The cannon logo on his cap was a symbol of defiance from the Texas Revolution, when the Mexican government demanded that the Texans return a small brass cannon they had supplied to help protect the colony of Gonzales. The Texans refused and the Mexican military tried to take it by force and lost.
It was just the type of spark to provoke an explosion in what looked like the roughest joint Perry Hale had been in in years. Watching from the corners of his eyes, he saw most of the patrons were watching Yolanda.
That was both good and bad.
Instead of sitting on one of the empty seats at the bar, he leaned his elbows on the scarred wooden surface. Yolanda moved up beside him and half-sat on a stool, angled toward Perry Hale so she could keep an eye on the room.
A bartender with unruly hair and an offset jaw took his time coming to take his order. “You got some cojones wearing that cap in here.” He spoke English with a heavy accent. “You lost?”
It was just his luck to find an educated bartender. “Is that a philosophical question or religious?”
The pockmarked barman frowned. “This is a local cantina.” He flicked his hand toward the tables. “For Mexicans. Tourists need to stay where they belong. We don’t need your money.”
“How do you know what my ancestry might be?” He jerked a thumb at Yolanda. “If DNA’s the case, then she’s my ticket.”
The man’s grin held no humor. His eyes went flat. “You already talk too much.”
Perry Hale had seen that grin a number of times in his life, usually preceding a fight. He also wondered if the guy owned a toothbrush. “Hey, we just came in for a beer.”
The barman dismissed Perry Hale and spoke to Yolanda in their native language. “Why are you with this gringo?”
She flat-eyed him and responded in border Spanish. “None of your business, and you talk to him, not me. Just because I look like you doesn’t mean we are the same.”
Perry Hale returned the man’s dead grin and also spoke in border Spanish. “Don’t mess with her. She’ll bust you up. So now that we understand each other in more ways than one, give us a couple of beers, please.”
Taken aback by the anglo’s grasp of his language, the bartender took a moment to sort things out. “You can have one, on the house, then get out.”
“We’ll leave faster if you’ll answer a question for me.”
The barman placed both hands flat on the bar. This time he spoke English. “Be quick about it.”
Annoyed by the whirl of languages and irritated by the man’s demeanor, Perry Hale had to concentrate. The song on the jukebox ended, only to be replaced by another that was so similar he couldn’t tell the difference. “You promised me a beer.”
Without taking his eyes off Perry Hale, the bartender reached down and plucked a dripping bottle from the cooler directly in front of him. Snapping the cap off a Sol with an old-fashioned church key, he thumped it on the bar in a gout of foam. He made no move to open another.
Not trusting the ice, or the barman’s hands, Perry Hale scooped it close and wiped the top with his shirt sleeve. He slid it across to Yolanda, who took a sip, keeping an eye on the bar’s patrons.
Perry Hale dead-eyed the man to make his point. “I’m looking for a guy who might have been in here this morning. Not much to describe, just an anglo looking to meet someone.”
“You said you only wanted a couple of beers.”
“Yeah, and I see only one. To fill in the time while you get another one, let’s talk.”
“Lots of people come in here. I don’t want to talk to any of them if they’re anglo.”
Yolanda leaned forward on her elbows. “You just told me this is a bar for Mexicans only. You don’t get too many norteamericanos. How about you cut the shit and tell me if my friend was here. Then we can go.”
The barman scanned the room as if someone might come help him handle the uncomfortable three-way exchange. He shrugged and dried his hands with a damp, filthy rag. “There was an anglo early this morning. He came to meet someone.”
“Who?”
There was that flat grin again, this time directed at Yolanda, as if she would understand. “My sister.”
“What’s her name?”
“Fosfora.”
“Did he see her?”
“Yes, and they left together after one of my friends beat him to the ground.”
Perry Hale snorted. “That didn’t happen.”
“It’s easy when it comes to an hombre marqueta in camisas hawiaianas.”
“Hawaiian shirts? Not this guy. Looks like a cowboy, and I can tell you, he ain’t no sissy man.”
“Cabello rojo?”
