by G. M. Ford
Instead, he rose to his feet, dragging his back along the side of the parked car as he staggered downhill. The closest cop reached for him. He dodged to the right, reached into his pants pocket, and swung something at the cop, who dodged backward out of range, just in time for his partner to plant a size 13 brogan in the middle of the tweaker’s back and send him staggering forward.
He banged into me. I felt a sudden pain in my neck as he bounced off my chest, wild eyed and flailing. I got both hands between us and shot putted him back in the other direction at considerably greater velocity than he’d arrived.
Things went downhill for him from there. Took the pair of cops all of ten seconds to get him trussed up like a holiday turkey and haul him to his feet. And then, when they looked over to make sure I was okay, it was like the world suddenly froze. They just stood there. One of them holding each of the tweaker’s elbows, staring at me like I’d suddenly grown an extra head.
Gabe stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Aw Jesus, Leo,” Gabe said.
“What?”
Gabe nodded. I reached for the burning place on my neck. My hand came away bloody. Son of a bitch bit me. My heart tied itself into a knot. I was still standing silent and slack-jawed when one of the cops started shouting into his shoulder radio. “I need an aid car . . . Santa Cruz Cove . . . stat . . . Repeat . . .”
I’d say that the rest is history, but, at that moment, I wasn’t sure I had one. A siren moaned in the distance. I moaned back.
“Way I hear it, the fuckin’ place went off like a cherry bomb,” the guy named Robbie said. “Some brother from Arizona told me they heard the bang thirty miles from Conway.”
“Half a dozen guys I known all my life ended up blown to shit,” the drunk in the corner slurred. “And all because those stupid fuckers got sloppy.”
There were four of them, and these guys were not all that happy about being forced to hide out south of the border. Weren’t much on housekeeping neither. There was no flat surface not covered with empty cans and bottles. The place smelled like a stable where all the horses smoked cheap cigars.
Chub’s nose was twitching like the Easter bunny.
“Where’s the guy?” he asked.
“Pete’s bringin’ him over. Be a coupla minutes,” a third guy said.
Lamar was keeping track of Chub from the corner of his eye. Things were not going well. These guys here were of the those assholes up in Conway got what they deserved school of thought and didn’t seem to be aware that one of those dearly departed rectums was Chub’s older brother. The longer these guys talked, the slittier Chub’s eyes got, a look Lamar was guessing didn’t bode well for the furniture.
About the time the drunk in the corner started blabbing again, Chub started inching in his direction. “Ain’t spending the rest of my fuckin’ life down here in Greaserville just ’cause one of those assholes . . .”
“My brother was one of them got killed up there in Conway,” Chub growled.
The guy in the corner looked up. Under normal circumstances, a confrontation such as this would have sent Lamar scurrying for the door, because Lamar was highly disinclined to be around when the shooting started if he could help it. But this time things were different. Lamar was pretty sure nobody in the room had a gun.
Getting caught with a firearm in Mexico would get you more time in a Mexican prison than anybody even wanted to think about. The Federales had gone through their little car like ants at a friggin’ picnic. Over . . . under . . . everywhere. If either of them had been packing so much as a nail clipper, the Federales surely would have found it, and they’d have been hell bound by now.
“You know what they sent my mama?” Chub wanted to know.
Lamar groaned inwardly.
The drunk wobbled to his feet. Wasn’t till he’d stood all the way up and blinked a couple of times that he realized how big Chub was. Lamar could see doubt crawl into his bloodshot eyes.
“What?” he slurred.
“A shoebox,” Chub whispered.
He brought a fist up to stifle a belch. “Yeah?”
“I weighed it,” Chub said.
The drunk frowned and then swallowed hard.
“Just under a pound and a half,” Chub went on. “That was as much of the stuff as they could positively identify as being parts of my big brother Randy. The rest of him was vaporized, they said.” Chub leaned right over into the drunk’s face. “So . . . you keep runnin’ your lips like you been doing, I’m gonna tear off your head and shit down your neck.”
Lamar cleared his throat. And then again louder. Nobody seemed to notice. The scent of new piss and old cigars hung in the air like cannon smoke.
