Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can.” He patted his pockets for a light. “There’s no problem here. If Doris says she walked into a door, then that’s what happened.”

  “You can’t hit your wife, Jack.”

  He found his Zippo in his front pocket. “I can do whatever I want. This is my town.” He removed the cigar from his mouth and gave me a hard stare. “Now I’m done playing with you. Get out of my house or I’ll get the Chief down here.”

  He put the cigar between his teeth and struck the lighter.

  “Don’t light that cigar,” I told him, my voice low.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You’re giving me orders now, Carl? In my own house?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. That’s not how it works. Like I told you, this is my to—”

  I took two quick steps and whipped my open hand through the air. The blow caught both of his hands at the fingers. The cigar and the lighter flew from his grasp, clattering against the bookcase.

  Talbott’s face reddened. Rage settled in his eyes. “You son of a bi—”

  I latched onto his wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other. With one swift lever motion, I dumped him out of the chair and face-first onto the hardwood floor. He grunted while I ratcheted the handcuffs onto his wrists.

  “What the hell do you think—?”

  “You’re under arrest for assaulting your spouse,” I told him. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney.”

  He let loose a string of curses, but it was nothing I hadn’t heard before.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I pulled him to his feet.

  “You can’t do this to me!” he barked at me. He pulled his lips back, baring his teeth. “You are finished!”

  “Finished here,” I grunted in agreement and shoved him toward the door.

  “I want to see the Chief!”

  “You can call him from lockup.”

  His eyes flared open at the word, then narrowed again. “Finished!”

  I took him by the elbow and walked him out of the study and into the great room. Doris stood by a chair, her eye wide with wonder. “Jack?” she asked, her voice breaking.

  “This is your goddamn fault!” he screamed at her.

  “Shut up,” I told him and forced him down the hallway.

  “Jack?” she called after him.

  “You did this, Doris!”

  I pushed him face first into the flat adobe styled wall. I flattened my hand against the back of his head, pressing my thumb into his jaw. I found the mastoid and drove the thumb into it. Jack screamed.

  “I said to shut up,” I growled into his ear. “Do you understand me?”

  He nodded frantically, but as soon as I eased off on the pressure, his eyes filled with venom again. “You’re going to pay for this. You are going to pay like a mother—”

  I drove my thumb into his jaw again and he yelped. “Maybe so,” I whispered, “but between now and then, you are going to feel a lot of pain if you don’t stop yelling at her. You got that?”

  He nodded again. I released the pressure. His eyes burned with red-hot hate, but he said nothing.

  “Jack?” Doris’ wavering voice floated down the hallway. “What do I do?”

  “Wait here,” I told her. I swung Jack away from the wall. We marched out the front door. At the Explorer, I searched his pockets and found nothing. I opened the back door and guided him into the seat.

  “You’re finished,” Jack told me, his voice low and deadly.

  “Yeah, you said that.” I shut the door. The brief blip of a siren caught my attention and a second Explorer pulled to a stop behind mine. Wes Perez hopped out of the driver’s side. His face was etched with concern.

  “¿Que pasa, Carl?” he asked, his tone worried.

  Much more slowly, John Calhoun stepped out of the passenger side and made his way toward us. His perfectly combed iron gray hair, creased jeans and impeccably white shirt were familiar and gave me an odd comfort.

  “I just arrested Jack,” I told them both.

  Wes’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Old John’s face remained impassive, but even in the dim light of the driveway, I saw the sheen of sweat on his cheeks and chin.

  “What for?” Wes asked.

  “He hit Doris.”

  Wes muttered a curse and glanced at Jack in the back seat of my rig.

  “That what Doris said?” John stared at me from under the brim of his Stetson.

  I held his gaze. “That’s what the bruise on her face said.”

  John didn’t answer. He pressed his lips together and swallowed.

  “You sure this is such a great idea, Carl?” Wes said. “I mean, this is Jack Talbott we’re talking about here.”

  “I know. And Jack Talbott hit his wife.”

  “Which I gather she’s not saying,” John added.

  “He hit her. And he’s going to jail.” I looked from one to the other, shaking my head in amazement. “Why are you two so afraid of him? Why is this whole town so afraid of him? Because he has money? So what.”

  Both men were quiet for a second. The ticking sound of their patrol Explorer’s engine cooling mixed with the sound of the cicadas while we all stood in the driveway and waited.

  “He’s got more than money,” Wes finally whispered.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Wes glanced up at me, his normally warm Mexican features spiked with worry. Before he could answer, yelling and thumping erupted from the rear of my patrol vehicle. Jack’s muffled demands to be un-cuffed and released wafted out to us. The eyes of both men pleaded with me.

  “Might be best,” John said. “You could write a report. Let the judge figure on what to do.”

  The tickle of anger that had exploded on Jack inside the house had been worming its way back into my chest since the two of them showed up with their worried faces, walking on eggshells. I reined it in before I blasted both of them.

