Hawke's Fury

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  It wasn’t that I was afraid. I was terrified. It reminded me of the time ten years earlier when I was on vacation with the family. One day we were snorkeling in a bay in Hanalei, Hawaii, when I swam alone to the far reef that stopped at the open ocean. The bay was clear and no more than twenty feet deep, but when I reached the outer edge, a current pulled me beyond the reef and the next thing I knew, I was suspended over the edge of deep, blue water. In my mind, all I could see was a behemoth shark coming up from the depths, all teeth and mouth wide open like that movie poster for Jaws.

  It was the same in that loud Mexican bar. Breath caught in my chest as we stood in the shadows beside the door. It felt like some kind of electrical current was pulling me into the blades of a spinning propeller. Cursing the impulsiveness that led me there, I wondered if I should have worn body armor under my blousy Aloha shirt.

  Colorful neon light from Mexican beer signs provided just enough light to see dark stains on the worn wooden floorboards that could have been blood, and there were a lot of them. Corrido Norteno music, local to the region, filled the air from speakers mounted right above our heads.

  The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Cherries glowed in the dark as customers dragged on their toonies, adding even more to the cloud swirling only inches above my head. Finally adjusting to the light, I made out the shapes of nearly a dozen men sitting at raw wooden tables. A few more lined up at the bar like birds on a wire.

  Alejandro nodded at the bartender whose face looked to have been beaten sideways and we made our way across the gritty floor. Two men were nursing drinks at one end of the bar, as far from the door as possible. A black-haired woman sat alone at the other.

  The whoppy-jawed bartender took his time drifting down to take our orders. “Que deseas?”

  Up close I wondered if he’d ever seen a toothbrush. From three feet away, his breath was harsh as a landfill. Alejandro answered for us. “Dos cervezas, por favor.”

  The bartender went for the beers and I angled myself. “Beer in the morning?”

  “Would you prefer tequila?”

  “I’d prefer to find this guy and get out of here.”

  “You nervous?”

  “Sure am.”

  He angled his head toward the center of the room. “Don’t let them know it.”

  “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

  He frowned. “Rodeo.”

  “It’s a country saying.”

  Alejandro kept frowning and I gave up. The pockmarked bartender came back with two dripping bottles of Corona. Slices of limes stuck up from the top. Knowing he’d used his bare fingers to pluck them from a plastic container of ice, and because of his horrific halitosis, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever heard of soap and water.

  The beer signs produced a surprising amount of light once we adjusted to the gloom. Details appeared, and I really didn’t want to see most of them. Dust was thick on what decorations were nailed to the walls. A dusty, spiderweb-laced coconut-head pirate hanging on a post behind the bar hadn’t been touched since it was hung in front of the mirror forty years earlier, or longer.

  Most of the glasses stacked on shelves looked dirty and water spotted. I was glad our beer came in bottles. Knowing what was in the water down there, it was probably best that Alejandro hadn’t ordered mixed drinks with ice.

  Feeling like a bird dog on point, I couldn’t get comfortable enough to slump over the bar like the other customers. Sinuses full of cigarette smoke that seemed to get thicker by the moment, I pulled the rodeo-cool Corona close.

  If necessary, it would make a pretty good weapon if things went south for any reason. “Do you recognize any of these guys?”

  He shook his head. “No. She looks familiar, though.”

  The black-haired woman in a tight white blouse and red pants was looking at me as if I owed her money. “You ever arrest her? She’s giving me the hairy eyeball.”

  “Maybe. Prostitucion, perhaps. Maybe she’s really looking at me.”

  “I hope she is.” Sensing motion on the floor, I glanced down. A skinny speckled dog walked up and sniffed my Justins. It looked up with hopeful eyes, but I didn’t have anything to feed him. I considered offering him the lime, but there was no point in exposing the poor critter to the bartender’s germs.

