The Creed of Violence (21 page)

The air was dense and filmy and they could taste the work of the
refineries on their tongues and the scent of its rancid perfume bitter to
the nostrils.

The father glanced across the cab at the son, who was behind the
wheel hunting for the Agua Negra offices. "Mr. Lourdes, the American
and Brit companies have a billion dollars in this. They know what
packets of money and a sense of purpose can do." He threw out his
arm to take in all that they could see. "By their standards ... I am just
a common assassin."

They drove through the railyards. Hundreds of workers were being
unloaded from freight cars and herded into lots like cattle or goats. El
Enganche-the Hooking-was what the process was called. Peasants
from farms and villages in the hills were recruited at bazaars and carnivals by wily agents known as enganchadors who promised transportation, free room and board and three to four pesos a day if the peasant
contracted to work for a period of time. Of course, when they reached
Tampico, they would be told by the companies that the contract was
not to be honored and that pay amounted to one peso a day. More than
they might ever make in some rural pisshole, but the cost of living in
Tampico turned them into hard-working indigents.

The father tapped the dashboard with his knuckles to draw John
Lourdes's attention to an array of wall graffiti defiling the Yankee and
the Brit. It was not the first run of epithets seen chalked on a wall
about the state of mind the people had toward the brutal realities in
Tampico.

"The women up top," said the father, "are heading for the same
fate as those bummers on the train."

John Lourdes knew this, though it was the first he'd ever actually
contended with that fact. It was not something he should involve himself in, yet he stopped the truck and got out. He then began to explain
to the women what their future held.

It was not news, he discovered. A girl not much older than Teresa
summed up their response by holding out and opening a small but empty
purse.

When John Lourdes started the truck back up the father asked,
"Mr. Lourdes, would you say I'm an intelligent man?"

"Sadly ... I would."

"You should have left the truck in the desert. You should have left
the women at the train. You should not have done what you just did.
You are driving straight toward ruin."

HE AGUA NEGRA offices were on the Fiscal Wharf. A dredger
was docked beside a pile hammer punching at the river bottom.
The wharf was crowded with traffic for the tankers. Jack B was out
in front of the rolling doors of a two-story shed having a smoke when
he spotted this flock of women riding atop a truck. He was a figure of
astonishment when John Lourdes pulled up in front of him.

Rawbone tipped his hat. "Not even a hello?" He stepped out of the
cab. "Would you be so kind as to tell the good doctor we've brought
the truck."

Jack B disappeared inside the shed without so much as a word.

"There goes a starved mind," said the father.

John Lourdes now stepped out of the truck and the women climbed
down from the back. It wasn't long before Doctor Stallings walked into
the daylight followed by a handful of officers and guards. As Rawbone expected, Stallings was not felled with astonishment but rather maintained the deadpan mask that was his trademark.

He looked to John Lourdes. "Your note ... it may well have made
the difference for us."

Doctor Stallings ordered Jack B to get the women organized. He
then asked John Lourdes how they managed the Sierras. He walked
around the truck while John Lourdes explained. The father watched
Doctor Stallings intently. When finished, as an afterthought, John
Lourdes said, "We lost a few crates before we had the cars braked."

The doctor listened silently. He told Jack B to get the women to
the field cafeteria. "Except this one and this one." He singled out Alicia
and the girl Teresa.

He then ordered both men into the truck and joined them. As John
Lourdes slipped behind the wheel, Teresa signaled him as if to say
goodbye. Doctor Stallings directed them to drive up along the Panuco.
He sat with arms folded and offered no conversation until he began to
point out the tank farms that lined the river. The Aquilla ... National
Petroleum ... Waters-Price ... Standard Oil ... East Coast Gulf ...
The Gulf Coast ... The Huasteca ... and those were only the northern
fields.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this has become its own nation."

