Chapter 22

Table of Contents

“That, gentlemen, was a foregone conclusion," Eddy said to the glum faces riding in his command jeep.  "Did you really think he was going to keep letting us poop on his patio? Besides, we're on a mission from God.  We're off to do the work of the Lord."

Even in the dark Eddy kept his ridiculously huge hat on his head.  Apparently there was an ordinance in the Gadsden Purchase that wannabe cowboys had to wear their hats at night.  His flying saucer chapeau was not a garment, it was as permanent a fixture as a tortoise's carapace.  

"Now who wants to sing along on that Cure song, you know that one that goes please please please, let me get what I want?  Altogether boys."  

“That's the Smiths," corrected the goon who was the elected corrector of the group. His name was Costello, incidentally, as if it matters.

"The Who?"

"Not the Who, the Smiths. Same island, different decades."

"Well dadgummit, why can't we just for once just please please please sing the song and not worry about who done it.  Quit being a killjoy.  These boys just want to sing and make merry."

The two other occupants of the jeep were slumped over exhausted in their seats.  The dirt road was twisting and bumpy, with dust leaking in through the window seals. These men practically farted dust, but it still made things uncomfortable.  The four wheel drive vehicles in convoy ahead stirred up a cloud that made breathing, much less singing, an act of martyrdom.

“Well how about that one that starts out Hey Now..."

"I'm not sure.  Sing a little bit more of it."

"That's all I know.  Throw me a bone here.  Hell, you know all those trivial facts.  The one that begins

Hey Now..."

“That could be any of a hundred tunes. Does it have one hey now or two?"

"I don't know.  What dadgum difference does it make?"

"It makes all the difference in the world," said Costello.  "If it's just one hey now, then it's probably that hey now you're an all-star song by Smash Mouth.  If it's two hey nows it's gotta be that hey now hey now, don't dream it's over by Crowded House."

"Well Hey Now Brown Cow, I don't remember.  I think it had two hey nows."

"Boss, if you want to lead a sing along, you have to make sure we're all singing the same song.  Next time, if you can't remember the words, at least count the hey nows."

Eddy got quiet.  All this antagonism had killed his singing mood.  They bumped along in silence for a moment or two more, then Costello spoke while the others slumbered.  "Can you explain this mission from God to me again.  Instead of sleeping in a fine bed, we're out here snoring dirt into our lungs."

Eddy beamed beneath his big hat.  "I told you it’s just like that Jethro Tull song.  We're going to tear down the wall!"

Costello didn't have the energy to tell the boss it was a Pink Floyd, not Jethro Tull song, so he let it go.  "Wait, I thought we liked the wall.  We put all that time and energy strong-arming people into voting for Trump so he could build his wall, and now you say the wall is no good."

"No, no no don't get me wrong!" Eddy pleaded.  "I'm all about the wall as a psychological and spiritual abstraction.  We need to put an invisible barrier between us and the parasites that are sucking dry the blood of American culture..  But a physical wall?  No way, José.  I shudder at the thought.  Think of the implications."

“The implications would be no more dirty beaners giving me indigestion when I'm trying to eat breakfast."  Costello spit a mouthful of tobacco juice into a cup, exposing putrefying teeth. 

"Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they say."  Eddy shook his head and turned his beatific cowboy hat heavenward.  "If there's no beaners, there's no us. Don't you get it?  As it is now, we're the wall.  If a real wall goes up, how are we going to skim our cut off the marijuana mules?  How are we going to pilfer a percentage from the pollitos crossing the desert illegally?  How are we going to shake down border businesses in the name of protecting them from the alien invasion?  If there's a wall we no longer justify our existence.  We're just another criminal cartel, and a feeble one at that."

Costello let this all sink in.  With the jeep bumping up and down, thinking was like mixing a drink in his thick skull until the ingredients were evenly distributed.  "Okay, I get it.  So what's our move?"

"Well mind you now, no one gets hurt.  What we are going to do is head to that construction yard where they are fixing to pour concrete for phase one.  We hide on the hill and shoot over their heads until the security guards skedaddle.  Then we move in and destroy the equipment.  Of course, everyone will assume it's the cartel that did it.  We keep up these guerrilla tactics and it'll be too expensive to build the gall-dang wall. Accordingly, the good old status quo shall be maintained."

