Backlands (28 page)

The day Fred Tyler appeared before Judge Horace Van Patten and pled guilty to breaking and entering and armed robbery, Matt was in the crowded courtroom. Before sentencing, Van Patten called Matt forward to describe the events that had occurred in his house. Matt used the opportunity to tell the judge that he believed Fred Tyler had killed Boone Mitchell. He submitted a copy of the missing person report he'd made to the police, which contained all the evidence found in Tyler's possession at Matt's house, including Boone's unsent letter to his wife and his union card, which Matt had found in Tyler's wallet. It wasn't enough to prove Tyler a murderer, but it got him the maximum consecutive sentence the judge could impose.

As he was led away, Tyler sneered at Matt and said, “I'll see you someday, pretty boy. Count on it.”

The next day the newspaper ran the story of Tyler's sentencing and once again proclaimed Matt a fine example of the upstanding citizenry of the fair city of Las Cruces. Beth clipped the article and sent it to her parents as further evidence of Matt's bona fides. Two weeks later, she received a letter from her parents that they would be arriving with her sister for a visit in a month.

Matt was convinced that Beth's family was coming to take her away from him, and the news of their impending visit depressed him no end. His downheartedness deepened the next Monday night at work when Wilford Hawkings, one of the railroad cops looking into Boone's disappearance, stopped by to tell him Boone's remains had been found buried outside of a shantytown in Sacramento, California. He'd been identified by an expired railroad pass made out in his name and a letter from his wife found with the body. The local cops were treating it as homicide, and his family in Detroit had just been notified.

Though he'd suspected and feared Boone's death, the reality of it felt like a mule kick.

B
eth Merton had come to New Mexico fearing she would be interminably bored. Instead, she now dreaded the possibility of leaving the still half-wild West she'd learned to love, an aunt and uncle she adored, and the young man who'd captured her heart. Her fears were not without cause; her father had lost his job with the Cleveland & Buffalo Transit Company. But his former boss, the president of the company, had recommended him to an old friend who was a partner in the Los Angeles Pacific Electric Railway Company. On the family visit to Las Cruces, Daddy would stop over for a few days before traveling on to Los Angeles to interview for a job. If he got hired, the family would of course move with him. Beth desperately hoped to avoid going with them. If she was fully recovered by then, she planned to beg Daddy to let her stay with Tía
Consuelo and Uncle Gus and finish her baccalaureate degree at the New Mexico Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College. She would argue that it would be best for her health's sake to remain in New Mexico. Uncle Gus and Tía
Consuelo were delighted with her scheme, which gave it a much better chance of success, but she'd said not a word about it to Matthew.

For months, she'd wanted to go to Mexico. How could she be so close to a foreign country and not visit it? She'd lived all her life in Cleveland, and Daddy had never once taken the family across Lake Erie on a steamship to Canada. What if she never returned to Cleveland and never, ever stepped into Canada in her entire life? She simply couldn't let such an unthinkable missed opportunity happen to her in New Mexico.

With wages coming in, Matt had kept the Studebaker, and Mexico was only fifty miles away by car. At a garage, Beth had picked up a road map that showed the highway to El Paso was rated first-class, which meant paved or oiled all the way, so getting there would be a breeze. Going alone with Matt to Mexico was the problem; Gus and Consuelo would never allow it. To get around them, she enlisted Matt in a deception. They would plan a picnic outing in the Organ Mountains, go to Juárez instead, and return late the same night using a flat tire as an excuse for their tardiness. Matt didn't need much convincing. The idea of getting her out of town alone was persuasive enough.

They left Las Cruces early one Saturday morning, traveling south on U.S. Highway 80, which paralleled the Rio Grande. Large farms dotted the riverside, creating swaths of green in sharp contrast to the brown upslope desert beyond. To the east, the Organ Mountains drifted down the valley into Texas before giving way to the Franklin Mountains, which overlooked El Paso.

Five miles outside of town, the radiator overheated. Matt pulled off the road, and they waited thirty minutes for it to cool down so he could add more water. They continued on, only to have it happen again just shy of the railroad yards in downtown El Paso.

Matt took a closer look at the radiator from the undercarriage and found a quarter-size hole in it, probably from a rock kicked up by a tire. Cussing in frustration, he gave Beth the bad news. “It will have to be taken out to be patched.”

Beth peered at the engine. “How long will it take?”

Matt dusted off his hands. “A couple of hours at least, depending on when they can get to it. First we have to find a garage. I'll fill the radiator again when it cools and hope we can make it to a garage before the engine blows.”

“Is our adventure ruined?”

Matt looked down the road at the nearby cluster of buildings that signaled downtown El Paso. “We'll probably have enough time to walk across the bridge to Juárez and back.”

