The Creed of Violence

THREE

AWBONE HAD A decision to make as he sat in the idling truck iforty miles east of Fort Bliss. Primal simplicity would dictate he forget El Paso. Best he swing south to Socorro or Zaragaza, then stake his way north to Juarez. People on the verge of a bloodletting will always pay top dollar for weapons and a truck. He had enough gasoline to make the journey and he'd robbed both men before he burned their bodies.

He smoked as he looked out toward the bladed hills that preceded El Paso. On that day in the year of our Lord, Rawbone was forty-five years old. On the truck seat was a photo he'd taken from the driver's wallet. He and his wife were posed on the platform of the Stanton Street Depot with their blank-faced kids.

He knew the depot well from that other life. He'd met his wife just blocks away on the Lerdo Tramway. Mules pulling the streetcar in the rain. Her voice like candlesmoke when he asked could he sit beside her. He swore his youth belonged to someone else, not him. Though he closed his eyes, the stillness of distance did nothing to strip the past away. It was there yet, forsaken but not forgotten.

There had been a city attorney in El Paso. A more corrupt or kinder man he'd never known. Wadsworth Burr would tell Rawbone, "Things happen that cannot be explained by any laws we know and they carry the damn secret with them all the way to our oblivion."

RAWBONE DROVE TO the barrio he'd known when married, only to find it gone. In the oppressive heat he walked a block of brick storefronts that had once been the adobes he frequented. The alley where they had lived was now a routeway for telephone poles cluttered with wire. His wife had been dead years, this much he knew. His son ... was a ghost.

He lit a cigarette and surveyed what once had been. On the corner of the alley where the sewing factory had stood was now a pawnshop; opposite was a gun seller where in one window was an ad that featured Bat Masterson with a Savage .32 automatic ... the ten-shot quickie ... A TENDERFOOT, read the ad, WITH A SAVAGE COULD RUN THE WORST SHARPSHOOTER IN THE WEST RIGHT OFF THE RANGE. In the other shop window was another advertisement. This depicted a woman in bedclothes aiming a Savage at the viewer: THE BANISHER OF BURGLAR FEAR ...

The barrio hadn't changed, he thought, it's only been dry fuckin' cleaned.

OVERLOOKING DOWNTOWN WAS the Satterthwaite Addition. There was a dreamy tranquility to those manicured estates as the sun fell away beyond the far mountains. Wadsworth Burr lived in a huge Missionstyle house near the corner of Yandell and Corto.

Rawbone was shown to the den by a young Oriental girl, who moved with an airy silence over the tiled floor. The high ceiling kept the rooms cool just as he remembered.

Burr sat at a campaign desk before a grand bay window from where one could see the Rio Grande wend its way through a withering sweep of desert.

Burr was not much older than Rawbone, but to see this once-noted attorney now was a study in startling contrasts. He had just begun the morphine shortly before that July Fourth Rawbone abandoned his family.

"You look like something straight out of Dickens, or at the very least, Hugo," said Burr.

"I'm in dire need, if that's what you're saying."

Burr motioned toward a serving cart with its chorus line of liquors. Rawbone tossed his derby aside. As he poured he saw Burr's wrists were mere belt widths and his scooped-out cheeks and boned-down jaw more likely features you'd see on a slumworn tramp.

Rawbone took a drink. Passing around the desk, he shook Burr's hand and noticed a hypodermic waiting on a white dinner napkin.

"You should have stuck to whiskey."

"But I had such an overwhelming need to express my character flaws."

As Rawbone walked over to the window, Burr asked, "What brought you out of exile?"

"I stumbled upon a business opportunity."

"Ahhh. I'll curb my curiosity."

Rawbone kept looking out the window as the earth began to tint under dusk. "I see the Addition is called Sunset Hills now."

"Yes ... it has a certain cemeterial ring, doesn't it? It seemed Mr. Satterthwaite suffered a reversal of fortune, which is something, I think, you should particularly note."

Burr reached for a sheet of letter paper and an ink pen.

"I see you still prefer them Chinese," said Rawbone.

Burr wrote something on the sheet of paper, folded it, then set it like a pup tent on his desk. "There has always been a place in my heart for deviance and passivity."

"I walked the barrio. Adobe Row is gone."

"It was a reasonable eventuality. All cultures prefer to replace someone else's vanities with their own."

Rawbone came around the desk again. He took from his pocket a bill of lading and handed it to Burr. "It's from an import-export shipper here in El Paso. What do you know of it?"

Burr studied the piece of paper. "I don't know the company. But I see these are items for building an icehouse." He handed it back. "You and the makings for refrigeration tests the limits of the imagination."

"There's a revolution coming," said Rawbone.

"It's here."

"Weapons will sell for a premium. As will three-ton trucks."

"Leave the city tonight," said Burr. "Go to Juarez. I'll arrange introductions to some very private people."

Rawbone's attention seemed to have drifted momentarily. "What do you know about the boy?"

Burr studied his friend carefully. "He wouldn't be a boy now, would he?"

"Is he here?"

Burr pointed to the paper tent on his desk. Rawbone took it up between two fingers and read: Wk,a4 can'4 be for-o44en, mvs4 remain forjo44en. Rawbone then folded and refolded the paper and put it in a coat pocket.

"You can take up in the apartment above the garage. I have plenty of clothes. Some will fit you. Look the part."

"Thanks, Wadsworth."

He poured another glass and reached for his derby. As he started out Burr, upon reflection, said, "Consider your options but don't get lured into some lost cause." Rawbone stopped partway across the room and looked back. "You were always at your best," said Burr, "when you were selfish and remorseless, with just a hint of humor."

"I'll note it, friend."

"Note it well. The city is not like it was. There's violence at hand. Undercover agents everywhere. More sheriffs, more law enforcement, more Rangers. And now the Bureau of Investigation."

"It's good to know we're in such efficient hands."

"There's a new law . . . the Mann Act. It gives the BOI a wide latitude when it comes to national security investigations. They have offices in the Angelus Hotel. And you know who's in charge ... Justice Knox."