Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

Then I thought I heard L.Q. Navarro's voice say, 'The dice are out of the cup. Make 'em religious, bud.'

I limped forward and flung the door back on its hinges and pointed L.Q.'s revolver into the room.

Felix Ringo and a second man stood just beyond a worktable where Garland T. Moon was wrapped fast against the wood planks with chains that were clamped and boomed down on his chest and thighs. Moon's face was turned away from me, as though he were napping. The clothes of Ringo and the second man were streaked with soot and bits of hay and dried horse manure. Behind them, the flooring in the barn had been ripped up, the plaster board gouged out of a bunk area, a rusty hot water tank split open with an ax.

The room was hotter than it should have been, filled with a hot smell that at first I thought came from the lantern.

'You don't look too good, man,' Ringo said.

I could feel the muscles constrict across my back, just like someone had taken pliers to my spine. I propped one arm against the doorjamb and held the pistol level with the other.

The second man clutched a plastic bag full of credit cards in his hand. He had the scarred eyebrows of a prizefighter and small ears and hair so blond it was almost white.

'Both you boys put your hands behind your head and get down on your knees,' I said.

The second man studied my face, his tongue moving across his bottom lip. 'Fuck you, buddy,' he said, and bolted into the barn, crashing out the door into the yard.

But I didn't fire. Instead, I kept the .45 pointed at Ringo's face, my other hand holding on to the doorjamb for balance. When I took a step forward, the pain caused my jaw to drop open. I heard the van start up outside and drive out of the yard.

'You want to go to a hospital? I can do that for you, man,' Ringo said.

I eased my hand onto the worktable, inches from the JOX running shoe on Moon's foot, stiffening my arm for support. An odor like the smell of burned scrapings from a butchered hog rose into my face.

'Last chance, Ringo. Get on the floor,' I said.

'You're all mixed up. This is DEA. You don't got no business here.'

I pulled back the hammer on the revolver.

'Okay, man. My friend gonna come back with some local law. They gonna jam you up, man,' Ringo said, and knelt on the floor and laced his fingers behind his neck. He crinkled his nose, his mustache wiggling on his lip, as though he were about to sneeze.

I worked my way around the other side of the table. Moon's eyes were staring at nothing. The skin of his face looked shrunken on the bone, puckered and red like a rubber Halloween mask. The cloth of his flowered shirt was crisscrossed with scorch marks, and inside the scorch marks were lesions that looked like they had been cut into the skin with a laser.

The blowtorch was turned on its side by the far wall.

'I'll take a guess. Crystal coming in, counterfeit credit cards going out,' I said.

'Hey, the guapa you was in the sack with? Ask her. This is a federal operation, man. She gonna fuck you again, except this time you ain't gonna enjoy it.'

'If y'all were looking for some of your stash, you tortured the wrong guy. It was probably Darl Vanzandt and his friends who ripped you off.'

'You want to take me in? That's good, man. 'Cause I'm gonna be on a plane back to Mexico City tomorrow morning. So let's go do that, man.'

'I don't think so.'

His eyes studied my shirt front.

'What's that you got in your pocket?' he asked.

'This? It's funny you ask. A friend of mine dropped it down in Coahuila.'

A dark and fearful recognition grew in his face, like smoke rising in a glass jar.

I moved toward him, my hand sliding along the table for support. Inches away from my forearm, a viscous tear was glued in the corner of Moon's receded blue eye.

'I bet ole Moon spit in your face,' I said.

Felix Ringo rose to his feet and began running toward the back of the barn, his head twisted back toward me. He grabbed onto a stall door and pulled an automatic from an ankle holster and fired three times, the rounds slappi