I kissed her on the top of her head and twisted the doorknob. “Ditto.” I wanted to say more. Find the right words. For some stupid reason my throat got tight and I couldn't speak.
Soon we were in the party, and speaking was out of the question. Shouting became the communication of choice. Along with pushing, pulling, guiding, shoving, waving over heads and smiling like you could actually hear what the asshole in front of you said.
I made my way through the crush of bodies, holding tight to Harper’s hand. The best antidote for new-to-the-party syndrome is always cerveza. I fished two Negro Modelos out of a cooler filled to the brim with water, floating chunks of ice, and bottles of beer. Thank god someone tied a church key to the cooler handle.
Our first job was surveillance. I staked out a piece of wall off to the side, and we claimed it for our own. Me, drinking my beer like I’d never taste another one. Her, standing there like a piece of meat in a den of lions. I served up my best barge-in-on-me-and-you’re-dead looks. They did the trick for exactly fifteen seconds. A drunk cholo staggered up, eyed Harper up and down, and offered her a hit off a joint. She took it and lit the end of it up like a stoner pro. She exhaled and passed it to me, eliciting a frown from her newfound friend. I pretended to hit the thing, then passed it off to a woman three people beyond us. Cholo boy muttered something in Spanish and followed his weed.
“Watch yourself, honey,” I said. “These people practically invented pot. I guarantee that’s stronger shit than you’re used to.”
“You don’t know what I’m used to, Junior. I’m good. Look around, tell me what you see.”
I got back on point and scoped Miguel’s group of party animals. I recognized most of his main gang, they and their dates made up about a third of the crowd. The rest I judged to be hardcore cartel by the tattoos, shitty haircuts, clothes that thumbed a nose at the Midland heat, and a general uncivilized manner. Like they’d mustered straight out of a prison yard in Mexico City to this barbecue in little old Midland, Texas, for their first brush with the outside world.
“Nice group of folks,” I said.
Another vato strutted up in that limp leg style they all favor and leered at Harper and licked his lips. “Hola, chica. You look lonely standing there all by yourself. You need a real man, eh? Not this pendejo standing here like he’s all that.”
I took a step forward. Harper stopped me with a hand to my chest. She smiled at me and bent toward the cholo. He leaned in expectantly, smiling. She whispered, “You see any real hombres in here, you let me know. Comprende? Now largate. Go away.”
He pretended to see someone across the room and slunk off.
“Hungry?” I said. “Measuring dicks always works up an appetite.”
“Come on, Mr. Man.” She laughed. “Let’s get you some carne asada, ribs, a fucking hamburger, anything to sink your teeth into besides the local wildlife.”
“Hola, amigo!” The voice came from behind us as we made our way out to the patio and the smoking grill. “Junior. Over here, hombre.”
We stopped and let Miguel and Yolanda make their way through the crowd toward us. Miguel wore a pearl-studded shirt worthy of the most stylish caballero. Yolanda matched him with an outfit only a hair more subdued than Harper’s. She looked hot enough to catch fire, and I carefully kept my eyes fixed on Miguel for their entire approach.
“I like your outfit,” Yolanda said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Not talking to you, asshole.” She winked at Harper. “You look like someone Claydesta Bank would never put on its payroll. That’s a compliment, by the way.” She extended her hand to Harper. “Welcome to our little party, Elizabeth.”
“You have a lot of friends,” Harper said.
Miguel took over the conversation. “This? Nah, this is mostly business. Got to keep up appearances. Drink, smoke, eat.” He spread his arms wide. “This is our golf course. It’s how our business gets done.”
I made a point of checking out the crowd. “I see most of the guys here. Dog, Nacho, Eduardo. Don’t see everyone.”
“You mean Freddie?” Miguel stared at me with a noncommittal smile. “Oh, he’s around. Like a dog you keep feeding. Couldn’t get rid of him if I tried.”
“Get rid of who?” Fuck You crept up behind Miguel and clapped him on the shoulder. “What’d I miss?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Your balls?”
“They let you out, I see,” Freddie said. “Someone should alert the local female population.”
