Ringer by Brian M Wiprud Read Free Book Online

in Texas. He was lucky to have even been that close to New York.
    The border crossing had gone wrong when the pickup truck stalled in the desert. Border patrols spotted their flashlights as Paco, the driver, and four other men tried to coax the truck back to life. They were rounded up and put into a school bus with fifty other illegals. Paco had tossed his bag of guns into the scrub, but when he was patted down the gringos missed the hatchet in the small of his back. That is how the Honduran farmers he grew up with carried their hatchets home, tucked into the back of their pants, blade nestled between their shoulder blades, where scar tissue and calluses formed to protect them from the edges.
    At a transfer point near the border, Paco ducked back under the bus and scuttled behind a portapotty. As his countrymen were being herded by flashlights into a set of new buses, Paco skipped off across the dark desert, headed for a parking lot. He had to climb a fence to get there, but he found haven in the bed of a pickup truck next to some roofing supplies under a bed cover.
    He awoke hours later when the owner of the truck drove out of the parking lot. Paco had no idea where he would end up, but when the truck stopped, it was at a convenience store. The driver was inside buying coffee when Paco crept from under the cover. The amber glow of a Texas dawn warmed him as he headed east along the highway.
    After an hour’s walk, the sun high, he heard a truck pulling onto the shoulder behind him. He expected the border patrol, but saw it was a van packed with migrant workers. The driver motioned to him. Paco knew he could not walk to New York. He needed to get to Houston, soon, to catch that bus. Since he’d ditched his bag with the guns in the desert before the border patrol grabbed him, he had no weapons and did not know what he would do to kill his target.
    So Paco shambled over to the car window, where the driver’s round scarred face shone darkly like a hammered brass plate. They spoke in Spanish, naturally, so you will want to use subtitles.
    “Work?” the driver said.
    “I am headed to Houston.”
    “My crew is a man short.”
    “I need transport to Houston. I have work in New York.”
    The mention of New York seemed to impress Plate Face. “That is a long way. You have money?”
    “Can you get me to Houston?”
    “You come across last night?”
    “I need a ride.”
    “I know friends who can help. If you have money.”
    “How far can you take me?”
    “Not to Houston, but in that direction. And like I said…”
    “Is there room in there?”
    “There’s always room for another countryman.”
    The passengers slid open the side door and helped Paco squeeze inside.
    Lurching forward, the van rattled back onto the highway, heading east.
    Paco was back on his way to New York.
    Slowly.

CHAPTER
    NINE
    THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES WERE still fresh on my mind when I exited the subway at Lexington and East Seventy-seventh Street and walked east. I had made the call to this woman Dixie and had arranged an appointment immediately. God was still on my side. Better to get this business with the ring completed as soon as possible.
    The meeting location was near an esplanade, a raised pedestrian boulevard perched over the FDR Drive and the East River. The access to this esplanade was five long crosstown blocks east of the subway, at an East Eighty-first Street cul-de-sac. It was a nice day so I did not mind the exercise, but it was warm so my jacket was thumbed over my shoulder. When I reached the esplanade, a panoramic view of the East River lay before me. Fat power yachts and tour boats plowed the turgid green river, and glassy green apartment buildings across the channel on Roosevelt Island twinkled in the afternoon sun. I laid a course north along the esplanade through a steady stream of Rollerbladers and dog walkers. Benches faced the water to my right and were strewn with sunbathers.
    Sturdy stone apartment buildings on my