“I guess so, though I don’t know why’d you want one from a simple law enforcement agent like myself. Right now, I’d like you to buzz Mr. Tawls and tell him there’s a Texas Ranger here to see him.”
The receptionist had the phone at her ear. “There’s someone here to see you, Mr. Tawls.… No, someone else. A Texas Ranger.” Eyes glued to Caitlin now. “Caitlin Strong.” She hung up the phone. “You can go right in.”
And Cort Wesley followed her through the door without asking if it was okay.
* * *
Caitlin smelled the cologne before she even glimpsed the big man swathed in it. Regent Tawls had played on the defensive line in college back in the sixties and had gone soft in all the wrong places. His big-boned frame now sagged in the middle, his considerable stomach pushing the boundaries of his suit coat and shirt. A crackling sounded as he pushed himself from the chair, the seat of his pants peeling up off the upholstery, to which perspiration had glued it. His face was plump and round, looking like an overgrown baby’s. Drawing closer, Caitlin saw it was shiny with sweat that similarly blotched his shirt in discolored patches.
Tawls wiped his hand with a handkerchief and extended it across his desk, eyeing Cort Wesley with no small degree of trepidation. “A pleasure, Ranger, a pleasure to meet a true hero of the state of Texas.”
Caitlin took his hand, finding it still damp and wondering what it had felt like before Tawls had dried it. “Ranger Caitlin Strong, sir, and this is Cort Wesley Masters. Mr. Masters has uncovered some information pertaining to a current investigation I’d like to ask you about.”
“I’m all ears, Ranger,” Tawls said, forcing an overly bright smile born of some extra-strength teeth whitener.
“Sir, your family once owned a farm just outside of Devine off Route Ninety, a property you are currently attempting to sell through your real estate interest. I believe you took over its management sometime in the early to mid seventies. Is that correct?”
The moment froze between them, the smile slipping off Tawls’s face and leaving Cort Wesley to wonder exactly how Caitlin had come by that information.
“Yes or no, Mr. Tawls?”
“Yes, Ranger, yes.” He forced another smile. “Some of the best feed corn you ever saw.”
“But that’s not all you grew, sir, was it?”
“Ma’am?”
“I believe you had occasion to meet my father, who was also a Ranger, sometime around nineteen-eighty. Jim Strong.”
Tawls stood there, his breathing so loud it sounded like a vacuum cleaner powering down. His eyes suddenly looked small, twin holes drilled in his flabby face. The smell of sickeningly sweet aftershave was overpowering this close to him and Caitlin caught just a whiff of the sour odor he’d doused himself to hide.
“I was asking you about your past encounters with my father, Mr. Tawls. I believe they involved you reserving a substantial stretch of your acreage in Medina County for marijuana growing.”
Cort Wesley felt the floor go wobbly beneath his feet.
“I’ve heard it told you were one of the most prominent marijuana growers of your time. My father wasn’t able to do much about it, since the local law and political types earned plenty off your profits. But he did investigate that suspicious fire that burned almost all your bud crops to the ground. Don’t believe his hard work ever did yield the perpetrator, though, did it?”
Tawls’s only response was even louder breathing that had turned wet and wheezy.
“Mr. Tawls?”
“No, Ranger, it didn’t.”
“A damn shame.” Caitlin aimed her gaze back at Cort Wesley. “Now, Mr. Masters here has some photographs that may help us finally nail the man who cost you all those millions in lost profits.”
It took a few moments for Tawls to realize Caitlin was waiting for a response.
“I sold my farm a decade later and went into real estate. Since then, the property’s gone through a bunch of owners who never did much besides flip it, the most recent of which gave me the listing a few months back. He didn’t even know I was the original owner,” Tawls added, shaking his head.
“Cort Wesley,” Caitlin prompted.
He laid a series of photographs down on Regent Tawls’s desk blotter picturing what could only be Maura Torres as a baby, toddler, and young girl in the company of her own parents and sister in photographs dated between 1973 and 1980.
“Do you recognize these people, Mr. Tawls?” Caitlin asked him, hesitating just long enough before continuing. “Please, take your time before you answer.”
“Yes,” Tawls said, after putting on a pair of reading glasses and studying the pictures closer.
“Do you know who they are?”
