A Texas Christmas

Chapter Five

“My father is a South American dictator,” Rick repeated, almost in shock.

“I’m afraid so.” Barbara pulled up a chair facing him and held his hand that was resting on the table. “They made me tell you. Nobody else wanted to. I’m so sorry.”

“But my mother said my father was dead,” he repeated blankly.

“She only wanted to protect you. Machado was in trouble with the Mexican authorities when he lived in the country because he was opposed to foreign interests trying to take over key industries where he lived. He organized protests even when he was in his teens. He was a natural leader. Later, Dolores didn’t dare tell you because Machado was the head of a fairly well-known international paramilitary group and that would have made you a target for any extremist with a grudge. He was in the news a lot when you were a child.”

“Does he know?” Rick persisted. “Does he know about me?”

Barbara bit her lower lip. “No. She never told him.” She sighed. “After Cash told me who your father was, I remembered something that Dolores told me. She said your father was only fourteen when he fathered you. She was older, seventeen, and there was no chance that her family would have let her marry him. She wanted you very much. So she had you, and never even told her parents who the father was. She kept her secret. At least, until she married your stepfather. Cash said that your stepfather got the truth out of her and used it to keep her with him. She didn’t dare protest or he’d have made your real identity known. A true charmer,” she added sarcastically.

“My stepfather was a sadist,” he said quietly. “I’ve never spoken of him to you. But he made my life hell, and my mother’s as well. I got in trouble with the law on purpose. I thought maybe somebody would check out my home life and see the truth and help us. But nobody ever did. Not until you came along and offered my mother work.”

“I tried to help,” she agreed. “Dolores liked cooking for me, but your stepfather didn’t like her having friends or any interest outside of him. He was insanely jealous.”

“He also couldn’t keep a job. Money was tight. You used to sneak me food,” he recalled with a warm smile. “You even came to visit me in the detention center. My mother appreciated that. My stepfather wouldn’t let her come.”

“I knew that. I did what I could. I tried to get our police chief at the time to investigate, but he was the sort of man who didn’t want to rock the boat.” She laughed. “Can you imagine Cash Grier turning a blind eye to something like that?”

“He’d have had my stepfather pilloried in the square.” Rick smiled, then sobered. “My father is a dictator,” he repeated again. It was hard to believe. He’d spent his whole life certain that his biological father was long dead.

“A deposed dictator,” Barbara corrected. “His country is going to the dogs under its new administration. People are dying. He wants to accomplish a military coup, but he needs all the help he can get. Which brings us to our present situation,” she added. “A paramilitary group is going down to Barrera with him, including some of Eb Scott’s guys, some Europeans, one African merc and with ex-army Major Winslow Grange, Jason Pendleton’s foreman on his Comanche Wells ranch, to lead them.”

“All that firepower and the government hasn’t noticed?”

“It wouldn’t do them a lot of good. Machado’s in Mexico, just over the border,” Barbara said. “They can’t mount an invasion to stop him. But they can try to find a way to be friendly without overt aid.”

“Ah. I see. I’m the goat.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“They’re going to tether me out to attract the puma.”

“Puma.” She laughed. “Funny, but one of my customers said that’s what the local population calls ‘El General.’ They say he’s cunning and dangerous like a cat, but that he can purr when he wants to.” Her face softened. “For a dictator, he’s held in high esteem by most democracies. He’s intelligent, kind, he reveres women and he isn’t afraid to fight for justice.”

“Does he wear a red cape?” Rick murmured.

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Who’s in on this?” he asked narrowly. “Does my lieutenant know?”

“Yes,” she said. “And there’s a covert operative somewhere in your organization,” she added. “I got that tidbit from a patrol officer who has a friend on the force in San Antonio. A guy named Sims.”

“Sims.” His face closed up. “He’s got connections. And he’s a total ethical wipeout. I hate having a guy like that on the force. He got careless with a pistol and almost shot himself in the foot. He’s the reason we just had a gun safety workshop.”

“Learning gun safety is not a bad thing.”

He sighed. “I know.” He was trying to adjust to the shock of his parentage. “Why didn’t my mother tell me?” he burst out.

“She was trying to protect you. I’m certain that she would have told you eventually,” she added. “She just didn’t have time before she died.”

