The Rules of Wolfe, page 1
The Rules
of Wolfe
Other Works
By James Carlos Blake
Novels
Country of the Bad Wolfes
The Killings of Stanley Ketchel
Handsome Harry
Under the Skin
A World of Thieves
Wildwood Boys
Red Grass River
In the Rogue Blood
The Friends of Pancho Villa
The Pistoleer
Collection
Borderlands
The Rules
of Wolfe
p
A Border Noir
James Carlos Blake
The Mysterious Press
New York
Copyright © 2013 by James Carlos Blake
Jacket design by Daniel Rembert; Jacket photographs: sunset © Morey Milbradt/Alamy; car and people © Johannes Leister
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9329-2
The Mysterious Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
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Distributed by Publishers Group West
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In memory of
Juan Cano Blake
You’re going to have things to repent, boy. . . . That’s one of
the best things there is. You can always decide whether to
repent them or not. But the thing is to have them.
—Ernest Hemingway, “The Last Good Country”
. . . unknowing youth, savage with health and
armed to the teeth with time.
—Philip Roth, Exit Ghost
There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Life is trouble. Only death is not.
To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.
—Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
Prologue
Rudy and Frank
Eddie Gato pleaded with us to take him on that run last winter but we said no. We’d been having the same argument with him for months. So had others in the family. He said we didn’t have to let anybody else know—we could keep it between us. Frank told him that’s not how we do things, not among ourselves, and if he didn’t know that by now he still had things to learn.
Frank’s my big brother. Eddie’s our cousin and was all of nineteen years old.
“I’ve got everything it takes for this business,” Eddie said, “and you guys know that.”
He did have what it takes, no question about it, and I understood his frustration. But that wasn’t the point. For the umpteenth time, I told him if he really wanted to work with us all he had to do was hold to the rule.
“That’s another three years,” Eddie said.
“That’s how it works,” Frank said, stroking his mustache the way he does when he’s tired of arguing.
“Fuck the rule,” Eddie said, and headed for the door, muttering something under his breath that sounded very much like “And both you too.”
I said, “What was that?” But he kept going and didn’t quite slam the door behind him.
Frank was right. The kid had things to learn.
p
We’re a large family, we Wolfes. About half of us live in Cameron County, Texas, and most of the rest in Mexico City. Our Mexico City kin own a couple of investment firms and are partners in one of the country’s largest banks. They’re also among the capital’s social elite, but because several of them have “Jaguaro” as their first or second name, they get a lot of ribbing from their friends about being connected to the shadowy organization called Los Jaguaros, reputed to be a major supplier of arms to some of the criminal cartels. The Mexican Wolfes accept this friendly teasing with good humor and the often expressed wish that their own business might someday be as profitable as the Jaguaros’ is said to be.
The truth is, they are Los Jaguaros, and we Texas Wolfes not only provide much of their supply, we now and then deliver it to their buyers. It was their guns Frank and I were carrying on that January run Eddie had begged to go on.
The load was three cases of HK-nine pistols and two of M-4 carbines. The buyer was a Tuxpan outfit called Los Cuernos, a small bunch reputed to be in league with the Gulf cartel. It was the first time the Jaguaros had sold to Los Cuernos, and they stressed that point to us in warning to be extra careful. But we always are, whether we’re delivering to somebody for the first time or the tenth. We know our business.
The transfer was set for midnight at coordinates a half mile offshore and around twelve miles north of Tampico. The Cuernos had been instructed to get there before us, in a shrimp boat with its nets deployed and three green lights strung vertically from the bow stem. We were in a small trawler rig of false Mexican registry. It had a modified hull for shallow draft and greater speed, and a pair of Hemi engines that could pull your head back when you hit the throttles.
I was at the wheel and Frank was scanning forward with the big 180×70s, looking for the green lights as we drew near the rendezvous spot. A cool offshore breeze carried the tangy smells of the estuaries. The sky encrusted with stars. An amber crescent moon low over the black mainland. The shrimper should have been in sight by then but the only vessel we could see was a tanker on the horizon.
We didn’t like the feel of things, and I brought us to a stop a half mile shy of the transfer point. We each had a Browning nine in our waistband, and the wheelhouse locker held a pair of Mossberg 12-gauge pumps holding buckshot loads. With the engines idling we bobbed on the easy swells while Frank kept panning southward with the big glasses.
Then came the faint growl of an engine cranking up near the dark shoreline. And then the unmistakable rumble of it heading our way.
“Speedboat,” Frank said. “It’s a rip.”
He switched off the running lights and I spun the wheel to starboard and gunned the Hemis. The acceleration leaned us rearward as the prow rose and we sped toward the barrier of rocky islands forming the outer rim of a lagoon. Frank checked the GPS and shouted a bearing for the nearest inlet. They were running without lights too and we still couldn’t see them against the southward coast, but we knew they were trying to cut us off. They could’ve done it easy if the transfer point had been farther out or we’d made the mistake of getting closer to them before stopping. But then, if we’d done that, they would’ve nailed us out there. They were cowboys. Come fast and hard and shooting, take you out quick.