Amidst an array of boiler stacks and paraffin plants and refineries
was a garrison of long, low huts and a corrugated warehouse. A sign
posted above the gate read:

AGUA NEGRA

OIL FIELD SECURITY

The men there were of the same lot as those on the train and
they drew up and became attentive when they recognized it was
Doctor Stallings in the truck. They pulled up to the warehouse garage.
Rawbone and John Lourdes followed Doctor Stallings to his office. It
was Spartan: a desk, a half-dozen phones. Both men were asked for their security cards. When Doctor Stallings had them in hand, he tore
them up.

"You no longer work for Agua Negra."

He waited for either man's response. Something seemed to pass
between the father and son. An unspoken sense to remain silent. Doctor
Stallings took petty cash from a drawer. He slid the stack of bills toward John Lourdes. "You're cut loose. Go to the Southern Hotel. Get a
room where the both of you can bunk. Take the motorcycle. If anyone
asks, you're not working for us."

John Lourdes took the money and pocketed it. He glanced at the
father.

"He's staying," said Doctor Stallings.

When they were alone, Rawbone took out a cigarette and lit it. He
removed his derby and set it on a wood filing cabinet. He went and sat
in a chair by the window.

"Those oil fields," said Doctor Stallings, "they're not as big as
Texas, but they stand to have a lot more influence. The companies here
will be thought of as a country in the near future. And they are beginning to learn how to be one. The practicals and priorities."

Rawbone set a leg up on the chair and rested an arm on his knee.
"You made a point of referencing Texas."

"Your legal situation."

"As Mr. Stars and Stripes is fond of saying ... this ain't Texas."

"And that is the point."

They heard motorcycle gears shifting and an engine whine.
Rawbone could see out the window and past the wire fencing John
Lourdes taking to the road through burned and trampled weeds.

"Do you fully trust him?"

Rawbone laughed inwardly. "I fully trust myself."

"You will ultimately have to come to a decision about that. You'll
be given the truck. You can hire out. Someone I know will contact people on your behalf. I'll tell them they can reach you at the Southern
Hotel. You're an independent contractor now."

"To what end?"

There was not a blank in his thoughts, nor a gap in the response.
"An assassination," he said.

Rawbone walked out into the fucking light with the foretaste of
death thick in his mouth. He knew, now, with an absolute clarity that
Doctor Stallings meant to see him and John Lourdes dead.

TAMPICO, THE OLD town, was built during the time of the colonial viceroys. Arches and wrought-iron balconies, French scrollwork and imported English brick. The town reminded Rawbone of New Orleans, right
down to the pure honey of satisfying the most private of pleasures.

The Southern Hotel was a five-story affair with elevators. It was
a money house with a mahogany bar and cafe tables where you drank
cocktails from real Tom Collins glasses. Businessmen stayed there, politicos, reporters from magazines like Colliers and Saturday Evening
Post, men from the Klondike gold rush who came to wildcat for oil
along the Panuco.

A key had been left for Rawbone at the hotel desk. When he entered the room, he was intensely troubled. The room was empty, but he
could hear the shower running. He threw his bindle down on a bed. On
the other was John Lourdes's shoulder holster, his carryall, his clothes
... and that notebook.

In a flash of anger and resentment at having been gamed he grabbed
the notebook and flung it. He did the same with the holster and carryall, even John Lourdes's clothes.

He realized that John Lourdes was besting him without even being
in the room, without even being aware, just by being, just by ...

His silhouette in the lamplight stiffened. He could hear himself
warning: Remain indifferent, dammit. Lay it out for him. Doctor Stallings ... all you sense. Mr. Lourdes could write it all down in that
sorry notebook.

He gathered up John Lourdes's things and put them back on the
bed as they were. Walk away from this and everything that went with
it, that was one possibility. Or find a way, a swift, sure way, to sacrifice
John Lourdes and so save himself.

