuring him...”
“Did Gale tell you that?”
“He had Creagan take his number, he was riding him pretty hard. He reckons Creagan was a part-time snitch.”
“As well as a car thief. And coyote?”
“Scruggs thinks FBI in Houston knew him. They won't confirm. But they might've been trying to get him to turn federal witness. You think about it, Laredo court were charging him, FBI putting in a squeeze. On top of that, a US Marshal, Jim Gale is on his back.”
“You think he just cracked?”
“He's out in the brush, the middle of the night, running mojados. Zach Tutton radios, tells him to get rid of the girls. God knows what was said...”
She looks at him.
“They're never going to admit it was anything more. The death house is up in Huntsville,” Whicher says. “State execution unit. I'd think they'd be mindful of that.”
Alvarenga sinks an inch in her chair.
“Creagan shot everybody. Plus Alfonso Saldana—from the truck. Harris ran for his life. The Tuttons say Creagan searched the bodies at the ranch, took anything that looked like ID. Then drove to the farm, told 'em what he'd done. Quint Lassiter was there. He shot him dead.”
The marshal's gaze settles on the empty plate. Amber light of whiskey on the table.
He walks her out. Benita Alvarenga. Into late evening sun on West Alamo Street.
She holds the folder of inquest notes. Something in the way she stands—as if reluctant to leave. “Meg Wheeler says she can't prove that Remington 700 was fired from the Toyota.”
“Zach admitted it was theirs.” Whicher shrugs. “He saw it in Creagan's truck, he'd loaned it to Todd. He grabbed it back—never knowing Creagan shot a man with it.”
Alvarenga looks off down the street toward the turn for the courthouse.
Whicher buttons his jacket over his gun. “Zach says Merrill Johnson came out to the farm. Lassiter and Johnson took Creagan's body out to Elm Creek in the stolen Toyota. We think they picked a load headed for Mexico in the morning. Johnson must've picked it.”
“Except the body fell off a mile down the line...”
He stands. Looks at her.
She glances at the folder. “Sheriff better have these.”
“I call you sometime?”
She doesn't look up.
“I mean...”
“I know what you mean.” She raises the folder. “I only came for the notes.”
He stands awkward in the suit and hat.
“And maybe to tell you something. That last day, the whole time you were suspended—you had no right to do any of the things you did. But you didn't say a damn thing...”
He doesn't answer.
She looks him up and down. “You got the guy, you probably figure it all worked out.”
“Listen...”
“You could have cost me my job. That's really all I need to know.”
Laredo, TX. Two days later.
Whicher pulls in to the truck park in downtown Laredo. It's near eight in the evening, stock trailers lined up in the lot. He cuts the engine, pushes open the door. The smell of beasts strong in the air.
Vic Delossantos from Border Patrol is walking along the side of an open-slat trailer.
Working a clipboard, talking with one of the truck drivers is the APHIS vet—Hannah Scott.
Delossantos spots the marshal. He crosses the expanse of pitted asphalt, last of the day's heat radiating.
Whicher steps from the truck.
“You got my message?” Delossantos says. “You could've come see me in the morning.”
The marshal watches Hannah Scott at the row of trucks. Sandy hair, freckles. Blue polo shirt and cap.
“This whole thing, man. Lot of people got shook up.” The Border Patrol agent looks at him sideways. “I heard Jim Gale's running for Lassiter's job. Up in San Antonio.”
“I heard the same.”
Delossantos screws up his face. “How about you?”
“We get done with the inquest, I'll be leaving. Transferring. Northern district.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
They stand a minute watching horses move inside the transports, tails flicking, stamping feet.
Hannah Scott's finishing up with the driver.
“You said you had something for me?” Whicher says.
“Not me. Hannah. The vet. It's about Brownsville, the university.”
“She wanted to see me?”
“I'll let her tell you, man.” Delossantos reaches out his hand. “Northern district. You know where?”
“Abilene. Lubbock, maybe.”
