Con Law

by Mark Gimenez

  ‘I’m done ranting.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I feel better now.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So, Professor, how do you feel about sex after dinner?’

  ‘Good.’

  Chapter 31

  ‘Being gay in West Texas, that wasn’t an easy thing for Nathan. It’s a hard land with hard people.’

  Brenda Jones knew about her husband’s double life. It was the next morning, and Book and Carla had stopped off at Brenda’s house to bring her up to date. They had called ahead; she had called Jimmy John. He wore his red jumpsuit; he had just gotten off the night shift. He recoiled when he saw Carla on the front porch.

  ‘We were more like brother and sister. Best friends. But I loved him, and he loved me, I know that. And we had been together since grade school, I couldn’t imagine living without him. He was a sweet man, Professor. He took good care of me. He would’ve been a great dad. He saw on TV that babies in the womb could hear voices, so every night at bedtime he’d put his head close to my belly and read children’s books to our baby.’

  She looked down at her belly; when she looked up, her eyes were wet. She seemed to have aged ten years since Book had last seen her.

  ‘Brenda, are you taking care of yourself?’

  ‘I can’t sleep without Nathan next to me.’

  She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘After law school, he wanted to live in Austin, but I knew he’d have to face it every day, fighting his demons with so many gays there. Out here, there was no temptation. Until the artists came to town. I saw him weakening, and I knew he had given in to his demons.’

  She paused.

  ‘Why would he choose them over me, Professor?’

  ‘Nathan didn’t choose to be gay any more than you chose not to be. That’s who he was. It’s hardwired, like your blue eyes. Brenda, he tried not to be himself for you. But he didn’t choose to be gay over you.’

  She jerked and grabbed her belly.

  ‘Whoa, he kicked me hard. He must want out.’

  She blew out a breath and pondered her belly a moment then looked up at him.

  ‘Professor, you don’t think he’ll be gay, too, do you?’

  ‘Brenda, he’s your son. You’ll love him no matter what he is.’

  Book turned to Jimmy John.

  ‘Did you know?’

  Jimmy John drank his beer then nodded. ‘I figured. He never said nothing, but he was different. I mean, he tried to be a regular guy, even played six-man football. But he wasn’t big, strong or fast.’

  ‘Not a good combination for football.’

  ‘Nope. And he was so damn pretty … not that I was attracted to him that way, I’m just saying. And those pictures he drew, never going to Boys’ Town down in Mexico with us, never went for the sheep—’

  ‘Sheep?’

  ‘Cowboy joke, Professor.’

  ‘It didn’t matter to you?’

  Jimmy John shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘He was the brother I never had. And he was the only person I could talk to.’

  He paused, and his expression said his thoughts had gone to the past.

  ‘Back in high school, my mom cheated on my dad. With a Mexican. Everyone in town knew except my dad. All the other boys laughed at me. Except Nathan. He cried with me.’

  ‘He must’ve been a good friend.’

  ‘My best friend.’

  Jimmy John Dale referred to gays as ‘queers,’ but his best friend was gay, and he knew it. Human beings were complicated creatures. And his former intern had led a complicated life. A complicated, short, double life. Book gazed at the wedding portrait on the wall and wondered about Nathan Jones’s life.

  ‘Heard about your intern,’ Jimmy John said. ‘She okay?’

  ‘A few broken bones, but she’ll mend. Jimmy John, you ever heard any rumors that Billy Bob uses cocaine?’

  He thought a moment then nodded. ‘But no one on the rigs talks about it. We’re too scared.’

  ‘Of Billy Bob?’

  ‘That it might be true. It’s like you’re on a pro football team and the star quarterback’s a cokehead. He could take the whole team down with him. Is it true?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Book turned to Brenda. ‘Did you find anything in the house that might be the proof Nathan said he had?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Anywhere else he might have put it?’

  She turned her palms up. Book turned to Jimmy John.

  ‘Any idea?’

  ‘Sorry, Professor.’

