by Mark Gimenez
"Luis, please turn up the volume."
Luis did, and they heard the governor speaking.
"I was sighting in a feral hog from up on that ridge when a young girl ran from this tree line, chased by three men on dirt bikes. I could see through the scope that she was just a kid. They ran her down, slapped her, pointed guns at her. I figured they were gonna kill her, so I shot them before they could shoot her."
"He shot someone?" the governor's wife said.
The camera caught three other people standing off to one side of the governor: a bald pudgy man, a big Texas Ranger, and a young blonde woman. She was very pretty. The governor's wife pointed at the woman's image on the screen.
"That's Mandy. He's having an affair with her."
Mandy Morgan gazed upon the governor of Texas. She had loved Bode Bonner from the first moment she had met him, in his office the day she hired on. He was tall, he was handsome, and he was twenty years older than her. All of her affairs had been with older men.
Was she seeking a father-figure, as her therapist had suggested?
Her father had died when she was only seven. He was not there when she was crowned homecoming queen or prom queen. He was not there when she graduated high school or college. He would not be there to give her away at her wedding. She could not remember a father's love or his arms around her.
She felt safe in Bode Bonner's arms.
She loved him, and he loved her. He hadn't said it, but she knew it. She wanted to be his wife, but he had a wife. But his wife had moved out of their bedroom, so Mandy had moved in-at least when his wife was out of town or they were. The governor's wife refused him sex, so she had stepped in to give the governor what he needed. She thought of it as her civic duty.
The satellite phone she was holding rang. She answered.
"This is the governor's wife. Put Bode on."
"Mrs. Bonner, he's giving a press conference. I'll have him call you back."
"I'll hold."
"Yes, ma'am."
Lindsay covered the phone with her hand.
" Ma'am. She calls me ma'am, like I'm old enough to be her mother." Lindsay sighed. "Maybe I am."
She turned back to the television. "DEA Agent Gonzales" now spoke into the microphones.
"These dead Mexicans, they were just teenagers, throwaways south of the border. The cartels recruit them off the streets because they've got nowhere else to go, train them as smugglers and assassins. No one's gonna miss these boys."
The camera captured close-up images of three bodies spread out on the ground like dead gunslingers in those old Western photos. They were young with tattoos on their arms. The camera panned slowly over their vacant faces. The last face seemed vaguely familiar, as did the LM tattoo in fancy script on his left arm. Lindsay pointed at the screen.
"Oh, my God! Jesse, is that-"
Jesus.
Enrique de la Garza reached up to the big television screen on the wall of his Nuevo Laredo office and gently touched his dead son's image. He had sent his first-born son to Tejas to become a man-but not a dead man. Not a man shot down like an animal in a big-game hunt by the governor of Texas. To be stuffed and displayed on a wall. No, that was not what he had intended when he sent his son across the Rio Bravo del Norte. Yet… there his son lay. Dead. Shot in the back. Twice. Like an animal. By the governor of Texas. Whose Anglo image now filled the screen. Who smiled broadly and held the rifle that he had used to murder Enrique's son. Who stood over the dead body of Jesus de la Garza for the cameras like a proud hunter showing off his trophy kill.
"I would very much like him dead," Enrique said.
Hector Garcia rose from the sofa and came over to Enrique.
"You want to kill the governor of Texas?"
"Yes. Very much."
"But, jefe, we have never before killed an American politician."
"We have killed Mexican politicians. We have dispensed justice to corrupt mayors, governors, police chiefs, federales… Why can we not kill an American governor? Why can we not dispense justice north of the river?"
"Oh, we can kill him. That will be easy. But the gringos, they will send troops to the border. They will seek venganza. They will demand justice."
"It is I who seek revenge. It is I who demand justice. They killed my wife, Hector, but I did not seek revenge then because it was a mistake. I did not kill the gringos then because that would not have been justice. But this… this was no mistake. He murdered my son."
Enrique de la Garza now addressed the governor of Texas on the television.
