Strong Cold Dead (23 page)

To Steeldust Jack, it looked as if the front portion of the convoy was being sucked down into hell itself. Wheels splintered and wagon frames cracked, shedding their contents. Guards both on horseback and manning the wagons drew their sidearms or steadied their shotguns. He knew the fear on their faces from that of Union soldiers caught in a Confederate ambush, the difference being the confusion that blossomed in its stead, with the realization that no ambush was coming. Still, a smattering of shots erupted, flashing through the haze of the dirt cloud rising from the collapsed roadbed, but hitting nothing.

John D. Rockefeller bucked his own horse around to face Jack Strong, but the Texas Ranger was already gone, his horse galloping through the grasslands and kicking up gravel in its wake.

 

53

H
OUSTON,
T
EXAS

“It was an old trick my great-great-granddad learned in the Civil War,” Caitlin said, finishing up the story.

The stale air of the gym seemed to have thickened through the course of her tale, the stink of sweat growing more pronounced in the process. It felt to her as if the air-conditioning had shut down, leaving her roasting inside her cotton shirt.

“Confederate soldiers,” Caitlin continued, “would dig and disguise trenches in the road to slow supplies headed to the Northern troops, like guerrilla warfare. It almost worked well enough to tilt things in the South's favor.”

“Almost,” Cray Rawls repeated.

“Even so, it slowed up Rockefeller's wagons enough to delay him for a while.”

“Well, Ranger, nobody's ever compared me to John D. Rockefeller before,” Rawls said, lifting the gloves hanging limply by his sides and tapping at the heavy bag in preparation for resuming his pounding of it.

“I wouldn't take it as a compliment, sir.”

“I guess it's a matter of perspective again, isn't it?”

“But here's the thing, Mr. Rawls. Back then, nobody had the resources to find out the truth behind John D. Rockefeller's cutthroat business practices or how many lives he left trampled in his wake.”

“Is that the comparison you're drawing here?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

One-two … One two … One-two …

Back to his punching again, Rawls seemed not to hear her.

“Because I wonder,” Caitlin continued anyway, “how much the Comanche tribal elders know about your history in Texas?”

One-two … One two … One-two …

“I wasn't aware I had much of one to speak of, really,” Rawls said, as casually as he could manage.

But something had changed in the way he hit the heavy bag. Caitlin could feel the reduced intensity of his blows, which suddenly sounded hollow on impact.

“It's true, isn't it, sir, that following the death of your mother in North Carolina, you were adopted by a couple from Texas?”

Rawls forced himself to continue punching, just going through the motions now.

“For a time,” he said.

“Nine years is a long time.”

Caitlin realized the man's entire demeanor had changed. His shoulders were sagging and his wrists were bending inward too much on impact. And he was breathing rapidly, mostly through his nose, the smooth and practiced cadence gone.

“What I'm getting at, Mr. Rawls,” Caitlin resumed, “is whether you informed the tribal elders you're doing business with about your criminal record in this state.”

Rawls stopped punching altogether and held the bag steady with his gloves. “I was a juvenile at the time. Those records are sealed. Are we almost done here?”

“You were charged with rape, and would've been charged as an adult if the charges had stuck. But the woman was a prostitute who never showed up to give her statement. Lucky for you. Along with the fact that the fire marshal never followed through much on the investigation into the fire that killed the couple that adopted you.”

“Thank you for not calling them my parents,” Rawls said stiffly.

“Religious types, I'm told. Real Bible thumpers.”

“Are you finished, Ranger?”

“Just one more question for now. You ever actually get in the ring, Mr. Rawls?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just this, sir: I've known a lot of great shots on the range, some of the best. Champion target shooters who've never actually been in a gunfight. I never understood why anyone would shoot for sport, any more than I can understand why somebody would learn how to box and never get into the ring for a real bout.”

“You didn't let me answer the question.”