Costello thought that this was why Eddy was the boss, even though his rock stars and movie stars were always just a cunt hair off. It wasn't like he confused Alice Cooper with Barry Manilow.  He confused Alice Cooper with Marilyn Manson.  Honest mistake. Besides that, he seemed to be able to see the big picture where no one else could.  But could his big picture be just a cunt hair off too?  That was a disturbing thought.  Out here in the Gadsden Purchase, you survived on the knife's edge of cunt hairs.

“Did you get the green light on this from…you know?”. Costello said carefully, because Eddy didn’t like to be reminded he was subordinate to anyone, especially to a beaner.

“Why wouldn’t he give us the green light?” Eric fumed. “Goshdarn wall is bad for his business too.”

Eddy ordered all the lights in the convoy doused, and the FF cruised the last two miles by the brittle fingernail moon.  The caravan parked off-road behind a rise, and there disembarked.  Not being real soldiers, just pot-bellied wannabe warriors, it took them some effort to struggle up the hilltop.  Once they got there, sweating more than the entire Gila watershed in a dry spell, the militiamen looked down the slope to a fenced in construction yard, where bags of concrete were piled indiscriminately among sophisticated, state of the art earth-moving vehicles.  Here Eddy struck a commanding, cross-armed George Washington pose.

"Where's those two little messicans of ours?" He demanded proprietarily.

"You mean Leonard and Victor?" answered Costello.  "Leonard is half Phillipino, and Victor is a darker skinned Italian."

"Close enough.  Get 'em ready."

The idea was to fire down into the construction yard, over the heads of the three or four unarmed security guards, until the defenders found the situation untenable and ran off into the desert.  Then the two "Mexicans" Leonard and Victor, chosen for their latino-ish appearance and low stature, would rush in wearing Donald Trump face masks and blow up the construction equipment.  The video cameras monitoring the lot would expose them as Hispanic individuals and everyone would assume it was a cartel hit, on the face a brilliant plan.

Everything went off without a hitch, except that one of the security guards didn't wake up during the fusillade, and had to be carried out to safety by Leonard and Victor before the demolition work could begin.  Then, because the cartel always left a sinister message behind, for added authenticity they thought they should spray paint something threatening and menacing, but it was discovered that neither of the two "Mexicans" knew any Spanish.  To resolve the problem, Eddy had them smear Go Trump! on the side of a shed. Looking this over, somebody pointed out it sounded like they supported Trump, which would be uncharacteristic of Mexicans.  So they crossed out the Go and replaced it with Fuck, but this offended Eddy’s Puritan sensibilities.  Finally, he had them censor it by painting the word Screw over Fuck. Something in this order was lost in translation, however, so the two faux Mexicans graffitied Screw Over Trump on the side of the shed, a message that looked decidedly un-menacing, and decidedly un-cartelish. They were debating how to edit it when someone picked up radio activity on a law enforcement band, so they decided to let the message stand and get out.

“Next time get me some real honest to goodness beaners,"  Eddy complained as they bounced away on the rutted road.  He punctuated his angry sentences by deliberately hitting bumps, which caused the passengers to strike the rag top ceiling.

"Remember that Black Sabbath song Night in the Ruts, boys?" Eddy growled.  "That's where I'm going to kick you, night in the ruts, if you don't find me some genuine messycans when I need them. What a day-bacle! Night-bacle, if you wanna get technical.”

Costello rubbed his forehead.  Night in the Ruts was Aerosmith, not Black Sabbath.  Now the boss was starting to mix up American and British acts, something he had not done before.  Furthermore, that was just an album name, not a song.  The boss was coming unraveled.

"It's tough to recruit real pedigreed Mexicans these days," said Costello, his head aching from a blow on the canvas roof.  "They won’t take chances because they are afraid Trump is going to deport them.”

"Well at least somebody bring a Spanish dictionary.  You always got your ugly mugs in those phones of yours.  Can't somebody Google a translation?"

"No bars out here, boss.  No bars."

Eddy fumed in silence for a while, until the flashing lights of a pair of border patrol vehicles approached.  The FF convoy cordially pulled onto the shoulder to let them pass, if raw desert could be dignified by the word shoulder, but the border patrol vehicles stopped in the middle of the rutted road to block their passage.

"I got this boys.  Let me do the talking," Eddy said.

