Borderland (23 page)

On
Friday he thought to end his stint in Jinx's diner. The usual five o'clock
bunch were seated on their usual stools and each called out a greeting as Vic
entered and took a seat. A new face beside Ed Kisner caught Vic's attention and
he rose again and offered his hand to the young man. "I don't believe
we've met. I'm Vic Kimmler."

"Len
Kisner," the man said, and the hand that clasped Vic's was rough and
hardened with calluses.

Now this
is a farmer, Vic thought. And the big, tanned fellow had to be his mother's
son, because he looked nothing like his puny, pasty-faced father, Ed.

"Pleased
to meet you, Len." Vic returned to his seat and looked up to see Jinx
smiling at him. Vic smiled back

"Well,
I'd best be gettin' back to work," Len said to his father. "Nice
meetin' you, Mr. Kimmler. Be seein' you around town, I guess."

His
departure caused a flurry of farewells among the men. Most of their faces were
proud as they looked upon Len, Vic noticed. But something else—a strange
tension—took over the moment he was gone. Soon there was an air of anticipation
among the men. Vic knew something was up from the way they kept looking toward Jinx.
"So what's going on today, guys?" he asked. "Any heavy town
business?"

Jinx
shook his head. "I was just tellin' the boys here about a girl I got awful
silly about, till she gagged over one of my dirty dishrags."

The men
lining the counter burst out laughing—all but Ed Kisner. In fact Ed looked
downright unhappy. Vic would have made a comment, but Ed Kisner had looked
unhappy since the day he met him. Nothing unusual there.

He
turned back to Jinx. "So are you the only bachelor in here?"

Ed Kisner
snorted. "Him and Gil Schwarz."

Jinx
scowled at the barber before smiling at Vic once more. "I got occupied
with town business and never looked around anymore."

Vic
nodded. "Was your dad the mayor before you?"

Ed
Kisner began to snicker, but looks from the other men soon shut him up. Vic
raised his brows and waited for Jinx to answer.

"My
papa was killed before I was born," Jinx said. "Your own grandpa was
mayor before me, Vic. Darwin's daddy."

"Really?"
Vic was surprised. "Granddad Rudolph was mayor of Denke?"

The men
at the counter all nodded in confirmation.

"Damn,"
Vic said. "What do you know about that?"

"And
now you're the town law," Jinx said with a wink. "Maybe someday after
I'm gone you'll follow in your granddaddy's footsteps, eh?"

Vic
laughed. "Sure." He glanced down the counter. "Me and Len,
right? We'll take over where you guys leave off."

"That's
right," Jinx said. "That's exactly right."

The
seriousness of his tone made Vic stop smiling. He was kidding, but he could see
Jinx wasn't. Only he and Ed seemed in anyway uncomfortable with Jinx's
satisfied grin. Vic shook his head. He was a new boy here. He wasn't going to
step up in a few years and take over the town. What about the other young men
in Denke? Surely there were others who coveted Jinx's position on the town
council. He tried to shrug off the old man's smile. "So tell me about old
Rudy—my grandfather, I mean. What was he like?"

"Smart,"
Tom Hamm said. "A hard sonofabitch. He kept as close to the old ways as
possible. If Darwin had done the same, he'd have been mayor next."

Vic
looked up. "Why wasn't he?"

"Didn't
want it," Doc Stade said. "He didn't want anything to do with being
mayor. It about broke your grandpa's heart."

'What
did you mean about keeping to the old ways?" Vic asked. "What did my
father do differently?"

"Everything,"
Jinx said in a sharp voice. "He defied tradition every chance he got,
couldn't see that the Denke way of doing things was working just fine—had been
for well over a hundred damned years. He wanted to change things."

"You
mean he didn't want to farm like everyone else," Vic said. "He wanted
to raise horses and own studs."

"I
mean—" Jinx stopped suddenly and forced himself to check his angry tone.
"I mean he didn't see things the way the rest of us did. Raising horses
and owning studs was just a part of it. First thing he did was run off and
marry your mama instead of the girl he was affianced to here. That made a lot
of folks wonder about his commitment to the Denke way of doing things."

