Jim Grant Short Stories #2 Read online

  ©Colin Campbell

  About the Author

  Ex-Army, retired cop, and former scenes-of-crime officer Colin Campbell is also the author of British crime novels Blue Knight, White Cross and Northern eX. His Jim Grant thrillers bring a rogue Yorkshire cop to America, where culture clash and violence ensue. For more information, visit www.campbellfiction.com.

  Copyright Information

  Jim Grant Short Stories #2 © 2015 Colin Campbell

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  First e-book edition © 2015

  E-book ISBN: 9780738745688

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  Contents

  Boquillas Crossing

  East Village Down

  Excerpt from Jamaica Plain

  Boquillas Crossing

  “Are you sure you really want to do this?”

  Grant stood in the shade of a dried-up ironwood tree and looked into dead black eyes. The eyes didn’t flinch. The sun beat down. The look told Grant one thing for certain. Yes, Tony Bohorquez really did want to do this.

  Jim Grant had never been to Mexico. Being so close now, he decided to take advantage of a few days’ leave to cross the border and take in some hot Latino tourist attractions. Boquillas del Carmen probably wasn’t at the top of anybody’s must-see list. Staying at the Buzzard’s Roost hotel was likely right at the bottom.

  Air brakes hissed as the Big Bend tourist bus pulled to a stop on a dusty street that was only missing a stray dog and some tumbleweed to have stepped right out of a spaghetti Western. The dried- up tree at the end of the street was just begging for a hanging. The other three passengers stepped down from the bus and wiped sweat from their brows. A young couple on their honeymoon and a big man with eyes so dark they were almost black. Grant was the last one to step on Mexican soil. Even the soil wasn’t welcoming. It was dry and dusty and baked to extinction.

  “This is it?”

  Grant looked along Main Street. He only assumed it was Main Street because the deserted thoroughfare looked to be the only street. There was a scattering of adobe buildings with hitching posts for the tourist donkey rides and something a bit more modern at the far end.

  The bus driver followed Grant’s gaze and shrugged. “Use to be busier.”

  Grant turned to the driver. “When?”

  “Back when use to cross Rio Grande in rowboat and ride to town on donkey.”

  “Before John Wayne, then?”

  “Before nine eleven.”

  Grant nodded. Boquillas Crossing was still a rowboat on a rope stretched across the river, but the rusty old school bus, painted white to reflect the heat, had replaced the donkey. 9/11 had a lot to answer for. Before then, Boquillas del Carmen relied on tourists coming across from Big Bend and had around three hundred residents. After the attacks, the border crossing was closed down, and the town withered and died. Just nineteen families scraped a living off land not inclined to let you scrape a living. The crossing had finally reopened this year, and the bus was an attempt to kickstart the tourist industry again. Judging by this trip, they had a long way to go.

  Grant checked the banknotes in his wallet. He still had trouble spotting the fives from the hundreds since they were all the same size and color. He took three one-dollar bills and handed them to the driver.

  “Thanks. You have set times for taking us back?”

  The driver jerked a thumb at the hanging tree. “Ring the bell. Noise carries.”

  Grant listened to the dull silence. If sound carried, there must be a lot of very quiet people around here—or nobody at all. The newlyweds crossed the street to get out of the sun. The big man disappeared around the back of the bus. Their footsteps were silent puffs of dust. There wasn’t even the sound of the wind because there was no wind. Then a few tinkling notes of guitar music drifted down the street, and Grant spotted the Park Bar in the distance.

  The driver used a lever to close the door and spun the bus in a tight circle that raised a cloud of dust and put the bus back facing the river. Boquillas Crossing was a mile and a half away on a sharp bend in the Rio Grande—a wide, flat beach beyond the end of town. The bus disappeared around the hardware store trailing dust. The newlyweds walked along the shady side of the street toward the music. Grant waited for the dust cloud to settle, then followed them. The big man with the dead black eyes was nowhere to be seen.

  Park Bar was a long, wide adobe building baked white in the desert sun. It sported a red and yellow Carta Blanca sign on the roof and pale blue piping on the columns along two sides. At night the sign would be lit up. During the day it looked as sad as the Licores Mexicanos signage painted along the roof’s leading edge. The signage had almost faded to nothing. The translation underneath had fared better. Mexican Liquors and Cold Beer. Beneath that, just in case patrons didn’t know where they were, handwritten script declared this as Boquillas del Carmen, Coahuila, Mexico. The windows had wrought-iron bars on the outside—the doors too. Full length with cracked glass, not the old Western saloon doors that always flip-flapped when you went through them. There’d be no flip-flapping today. The doors were wedged open, allowing the music to spill along the street.