Tawls eased a few of the pictures back toward her, leaving damp fingerprint stains atop the likenesses. “I believe the man’s name was Mateo Torres. His wife was named Carmen. I don’t recall either of the children’s names.”
“Could the baby have been named Maura?”
Tawls shrugged. “Could have been anything. I don’t believe we were ever introduced.”
Caitlin ignored the snippiness of his remark. “But your memory is strong otherwise. I think that’s because you have a reason to remember Mateo Torres, don’t you?”
Tawls drummed the desk with his fingers before answering. “Is this off the record?”
“We’re not investigating you here, sir. At least, not yet.”
He swallowed hard, having trouble meeting Caitlin’s gaze now. “Mateo Torres and his business partner stole from me, Ranger.”
“You report that to my father?”
“I couldn’t, on account of what it was he stole.”
“Marijuana,” Caitlin figured. “How much marijuana, Mr. Tawls?”
“A whole truck full. They stole the truck too.”
“And this would have been…”
“Nineteen-eighty, just like you said. Torres’s daughter you’re so interested in must have been about seven at the time.”
Caitlin stole a quick glance at Cort Wesley. “What about this business partner of his?”
Tawls searched out another picture with his eyes and pointed at it. “That’s him there standing with Torres, his little girl about the exact same age as … Maura, was it?”
“You recall the other man’s name, sir?”
“Cantú,” Tawls told her, “Enrique Cantú.”
P
ART
S
IX
Night and day will the ranger trail his prey, through rain and shine, until the criminal is located and put behind bars where he will not molest or disturb peaceful citizens. For bravery, endurance and steadfast adherence to duty at all times, the ranger is in a class by himself. Such was the old ranger, and such is the ranger of today.
Ranger James Gillet,
Western Horseman Magazine
(1881)
50
S
AN
A
NTONIO
“I know what you’re thinking, Ranger,” D. W. Tepper said from the other side of the Denny’s booth where he’d met Caitlin for breakfast the next morning. The restaurant was situated just short of the River Walk and still offered the best breakfast in town.
“What am I thinking, Captain?”
“That this Enrique Cantú was somehow related to Esteban Cantú, the provincial governor who started the whole damn Mexican drug smuggling business by bringing opium into California through Baja.”
“Man gets celebrated as a hero for all these public works projects he undertook to build the roads that made life a snap for his smugglers. But I don’t think that at all, sir…”
“That’s a relief.”
“… I know it. I did some research to confirm my suspicions, D.W. Turns out Enrique Cantú, business partner of Mateo Torres, was Esteban Cantú’s grandson. That means we now have something directly linking Maura Torres’s father to the drug trade.”
Tepper settled back in the booth and stretched his arms out to either side, forgetting about his eggs. “What else?”
“D.W.?”
“You got that look that says you got something you’re not ready to tell me. You mind if I take a guess?”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“We got five dead kids in what’s left of Willow Creek at the same time Mexican hitters go after Dylan and Luke Torres.”
Caitlin took a bite of her bagel, saying nothing.
“I knew it,” Tepper followed.
“Seems about as obvious as it gets, Captain,” she said between chews.
“The connection lying somewhere on Regent Tawls’s marijuana farm back around nineteen-eighty.” Tepper thought for a moment. “You said Tawls told you Enrique Cantú and Mateo Torres stole a truckload of marijuana from him?”
“They stole the truck too,” Caitlin nodded. “It was my dad’s case, though it seems Tawls wasn’t very cooperative.”
“You figure maybe he’s more involved in all this than you think?”
“He’s no killer,” Caitlin said, shaking her head. “Tawls’s receptionist asked for my autograph.”
“You give her one?”
Caitlin nodded. “On the way out.”
Tepper rubbed his forehead, leaving a red welt that began to fade as quickly as it came. “Only time I ever did that was in an elementary school they sent me to speak at with your granddad. He had a line of kids out into the playground waiting for him to sign while I got ten maybe and then went to take a piss. I came out of the bathroom, went to lunch, and Earl was still signing when I got back.”
“He never liked to disappoint people.”
Tepper hesitated, holding his next forkful of eggs suspended between the plate and his mouth. “What else is on your mind, Ranger?”
“Just this Torres and Cantú stuff.”
“You wanna be more specific?”