“Your face gave it away,” Caitlin told him, “along with the way you're hitting the bag. Boxers hold back when they're practicing. It's a necessary evil, so they can unleash themselves in the ring. But you aren't holding back anything, like that bag is as close as you'll ever come to a real opponent.”

“Maybe you didn't notice my nose.”

“I did, sir, along with the lack of even a blotch anywhere else. I'm guessing you did some simple sparring that turned bad. Looks to me like somebody sucker punched you.”

“I'm sure there's a point to all this,” Rawls said, breathing faster and louder.

“Only that an actual opponent is a whole different thing, either in the ring or in a gunfight. I just thought you should know that. Call it a little friendly advice.”

Rawls leaned back against the heavy bag, crossing his arms against his chest. “Did I do or say something to offend you, Ranger?”

“When you first saw me coming over, you looked at me like you knew you'd been caught. Like you'd done something that made you figure me or somebody else was coming, and that maybe you were glad, at least resigned. I've seen that look before, plenty often, and it always makes me wonder what a person's hiding. Because if they're hiding one thing, it's a pretty safe bet they're hiding something more.”

Rawls grinned, his brilliantly white teeth glistening in the spill of overhead gym lights. “Did you rehearse that? I mean, it sounds like a speech you've given before.”

“I'm not one for giving speeches, sir, but I got roped into speaking at a high school graduation, come spring, at that Houston prep school I mentioned to you.”

“Lucky kids.”

“We'll see. Anyway, one of them got kidnapped the other day, right out of a McDonald's, if you can believe that.”

“Well, this is a pretty dangerous state, Ranger.”

Caitlin slapped her hat against her side and then fitted it back in place over her hair. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, sir.”

 

54

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Bobby Roy's Used Cars and Bail Bond Service was located just down South Frio Street from the Bexar County magistrate's building, in a beat-up lot bleeding macadam amid a patchwork pattern of what looked like gravel instead of tar. Cort Wesley parked his truck next to a construction site in the shadow of a John Deere front loader, waiting to make sure the men identified by Miguel Asuna were inside.

The John Deere kept him hidden from sight while not shielding him much from the sun, and Cort Wesley was fine with that. Fine with it roasting him, to further fuel the fury he felt every time he considered a couple of two-bit thugs rousting his son to make their bullying points.

And two-bit thugs, according to Miguel Asuna, was exactly what they were.

*   *   *

“Body shop right here in the city did the work,” he had told Cort Wesley, forty minutes after their initial meeting. “The Escalade's registered to Bobby Roy, guy who rips people off on his used cars as much as his bond work. My guess is your boy was worked over by a couple of ex-cons who sell jalopies off his lot, when they're not chasing down bail jumpers for him.”

“You're kidding.”

Asuna raised his hand theatrically. “God's honest truth, amigo. They're brothers, Terry and K-Bar Boyd.”

“K-Bar?”

“What can I say?” Asuna shrugged. “Man fancies himself good with a knife. Word is he gave himself the nickname after shanking a couple guys in prison. God's honest truth, too.”

“Tough guy, eh?” Cort Wesley said, thinking of what Luke had told him about a guy with a knife, sticking the tip in Luke's crotch, explaining how he'd had his way with boys before.

“If doing them in the back makes him tough, sure. And I'll tell you something else that's true: I do much better work than the clowns Bobby Roy took that Escalade to. Tell him that, if you see him.”

“Oh, I'll see him.”

*   *   *

The black Escalade pulled into the lot and slid into a space directly in front of before the entrance, two hours into Cort Wesley's superheated vigil. Luke hadn't been very specific in his descriptions of the Boyd brothers, Terry and K-Bar, but he'd still provided enough for Cort Wesley to recognize them climbing down out of the Escalade. Both wore leather gloves with the fingers cut back, as if they'd bought their toughness on sale at Walmart. Living, breathing caricatures who were plenty good enough to track down desperate bail skips and scare high school kids, which wasn't very good at all. But they were probably armed, and Cort Wesley wanted to find out fast, without making a mess, who'd sent them after Luke.

