‘It’s pretty expensive to get fined, you know.’

I look at his fresh, open face. ‘Gee, yes, Winfred. I know.’

He grins.

‘So what are you doing in here?’ I ask him. ‘Are you off duty?’

‘Oh no. I just picked someone up.’ He nods through the window to the Ford Explorer. A skinny little Mexican is fidgeting in the front seat looking like a kid who’s praying his mother will remember to buy a packet of crisps along with the petrol.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Just some guy I’m taking back into Nogales.’

‘Why?’

‘Joseé? Cos he’s an illegal.’

‘And you left him alone in the truck?’

‘Sure, why not?’

‘Isn’t he under arrest?’

Winfred shrugs. ‘Nuh-uh, he’s been running drugs and needs a lift home.’

I study his face for signs of subversive humour, but Winfred just doesn’t look like someone who knows how to take the piss.

‘He’s a mule. He comes across two, three times a week, gets rid of his load, then he goes back over the border. If I see him, I give him a ride, y’know, save him the trouble of walking.’

‘Let me get this straight. You fine me a hundred dollars for driving ten miles above the speed limit, but you give a drug trafficker a free lift home?’

Winfred’s smile is clean and white and might be graded as classic American were it not for his canine teeth, which have crept over his incisors, causing his upper lip to jut out somewhat. ‘Hey, Duval said you had a temper.’

I stiffen. ‘You know Duval?’

‘Sure.’

‘How so?’

‘Oh, him and me, we’re good friends.’

‘Really?’ I keep my tone casual. ‘How did you meet him . . .? I mean are you both from round here?’

‘Nuh, my home is in Utah.’

‘And Duval?’

‘I meet him all over the place. He’s one crazy cowboy!’

‘Uh-uh . . . what exactly do you mean by that? What kind of crazy?’

Winfred begins to look a little shifty. ‘I dunno.’ He reaches for a toothpick.

‘So what brings you here?’ I change the subject. ‘To Ague?’

‘Me? Oh, I got into a fight on the rez, and so I left.’

‘Did you kill someone?’ Jack asks.

‘Are you a sheriff?’ Winfred chuckles. ‘Cos you don’t look like a sheriff.’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ Jack replies severely.

I ask Winfred how he got into the Border Patrol and he tells me that after his fight he went to Las Vegas and drank heavily for a while, then got his act together and took the law enforcement exams.

‘Is that where you learned to speak Spanish?’

‘Yeah, I learn it pretty good at the academy but it’s slipping away now.’

‘You don’t need it?’