“I’m still trying to figure things out, but I believe it all goes back to nineteen-nineteen again.…”
51
N
UEVO
L
AREDO,
M
EXICO; 1919
Strong’s Raiders met their Mexican counterparts for the first time in mid-May, crossing the Rio Grande in a trio of Ford trucks over the Laredo International Foot Bridge into Nuevo Laredo. The bridge had been destroyed by a flood in 1905 and had taken six months to repair. Lava, the Mexican soldier William Ray and Earl Strong had first met in Willow Creek, had set up the meeting, the subject being how to take down
esos Demonios,
Esteban Cantú’s soldiers currently carving a bloody distribution network across the border into Texas.
Lava had chosen a cantina featuring electricity for the meeting, the officers and soldiers inside surprised when a twelve-year-old boy known for giving free shoe shines entered instead.
“I have a message for you,” the boy said to Lava.
The message directed Lava to bring the three generals, and only the three generals, to a spot on the shores of the Rio Grande protected by the Chihuahuan Desert to the west and the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains to the east.
“I don’t like surprises,” William Ray said in English and then repeated it in Spanish for Lava and the generals once they arrived at the rendezvous. “And the number of horses I saw tied up around town told me a lot more than just the four of you might be attending our meeting.”
His face was lit by the crackling flames of a fire that sent embers twisting away into the breeze lifting off the river. His skin shone thanks to the desert heat even at night this time of year.
“It’s mutual interests that have brought us here,” William Ray continued, “and it’s mutual interests that we’re gonna keep in mind ahead of everything else. You need to be rid of
esos Demonios
for your side to bring down Carranza, and we need to be rid of them to keep the shit they carry from poisoning the state of Texas. Question being how best to go about that.”
“
Señor,
” started Lava, serving as spokesman for the generals, “it is our feeling we cannot defeat
esos Demonios
here in Mexico. They have too much power and inspire too much fear in the people. We are worried our soldiers would run from them at the first sign of battle.”
“Well, I thank you for your honesty,” said William Ray, “and truth be told, I was thinking the same thing, though for a different reason entirely. We don’t want to fight these demon soldiers on their own turf. Question being how do we lure them into a trap we can spring?”
“I believe we’re going about this in the wrong way,” said Frank Hamer, no longer able to restrain himself. “All tactful and shit.”
“What would you recommend, Frank?” William Ray asked him.
“For starters, I’d take the fight directly to Cantú. Pay him a visit up close and personal like.”
“Lava, what you have to say on that front?”
“
Señores,
Cantú has many enemies. He is very cautious in his movements and very well protected when he goes anywhere. No one has been able to get to him.”
“Texas Rangers ain’t tried yet,” Frank Hamer reminded, suppressing a laugh.
“I don’t believe that’s a bad idea, just not on its own,” noted Manuel Gonzaullas.
“What’s that mean exactly, son?” William Ray asked him.
“Cantú is not a man likely to respond simply to threats.”
“Knowing Ranger Hamer here, simple isn’t in his vocabulary, and I imagine he’s got something bigger than what you’d think of as a threat in mind.”
“I do indeed, starting with the barrel of my old Colt.”
Gonzaullas avoided Hamer’s gaze in responding. “Cantú must have known this battle was coming when he expanded his business east into Texas. That means he’s prepared for whatever we throw at him.”
“That is true,” Lava echoed, as Pancho Villa’s three top generals who’d accompanied him nodded in virtual unison. “We would be better served focusing our attention elsewhere.”
“I believe there’s a way to make our point to Cantú so he gets the message we want sent,” Bill McDonald suggested, swallowing air to stifle a fresh coughing fit. “That being we keep our focus trained on these
esos Demonios
of his. We’ve all had our share of scrapes with Mexicans of this kind, and these might be worse or better depending on your thinking, but they’re Mexicans all the same. We know how they think and how they’ll respond.”
“Captain McDonald,” began Earl Strong, “with all due respect, sir, you didn’t see what they did in Willow Creek. I’d argue that this is a new kind of enemy we’re up against, chosen specifically for their ruthlessness and desire to kill pretty much everything in their way. Just the way it’s gotta be for Cantú to make the inroads he needs in Texas for his smuggling operation. Makes it all the more important we stop him here and now. Be a lot harder to do that once he’s got things built up on our border with Mexico the way he did it in Baja.”