Free BBH01 - Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke Page A

enclosed gloom of the
sheriff's office,
across from his desk and the leviathan silhouette of his body against
the back window. The deputy who had arrested me leaned against the log
wall, his face covered in shadow. The sheriff took his cigar out of his
mouth and leaned over the spittoon by the corner of his desk and spit.
    'You turned that fellow into a human pinball. What's
the matter with you?' he said.
    'It's time to charge me or cut me loose, sheriff,' I
said.
    'Just keep your britches on. You don't think I got
enough drunk nigras and white trash in my jail without having to worry
about the goddamn lawyers?… Ah, there's the man right now.
Cain't you beat up somebody without starting an international
incident?' he said.
    The door opened, and a dark-skinned man in a
tropical hat with a green plastic window built into the brim and a tan
suit that had no creases entered the room. He removed his hat and shook
the sheriff's hand, then the uniformed deputy's and mine. He was a
little older than I, in his midforties, perhaps, his jawline fleshy,
his thin mustache like the romantic affectation of a 1930s leading man.
    'Felix Ringo, a Mexican drug agent?' I repeated.
    'Yeah, you know that name, man? Is gringo. My
ancestor, he was a famous American outlaw,' he said.
    'Johnny Ringo?' I said.
    'Yeah, that was his name. He got into it with guys
like, the guy there in Arizona, was always wearing a black suit in the
movies, yeah, that guy Wyatt Earp.'
    'Felix is jalapeño and shit on toast south of the
Rio Grande. You fucked up his bust, Billy Bob,' the sheriff said.
    'Oh?' I said.
    'The guy you drug up and down, man, I been following
him six months. He's gonna be gone now,' the Mexican said.
    'Maybe you should have taken him down six months
ago. He hurt a little boy this morning.'
    'Yeah, man, but maybe you don't see the big picture.
We take one guy down, we roll him over, then we take another guy down.
See, patience is, how you call it, the virtue here.'
    'The guy I pulled out of that bar isn't the Medellin
Cartel North. What is this stuff, sheriff?' I said.
    The sheriff rolled his cigar in the center of his
mouth and looked at the Mexican drug agent.
    'Billy Bob used to be a Texas Ranger, so he looks
down on the ordinary pissant work most of us have to do,' he said.
    'That's a bad fucking attitude, man,' Felix Ringo
said.
    'Get out your fingerprint pad or I'm gone, sheriff,'
I said.
    He dropped his cigar hissing into the spittoon.
    'There's the door. Don't mistake my gesture. Stay
the hell out of what don't concern you,' he said.
    Felix Ringo followed me outside. The light was hard
and bright on the stone buildings in the square, the trees a violent
green against the sky. I could see Mary Beth Sweeney outside her
cruiser, writing on a clipboard in the shade. She stopped and stared
across the lawn at me and the man named Felix Ringo.
    'You want something?' I asked him.
    'I seen you somewhere before. You was a Ranger?' he
said.
    'What about it?'
    'You guys did stuff at night, maybe killed some
people that was fruit pickers crossing the river, that didn't have
nothing to do with dope.'
    'You're full of shit, too, bud,' I said, and walked
toward the cab stand across the street.
    I stepped off the curb and waited for a car to pass.
    Then I heard her voice behind me.
    'Hey, Billy Bob,' she said.
    'Yeah?'
    She gave me the thumbs-up sign and smiled.
     
    The next morning I drove along the
fence line of my
property to a section by the river where Lucas and Vernon Smothers were
hoeing out the rows in a melon patch. I walked out into the field, into
the heat bouncing off the ground, into Vernon's beaded stare under the
brim of his straw hat.
    'I want to borrow Lucas for a couple of hours,' I
said.
    'What for?' he asked.
    'Take a guess,' I said.
    He propped his forearm on his hoe handle and smelled
himself. He looked out over the bluff and the milky green flatness of
the river and the willows on the far side.
    'I don't want to lose my melons to