  The newlyweds disappeared through the door. Grant stood outside for a moment while his eyes scanned the dark interior. Country and western music from a jukebox washed over him—some cowboy singer who was pretty good with a guitar. Grant caught a line from the lyrics halfway through—something about crossing the Rio Grande—and smiled. He hadn’t marked Boquillas del Carmen as somewhere that would have a song written about it. He saw the newlyweds turn to each other when the next line—about a gringo honeymoon—came out of the ancient jukebox in the corner. He was pretty sure they were smiling at each other.

  If Grant had been paying attention, and if their faces weren’t shrouded in gloom, he’d have noticed that the couple was a little old to be newlyweds. Not teenage lovers but approaching thirty with life baggage. And they weren�
�t smiling; they were exchanging a sad moment as the song proclaimed they were dreaming without end. It didn’t look like they believed that line; for them, the end was very much in sight. Grant wasn’t thinking about that as he stepped into the cool, dark interior. He was wondering where the big man from the bus had gone.

  “Beer supply is”—the bartender shrugged—“very thin.”

  There was a mousetrap and a sign on the end of the bar. to registar a complaint press red button. A red cork had been fastened to the trigger for unwary fingers. Grant stood at the bar and looked at the shelves. There were a few bottles of tequila and yellowish mescal, but no beer.

  “You can say that again.”

  The bartender jerked a thumb toward the border crossing. “Boss didn’t believe they were going to open it.” He shrugged again. “We’re not stocked up. I call him again yesterday, but he still don’t believe it.”

  “Sign outside says cold beer.”

  The bartender kicked a cooler beside his feet. “We got cold beer. Just not much of it.”

  Grant looked across at the newlyweds sipping bottled beer at a table near the door. That was two bottles less from the Park Bar’s dwindling supply. If Boquillas got a rush on, they’d be in real trouble.

  He decided to help them out. “You got cold Pepsi?”

  The bartender paused wiping the glass he was polishing. “You aren’t from around these parts, are you?”

  “Mexico?”

  “America.”

  Grant didn’t think his Yorkshire accent was that strong. “You noticed, huh?”

  The bartender opened the cooler, brought out a familiar-shaped bottle with its red label, and popped the lid. He didn’t offer a glass. “This is the land of Coca-Cola, not that Pepsi shit.”

  The cowboy stopped singing about a gringo honeymoon, and there was a pause while the jukebox selected something else. Grant took advantage of the interlude.

  “Must be good having a song written about you.”

  The bartender went back to polishing glasses that nobody drank out of. “Robert Earl Keen. He came here once.”

  “You must have made quite an impression.”

  Another pause in the polishing and a nod farther up the street. “The other, here. The Buzzard’s Roost. He did a lot of jamming there.”

  “And immortalized it in song?”

  “That’s what singers do.”

  Grant paid for the Coke and took a cool, refreshing drink. “And the line about the cowboy running from the DEA?”

  “That was there too.”

  “Should make for an interesting night. That’s where we’re staying.”

  The bartender stopped polishing and put the glass on the bar. There was an electronic whine and a click from the jukebox, then Marty Robbins began the guitar intro to “Ballad of the Alamo.” An odd choice for a small bar in Mexico.

  The bartender shook his head. “No, you aren’t. It’s an abandoned shell now. Roof blew off years ago.”

  Grant stood opposite the crumbling walls and knew one thing for sure. The roof might have blown off in a windstorm, but the hotel had been burned out long before that. The other thing he knew was that it wasn’t the same Buzzard’s Roost the tourists were staying in tonight.

  The sun had moved west across the hard blue sky and was now dipping toward the cliffs on the Texan side of the Rio Grande. Shadows crawled across the river basin toward the old mining town, but Boquillas del Carmen stood atop a rise of land in blazing sunshine. The hanging tree provided little shade. The elevated plateau provided even less.

  “Mister. We need to check in together. It is part of the package deal.”

  Grant looked at the female half of the newlyweds and realized this wasn’t entirely a gringo honeymoon. Her clothes and features might project the all-American woman, but the hint of an accent gave her away. The husband, on the other hand, was a dyed-in-the- wool Texan complete with cowboy boots, Stetson, and faded jeans.

  “Yeah. We better stick with the game plan.”

  Grant turned away from the burned-out shell toward the modern building at the top of the street—the only two-story structure in town. Even though it was newer than the rest of Main Street, the Buzzard’s Roost was still a fading hacienda with all the color sucked out of it by the desert sun. There was a covered porch along the front with stone arches that supported the balcony. The flat roof had a false front, just like in every Western Grant had ever seen, and that’s where the painted sign was: The Buzzard’s Roost. Same as the Park Bar, in case the guests didn’t know where they were, handwritten script declared Boquillas del Carmen, Coahuila, Mexico.

