The Governor's Wife (52 page)

"
¿Por qué tan cariñosa?
" Becca said.

"
Quiero ser tuya
," Josefina said.

"She said she wants to be yours."

Bode frowned. "No, no, honey, it doesn't work that way in America. What those men did to you, that was wrong, okay? Men in America, we don't have little girls for our—"

"Daddy," Becca said. "She didn't mean it that way. She wants to be your daughter." She turned to Josefina: "
¿Hija?
"

She nodded. "
Sí
.
Hija.
"

Becca grinned at Bode.

"I always wanted a little sister."

"Lindsay, if El Diablo learns that you are the governor's wife, he will kill you before the sun again rises over the Rio Grande. You must go home."

"I am home."

Jesse and Lindsay got out of the pickup truck and walked into the house followed by Pancho. They placed the grocery bags on the kitchen counter next to the phone. The red message light was bright. Jesse hit the PLAY button and listened to messages from Mayor Gutiérrez and Latino legislators and business people from around the state—all pleading with him to be the Latino who takes Texas back from the Anglos. The latest polls showed Jesse in a dead heat with the governor.

"Of course," the mayor said on the recording, "we might not have to beat the governor-for-life because he might not be alive much longer."

Jesse stopped the message and turned to Lindsay.

"Sorry. Gutiérrez and these other old Latinos, they are of another generation. They are still angry over past injustices. They want to fight the Mexican-American War again. But fighting past battles again does not help the people today, here on the border."

"No," Lindsay said. "It doesn't help them at all."

"And the leaders from the state and national Democratic Party, they think if I beat your husband here in Texas, he could not win the presidency."

"Losing governors don't win the White House."

"But they are just using me to further their agendas."

"That's what they do."

"The Democrats do not care about the people here on the border any more than the Republicans. I am just useful to them. They just want me to take the governor's job so to save the president's job. As if the president needs me."

The phone rang. Jesse picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.

"Hello."

"Dr. Rincón?"

"Yes."

"Please hold for the president."

German immigrants settled most of the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s. The liberal Germans settled in Comfort. They called themselves "free thinkers." They opposed slavery and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Twenty-eight of those Germans paid for their beliefs with their lives; they were ambushed and massacred by the Confederates in 1862.

Located forty-five miles north of San Antonio on Interstate 10, downtown Comfort—which is to say, the three blocks of High Street—consists of antique shops, a bed-and-breakfast, a small library, a restaurant called the Texas Bistro, and a deli/wine bar called High's on High Street. It was eight the next morning, and Bode Bonner stood at the corner of Seventh and High across from the old bank that was now a museum.

He did not look like the governor of Texas that day. No Armani suits and French-cuffed shirts or even jeans and starched shirts. He wore a knit shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers. His blond hair stuck out wildly from beneath a burnt-orange Longhorns cap pulled down low. He wore sunglasses. He hadn't shaved. He had woken at dawn, as he had always done on the ranch, but not because there was work to be done; because he had woken in a cold sweat from reliving Mandy's murder. He could not erase the image of her face exploding from his mind.

Chelo had already been up at the house, but Becca and the kids were still asleep, so she was holding off breakfast. He grabbed a cup of coffee then drove into the town where he had grown up. He was searching for something.

The man he used to be.

A loud noise startled Bode, but it was only an old pickup backfiring. He was as jumpy as Jim Bob these days. The town had not yet come alive; of course, you could stand in the middle of High Street during rush hour and not risk getting hit. To say life was slow in Comfort was like saying it was hot in Texas in August. Bode needed breakfast and more coffee, so he walked down to High's. He entered, removed his sunglasses, and made eye contact with the proprietor behind the counter; he recognized Bode, but only nodded then turned back to an old-timer ordering.

"And a scone."

The old man had white hair, a slumped posture, and a wood cane.

"Grady, you want two scones?"

"Why would I want two scones?"

"Because you already ordered one."

"I did?"

"Yep."

"I'll be damned."

The old-timer named Grady turned from the counter, leaned hard on his cane, and eyed Bode a long moment.

"You look mighty familiar," he said. "Like someone I seen on TV."

"The governor," the proprietor said.

"No," Grady said, "not the governor. Someone else."

Bode glanced over at the proprietor; they shared a smile.

"It'll come to me in a minute," Grady said. "You know he grew up here?"

"Who?"

"The governor. Helluva ath-a-lete."

"That so?"

"Yep. One game he scored six touchdowns."

"Seven."

"Or was it seven? Can't recall. Anyways, he don't come back much no more, wants to be president they say. Damn shame."

"That he wants to be president?"

"That he shot himself in the foot like that other boy wanted to be president, cheating on his wife."

Bode again glanced over at the proprietor, who averted his eyes this time.

"Saw it on
Fox News
."

"You figure that makes him a bad man?"

"Who?"

"The governor."

"What'd he do?"

"Cheating on his wife."

Grady shook his head.

"Nope. Makes him a selfish man. Man that don't think of no one but himself."

"What am I supposed to do when the president calls and says he needs my help? That he needs me to beat the governor so the governor does not beat him?"

Jesse and Lindsay drove to the
colonia
.

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I don't want you to run for governor."

"Because of your husband?"

"Because of you."

"What do you mean?"

"It'll change you. Politics. It changes everyone it touches. For the worse. You're a good man, Jesse, too good for politics."

"How do you know this?"

"I've worked with you for four months now—"

"No. That politics will change me."

