out?"
"Halfway." He nodded. "I already had it in my head, you know? Why take chances? Put the bitch down. White men don't get much more'n a tongue-lashing for that around here. But . . ." He shrugged. "My daughter's eyes."
Joe said nothing, his blood loud in his ears.
"Sent a boy to do it."
"What?"
He nodded. "One of the boys we got, Cyrus, I believe. Looking for a war but he can't find one right now. Spic woman saw the look in his eyes, she took off running. Cyrus is part coon hound though, grew up in swampland near the Alabama border. Should find her without breaking him a sweat."
"Where will you take her?"
"There's no taking her anywhere. She attacked us, boy. Her people did anyway. Cyrus will do what he will with her, leave the rest for the reptiles." He put the stub of a cigar in his mouth and struck a match off his boot. He squinted over the flame at Joe. "Confirm your assumption - I seen battle, son, yeah. Killed me one Dominican, killed me Haitians by the bushel, point of fact. Few years later, I took out three Panamanians with one Thompson burst on account they were all bunched together, praying I wouldn't. The truth of it all and don't let no one ever tell you different?" He got the cigar going and flicked the match over his shoulder. "It was some fun."
Chapter Sixteen
Gangster
As soon as the sailors left, Esteban ran to the motor pool to grab a vehicle. Joe changed out of his uniform as Dion backed the truck over to the ramp and the Cubans began pulling the crates right back out of the hold.
"You got this?" Joe asked Dion.
Dion beamed. "Got it? We own it. You go get her. We'll see you at the spot in an hour."
Esteban pulled up in a scout car and Joe hopped in and they took off down Highway 41. Within five minutes they saw the transport truck about a half mile ahead rumbling down a road so straight and flat you could practically see Alabama at the other end.
"If we can see them," Joe said, "they can see us."
"Not for long," Esteban said.
The road appeared to their left. It cut through the palmettos and across the crushed-shell highway and back into the scrub and palmettos on the other side. Esteban turned left, and they bounced onto it. It was gravel and dirt and half the dirt was mud. Esteban drove like Joe felt - harried and reckless.
"What was his name?" Joe said. "The boy who died?"
"Guillermo."
Joe could see the boy's eyes as they'd closed, and he didn't want to find Graciela's looking the same.
"We shouldn't have left her out there," Esteban said.
"I know."
"We should have assumed they'd have left someone behind with her."
"I know."
"We should have had somebody waiting with her, hiding."
"I fucking know," Joe said. "How is this helping us now?"
Esteban goosed the gas and they soared over a dip in the road and hit the ground on the other side so hard Joe feared the scout would rise onto its front wheels, flip them onto their fucking heads.
But he didn't tell Esteban to slow down.
"I've known her since we were no taller than the dogs on my family farm."
Joe didn't say anything. A swamp lay off to their left through the pines. Cypress and sweet gum trees and plants Joe couldn't begin to identify raced by on either side of them, blurring until the greens and yellows were the greens and yellows of a painting.
"Her family were migrant farmers. You should see the village she called 'home' a few months every year. America has not seen poverty until it's seen that village. My father realized how bright she was and asked her family if he could hire her as a maid-in-training, yes? What he was really doing was hiring me a friend. I had none, just the horses and the cattle."
Another bump in the road.
"Strange time to be telling me this," Joe said.
"I loved her," Esteban said, speaking loudly over the engine. "Now, I love somebody else, but for many years, I thought I was in love with Graciela."
He turned to look at Joe and Joe shook his head and pointed. "Eyes on the road, Esteban."
Another bump, this one lifting them both out of their seats and then back down again.
"She says she's doing all this for her husband?" Talking helped put the fear in a manageable place, made Joe feel less helpless.
"Ach," Esteban said. "He's