Con Law Part 19

'You showed it to everyone else in town.'

'That's true,' Nadine said.

Book gave his intern a sharp look then handed the letter to Carla. She read it.

'See, he said his client is contaminating the aquifer. He meant Billy Bob. And now he's dead.' She checked the postmark on the envelope. 'Died the same day he mailed the letter. That seem odd to you?'

'Oh, G.o.d,' Nadine said. 'Don't tell me you don't believe in coincidences?'

'Not that much of a coincidence. Professor, Nathan said he hadn't put all the pieces together yet, said he'd come back to me when he did. Maybe he did. Maybe he put the pieces together. Maybe Billy Bob killed him. Professor, work with me. Please.'

'I'm sorry, Ms. Kent. I work alone.'

'Then why'd you bring me?' Nadine said.

'I mean, alone with an intern. This is Nadine Honeywell.'

'If you didn't come to Marfa to find the truth,' Carla said, 'then why'd you come?'

'To fish.'

'Fish? Where? There's no water between here and the Rio Grande, and if you eat fish from that cesspool you'll die.'

Carla now gave him a sharp look; she stood.

'Don't toy with me, Professor.'

She marched over to the bar. Book watched after her. She was an attractive woman, lean with a low body ma.s.s index, no older than thirty, with dark hair and eyes. She wore tight jeans, boots, and the T-shirt. She looked tough.

'Don't worry,' Nadine said. 'You won't be romancing a lesbian.'

'I don't plan on romancing her, but how do you know she's not a lesbian?'

'Because I attract lesbians. I don't know why. But she wasn't attracted to me. She was to you. She'll be back.'

Nadine sipped her soda.

'Why'd you play coy with her?'

'Because I don't know her.'

Nadine nodded at the bar.

'Everyone else does.'

The locals at the bar regarded Carla as if she had a communicable disease; she was apparently well known but not welcome. She stood alone.

'Come on,' Sonny said. 'Let's have some fun with Carla.'

'I wouldn't do that if I was you,' Jimmy John said.

'Why not?'

'Looks like she's friends with the professor.'

'What professor?'

'Don't you read the newspaper?'

'h.e.l.l, no.'

Jimmy John pointed with his forehead in the professor's direction.

'Him?' Sonny said. 'That skinny-a.s.s guy she was talking to, he's a professor?'

'Yep.'

'That long hair, he looks like one of them queer artists. We're supposed to be scared of him?'

Sonny grabbed his Lone Star longneck and headed over to Carla at the bar. Mitch and the others followed. Jimmy John popped two Advil and chased them with a beer.

'We'll get started on the Welch brief tonight,' Book said to his intern. But his eyes were on the bar where several roughnecks wearing red Barnett Oil and Gas jumpsuits and holding longnecks walked up and bookended Carla. They said something to her, and she said something to them. It was obviously not polite conversation. She got in one man's face and said what appeared to be the F-word and not 'fracking.' She turned to leave, but the roughnecks grabbed her arms. She struggled against their holds. Her eyes went to Book. She no longer looked tough.

He groaned then pushed himself up and walked over to Carla and the roughnecks. They were bigger, stronger, younger, and drunker.

'How about a dance, Ms. Kent?'

'I'd love to.'

She again tried to pull away, but the roughnecks maintained their hold.

'The lady wants to dance,' Book said.

The biggest roughneck held up one finger and said, 'A, she ain't no lady.'

A second finger.

'Two, there ain't no music playing.'

A third finger.

'And D, this ain't-'

'No, no, no,' Book said. 'You either say "three" or "C," not "D." D would be four fingers.'

'Oh.'

The roughneck held up four fingers.

'And C, this ain't none of your G.o.dd.a.m.ned business, Pocahontas.'

Book sighed. The Indian thing again. A few more roughnecks holding longnecks joined the party. They had Book pinned to the bar.

'Oh, s.h.i.t.'

Those big brutes would beat up the professor for sure. He really was crazy. Nadine searched the crowded room and spotted a familiar face. She stuffed the rest of the moon pie into her mouth then jumped up and hurried over to the young man sitting alone at a table. His eyes turned up to her; she pointed at the professor.

'He needs help! Do something!'

Her words sounded garbled through the moon pie. She swallowed and tried again.

'He needs help! Do something!'

The Border Patrol agent named Wesley Crum offered only a lame shrug.

'No jurisdiction. He's an Injun, not a Mexican. Call someone at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.'

He thought that was funny.

Book pointed a finger as he counted the men in the red jumpsuits.

'One, two, three, four ... Are you with them? ... Five. You know, this really isn't a fair fight.'

'So?'

'So there are only five of you.'

'He's a funny Injun,' the big roughneck to his right said.

Five men, five moves, five seconds max. Right to left down the line. They would go down like dominoes. Book needed the big roughneck to his right to start the action, so he said, 'And you're an a.s.shole.'

The roughneck reached for Book with his non-beer-holding hand and took a step closer. That was a mistake. Book drove his left knee into the man's groin ... he went down to his knees ... then a right-hand throat strike to the second man ... he gagged and fell backwards ... now a left-hand back fist to the third man's temple ... he stumbled back and grabbed his head ... then a reverse punch to the fourth man's face ... he collapsed to the floor ... and finally a-but the fifth man stepped back out of range.