"Because my husband was a good man before he became a politician."

Bode Bonner had learned that he was special when he was twelve years old, when his superior athletic ability first became evident. Everyone—students, teachers, even grownups in town—assured him he was special. Often. Each year, the attention grew with his on-the-field exploits. By the time he was eighteen, that Bode Bonner was special was an accepted fact in town.

And in his mind.

That knowledge changes a boy. To walk into the feed store crowded with grown men and be greeted as if he were a god because he could play football, that changes a boy. Signing autographs when you're sixteen, folks wanting their photos with you when you're seventeen, college recruiters from around the country beating a path to your front door when you're eighteen: That becomes a part of you, like the blue of your eyes. It changes who you are, how you see yourself, how you view the world. Other people. Life. You start to believe that other people exist to serve you. That the world belongs to you.

It makes you selfish.

Ninety miles east in Austin, Jim Bob Burnet sat at his desk drinking coffee. Christ, Mandy's brains blown out and then Becca overdoses on sleeping pills. Now Bode, Becca, and the Mexican children had fled to the Comfort ranch. Jim Bob had elected to stay behind in Austin. He couldn't wait to leave Comfort when he was a kid, and he had never returned as an adult. And he never would. So he sat in his office.

With the blinds shut.

Bode Bonner had made a full recovery: the polls, the followers, the pledges to the Super PAC. They were all back. The scandal had been cremated with Mandy Morgan. The latest assassination attempt on the governor of Texas remained the number-one story in America. Reporters broadcast live from just outside the fence surrounding the Mansion grounds, almost as if hoping to catch the governor's expected assassination live, like a reality show. Jim Bob stood and stepped over to the window; he stayed to the side and peeked through the blinds. Satellite dishes rose high above a dozen TV trucks lining Colorado and Tenth Streets. The camera lights shone brightly. He returned to his chair and increased the volume on the television. The reporter outside was saying, "The governor of Texas remains secluded in the Governor's Mansion …"

He muted the volume. He would maintain the pretense that the governor was still in town with a steady stream of press releases and tweets. He picked up his iPhone.

At my desk. Won't let the devil himself keep me from working hard for the people of Texas.

"Cute."

Enrique de la Garza read the governor's tweet on his iPhone. He was one of the governor's twelve million followers, not because Enrique cared what the governor was doing at any particular moment, but because he needed to know where the governor was in order for Hector Garcia to put a bullet in his brain. He started to put the encrypted cell phone to his ear and assure Hector that the governor was still in Austin, but—

A thought struck him.

The governor was not in Austin. He had left town. They were pulling the trick on Enrique de la Garza. He put the phone to his ear.

"Hector, the governor is no longer there in Austin."

"But,
jefe
, we have had twenty-four/seven surveillance on the Mansion. He is here. Yesterday, his caravan journeyed around town."

"No. It is a decoy. He is gone. Find him!"

All his dreams had been born on that field.

Bode sat in the stands at the Comfort High School football stadium. On that field he had discovered two things: his football ability and his ambition. His ability fueled his ambition. His ambition expanded his world beyond Comfort and the ranch. He began to believe that there was more waiting out there for him. That his life would be played out on a bigger stage. That he belonged on such a stage. All he had to do was surrender to his ambition.

And he had.

"That you, Bode Bonner?"

Bode turned to an old black man standing there. It took him a moment to recognize the school janitor from thirty years before. He had been old back then, but he was ancient now.

"Mr. Jefferson. How are you?"

"Older. You still the governor?"

"Yep."

"Thought they killed you?"

"They tried."

Hector Garcia and one of his
soldados
followed the Texas Ranger into the restroom at the small taco bar near the University of Texas campus. They had trailed the Ranger in the SUV from the Governor's Mansion to the restaurant: lunch break. It would be this Ranger's last lunch. When they entered the restroom, the Ranger was zipping up. His
soldado
blocked the door. Hector pulled his switchblade and released the blade. The Ranger turned from the urinal, and Hector pushed him hard against the wall and swiped the blade across the Ranger's face, bringing the blood.

"Where is the governor?"

"Fuck you!"

Hector drove his knee into the Ranger's testicles; the Ranger went down. Hector felt the heat of hatred consume his body. He pushed the Ranger's head into the urinal and put the blade inside his nostril and slit it like butter. The Ranger started to scream like a child, but Hector clamped off his throat and all sound.

"Where is the governor?"

"Fuck you!"

Hector cut out the Ranger's eye. Before he died, he told Hector what he needed to know. Then they set fire to the taco bar to delay a warning to the governor.

They would only need that one night.

Bode Bonner had been a senior when Lindsay Byrne had moved to town, to this modest frame house. She had been the love of his life from the first time he saw her at school, looking lost in the main corridor. He walked up to her and said, "Hi, I'm Bode Bonner." He waited for the sense of awe to cross her face, but it didn't. It never had. Lindsay had never bought into his specialness. To her, he was not a god. He was just a man. She had brought him back down to earth that day. She had kept him grounded.

She had not idolized him as so many others had, but he had still been her hero. She had told him so one day on the ranch during spring roundup. They had worked side-by-side in the pens—he branded, she vaccinated. She had stumbled back over a calf; he had reached down and scooped her into his arms and off the ground before a cow could kick her. Her face was red from the sun and the work, and she was beautiful. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. Then she gazed into his eyes in that way she did, and she said, "You're my hero, Bode Bonner."