Beth pouted. “That's it?”

“This time, I reckon.” Using a rag, Matt loosened the radiator cap and watched the steam hiss out. “How come when we first met, you told me you were Gus's only niece?”

“I fibbed because I didn't want you to find out about my sister, Emily.”

“Find out what?”

“That she's prettier, smarter, and taller than I am. I hate her, of course.”

Matt grinned. “I can't wait to meet her.”

Beth punched his arm, hard. Matt pulled her to him and kissed her, hard.

With the radiator refilled and the engine off, Matt coasted the Studebaker down a street that sloped gently toward the river and rolled it to a stop at a garage just off the town plaza. While Beth waited, he talked to the garage owner. He soon returned, shaking his head and looking glum.

“He's here alone and can't get to it until first thing in the morning, but if I take it out myself, he'll weld a patch on it pronto.”

Beth sternly shook her head. “Don't you dare do that. I'm going to at least set foot into Mexico today, and you're coming with me.”

“We can't stay here overnight unless we sleep in the Studebaker. I don't have the money to fix the car and pay for a room.”

Beth pointed to an ornate, ten-story brick hotel on the corner. Two wings with fancy gold parapets each sporting Old Glory on rooftop flagpoles were separated by a grand entrance under a huge domed ceiling. Ritzy new motorcars lined the street in front of the building.

“We'll stay there,” she said.

Matt couldn't conceive what such a swanky place would charge for one night. “No can do.”

“I have money.” Clutching her small purse, Beth started toward the hotel, stopped, and looked back over her shoulder. “Shall we be Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Kerney for the night?”

Matt gulped and managed to say, “How do we get away with that? We don't even look married. You don't have a wedding ring.” He stopped. Why was he putting up a fuss?

Beth looked at him like he was an idiot.

“It's okay by me,” he added sheepishly.

She smiled approvingly. “Good. I'll explain to the desk clerk that our car broke down and you'll bring our luggage later. Meet me in the lobby when you're done.”

“What luggage?”

She waved and turned to go. “Pretend we have some.”

He watched her stroll to the hotel entrance dressed in walking boots, slacks with loose, floppy cuffs, a wide belt that accentuated her tiny waist, and a sleeveless sailor top. She was a knockout. His heart pounding in anticipation of the night ahead, Matt followed her with his eyes until she disappeared through the double doors of the hotel.

***

T
he desk clerk at the Hotel Paso del Norte assigned Mr. and Mrs. Kerney a small room with a double bed on a lower floor next to the elevator. A placard on the dresser informed guests that the hotel opened in 1912, the large glass dome in the lobby ceiling was made by Tiffany & Co., and during the Mexican Revolution folks gathered on the rooftop terrace to sip cocktails and watch skirmishes and firefights between federal troops and Pancho Villa's rebels across the river in Juárez.

Beth freshened up in the modern bathroom and returned to the lobby just as Matt came through the front door and stopped to look up at the two-story glass dome that diffused the sunlight into a rainbow of sparkling colors.

“Did they give you a room?” he whispered when Beth approached.

“Of course they did, Mr. Kerney.” She pulled him outside by the sleeve.

“Where are we going?”

“We'll picnic on the town plaza and then walk to Mexico. The desk clerk said it's just a mile to the bridge.”

They carried the picnic basket between them from the Studebaker to the plaza, spread a blanket under the shade of a big cottonwood, and ate their lunch of ham sandwiches, potato salad, and homemade lemonade. With liquor, beer, and spirits legal in Mexico, it seemed reasonable that El Paso wouldn't need speakeasies, but right across the street from where they picnicked stood what obviously had been a saloon in the old days. The door and picture windows had been painted black, and a carefully lettered sign above the door read:

EL PASO GENTLEMEN'S RIO GRANDE ROWING CLUB MEMBERS ONLY

A row of cars filled the parking lane in front of the club, and there was steady traffic of men and women in and out the front door, which was guarded by a bouncer who sold memberships to potential patrons on the spot.

Beth sighed. “I'd love to see what a real speakeasy is like—dangerous gangsters, beautiful dames, shady proprietors, tough bulls.”

“I'll take you.”

Beth raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You have to buy a membership and you only have enough money get the car fixed.”

“I've been watching the bouncer make change. A day's membership costs a buck.”

“What about the car?”

“I told the garage owner I'd pull the radiator myself in the morning, and he agreed to weld it for me cheap.”

“So you're not broke.”

“Not yet.”

Beth stood and smoothed the front of her slacks. “Let's go.”

They repacked the picnic basket, left it under the tree, and crossed the street. Matt handed the bouncer a buck as he looked them up and down, giving Beth a careful once-over. He had a prizefighter's face, with a flattened nose broken too many times and heavy scar tissue above both eyes.

