Part 14 (1/2)

'And?'

'B, Billy Bob Barnett is the client in his letter who is allegedly contaminating the groundwater.'

'And?'

'C, he didn't show his proof to either his wife or his best friend.'

'Very good.'

'And D, he was gay.'

'Who? Jimmy John?'

'Nathan Jones.'

Chapter 9.

Border Patrol Agent Wesley Crum yelled back to his partner: 'Angel, you run like a G.o.dd.a.m.n queer! Hurry, they're getting away!'

It was after midnight, and Wesley and Angel were chasing wets through the desert again. Wesley wore night-vision goggles which allowed him to spot the wets running through the brush-not as good as the Predator's 'eyes in the sky,' but the goggles gave him an on-the-ground advantage over the wets. He was after two males and two females, no doubt a mom-and-pop operation who brought the kids with them for a lifetime in America. A chance at the American Dream: free education, free healthcare, free welfare, free this, free that, free everything, living at the expense of hard-working, tax-paying Americans. What a deal. First thing they do is get pregnant and punch out a baby in America-an American citizen with exactly the same rights as Wesley Crum-which guarantees them an extended stay in the U.S. of A. Consequently, Wesley viewed his job as deficit reduction: every Mexican he caught and deported back across the river equaled four or five Mexican babies the federal government wouldn't have to support. h.e.l.l, if he caught enough wets, he could single-handedly balance the f.u.c.king budget.

Wesley Crum was thirty years old and had been on the job twelve years. He had grown up in Marfa and wanted to stay in Marfa, but there were no jobs in Marfa. Most of his high school buddies had moved away to Odessa to work the oil fields. Wesley hired on with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security. That was back when agents didn't have to speak Spanish to get hired. Now Border Patrol hired Hispanics like Angel.

His partner was an odd duck. Read books. Listened to Marfa Public Radio. Knew stuff. Liked art and the artists. Three years younger than Wesley, Angel had grown up in Presidio and went to college at Texas A&M. Graduated, but he came back to work the border. They were as different as night and day-or Anglo and Hispanic-but they had forged a partners.h.i.+p that had lasted Angel's entire five years on the job, which was five years longer than any other relations.h.i.+p in Wesley's adult life. Of course, everyone liked Angel Acosta. He was that kind of guy. They worked the Big Bend Sector, which covered 165,000 square miles including seventy-seven counties in Texas and all of Oklahoma and 510 miles of the Rio Grande. Which pretty much guaranteed that they would chase wets every night. But Wesley liked the desert at night. He stopped and waited for his partner to catch up. Angel arrived; he was breathing hard. They addressed each other through the night-vision goggles.

'Let them go, Wesley. They just want to work.'

'Are you having one of them eccentric crises I heard about on TV?'

'Existential. You watching Dr. Phil again?'

'Are you?'

'You've got to do something else during the day when we work the night s.h.i.+ft.'

'Like what?'

'Well, you could try reading.'

'Reading?'

As if Angel had said 'yoga.'

'I just don't see why we chase these people when they just want to work.'

'So we can keep working. So we keep our jobs, that's why we chase wets. Angel, there ain't no other jobs in Presidio County for guys like us, especially me. We either chase wets or collect unemployment.'

'We could work the frack rigs.'

'Man, chasing wets is a h.e.l.l of a lot easier than that. And the federal government's benefit plan is much better than anything in the private sector.'

Angel shrugged. 'That's true.'

'Okay. You got your head on straight?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'Good. They're hunkered down about a hundred yards due north. You circle around east, I'll go west. We'll trap these wets and deport their Mexican b.u.t.ts back to Chihuahua.'

They ran into the dark desert.

Chapter 10.

'Saw you out running this morning,' Presidio County Sheriff Brady Munn said from the other side of his man-sized desk. 'Dawn in the desert's nice, ain't it?'

Nadine eyed Book through her black gla.s.ses. 'You ran at dawn? What is that, like, eight A.M.?'

'Six. I always run at dawn.'

'I sleep at dawn.'

'You folks want a cup of coffee?'

'No, thanks,' Book said.

'Sure,' his intern said. 'With cream. The real stuff, not the powdered.'

The sheriff cracked a little smile. 'I'll get the jail chef right on it.' Instead, he called out through the open door: 'Rosa, two coffees. With real cream.'

A hearty laugh came back. Then a voice with a Spanish accent.

'Real cream? Are you serious?'

'Run across the street to SqueezeMarfa, they'll have some.'

Now Spanish words came back, which turned the sheriff's smile into a chuckle.

'You folks speak Spanish?'

'No,' Book said.

'Nunh-huh,' Nadine said.