This wasn’t the kind of crowd where backing down was an option neither. A mumbled apology and a shit-eating grin weren’t gonna float with this bunch. You pussied out in front of these kinda rednecks, you were gonna start waking up in the morning with your boxers on backward. Lamar swallowed a chest full of air and spread his feet for balance as Chub grabbed the drunk by the throat, hoisted him from the floor, and began waving him like a Fourth of July flag. The drunk flailed with his arms and began making noises like a downed high-tension wire.
“Chub . . . dammit,” Lamar growled.
The front door suddenly clicked open. A guy in a robin’s egg–blue suit came stumbling into the room with a laptop under his arm, followed by a biker-type guy who must have been the aforementioned Pete. Chub set the twitching drunk back on the floor, but by that time the guy’s legs were so far gone he just plopped down onto his butt, massaging his throat with both hands and rocking back and forth like a hobbyhorse.
“We got trouble here?” Pete asked, nudging Blue Suit forward with a shoulder.
Lamar saw his chance and stepped forward. “No . . . no trouble, man. Just gotta do a little business with this guy here”—indicating Blue Suit—“and we’ll be on our way.”
“And we’re all supposed to get lost while you guys do whatever the fuck it is?”
“That’s what they told me too,” Lamar said. “You know, man . . . loose lips and all that kinda shit. The less people know . . .” He shrugged. “I’m just doin’ like they told me, man. Getting the info they want and then gettin’ our butts right back to HQ with whatever this guy tells us.” Lamar snapped his fingers. “Over . . . done . . . just like that.”
“What the fuck you talking about?” Chub said from the far side of the room.
“About doin’ what the brass sent us down here to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Find out what this guy’s got to say and bring the info back to them. We’re just messenger boys. That way there ain’t no electronic trail to follow.”
“That ain’t what they told me,” Chub grumbled.
Pete started waving an angry hand. “You motherfuckers work this crap out between yourselves.” He looked over at his housemates. “Let’s go down and shoot a little pool while the secret agents here get out their decoder rings.”
They managed to scrape the drunk off the floor and dribble him down the stairs. His grunts and groans hung in the air after the cellar door closed.
Lamar looked at the guy in the blue suit. “They told me to tell you to check your bank account online.” The guy hesitated and then slowly eased the laptop out from under his arm. His eyes kept flicking up and down, from the screen to Chub and Lamar and back again. Couple of minutes later, he closed the laptop.
“You get your money?” Lamar asked.
The guy nodded and loosened his tie.
“You speak English.”
The guy nodded again.
“What you got for us?”
He checked the room. “I work IT security for BanRegio bank. You know, mostly lookin’ out for cartel money laundering, that kind of stuff. You notice . . . you know what I mean. Somebody gets fifty grand transferred into his account whenever he wants it, tends to come up on our scans. Always a wire transfer from a bank in Washington State to our branch in Tijuana.
Don’t happen every day. So . . . you know . . . I did a little snooping around . . . you know, checking the accounts and such . . . And then . . . somebody starts asking questions about this same guy, so I figure . . .” He shrugged. “He’s using the name Leon Marks.”
“You know where that fucker is?” Chub asked.
The guy stared up at Chub for half a minute and then nodded again.
“Where?” Chub demanded.
“The money always ends up in the Point Loma Credit Union.”
“Where the fuck is that?” Chub inquired.
“San Diego,” the guy said. “On Sports Arena Boulevard.”
“You’re sure?” Lamar asked.
“We got a way of tracing money flow. It’s what we do.”
“That all?” Chub growled.
The guy looked at his shoes and then up at Chub. “My cousin Arturo . . .”
“What about him?”
“He lives in Mission Valley . . . he gets his kids every other weekend. Mostly takes them to the beach.” He could sense he was coming to the end of Chub’s patience, so he spit the rest of it out in a rush. “Arturo saw the picture of the guy in the bank . . . this Waterman guy . . . swears on his mother he’s seen that guy in Ocean Beach a couple of times.”
A long quiet minute passed.
“I’ll find you a ride back,” Lamar said finally.