As he threw the pants on the bed, the wallet fell from the back
pocket to the floor. He cursed as he bent to retrieve it. Spotting this
sliver of gold visible from between the leather flaps, he spread the wallet open to be contemptibly sure it was what he thought it was. What
lay on the cracked and dry leather surface-an insignificant trinket of a
crucifix with one broken cross beam.

How long had it been since anything had savaged his being or left
him bare? But there it was.

Was it possible—

He slipped the cross back and closed the leather flaps and put the
wallet back in the pant pockets. He stood in the midst of upheaval
knowing ... he had been undone by his own hand.

IN THE ROOM, alone, John Lourdes dressed in clean clothes. He took
his wallet from the other trousers. He made sure his mother's cross was
there before tucking it into his back pocket. He slipped on his shoulder
holster. He sat at a desk and prepared a wire to justice Knox, then a
letter to Wadsworth Burr.

Night had come and he motorcycled back out to the Agua Negra
field offices to find out what had happened to Rawbone, but no one
knew. While he was there John Lourdes did learn the women had
been taken to a cafeteria for the guards down the road. That was to be
their station. There he was told that Teresa and Sister Alicia had been
brought to the mayor's house to work as part of the kitchen crew. He
motorcycled to that address, which was by the Laguna del Carpintero.

The turreted house stood three stories in the moonlight. It was an
ill-conceived spectacle of iron grillwork and marquees and Moorish
porticos. In the huge lot behind it were two oil derricks, and where the
ground declined toward the laguna was a foul black soup. There were
piles of rotted lumber and a wrecked barge at the edge of the shore and
supply shacks and chalans and a rusting truck with a fence around it for
horses and mules and a battery of goats.

The house burned with light when John Lourdes rode past. In the
great room with sconces and braided scrollwork were a dozen men.
They were deep in conversation while drinking. One of the men was
Doctor Stallings, another Anthony Hecht. John Lourdes parked the
motorcycle against a tree and shadowed the darkness to get a better
view.

The mayor, who was of Mexican descent, seemed to have much of
the conversation directed at him, though there was one other man who
appeared to be of central importance. He wore a near-white suit and
favored a mustache much like John Lourdes. He was older and had a
cultured face and often he would clip his thumbs inside his suspenders
when he spoke.

Where the kitchen light cast itself upon the darkness John Lourdes
saw a crew of women at their work stations. Teresa was in a corner
scrubbing pots; Alicia was at the stove. He called to the old woman
through the screen door. She put out her arms in a gesture of surprise at
seeing him, then looked back at the closed door to the hall. They talked
for a few minutes before she went and tugged at Teresa's hair.

Teresa came forward in a leather apron tied around her neck that
hung almost to the ground; her arms were dripping wet. She was embarrassed yet elated at seeing John Lourdes. He held out a piece of
paper torn from his notebook.

He had written: / wan4eJ 4o make sure you were a/r~~4. /'m
s4ay'/ji a4 4e 5ov4ern /-/o4e/, iS you Sind yourse/S wi4 4rouble.

He wanted her to have it, but she made a gesture with her hand
for the pencil. She slipped open the screen door. She wrote on the same
page: /4's jood 4o see you. This she underlined.

From back in the house a man was calling out and the door to the
hall swung open. John Lourdes forced the page they had written on into
her hands before retreating to the darkness. In those few moments with
Teresa he had picked up some of the conversation coming from that
other room. Most of it seemed to deal with the mayor and where he
stood politically now that the insurrection had been authorized.

Along the side of the house John Lourdes spotted a root cellar. It
was practically beneath the rooms where the men were. He went and
knelt by the canted entranceway. He looked about. There were but
two men down by the derricks. He could see the faint glow of their
cigarettes. He worked the latch and lifted the weathered door. He bent
and felt his way down a set of wobbly steps. He closed the night off and
hunched there in the dark. The cellar was foul with decay and fungaled
shorings, the floor was flooded with a few inches of tainted water and
every cautious step he took slopped behind him.