Devils and Dust

by J. D. Rhoades

  Also by J.D. Rhoades

  The Jack Keller series

  The Devil’s Right Hand

  Good Day In Hell

  Safe And Sound

  Breaking Cover

  Broken Shield

  To the memory of my father, Jerry Delano Rhoades, Sr. (1933-2014)

  THE JEFE affectionately called him El Poeta—the Poet. It had nothing to do with literary talent; in fact, the man driving the truck was almost completely illiterate. The nickname was in honor of the man’s ability to curse. El Poeta was a virtuoso of invective. The jefe once said El Poeta could curse for twenty minutes and not repeat himself once.

  The road he was driving gave him plenty of inspiration. The old truck bounced and rattled over the corrugated surface, abusing El Poeta’s spine mercilessly.

  “Hijo de mil putas!” He spat as the truck bottomed out on a particularly bad pothole. “Me cago en la leche de tu puta madre!” It was unclear if his rage was directed against the road, the truck, or the world in general.

  Someone banged on the wall of the truck, behind El Poeta’s head. “Parate, pinche idiota!” he shouted back. This close to the border was no place to stop for a piss break. That’s what the buckets in the cargo area were for. If they sloshed a bit because of the bad road, that wasn’t El Poeta’s problem. This was the road he knew the Border Patrol never watched. El Poeta didn’t know if they just didn’t know about it or if some palms had been greased to make them look the other way, and he didn’t give a damn. His job was to drive the big truck to a deserted area just north of the border, hand each of the pollos in the back two bottles of water, point the way north, and get the hell out. It was up to them to figure it out from there. He slowed, stuck his head out the window, and squinted at the sky. It was still full dark, the stars glittering coldly above.

  Suddenly, El Poeta saw headlights ahead. “Mierda!” he muttered. This road had always been clear before. As he drew closer, he saw two sets of lights, both belonging to large SUVs. They were side by side facing toward him, blocking the road.

  Border Patrol. It could be no one else.

  “Me cago en Dios y los trescientos sesenta y cinco santos del año!” El Poeta snarled in frustration as he pulled the truck to a stop. He briefly thought of bailing out and running for it, but he knew that would be idiotic. Even if he did manage to outrun the officers, he’d be stuck in the middle of the pinche scrubland with no pinche water and no pinche way home. No, he was fucked and he knew it. The headlights picked out a man dressed in a dark-green uniform and Smokey Bear hat striding toward the truck. El Poeta rolled down the window. He blinked as a flashlight was shined in his face.

  The officer didn’t speak for a moment. Then, “Fuera del carro. Manos en el aire.” The man’s Spanish accent was terrible.

  El Poeta obeyed and climbed out of the truck. He put his hands in the air, grinning in what he hoped was a placating manner.

  “En sus rodillas,” the voice growled.

  El Poeta was puzzled. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Still, they had the guns. Slowly, he got down on his knees. Another uniformed man walked past him, to check out the back of the truck, El Poeta assumed. He couldn’t see the faces of the men in the glare of the flashlight, but he did see a shotgun. A third man was climbing into the truck. El Poeta heard the engine fire back up. The driver dangled an arm out the window. El Poeta could see the network of tattoos covering the exposed flesh below the short sleeve. They looked like spider webs, wrapped around the man’s forearm.

  El Poeta’s forehead wrinkled. “Hey,” he said in English. “What the fuck…” it was the last thing he said before the man behind him blew off his head with the shotgun.

  THE FRONT door swung open. A harsh blast of sunlight lit up the cool dim interior of the bar. A young woman straightened up from where she had been placing bottles in the well behind the bar. She was short and broad-shouldered, her curves accentuated by her tight T-shirt and jeans. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled back beneath a paisley scarf.

  “We ain’t open yet, hon,” the young woman said to the figure who stood in the doorway.

  That person stepped inside and closed the door. She was a slender woman in her mid-forties. Despite the desert heat outside, she was dressed in a long-sleeved white blouse and black denim jeans. She wore black gloves on her hands, one of which rested atop a gold-handled cane.