Book gestured with his fingers for him to come closer. He shook his head. Book gestured again. The man's eyes turned from Book to behind Book. He spun around just in time to see Nadine slam a beer bottle over the bald head of another roughneck holding a pool cue as if he were about to clock Book in the head. The roughneck's eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the floor. Nadine held the broken beer bottle in one hand and the chocolate soda in the other. She sucked from the straw.

'Can we go home now?'

Carla's eyes went from Book to the roughnecks groaning and holding various parts of their bodies and then back to Book.

'I thought you're a law professor?'

'I said I had other skills.'

Her eyes twinkled. 'Are those all your physical skills?'

They shared a long gaze, which was not interrupted when a meaty hand clamped down on Book's right arm and a gruff voice said, 'Time for you to leave, buddy.'

Book maintained his gaze with Carla but grabbed the man's hand and turned his wrist counterclockwise and dug his fingers into the man's palm pressure point until his knees buckled and he went down to the floor.

'I'll leave when I d.a.m.n well please.'

He broke eye contact with Carla, released the man, and then turned to Nadine.

'Let's leave, Ms. Honeywell.'

'Town?'

'This bar.'

They headed to the door, but he heard Carla's voice from behind.

'I'll take a rain check on that dance, Professor.'

From across the bar, Jimmy John shook his head. He hated to be an 'I told you so,' but Sonny and Mitch never listened. The girl named Nadine was kind of cute and good with a beer bottle to boot.

'Is it unconst.i.tutional under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures for the police to draw a suspect's blood without consent?'

Nadine Honeywell typed on the laptop, but she couldn't focus on the Welch brief because her body still tingled with fear and excitement and adrenaline-she had actually smashed a beer bottle over that big brute's bald head! OMG! She had never done anything like that in her entire life! Normally, when faced with such a physical conflict, she would have grabbed the moon pie and chocolate soda and dove under the table and hidden from the danger. But the professor's kung fu b.u.t.t-kicking had shifted her adrenal glands into high gear, and she had just acted out all her fantasies-well, not the one with that tall guy at the fish shop in San Francisco, where she's at home cooking in her ap.r.o.n and nothing else and he delivers a big salmon and one thing leads to another and soon their bodies are covered in extra virgin olive oil and ... she blew out a breath ... G.o.d, that's a great fantasy ... but the one where she wasn't a timid law student afraid of life who cowered before conflict and ran from ... okay, okay, we've been through that too many times, just let it go ... Where was she? Oh, yeah, she hadn't even made a conscious decision to do it; she had just done it. She saw him advance on the professor from behind with the pool cue and knew he was going to hit the professor. He could have been killed. Her future flashed before her eyes: the professor is dead; she's stuck in Marfa; no one to call but her father; he flies in from San Francisco; he is not happy with his daughter. That dire prospect gave her the incentive to grab the bottle and swing it as hard as she could at the guy's head. She still couldn't believe she had knocked him unconscious. But she was always strong for her size.

It felt really good. Not to be afraid.

She sat propped up in Elizabeth Taylor's bed. The professor had put her to work on the Welch brief then gone next door to Rock Hudson's room to return phone calls. Cell phone reception was better on the outdoor patio.

Joanie had left three messages for Book at the Paisano. He called his sister back from the rooftop patio. The sky was dark and the stars bright. And a young lawyer was dead. Did he fall asleep at the wheel or was he run off the road? Was his death an accident or a murder? Was it just a coincidence that he died the same day he mailed the letter? And the most perplexing question of all: how do you find a dead man's truth?

Chapter 13.

At dawn, Book exited the courtyard at the Paisano and ran south on Highland Avenue past the Andy Warhol and John Chamberlain exhibits and the railroad tracks just before the crossing arms came down and a train roared through town and the yellow corrugated buildings at the Border Patrol sector headquarters and the sign that read 'Chinati Foundation' and the teepees at El Cosmico- Carla Kent stood under the shower and let the water wash over her body. The air was cold, but the water was hot. The open-air community bathhouse had a roof and partial wood sides that provided some modesty if one were modest, but it offered a majestic view of the mountain ranges that surrounded the Marfa Plateau and Cathedral Rock to the east, a mountain peak shaped like the Great Sphinx. She loved dawn in the desert. An unspoiled land she would fight to protect from fracking. It was her mission in life. That and to see Billy Bob Barnett in prison or dead. Preferably dead. She rinsed the shampoo from her hair; when she opened her eyes, she saw a lone runner heading south on Highway 67 that fronted El Cosmico.

The professor.

-and a strange configuration of large concrete boxes aligned in an open field parallel to the road; his breath fogged in the morning air. He cleared civilization and ran on the strip of asphalt cutting through the desert; not a single car pa.s.sed him. He thought of the Comanche when they had roamed this same desert; they accepted it on its own terms with no need to make it something more. Then Hanna's train had come and changed the desert and their lives. He felt the desert changing him-and he knew it would change him more before he rode the Harley home. He ran several more miles then turned back and headed north. But he stopped to observe the shadows cast onto the yellow prairie gra.s.s by the rising sun off the concrete boxes.

It was oddly mesmerizing.

When he arrived back at the hotel, he did not enter the lobby. The Paisano did not serve breakfast, so he continued up the sidewalk past the small Chamber of Commerce office and Consuelo's Bookkeeping and Tax Service and then turned west on Lincoln Street. Half a block down, he ducked into the small courtyard of SqueezeMarfa, the sheriff's favorite break-fast spot. He went inside and ordered a Strawberry Banana Cabana smoothie with nonfat vanilla yogurt then sat outside and pondered the life and death of Nathan Jones.

His life was short.