The Border Patrol agent places a hand over the marshal's as they shake goodbye. Then turns back to the waiting line of trucks.
Hannah Scott fits a top to her pen.
Whicher spots a bench in a park off the lot—scorched grass, a line of palms stretched along the river bank.
The vet takes a loose strand of hair from her mouth, stepping over, clipboard beneath one arm. “Evening.”
He nods. “We take a walk?” He takes out the pack of Marlboros. “You smoke?”
“Nope.”
“Didn't think.”
They walk across a loop road to the little park. Sit at a bench facing the water.
Downstream, Convent Avenue Bridge spans the Rio Grande, cars and trucks stacked solid.
“So, Vic tell you?” She puts the clipboard on her lap. “It's about that man. Trying to find out about his son.”
From his jacket, Whicher takes a book of matches from the White Star Cantina. He lights the cigarette. Shakes out the match.
“Vic was pretty upset,” she says.
Whicher smokes. Stares at traffic on the bridge.
“About the little boy, I mean. About the father. He asked me about it a few times.” She pauses. “I told him we see it a lot.”
On the Mexican bank of the river, a mass of trees shimmer in the wind.
“Fatal birth defects,” she says, “in horses. The same as NTDs.”
He glances at her. Takes the cigarette from his lips.
“Neural tube defects,” she says. “In human births. I told him what I know. He wanted me to talk to you.”
Upstream, upriver, red steel trusses of a railroad bridge span the water. A freight load on it, creeping north.
“There's been studies in the horse world. Animal medicine's a separate world from human medicine,” she says. “Except, of course, it really isn't.”
At the far side of the park, a lone Hispanic kid turns on a cinder court, shooting hoops at a rim with no net.
“We see NTDs every year toxic mold gets into the corn harvest.”
The marshal meets her gaze.
“Stillborn foals,” she says. “The white matter of the brain is liquified. We know what causes it—it's the corn mold.”
“Ma'am?”
“Fumonisin. It's a toxin in unprocessed corn.”
He shifts on the bench. “I'm not any kind of science major...”
“It's a naturally occurring mold.” She lays her hands on the clipboard. “Some years it's worse than others. But any year the toxin level is high, all livestock are taken off feed containing corn.”
“You're saying that's what causes it?”
“There's a glut of corn, it goes cheap, places like Mexico, anyplace people want cheap food. Like unprocessed corn to make tortillas. Not the store-bought kind—the raw ingredients.”
Whicher stares at the parched grass in the park, an image in his mind; the woman at the painted shacks by Creagan's trailers. Grinding corn in a bowl.
“If a pregnant woman ate it,” the vet says, “the effect on an unborn child would be the same as on an unborn foal.”
He twists his head to look at her. “The folk at the university know this?”
“Human health and animal health.” She shakes her head, crosses one leg over the other.
He smokes in silence.
She stares out over the river.
The kid on the court runs, shoots—hits the backboard.
“But you think it's been passed on,” Whicher says, finally. “This information?”
“It'll be somewhere in the bottom of a drawer.”
From the corner of his eye he sees the railroad bridge. Trains had nothing to do with it, with the kid getting sick, the mother riding freight, breathing chemicals. How many things could a man get wrong?
The catch of animals is strong in the air. He thinks of horses sent down to the knife; people dying to come up. Stillborn kids in a hospital. Rotten feed.
He takes off the Resistol. Sets it down on the crown.
She stands, turns to go. “I don't suppose it changes anything,” she says. “Vic just wanted me to tell you.” She spreads her hands. “I guess it didn't really matter...”
The river moves in the channel, toward a waiting ocean. He watches the water's surface, sun dancing—points of brilliant light. Across the city, the noise of traffic drifts in the air, a flow of moments, lives entangled, intertwined.
He hears her footsteps as she walks away. Throws down the cigarette, sets the hat on his head.
“It mattered.” He speaks his answer to the wind.
The kid on the court has gone.
No one hears him.
“It mattered,” he says.