“I’m glad you got that rifle out of his hands before my boys got there, Mr. Travis. No telling what could have happened otherwise.”

“He means what could have happened to Mr. Sterling,” Deputy Rice said. “But I’ve never had to shoot anybody yet. Knock on wood.”

The three of us there-the booking officer, Deputy Rice, Sheriff Thornton, and myself-all started at the sudden WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!sound that came from the holding tank.

“Let me OUTTA HERE! You HEAR ME!” Hank’s muffled voice reverberated off of concrete and steel.

“Your friend,” Sheriff Thornton began, “is a hell-raiser. A bit old for that, ain’t he?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

My eyes detected movement from upwards and to my right. On one of the closed-circuit surveillance monitors there was someone walking up to the back door of the jail. Someone familiar.

“I’ll be dipped,” I said.

It was Agent Cranford. In the camera lens-distorted background behind him I could make out Agent Bruce standing by the Suburban talking with Julie.

“Better let him in,” I said, just as the buzzer went off.

“Who is he?” Sheriff Thornton asked.

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“Sheriff, if you’ll let these fellows go, I’ll be responsible for them.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” he said.

We were in a small conference room off the booking room. In the corner was an old fingerprint roller and a leaning stack of ancient parking meters. The quest for space is an ever-present problem for small town governments. The room was concrete cinder-block covered with lime-green paint. It gave our faces a sickly pallor. Then again, I wasn’t feeling so good myself. I could have used some breakfast to go with the cup of coffee I had in my hand.

“I just like to know what’s going on in my county,” Sheriff Thornton finished.

“Sheriff,” Cranford said. “First, I need to know something. Don’t take this the wrong way, alright?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you a close friend or relation to Archibald Carpin?”

Sheriff Thornton laughed. I looked at Cranford. He was a little too seasoned to take offense. He waited for the laughter to subside.

“What’s so funny?” he asked

“Heh! Nope,” Sheriff Thornton chuckled. I’m not remotely related to that coke-snortin’, rum runnin’ fool. No sir. You and Mr. Travis and that aging hell-raiser in my drunk tank in there come to my county to do something about that idiot?”

Agent Cranford looked at me. “As far as I can tell,” he said, “Mr. Travis, Ms. Simmons and Mr. Sterling are here because of a little girl named Jessica. And because of two million dollars.”

My heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the money before.

“Is he serious?” Thornton asked me and rubbed his rough-hewn, meaty hands together.

“Like a heart attack,” I said.

“Okay. That explains them,” he said. “What about you?” He pointed his finger at Cranford. “Why are you here?”

“My partner and I are here to shut down a certain moonshine operation that has been going on in this county since the late 1920s.”

“Oh. That.” He yawned. “Every few years a couple of fellows like you come through here. They go out there, look the place over. Then they leave.

“Yep,” Cranford said. “I know. I’ve read and re-read the files. But-” he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and handed it to Thornton. Thornton looked it over and handed it to me. I scanned over it quickly. There were three columns. The first column heading was ‘Date’, and underneath it was a long list of dates from 1930 to four years ago. The second column was a list of offenses, most of them the same thing: “ULUT alcohol transport”.

“What’s ULUT?” I asked.

“Unlicensed, untaxed.”

The third column was numbers. Dollar amounts.

“Those are just the ones we’ve interdicted-caught,” Cranford said.

I did some quick math. The total was millions of dollars.

“This case,” Cranford said. “It’s my last hurrah. I retire in two months.”

“So where does the wrecking crew here come into play?” Sheriff Thornton asked and gestured towards me.

“Our government cannot run without the assistance of its people.”

“What the hell kind of an answer is that?”

“The only one I have to give, right now.”

“All right. All right.” Sheriff Thornton stood up. He leaned across the table as Agent Cranford and I stood up. He shook both our hands.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

“Please,” he said. “Get that crazy, gun-toting alcoholic out of my jail.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Agent Cranford followed us back to the motel. Julie and I helped a snoring Hank out of the car and into his room. Dingo followed us in.

Hank needed a bath. I wasn’t his Momma, so I decided to wait and see if she showed up to bathe him. He was a friend, but I hadn’t signed up for that job yet.

“You two go get some breakfast,” Cranford said when I came out of Hank’s room. “I’ll stay here until you get back.”

“Uh. Thanks,” I said.

Julie waited until we were in the Suburban headed out of the parking lot before asking me: “Why do you trust those guys?”

“They sprung Hank out of jail.”

“Yeah, but what’s their angle?”

“I wish I knew.”

We had a late breakfast-that was more of a lunch than anything-at a Mexican Restaurant. The food was pretty good, but not as good as the Austin venues I was used to.

When we got back to the motel, Hank was still zonked.

Cranford and Bruce waved and drove away as soon as we unlocked our door.

“You’re right,” I said to Julie. “They’re pretty weird. Nice, but weird.”

Julie and I passed the rest of the day in each other’s company.

I kept expecting Hank to wake up. I kept expecting the phone to ring. I kept a watch out for light blue Ford F-150 pick-up trucks.

Night time.

We were back inside the hotel room, in the same bed. In the dark with her body pressed against mine, it was like we’d never left the room from the night before. The events of that day hadn’t even happened. We did things in the night that young people do in the back seats of their parents’ cars.

Afterwards, I went outside and smoked one of her cigarettes. At one time in my life I smoked only when I had a beer in my other hand, so this was new for me. Julie had been craving a cigarette for the last several days. She’d gotten some when we had stopped for lunch.Maybe I wouldn’t turn it into another bad habit. Like sleeping with my clients, for instance.

A white, late model Ford sedan pulled up next to the Suburban. A lone figure emerged under the bright orange-ish light.

Agent Cranford.

I waited for him.

I’d forgotten to give the Suburban a thorough going-over and remove the GPS bug that had been planted there.

The North Texas night was cooler than the previous one. The door behind me was open just a crack. Julie was in there in the dark, snoring softly.

I thought of a name: Ernest Neil. The name of the man who had died in Julie’s arms. That sounded rather poignant.

“Hiya,” Agent Cranford said.

“Hey.”

“Nice night. Got another one of those?” he asked, referring to my cigarette. “I think I left mine down in the car.”

“I don’t normally smoke,” I told him. “These are Julie’s. But it’s a smoking kind of night, you know?”

“Uh huh,” he agree.

I fished a cigarette out for him. I wondered if Julie counted them. Probably not.

He took it with a thin smile. I thumbed the lighter. Held it for him as he lit up.

“Thanks.” He drew deeply, paused, letting the nicotine bite, exhaled slowly. I’d say he was about forty-eight years or so. Conservative haircut. Clean shaven, even late at night. Forty-eight seemed sort of young to be looking at retirement. I hoped I was going until I was about ninety.