Kicks for a Sinner S3 (12 page)

No harm would come to Tommy if Joe Dean played along and delivered the ransom, no, call that a voluntary donation—to help out a relative in need—in need to get out of Mexico. He’d mailed the letter with his demands and directions in some no-name Texas town with a post office drop right on the main street when the gas guzzling truck needed refueling yet again. Tommy woke when he stopped, but went right back to sleep with a vague, “That’s nice” when he told the kid he’d just sent a postcard home to his parents so they wouldn’t worry. Couple of days, Joe and his smart little wife would know for sure where Tommy was, but until then, he hoped they both sprouted as many gray hairs as he had. Life had not been kind: he wanted the rest of his to be nice and easy.

Bijou had a gut feeling Esteban was on to his skimming, and bad, bad things happened to people who crossed the boss. They ended up beheaded, their bodies dissolved in acid if not left as an example to others. Time to turn in his resignation and take off for Brazil with Pilar and Xochi. Now, that country had some righteous bull riders, and he knew a few who’d made it big back in his day and owned vast ranches and fine restaurants now. Could be they’d give a job to one of their kind who hadn’t made a fortune on the circuit like them. He was near to topping off his latest bag of white powder, and the sale from that should buy his family first class plane tickets to Rio and keep them in style for a while. Too bad he’d frittered away the cash from earlier scores on rings with real jewels and then lost them gambling. No big deal. With Joe’s contribution, they could live for years on the cheap if he didn’t feel like working, but a man liked to be busy.

Bijou glanced back at Tommy still fast asleep on the back seat. The shadows of morning dulled his son’s red hair and obscured his freckles. The guard wouldn’t get a good look at the boy. The puppy, however, scrambled down and lifted an unpracticed, wobbly leg against the front seat where he sat. Jesus God, he should throw the animal out a window before the kid woke, but then the boy might howl when he found it gone, and they were too close to crossing the border now to create an attention getting ruckus.

He’d picked the pissant little cur from a cardboard box of mongrel pups bearing a sign saying, “Free to Good Homes.” Two kids, a boy and a girl almost as cute as his own, sat beside the container under an oak tree and looked up hopefully at every passing car. Far as he knew, Bijou Billodeaux took the only pup that day.

The girl with tearful blue eyes and a quivering lip told him their dad would give the pups to the animal shelter if no one took them. “They might be put to death, mister.”

Youngsters, so gullible. He could have taken the whole box and sold them to Mexican dogfighters for bait to train their animals, but he didn’t have the time or want the trouble. Just one would lure his son to him. He made sure he chose a male. No red-blooded boy wanted a bitch—until he turned into a teenager. His wit made him laugh. Only now, he had a problem. Often enough, he’d brought back pit bulls and fighting cocks for his boss on a return trip. No law against transporting them to other countries so long as you had a health certificate from a vet. This dog had none. He knew Tommy would wail if he woke to find his puppy gone.

Bijou pulled to the side of the road and let other vehicles precede him to the checkpoint. He had a little observing to do and in the meantime would take care of the pup. Rummaging in the trash on the floorboard, he found one of Xochi’s red hair ribbons, forever slipping out of her curls, and used his pocketknife to cut it into three pieces. One made a tight muzzle around the pup’s nose, and the other two hog-tied its front and back legs. Cowboy skills, a man never forgot them. He shoved the shaking small dog under Tommy’s blanket, then cracked open another energy drink and swigged it down while watching the guards at work.

He selected the one he wanted, a short overweight woman with brown skin and thick, cropped black hair under her hat. By the slump of her shoulders and weary wave of her hand to drive on as she returned a set of passports, she’d been on duty all night and waited for her relief to arrive shortly. Passports ready, he got back in line.

“Your business in Mexico,” the guard asked dully as she scanned the passports.

“Vacation. Got a place south of the border. I’m taking my boy down there for his spring break. Try not to wake him now. We left north Texas last night so we could have more time together. Divorced. You know how that goes.”

She nodded as if she wouldn’t be doing this job at all if she were married to a man who made good money. “Juan Deaux, strange name,” she commented, pronouncing the last like Dew.

“I say it Doe, Juan Deaux. My mother was Mexican, my dad a randy Cajun.” Bijou honored her with a broad smile and a twinkle of his gold tooth. “Guess I am, too. Like to see my place in Nuevo Laredo when you get off? I got a taste for brown beauties.”