I stepped forward, and Fuck You did the same. My hands squeezed my beer bottle while I imagined them squeezing something else a bit scrawnier.
Miguel laughed. “Hey, hombres, relax, man. It’s a party, eh? We eat, have some laughs. You two got some serious work to do. Repair bridges, eh? Be friends. You gonna work together; it’ll be better for me, Yolanda, everyone. Trust me.”
Harper stepped between us and whistled. “Who does your tats, Freddie? I’ll be sure and never look him up.”
Yolanda snorted and Miguel outright guffawed.
Freddie leaned forward, smiling like a rattlesnake would if it could.
“You might want to watch yourself, señorita. I hear chicas who hang around this guy end up with their tits cut off.”
That did it. I glanced at Harper who simply winked at me. I went to pinch Fuck You’s head off but he’d vanished, melted into the crowd behind him.
“Where’d he go?” I said. “Where’d the chicken shit run off to?”
“I told you,” Miguel said. “He’ll be around all night. Can’t get rid of him. Forget him. Lighten up. You didn’t bring this fine woman here to get into a fight with Freddie Medina. Have some fun. Have some food, wine, beer, whatever. It’s a party, man.”
The next few hours passed in a blur of three kinds of beer, cartel-grade smoke, and anything that would fit on a barbecue grate. I gave up trying to identify what I ate, my attention split between Harper and a constant search for Fuck You.
Asshole kept to the shadows. I’d see him talking to a few people, head his way, and he’d disappear again. Never stayed in one place long enough. Never stayed in the light. Who knew the fucker was half chicken shit, half ghost?
Harper did her thing. Mixing it up, moving around the rooms with Yolanda. I figured her for making IDs, recording names and faces for later. Giving the boys on the other end of her wire something to write down. Feds live and die by their paperwork.
I pulled out my phone, pretending to make a call. I needed to check the time. Harper had said two-o’clock to her gang. Sure enough, ten minutes to two, Apple time. Time to find my woman.
I found her out on the patio leaning against a column, a crowd of people behind her laughing and talking. Not paying attention. She looked more than a little drunk. Not good.
I hurried to her and heard Fuck You’s voice.
“Misplace someone, asshole?” His voice came from the crowd, and he stepped out, away from it, and right up behind her. “I don’t know, man.” His voice dripped with concern. “She doesn’t look too good, hombre.”
I rushed forward and grabbed Harper as she slumped forward.
“Junior.” She turned her face to mine and worked to form words. “He . . . my back . . . Freddie . . . call . . .”
She collapsed, and I hugged her to me.
My hands slid down her back. I felt something slick, and I brought a hand around. In the flickering party-lights the blood shone dark, almost black.
“Oops,” Freddie announced to the crowd. “Bitch can’t hold her liquor.”
Harper’s legs folded beneath her, and I whispered into her chest, “Get in here on the double, fuckers. Call an ambulance.”
I laid her gently onto the concrete while people in the crowd shouted encouragement.
“Get her another beer, asshole.”
“You’re gonna get lucky tonight.”
“Get her to the bathroom before she pukes her guts out.”
Her breathing came
labored and ragged. I kissed her forehead and stood up.
Freddie sported a smear of blood on his shirtfront and, more importantly, a knife in his hand. He wiped the blade on his jeans and left a dark smear.
“Lose another one, fucker?” he said. “You do got a way with women.” He tossed the blade from hand to hand, acting confident. He’d been in enough street fights to rely on his skills and experience. The knife gave him courage the beer and smoke couldn’t. Courage enough to sneak up on a woman and slide a knife into her back.
“Been looking for me? Should have looked harder. Maybe your girlfriend would still be alive. The old woman fought harder than this cunt.” He darted forward, knife held low, ready to slash upward. It’s what they all do. Like they learned it in knife school.
Big mistake.
I backed up and pulled off my shirt, wrapping it around my left arm. I took my time. I’d been to the same school. Graduated with honors.
“Come on, cobarde, coward,” I said. “You’re pretty good against old women and anyone else you can stab in the back. After I gut you I’m going to make you eat that pig sticker.”
