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2.

It wasn't long after Jackie left that all Hell broke loose.
Tommy Wainwright was yappin' me up while I washed some glasses and set them to dry. The suits had finished their drinks and left. No tip. You'd think guys dressed like that could afford to leave one, but they was in my bar drinking ginger ale, too.
Tommy had just asked for another Coors when five or six guys, more suits, came in, catching my eye so that I looked up in time to see the last one latching the front door.
Aw, shit, another robbery, I thought to myself, and I put down the last of the glasses. I walked over to where I had John Henry leaned up against the inside of the bar. He'd seen me through a couple of robberies without much problem outside of patching some holes in my plaster walls, but that wasn't bad. Twelve-gauge buckshot into plaster lathe is a pretty easy repair.
"What can I do for you fellows?" I ask, smiling as I go to get my gun.
"You can stop right there," says the first one, "we don't need any fireworks," and he starts reaching into his jacket. I had just put my hand on the pump-action. "We're FBI, and we have some questions for you, Ruben."
My grip relaxed a little and I looked off to the side where one of the goons was coming around the bar. He had me dead to rights, a semi-automatic pistol on me.
"What the fuck, Ruby?" Tommy asked quietly. He shifted a little in his stool, and I hoped to Hell Tommy wasn't reaching for his gun. Another pistol came out, this one pointed at him, and Tommy went limp. I took a deep breath. I didn't do thirty-four goddamned patrols in the Annamite Mountains only to wind up shot dead in Fort Worth.
"Just you go easy, Tommy," I said, not taking my eye's off the pistol pointed at me, nor my grip off my shotgun.
"That's some good advice, Mister -- Wainwright, isn't it? Tommy Wainwright?" said the guy with the drop on me. Another goon pulled out a pad and started taking notes, and yet another opened up a laptop on my bar. "You'd do well to relax too, Mr Flores. For starters, forget about your gun." My look must've said much, because the Fed showed a small smile. "We're here to talk, not shoot." I let go of the Remington. Wouldn't do me much good, anyway, with the rest of this artillery around.
"Good, thanks," he said, and holstered his piece as another one led Tommy off into the dance room.
"Well, what can I do for you?" I asked.
"First --" he reached into his jacket again, and presented his ID badge "-- I need you to acknowledge that you're speaking with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that you understand that knowingly making a false statement can and will be prosecuted as felony perjury." I looked over his badge; it looked real to me.
"Acknowledged, Agent Hicks."
"Good." He put his badge away. "Do me a favor and surrender your weapon." I handed him John Henry, which he handed off to another agent, who quickly cleared it.
"Great. Now why don't we go sit in a booth and talk a little?" said Hicks.
"I don't see as I have much choice." I followed him to a large circular corner-booth. The asshole with the notebook followed me, and when I sat he stood blocking my exit. I was calming down, but that kind of shit irks me. I looked up at him, but he made no move to be polite. I decided not to ask him to move.
"Now, Mr Flores, do you know an Andrew Jackson Harshaw, of Benbrook, Texas?"
"I couldn't rightly say."
"Is that so?"
"Of course it's so," I answered. "I'm a busy man, and old, too. I don't remember if I met anyone named that or not. Hell, I'd forget my ass if it wadn't stuck on."
"He just left fifteen minutes ago. Reporter, riding a bike."
"Oh, you mean Jackie? Why the hell didn't you say so?"
"What do you know about him?"
"He's a customer. He comes in, once, maybe twice a week, has a couple of beers, shoots some pool," I said. "Reporter, as you said." I noticed that the doofus with the laptop had strung one of those web-cam things at the end of the bar, and was recording this bullshit. "Met him 'bout a year ago when he came back from Afghanistan. I guess he was covering it for TV. Good guy, got shot over there. He's a writer now."
"Read any of his books?"
"No," I answered. "Too busy to do much reading."
Hicks arched an eyebrow at me. "Is that so?" he asked again.
"Of course it's so." I stuck out my hands. "These look like reading man's hands, hotshot?"
The boy – he couldn't have been more than thirty, that's a boy in my book -- he chuckled a little. "Fair enough," he says and moves on, pulling out his own notebook, this one a little leather appointment book, and flipping through a couple of pages.
"Ever read a book of his called Eagle in the Mountains?"