“Yep. Redheaded.”
“It was him.”
Perry Hale and Yolanda exchanged looks. She thought for a moment. “I remember seeing an Aloha shirt in his truck the other day. Mary gave it to him for his birthday, and he kinda liked it. He kept it there just in case he wanted to look casual.”
Only Sonny Hawke’s teenage daughter would think to give her daddy a Hawaiian Aloha shirt. More than once she said she liked seeing him out of his Texas Ranger “uniform” every now and then. Not a uniform at all, Rangers wear khaki pants, legendary tooled leather gunbelts and badges, light shirts, and their ever-present western hats. In any crowd, anywhere in Texas, Rangers are immediately recognizable.
But Sonny sometimes liked what he called “dressing down,” wearing oversize untucked shirts, because the blousy material hid his .45 when he wanted to be casual.
“That’s our man.” Perry Hale watched Yolanda take another drink. Behind her, two young locals made of rope and wire walked up and stopped, one on each side.
One sported a thick drooping mustache and a fresh, blood-stained bandage over one eye. The other dressed like a vaquero with gold teeth, a taco hat, and a dangerous smile was holding a beer bottle by the neck, thumb hooked in his hand tooled belt. Voice low, he leaned in and spoke Spanish. “Chica, I’d like to stuff your piñata. Can I buy you a cerveza?”
She batted her dark eyes at him. “Does that rude pickup line really work for you?” His buddy snickered as she held up her Sol. “I have one, and my husband bought it for me.”
That sounded funny to Perry Hale, because they’d never talked about getting married. Preferring to let her handle herself, he turned back to the bartender. “Was Flaco here, too?”
Something flickered behind the lopsided bartender’s dull eyes.
Taco Hat wouldn’t quit. “He doesn’t look like much. Come join me and my friend and leave that Sol. We order only Coronas, because they are colder. Juan, open two for this chica.”
“I’m sure they come out of the same ice bucket,” Perry Hale answered Taco Hat without taking his eyes from the bartender’s face. He wanted to be sure the man understood that he was listening. “Anyway, did Flaco show up, too?”
“There was no Flaco.” Juan shrugged. “My sister left with your friend, and she hasn’t been back.”
“Do you know where they went?”
The side action continued when Taco Hat moved closer to Yolanda. “Come drink with men.”
Perry Hale sighed. Cutting his eyes toward the pair, he pointed with his cap. “You don’t want to mess with that little gal, buddy. She’ll eat your lunch.”
“Que? Chinga tu madre. I’m talking to her, not you.”
Turning back to Juan behind the bar, Perry Hale kept himself angled just enough to keep the two men in his peripheral vision. “Look, I’m kinda worried about my friend, and that goes for your sister if she’s with him. He tends to attract trouble,” he jerked a thumb at Yolanda, “like her.”
Yolanda turned away from Taco Hat. “Just minding my own business here, buster. Go back over there and play with your friends.”
Taco Hat ran his fingertips down Yolanda’s arm. “Mira. I can show you a good . . .”
“Hey, Taco Hat. You’re about to draw back a nub.” Perry Hale switched his attention back and forth, watching Juan’s eyes. “M
y friend hasn’t called in. Have you heard from your sister?”
Ignoring Perry Hale’s warning, Taco Hat cupped Yolanda’s chin. Her hand snapped up as fast as a rattlesnake strike. He shrieked when his finger suddenly turned at a horrific angle away from his hand. She held on and twisted. In an effort to relieve the excruciating pain of muscles and ligaments stretched almost to their breaking points, his knees bowed backward.
“There you go,” Perry Hale said, trying not to laugh.
Taco Hat’s mustached friend reached for Yolanda’s thick ponytail. The edge of her free hand scythed through the air like an axe blade, catching him on the tip of his nose that exploded in a burst of blood. The lackey’s boots left the floor and he crashed backward onto a table full of empty bottles and dirty glasses. The men who’d been sitting there leaped from their chairs and backed against the wall.