Unlike other parties where women would be wailing and men dialing 911, all these fine folks formed a circle around us and picked sides. Very few bid on the gringo.
Freddie circled to his right. As a right-hander it probably felt natural for him. Good. He made his first blunder. I circled left, against the grain, forced him to make his move early. He took a halfhearted swipe at me, and I stayed close enough so his knife tip grazed my shirt but missed my skin.
The apparent damage he’d inflicted emboldened him, and he went for the same move again, stepping in closer this time to draw serious blood.
I pinned his knife arm. My left forearm against his outside bicep, my right hooked inside his arm. I pushed with my left, yanked hard with my right, and popped his elbow backwards out of its socket. It sounded like popping apart a chicken leg.
He screamed and dropped the knife.
The crowd went quiet.
I bent and retrieved the weapon. It felt familiar. Like mine, but a bit worse for wear. Regular Marine-issue KA-BAR. In this shape, twenty bucks at any Army/Navy store. I doubted he bought his.
“My arm, my arm,” he wailed. “He broke my fucking arm. Miguel. MIGUEL, GET HIM! SHOOT HIM!”
Miguel watched from the edge of the crowd and didn’t make a move. Not that I cared. If Miguel wanted to die too, I’d be happy to oblige.
Freddie backed away, holding his arm. His squeals turned to howls.
“MIGUEL, YOU ASSHOLE, FINISH HIM.” Freddie banged up against the same column Harper had leaned against.
I stepped in close.
He pawed at me with his good arm. Fingers clawed, trying to make a fight of it.
I swatted his arm away like I would an obnoxious bug. With my other hand, the knife hand, I buried the carbon steel up to the hilt in his gut and whispered in his ear, “Uh-oh.”
Air whooshed out like I’d punctured a beach ball.
“This is for Patricia,” I hissed. I pulled out the knife and thrust it in a couple more times. Fast and hard, like they taught me in prison. Each shove felt better than the one before.
Fuck You’s mouth gaped like a fish, and when I pulled the KA-BAR free the last time, I reversed my grip on the hilt. It dripped slick with blood, and I squeezed it tight in my fist.
His collapsing legs tried to take him to the ground, but I thrust my forearm against his throat and pressed back against the column, holding him up.
“Not yet, fucker.” I leaned in close, made sure his eyes focused on mine. “This is for Harper.”
I jammed the blade into his open mouth. This time I took it slow. I pushed and pushed until blood fountained from his lips, and I left the knife there while he gagged and slumped forward.
I shoved him away like a sack of garbage, and he collapsed.
I hurried over to Harper and cradled her head, whispering, blubbering like a baby. “You’re going to be okay, honey. You’re going to be okay.”
She blinked once, looked at me with tears in her eyes, and sighed, closing them for the last time.
“FREEZE! EVERYBODY FREEZE”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Junior
The five guys in the holding cell with me kept to themselves. The bolder ones made a point to glance off slowly when I caught them staring. But glance off they did. No one bothered me. Probably had something to do with the blood caking on my shirt and the red stain that reached up to my right elbow.
“What’d you do this time, Alvarez? Hm?”
I recognized the cop outside the cell. Allen something.
“You got a couple folks fooled around here. Not me. You’re bad news, and I’m going to make it my business—”
“ALVAREZ, FRONT AND CENTER.”
A clipboard-toting cop walked up rattling a keyring. He slipped the clipboard under one arm and picked through the keys until he settled on one he liked. “S’cuse me, officer,” he said to Allen and stepped in to unlock the cell door.
“What are you doing? Where you taking this piece of shit?” Allen asked.
“Where all pieces of shit go before they’re released.”
“Oh, come on. This must be some kind of mistake.”
The guard waved his clipboard. “It’s all right here, beside the coffee stain. See?” He jabbed a finger at the top paper. “Says ‘Alvarez is to be released and escorted to interrogation immediately.’ The order’s signed by Officer Carmichael.”
Allen pushed by him and yanked open the cell door. “Fine. I’ll take him.”