"You murder my son, but I am not to seek revenge? The Muslims, they murdered your sons and daughters on nine/eleven, and you sought revenge. You invaded their countries and killed tens of thousands of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, spilling innocent blood to quench your thirst for revenge. Oh, but you are the Americans. You are the righteous avengers. The holy Anglos. They were only the unholy Muslims, and I am only the stupid Mexicano who feels not the sun on my back or the pain in my heart. Who is a manual laborer but not a man. Whose son's life is not worthy of revenge. Who does not deserve justice.
"Is that what you think, Governor?"
He stepped over to the wall rack and removed his prized machete. He returned and raised the blade to the governor's image on the screen.
"Am I not a father? Do I not love my son? Are your sons worthier of revenge and justice than mine? Because I am Mexican and not American? Because my skin is brown and not white? Because I speak Spanish and not English? Because I live south of the river and not north?
"Is that what you think, Governor?"
Enrique de la Garza, Mexican, father, dispenser of justice in Nuevo Laredo, and now seeker of venganza — the man known to the world as El Diablo, head of the notorious Los Muertos drug cartel-said only two more words to Hector Garcia.
"Kill him."
THIRTEEN
"Mandy! These kids are running around the Mansion like they're at a goddamned McDonald's."
"Bo- de," Mandy said, her face contorted in that familiar pretend frown. "Don't talk like that in front of the kids."
The Mexican children had brought out the mother in Mandy. She was prepping them for the cameras, smoothing the boys' hair and fixing their clothes, wiping syrup from their pancake breakfast off their faces, and generally having one hell of time corralling the kids into their positions on the floor around Bode. She bribed them with donuts.
It was just after seven the following Monday morning, and Bode Bonner sat on a stool in the living room of the family quarters in the Governor's Mansion surrounded by the thirteen kids. The last forty-eight hours had been a whirlwind. They had remained in West Texas Saturday night. Bode gave statements at the scene that ran on the network evening news and cable outlets. With the majestic Davis Mountains as the backdrop and the governor of Texas holding a high-powered rifle and standing over three dead Mexicans-political candidates always established their manly bona fides by taking reporters on hunting trips, but they only shot ducks-his first national media exposure had garnered the Professor's approval.
"Hell of an introduction to America," Jim Bob had said.
They wrapped up their post-shooting interviews at the scene with the FBI and the DEA and the Texas Rangers and even the Jeff Davis County Sheriff, a good ol' boy named Roscoe Lee whose county morgue now held the three Mexican hombres on ice. The on-the-ground ruling was "defense of a third person"; the killings had been justified in order to save another person's life, being little Josefina. No criminal charges would be filed against the governor of Texas. Point a gun at another human being and pull the trigger, and you're either a murderer or a hero. It's a fine line.
Bode Bonner was on the hero side of the line.
After the interviews, they transported the children back to John Ed's lodge in the Hummer like school kids on a class outing. Mandy the madre sat them around the big dining room table, and Rosita fed them beef tacos, refried beans, and guacamole
. They ate as if they hadn't eaten in months-until federal agents with "ICE" in bold white letters on black jackets and big guns on their hips arrived to take them into custody pending deportation. The kids-like every Mexican-knew ICE meant Inmigracion, so the appearance of the agents threw them into a frenzy. They screamed"?Corren! "
— then tossed their tacos at the agents and bolted from the dining room table and scattered about the lodge looking for hiding places; Bode later found little Josefina curled up in a small cabinet beneath a bathroom sink. He had tried to get the ICE agents to calm down, but refried beans and guacamole splattered across their black jackets didn't sit well with the Feds.
"We're taking these Mexicans into custody!"
Bode got in the head ICE-hole's face.
"The hell you are! I found them! They're in Texas-and I'm the goddamned governor of Texas!"
"I don't care if you're the fucking king of Canada! Those kids are coming with us!"
"Prime minister," the Professor said. "Canada has a prime minister, not a king."
