The Cat, The Devil And Lee Fontana

12

Misto’s dreams that night, as he slept at the foot of Lee’s bed, were visions he knew were a part of Lee’s future. And though he felt fiercely protective of Lee, staying close to him since his parole, his thoughts tonight were on Sammie, too, so far away in Georgia.

Brad Falon had returned to Rome after his prison time, escaping a dirty piece of business out in L.A., running from the law before the land scam he’d been involved in was uncovered. Now, he was too near again to Sammie, in that small town, was too interested in Sammie and in her mother and was a threat to them both.

Except that now, in Georgia, Morgan Blake was home again, he was out of the navy and back with his little family. Becky and the child need no longer face Falon alone, and that satisfied and eased Misto.

But Lee was alone, and just now he needed Misto. The ghost cat did not mean to leave Fontana as the dark spirit sought to own him. And in Misto’s dreams, the connection between Lee and Falon and Sammie was building closer, their lives slowly drawing together, incident by twisted incident, toward a final and life-changing event that would shape the future of all three.

Only just before dawn did the cat stir from his dreams, and leave Lee, slipping out into the fading night to wander the dim ranch yard and then to stroll in through the bunkhouses observing the sleeping workers, their clothes and possessions strewn everywhere among the jumble of cots, a far less organized scene than a cell full of regimented prisoners. The breath of the sleeping men smelled strongly of chiles and garlic. He wandered and looked, amusing himself and then moved outside again where he chased half a dozen chickens, sending them flapping and squawking in panic; then he headed for the back door of the ranch house where, if he were lucky, Jake Ellson might have set out a bowlful of milk for the half dozen farm cats. The rancher had seemed pleased when he glimpsed a new mouser on the property, maybe a wanderer, maybe a drop-off, as often occurred in the open country. Misto, during his stay, meant to catch and leave a few fat mice on the porch, just to prove his prowess.

Yes, this morning there was milk. He lapped the bowl clean before the other cats got to it, and then looked up at the kitchen window, catching glimpses of Jake as he prepared his breakfast; the boss seemed to prefer quiet in the morning to that of a crowd of noisy braceros.

It was Friday, the end of Lee’s third day on the job, that Ramon Delgado came roaring into the ranch yard in his big white Cadillac, kicking up dust, and Lee got a look at the two canvas cash bags that contained the ranch’s weekly payroll, and then soon at the money itself. At enough cash to set him up real nice. And this payroll, to be doled out to more than a hundred men, was only one of four among the Delgado holdings.

The day was still hot as hell though the sun had already dropped behind the hills as they headed in from the fields. Lee had pulled into the ranch yard, the last in the long line of trucks, hot and sweaty after twelve hours of driving. He felt beat down to nothing, it took the last of his energy to get out of the truck, turn in his tally to Jake, walk across the dusty yard to his cabin and ease himself down on the top step, trying to get a full breath. The job itself wasn’t hard physical work, driving the truck back and forth. Even the heat was to his liking—until it got too damned hot. But it was the stress of dealing with a few quarrelling braceros that would tighten up his lungs. He sat sucking air, slowly calming himself, watching the five other foremen stride across to their cabins, three gringos and two Mexican men, all brown from the sun and seeming comfortable in the heat, all of them at least a generation younger than Lee.

Well, he wasn’t letting on how beat he was, he needed the job, and he liked it here. He had plans here, he didn’t mean to move on until he was loaded with cash, and ready. But right now his shirt and pants stuck to him wringing wet, and his feet were swollen inside his boots. His eyes burned from the glare of the fields, from rows of broad melon leaves reflecting back the beating sun, and from sun bouncing off the hood of the truck. He was parched, dog tired, and his temper boiling from a run-in with the boy he’d picked for straw boss.

From the first morning, Lee had to work at establishing his authority. These men had different ways than the men he’d worked with at McNeil, and he was even rusty with the farm equipment. On that first morning, heading out of the ranch yard before daylight, driving a truck for the first time in years, following the line of trucks, he’d jerked the clutch so bad that the men, jammed into the truck bed, laughed and hooted and shouted good-natured Spanish obscenities at him. They’d eased along a dirt lane and sharply up the side of a levee to a thin track at the top, the old truck straining, then moving on fast through the darkness to keep up with the others. The thin ridge dropped steeply on both sides. The truck rocked and heaved as the field hands horsed around laughing and cuffing each other, thinking nothing of the drop, not giving a damn if they went over. Lee crouched over the wheel gripping hard with both hands, hoping to keep it on the narrow track. As the sky began to turn red, sunrise soon staining the fields, he could see an occasional turnoff angling down the bank on his left. On his right, almost directly under him, a concrete ditch surged with fast black water from the Colorado. He was mighty glad when he saw his own flag marker, ahead in the field below.

As he angled down off the levee, the rising dust from the trucks ahead filled his mouth and nose, dust crept into his lungs so thick that soon he was retching and gagging, coughing up specks of blood. Well, hell, maybe the emphysema would finish him right there in the stinking truck, and who would even care?