The guard shook his head dubiously. “I dunno. I’m the one s’posed to transport prisoners while in the facility.”
“I’m doing you a solid.” Allen leaned close to read the man’s name tag. “Officer Preston. You’d be wise to accept it as such.”
“Knock yourself out. Sign here,” he mimicked Allen’s name tag move, “Officer Dempsey, and he’s all yours.”
Allen scrawled something on the man’s pad and tossed him the pen. “You heard the man, Alvarez. You and me are taking a walk.”
He stepped wide to let me out of the cell. “Oh, shit, I almost forgot,” he said. “Hold up.”
He whipped a pair of cuffs off a clip on his belt. “Hands in back. You know the drill.”
“Officer Dempsey, I don't think this man requires—”
“But I do think, Preston. You do your job, walk up and down jangling your keys and look important. I’ll do mine.”
He squeezed the cuffs tight around my wrists. “Too tight? I hope?”
I stared at him. No comment. Let him play his Dirty Harry games.
He shoved me forward toward the exit door. “You know, Alvarez? You smell like a dead animal.” He sniffed loudly. “Yeah. Definitely something died.”
I flashed on Harper’s face, her eyes closing. I stopped and flexed my fingers. Contemplated snapping his neck.
“Oops. Sore spot, Alvarez? I should think you’d be used to shit dying around you.”
It took all I had to stay rooted in place.
“Let’s go, let’s go.” Allen shoved me.
I didn’t budge.
I turned toward him, and he reached for the holster at his side. The empty holster. He’d stashed his pistol at the entrance where all guns are confiscated before officers are allowed into the lockup facility.
He hesitated, and I felt my face crack wide with a smile. First time I felt like smiling in forever. It must have looked horrible, from the way he paled and backed up a step.
“We going to have a problem here, Alvarez?”
“Take me to your leader officer.” The contempt I put into the last word tasted good in my mouth.
We made it to the outside of Interrogation Room Six without further incident. I saw movement behind the frosted glass in the door. He knocked, and we pushed through into one of the larger rooms in the facility, large enough for an actual conference table ringed with
chairs.
Captain Samosa sat at one end, Officers Kailey Carmichael and Shinto Elliot, a couple men I didn't recognize, a beefy white guy and a tall black guy in their DEA-issue gray suits sat in the chairs along the side. My lawyer, Carlos Sanchez, took the other end facing the captain. A tiny handheld tape recorder sat dead center on the table.
“Hi, there, professor.” I turned and showed my cuffed hands to Kailey, and she smiled at me with sad eyes.
“Professor?” the captain said.
“It’s nothing,” Kailey said. “Our little joke.”
“In the meantime, I’d like to thank you all for coming,” I said.
“Sit down, asshole,” Allen snarled behind me.
I kicked a chair aside to get into it.
My lawyer rose from his chair and walked around the conference table, thumbs hooked in his suspenders. Everything casual except his eyes. He stopped beside me before I could sit. “You doing all right, son?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Officer.” He directed those blazing eyes at Allen. “I suggest you remove those handcuffs from my client immediately. Every second you waste,” he consulted his watch, “I will add a thousand dollars to the lawsuit we will summarily bring against you and this department.”
The captain rose and spread his hands to calm the waters. “Gentlemen and ladies.” He nodded to Kailey and Shinto. “Let’s all keep our heads and have no more talk of lawsuits or any other nasty business. We are all on the same side, here.”
“What side would that be, sir?” Sanchez asked.
“Why, justice, of course,” the captain said. “Officer Dempsey, remove the cuffs from our, um, guest, and let’s get this mess straightened out. It’s taco night at home, and I hate to miss my Mary’s tacos.”
Allen produced a key and unlocked my handcuffs and stepped back. He couldn’t bring himself to remove them completely and left one cuff dangling. I brought my arms around and finished the deed for him. He reached for his cuffs, and I tossed them on the table.
“These gentlemen here are from the Drug Enforcement Agency,” the captain said, “and have asked that we remand Mr. Alvarez into their custody.”
West Texas Dead: A Kailey and Shinto Mystery Page 24