The ICE agent gave Jim Bob a "fuck you" look then said to Bode, "These kids belong to the federal government."
"The hell they do," Bode said.
Governors of the fifty states hate natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires that tear a swath of destruction across the land, and man-made disasters like an offshore oil rig blowout that dumps millions of barrels of oil into pristine waters, and Wall Street gamblers who play high-risk games with the world's economy and lose, busting state budgets in the process; but they reserve their highest degree of hatred for the most arrogant, self-righteous, and overbearing bastards to walk God's green earth.
"Fucking Feds," Bode said.
Texas Governor Bode Bonner and Texas Ranger Hank Williams put their big bodies between the Feds and the kids. They remained in a Mexican stand-off until Jim Bob made a few calls to Washington. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security worked for a politician, so she sided with politics. The last thing her Democratic president (who wanted Latino votes in the next election) needed was thirteen Mexican kids shown on the national news being perp-walked out of the lodge like criminals by ICE agents under her command. She ordered the agents to stand down. They weren't pleased, particularly when Bode gave the head agent a parting, "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on." ICE departed in defeat, Bode, Jim Bob, and Hank shared high-fives all around, and Rosita and Pedro searched the lodge calling out to the kids in Spanish: "Please come out, children. ICE is not going to take you away. The governor is going to take you on the airplane to Austin. You will live in the Governor's Mansion. La mansion del gobernador de Tejas."
Legal custody of thirteen Mexican children was now vested in the governor of Texas.
The Professor's idea. He said the political lesson learned from Kennedy was that if you surround a handsome politician with cute children the voting public will form a favorable impression of him even if he's screwing Marilyn Monroe on the side. The man didn't have a Ph. D. in politics for nothing. So they had all flown back to Austin Sunday morning in the Gulfstream. They put the kids in the spare bedrooms in the Mansion, but the boys kept running outside to pee on the south lawn. Turns out, they had never before used an indoor bathroom. Bode gave them a Toilet 101 lesson; fortunately, there were no bidets in the Mansion. Once the boys discovered the kitchen-"?Cocina interior! "-and learned that the chef would cook whatever they wanted upon request, they had eaten around the clock while watching Mexican futbol on cable. Mandy signed on as camp counselor, and Lupe adopted them like the children she never had. They laughed and smiled and seemed like normal kids who didn't speak English, not kids who had been held captive for a year on a remote marijuana farm in West Texas.
Except Josefina. She did not laugh or smile.
They were now scrubbed clean and sporting new clothes from the Gap. Mandy and Hank had taken them shopping the day before and charged $3,000 on the campaign credit card. But the kids would look nice on national TV. Because the governor of Texas was about to do what you do in America when you win the lottery or lose a reality show or claim a politician sexually harassed you or get banned from the prom for being a same-sex couple or kill three bad-ass hombres in West Texas: you go on television and tell the nation how you "feel," that being critical information all of America needed to know before breakfast-along with that Kardashian girl's latest love fiasco, of course. Bode had always experienced the urge to puke his oatmeal at the pathetic people parading their emotions on the network morning shows, desperate for their fifteen minutes.
Now he was about to join the parade.
The local station's producer came over and said, "George is wrapping up his interview with the couple that got kicked off Dancing with the Stars last night. You're up next." He sized Bode up then turned and shouted, "Make-up!" Back to Bode: "New York will run a setup piece then you'll go live with George."
The make-up lady arrived and gave Bode a once-over through her red reading glasses. She then patted a powdery pad on his forehead.
"That'll keep the glare down. Not much I can do about the hair."
Lupe had brushed and sprayed his hair to perfection that morning. The make-up lady stepped away, leaving Bode to stare at Jim Bob in the corner fiddling with his phone. Texting. Twitting. Tweetering. Whatever. Immediately after the shooting on Saturday, the Professor had commenced orchestrating a nonstop media blitz for the coming week. The shooting had made front-page headlines in every major newspaper in the country on Sunday-they called him an "American Hero"-and the Mansion switchboard had been overloaded with calls from media outlets across the country and around the world. Everyone wanted a piece of Bode Bonner. Jim Bob Burnet held the hottest news story in America in his hands, and he was using it to Bode's best advantage-because in the 24/7 news cycle that was life in America today, anyone could become someone in twenty-four hours.