"I already told you I ain't much of a reader." I could see what they was after, now. While I didn't normally make friends with my customers -- makes it a bitch to call in an overdue tab, you see -- I'd come to be close with Jackie. Even though I was old enough to be his daddy, he wasn't cut out of the same cloth as these other young scrubs. Oh, he liked that rock-n-roll crap, and he cavorted with them nigras on occasion and what-have-you, but he was something of an old-timer too. We'd go fishing or hunting out on my spread down by Lake Whitney. I got deer and turkey running around. It was good to see that folk in Camp County, where his family was, still raised a boy to handle a rod and a gun. He was good people, and whatever these agents were here for, it wasn't for something he'd done wrong. I knew this, so I held my cards close and my mouth shut.
Hicks went on. "It says here that you were wounded in Vietnam."
"Yeah."
"Tell me about it?"
"Naw, that's damn' near fifty years ago. And it's not what you're here for, I reckon."
"Fair enough. Did you know that Mr. Harshaw was writing another book?"
"Stands to reason, him being an author and whatnot."
"Know what it was about?"
I lied. "Nope." Of course I knew what it was about. Jackie had asked me to read it, to give him a "recon infantryman's view of it" as he'd put it. It was this book as had him in hot water, sure as the Sun rises in the East, what with its stories about payoffs and assassinations and torture and such. I couldn't say whether it was true or not, what he wrote -- but no good comes of writing about the CIA like that, and I had tried to tell him as much.
"You never read it?"
I held out my hands palms-up again. Hicks smiled and made another mark in his notepad. He pulled a card out of the inside pocket of its cover and handed to me. "I think this will be all for now, Mr Flores," he said, standing. "If you remember anything else, would you give me a call?" I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn't believed much if any of what I'd said. "Or we may need to get in touch with you for some follow-up, so if you go somewhere out of town, we'd appreciate you letting us know."
"Well, next time you can leave your guns, and don't lock my goddamned door."
"We'll see what we can do," he answered and stuck out his hand, but I left it hanging. I'd sooner shake hands with a cocked mousetrap. He turned and started out. "See you soon, Ruben," he called back, and then the Rat Pack was gone.
"What the Hell was that about?" Tommy asked me as I poured myself a stiff bourbon and soda. "What do they want Jackie for?"
Like I said, I knew, but I wasn't gonna say a thing, especially not to Tommy Wainwright. Don't get me wrong, Tommy was a good kid, but if brains was money his wallet was empty. He wouldn't keep his mouth shut.
"I don't know, Tommy."
"Well, if it's FBI, he's in some deep shit, that's for sure."
"Yeah, I reckon so."
"Well, ain't you gonna call him?"
I had already thought of it and decided not to. Sure as shit they already had his phone bugged. "Not right now, not from here."
"For Christ's sake, Ruby, you're just gonna let 'em --"
"You hush, Tommy. Them are Feds. They don't pull the trigger on a deal like this until they got all their ducks lined up. They probably got my line tapped already. The only thing a call from here will do is tell them where his cell-phone is."
"Oh, ain't this a shit sandwich," he groaned. "What the Hell did he do, anyway?" Tommy went quiet for a spell, and then: "God damn it, it's that book of his. I'll bet he was writing about that shit over there and someone found out about it. Someone is pissed."
Well, maybe he did have a little money in his wallet. "You listen here, Tommy Wainwright," I said. "Don't you go yapping about this. You keep this close to your chest."
"Bleeding Christ, Ruben, we can't just sit here and do nothing."
"What do you think we should do?" I snapped. "Call him up so they can locate him with them cell-towers? Maybe go down to his house so they can come and ask more questions, this time about what you were doing there? What?" He sat quietly for a bit, and then spoke.
"I expect you're right," he said, "but this sure is a shitty feeling, doing nothing."
"Well, I didn't say we was gonna do nothing," I said. "I'm gonna hang up my vacation sign and head on down to Whitney for a few weeks until this crap blows over. Connie's been nagging at me to retile the kitchen and do some painting anyway. And I've got some thinkin' to do."

©DK Gossett 2012[/size]

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Peace and joy, peace and joy,
Colours and comfort and peace and joy.
Peace and joy, peace and joy,
Love and happiness and bliss and peace.

I glow within and I reach it,
That place of stillness, peace and calm.
Stress melts away, light years away,
And light shines out and colours and scents.

Vivid transformation,
Like a butterfly from a cocoon.
All seems vivid and glowing and peaceful,
Life shines forth in calm repose.

Peace and joy, peace and joy,
Light shines within and darkness does leave me.
I sit in joy, warm peace and glow,
Reach out in contentment, stretch out a hand.

So pleasant to simply be,
Sit at rest, stretch, breathe and wonder.


- Mequa

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