  ‘I always gave my important stuff to my dad,’ Carla said.

  ‘His obituary said his parents survived him. Where do they live?’

  ‘On a ranch west of Valentine.’

  ‘How far out?’

  ‘Forty-five miles.’

  ‘Thirty minutes by pickup,’ Jimmy John said. ‘Just past Prada Marfa.’

  ‘Back in oh-five,’ Carla said, ‘these two German artists named’—she read their names on the plaque—‘Elmgreen and Dragset, they thought this would be just about the funniest thing in the whole world, a Prada boutique in a ghost town. Locals never got the joke. Hence, the bullet holes.’

  Valentine, Texas, qualifies as a ghost town. Only two hundred and seventeen lives play out there; the only thing the town has going for it is its name: every February, thousands of envelopes holding Valentine’s cards arrive at the tiny post office to be postmarked ‘Valentine, Texas.’ One mile west of town on Highway 90, sitting on the south side against a backdrop of cattle grazing on the yellow prairie grass, yucca plants, mesquite bushes, and a distant ridgeline silhouetted against the blue sky was a small white stucco building with plate glass windows (sporting several small bullet holes) under awnings and Prada Marfa printed across the front façade. Arranged on shelves and display stands inside were high heels and purses from the Prada Milano 2005 collection.

  ‘A fake Prada store,’ Book said. ‘In the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘The Jones ranch is a ways out,’ Book said.

  ‘Everything in West Texas is a ways out. You think we’ll learn anything from them? Nathan’s parents.’

  ‘Doubtful. But we’ve run down every other rabbit trail.’

  A rocket suddenly rose into the sky in front of them.

  ‘Look at that,’ Book said.

  ‘Bezos, the Amazon guy, he bought a couple hundred thousand acres over there, built a spaceport. Calls it “Blue Origin.” They’re testing rockets.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘Hey, we’re high-tech out here, Professor. We’ve got the Air Force’s Tethered Aerostat Radar site on Ninety—it’s a blimp-type craft, they put it up to detect drug planes and ground transports in the desert. We’ve got the Predator drones flying the river—they operate those out of the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. And we’ve got Bezos’s rockets.’

  ‘And modern art masterpieces.’

  ‘Is West Texas one crazy-ass place or what?’

  ‘In Giant, Bick Benedict puts his boy on a pony when he’s four, maybe five, kid starts wailing. That was Nathan. Hated horses and cows and manure. But I still loved him.’

  Bill Jones blinked back tears.

  ‘He was your son.’

  ‘I wanted him to be a rancher, take over the spread. He wanted to be an artist. At least he became a lawyer. Reckon I’ll sell out to some rich Yankee like everyone else, move over to Fort Davis with all the other old folks. Play bingo.’

  ‘Maybe your grandson will want to be a rancher.’

  ‘You think?’

  Nathan’s parents, Bill and Edna, had welcomed Book and Carla into their home on a cattle ranch outside Valentine. Their land comprised twenty sections—12,800 acres—of prairie grassland. The Joneses had ranched that land since after the Mexican–American War. On the wall of their living room were framed photos of Nathan as a boy, a young man, a new lawyer, and a new husband. Book wondered if they knew Nathan’s truth: his double life, his se
crets, his art, his dreams. His unfulfilled life.

  ‘Professor, why do you care so much about my son?’

  ‘He saved my life, Mr. Jones.’

  ‘Nathan? He saved your life?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He stepped between me and a bullet intended for me.’

  ‘His shoulder?’

  Book nodded.

  ‘He told us that scar was because he tore his rotator cuff playing basketball.’

  ‘No, sir. That was because of a bullet.’

  Mr. Jones seemed to stand a bit taller.

  ‘Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Nathan interned for me at UT law school four years ago. A week ago, he sent me this letter.’

  Book handed the letter to Nathan’s parents and gave them time to read it. Edna cried; Bill handed the letter back to Book.

  ‘So you’re the professor?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He said you’d come.’