She handed back the passports and shook a stubby finger at him. “No flirting with the border patrol.” She liked him, he could tell. That didn’t stop her from checking the box of his truck or its undercarriage. She pawed through Tommy’s duffle, too, but very quietly. “Some girls’ clothes?” she questioned.

“Castoffs for the orphanage,” he ad-libbed.

“Nice of you. These hardly look worn.”

Bijou wished she’d hurry before the boy woke up or the puppy whimpered, but Tommy didn’t stir. Very little of his face showed with the blanket drawn up. The female guard took care to speak softly just above a whisper. Finally, the broad gave them that tired wave and let them go.

Ah! Good to be back in Nuevo Laredo, the city squatting in a hump of the Rio Grande where industry thrived and all tastes could be satisfied. He steered past the monument to mothers in front of the Crowne Plaza hotel where he never stayed and chuckled to himself. The stout Mexican woman portrayed in the sculpture sheltered a boy and a girl in her skirts. Could be his new family, only Pilar wasn’t so fat.

Flush with cash one night, he’d bought her from a bordello owner. Fourteen and fresh, broken in but not yet jaded or diseased, she made a good wife, not that he’d ever married her in the church, just a civil ceremony one afternoon in a weak moment. After a few months, Pilar started upchucking and complaining of sore breasts. That caught him by surprise. He figured her pimp took care of keeping his girls on the pill, but he hadn’t given a thought to birth control, not even condoms since a doctor declared her clean. Damn his sentimental heart after losing Tommy to Joe Dean and failing to get him back, he’d let her have the baby, then took care of the matter of her having another. “Tie those tubes in knots, doc,” he’d said. “
No mas muchachas,
comprende
?”

He snaked the truck toward the very edge of the city where the land turned to arid earth and the bushes grew brittle and scrubby and often covered with thorns. Off in the distance, he could see Esteban Miro’s lavish hacienda surrounded by irrigated green fields where high class broodmares grazed with the spring foals by their sides. He’d have a say about which colts and fillies to cultivate and which to sell off as yearlings—if he hung around that long. Parking the truck in his front yard not much different from the xeriscape surrounding it, Bijou got down from the cab and took the duffle with him. The small whirlwind that was Xochi burst from the front door and engulfed his legs.

“Papi, you bring me something pretty?” his daughter asked just like all women.

He spread the top of the bag like a merry Santa Claus and took out the first of the frilly dresses. His little girl squealed with delight and rooted in the sack for other treasures.

Tommy sat up in the truck’s cab and put down the window. “We there yet?” he asked, wiping his eyes. “Hey, who tied my puppy up in ribbons?” He removed the red ribbon from the dog’s jaws. “There, now you can breathe better.”

The pink tongue lolled out immediately, and the pup’s small sides heaved in rapid panting. Tommy freed the paws and received several grateful licks right on the lips. “Stop that!”

He wiped his face on his forearm and leaned out the window. “Hey, this looks just like the Grand Canyon without the big hole in the ground and the pretty rocks. Are we really in Mexico? Is your house made of mud, Dad? Boy, you have a lot of cactus in your yard. Must make it hard to play here. You got some of those red flowers in pots like my mom has. Geraniums? That a satellite dish on the roof? What channels do you get here?”

“Jesus, you got more questions than a wife after a boy’s night out, son. This here is your baby sister, Xochi.”

The little girl wore a faded blue outfit but danced away with a lacy white pinafore embroidered across the yoke with multicolored flowers and shouted, “
Soy una princesa!
” She twirled and the red ribbon holding back her long, black curls came undone and flew away to land in a thorn bush like a bright bird. She had big, brown eyes with curly lashes, Billodeaux eyes, and was brown-skinned with a small, tight belly straining a dress a little too small.

“Yeah, I understand that. Jude and Annie think they’re princesses, too, and sure act like it. Just what I needed, another princess,” Tommy said with disgust. He tried the truck door and found it locked. “Hey, hey, let us out of here.”

Bijou sauntered over in no hurry to release him. The pup scrambled out first and began nosing around at once, still panting, probably looking for water. Tommy followed not allowing his new daddy to help him down. “I can get out myself. We have a truck just as big at Lorena Ranch.”

