Wild Country

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Quantrill found Concannon true to his word. The van never coughed once, either in fan mode across open country to Hondo, or on its wheels down decent roads to Corpus Christi. He checked export prices on Friday evening, slept in the van, and wired over five thousand dollars to Sandy's account late Saturday morning after buying spare parts to accommodate Garner Ranch.

En route to Alice at noon, he wondered if some of those parts would help ferry hard drugs through Wild Country. Supposing the answer was "yes," had he unwittingly crossed his own ethical borders? Perhaps not, so long as it was unwitting. The more you know, he reflected, the more you're responsible for. By the time he reached Jim Street's ranch home near Alice, he was ready to envy fools.

He recognized the area by the creek that lazed between grassy banks, and the huge pecan trees nearby. Street's place was less inviting now, robbed of some of its charm by cyclone fencing that stretched out of sight and a polite giant manning the gate. On earlier visits he had thought of the rambling stone house as a gracious lady; now she was a suspicious old dame with a leashed Doberman. There would be no parking inside for any van — explosives were too easily hidden — but Quantrill's appointment and his thumbprints gained him entry for a long walk along a flower-lined path to the house. The groundskeeper patted him down but showed no concern over what was in Quantrill's pockets; it happened again with the receptionist, a plain-faced woman to whom Ted Quantrill was no more than a side of beef. They found Attorney General James Street puttering among potted shrubs before a huge solar window of his study, and then the woman left them. Quantrill suppressed an urge to stare.

"Looks like you're stayin' healthy, boy," said Street, extending his hand. It had the mottled color of great age and, noting the Gov's liverish complexion, Quantrill took the twisted hand carefully. He smiled at the old man's firm grip and his welcome: "Enjoy it while you can; one of these days they may turn you into a gawdam machine, too."

Street's motorized walker surrounded the old man's squat bulk with linkages, fiber rods, and slender hydraulic tubing. It cupped him in pads up to his beltline. its power source hidden inside a hard plastic pack at the small of his back. Ungainly as it looked, it permitted the old fellow to move around without the agony of earlier days. Arthritis had ruined his hips and feet long before. Seeing Quantrill's scrutiny, Street turned back toward his potted plants. "Don't ask how I take a leak with all this plumbing, boy. You mind if I cultivate my coffee while we talk? This and football are two things I can still enjoy."

Quantrill showed interest that delighted the hobbyist in the old man. Harsh winters following nuclear war had at least brought a few small improvements: hardy, knee-high citrus and corn, even tiny coffee bushes that produced a good crop in a windowbox. It wasn't a real economy, Street admitted, now that you could get the "reg'lar stuff again. It was just something to make an old curmudgeon want to rise in the mornings.

Presently the old man leaned back, locked his walker so that he could relax, and clicked his pruning clippers with a gnarled hand. "I don't like clippin' live branches without a good reason, son. Did you know somebody clipped Boren Mills this past week?"

The parallel took Quantrill by surprise. "First I heard of it, Gov. I thought he vescoed out to Cuba or some such."

"Or some such," said Street vaguely, with a keen glance at the younger man. He did not reveal that he had the news from Canadian sources in Oregon Territory. "I suppose you can account for your whereabouts last weekend."

Quantrill folded his arms, leaned against a huge Mexican pot, and took his time answering. Much of that weekend he had been wearing contact lenses and dyed hair as randy Sam Coulter. For damn sure, he did not enjoy the prospect of explaining that. "Yessir, if I have to. But I didn't come here for confession. All the same. I don't even care who took Mills out, or why. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," he finished, grinning.

"I'll buy it," said Street, laying down the clippers. "Why did you drop in? To watch the Teasippers and Horned Frogs on the holo this afternoon?" Like most native Texans, the old man would never outgrow his passion for football. Names like Cy Leland, Jack Crain, Doak Walker, and Earl Campbell were permanently etched into his memory.

"Should be a close game," said Quantrill, and followed as the old man's exoskeleton walked him to a library that smelled of leather and wood polish. "I had two reasons, Gov, both business — besides seeing you again."

Street waved away the pleasantry, took his hand comm set and used it to order a tray of munchables before folding himself into a semiupright couch and adjusting the wall holo set. "Good news or bad?" he asked, dialing the audio low.

"Both, I think. You knew I took Judge Anthony Placidas's dying statement?"