  Ignored by the rest of the customers, we waited. Conversations were low and way too fast for my limited border Spanish. I leaned in to Alejandro. “So do you recognize the name Flaco?”

  “Flaco Jiminez.”

  He’d thrown out the name of a famous Tejano musician from San Antonio. I grunted. “Anyone else?”

  “There are lots of Flacos. It’s a common nickname. It means skinny.”

  “That doesn’t help us much.”

  “Why do you have that name?”

  “I’m supposed to make contact with him.”

  The woman shook a cigarette from a pack lying on the bar, slid off her stool, and strolled toward us in ridiculously high heels. Alejandro must have seen that her cig was unlit. He lipped a smoke from the pack in his shirt pocket. Lighting it, he held the flame out for her when she came close. She stuck the toonie between her lips and leaned into the flame.

  Up close, her eyes were dark and pretty. The rest of her was coarse and hard as nails. She spoke English, for my benefit. “Are you looking for a party?”

  “Pretty early for that, ain’t it?”

  Alejandro shot me a glance, then turned back to her. “No. We’re here to meet a friend.”

  “So am I.”

  The silence was thick for a long moment.

  She inhaled and blew the smoke toward the bartender from the corner of her mouth, as if to spare us the additional carcinogens. “Who is it you’re meeting?”

  I inclined my head. “Flaco.”

  Alejandro watched us, like a spectator at a tennis match, but his full attention wasn’t on us, though. He kept glancing at the other guys, keeping them in place in his mind. How’d I know that? I was doing the same thing. I didn’t want a chess game to start up around us, with players moving in positions I didn’t like.

  To prove my point, one of the guys at a table in the shadows near the door stood. The pockmarked bartender saw him coming and they met and exchanged words I couldn’t hear. Pockmark reached under the bar and I tensed, feeling like an idiot when he came up with a bottle of tequila and poured the man a shot.

  The woman beside us took another drag, this time blowing the smoke straight down. It billowed in our direction and I wondered if it was some kind of statement. “I’m supposed to meet a norteamericano.”

  Alejandro stepped in. “Do you know his name?”

  She shrugged. “No. What’s yours?”

  “My wife won’t let me tell strangers.”

  “You’re here without her.” She smiled. I got the feeling she was having fun jerking me around. “So you are here for a party.”

  “Get lost.”

  The light in her eyes died. She spun on one heel and stalked back to her place at the end of the bar. Alejandro leaned on his elbows. “That ended abruptly.”

  “I’m not here to play games.”

  Two dark shadows in the corner rose. One went to the bar. The other had a different idea. He sauntered toward us and from the way he was walking I knew he was looking for trouble. I’ve seen that kind of nonsense all my life, from high school through adulthood.

  Working as a highway patrol officer I learned to read body language, faces, and even the tone of an individual’s voice. It’s a skill all good LEOs acquire, and it serves us well in escalating situations.

  Angling myself to face him, but keeping my head low so the hat brim partially covered my eyes, I picked up the beer bottle.

  Alejandro was between us. He planted his feet and straightened. “Necesitar algo?”

  The guy was wearing what we call back home a wife-beater shirt. Tattoos covered both arms and drawled up his neck. He spoke in English to make sure I understood. “This bar is not for
tourists.”

  Alejandro pulled back his jacket to reveal his badge. “He is here with me.”

  “I don’t care. You should not bring him here. It is dangerous.”

  “For who?”

  “Both of you.”

  “Not me.” Alejandro looked as casual as if they were talking at a church social. “I suggest you go back to your compadres and leave us alone.”

  One of the men slumped over the bar finished his drink and headed for the door, followed by another guy who took his beer with him. As they passed the table where the troublemaker had been sitting, another man stood and drifted in our direction. Chairs scraped the floor and two more rough-looking guys joined him. They’d been listening to the exchange and moved in like lions surrounding their prey.

  Still leaning one elbow on the bar, Alejandro shook his head. “Don’t do this.”