  ‘Nathan told you I’d come to see him?’

  ‘No. To see us.’

  ‘You? Why?’

  ‘Because you’d want this.’

  Bill Jones held out a key.

  Chapter 32

  Fort Davis is the county seat of Jeff Davis County, twenty-one miles north of Marfa. It’s a cute little mountain town filled with senior citizens, as if the American Association of Retired People had invaded the community. The key opened a safe deposit box in the First National Bank of Fort Davis. Inside was a clasp folder with a stack of papers six inches thick. Carla flipped through the papers.

  ‘Well logs,’ Carla said. ‘And Barnett Oil and Gas tax returns. This is it. Nathan’s proof.’

  ‘Of what?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s just numbers. I never was good with numbers.’

  ‘I know someone who is.’

  Book and Carla walked into his intern’s hospital room and found her sitting up in bed and Jimmy John Dale in his red jumpsuit standing next to the bed. He had rolled up the right sleeve as if showing off his biceps.

  ‘Jimmy John?’ Book said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘He’s showing me where the horse bit him,’ Nadine said.

  ‘You drove to Alpine to show my intern a horse bite?’

  ‘Oh, uh, no, Professor. I drove Brenda over here. Her water broke right after you left this morning. She had the baby.’

  ‘Are they both okay?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Book dropped the papers from the safe deposit box on Nadine’s bed tray.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Nathan’s proof.’

  ‘Proof of what?’ Jimmy John said.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Nadine thumbed the pages like a card sharp. ‘Numbers. Looks like a job for the geeky intern. All right, Professor, I’m on it. And thanks for the underwear. I love the feel of cotton.’

  ‘Over-share.’

  ‘Where’s the nursery?’ Carla said. ‘I want to see the baby.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Jimmy John said.

  He led Carla outside. Nadine turned to Book.

  ‘Carla’s dad, Wayne Kent, fifty-four, died in an oil rig blowout outside Odessa six years ago.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘He worked for Billy Bob Barnett.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Carla and her mother sued Billy Bob and his company for negligence. They lost. Carla’s been after Billy Bob ever since. He’s gotten restraining orders against her in four Texas counties. She apparently snuck onto his well sites trying to get incriminating evidence. Tom Dunn represented Billy Bob and the company in court, said she had a vendetta. Said she was mentally unstable.’

  ‘You’re a handsome little boy, aren’t you? Yes, you are.’

  Carla Kent made faces and baby talk to Nathan Jones Jr. wrapped up like a papoose in the crib on the other side of the glass. Book stood next to her.

  ‘So, Professor, you want to make a baby?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘One day.’

  He had always thought that he would be a father one day. Until he got the test results back. There would never be a John Bookman Jr. It didn’t seem fair. But life was not fair. Not for Nathan Jones Jr. who would never know his father, or for Nathan Jones who would never know his son. Not for Nadine’s sister. Or Book’s father. Or his mother. Not for anyone.

  ‘Wave to Aunt Carla.’

  They stopped by Brenda Jones’s room and told her what they had found and that as soon as they knew what it meant, she would know. She cried.

  ‘I wish Nathan was here,’ she said.

  ‘I know you do,’ Book said.

  They then drove back to Marfa and had a late lunch at the Food Shark under the shed in downtown. They sat at a long picnic table where artists had gathered like moths to a flame, fitting since the Food Shark proprietor was himself an artist; his medium was old television sets, which he arranged in various patterns with an image on each screen.

  ‘Kids need a dad,’ Carla said. ‘Especially boys.’

  They did.

  ‘At least he’ll have his grandpa.’

  At least.

  ‘You still here?’

  Book looked up to the mayor of Marfa. He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re happy.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I lost a sale today. A New York couple—two boys—they backed out ’cause they heard about the murder, that we got a murderer running the streets of Marfa, killing homosexuals. Said other artists are worried they might be next, figure the locals are targeting them.’

