Free Vampires by John Steakley Page B

Carl wanted to know.
    “Well, my job was to check out the Cuban connection into raw brown Mexican heroin, so I was along the Texas border trying to find out if all the rumors about a big-time purging of the hippie smugglers was true.”
    “Was it?” somebody asked.
    “It was. They were wiping out all the amateurs to get ready for the big money they were monopolizing.”
    “So what did you do?” somebody else asked.
    Jack shrugged, grinned. "Got in the way mostly. It was a dumb assignment and a dumb idea to send me along. I liked the NSA but they didn't trust me. I liked the CIA but they didn't even trust each other. I was scared of the DEA and they hated me but had to take me because of orders from upstairs.
    “It was a mess.”
    He paused, looked around, and grinned easily. “But I did have an interesting couple of weeks.”
    And Cat thought, Here it comes. He glanced around at the others in the lounge and wondered how they were gonna take whatever it was that Jack was trying to sneak up on them.
    And then he thought, He's trying to sneak it up on me, too. First time ever. Of course, there's a first time for everything, so...
    So why am I so scared?
    And once more Jack Crow began to speak.
    Second Interlude: Felix
    Raw brown heroin changed everything. Those little doper camps used to be so cute, like a piece of the Wild Frontier. They'd camp out in the weeds somewhere in their motor-homes and the Mexicans would spring up a village out of tarpaper shacks to be close to the loose change spilling off. And there was quite a bit of that to be had. Life was pretty good.
    I remember they used to string Coleman lanterns on poles for streetlights.
    Playing undercover G-man, I left my weapons in the motel and parked my truck off the road before walking into a camp that night. It was one of the last really big ones and I could hear lots of shouting as I got close. But when I stepped through into the clearing there were only two guys there, both Mexicans, both drunk. I walked up beside one of them and said: “Qué pasa, hombre?”
    He hit me.
    Smacked me good right across the chops, my lip bleeding, then swings at me again and misses and the guy beside him starts yelling out, “Another one! Here's another one!” And then he jumps at me, too.
    They were both too drunk to do any more damage but that yelling brought reinforcements amazingly fast. More Mexicans started spilling out of the darkness from all directions, all drunk and all angry and all coming at me.
    I ran like hell.
    The wrong way, of course, that being the kind of night it was. Toward the river, away from my truck. I was lost in about two seconds, stumbling through the brush with Spanish obscenities echoing from behind. I had no idea what was going on except the basics: I was in deep shit.
    But I was old enough. Old enough means I was too smart to try to stop and moralize with a meat-eating mob. There really are people out there who, while you're trying to explain it's not your fault, will pound you into putty.
    - I found the river when I fell into it. Well, stepped into it. The Rio Grande isn't much but thirty feet across around those parts. So anyway, I step back and start shaking my boots dry and I hear this smartass voice pop through the night with “Hey, gringo! Where're ya goin'?”
    I probably didn't jump over a mile or two. And I had already started to run when I realized the voice had sounded out in English, not Spanish. I spun around and first laid eyes on William Charles Felix, lounging in the door of an abandoned boxcar with a cigarette in his mouth, a bottle of tequila in his hand, and the biggest shit-eating grin you ever saw in your whole life. Had a World War II leather flying jacket, a faded blue navy work shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, and a Humphrey Bogart hat.
    I found myself grinning back. Couldn't help it.
    I walked over and took the bottle from his hand and had a swig and asked him who the hell he was and he told me and invited me inside. So I