"Maybe
he didn't love her," Vic suggested. "The local girl, I mean."

Jinx
shook his head sorrowfully. "You're missing the point, Vic. But anyway,
that's all water under the bridge now. Darwin lived the way he wanted and we
all respected his right to do it. Didn't we, boys?"

After
everyone nodded or muttered his agreement, Jinx took off his glasses to rub his
greasy, wrinkled forehead.

"Are
we going to tell him?" someone murmured, and Jinx abruptly put his glasses
back on and shushed the man.

"Tell
me what?" Vic said. He glanced at the faces around him. The old men were
even more agitated. "C'mon," he said. "What gives?"

"It's
town business," Jinx said stoically. "We can't bother Victor with
it."

"He's
one of us now, ain't he?" Bauer asserted. "We're all in this together.
I say we tell him and see what he says. Call for a vote, Jinx."

"I
ain't callin' for no damn—"

"Tell
me, dammit," Vic was irritated. "I'm not leaving this stool until you
do."

"Fred,"
Jinx said, and Fred Bauer's chest heaved. He turned on his stool to look at
Vic. "You all know I was down in Oklahoma for a day or two this week. I
was in Oklahoma City, Victor, meetin' with a supplier friend of ours—sells
fertilizer—and we were havin' a nice little dinner in a cute little Mexican
restaurant. He left early and when I come out of the restaurant this young punk
comes up behind me and puts a gun in my back. I give him my wallet, just like
he asks, with two thousand damn dollars inside. Then, when he was openin' it to
see what was in there, I grabbed for his gun. I know it was dumb, damn sure
was, because he smacked me on the head with the thing and took off runnin' with
my wallet. But he dropped somethin' behind him. I don't know if it fell from
his pocket or what, but I seen it layin' there when he run off so I picked it
up."

"What?"
Vic said.

"Looked
just like what Ed confiscated out of that car from Colorado last month. Those
two drunken boys who run over Sadie Hamm's cow? Damned thing got loose and was out
a wanderin' the highway. Anyway, them two boys run off, but not before he got
all the booze and this other stuff from their car."

"What?"
Vic repeated.

"We
ain't real sure," Jinx said. "Maybe you can tell us what it is."
He reached under the counter and came up with a small, carefully wrapped
plastic bag. He handed it to Vic. "We think it's some kind of dope, but we
ain't altogether certain."

Vic
looked, tasted a bit from the bag then began to nod. "Yeah, it’s
definitely dope. This is cocaine, gentlemen. Is this it?"

Jinx
shook his head. "We got more in the back. That there is just what Fred
picked up in Oklahoma."

Vic
frowned. He was looking at a gram. "How much more?"

"I'll
get it," Jinx said. "Ed didn't know what it was when he took it off
the boys. Never did get around to callin' the sheriff, did you, Ed?"

Ed
shrugged and looked at nothing. "I was embarrassed about 'em gettin' away.
And I had to get Sadie's cow out of the road."

Vic
nodded. He could see Ed being embarrassed over such a thing. In the next second
his eyes rounded when Jinx came out and dumped what had to be a kilo of coke on
the counter in front of him. "Christ," he breathed.

"Probably
seen a lot of this stuff in your cop work, huh?" Fred Bauer said.

"Yes,"
Vic admitted. "A lot." They didn’t know anything about his being
kicked off the force. He hadn't even told his father the entire truth. He had
mentioned taking money from the gangs to look the other way during their drug
deals, but he hadn't said a word about stealing the confiscated coke. Nobody
but Nolan knew.

"A
shame," Jinx said. "Ain't much of a tradeoff for Fred's two thousand
dollars and Sadie's milk cow. Probably ain't worth much, is it? 'Bout fifty
bucks?"

Vic
nearly choked. "More than that," he managed to get out. A lot more. Theft
or not, he had paid a few bills with the coke he had stolen—mostly by using
some punk to sell it back to the guys it had been confiscated from. Then he'd
have the same guys busted again while they were out on bail from their first
bust, and the coke would be confiscated yet again. The scheme worked great for
a while, with the coke never making it onto the street. But coke was always out
there. Take one dealer off the street and see three more come in to replace
him. From Los Angeles, New York, Florida, Jamaica—not to mention a thousand
home-grown kids just waiting for a shot at some quick and easy cash.