  “I’m taking him in,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now do me a favor and stay here with my rig while I finish up this call.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I strode to the rear of the Explorer. As soon as I swung open the rear door, Jack’s voice boomed out from the back seat.

  “—Wes, you goddamn wetback turncoat! Get me out of these cuffs or your cousins are going back across the Rio Grande! Do you hear me, Wes? You fucking bean-eater! I’ll make sure your primos —”

  I removed a camera I kept back there for photographing evidence and slammed the door again. Jack’s voice dropped to a muffled roar. A quick check showed three shots left on the roll of film.

  John cleared his throat. “If you’re gonna be a while, Carl, maybe we ought to un-cuff him. Just while we’re waiting on you to—”

  “He stays cuffed.” I looked up at John, then over at Wes. “And I swear to God, boys, if I come out and he’s not still cuffed and stuffed, I will gut-shoot all three of you.”

  Both men blanched. They knew I didn’t mean it, but they knew I meant business, too. I didn’t wait for their reply. I headed back into the house.

  I entered without knocking. I found Doris in the great room, curled up on a small couch and rocking slightly. Tears streaked her face.

  “Doris? I’d like to take your picture, if that’s okay.”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes no longer held the arrogant denial I’d seen earlier. Instead, she bore the same haunted, fearful look she’d had when she answered the door. She shrugged. “It won’t matter now.”

  I snapped an overall shot of her, then zoomed in for two close-ups of her face. Each time, she flinched when the flash flared as brightly as a muzzle blast.

  I lowered the camera and thanked her. She stared back at me with a shaken mien.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked in a voice thick from crying.

  “Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean the law doesn’t apply to him.”

  She sniffed and a sad smile tugged at the corne
r of her mouth. With a shake of her head, she said, “Oh, Carl. You’re such a romantic. One of these days, reality is going to hit you like a runaway semi.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I touched the brim of my hat and left.

  Once outside, I saw that Wes and John had moved out of hearing range from my vehicle. They looked like two dogs that were waiting to be whipped for tearing up their master’s drapes.

  John watched me approach. “You gonna need us at the station, you figure?”

  I shook my head. “Wes’ll be enough. He can drop you at home first, though.”

  John nodded in agreement and obvious relief. “All right, then.”

  I gave Wes an upward nod. “See you at the station after, all right?”

  His eyes darted to John and then back to me. “Sure,” he said with false camaraderie.

  I opened the driver’s door to my Explorer and stepped up into the seat. Jack’s verbal harangue washed over me immediately, but I ignored it and dropped the camera on the passenger seat. I turned the ignition, lowered the gear lever into Drive and headed toward the station.

  Jack became strangely silent once we reached the station. His stream of threats and insults for the entire ride dried up. It’s a phenomenon I’d seen before. When the previously ambiguous concept of jail suddenly looms as a very concrete reality for the prisoner, it can be a sobering moment for some. I was surprised it affected Jack in that way, though.

  I removed his handcuffs, took his belt and his watch away. The thick band was gold and heavy. I put him in a holding cell at the end of the hall. He rubbed his wrists and glared at me, but didn’t say a word. I decided that booking photographs and fingerprints could wait. I needed to get the paperwork done before morning came. Besides, I figured he needed to spend a little time sweating.

  Molly was waiting for me at my desk when I closed the door to the hallway of jail cells.

  “You really arrested him?” She shook her head in wonder. “I thought I’d never see the day that happened.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at me like I’d asked the most foolish question of the decade. “Because he’s Jack Talbott, that’s why. This is his town.”

  “I keep hearing that. And you know what? I don’t get it. I never have. So he’s got some money. He’s just a big fish in a small pond.”

  Molly shook her head. “No, Carl, you’re wrong. It’s not just that he’s richer than anyone else in town. Hell, he’s richer than everyone else in town put together. But it’s more than that.”

  “Power?”

  “Yeah, that, too. But not the kind you’re thinking of. He’s got plenty of that, but that’s not what makes this his town.”

  “Then what?”

  She eyed me for a moment. Then she said, “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out. You’re a cop. You’ve been here four years. You’ve seen how he is.”

  I turned up my palms and spread my arms. “Enlighten me.”

  “He has something on everyone in this town. Something on them or something that they want.”

  “Everyone? Come on.”

  “Everyone,” she insisted.

  I thought about it for a moment, remembering his tirade toward Wes when I opened the back of the Explorer.

  “He said something to Wes about his cousins.”

  She nodded. “Three of Wes’s cousins are illegals. They work on Jack’s cattle ranch.”

  “And he holds sending them back to Mexico over Wes’s head,” I finished.

  “Exactly,” she said. “That’s the way he works. If he doesn’t have something on you, he finds out what it is you want and strings you along until he does. And if he can’t get anything on you, he just plain runs you out of town.”

  “That’s pathetic. It’s loco.”

  “It’s Jack,” she said. “And it’s La Sombra.”

  “Jack’s town,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “Now you’re starting to understand what you’re up against.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Well, he’s not above the law as far as I’m concerned. And he doesn’t own me.”