I had to slow down for the inlet, and my gut tightened at the roar of them closing on us. They were near enough now for us to see it was one of those open military speedsters but we couldn’t tell how many guys were in it.
As I steered into the passage, they cut back on their engine and opened up with automatic rifles, the rounds smacking against the wheelhouse, popping through its glass. Then we were in the lagoon and out of their view, and the question now was whether they knew the place as well as we did.
The lagoon is full of shadowy palm hammocks, but the main channel’s open to the sky and I could see well enough to hold to it. We snaked around the hammocks and went past two branching narrower channels before I turned into the next one. I cut off the engines and we bumped to a halt against a mangrove root in the darkness of the overhanging palms.
We figured that if they were familiar with the lagoon they’d play it smart, post a guy at the inlet we came through and patrol the other cuts along the outer bank where we might slip out. We had a plan for that.
But they came in after us. Rumbling slowly up the main channel. Cowboys. Afraid of nothing.
Frank took an angle-head flashlight out of the locker and clipped it to his belt, then handed me a flare gun and one of the Mossbergs. We could’ve laughed out loud and they wouldn’t have heard us over their engine. We hustled out of the boat, crabs scuttling over our boots, some crunching underfoot, and took positions about twenty feet apart on higher ground from which we could see the main channel. I crouched beside a palm that curved sideways and gave me a clear view of the overhead sky.
We heard the boat getting closer. Then its dark form appeared around the channel bend.
When it came abreast of me, not ten yards away, I pointed the flare gun straight up and fired, the discharge muffled by the loudness of the motor.
The flare was set with a quick fuse and burst into a white incandescence about forty feet up, starkly illuminating the five of them, instinctively gaping up at the blinding light—and we started blasting, holding down our triggers after our first shot and pumping the slides as fast as we could in a rapid-fire volley. At such close range in an open boat, they had no chance at all, the buckshot tearing them apart, blowing away portions of them, removing most of the head of the guy at the wheel—who fell against the throttle so that the speedboat roared and veered into the opposite bank and rose straight up and almost completely out of the water before keeling over and crashing back into the channel with a terrific splash and crackling of steam.
They didn’t get off a round. It was over before the oscillating parachute flare descended into a palm, gave a few more sputters, and died. And the darkness closed around us again.
Frank turned on the flashlight, holding it out to the side in one hand, his pistol in the other. His beam found each of them in turn, all in awkward sprawls and none moving or making a sound. I set the Mossberg aside and went down the bank and took out the Browning and held it over my head as I waded across the chest-high channel, then slogged out and slipped the pistol back into my pants. Frank held the light on the body nearest to me and I started searching pockets.
The third guy I tried had the money. A wad of American currency that on later count would total exactly what they were supposed to pay us. So why the cross? Their boss put them up to it? They take it on themselves to try to impress him by stealing the load? They sell him out? Who the hell knows? It didn’t matter to us. This was a Mexican bunch, the Jaguaros’ concern. We’d tell them what happened and they’d take it from there.
Then a voice croaked, “Mátame . . . por amor de Dios.”
Frank’s light flicked over to a guy on his back at the bottom of the bank slope, his legs in the water. One of the two I hadn’t searched. Most of his side had been ripped away and the flashlight exposed a wreckage of ribs and viscera. Unbelievable what a body can survive even for a little while. He wasn’t much more than a boy, seventeen, eighteen. A boy who’d been all set to kill us.
“Por favor . . . los jaibos. Me van . . . a comer.”
He was right. You could hear the rustling and clickings of the crabs on the move in the dark. Converging on the fresh bounty. They’d start eating him while he was still alive.
I took out the Browning and cocked it and held the muzzle a few inches from his forehead. His eyes rolled up to regard it. And I fired.
I would’ve done it in any case. When you make a deal you stick to it. Rock-hard rule. You don’t renege, you don’t sell out. You hold up your end and expect the other party to do the same. If the other party doesn’t, you’re entitled to deal with every man of it as you see fit in order to set things right.
No—you’re more than entitled. You’re obligated. Or the rule would mean nothing.
p
As always after a job that takes us anywhere near Tampico, we spent the next few days there. A pleasant laid-back town, excellent for recouping one’s mellow. We dined well on the local cuisine, danced with lots of girls to the tierra caliente music in the plazas, did some cantina crawling. All in all enjoyed ourselves plenty.
At some point it occurred to us that this was the first time we’d ever had any real trouble on a Tampico run. And that Eddie Gato of course would’ve loved it.
Then we got back home and heard all about the family fight and that Eddie was long gone.
