Chapter 35

Table of Contents

Tony Vargas stood outside the adobe jailhouse of the ranger station with his hands cuffed behind his back, watching Dustin Diesel stare at his squad car and stroke his Odobenian mustache.

"Let's get going already," Tony said as he squirmed in his manacles.  "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking I'm going to commandeer Lindell's truck," he said.  "Mine is about to come up with a flat tire, I am thinking."  Dustin walked into the jailhouse and found the keys to Lindell's Ranger pickup hanging on the rack. Since Lindell was the local ranger, it was appropriate he drove a Ranger.  Dustin made sure the truck started, then pulled out his pocket knife and put the blade through one of his squad car tire´s sidewalls.  Then he got on the radio.  "This is Santa Cruz Sheriff Dustin Diesel.  I have suffered a vehicle breakdown and I am heading back to Nogales in the automobile of a private citizen, escorting a prisoner.  No need for assistance at this time."

Dustin dropped the mike after hearing a rather disinterested 10-4 on the other end.  "These squad cars got a black box in them.  All of our conversations will be recorded.  They also have dash cams.  We don't need any eyes or ears on this.  Besides, I get the feeling it's better to travel incognito."

"Yeah, but Lindell is going to be pissed.  He loves his truck."

"Lindell is so drunk he won’t know what hit him. Sometimes he wakes up from a bender and forgets where he parked his truck. One time he reported it stolen, then found it a week later, parked under a pinyon half a mile away. We will either be back or be dead before he sleeps it off.  When he sees my squad car with a flat he'll probably figure it out anyway.  He's a drunk but he ain't stupid."

Dustin transferred his weapons from the squad car to the pickup.  In addition to his sidearm he was packing a 12 gauge and a Savage 308 Winchester that had a scope for long-range work.

"You still carrying that old piece of shit?" Tony said with mock disparagement, knowing the Sheriff was deadly with it.  "They got better sniper guns than that now."

Dustin caressed the rifle stock lovingly.  "I'll either go to heaven or hell with this weapon, depending on where the good Lord sees fit to send me.  The shot is about the man, not the machine.”

“I just hope you shoot better than you golf. Save that noise for your rifle range flunkies, and get me out of these handcuffs.  It might get complicated, so you better deputize me on the spot.  I can't raise my right hand with my hands cuffed."

The Sheriff could see the merit of this argument, but he was nervous.  If any man was his match, it was Tony Vargas. He looked and acted like a buffoon, but he was still quick, tough and smart. "You're not going to try anything funny, are you?"

"Hell yeah.  You know me, I’m the class clown.  Come on man.  I'm at the end of my rope.  I've got nowhere to run to.  I've spent the last few weeks trying to force myself with every ex-girlfriend from the past 50 years of my life, but none of them will have me.  It's like I grew a harelip all of a sudden.  I'm done.  Game over."

Dustin read helplessness and despair in Tony's eyes.  His old buddy was a philandering jerk, that was for sure, but he didn't like to see him with the fight all gone, with his swagger surgically removed. He took off the cuffs, and Tony sat down passively in the passenger's seat of the Ranger.

"Let's roll," Tony said.  "On second thought maybe I'm better off in jail.  They got porn there, right? Didn’t some judge say that’s a constitutional right?”

Dustin glowered at him. ¨Yeah, I think so, but around here you of all people should know we wipe our backside with the constitution.¨

The Ranger rolled down the mountain.  The pair moved quietly at first, without Tony's usual banter,  but then Dustin started thinking out loud about things.  "Your brother Danny has got to be mixed up in all this.  Danny has Eddy Drucker on a short leash, from what I understand.  Whatever happened to your brother, anyway?  I remember he used to be such a well-behaved fella, taking your mother to church on Sunday, tipping his hat to the ladies, making the rounds of the old folks to make sure they were okay.  It seems to me he went bad in a hurry."

Tony sank a little bit in his seat.  He never liked to talk about his brother, but people were always trying to coax it out of him.  "Me and Danny are only half brothers, you know."

"I know that.  Everybody knows that.  It's kind of obvious, you got two different last names."

Tony winced.  "Well that's only because my mother, for all her saintly glory, had really bad taste in men.  Her first husband Abel Valero got too drunk one day, then fell down and drowned in a ditch.  To drown in a ditch in this waterless shithole you really got to be fucking trying.  I call it suicide.  My mother could be kind of tough to live with.  Those dudes deserved the treatment anyway, they were assholes.  Her second husband, Hector Vargas, just ran off, or maybe wound up in jail."

Dustin looked over at Tony carefully. This question was a land mine. "Hector was your Father, right?"

"What are you, Dr. Phil? Why you gotta go there?  I've spent my whole life trying to convince people that bueno para nada was not my Dad.  Unfortunately, I got cursed with his name, but he ain't got nothing to do with me.  Look at my skin.  Didn't they always used to call me huero in school?  Hector Vargas was dark as a fucking cigar store Indian.  Short little fucker too.  I'm six feet.  There's no way."

As he navigated the featureless highways, Dustin nodded thoughtfully.  "Folks always did say that.  I guess that's why they always said you crawled in off of the desert, and that's why you got this tendency to take care of homeless critters."

"Well that theory actually makes more sense than Hector Vargas being my Dad.  I wish I could just erase that asshole's name from my birth certificate, but it's ain’t that easy."