Hal Owen got out and waddled like a constipated penguin over to Eddy's jeep.  He looked  high-strung and weary, but whether that was because of the job or his overbearing mother was hard to say.  

"We got a report of explosions out at the construction yard," said Hal.  "Did you guys hear anything?"

"Holy Hades we did," said Eddy  "Sounded like a big firefight over there.  We've been patrolling around, trying to do our patriotic duty and protect the wall construction, but that was too much firepower for us.  We got out quick.

“Firefight?" said Hal.  "Who was shooting at who?"

Eddy smiled a smile so toothy it captured the feeble moonlight and amplified it to near solar status.  "You got me.  That's why you make the big bucks, big guy."

Hal scratched his boots in the dirt like a bantam rooster in battle mode.  References to his height really stuck in his gizzard, but he couldn't afford to fight with these assholes right now.

"How come you guys didn't radio it in?" Hal asked.

"We were just about to," Eddy said.  "We were kind of running for our lives."

Hal crossed his arms and stretched backwards, possibly to achieve the illusion of greater stature. It didn't occur to him to ask why, if they were running for their lives, most of the convoy was asleep, with unhinged draws drooling all over the dust saturated Jeep upholstery, making mud. "Well, I've got something to tell you.  I've been looking for you goons the last couple of weeks.  When we don't need you you're always sticking your noses in our business, but when we need help you're nowhere to be found.  You heard about that Arab woman who died in the desert, right?"

“I shore did," Eddy said, taking off his hat and lowering it to his heart, as a show of respect. Not surprisingly, it smelled under there.  "Sad, sad situation.  If those Ay-rabs would only take care of their own they wouldn't have to risk crossing this God-forsaken desert."

"Their country is a God-forsaken desert too,” Hal reminded him.  "I don't think she was over here fleeing hunger and persecution.  I think she was part of a terrorist cell.”

"Terrorist cell?”  That might explain your little shootout tonight."  Costello noted how clever Eddy was in planting the idea of the shootout in Hal's head, a shootout that had never happened.

Hal put his hand on his chin in the classical pose of thought, though deep thinker he was not.  "You know, that's something worth looking into."  He was giddy from the idea that this case had promotion written all over it.  When he told his bosses about the terrorist shootout they were bound to take him seriously.

"Why don't you run over there and look into it while the crime scene is still smoking," Eddy urged him.

Hal pivoted on his right foot and looked over at his lone partner in the other truck.  He then looked down at his sidearm, and found it woefully inadequate in its tiny holster.  "Truth is, I'm a little short-handed tonight."

Eddy slapped his knee and laughed.  “Wish I’d said that!”

Hal Owen went red, a glow so intense it could even be seen in the moonlight. Then he ran his fingers across the place he once had hair.  "Come on, get serious.  What's say we go over there and check it out together.  You got a lot of guys with guns here."

Eddy drew a dramatic breath.  "You know I would love to help you, old friend.  I've lived my life, I've had my fun, I've got nothing to lose.  But these boys here have their whole lives ahead of them.  They want to go home to their ladies and kids.  I can't send them on a suicide mission.  Besides, the way it sounded, those clowns were packing some heavy artillery, far superior to the pea-shooters we've got. So first you call in reinforcements, then you can deputize us. How about that?"

Hal nodded rapidly, shaking his nearly smooth head working like it was some vibrating sex toy.  "I get it," he said, "I get it.  You know, some of my colleagues think you guys are more of a liability than an asset out here. But I, for one, appreciate your effort and support.  I am thankful beyond words for your patriotism and your vigilance.  I won't ask you to put your lives needlessly at risk.  But there is one minor task I would like to request your assistance in."

"Go ahead.  Bounce it by me."

"The lady who died in the desert had a kid.  A little blue-eyed boy two to three years old.  The body of that child was never found.  We think the boy is still at large."

Eric's face went temporarily pale, even in the dim moonlight.  "A kid?  What do you mean a kid?"

"Just like I said.  Why does that surprise you?"

"Well, because...well because it's just sad.  The human tragedy.  It breaks my heart."

Hal fought back the urge to roll his eyes.  He had heard lots of stories from foot bound immigrants moving across the hostile desert about how the FF would nip at their heels like a pack of wolves, keeping them from water if they couldn't pay or if they hadn't been cleared by the coyotes Eddy franchised with. Sometimes there were children in these groups, but of course none of that mattered to these clowns.  There was only sensitivity to human tragedy if there was money to be made.  But right now Hal would turn a hypocritical cheek because he needed their eyes and ears.