The old man seemed to be watching the pregame show but shook his head. "I didn't even know he had died."

"I thought as much. So you can't know he admitted being part of a drug-running operation and fingered a young rancher while he was bleeding out."

Street sighed and dialed the audio completely out. "Maybe you'd better take it from the top, son."

Top to bottom, the account lasted through the first quarter (Texas 14, T.C.U. 3). Quantrill kept skipping details he assumed the old man knew, and Street kept spearing after those details like a linebacker. Gradually, Quantrill began to appreciate that this tenacious old codger now watched over a dominion far greater than Wild Country, with interests far more diverse than a handful of high-tech rebels. It was astonishing, now that he thought about it, to find America's top cop willing to give personal attention to the unease of a deputy marshal. Still, Texas tradition overflowed with such experts at informal one-on-one: Houston, Allred, Johnson.

"So Steams has been trying to dump you, but now he dangles a commendation at you to keep the heat off this young Garner fella," said Street, adding an excited, "Dump it off!" as a purple-jerseyed quarterback on the holo disappeared under behemoths in orange and white. No doubt about it, Jim Street could boss two outfits at once.

"And the judge said to tell you that your channels are not secure. I'll give you odds that's not audible on the tape you get, Gov. If you get it at all."

The old man shook his head in disgust at a broken play. "The horny toads got to settle down if they're gonna win this one," he said of the T.C.U. team. "So do you, son. Now let me tell you something that doesn't go out of this room: I've known my channels were tapped for a long time. If it's Stearns, I'll soon know."

"Look, look," Quantrill burst out happily, always elated when the underdog rolled to the top. A horned frog receiver had taken a pass on a dead run from between two defending Longhorns and was streaking for a distant goal.

"Always expect that fourth down pass when the other fella's rattled. Get him desperate enough and he'll do anything," Street said, cackling. "We don't want the other side rattled, son," he added soberly. "And we don't know if Stearns is ours or theirs. You aren't an unbiased observer."

"True. I know Marv Stearns's record, it's good," Quantrill admitted. "A week ago I would've thought he was immune to a bribe."

"Nobody's immune if the right coin comes along, son. Take me, now; I might do most anything for a new set of bones that'd let me run eighty yards for a touchdown. But there's only one thing I can do, outside normal channels. That's to use the one man with young bones that I can sure-'nough trust in this matter." He watched the extra point, Texas 20, T.C.U. 10, then tapped a forefinger toward Quantrill.

Ted Quantrill slid down in his overstuffed chair and groaned. "Christ, and I was about ready to pack it in. I was telling Lufo Albeniz the other day, it was time I turned in my ID."

Street: "Good. Spread that news around."

Quantrill: "I don't get it."

"Long as you're a deputy," said the old man, "Steams can put you in whatever fix he likes. If you soured on the job, got into a ruckus with him, and told him to stick his badge sideways, you'd be free to move."

"Yeah. And broke as the Ten Commandments," Quantrill said.

"Oh… the Justice Department funds its informants, and pays a few informal brick agents, boy. You might find it's a raise, getting a monthly check for consulting with war historians. Or some gawdam thing. But it'll be direct from me, and when I say 'frog,' boy, I want to see you hop! Some of the contraband through Wild Country goes quicker'n scat. Goddammit, are you listenin' to me?"

Quantrill had just watched an on-side kickoff recovered in midair by a frenzied T.C.U. player. It looked like frenzy might win the day in Austin. "I'm a rich consultant," he said, palms out.

Not yet he wasn't, Street replied, and explained how it should work. Ideally, Marvin Stearns would be able to show cause to demand Quantrill's badge within a week or so. That way, nobody would wonder why Quantrill had quit. What did Quantrill have to sign? Nothing, Street replied. His handshake had always been enough. The handshake came immediately.

Quantrill stood up and stretched hard as the half ended with the Longhorns leading by a thin 20–17. "I can't leave now," he said.

"Dead right, son; in the second half you learn why it's nice to have strength three deep in the trenches."

Quantrill assembled a sandwich from cold cuts; popped the top from a Lone Star bock; sat back and studied the old man carefully as he began: "And you may get a hot potato in your lap. Governor. You remember that toy-sized synthesizer Eve Simpson lost? Well, what if I could put it in your hand one day soon?"