  ‘Well, look at the bright side, Mayor. If we find the killer, the New York Times might write another story about Marfa.’

  His expression brightened.

  ‘You really think so?’

  Carla sat inside one of Donald Judd’s concrete boxes at the old fort and dangled her legs.

  ‘I love these things,’ she said. ‘My teepee is right over there’—El Cosmico occupied the adjacent tract—‘so I come over here and contemplate life on concrete. You know they’re big enough to see on Google Earth? Like God looking down on us. What was he thinking?’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Judd.’

  They had driven out to the Chinati Foundation then walked over to the field where Judd had aligned sixty concrete boxes—each exactly 2.5 × 2.5 × 5 meters—into fifteen groupings. Carla climbed through the boxes like a kid on a playscape. A tomboy.

  ‘If I was a boy, my dad was going to name me Clark. He always called me his Supergirl.’

  ‘You miss him?’

  ‘Every day. Hard on my mom. She lives with me.’

  ‘You take care of her?’

  ‘More like she takes care of me. She gave me my passion. He made me tough. Taught me to fight boys—not as good as you—and to never back down. And to use guns. He said men respect a woman who carries a gun.’

  She pondered her words a moment then pointed past Book.

  ‘There’s a tough man who carries a gun.’

  Book turned and saw the sheriff standing in the parking lot between his cruiser and Carla’s truck. He waved Book over.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ Carla said.

  Book walked through the prairie grass and over to the sheriff. A Hispanic woman sat in the back seat of the cruiser.

  He shook hands with the sheriff who nodded toward Carla and the concrete boxes.

  ‘You figure her out?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Anything I need to know?’

  ‘No.’

  The sheriff grunted. ‘Well, podna, there’s something you need to know about her.’ He opened the back door of the cruiser. ‘This here’s Lupe. She’s the overnight maid at the Paisano. Lupe, this is the professor.’

  Book said hello. She just smiled in response.

  ‘She’s a little shy around Anglos,’ the sheriff said. ‘Anyway, she remembered something about the truck that sped off the night your window got sh
ot out.’

  ‘It was maroon?’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  The sheriff turned to the woman.

  ‘Lupe, tell the professor what you saw.’

  ‘The truck, it had the bumper sticker with that funny word.’

  ‘What funny word?’

  ‘The F-word.’

  ‘The uh, f-u-c-k word?’

  Lupe giggled. ‘No, not that F-word. The other one.’

  ‘The other F-word … Fracking?’

  ‘Sí. That F-word.’

  Lupe pointed at the bumper sticker on Carla’s truck that read No Fracking Way.

  ‘That is the bumper sticker. And that is the truck I saw.’

  ‘And that’s a twelve-gauge shotgun in her window rack,’ the sheriff said.

  Book took a moment to process that information. He turned to Carla. She lay stretched out on top of a concrete box, as if sunning herself on a beach.

  ‘Sorry to have to break that news to you, Professor. You want to press charges?’

  Book slowly shook his head. ‘No. I want to know why.’

  The sheriff nodded at Carla in the field. ‘Answer’s right out there.’

  The sheriff and Lupe left. Book walked back to Carla.

  ‘What’d the sheriff have to say?’

  ‘That you shot out our window at the Paisano.’

  Her expression served as a confession.

  ‘Why, Carla?’

  ‘I had to keep you in town. So we could learn the truth about Nathan.’

  ‘So you could have your revenge against Billy Bob.’

  ‘Professor, you’ve been checking up on me.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘What’s wrong with revenge?’

  ‘It’s the wrong motive. I’m here for justice.’

  ‘Billy Bob murdered my dad.’

  ‘You lost your civil trial. The jury said he didn’t.’

  ‘In Odessa. Billy Bob cut corners on that rig—on safety, on the environment, on everything and everyone. He doesn’t give a damn about the planet or the people. Only his profits.’

  ‘So you’re devoting your life to putting him in prison?’

  ‘Or in a grave.’ She paused. ‘I hate him.’