He grimaced. “What am I supposed to do now, walk over the border, find the general and say, hey, guess what, I’m your kid?”

“I don’t really think that would be wise,” she replied. “I’m not sure he’d believe it in the first place. Would you?”

“Now there’s a question.” He leaned back in the chair, his dark eyes focused on the tablecloth. “I suppose I could have a DNA profile done. There’s a private company that can at least rule out paternity by blood type. If mine is compatible with the general’s, it might help convince him … Wait a minute,” he added coldly. “Why the hell should I care?”

“Because he’s your father, Rick,” she said gently. “Even though he doesn’t know.”

“And the government’s only purpose in telling me is to help reunite us,” he returned angrily.

“Well, no, they want someone to convince the general to make a trade agreement with us once he’s back in power. They’re certain that he will be, which is why they want you to make friends with him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to know he has a grown son who’s a cop,” he said coldly. “Especially since he’s wanted by our government for kidnapping.”

She leaned forward with her chin resting in her hands, propped by her elbows. “You could arrest him,” she pointed out. “And then befriend him in jail. Like the mouse that took the thorn out of the lion’s paw and became its friend.”

He made a face at her. “I can’t walk across the border and arrest anyone. I might have been born in Mexico, but I’m an American citizen. And I did it the hard way,” he added firmly. “Legally.”

She grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “I know you sympathize with all the people hiding out here who couldn’t afford to wait for permission. In some of their countries, they could be killed just for paying too much attention to the wrong people.”

“It’s very bad in some Central American states,” she pointed out.

“It’s very bad anywhere on our border.”

“And getting worse.”

He got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. His big hand rested on the coffeemaker as he switched it off. “Who’s the mole in my office?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “I only know that Sims told his friend, Cash Grier’s patrolman, about it. He said it was someone from a federal agency, working undercover.”

“I wonder how Sims knew.”

“Maybe he’s the mole,” she teased.

“Unlikely. Most feds have too much respect for the law to abuse it. Sims actually suggested that we confiscate a six-pack of beer from a convenience store as evidence in some pretended case and threaten the clerk with jail if he told on us.”

“Good grief! And he works for the police?” she exclaimed, horrified.

“Apparently,” he replied. “I didn’t like what he said, and I told him so. He seemed repentant, but I’m not sure he really was. Cocky kid. Real attitude problem.”

“Doesn’t that sound familiar?” she asked the room at large.

“I never suggested breaking the law after I went through the academy and swore under oath to uphold it,” he replied.

“Are you sure you didn’t overreact, my darling?” she asked gently.

“If I did, so did Cassaway. She was hotter under the collar than I was.” He laughed shortly. “And then she beat the lieutenant on the firing range and he let out a bad word. She marched right up to him and said she was offended and he shouldn’t talk that way around her.” He glanced at her ruefully. “Hence, the rose.”

“Oh. An apology.” She looked disappointed. “Your lieutenant is very attractive,” she mused. “And eligible. I thought he might find Miss Cassaway interesting. Or something.”

“Maybe he does,” he said vaguely. “God knows why. She’s good with a gun, I’ll give her that, but she’s a walking disaster in other ways. How she ever got a job with the police, I’ll never know.” He didn’t like talking about Cassaway and the lieutenant. It got under his skin, for reasons he couldn’t understand.

“She sounds very nice to me.”

“Everybody sounds nice to you,” he replied. He smiled at her. “You could find one good thing to say about the devil, Mom. You look for the best in people.”

“You look for the worst,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “That’s my job.”

He was thoughtful, and morose. She felt even more guilty when she saw how disturbed he really was.

“I wish there had been some other way to handle this,” she muttered angrily. “I hate being made the fall guy.”

“Hey, I’m not mad at you,” he said, and bent to kiss her hair. “I just … don’t know what to do.” He sighed.

“‘When in doubt, don’t,’” she quoted. She frowned. “Who said that?”

“Beats me, but it’s probably good advice.” He put down his cooling coffee and stretched, yawning. “I’m beat. Too many late nights finishing paperwork and going on stakeouts. I’m going to bed. I’ll decide what to do in the morning. Maybe it will come to me in a dream or something,” he added.

“Maybe it will. I’m just sorry I had to be the one to tell you.”