“Sure you do. You got everything at Lorena Ranch.” Except a redheaded little boy. Shove that up your ass, Joe Dean, Bijou thought. “You hungry, kid?”

“Daddy Joe and Mr. Polk always say to tend to your stock first. Macho needs some water. Somebody tied him up and put him under that hot blanket. He coulda died.”

Bijou grinned showing off his gold tooth again. “No way. See, if I hadn’t of hidden him, the customs people would have taken him away because he has no papers. We smuggled him across the border into Mexico.” He winked as if they were partners in a serious crime. “So his name is Macho. How’d you come up with that?”

“Corazon always says Daddy Joe is
mucho macho
so that must be good. She says it means manly and then some.”

“Sounds like your maid has a crush on Joe Dean, but don’t all women?”

“No, she doesn’t. Corazon is married to Mr. Polk who says he likes his women with some meat on their bones.”

Someone laughed inside the house. A beautiful woman came to lean in the doorway. She had dark eyes outlined in black, long hair hanging straight down her back like a silken cape, and lips painted red showing up brilliantly against her tan skin. “I would like to meet this Joe,” she said.

Bijou scowled. “You ain’t never gonna have the chance. Here, I brought you these earrings with real diamonds in them. Put ’em on, then get water for the dog. Pilar is your new mom, Tommy.” But she sure didn’t look like anyone’s mother. Way younger than either Nell or even Cassie, that’s what he liked about her most, that and her big tits.

“I like,” his woman said, hooking them in her ears. She turned and went inside moving her hips the way Joe Dean’s puny wife never would and never could. By the time he took his eyes off her swaying behind, his daughter had the puppy clutched tightly in her arms.

“You bring me a dog, too, Papi?”

What a greedy little thing she was—exactly like Pilar. Bijou nodded at Tommy. “Well, son, you gonna stand up to her or not?”

“No, he’s mine. You have a funny name.” He answered the challenge with an insult.

“Xochi means flower in Aztec. Aztecs cut out people’s hearts. Papi says so.
Como se
llamo
?” She didn’t release his puppy.

Tommy had taken a step back at the heart comment, but now he got right in her face. “
Me llamo
Tommy. Let me have my dog. I can speak Spanish and English exactly like you. Our housekeeper, Corazon, taught me lots of words in Mexican.” He crossed his arms with a “so there” defiance.

Xochi gave him a sly, sideways glance. “What you give me for him?”

Bijou shook his head. “Just like her mama. This is your new brother, Tomas. The dog belongs to him. Go see what else I got for you in that bag. Dig out some of them pretty shoes.”

She dropped the puppy and raced for the bag again. Her feet were bare and dirty. She needed shoes much more than a dog.

Pilar returned and put down a plastic dish of water for Macho who slurped it up right away. She had on the dress printed with red roses, the one her breasts nearly fell out of when she bent over, a homecoming invitation if Bijou ever saw one. She’d been to the salon. Red polish covered the nails of her hands and feet. She wore his wedding ring on one slender finger and a toe ring with a tiny green palm tree showing from the open front of her sandals. He wanted to suck her nipples and each one of those digits, the kids be damned. They could play in the yard a while.

Tommy made an astute observation, smart kid just like his daddy, his real daddy. “You look like you could be Xochi’s big sister, not her mom.”

That laughter came again, not like church bells, more like the chimes on an ice cream truck full of goodies. “
Gracias
. I know my husband have another child up north. Nice you come stay with us, Tomas. Maybe you go to Brazil with us, eh?”

“Brazil, where’s that?”

“Shut up about Brazil,” Bijou commanded. He looked all around though not a single person was in sight, the hour still being early. He adjusted the swelling in his crotch. Nope, he should tend to business first. “I’m going over to the hacienda to tell the boss I’m back. You make sure Tommy feels at home, Pilar.”

“Sure, Bijou. Come, Tomas. I make breakfast. Maybe you stay with us a long, long time.”

FOURTEEN

“We should have let Tommy get a puppy for Christmas. Nell talked me out of it. Said he was too young, but it’s all he wanted. That’s how Bijou got to him. We have piles of barn cats for the girls to chase, what difference would one dog have made?” Joe Dean Billodeaux hunched over at the long kitchen table and buried his face in his hands.