  The woman brushed a lock of her long ash-blond hair out of her eyes with her free hand. “Mind if I wait inside?” she said softly.

  The bartender looked her over. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the gloves. It made her pretty face look hard. “Kind of hot to be wearing gloves, ain’t it?” she said pointedly.

  “I’ve got some scars on my hands,” the woman said in the same mild tone. “I don’t like people staring.”

  The look of suspicion on the bartender’s face turned to embarrassment. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t know. It’s just that…”

  The woman in the doorway waved it off. “No problem. Someone came into my place, wearing gloves in this heat—I’d get a little suspicious, too.”

  The bartender smiled. “C’mon in and have a seat. I reckon we can open early today.” The woman took a seat on a barstool and leaned her cane against the bar. The bartender extended a hand. “I’m Jules. Short for Julianne, but nobody calls me that.”

  The other woman took the offered hand. “Angela.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, almost imperceptible, before Jules smiled again. “What can I get you?”

  Angela scanned the beers lined up behind the bar. “Shiner Bock,” she said. “And a glass of ice water, if you’ve got it.”

  “Comin’ right up,” she said.

  Angela watched her as she fetched the beer and the water. She looked too young to be tending bar, especially in a rough-looking place like this, but she moved with perfect assurance, as if she were in her own home.

  “Thanks,” Angela said as the bartender put the beer in front of her. She handed over the money. “So, where’s Henry?” She gestured at the sign above the bar. WELCOME TO HENRY’S, the sign proclaimed in faded red letters in an old-timey typeface.

  Jules glanced at the sign. “Henry was my dad,” she said. “He died last year. Liver cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Angela said.

  Jules shrugged, a gesture of resignation that looked too old for her. “Ain’t nothin’ for you to be sorry about.”

  “Still.”

  Jules smiled. “Thanks.” She bent over again and went back to setting up the bar.

  After a few minutes, Angela spoke up again. “I’m looking for Jack Keller.”

  Jules froze, her hand halfway to putting a rocks glass on the shelf. She finished the movement, then stood up. Angela couldn’t read the look on her face.

  “So,” Jules said in a small voice, “you’re that Angela.”

  Angela took a sip of the water before replying. “He’s mentioned me?”

  Jules’s mouth twisted. “Only in his sleep.” She went back to work, but her motions now were angry, abrupt. “He ain’t here.”

  “Is he working today?” Angela said.

  Jules stood up. “What do you want with Jack?”

  “Jack’s a friend of mine,” Angela replied, “and a friend of my husband.”

  The girl looked suspicious again. “Your husband know you’re out here looking for Jack?”

  Angela shook her head. “Doubtful. He disappeared about three weeks ago.”

  “So he run off,” Jules said, her voice rising, “and you’re looking up your old flames?”

  “Jules,” Angela’s voice was low, but it cracked like a whip. It silenced the young woman’s building tirade like shutting off a tap. “Jack’s a friend, that
’s all. I’m not here to steal him away from you.”

  At that moment, the door swung open again, bringing in the light and the noise of a truck roaring by on the highway.

  The man who stepped inside easily topped six feet. He had gotten leaner and darker since Angela had last seen him, and the desert sun had dried and toughened him like leather. The biggest shock, however, was his hair.

  “You cut all your hair off,” Angela said.

  Jack Keller looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged. He ran a hand over the short stubble. “It gets pretty hot around here.”

  “I noticed.” There was another long silence. “Can we talk?” Angela said finally.

  Keller glanced at Jules, then back at Angela. “I have to get to work,” he said. “But yeah. For a few minutes.” He gestured toward a booth near the back. Angela walked over and took a seat. Keller followed. He sat across from her, hands folded on the table. His face gave nothing away. A moment later, Jules slid into the seat next to him. She slid an arm around his broad shoulders, her eyes daring Angela to say anything. Keller looked uncomfortable for a moment, then his face returned to its former impassivity. “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  Angela looked amused. “After all those years in the bail bond business, you think I forgot how to run a skip trace? And you weren’t even trying to cover your tracks, Keller.”