Effortlessly pushing Taco Hat’s hand up and backward even more, she bent the finger to an impossible angle. Screaming like a little girl, he curled backward and she followed his momentum, exerting even more force until his back slammed onto the filthy floor.
Not taking his eyes from the barman’s face, Perry Hale waited for the scream to change pitch. He knew what was coming. No one touched Yolanda. He’d gone too far.
A sharp snap told him Taco Hat’s finger broke, just as he expected. The man shrieked.
The bartender moved to pick up something from behind the bar, and Perry Hale shook his head. “Nope. You could have stopped this.”
Yolanda kicked Taco Hat in his huevos and he shrieked again. “I don’t want your beer. I don’t want you touching me. Comprende?” She finally turned loose of his broken finger and blistered the air with a string of Spanish curses that went on for thirty seconds.
Blood pouring into his mustache from his busted nose, the lackey rolled off the table and staggered backward, wanting no more of the slender woman who fought like a gato montes, a wildcat. Eyes flashing, Yolanda spun toward Juan the bartender, planted her feet while at the same time pointing an index finger at his face, and unleashed another torrent of border Spanish that had the man blinking in stunned silence.
Breathing hard, she grabbed the bottle of Sol and drained half in two swallows. She slammed it onto the bar and threatened the rest of the patrons with a hot glare that was almost luminous.
“Now.” Perry Hale smiled at Juan. “Do you know where your sister and my friend went?”
Stunned, Juan answered. “El Cruce. She told me she’d be back by dark.”
“What else did she tell you?”
As Taco Hat’s bloody, groggy friend half-drug him toward the door, Juan told Perry Hale and Yolanda what he knew.
When he was finished, Perry Hale nodded. “Now, one more thing. If anyone follows us from here, if anyone from this cantina causes any trouble for me, her, or the friend I’m looking for, or if you’re lying to me and any of us gets hurt, I’m coming back here and burn this place to the ground, with your corpse in it. Comprende?”
The bartender could only blink.
“Yolanda, would you repeat that so he can understand what I said, please? I don’t want to figure out how to say it in Spanish.”
Giving him a dimpled smile, she repeated Perry Hale’s statement in a soft, even voice. “Ahora, una cosa más. Si alguien nos sigue desde aquí, si alguien de esta cantina causa algún problema para mí, para ella o para mi amiga, o si ella me miente y uno de nosotros se lastima, volveré aquí y quemaré este lugar para El suelo, con tu cadáver en él. Entiendes, mi amigo?”
He understood that, and nodded as they left without further molestation.
Outside, they hurried down the street, glancing over their shoulders from time to time to be sure they weren’t followed.
“Did you have to break the guy’s finger and bust his balls?”
“He was lucky it wasn’t his arm, and I only kicked him once. You know I don’t like for people to touch me.”
He intentionally poked her with his index finger, like a little kid prodding his sister to make her mad. “How about me?”
Her laugh was high from adrenaline. She reached for his hand, slowly, so he could jerk it away and they hurried back toward the border.
Chapter 23
The houseware store was silent, but it was one of those quiets that parents recognize when a toddler hasn’t been heard from in a while, and they know something’s up. Well, something was. A black-haired man came out of nowhere. One minute I was standing there beside the counter all by myself, and the next thing I knew, a mean-looking guy with enough tats on his arms and neck to work in a circus rushed at me from around the end of an aisle.
The knife in his hand looked to be the size of a machete. You talk to any hand-to-hand self-defense instructor about knife fighting and they say there are no real winners when it comes to sharp edges. The first person to bleed out loses, while the other guy is simply the survivor.
I’ve taught those classes, and instruct my students no matter what the age or experience, to turn and run like a striped-ass baboon if anyone comes at you with a knife. I’d’ve listened to my own advice if I could.
The guy was so close by the time I saw him that running wasn’t an option. There was a ragged, shoulder-high display of some kind of candy and cookies I couldn’t pronounce. I slapped the wire rack into him with one hand, just to get something between us and give me time.
It worked better than I expected. Tangled in falling sweets and rattling metal that swarmed him like a closet full of wire hangers, my assailant went down.