The guy rose from the chair. “You don’t mind, think I’ll just find my own way out,” he said and started triple-timing it for the door.
Lamar and Chub stood silently as he threw the door open and began to sprint down the front walk. “A wise man,” Lamar noted with a grin. “Didn’t get the feeling that our brothers here were much into nurturing.” When Chub didn’t say anything, Lamar said, “Maybe we ought to get the hell out of here too.”
Chub didn’t move, just stood there glowering.
“Let’s went,” Lamar tried.
“That ain’t what they told me,” Chub said again. “I ain’t no goddamn messenger boy. Only errands I run are for my mama.”
“What’d they tell you?” Lamar felt obliged to ask.
“Told me I was gonna be able to take care of this motherfucker Waterman myself.”
Lamar was waving him off before he finished the sentence.
“Uh-uh,” he intoned. “All we do now is get back home quick as we can.”
Chub was shaking his hay-bale head. “Ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “Gimme the damn car keys.”
If he’d had the space to run, Lamar surely would have, but as things stood, Chub was between him and the door, so the way he saw things, his choices were real limited.
He tossed the keys at Chub, who snatched them in midair, did a crisp left face, and strode out the front door. By the time the metal front gate banged closed, Lamar had found the phone in his inside jacket pocket and was autodialing the preprogrammed number.
“Yes.”
“I’m . . . ah . . . ah, one of the guys y’all sent down to Mexico.”
“Weren’t you told not to—”
“We got us an emergency here,” Lamar blurted. He got about halfway through explaining the situation when whoever was on the other end started to yell.
“Don’t let him out of your sight. You hear me? You stick to him like ugly on an ape. Don’t let that motherfucker do anything stupid. You better—”
Lamar broke the connection and sprinted for the door. The wind in his face smelled of rotting kelp as he ran for the street. He jammed the burner phone into his pants pocket and pumped his arms like he was trying to take flight.
It was the laws of physics that saved the situation. Just like you couldn’t stuff ten pounds of sand into a five-pound bag, there was no way to stuff Chub Greenway behind the wheel of a Smart car. He was trying to tear the roof off when Lamar skidded to a stop next to the car. “Okay . . . okay,” he panted. “I’ll drive.”
When I butt bumped the swinging ER door open and stepped out into the waiting room, Sergeant Carolyn Saunders was sitting in a worn leather chair chatting quietly with Gabe. They both got to their feet at the sight of me walking their way.
“So?” Gabe said.
“Either I’m gonna die or I’m not,” I said with a shrug.
“That’s it?”
“They’ve gotta run a bunch of tests. Took enough of my fluids to float a paddleboard and said they’d give me a call as the results come back from the lab. They’re telling me they don’t know how long it will take to find out whether or not I’ve got anything. Months . . . maybe years.”
Gabe pointed down at my hand. “Meds?”
I’d totally forgotten I was carrying a handful of prescriptions. I brought them up to eye level and began to read: “Tenofovir 300 mg a day.” I shuffled the pages. “Emtricitabine 200 mg daily and raltegravir 400 twice a day. It’s a twenty-eight-day program. The doctor already phoned them in to the Rite Aid on Sunset Cliffs.” I shook the papers in the air. “These are just in case.”
I looked over at Sergeant Saunders. “They’re telling me what I really need to know is the medical status of the guy who bit me.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “But you’re going to need to come down and look at the mug shots.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know what you were doing at Santa Cruz Cove when this happened.”
I thought about lying to her but decided to just spit it out.
“I was being a nosy bastard. Trying to figure out how the body got to where you found it.”
She gave me the fish eye.
“We been wondering about that ourselves,” she said. “You got any ideas?”
I nodded Gabe’s way. “We’re thinkin’ it had to be more than one person.”
She looked at me hard. “You sure you don’t have something you’d like to tell me?”
I met her gaze. “Sergeant . . . if I had anything at all that would help you with this kid’s case, I’d have told you to begin with.”
“They do a postmortem on the kid yet?” Gabe asked, before she could press me.
She looked over at Gabe and then back to me, trying to decide whether or not to tell us. “He died of the flu,” she said finally.
