Chapter 25

The phone call from Willie was an eyeopener to say the least. There were visitors at our property when he called, and he was watching them through binoculars as we talked. He could see Chief Tremain and his son Raul as they were talking to three men who showed up in a big black GMC Yukon XL Denali. You know, an attempted display of ostentatious power and prestige.

We’d been gone for five days, George and Edna’s closing was two days out, late in the morning, then we were returning them back to the Gulf and heading home after a good night’s sleep.

Willie wanted to make sure we didn’t go back home to the lodge yet, hence the call. He thought three days from then would be all right, depending on what happened in the next half hour. They had been snooping around for about a half an hour by the time Tommy was on the scene. The sheriff’s deputy was just pulling up as we were discussing it over the phone.

While we were talking, Raul surreptitiously took pictures of the three guys, sending them to the sheriff’s office, the reservation police office, and Willie, all at the same time. Willie forwarded them to me, so I was able to ask Courtney and Lori if either of them recognized any of the men.

“Willie, Lori recognizes the big one in the bolo tie as one of the bouncers at the club, and the one in the fedora is definitely Dongas himself. He’s the drug dealer, or as the cops said, the kingpin. The other guy is the lowlife that was just out at our place several weeks ago. He has more warrants out for him than you can shake a stick at. Can you try to pass that information on to Tommy and the deputy?”

“Yeah, Charlie. Let me do that now. I’ll call you back.”

I didn’t expect it to take over an hour for him to contact me again, but a lot happened in that hour, including reinforcements coming a bit too late to keep Raul from getting injured and Manuel Dongas from taking off in a bullet riddled Yukon, shooting behind him on the way down our lane.

The guy with the warrants out for him caught two of Tommy’s and two of the deputy’s rounds in his chest as he brought a gun to bear on Raul, getting one round off himself.

Raul will be no worse off for wear with a little physical therapy, taking a nine-millimeter full metal jacket in the thigh muscle. No bones, no arteries, no muss, no fuss. Just a lot of pain and a little blood.

The bouncer threw his hands up in the air and pissed his pants. He was unarmed and just there to intimidate folks and beat on someone if need be. A show of force, if you will. More like a show of brute force and fear mongering. In any case, he’s in a lot of trouble, but he’s alive.

“And you watched that whole thing go down, Willie?”

“Yeah. It was weird. It was like I was watching a TV show, but I knew the people. Yeah, weird. It’s gonna take hours for this to get cleaned up. I guess you can come home whenever you like. They’ll find the other guy, that Dongas guy, somewhere, and he won’t come back here. No way. He watched one of his people go down hard and he knows the cops here aren’t playing.”

“Wow!” That was all I could think of, then I came up with, “Willie, thank Tommy for us. Tell Raul we’re sorry he took a round for us and we’ll check on him when we get back, too. He’ll probably have some time off. I’ll check with the sheriff’s office tomorrow. I can’t believe they haven’t called me yet.”

“They know we’re talking, Charlie. You’ll hear from them tonight or tomorrow, I’m sure. Your front yard is a crime scene, after all.”

“True, that. Let me go brief the girls. I’ll see you in a few days. If you need me, or you get any new information, we’d love to hear from you.” We signed off, I relayed as much as I could remember of the conversation to the girls, then just as we were laying down for bed, Willie called back.

He told us Dongas didn’t make it very far. They caught him heading south on Interstate Twenty-five, trying to make it to Mexico. He tried to swerve around a state trooper and skidded into a bridge column. We found out later that if he lived, it’d be a while before he’d be walking, let alone walking around freely. There was still that definite possibility that the state would not be housing the man in the pen. They don’t keep dead people and he was in critical condition and on life support systems.