  The newlyweds stepped into the shade of the front porch, and Grant followed. He glanced over his shoulder. “We seem to be missing one.”

  The husband was unconcerned. “I’m sure he’ll be along.”

  Contradicting his wife’s assertion that they should stick together. Or making sure Grant didn’t wander around on his own while the big man with the dark eyes did exactly that. Grant still wasn’t suspicious of the married couple. Not until he saw the reaction of the reception clerk when they approached the desk.

  The short, round Mexican behind the counter did a comedic double-take, then disappeared into the back office. Two more Mexicans sitting with their feet up on a dining table in the lobby dropped their feet to the ground and slid their chairs back. The scraping on the tiled floor was like chalk on a blackboard. What little noise there was dried up to silence. A clock ticked at the bottom of the main staircase.

  The Texan looked around, a nervous tick forcing him to wink. The woman pushed her shoulders back and held her chin up. Whatever tension was in the air, the woman ignored it. She walked to the counter and dinged the old brass bell next to the register.

  Grant watched the dynamic change. The two Mexicans went from surprise to dull insolence. The Texan stood beside his wife and put an arm around her shoulders, either giving her the support she needed or taking strength from her stance. The desk clerk came back out. He kept his head bowed but his eyes on the woman. His voice was a gravelly whisper.

  “You should not have come back.”

  The woman put steel into hers. “He knew that I would.”

  “It is a bad choice.”

  “It is the only choice.”

  The clerk was almost pleading. “After all this time.”

  “They reopened the border.”

  The husband laid a hand on the counter. “And the crossing goes both ways.”

  The woman put her reservation documents on the counter. “We’re tourists.”

  Grant was running different scenarios through his head, but the thing that stuck was another line from the song at the Park Bar about a cowboy running from the DEA who left his wife and family. Grant thought about drug mules and deals gone wrong and all the variations thereof. He also thought about a vacation rapidly turning to rat shit and tried to reverse the trend. “Yeah, me too. You got my room key? I’d like a shower.”

  The desk clerk became all business and took Grant’s reservation papers. He ticked all the forms and filled in the register and unhooked a key from the rack behind him. The key ring jingled in the silence. Grant nodded his thanks and glanced around the lobby and dining area. The two Mexicans were giving Grant the evil eye. Grant smiled and headed for the stairs.

  The newlywed’s backup man from the bus didn’t come in. Drug deals always had a backup man. That meant that, in the eyes of the Mexicans, Grant just got voted man most likely to.

  Grant dropped his overnight bag on the bed. The room was square and plain and functional: a bed and a chair and a chest of drawers. The door was solid, but there was a glass door onto the balcony. Even if Grant wedged the chair behind the main door, the balcony was the weak spot. If the Mexicans decided to take out the backup man, that’s where they’d be coming from. If was a big word.
It spoke of uncertainty and possibilities. This was supposed to be a one-night stay on a two-day trip. Grant wondered why every time he took a vacation life conspired to throw a spanner in the works.

  Keep out of trouble. Don’t get involved. The words of Inspector Speedhoff when Grant had been sent to Boston. It didn’t look like it was going to happen here anymore than it had in Massachusetts. He didn’t want to get mixed up with smugglers and their internal problems and vowed to keep as much distance as possible between him and the newlyweds. It was a good idea, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Grant’s good intentions lasted fifteen minutes. Until he heard the thump and the slap and the woman cry out in pain.

  There were two more Mexicans in the lobby when Grant looked down from the top of the stairs. None of them were very tall, but all were solidly built and muscular. Hard times in a desert town would do that to a man. The craggy features and scarred fists spoke of very hard times indeed. A breakfast table had been pushed to one side and two chairs knocked over. The Texan was on the floor between the four men. The woman was being held back by the strongest. The desk clerk went out through the back door.

  Grant took a few moments to assess the situation. It didn’t take long. The clerk didn’t want to get involved. The woman had tried to intervene and been slapped for her trouble. The Texan was bleeding from the head and mouth. The four Mexicans were taking turns kicking him while he was down. That didn’t seem fair to Grant. Slapping women was an even bigger no-no. The backup man still hadn’t shown up.

  Keep out of trouble. Don’t get involved.

  Not likely. Grant came down the stairs on the balls of his feet, knees flexed for easy balance. He wasn’t trying to be quiet, it just worked out that way. He was more concerned with drawing attention away from the injured man and staying loose. He kept any threat out of his voice, aiming for light and chatty.

  “I thought you were supposed to hang piñatas outside.”

  Four sets of eyes turned toward the man coming down the stairs.