Unless making that mess better served his cause, Cort Wesley reasoned, his eyes falling on the John Deere front loader again.

*   *   *

The driver from the nearby work crew had been kind enough to leave the key in the starter of the Deere, which handled like a big, angry SUV.

“Hey!” Cort Wesley thought he heard someone yell, as he turned the Deere wheel all the way to the left and swung out into traffic. “Hey!”

He thumped across the eastbound traffic lane and moved into the westbound lane, accompanied by screeching brakes slammed by drivers doing a collective double take at the sight of the massive vehicle ranging across their path like some iron dinosaur.

Cort Wesley hopped the curb into Bobby Roy's used car lot, managing to steer clear of the twin rows of vehicles, which were covered more by dust than by paint. He headed straight for what passed for a showroom.

 

55

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Cort Wesley barely felt the impact as the big Deere's raised shovel crashed through the showroom glass and plowed T-Bird and Caprice classic convertibles from its path like they were Matchbox cars. A guy he thought he recognized as Bobby Roy flew out of a desk chair, in front of which sat a couple with whom he'd been in the process of closing a deal.

Terry and K-Bar Boyd stumbled out of the back office, struggling to free nine-millimeter pistols from fancy holsters tucked under their sport jackets. But Cort Wesley was out of the cab by then, boots crunching over shattered glass, kicking aside a back bumper that had separated from one of the convertibles on impact. He reached the Boyds just as they finally found purchase on pistols, and he tore the weapons from their grasps in a motion so fluid that both brothers were left absurdly aiming their empty hands at him.

“What the fuck?” one of them managed, before Cort Wesley slammed him in the nose with a ridged palm.

He watched the potential buyers flee through a side door, closely followed by Bobby Roy himself, as Cort Wesley stuck a leg out to trip the second Boyd brother. Then he hoisted both of them up onto a big rectangular planter, which looked decorative compared to the rest of the showroom. He smelled spilled coffee somewhere as he smacked the Boyd brothers' heads together to further make his point. The impact sounded like a golf club thwacking a ball off the tee.

“You K-Bar?” he said to one, producing a dazed headshake. “Then nice to meet you, Terry,” he greeted him. “You too, K-Bar,” he said to the other. “I'm the guy whose son you pulled out of that McDonald's the other day, in Houston. Sound familiar? You were trying to scare me off. Thought I'd give you boys the opportunity to do it in person.”

“Fuck you!” Terry managed in nasally fashion. He was pinching his nose closed in a futile attempt to stanch the blood that Cort Wesley's blow had unleashed.

Cort Wesley let them see him grin, ignoring Terry Boyd's failed show of bravado. “You boys crossed a line here, and the only reason you're not under the big wheels of that John Deere now is I need to know who put you up to it.”

The Boyd brothers heard the screech of police sirens picking up cadence in the distance, their expressions flashing hope that their assailant would surely flee. Clearly, they were uneducated on the damage a man like Cort Wesley could do to them in his remaining minute or so.

“You give me a name and you get a pass. Call it your Get Out of Hell for Free card.” Cort Wesley glanced at the blood running from Terry's nose, between his fingers, and the lump the size of a baseball that had already formed on K-Bar's skull. “Well, not quite for free, but close enough as things go.”

“We ain't gonna give you nothing!” K-Bar ranted, his words stringing into each other. “You wanna kill us, go right ahead.”

His bravado, inspired by the increasingly loud police sirens, was ignored by Cort Wesley, who snatched up a pristine fan belt, once displayed on a partition wall that now had fallen to the Deere. The sign had said something about the belt coming from the Mustang the great Steve McQueen had driven in
Bullitt,
but Cort Wesley had his doubts.

“Okay,” he said, wrapping the fan belt around K-Bar's neck and tightening it until K-Bar's breath choked off and his face began to purple.

“What the fuck, man?” Terry Boyd ranted, his voice whiny. “What the fuck?”

Terry's brother was starting to gurgle now, his cheeks so pumped with air they looked as if they were ready to explode.