He slowed along the edge of the melon field and the men began piling out, lurching the truck harder, landing at a run to keep their balance beside the slow-moving vehicle, men peeling off into the melon rows. They got to work fast when they were picking on their own time, were paid by how much they could harvest. They didn’t look up from their work as the sun lifted, as the sky slowly bleached to white and the rising heat slicked sweat across their bare backs. They stopped only to drink from the six water coolers that were wired to the back of the truck, then got to work again. Lee, driving along feeling the truck jolt as they loaded the melons, couldn’t escape the sun’s reflection from the fields and from the truck’s hood and dashboard. The temperature inside the cab, even with the windows open, must be a hundred and thirty. He wished this were a horse operation instead of a farm, wished he were doing a job he cared about, something he could put his mind to.

By midmorning he’d pulled off his shirt. He felt cooked through. He grew bored with keeping tally on the pickers, marking down their loads as they dumped them into the truck bed. By noon the water coolers were empty and the truck riding low on its axles, its bed piled high with its first load of cantaloupes. Going back in for the noon meal, the men rode on the outside, clinging to the slats, their voices irritable now with heat and hunger, exploding in fast Spanish arguments, and the heavy, sweet smell of the cantaloupes sickened Lee. If he were twenty years younger, maybe he wouldn’t mind this routine. At his age, with the emphysema flaring up, working all day in this damnable heat wasn’t going to cut it for long. Where the hell had he gotten the notion that the hot desert was just what he longed for? It was early that afternoon when, observing the men at work, he picked out a straw boss to run interference for him.

Tony Valdez was a squarely built kid in his early twenties, with an easy way about him. Maybe too easy, but he looked like he could handle the men, and that was what Lee wanted. Valdez worked stripped to the waist, the silver cross hanging around his neck swinging as he bent to cut the fruit from the vines. Lee saw no prison tattoos on his sun-browned skin, and no sullenness in his face. “I’ll pay you two dollars a day extra,” he’d told Tony. “You’ll keep the arguments down, and help me with the tally.”

The boy’s shoulders had straightened. “I can do that.”

“Can you drive truck?”

“I can drive that truck.”

Lee had nodded, thinking Tony would do. But it wasn’t long before the kid was strutting like a Spanish rooster, goading the men. “Estoy el segundo jefe, you guys. Don’t give me any shit,” and the next thing Lee knew a fistfight erupted between Tony and a dark-skinned older man. Lee, jumping over a row of cantaloupes, grabbed the two of them and jerked Tony around to face him, his temper flaring hot.

“What the hell did I hire you for! To stop fights, not start them.”

Tony looked at him innocently. “I was only keeping order, señor . . .”

The men snickered.

Lee shoved Tony toward the rows and whirled around, staring at the idle crew. “The bunch of you get back to work or I’ll run your sorry asses clear to hell off the place.” He’d burned with rage, almost out of control. The other men looked at him, and quieted and turned away.

Lee didn’t think he had the authority to fire anyone, but they seemed to think he did. He looked Tony over, trying to quiet the fire in his belly. “If you can’t straw boss like a man, Valdez, I’ll pick someone who will.”

Tony quieted, too, looking at him first with anger, and then sheepishly. For the next three days Tony behaved himself, he didn’t goad the men, and he stopped two serious arguments capably enough. But then on Friday evening, when Lee moved to the right seat and let Tony drive, heading up the levee, the kid double-clutched it, jammed it into second and floorboarded it, shooting up the slope so fast the front wheels left the ground and the rear end skidded toward the drop-off. Lee grabbed the dashboard, and the pickers laughed and cheered.

“What the hell are you doing, Valdez! Slow down! This ain’t no cayuse you’re breaking!”

“Just getting the truck up the hill, señor.”

“Yeah, and have the damn thing in the canal, on top of the pickers.” He wanted to smash the kid’s face. “If you can’t do better than that, hombre, you’ll ride in the back from now on.” Lee had been mad and rightly so, but in the ranch yard as he swung out of the truck, he wondered if that much anger was called for, wondered at the explosion of blazing rage that had filled him.

Dusk was gathering as Delgado’s Cadillac pulled into the yard. Lee turned over his day’s tally to Jake and moved away to his cabin to sit down on the steps catching his breath. Maybe he’d get used to this gig, and maybe he wouldn’t. On the hot evening breeze, the smell of beans and chili from the cookhouse drew him. Rising, he moved inside the cabin to douse himself with water, to gulp water, then he headed on out and down the steps, anticipating an isolated supper at the long tables, among the Spanish-speaking men.

Jake was just crossing from the house to the big white Cadillac parked beside the mess hall. There was no mistaking Ramon Delgado, as the boss stepped out. Looked like the fancy new car had been clean and shining when he left the home ranch this morning, before it picked up the day’s collection of road dust. Lee could see the gleam of red upholstery inside. Along the back shelf beneath the rear window lay a handsome serape carefully folded, and on the hood, where other cars had radiator ornaments, Delgado had mounted a set of polished, brass-tipped longhorns that reached out just to the edge of the fenders.