  “He is leaving now.” The first guy puffed up, and we were suddenly in a schoolyard situation that every guy in the world recognizes. People keep swelling up and joining in, and before you know it, no one can back out and save face.

  With the almost untouched beer in my hand, I sidestepped to get clear of Alejandro and face those who were crowding around. “Hey guys. Y’all just cool down and I’ll leave. How about that?”

  The man grinned. “You don’t tell us what to do. You leave when we say.”

  It was a Catch-22 statement in the room full of tension as thick as the smoke swirling in the neon lights. Nothing I said was going to alleviate the situation that was about to spiral out of control. A stocky Mexican in a taco hat was the closest to me. I figured I’d lay him out with the bottle across the eyes and Alejandro could handle the first guy. Getting two of them out of the picture at the outset might break their courage.

  It didn’t look like a situation requiring firearms. Just a good old friendly fight in a Mexican honky tonk. That was until one of the men clicked open a switchblade and the dance opened in an instant. The guy beside me swung a roundhouse blow toward my head. I slapped it aside and backhanded the beer bottle at his eyes, just like I’d imagined.

  The dark bottle exploded against his temple in a burst of foam and glass. He went down and the big M9 was in my fist as if by magic. You don’t carry that double-action 9mm cocked and locked like my 1911, so the hammer was still down, but my thumb flicked the safety off as it was coming to bear. It leveled in the middle of another guy’s chest, my finger on the trigger.

  As fast as it happened, I was a little slow. Alejandro had a Glock in the compressed ready position, pointed at the man with the knife. I was glad to see he wasn’t holding it straight out at the end of his arm. That’s an amateur’s move, and there are people who can strip it from your hand in the blink of an eye. Besides, aiming wasn’t necessary in such close quarters. If people started shooting or cutting, it would be a mow ’em down scenario with the weapon held close to his body.

  That’s when the woman stepped in. Concentrating on the guy I was about to ventilate, I didn’t see her until she was right between us and the home-town boys. For the next ten seconds, she gave them a dog cussing in Spanish. No one answered back, and when I glanced over at the barman, he was holding the stubbiest cut-down double-barrel shotgun I’d ever seen. It was pointed in the general direction of that crowd, though if he’d pulled the trigger some of those pellets would have gotten into the rest of us, too.

  The men had seen him, also, and they stopped.

  Seeing her words and the shotgun had taken the fire out of them, she turned to me and spoke one word. “Hawke.”

  Keeping his pistol at waist level and close into his body, Alejandro stepped back, and the line of men bracing us wavered, then backed away. I nodded. “Hawke.”

  She turned toward the semicircle of barflies and opened up with another firehose of Spanish that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. They backed off, and I don’t blame them. After what seemed to be a blistering five minutes, they were done, all except for the original guy who kept eyeballing me. I wouldn’t look down, so he finally helped his bloody friend up from the floor. They turned and headed for the door, throwing a sentence back toward her that I didn’t understand.

  When he was done, she snapped her head toward that same door. “Ven conmigo ahora.”

  I did what she said and followed, keeping my weapon leveled at the room. Alejandro fell in as a rear guard and when I stepped outside about half expecting to get shot, he backed out behind me.

  Seeing the street was clear, I slipped the M9 into the small of my back and pulled the shirt down. She was standing hip-cocked about five feet away. There was no one else in sight. I got the idea that was how she always stood, from a lifetime of posturing on the corners and in bars. It seemed that everyone had cleared the street in anticipation of the three of us coming outside. In those old westerns it would have been an ambush.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Give me the name you have.”

  Turning so that my back was against the wall, I met her gaze. “Fosfora. Flaco sent me.”

  The corner of her mouth ticked. “Sí. Come with me.” She led the way and turned at the corner.

  Keeping one eye on the closed cantina door, Alejandro snickered. “Fosfora.”

  “That name’s funny?”