  “My question,” Jules said, “is why?”

  Angela glanced at Jules, then sighed. “Oscar’s gone,” she told Keller.

  “That your husband?” Jules said, with a pointed look at Keller.

  “Yes,” Angela said. “My husband.”

  Keller looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “He didn’t die, Jack. And he didn’t leave me. He disappeared.”

  Keller looked up. For the first time, a spark of interest flared in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Where was he when you last…” The spark in his eyes died like an ember. He looked back down at his hands.

  “He’d finally got enough money to bring his sons here from Colombia,” Angela went on. “But they didn’t show. He went to talk to the…to the people who were bringing them.”

  “Smugglers,” Keller said.

  “Well, he wasn’t legal,” Angela said, “so he couldn’t very well do it any other way. But they couldn’t tell him anything. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know. He was frantic. He said he was going to go find them. He told me not to worry.” She barked a short, mirthless laugh. “Like that was going to happen.”

  Jules spoke up. “What does this have to do with Jack?” she demanded.

  Angela didn’t answer. She just looked at Keller. It was he who finally spoke. “She wants me to help find him.”

  “Why does she think…?”

  “Because that’s what I used to do for her. Track people down.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Angela looked at him, unmoving. “And because Oscar Sanchez was my friend. I owe him.” He looked at Angela. “And I owe you,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything, Jack,” she said. “Any debt you ever owed me, you paid a long time ago.”

  “Yeah. Well,” Jules said, “that’s good to know.”

  Keller looked at her and his face softened. Angela felt a stab of jealousy. She quickly snuffed it out. You took another road long ago, she scolded herself, and now you’ll see it through. To the end. “Actually,” she said to Jules, “I don’t know if I want Jack to help me with this. There’s someone else I want him to talk to first.”

  Keller looked up. “Who?”

  Angela slid out of the booth and stood up. “Lucas is with me. He’s across the road.”

  “Who’s Lucas?” Jules said.

  “Another friend,” Keller replied. He nudged Jules slightly with his hip. She got up slowly, her face expressionless. “So,” she said in a flat voice, “you coming back?”

  “Yeah,” Keller said, “I am.”

  “You can come with us if you like,” Angela said. “This affects you, too.”

  “You’re goddamn right it—” Jules began, then she stopped. She looked at Angela. “I can?”

  “Like I said, Jules,” Angela said, “I’m here as a friend. On behalf of a friend. That’s all.”

  Jules looked at her. Then she smiled slightly. “Okay,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be,” Angela said. “It’s okay. You coming?”

  Jules shook her head. “No. I got a business to run here.” She looked at Keller. “And don’t take all day,” she said severely. “It’s Friday, and this place is gonna fill up fast come five o’clock. I’m gonna need you.”

  Keller smiled. “I know. I’ll be back.”

  The bright sunlight felt like a physical shock as they stepped out of the bar. A semi roared past on the two-lane desert highway in front of them, diminishing rapidly into the far distance, leaving only whirling dust and empty silence behind. There was no other traffic. A black Cadillac CTS with a sticker from a car-rental company was parked across the highway, in front of one of the units of a worn-out looking motel. A sign in front announced it was the DES RT S NDS INN.

  “Yeah,” Angela said as they crunched across the gravel parking lot. “I bet the place really jumps.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Keller said. “I don’t know where they come from, but they start showing up right after five. The place fills up. The motel makes a few bucks giving them a place to sleep it off.”

  “Everybody wins,” Angela said. They crossed the road. “Lucas said he’d be at the pool.”

  He was. Major Lucas Berry, U.S. Army Medical Corps (Ret.) sat at the edge of the postage-stamp-sized swimming pool behind the hotel, dangling his legs in the tepid water. He was dressed in a brightly colored pair of swimming trunks that provided a sharp contrast to his dark-brown skin. A cooler of iced Tecate beer sat on the edge of the pool beside him. When he saw Keller and Angela, he swung his legs out of the water and stood up. He was taller than Keller by a couple of inches, and broader. He extended his hand. “Sergeant,” he said. His voice was a deep baritone that sounded like it should be coming from a burning bush.

