Beau pulled up and took a heavy black vinyl sports bag from the rear of his Cherokee. He slung it over his shoulder, blipped the lock on the car, crossed the pavement and stopped at the door. He unlocked it, pushed down the handle with his elbow and backed his way inside. The interior was simple. The front door opened into the office, with the desk, some pot plants, a standard lamp and a sofa that had been pushed back against the wall. There was a second door, opposite the street door, that led to a corridor that went all the way to the back of the building. There was a kitchenette, a bathroom and, at the end, a small cell that could be locked.

The safe was in the kitchen, the kettle and a couple of dirty mugs resting atop it. Beau spun the dial three times — four-nine-eight — and opened the heavy cast iron door. He unzipped the bag and spread it open. It was full of paper money.

Fifteen big ones.

The smell of it wafted into the stuffy room. Beau loved that smell.

He took out the cash, stacked the fifties in neat piles and locked the safe.

He locked the front door, got back into his Cherokee and headed for the hospital.

* * *

Hank was sitting up in bed, his cellphone pressed between his head and shoulder while his right hand was occupied with tamping tobacco into the bowl of the pipe is his left hand. He was in his early sixties, same as Beau was, and, lying there in bed like that, he looked it. Man, did he ever look old. The whole of his right side was swathed in bandages and there was a drip running into a canula in the back of his hand. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and that added on a few extra years. The colour had leeched from his face and now his skin was as white as the sheets the clan folks used to bleach up special for a Saturday night cross-burning session. He wasn’t wearing anything above the waist and his arms — Beau remembered them when they were thick with muscle — looked withered and old. The tattoo of the snake that he had had done in Saigon was wrinkled and creased where once it had been tightly curled around his bicep.

Old age, Beau thought. That was the real reaper. Coming for all of us. Still, he thought: I’d rather eat five pounds of cactus thorns and shit sharp needles than look like that.

He raised a hand in greeting and Hank reciprocated with a nod, mouthing that he would be two minutes before speaking into the receiver again: “I’m telling you, Maxine, the judge don’t give a sweet fuck about that. What he’s gonna get now ain’t a pimple on a fat man’s ass compared to what he’s gonna get. If he don’t make it for the hearing tomorrow he’ll make an example out of him. I’m telling you, no shit, he’s looking at five years before he even gets a sniff of parole. Five. Is that what you want for him? No? Then you better tell me where he’s at.”

Beau could hear the buzz of a female voice from the receiver.

There was a coffee machine in the hall and Beau went outside for two brews in white Styrofoam cups. He searched the small wicker basket next to the machine for a packet of Coffee-mate, came up empty, went back through into the room and found a bowl of sugar instead. He spooned a couple into both cups, stirring the sludgy brown liquid until it looked a little more appealing.

“Fine. Where — Pounders? Alright, then. I’m gonna send someone to go and get him.”

Beau sat down and stared at his old friend. He thought about the first time they had met. 1976. They’d graduated from the Border Patrol Academy and been posted up in Douglas at about the same time. Hank had been a uniformed cop near the border in El Centro, California, before coming on duty with the B.P.. The two men were partnered up on a cold, dark night in February. They had been assigned a wide sector up near the old copper-smelting operation near Douglas. The air stank of sulphur and you could smell it in your clothes and taste it on your tongue for days after you had been out at night. On the other hand, it wasn’t all bad: the train that circulated the edge of the smelter’s slag piles would dump three-ton buckets of bright orange, liquid ore over the hundred-foot-high waste bed that lit up the borderland with a brilliant flow of man-made lava that you could see for miles around.

The two of them were thankful for the glow on that particular evening; they were laid up in wait for a group of marijuana backpackers who, according to the word they’d heard, were headed north. They were scouting the desert trails looking for them; Beau had his .357 revolver and a.12 gauge pump shotgun loaded with buckshot. Hank had the same .357 but, instead of the shotgun, he had a .30 calibre M1 Carbine with a thirty-round banana magazine for extra firepower. The M1 wasn’t legitimate load-out for the Border Patrol but, the way Hank saw it, there was truth in the adage “peace through superior firepower.” If the bad guys had .22s, you wanted .44s. You always wanted the upper hand. That was the logic and it made sense to Beau, too.

As they walked south on the desert trail they heard the faint crunch of footsteps ahead. They thought it must have been cattle at first but then Beau remembered the rancher had moved his herd onto a different pasture the week before. The mules were coming right at them. They raised their weapons and called out the order to stop. The bad guys were armed and they capped the first shot, the muzzle flash so close at hand that Beau was temporarily blinded by the burst of bright white light that scorched across his retinas. He fired back with the.12 gauge and emptied it. Hank took over with the M1, the mules firing back as they started to retreat. The smelter train made a delivery of glowing slag and, in the sudden flare as the embers crashed to the ground, Beau’s vision cleared as he turned to look at the profile of the man beside him. It was the instant of fullest illumination and the image was vivid, clear — and weird — enough to have stayed with him ever since. Hank looked like he was close to the moment of sexual release, balls-deep with a raging hard-on and ready to blow. He was smiling in ecstasy. The son of a bitch had this wicked-ass smirk on his face as he ripped through the clip. He wasn’t scared. He was enjoying it. Beau knew that feeling from ‘Nam, too, and it was all he needed to take out his .357 and start warming up the barrel.

“I’m serious, Maxine,” Hank was saying, “if he comes back, you call me right away. He really doesn’t want to rile me up right now. I’m not in the mood to go chasing him down all over the state and, if he makes me do that, I ain’t promising he don’t get brought back in cuffs and with a bloody nose. You hearing me straight, darling? I ain’t messing. Don’t you dare make me look like a fool, now.”

He ended the call.

“You ain’t chasing anyone tonight, partner,” Beau said, dropping down onto the room’s small sofa.

“She don’t know that.”

“Who is it?”

“Fellow named George Bailey. Been stealing cars. This time, though, the dumb fuck had a pistol on him while he was doing it. ‘Possession of a concealed weapon,’ he’s looking at five, minimum, probably seven or eight depending on which judge he gets. He decided he’d take his chances on the road, I’m trying to persuade his lovely girlfriend” — that word was loaded with sarcasm — “otherwise. He’s out getting drunk so I’m going to send George McCoy to go pick him up. Unless you wanna do it?”

“Uh-huh,” Beau said with a big smile, shaking his head. “I’m not into that no more.”

“Only the big game for you now, partner?”

“That’s right.”

“What was the last one?”

“Mexican.”

“And?”

“Not so bad.”

Beau had finished the job the night before. It had been an easy one by his usual standards. The Lucianos had interests in a couple of big casinos in Vegas and one of their croupiers, this wiry beaner by the name of Eduardo del Rio, had entertained the thought that he could run south with fifty grand of their money. The family had sent Beau after him. It had been pretty easy. He must have been the most dumbshit robber in the Mexican state of Sonora that night and it had been an easy bust. He had run straight home to his wife and Beau had just to wait there for him. He’d been a little punchy when Beau confronted him but his attitude had adjusted just as soon as he starting looking down the barrel of Beau’s.12 gauge pump.