“I’ll get used to the idea,” he assured her. “I just need a little time.”

She nodded.

But time was in short supply. Two days later, a tall, elegant man with dark hair and eyes, wearing a visitor’s tag but no indication of his identity, walked into Rick’s office and closed the door.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

Rick stared at him. “Do I know you?” he asked after a minute, because the man seemed vaguely familiar.

“You should,” he replied with a grin. “But it’s been a while since we caught Fuentes and his boys in the drug sting in Jacobsville. I’m Rodrigo Ramirez. DEA.”

“I knew you looked familiar!” Rick got up and shook the other man’s hand. “Yes, it has been a while. You and your wife bought a house here last year.”

He nodded. “I work out of San Antonio DEA now instead of Houston, and she works for the local prosecutor, Blake Kemp, in Jacobsville. With her high blood pressure, I’d rather she stayed at home, but she said she’d do it when I did it.” He shrugged. “Neither of us was willing to try to change professions at this late date. So we deal with the occasional problem.”

“Are you mixed up in the Barrera thing as well?” Rick asked curiously.

“In a way. I’m related, distantly, to a high official in Mexico,” he said. “It gives me access to some privileged information.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how much they’ve told you.”

Rick motioned Ramirez into a chair and sat down behind his desk. “I know that El General has a son who’s a sergeant with San Antonio P.D.,” he said sarcastically.

“So you know.”

“My mother told me. They wanted me to know, but nobody had the guts to just say it,” he bit off.

“Yes, well, that could have been a big problem. Depending on how you were told, and by whom. They were afraid of alienating you.”

“I don’t see what help I’m going to be,” Rick said irritably. “I didn’t know my biological father was still alive, much less who he was. The general, I’m told, has no clue that I even exist. I doubt he’d take my word for it.”

“So do I. Sometimes government agencies are a little thin on common sense,” he added. He crossed his elegant long legs. “I’ve been elected, you might say, to do the introductions, by my cousin.”

“Your cousin …?”

“He’s the president of Mexico.”

“Well, damn!”

Ramirez smiled. “That’s what I said when he told me to do it.”

“Sorry.”

“No problem. It seems we’re both stuck with doing something that goes against the grain. I think the general is going to react very badly. I wish there was someone who could talk to him for us.”

“Like my mother talked to me for the feds?” he mused.

“Exactly.”

Rick frowned. “You know, Gracie Pendleton got along quite well with him. She refused to even think of pressing charges. She was asked, in case we could talk about extradition of Machado with the Mexican government. She said no.”

“I heard. She’s my sister-in-law, although she’s not related to my wife. Don’t even ask,” he added, waving his hand. “It’s far too complicated to explain.”

“I won’t. But I remember Glory very well,” he reminded Ramirez. “Cash Grier and I taught her how to shoot a pistol without destroying cars in the parking lot,” he added with a grin.

Ramirez laughed. “So you did.” He sobered. “Gracie might be willing to speak to the general, if we could get word to him,” Ramirez said.

“We had a guy in jail here who was one of the higher-ups in the Fuentes organization. He’s going on probation tomorrow.”

“An opportunity.” Ramirez chuckled.

“Apparently, a timely one. I’ll ask him if he’d have the general call Gracie. Now, how do you get Gracie to do that dirty work for you?”

“I’ll have my wife bribe her with flowers and chocolate and Christmas decorations.”

“Excuse me?” Rick asked.

“Gracie loves to decorate for Christmas. My wife has access to a catalog of rare antique decorations. Gracie can be bribed, if you know how,” he added.

Rick smiled. “An assistant district attorney working a bribe. What if somebody tells her boss?”

“He’ll laugh,” Ramirez assured him. “It’s for a just cause, after all.”

Rick started down to the jail in time to waylay the departing felon. He spoke to the probation officer on the way and arranged the conversation.

The man was willing to take a message to the general, for a price. That put them on the hot seat, because neither man could be seen offering illegal payment to a felon.

Then Rick had a brainstorm. “Wait a second.” He’d spotted the janitor emptying trash baskets nearby. He took the man to one side, handed him two fifties and told him what to do.

The janitor, confused but willing to help, walked over to the prisoner and handed him the money. It was from him, he added, since the prisoner had been pleasant to him during his occupation in the jail. He wanted to help him get started again on the outside.