“Been here before?” he asked.

“No,” Matt answered. “We're just down from Las Cruces.”

“On our honeymoon,” Beth added, smiling sweetly, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Honeymoon, eh?” He stood aside and opened the door. “Okay.”

Beth batted her eyes. “Would you make sure no one takes the picnic basket we left under the tree?”

The bouncer grinned. “Sure, doll.”

Inside, the air was blue with cigarette smoke, and well-dressed customers filled the tables. Waiters in white shirts and string ties passed through the throng, balancing trays of drinks and platters of food. Matt and Beth found a place at the long bar, which was populated mostly by older men without female companions who were intent on serious midday drinking.

“What are you going to have?” Beth whispered.

Matt eyed the drink price list on the wall behind the bar. “A glass of beer, I think. And you?”

“A cocktail,” Beth announced emphatically. “A Manhattan cocktail.”

After determining that Beth wanted rum in her cocktail, the bartender poured Matt's draft and put Beth's drink together right in front of her, mixing it up in a flash. He gave it a quick stir, added a cherry with a flourish, and pushed the glass carefully to her.

Beth beamed at the man in delight, clinked her glass with Matt's, took a sip, and said, “So this is demon rum. I like it.”

She took another sip and glanced around the dimly lit room. There wasn't a sinister-looking man in sight, and all the women appeared reasonably respectable. On the far wall hung two crossed rowboat oars and an oversize red-and-white life buoy with
EL PASO GENTLEMEN'S
RIO GRANDE ROWING CLUB
stenciled on it. A rowboat draped in semaphore flags was suspended from the ceiling. An upright piano, bass fiddle, and drum set occupied a small bandstand in a corner.

Everything about the place appealed to her. She wanted the musicians to appear and start playing so she could dance. She was happy the car had broken down, happy to be sitting in a speakeasy sipping a Manhattan, happy that Mexico was just a short walk away.

She felt grown-up and dangerously alive. She turned to Matthew and said, “The hotel desk clerk said the whiskey is better and cheaper in Juárez. He gave me the name of the best bar in the city, the White House. Let's go there and have another drink. We can hoof it.”

Matt smiled, raised his beer glass, and drained it. “I'm ready when you are.”

After stashing the picnic basket in the Studebaker at the garage, they joined a procession of pedestrians on the sidewalk of a street congested with cars, crossed the Rio Grande International Bridge, and stepped into the different world of Juárez, Mexico. Burros crowded the streets and slowed traffic. Men wearing straw sombreros, serapes, and huaraches surged around them carrying colorful baskets, hawking trinkets to tourists. Women in white peasant dresses with brightly colored shawls draped over their shoulders walked by crowned with huge baskets of flowers, offering bouquets for sale for a few pesos.
Braceros
on their way north to look for work hurried by. Horse-drawn wagons filled with produce and crates of squawking chickens and young pigs tied by the neck to wagon boards creaked down the cobblestones to the clip-clop of the ponies. Mariachi music poured from open bar doors. There were hunchback beggars, blind men singing, shoeshine boys snapping polishing rags, taxi drivers standing next to spotless cabs calling out for fares, and painted girls eyeing the unaccompanied men passing by. There were old men with chiseled Aztec faces, young women with high cheekbones and flashing Spanish eyes, men with the haughty look of grandees, and flocks of children following along behind mothers out shopping at the fresh-produce stalls.

Street-side merchants at rickety stands sold imported whiskey and liquor by the bottle and the case. The aromas from open-air food carts filled the air. Store windows displayed hand-tooled saddles, handmade guitars, native pottery from the interior mountains, hand-sewn festive skirts and blouses for ladies, carved and painted religious objects, fancy sombreros for men, and expensive cowboy boots with gleaming silver tips. The Depression had brought a halt to brisk commerce, and most of the stores were empty of customers, with forlorn merchants standing in shop doorways, desperately inviting passersby to come inside to buy their wares.

Doors and window frames were painted a rainbow of colors, including magenta, lime green, violet, and turquoise blue. The city was a riot of hues and sounds, with people unlike any Beth had ever seen. She was in love with the place, already scheming in her mind to travel the world and see every corner of it.

They passed a storefront wedding chapel, the façade painted pristine white. Matt stopped and said with a grin, “Want to get married?”

Beth twirled around and leaned against him. “To you?”

“Yep, to me.”

“Yes, but not yet.” She kissed him and pulled him away from the chapel down a side street that opened onto a large plaza. Across from a towering church with tall spires on the opposite side of the plaza, a long, high, whitewashed adobe wall hid all but the roof of a large hacienda shaded by two dozen ancient trees. A small sign above an almost unnoticeable courtyard gate in the thick adobe wall announced:
CASA BLANCA.