  Keller shook his hand. “Major,” he smiled. Then the smile faded. “You here to see just how crazy I am?”

  “Pretty much,” Berry said. “Pull up a chair. Have a beer.” Keller pulled up one of the plastic chairs that ringed the pool. He shook his head at the offered beer. Berry raised an eyebrow slightly at that, but made no comment.

  “I’m going back in the room,” Angela said. “This heat’s too much for me.”

  As she walked away, Keller asked softly, “How’s she been?”

  Berry shrugged. “Worried sick about you, for starters.”

  Keller grimaced. “Sorry,” he muttered and dropped his gaze to the floor. “When did she and Oscar get married?”

  “About three months ago.” Berry grinned. “Funny story, really. She asked him.”

  Keller looked up. “She did?”

  “Yeah. He wasn’t going to ask her, for fear she’d think it was just for the green card. But, good Catholic that he is, he was getting more and more conflicted about just shacking up. So she broke the logjam for him.”

  “Sound like you’ve all talked a lot.”

  “Yeah,” Berry said. “Just as friends, though. Not professionally.” He raised his sunglasses and looked directly at Keller. “But I’m not here to fill you in on Angela’s life. She can do that herself. I’m here to talk about you.”

  Keller sighed. “I’m fine, Lucas.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you got up out of a hospital bed, checked out against medical advice, and walked off without saying a word. And why you headed for, of all places, the desert.”

  Keller closed his eyes. It hadn’t made any sense to him either. He had never had an easy life, but it was the Kuwaiti desert where things had really gone bad for him. He saw the burning Bradley fighting vehicle, heard his men screaming. Burning, they’re
burning…he took a quick, deep intake of breath and opened his eyes. Lucas was looking at him.

  “I—we—spent years getting you out of that desert in your head,” he said softly, “and yet you end up here. In the real one.”

  “Well,” Keller said, “getting out of that desert meant starting to care about things again. About people. And that’s what put me here.” Lucas acknowledged the point with a nod of his head.

  “And,” Keller went on, “to tell you the truth, it’s not bad here. I’m working. And I’m not wrecking myself doing it.”

  “You don’t miss it?” Lucas said. “The hunt? The takedown? You used to say you lived for that. It was the only thing that got you up in the morning.”

  “And you used to tell me how fucked up that was.”

  Berry chuckled. “That I did.” He fished another beer out of the cooler. “So you won’t be coming back with us.”

  Keller looked at the water, shimmering in the blazing sun. “I didn’t say that.” He stood up. “How long are you staying?”

  Berry gestured toward the nearly empty motel. “Well, much as I hate to leave this fine resort and its luxurious amenities, probably in the morning.”

  “I’ll let you know then,” Keller said. He walked off toward the bar.

  AT LEAST the truck wasn’t bouncing as badly anymore. It was still stifling, and the smell from the toilet buckets was overwhelming. The last of the battery-powered lights was failing, so it would soon be pitch dark as well. The people crammed into the back of the truck sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knees drawn up, their misery wrapped around them.

  “Why is this taking so long?” Edgar asked his older brother Ruben. “They said we’d only be in this truck a little while.”

  Ruben shrugged. He put his arm around his brother. Everything had taken longer than the coyotes said it would: the plane ride to Mexico, the bus ride to the little border town where they were taken to a warehouse, then packed like sardines into the truck, and now this. Ruben thought back to the moment a few hours ago when the truck had stopped. He was sure the sound he had heard was a gunshot. So were most of the other people, but they had stopped talking about it when the truck began moving again. Now, everything was silent except the roar of the engine and the whining of the wheels. It sounded like they were on an actual paved highway rather than the rough gravel roads they had traveled on for so long. We must be north of the border. So why aren’t they letting us out like they said? The truck ground to a stop. The passengers stirred. There was a brief silence, then a loud creak, a banging noise, and the cargo compartment was flooded with bright light as the back door rattled up. Ruben tightened his grip around his brother’s shoulder.