Sonora
p
Friday
1
Eddie
Eddie Gato Wolfe watches the plume of dust rise from the distant shimmer of ground heat and begin to come his way like some badland apparition. He cannot account for his ominous impression of it. He is not given to apprehensive fancies and anyway knows that the dust is from a motor caravan bringing the Boss’s people. Even so, you should never disregard a foreboding of threat—a presentiment, intuition, hunch, call it what you will. It’s a rule. But then his family has many rules, and although some of them are more deeply rooted in him than he knows, there is one he has refused to abide by. That is why he is here on this late summer afternoon, in this desert watchtower of Rancho del Sol, at such far remove from home.
And then as abruptly as it came to him, the spectral notion passes. The dust now looks only like dust as it carries over the sunburned stony terrain of scrub brush and cactus and skeletal trees. He chides himself for his momentary illusion and lowers the binoculars and calls down to the courtyard, Here they come!
Flores, the security chief, gives orders and his men leave off flirting with the maids and hustle to their posts. The servants make for their stations. The security men are armed with AKs, the compound guards with M-16s. In the watchtower Eddie Gato mans a .50-caliber machine gun loaded with armor-piercing rounds.
p
For a little over two months the only inhabitants of Rancho del Sol have been Eddie Gato and the three other resident guards, plus an old married couple that does the cooking and laundry and sundry other chores, and a gardener of indeterminate age who keeps to himself. Then four days ago the ranch received notice from Culiacán that a party of guests would be arriving on Friday. The next morning a crew of maids and other workers came from the village of Loma Baja to begin getting the place ready. Eleven miles from the rancho but a part of its property, Loma Baja is flanked by the only local parcel of ground suitable for the airstrip the Boss put there for his small jet plane, and the only bus in the village was supplied by the Boss to transport workers to the rancho. Once a community of goatherds, Loma Baja now exists for no purpose but to provide occasional labor for the rancho and to maintain the landing field and the garage alongside it that houses the Boss’s Cadillac Escalade.
On Wednesday, the dapper Flores and his security team showed up, plus a communications crew with its load of equipment. They had all flown from Culiacán to Ciudad Obregón and then driven to the rancho in six dark-windowed SUVs of various makes. Flores posted pairs of armed guards at roadside points fifteen and seven miles west of Loma Baja, and another two guards on the crude road from the village to the compound, where he at once set up a security perimeter. Then yesterday came the trucks with their large cargoes of food and spirits, plus a chef and his kitchen staff.
And now, under the swelling billows of dust, here come the guests.
Flores has informed the staff that the Boss himself has been detained by last-minute business and will not come until midday tomorrow, when he and his brother, El Segundo—the Company’s second in command—arrive in Loma Baja in the jet.
p
Eddie Gato is the youngest of the four rancho guards, having turned twenty in May, and he is one of the two newest, the other being twenty-two-year-old Neto Rincón. Both of them have been here four months. Javier Monte, also twenty-two, has been here ten months, and Jorge Santos, the twenty-seven-year-old guard captain, more than six years.
There is really no need for guards against thieves. The region has few inhabitants and they all know whose rancho this is and nobody would dare to steal from it even if it were left unattended and all its doors and windows open wide. But it is imperative to guard against infiltrators who may attempt to plant surveillance devices or explosives. The military. The police. Business competitors. Whoever.
The four guards work a regular rotation of eight-hour shifts in the watchtower so that every fourth day one of them has a full day off. They have ample diversion in their off-duty hours. The compound has a swimming pool, billiard tables, a library, satellite television. There are video games and a vast collection of music CDs and of DVDs ranging from the latest Hollywood movies to the best pornography on the market. There is a small gymnasium. There is a target range behind the house. The kitchen is always amply stocked and the old woman is a good cook. To satisfy their sexual urges they can go into Loma Baja and avail themselves of its handful of homely whores.
There are, however, stringent restrictions. The guards are forbidden to possess a passport, and any man found to be hiding one will be dealt with summarily. There is no telephone line to the rancho, and although there is a cell tower in the form of a flagpole displaying the national flag, guards are not permitted to have cellular phones and are prohibited from using the phones supplied to the old couple for contact with the Company, each of which is destroyed after a single call. Drug use is certainly forbidden, and the guards may not possess liquor on the property. The large bar lounge in the main house is kept locked when the Boss is away, and on his order the sole cantina in Loma Baja was years ago razed and the village told to stay dry. The guards may drink only on their day off and someplace other than the rancho and Loma Baja, and the old couple is under strict directive to report any man they suspect of being drunk or having booze on the property. On his free day, every guard in his turn usually chooses to go to Ciudad Obregón in one of the compound Jeeps. The city is seventy miles away in a straight line but almost twice that on the odometer because of the serpentine route from the compound to the state highway, a drive of more than three hours. The Hotel Rey in Obregón is available to the guards at no charge. In addition to a fine cantina, the hotel has a resident cadre of whores better-looking than those of Loma Baja—though in Eddie Gato’s estimation not by much.