“What?” I blurted.
She waved a scout’s honor hand. “That’s what we thought too. It’s also why the case has been turned over to missing persons. Other than the illegal dumping of the body, as near as any of us can tell, there was no crime involved.”
She pulled a small spiral-bound notebook from her back pocket and thumbed through it. “ME’s office says the shirt he was wearing was of Mexican manufacture. He’d had a bunch of low-rent Mexican dental work lately. Cosmetic stuff . . . like somebody was trying to pretty him up a bit.”
“Why would he need dental work that young?” Gabe asked.
“Malnutrition. ME said he’d been malnourished most of his life.”
She flipped another page. “No reports of a missing Mexican child that meets his description either.” She closed the notebook and jammed it back from whence it came.
“Experience tells me that we’re probably looking at some sort of human trafficking thing here,” she said. “Lots of times they gussy the kids up a bit before they sell ’em, but like I told you, it’s not my case anymore. I just came down to see if you were okay.”
“That seems to be the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said.
“I’m on duty at nine in the morning,” she said. “Can you make it down to look at the mug books? Things are quieter in the A.M.”
“I’ll be there.”
I watched in silent awe as she sashayed up the hall and out the door.
Gabe chuckled. “I don’t think the specter of AIDS is much gonna enhance your prospects for gettin’ any of that.”
“Me neither.”
“What now?”
“Let’s go down to Newport and get drunk.”
“Sounds like a helluva good idea.”
Chub pulled t
he Chevy Blazer to a stop in the Red Lobster lot and pointed to the other side of Sports Arena Boulevard.
“There it is,” he said. “Point Loma Credit Union.”
They’d ditched the Smart car about a mile south of the U.S. border, left the keys in the ignition, and walked across the border at Otay Mesa, where they’d rented an SUV about the size of a Bradley fighting vehicle and driven north.
“So this is where the money goes. So what? They ain’t tellin’ us shit,” Lamar said. “Banks are cinched up tighter than a frog’s ass.” He cut the air with the side of his hand. “I mean . . . what we gonna do, sit out here in the parking lot for a coupla weeks hoping this Waterman guy shows up?”
Chub just sat there behind the wheel, glowering out through the windshield. Traffic whizzed by on Sports Arena Boulevard.
“It’s like I been sayin’, man . . .”
“Where’s this Ocean Beach place? The banker’s cousin said he seen this Waterman guy there.”
Lamar sighed and touched the GPS navigation device in the middle of the dashboard. He tapped several other buttons and then sat back on the seat.
“Looks like it’s straight ahead, man. Not very far neither . . . but, man, listen to me . . . this ain’t what we’re supposed to be doing here . . . we’re just supposed to . . .”
Chub turned his head slowly. “You wanna leave . . . leave. I’ll drive ya to the friggin’ airport, but I’m gonna settle up with this Waterman guy myself.”
“But the Brotherhood—” Lamar began.
“Don’t give a rat’s ass about no Brotherhood,” Chub drawled. “That was Randy’s thing, not mine. For me this is about my family. About doing right by them. That’s why I said I’d go along with this dumb-ass thing. Government’s been cheating my family for as long as anybody can remember. They killed my father. They killed my brother. And since I can’t kill all of ’em, I’m gonna kill this guy Waterman.” The seat belt groaned as Chub leaned hard in Lamar’s direction. “My family ain’t never had nothin’. We always been dirt poor,” he said in a low voice. “We worked the land in North Carolina for ten generations only to find out we didn’t own the land and that land we did have title to, we didn’t own the mineral rights, and when the mineral is coal, there ain’t no land left when they get done with it. We moved from place to place ever since, always on the outside, struggling to keep body and soul together, never getting any of the good stuff, makin’ tires in Akron, Ohio, cars in Detroit, makin’ steel in Pittsburgh, workin’ farms from Wyoming to Wisconsin. It’s like somewhere way back somebody decided people like us didn’t matter anymore, so they just walked off and left us behind. So if you wanna leave . . . leave . . . it’s okay with me . . . just go.”