Ramon Delgado was a big man, half a head taller than Jake and maybe twenty pounds heavier. He looked to be all muscle under his Levi’s jacket and pearl-buttoned shirt. His boots were three colors of fine soft leather, heavily stitched in flower patterns. His black Stetson sported a silver hatband. Lee imagined a nice home place up in Hemet, maybe an adobe house low and rambling, green lawns irrigated by the Colorado and shaded by rows of date palms. Everything about Delgado looked rich and successful; and beneath the wide black brim, his face, hard-angled and square, had the look of a man to be wary of.

Beside him, Jake looked thin and dry, the leathery look of a cowman, faded frontier shirt, faded jeans and cracked boots. Lee watched the two men head inside the mess hall, eyeing the four bulging money bags they carried, bags marked with a bank logo that Lee couldn’t read, and each sealed at the top with a green drawstring and a metal clasp. Watching Delgado with speculation, he headed on in, to collect his pay.

The pickers, the minute they saw Delgado’s car, had piled out of the trucks laughing and talking and crowding fast into the mess hall for their wages. They were lined up inside, shoving and jostling, eager to pocket the week’s take, twenty to twenty-five dollars apiece, depending on how fast a fellow worked, more money than they’d ever see in Mexico. And the bags held, as well, the wages for Lee himself and for Jake and the other five foremen.

He knew from Jake that Delgado made the rounds to all four ranches every Friday, heading out from Hemet, knew that Blythe was his last stop, that he’d stay with Jake overnight, head back home in the morning. The same drill, week after week. Leave Hemet at dawn carrying all four payrolls, carrying enough cash to set a fellow up real nice.

Maybe not as much as Lee would like to have on him before heading for Mexico, but a nice start. And how could Delgado miss a week’s wages? The thought quickened Lee’s pulse, wondering where Delgado kept the money until he headed out. In the local Hemet bank, maybe picked it up the night before? Or in a home safe?

If the safe was one of those big walk-in jobs, that would be a poser. He wished he’d paid closer attention to the half-dozen master safe crackers he’d known over the years in one prison or another. Though he had learned some, all right.

But if there was a safe, what other kind of security did Delgado have? Dogs? Guards? Some kind of electronic device?

No, it would be better to hit him just as he started out in the morning from Hemet, wait until he was on the road alone, then force him over. He’d need firearms; and he needed to know what weapons Delgado carried, and where, what weapons he had stashed in that big Cadillac, and what weapons he carried on him.

But, picturing himself forcing Delgado’s car off the road, a tremor of fear touched Lee. Was he up to this? Up to handling Delgado alone, as he had always handled his victims in the past, except for those years he ran with Jake? After parting from Jake, he’d blown a couple of jobs, and when he took a good look at what he was now, an honest look at how he’d aged, at how weak he’d grown compared to the man he had been, he didn’t much like what he saw.

But then a dark sense of power kicked in, a sudden surge of certainty. He could do this. What was the matter with him? A dark vitality stirred his blood, strength burned in him, and a hard envy of Ramon Delgado, jealousy for all Delgado had that Lee had never had. A heady resentment boiled in him making him scoff at the idea he was too old to take down Delgado, that he was biting off more than he could handle.

He’d bring this off, he thought, smiling, he could take what he wanted and maybe—maybe he could set Jake up for the fall.

He thought about that, about laying the groundwork for Jake’s arrest, setting up the clues, maybe lift one of Jake’s guns from the house, with Jake’s fingerprints on it, maybe something else of Jake’s left “forgotten” under the seat of the Cadillac. He’d stash the money where no one would find it, return to the ranch innocent as a babe. And when the cops came nosing around he’d be there to sympathize with Lucita, to comfort her, to be enraged at Jake’s betrayal of all they’d had together.

If Lee could hear the cat’s whisper that Lucita would never believe such a story, that thought didn’t last long. The dark presence told him more forcefully that he could do this, he could lay out a foolproof scenario that left Jake guilty beyond doubt, a plan that even Lucita would have to believe.

It would take time to work it out, to put every detail in place. But, thinking about the plan as he moved through the mess hall to the pay table, his certainty, his self-satisfaction, was a dark itch within him.

Taking his turn at the table, where Jake and Delgado were dealing out the week’s cash, he collected his three days’ wages, pocketed the meager change and left the mess hall. He could see the cooks working back in the kitchen, could see that supper wouldn’t be set out on the long serving counter until the payroll had all been dealt with. Winding out between the lines of crowding men, he returned to his cabin smiling, liking his plan. He sat on the steps feeling bold and right, watching through the screens the crowd at the long table until a sudden sneeze behind him made him swing up off the steps turning, his fists clenched.