"I need the boy," said Hal.  "He's carrying the key that could unlock the whole sleeper cell.  Somebody out here has him.  Maybe some immigrants took him in.  I need that kid and if you see him I want to be the first to know."

Eric scratched his cheek.  "Well, uh, what does he look like?"

"Come on man.  How many blue eyed, blonde haired Mexicans cross this border illegally?  You could spot him a mile away.  Do we have a deal?"

"Yeah, sure.  Whatever.  You know I do my part to aid and abet law enforcement whenever I can?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on man.  We're old pals.  You know you can count on me."

Hal looked at Eddy suspiciously.  Eddy took note of his anxiety, remembering when Hal had been such a happy go lucky guy, when he didn't care about anything.  The badge had ruined him. Hal was married to his badge, and married to his mother, a thought made Eddy think fondly of his little gook wife. He had his bride shipped over in a rice crate straight from her jungle village, shielded from glittery sensory input that would taint her along the way.  She never gave him any lip while he did his thing, and never complained when he had difficulty performing his manly duty."

"It's a two way street," said Eddy.  "Tit for tat.  I bring you the boy and you leave my boys alone.  I know they do some things that sometimes might look bad to the general public, but you know that ultimately we're doing the work of the Lord out here."

Hal nodded.  Eddy smiled a second moon that lit up the night sky, but as he rolled up the window and drove away from the scene he shut off the smile immediately.  "How come nobody told me there was a kid there?" he barked at his passengers in the jeep.

The answer was so obvious it seemed like a trick question, so no one wanted to be the first idiot to answer.  Costello looked around for support but, with none forthcoming, he took it upon himself.  "You were there.  You must have seen him.  We all saw him."

"I didn't see anything!"  Eddy struck his hands on the wheel.  "I was busy pontificatin! You know durn well it's my job to pontificate, and your job to be my eyes and ears while I serve as the mouthpiece!" He pounded his chest in penitence. "Do you think me such a beast I would leave a child to die in the desert?  Where was he?"

"In the most obvious of places," Costello answered. "In his mother's arms."

"Don't mess with me.  I am not in the mood to be messed with."

"It's true," said Costello, and the others in Eddy's command jeep would have nodded in agreement, had they been awake.  "To be fair, she was covering him up with her body while kneeling down there in the dirt, chattering away in that sand beaner language.  Perhaps you were preoccupied."

Eddy let this sink in, upset for committing such an egregious error, but the massive ego filling the hat was unwilling to take the blame.  "Well, sometimes I do get carried away with my speech making but that's why I take you knuckleheads along. Why else?"  He made angry monkey faces in the darkness, then his tone turned conciliatory.  "Well, now we got a problem.  We've got to find that kid.  We don't know how much he saw or how much he knows.  We don't know how much he talks or what language he speaks, if he can even talk yet.  We don't know if he speaks any of the local lingua francas, or is that linguas franca?  Even if he speaks pure raghead, sooner or later they will find someone to decipher his jibber-jabber.  This is a problem.  A big problem."

The jeep bumped down the dark road.  The motor in Eddy's head hummed and lurched and clanked in time with its engine.  "I find it far from coincidental," Eddy said at length, "that the closest human habitation to this incident was the Gasden Motel.  I get the feeling that someone there saw that kid, or knows where he is.  Tony Vargas is in the habit of collecting critters, maybe he even collected the kid.  The problem is that now we are under the dictates of an agreement that require us to stay away from that motel. This does not mean, however, that we cannot maintain a clandestine vigilance from afar."

Eddy threw the jeep in a lower gear to climb a hill.  The engine strained, his brain strained.  "And that's exactly what we are going to do.  A couple of you are going to park your asses out in the desert with spotting scopes to keep an eye out for the kid.  The rest of us are going to patrol the highways and back roads of the Gadsden Purchase to find Tony Vargas, because I do not doubt he knows something.  This is our number one priority right now.  The future of our organization hangs upon it, just like this hat hangs on my head.”



Image courtesy of Lorie Shaull, flicker via Wikimedia Commons, altered into Black and White. Click to see her work.

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