Bode Bonner was now someone.
Jim Bob stepped over to Bode with the phone held high and said, "You got over two hundred thousand followers now, more than Romney. Course, he's a Mormon. How exciting could his life be? Oh, you made the nationals."
"I did?"
"You did. The Rasmussen tracking poll puts you at ten percent among Republican voters, Gallup at twelve. You're in the game now, Bode. America saw you for the first time this weekend and they liked what they saw-a rugged, handsome, action-hero."
He paused as if pondering the mysteries of the universe.
"What are the odds? We go out to John Ed's ranch that day, we're on that ridge and you're already sighted in at the exact moment the girl tries to escape-right place, right time, right gun. If I were a religious man, I'd say it was God's will. But I'm not, so I'd say you are one lucky SOB. And one thing I've learned from gambling in Vegas-when you're on a lucky streak, don't quit."
"Ride the wave."
"All the way to the White House. The 'Bode Bonner for President' campaign starts right now. I've plotted out a media tour for the next seven days, starting with the network morning shows. After that, we fly back out to John Ed's ranch for the 60 Minutes profile. Tomorrow we fly to L.A., then Chicago, New York, and wrap up the week in D.C. on Fox News Sunday. One week from today, you'll be the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. If you don't fuck it up."
"How?"
"By saying something stupid on national TV."
"No. How will I be the Republican presidential candidate in one week?"
"Because you're fixing to catch the biggest wave in politics since Reagan in eighty. He was bigger than life, and you're about to be. This is a game changer, Bode. The sort of thing that can put a Texan back in the White House."
"How do you know?"
"Because this is what I do."
What he did was make Bode give up the Armani suits. "Italian suits and French cuffs won't sell in Iowa and New Hampshire." So the governor of Texas was wearing a starched, buttoned-down, long-sleeved, pearl-white shirt with t
he athletic cut to accentuate his impressive physique, jeans, a black cowboy belt with a sterling silver Great Seal of Texas buckle, and black cowboy boots. The Professor was frowning.
"Did Lupe spray your hair this morning?"
"Of course."
"Well, don't do it anymore. Man using hair spray, evokes vanity and femininity. Voters don't want their president to be vain or their commander-in-chief to have a feminine side."
"You never complained before."
"You never had a chance to be president before."
His eyes hadn't left Bode's hair, and the frown hadn't left his face. He reached his hand up with his fingers spread wide to Bode's head-but he froze in midair.
"Where's Mandy?"
Bode nodded toward the back corner where Mandy stood with little Josefina, whose arms were wrapped tightly around herself. She was only twelve and slight of build and looked more like a skinny boy than a girl. When Mandy reached out to touch her shoulder, she recoiled. Jim Bob called out to Bode's aide and mistress.
"Mandy!"
She broke away from Josefina and arrived with a frown.
"Josefina's terrified of being touched by anyone. We need to get her a therapist. I'll ask mine if he counsels children."
"You have a therapist?"
She shrugged a yes.
"I'm taking the kids to the pediatrician this afternoon," she said.
"Check their eyesight. A couple of the boys sit two feet from the TV. And take them to the dentist, their teeth are terrible. Take Lupe to translate."
"Can I use the campaign credit card?"
"Sure."
The Professor's eyes had returned to Bode's head.
"Mandy, run your fingers through Bode's hair."
She eyed his hair then Jim Bob.
"But his hair looks perfect."
"Exactly."
She shrugged and stepped close enough to Bode that he could inhale her scent. He felt a stirring, then he felt guilty. His wife knew about his mistress, but he still felt guilty. His mistress now ran her fingers through his hair. Jim Bob observed the result in his professorial mode.