The Beretta was back in my hand, but before I could shoot, I sensed another someone rushing at me from behind. Keeping the weapon close to my body, I whirled just in time to see a skinny little guy charging at me like a linebacker. Funny thing was, he didn’t have a knife in his hand, but a pistol.
Maybe he got all excited and wanted to see the fear in my eyes as he killed me, or he could have been a bad shot and needed to get closer so he wouldn’t miss. Either way, it was a mistake. Pistol close to my body at waist level, I shot three times at center mass, and his knees buckled. Limp, he landed backward on his butt and slumped against a dusty shelf of metal rods.
That threat down for good, I spun back to the first guy who’d kicked and cursed himself from the display rack. He rose at the same time a boil of crushed sweets and baked goods reached my nose. With no time or inclination to tell him to put his hands up, I shot him twice, again center mass, and he fell backward onto those wire shelves. He gurgled for a moment and then stilled.
I might have felt bad, until I saw a wet, perpendicular stripe on his pants where he’d wiped the blood from his knife after killing Alejandro and the counterman.
“Hawke!”
In fighting mode, my finger was on the Beretta’s trigger when I crouched and twisted toward the shadow standing in the back door. It wasn’t a third attacker, but Esteban holding what looked like Alejandro’s Scorpion. I still almost shot him, but it was pointed down.
“What the hell!!!???”
“We have to go.” The steel in his voice completely covered his accent. “Follow me now!”
Voices rose outside and tires squalled on the pavement out front. Esteban disappeared from the rear doorway. Someone on the street was issuing orders, and, with no other options, I left my friend’s body where it lay and charged after the man I didn’t know.
Chapter 24
As a scattering of sharp gunshots echoed from the square, I followed Esteban through the long shadows stretching across the huge courtyard. A round pocked the stucco five feet in front of me. I ducked at the same time Esteban disappeared through an arched opening, shouldering the metal gate out of the way with a squawk of rusty hinges.
Movement in my peripheral vision gave me just enough warning to juke sideways as a guy holding an M4 leaned into a section of crumbling wall twenty feet from the houseware store I’d just left. I was still forty yards behind Esteban when the guy led me too far. Pops of light in the gathering
dusk flashed at the same time a line of bullet holes ripped the stucco a couple of feet ahead.
Cursing my Aloha shirt for being so bright, I spun, dropped to one knee, and brought the Beretta to bear. Squeezing the pistol’s trigger as fast as possible, I really had no hope of hitting anything at that distance. It was suppression fire that worked when the sheer volume of firepower from the double-stack magazine did its job, and the shooter ducked back out of the way.
The Beretta’s slide locked back and I thumbed the empty magazine free. Slapping in a fresh one from my pocket, and wishing I had the daypack full of loaded mags back in the car, I sprinted for the metal gate up ahead. More shots hammered the courtyard, and I figured the best thing to do was get out of the open.
Esteban leaned back around the arch and added his own touch to the fight, sending a string of automatic weapon fire from the Scorpion toward the people popping up like Whack-a-Moles in the openings across the courtyard. His bullets chewed up the crumbling wall and someone cried out.
An odd thing happened inside my head, and for an instant I had an inkling of what it was like for those boys back in the Alamo in 1836. Here I was in a courtyard too large to defend, with people shooting from all directions. I knew good and well that Crockett would have hauled ass just like I was doing, if he’d gotten the opportunity.
Esteban’s weapon ran dry, and he waved. “Come on!” He vanished from sight, and I raced toward his arched opening, struggling to see in the fading light.
Dusk and a line of tall trees and fat palms in the poor neighborhood beyond the courtyard added a darker element to all the fun we were having. Because of all the vegetation, light was almost gone on the street beyond the arch. The guns were momentarily silent.
Esteban said the way was clear, but I just couldn’t run blind into the unknown. I skidded to a stop under the arch and peeked around the corner to see him hightailin’ it across the empty street and into an alley. I wanted to holler for him to slow down, but decided that probably wouldn’t be smart, even though those guys already knew where I was.
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