"Think
we'd get some kind of reward if we turned it in to the sheriff?" Fred
asked Vic. "It's really gonna hurt the town without that two
thousand."

Vic
looked at Fred's warty, pathetic face and shook his head. "No. I'm sorry
Fred, but they don't give rewards for turning in dope. They probably should,
but they don't."

"Well,
damn," Kent Vogel said loudly. "That just don't seem fair to me. Here
we are, hard up as a declawed cat in a birdhouse and can't do a damn thing with
a bunch of cheap powder. Sadie without her cow and Fred without seed
money."

"Seed
money?" Vic repeated.

"For
crops and gardening," Fred explained his expression miserable. The town
buys all the seed for local folks. I had the money and I lost it. Won't be
nothin' for no one now and everyone's goin' to blame me. I never shoulda had
that money with me in that wallet. I'm real sorry, boys."

"That's
all right, Fred," Tom Hamm said, and he put a hand on his friend's
shoulder. "Coulda happened to any one of us. We'll just take our lumps and
go without. I'm goin' to see my boy in New Mexico next week. Maybe I'll take
along that old pocket watch my daddy give me and pawn it."

An
outcry arose. Vic listened as Tom's friends shouted in dismay and asked him not
to sell his treasured heirloom.

"That
thing's for your boy, Tom. Don't be sellin' that."

"It's
the only thing your daddy give you, Tom. We'll be all right without the seed.
Don't sell that watch."

Finally,
Vic lifted a hand. "Hey. Why don't you just keep the money you offered for
the hay in my barn. You can buy some seed with that."

"That's
a real nice offer," Jinx said. "But we can't do it. I was meanin' to
talk to you about that, Vic. Here back, we had to rework a combine or two, and
it ran into more money than we expected. We just got the bill this week and
we're likely to be strapped to pay you what we offered for that hay. But don't
you worry, we'll do 'er somehow. The town of Denke ain't reneged on a deal yet.
If I have to go to the city and peddle that dope there, I'll pay you that
money."

Vic
smiled at the image of the bald, wrinkled Jinx going into the drug business.

Jinx was
laughing at himself. "By golly, now why didn't I think of that before?
Just find me some young hood and get rid of the stuff once and for all. What's
it worth, Vic? Think I can get our two thousand dollars out of what we got
here? Damn it all, that's what I'll do. Tom, I'm comin' to New Mexico with you.
Get me a pea coat and paint my head purple and I'll go downtown and make me a
sale!"

Everyone
was laughing now. Everyone but Vic. He was watching them. When the laugher died
down he said, "Jinx, you're not serious."

"Why
not?" Jinx threw one skinny hand into the air. "I got no moral qualms
on this issue. Probably should, but I don't. I watch the news and I see what's
goin' on in the world. Damn junkies get the stuff no matter what anybody does
to stop 'em. You know that Vic, you were a big city cop. These same junkies come
killin' our cow and stickin' up one of our own and what am I supposed to feel?
That they're sick and need my help? Well, I don't feel that way, mister. They
got themselves into whatever jam they're in, and I didn't have a damn thing to
do with it. Now unless you want to hand me over to the sheriff, I'm goin' to
New Mexico with Tom next week. Maybe some of them artists down in Santa Fe can
use the stuff. We sure as hell can't."

Vic
nervously rubbed his jaw. He didn't like this. He didn't like it at all. Jinx
couldn't possibly know the dangers involved. "You don't know what you're
talking about, Jinx. You can't just walk up to someone and ask if they want to
buy some coke. What if you're caught and arrested?"

"What
if I am?" said the old man in a defiant tone. "Ain't goin' to live
that much longer anyway."

"These
people," Vic tried. "They're not like you and me, Jinx. People who
use it are sometimes desperate and usually on the edge. To them you'll appear
to be a foolish, unarmed old man with a kilo. You could be hurt or even
killed."