The prisoner, smiling, understood immediately what was going on. He took the money graciously, with a bow, and proceeded to sing the janitor’s praises for his act of generosity. So the message was sent.

Gwen Cassaway was sitting at Rick’s desk when he went back to his office, in the chair reserved for visitors. He hated the way his heart jumped at the sight of her. He fought down that unwanted feeling.

“Do they have to issue us these chairs?” she complained when he came in, closing the door behind him. “Honestly, only hospital waiting rooms have chairs that are more uncomfortable.”

“The idea is to make you want to leave,” he assured her. “What’s up?” he added absently as he removed his holstered pistol from his belt and slid it into a desk drawer, then locked the drawer before he sat down. “Something about the case I assigned you to?”

She hesitated. This was going to be difficult. “Something else. Something personal.”

He stared at her coolly. “I don’t discuss personal issues with colleagues. We have a staff psychologist if you need counseling.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, do you have a steel rod glued to your spine?” she burst out. Then she realized what she’d said, clapped her hand over her mouth and looked horrified at the slip.

He didn’t react. He just stared.

“I’m sorry!” she said, flustered. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to say that …!”

“Cassaway,” he began.

“It’s about the general,” she blurted out.

His dark eyes narrowed. “Lately, everything is. Don’t tell me. You’re having an affair with him and you have to confess for the sake of your job.”

She drew in a long breath. “Actually, the general is my job.” She got up, opened her wallet and handed it to Rick.

He did an almost comical double take. He looked at her as if she’d grown leaves. “You’re a fed?”

She nodded and grimaced. She took back the wallet after he’d looked at it again, just to make sure it didn’t come from the toy department in some big store.

She put it back in her fanny pack. “Sorry I couldn’t say something before, but they wouldn’t let me,” she said heavily as she sat down again, with her hands folded on her jeans.

“What the hell are you doing pretending to be a detective?” he asked with some exasperation.

“It was my boss’s idea. I did start out with Atlanta P.D., but I’ve worked in counterterrorism for the agency for about four years now,” she confessed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “This wasn’t my idea. They wanted me to find out how much you knew about your family history before they accidentally said or did something that would upset you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve just been presented with a father who’s an exiled South American dictator, whose existence I was unaware of. They didn’t think that would upset me?”

“I asked Cash Grier to talk to your mother,” she said. “You can’t tell anybody. I was ordered not to talk to you about it. But they didn’t say I couldn’t ask somebody else to do it.”

He was touched by her concern. Not that he liked her any better. “I wondered about your shooting skills,” he said after a minute. “Not exactly something I expect in a run-of-the-mill detective.”

She smiled. “I spend a lot of time on the gun range,” she replied. “I’ve been champion of my unit for two years running.”

“Our lieutenant was certainly surprised when he found himself outdone,” he remarked.

“He’s very nice.”

He glared at her.

She wondered what he had against his superior officer, but she didn’t comment. “I was told that a DEA officer is going to try to get someone to speak to General Machado about you.”

“Yes. Gracie Pendleton will talk with him. Machado likes her.”

“He kidnapped her!” she exclaimed. “And the man she’s now married to!”

He nodded. “I know. He also saved her from being assaulted by one of Fuentes’s men,” he added.

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“She’s fond of him, too,” he replied. “Apparently, he makes friends even of his enemies. A couple of feds I know think he’s one of the better insurgents,” he added dryly.

“He did install democratic government in Barrera,” she pointed out. “He instituted reforms that did away with unlawful detention and surveillance, he invited the foreign media in to oversee elections and he ousted half a dozen petty politicians who were robbing the poor and making themselves into feudal lords. From what we understand, one of those petty politicians helped Machado’s second-in-command plan the coup that ousted him.”

“While he was out of the country negotiating trade agreements,” Rick agreed. “Stabbed in the back.”

“Exactly. We’d love to have him back in power, but we can’t actually do anything about it,” she said quietly. “That’s where you come in.”

“The general doesn’t even know me, let alone that I’m his biological son,” he repeated. “Even if he did, I don’t think he’s going to jump up and invite me to baseball games.”

“Soccer,” she corrected. “He hates baseball.”

His eyebrows lifted. “How do you know that?”