  “It isn’t a real name. It’s a nickname. Fosfora means a short-tempered girl who burns down quickly, like a match.”

  “Great. Someone just like me.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Chapter 16

  Esteban’s Toyota Tacoma shot down the two-lane desert highway. He drove with one hand hanging over the top of the wheel, worried sick about his recent conversation with la Mujer del Diablo. His whole world seemed to be coming unraveled, and he knew for certain why.

  He knew as much, or more about her, as the Devil Woman did about him.

  Ticking over the items that connected them, he kept an eye out for roadblocks. They were both U.S. citizens. They’d both worked their way up in the cartel, unlike 99.9 percent of those around them. Despite what he’d told her, both had family weaknesses, a chink that was easily manipulated, if she ever had cause to find them.

  It was obvious she’d figured out that someone was investigating her background. He usually shut her computer down after using it without asking, but she’d appeared suddenly in the courtyard that day while he was researching her background and he had to hurry and log out.

  It was those damned geeks who told her someone had searched her name.

  His life had been dangerous up to that point, but now it was almost assuredly at what he considered Defcon 1. Angry at himself for taking so long to act, he worried that everything he’d set in place was too late. She’d acted first.

  Now he was in catch-up mode.

  Chapter 17

  Despite the high heels on her feet, the girl I knew as Fosfora set a right smart pace down a dirt alley full of barking dogs shouted quiet from unseen people. Alejandro and I stayed with her, frequently checking our back trail. I kept expecting a car to come barreling down the alley to run us down.

  We caught up to her just as she turned onto a street even grimier than the one we’d left. A man stepped out of a doorway, saw her with us following, and went back inside.

  Despite my hat and jeans, I stuck out like a sore thumb in that dumb Aloha shirt that was quickly becoming a bad idea. It felt like hundreds of eyes were on me from the windows. I also didn’t like being so far away from Alejandro’s truck, and the look on his face said the same thing. He finally dug in his heels.

  “Alto!”

  She stopped and whirled. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not following you any more on foot.”

  “So stay here.”

  “No. You stay here. Hawke and I are going back to get my truck, and then we’ll come back around to pick you up.”

  She puffed like a little banty rooster and cut loose with another river of Spanish. This time, without all the accordion music blaring in the background,
I picked out a few words that I wouldn’t repeat in mixed company.

  Alejandro jumped right back at her and spun on his heel, waving a hand back as he stalked off down the street. I paused. “He’s right. We need his truck.”

  She paced the cracked sidewalk, weighing her options. “I can get someone to drive us to the person you need to speak with.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I’m not getting into a car down here with folks I don’t know.”

  Angry, she flipped her hand with the cigarette in the air and followed us, jabbering away under her breath. I knew for sure then why they hung her with the nickname about her temper.

  Behind her, a sledgehammered car pulled out of an intersecting street and paused, the driver giving us the once-over. An individual riding in the passenger seat leaned over to get a better look.

  Even though it was her town, I figured we needed to get out of there. “You better come with us.”

  “You are making this very difficult.”

  Without being obvious, I pointed with my head. “Cool down. We just need to get gone, and I think letting Alejandro drive is smart. He’s the law, remember?”

  She glared at me, then the car that was still there, and back at me. “Bueno.”

  * * *

  Alejandro’s eyes flicked to his rearview mirror as he drove. “Where are we going?”

  “A small ejido straight ahead.” Fosfora’s soft voice from the back seat belied her temperament. She curled up like a kitten in the corner and looked comfortable enough to take a nap.

  I turned my head to see her behind Alejandro. “How far?”

  “You’ll know when we get there.”

  He didn’t like that answer. “What is the name of this community?”

  She shrugged. “It has no official nombre. El Cruce.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. It could mean the crossroads or the cross.

  Alejandro set his jaw and kept driving. The desert flashed past for half an hour until I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “You know where we’re headed, bud?”