It got awkwardly quiet for a moment but then Dustin resumed the discussion.  "So what happened? In spite of not having a Pop around, you seemed like a good little family.  Your Momma was a strong lady.  She kept you three boys in check.  I don't know where Danny went south."

"Believe me, Danny was always an asshole,” Tony said,”but we kept it in the family, under wraps. Then one day he bought that filling station. You know every business around here pays protection money to someone, but Danny didn't want to pay. When he came back from Vietnam he was a bad-ass vato. He was a tunnel rat over there, you know. They always sent Mexicans to do those jobs because they're expendable.  One beaner goes down you just throw in another, like tossing in a grenade.  But Danny was a tough, ornery son of a bitch.  He used to drag those little rice eating gooks out from their holes by the skin of their balls.  He seen a lot of bad shit over there and it made him mean, after that he wouldn't let anybody fuck with him.  When the local thugs tried to shake him down he said fuck you I ain't paying.  Except he didn't say fuck you because he don't curse. Never did.”

There was a pause between quotation marks as Tony gathered his words.  He still didn't know on which side of the fence Danny sat on this current issue. They had argued about Mike before they left, Danny trying to call in a favor involving the kid.  What fucking favor? Tony asked him. I got you out of jail, Danny answered.  Yeah, but first you got me into jail with your bullshit.  Leave the kid alone. The conversation had almost ended in fisticuffs.  Then that same night, that squinty little whore had gotten in between he and the kid right when things were going good, and now he found himself here, homeless and under arrest, while Danny muscled in on Mike and the motel.  Danny was his brother, but was only really his brother when it was convenient for Danny.  The rest of the time you were just a tool for him, something to be used and thrown away when service had been rendered. Fuck Danny.

"You already know that Danny killed Bobby Cortes and his whole gang, one by one,” Tony continued. “I can't say I did not participate logistically, but I never pulled no trigger. The whole town was behind him anyway, Danny became a hero, because Cortes was a thug.  But you know as well as me that no one operates  independently down here.  Cortes was part of a bigger racket, and that racket wanted revenge.  Fighting them took soldiers and money.  So now, instead of paying Bobby Cortes, the local merchants paid Danny.  Some of them dragged their feet, naturally, and although Danny tried to reason with them, sometimes he had to use heavy hints.  The shit got deeper and deeper.   Instead of being some kind of Robin Hood freedom fighter, Danny became Bobby Cortes, reincarnated.  He had to make deals, he had to make alliances.  To get the money he needed, he had to take over the operations that Cortes was running before, and bring in new people to supply him."

"At that point," Tony went on, "I think Danny was still trying to do the right thing.  I think his heart, if he ever had one, was in the right place.  Could be he still thinks he's doing the right thing.  But things changed when Saul died.  Saul is Marisol's Pop, you know."  Dustin nodded.  "Saul was always a sweet kid, and he idolized Danny.  That was his undoing.  Danny was always sending Saul out to do his dirty work, and one night he got gunned down, right there on Main Street Yuma.  He died with a smile on his face, like he got the joke, but the joke was on him."

"Danny really changed after that.  He got even meaner, and he got violent.  He didn't try to persuade people nicely anymore, you were just supposed to do things because he said so.  I was already working for the Southern Pacific at that time, you know.   I was kind of a tunnel rat myself, crawling into boxcars sometimes, that were like holes in the ground with wheels.  I sparred with some bad mother fuckers riding the rails for free.  A lot of times they were some real swine carrying guns or blades, and they deserved to be knocked on their ass.  Other times they were just broke kids trying to catch a free ride home.  I still had to rough them up a little, to send a message, but I never left a mark, and I never enjoyed that part.  That was just my job and I did it good.  I was a soldier for the Southern Pacific, with my whole heart and soul thrown into it.  I got the job done and they loved me for it."

"But like I said, after Saul died Danny started treating us like we were his bitches.  He expected me to use my job to move his merchandise but I told him to get fucked, in so many words.  Like I said, I was a soldier for the Southern Pacific, and that's where I drew the line.  After Saul died, not too many people got away with saying No to Danny.  The only reason I did was because he is my brother, and he swore to my Mother on her death bed that he would take care of me.  He takes that shit seriously, otherwise I would be dead, like everybody else who crossed him.¨

Dustin had pulled the bumpy little Ranger onto the freeway now.  Cornudo loomed ahead. It was a town that existed in defiance of its exclusion from every map, based on strict guidelines that prohibit roadkill, bug splats, potholes and other road hazards from being annotated on cartographic instruments.

"But now I think Danny is desperate," Tony went on as he took a wistful glance in the direction of his hometown.  "You can say what you want about him, but up until this point he's been kind of a benevolent dictator, as long as you don't fuck with him.  Now he´s different, I think he's in some kind of big trouble.  Do you remember that construction site that got shot up on the border, where they were waiting for funds to go ahead with the wall building?  That sub-contractor was one of the cartel´s guys.  The buzz I've heard in the bars the last few days is that the cartel set that company up so they can get a jump on digging a drug tunnel right under the wall.¨

  ¨Well, now the operation is exposed, the feds found plans for a tunnel there, and Danny is in deep with the cartel because the dudes who raided the site, namely Eddy and the FF, work for him.  He needs quick cash to get out of this problem.  Mike has a lot of cash, and Danny knows that.  Can't this clunker go any faster?"

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Image by US Customs and Border Protection - public domain, via Wikimedia Commons