  Molly considered me for a moment. Then she said, “That’s when he’s the most dangerous, Carl.”

  I looked into her eyes. I wondered how she knew these things. I wondered what Jack had on her.

  “Don’t ask,” she said, reading my gaze. “Just leave it alone.”

  I nodded slowly. “All right. I need you to make a copy of that 911 call for me, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s evidence.”

  She didn’t answer. Without another word, I headed upstairs to write my report.

  Wes walked in when I was about halfway through the face sheet of the report. I looked up. He stood across the room from me, his thumbs looped in his belt while he chewed on his lip.

  He glanced over at the closed door. “You got him in holding?”

  “In number three.”

  He nodded, then looked back at me. “You figure your charges will stick?”

  “I reckon they should.”

  “Should?” Wes barked out an exasperated laugh. “Maybe in El Paso, they’d stick. Hell, probably not even there. You might not even be able to make these stick in Dallas, Carl. But this isn’t Dallas and it ain’t El Paso.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s La Sombra. And La Sombra is—”

  “Jack’s town.”

  We stared at each other across the room. Wes ran his hands through his thick black hair and sighed. “I...I don’t think I can be with you on this one,” he muttered.

  I nodded in understanding. “Do what you gotta do.”

  He drew another deep, wavering breath and let it out in a rush. “I’m sorry. Really. But my cousins –”

  “Go,” I said. I kept any accusation out of my tone.

  Wes pressed his lips together and left the room.

  I resumed typing, waiting for the storm.

  “What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing?” the Chief roared at me.

  “My job, sir.”

  “Your job? Your job is to arrest criminals around this town.”

  “That’s what I –”

  “You arrested Jack Talbott!” the Chief screamed. “What the mercy fuck were you thinking?”

  I looked into the Chief’s contorted, red face. His hair was tousled with sleep. Even his vain, handlebar mustache was tweaked. His mouth hung open slightly. I could see the permanent blackness of his gums, but he must’ve scrambled out of bed so fast he didn’t even stop to stuff a wad into his lip. The sourness of his breath and unbathed body drifted into my nostrils.

  When I searched his eyes, though, I found no trace of the rage or anger I expected. He was afraid.

  “What’s he got on you, Chief?” I whispered. “Just holding your job over your head, or is it something more?”

  “What?” he sputtered. The red drained from his face and he became pale. “What did you say to me?”

  “He’s just a man,” I said. “He’s not the devil.”

  The Chief held out his hand, his fingers shaking. “Give me your badge, Carl. You’re done.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  His eyebrows flew up. “No? You little outsider son of a bit—”

  “I wonder what the newspaper would think of a cop getting fired for making a domestic violence arrest,” I said.

  The Chief’s jaw clenched.

  “Or even the TV station over in El Paso. They’re always looking for corruption cases.” I smiled without humor. “Those news boys would like nothing more than climb up some small town police chief’s ass and point out all the things he’s doing wrong.”

  He dropped his hand to his side. “Go home,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “I’m not finished with my report yet.”

  “You’re finished for tonight,” he said, leaning forward. His eyes flickered with rage. “Now go home or I’ll fire your Yankee ass for insubo
rdination. Try’n get someone to give a shit about that, boy.”

  Days passed. Jack’s arrest was the talk of the town and yet it wasn’t. The newspaper didn’t report it. No one mentioned it in polite circles. But in the undercurrent of conversation, when people were sure that no one else would hear, I knew they were talking about it. People eyed me with a curious mix of dread and admiration. By arresting him, I’d only accentuated my own status as an outsider, despite being a part of La Sombra for four years.

  The Chief had released Jack later that same night.

  Since then no one at the station spoke to me, except Molly and even she waited until we were alone. We kept our conversations to bare minimum.

  I finished my report and turned it in.

  I worked my shifts. Everyone in town played the surface charade of politeness but their actions were devoid of warmth. Their nods of hello were perfunctory. They spoke to me briefly and about nothing of consequence. My calls for service dipped to almost nothing.

  I felt more like an outsider than ever before.

  On my days off, I drifted down into Mexico, hanging out in La Cuidad Juarez and listening to music. I saw several beauties there, but none had the grace or mystery of Isabella.

  She drew me back. She drew me to the Tres Estrellas, where she worked. I rolled back into town and straight to the bar.

  The twang of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire danced out of the jukebox. There was a momentary dip in conversation when I entered and walked to the bar. Or maybe it was my own paranoia, after the week I’d had.

  Isabella watched me from behind the bar as I slid onto a stool. Her eyes held a curious mixture of emotions, none of which I could quite place. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She threw the white towel over her shoulder and walked over to me.

  “Carlos,” she said, and rolled the ‘r.’ She leaned forward on the bar. The movement accentuated her cleavage. The scent of her perfume, musky but with a hint of orange, wafted over me.

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It was the first personal attention I’d had in a week that wasn’t cold or distant. And it was from Isabella.