“I have a file on him,” she said. “He likes strawberry ice cream, his favorite musical star is Marco Antonio Solís, he wears size 12 shoes and he plays classical guitar. Oh, he was an entertainer on a cruise ship in his youth.”

“I did know about that. Not his shoe size,” he added with twinkling dark eyes.

“He’s never been romantically linked with any particular woman,” she continued. “Although he was good friends with an American anthropologist who went to live in his country. She’d found an ancient site that was revolutionary and she was involved in a dig there. Apparently, there are some interesting ruins in Barrera.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nobody knows. We couldn’t even ascertain her name. What I was able to ferret out was only gossip.”

He folded his hands on his desk. “So, you’re a fed, I’m one detective short and you’re supposed to be heading a murder investigation for me,” he said curtly. “What do I do about that?”

“I’ve been working on it,” she protested. “I’m making progress, too. As soon as we get the DNA profile back, I may be able to make an arrest in the college freshman’s murder, and solve a cold case involving another dead coed. I have lots of information to go on, now, including eyewitness testimony that can place the suspect at the murdered woman’s apartment just before she was killed.”

He sat up. “Nice!”

“Thank you. I have an appointment to talk to her best friend, also, the one who took the photo that the suspect showed up in. She gave a statement to the crime scene detective that the victim had complained about visits from a man who made her uneasy.”

“They’ll let you continue to work on my case, even though you’re a fed?”

“Until something happens in the general’s case,” she said. “I’m keeping up appearances.”

“You slipped through the cracks,” he translated.

She laughed. “Thanksgiving is just over the horizon and my boss gets a lot of business done in D.C. going from one party to another with his wife.”

“I see.”

“When is Mrs. Pendleton going to talk to the general, did the DEA agent say?”

He shook his head. “It’s only a work in progress right now.” He leaned back in his chair. “I thought my father was dead. My mother told me he was killed when I was just a baby. I didn’t realize I had a father who never even knew I was on the way.”

“He loves children,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but I’m not a child.”

“I noticed.”

He glared at her.

She flushed and averted her eyes.

He felt guilty. “Sorry. I’m not dealing with this well.”

“I can understand that,” she replied. “I know it must be hard for you.”

She had a nice voice, he thought. Soft and medium in pitch, and she colored it in pastels with emotion. He liked her voice. Her choice of T-shirts, however, left a lot to be desired. She had on one today that read Save a Turkey, Eat a Horse for Thanksgiving. He burst out laughing.

“Do you have an open line to a T-shirt manufacturer?” he asked.

“What? Oh!” She glanced down at her shirt. “Well, sort of. There’s this online place that lets you make your own T-shirts. I do a lot of business with them, designing my own.”

Now he understood her quirky wardrobe.

“Drives my boss nuts,” she added with a grin. “He thinks I’m not dignified enough on the job.”

“I’m sure you have casual days, even in D.C.”

“I don’t work in D.C.,” she said. “I get sent wherever I’m needed. I live out of a suitcase mostly.” She smiled wanly. “It’s not much of a life. I loved it when I was younger, but I’d really love to have someplace permanent.”

“You could get a job in a local office.”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Meanwhile, I’ve got one right here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was at first,” she added. “I would have liked to be honest.”

He sensed that. He grimaced. “It’s hard for me, too, trying to understand the past. My mother, my adopted mother,” he said, just to clarify the point, “said that the general was only fourteen when he fathered me. I’ll be thirty-one this year, in late December. That would make him—” he stopped and thought “—forty-five.” His eyebrows arched. “That’s not a great age for a dictator.”

She laughed. “He was forty-one when he became president of Barrera,” she said. “In those four years, he did a world of good for his country. His adopted country.”

“Yes, well, he’s wanted in this country for kidnapping,” he reminded her.

“Good luck trying to get him extradited,” she cautioned. “First the Mexican authorities would have to actually apprehend him, and he’s got a huge complex in northern Sonora. One report is that he even has a howitzer.”

“True story,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Pancho Villa, who fought in the Mexican Revolution, was a folk hero in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. John Reed, a Harvard graduate and journalist, actually lived with him for several months.”

“And wrote articles about his adventures there. They made them into a book,” she said, shocking him. “I had to buy it from a rare book shop. It’s one of my treasures.”