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Milllionaire playboy/detective Bill Chak volunteers to help his alma mater, the University of Texas, solve the mystery of the shooting death of their prize high school football recruit, Charlie Gonzalez, and his father, Abel Gonzalez, on their remote ranch in southwest Texas. His allies in the search are Booth Davis, the crusty county sheriff, and Rafael Ortiz, a Piedras Negras brothel operator who handles Chak's detective business in Mexico.
Chak patiently pursues three leads which eventually prove to be false. First, a high school rival of the murdered boy is suspected. Then the arrow of suspicion points to Hamp MacGillicuddy, a rabid alumnus of Texas A & M who has gotten his school in trouble on several occasions with his unethical recruiting practices. The third suspect is the mother of Charlie Gonzalez and ex-wife of Abel Gonzalez, who hated him for divorcing her and taking up with an Anglo mistress.
But the investigation abruptly changes course when a rented car is discovered in a deep water hole in the Frio River near the Gonzalez Ranch. There had been heavy rain and severe flooding the night of the murder, and the car had been washed off a low-water crossing into the river. It is a rental car from an agency at the San Antonio Airport. No body is found in the vicinity, so Chak and Davis assume that the driver escaped. The contents of the vehicle was soaked, but the searchers found a shotgun which had been fired five times, and one valuable clue - - a map of New York City with a location marked at the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village.
The detective and the Sheriff interview personnel at the San Antonio agency which rented the car and get a good description of the driver. They then fly to New York City and check out the location of the X on the map. To their surprise, they find that an NYU professor, Murray Glass, was making a speech under the arch on Lincoln's birthday and was shot dead from the fire escape of a nearby building. They talk to the NYPD lieutenant who investigated the murder and are surprised to find that the FBI has taken over the case as a federal matter. They also learn that nobody can trace the professor's history back more than 10 years.
Back in Texas, Chak enlists Rafael Ortiz to set up a meeting with the Gonzalez widow in Monterrey, Mexico. She is ambivalent about the murders - - angry and aggrieved by the death of her beloved son, Charlie, but glad that her conniving husband is dead. When the widow hears the description of the suspected murderer - - the man whose rent car was found in the Frio River - - she becomes furious and offers to help any way she can.
Under questioning by Chak, she reveals that she and Mr. Gonzalez were originally wealthy Hondurans who owned a large plantation near the Nicaraguan border. When the U.S. set up the Palmerola air base in Honduras to supply the Contra rebels in the 1980's, they leased part of their plantation to U.S. agents for location of warehouses and refueling tanks. She explains that a small group of American and Hispanic men often came to their home for dinner, and that her husband told her that two of the men were wholesale drug dealers.
The FBI agent in charge in San Antonio sets up a meeting with the Sheriff and the detective and orders them to drop their investigation, but they refuse. Chak then offers a compromise - - that the two sides work together and set a trap for the killer or killers. His idea is that Mrs. Gonzalez and her sleep-in companion, an Albino man named Chi-Chi, move to the Gonzalez ranch. Chak will act as their agent, announcing that the widow is writing a "tell all" book about her husband's activities, and will hold a news conference at the ranch in one month. In the mean-time, no news media persons will be allowed to interview her.
The FBI, the Sheriff, and the Texas Rangers set up an elaborate undercover protective network to intercept any suspicious persons who show up in the area and to protect the widow.
Just when it appears that nothing is going to happen, alarm signals go off throughout the area. Half a dozen strangers are reported to have been spotted in the vicinity, several asking about the location of the Gonzalez ranch.
The security network swings into action just in time and intercepts a five-man death squad which is approaching the ranch house through the woods. Four attackers are killed, but the fifth escapes and heads north on foot into rugged, cedar-covered canyon country.
The security team pursues the fifth shooter, corners him, and is forced to kill him after he refuses to surrender. Thinking the mystery is solved and the case closed, the Sheriff, Chak and the FBI agent in charge return to the ranch house to tell Senora Gonzales and Chi-Chi the good news. But the scene which awaits them there only deepens the mystery, providing a chilling climax to the novel.
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