Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  She folded her body around me, and the shock of the blows raining down on her back went right through her chest and shook my head. He swung and he kicked and he cursed until he wore himself out, and then he left her there on the floor, in the bright yellow dress she had chosen to honor the Lord.

  Anna looks at me with clear blue eyes and says, “Imagine what your life would be if you had someone who loved you like that.”

  “Goddammit, shut the fuck up, you fucking whore!” I’m standing over her with both fists clenched. I’m going to hit her with every ounce of strength I have.

  “What’s the matter, Freddy?” she asks calmly. “Did I hit a nerve?” She picks the gun up from her lap, clicks the safety off, and points it at me. “Don’t even think about hitting me. I won’t take any more of that from anyone.”

  I stare at her for a couple of seconds, filled with shame and hatred for myself as the jittery bead of red light on my heart raises an instinctive panic.

  Breathe, Freddy. Breathe. Deep breaths.

  She stands and takes a couple of steps back, keeping the gun pointed at my heart.

  “You like being a detective, huh? You get to ask all the questions, and you don’t have to answer any.” She looks at me for a second, then says, “Well let me tell you something. I used to be a stripper. I was the one on stage baring everything while the guys showed nothing. At least, that’s how they thought it worked. But most guys are like amateur poker players. They show a lot more than they think they’re showing. Let me ask you something, Freddy Ferguson. Do you know what it’s like to be looked at like that?”

  “Like what? What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “The way you looked at me in the security line at the airport. Do you know how intrusive that is? To be put under the glare of that kind of scrutiny?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Tell me, Freddy, what are you looking for?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” I say under my breath. “I was looking for you, OK? And here we are. I’m sorry I called you a whore. I didn’t mean it. I have a bit of a temper, OK?”

  “I can see that.”

  She looks back at the cross on the table and says, “Can I finish what I was saying? Because, you know, it’s really rude to cut someone off when they’re talking about something so personal.”

  “All right,” I say.

  “Try to sound happy about it, will you?”

  I let out a long breath of frustration.

  “Because I’m sick of people being rude to me. I’m sick of people not listening, and I’m sick of not being heard.”

  She nods toward the cross and says, “When they crucified Him, His mother had to watch. Mary Magdalene had to watch. I did that to my own mother, and to my sister. I made them watch. And I can’t forgive myself for all the hardship I put them through. That’s part of the whole program, you know. Forgiveness. But I’m not very good at that yet.”

  She glaces at the bruises on her wrists and says, “You know, a lot of guys are weird. They want you to piss on them, or pretend you’re twelve, or shove a dildo up their ass. I don’t judge them. We all have our quirks.”

  She’s drawing little circles on my heart with the laser.

  “But I’ll tell you where I do judge. Some guys can’t get off unless they’re dominating you. Those are the real pervs. Those are the ones I won’t see twice. And Lomax? Nothing turns him on more than knowing he’s really, truly hurting someone.”

  She looks at the scars above my eyes, the ones that every boxer has, and says, “You look like you’ve had your fights, and you’ve probably taken your beatings, just like everyone else. But to be utterly helpless, to be crying and unable to defend yourself, to just have to lie there and take it while you pray for him to finish, that’s something no man will ever understand.”

  No, I think, but a kid understands it. A little kid in the wrong situation knows exactly what that’s like.

  “Get out of here, Freddy. Get the fuck out of this house. And if you do see Lomax,” she says bitterly, “do me a favor and put a bullet in his head.”

  21

  At four a.m., I’m sitting on a motel bed in Elgin with the TV on for distraction. I should be tired. This day started back in DC almost twenty-four hours ago. But I can’t sleep.

  I sent Anna a text two hours ago reminding her she owes me two more names. She had told me she’d find them in the pages of the Austin Statesman. So far, I haven’t heard anything back.

  The TV is murmuring quietly on the wall above the dresser. It’s a rerun of the eleven o’clock news, showing the big drug arrest that nabbed Anna’s escort on a highway near Longview. That’s about 250 miles northeast of here, near the Louisiana border. I turn up the volume.

  “The Texas Department of Public Safety announced a major drug bust this afternoon, the result, they say, of a lengthy investigation involving the State Highway Patrol and the Criminal Investigations Division. Texas native Ramón Ramírez was picked up just east of Longview, on his way to Shreveport, Louisiana, with two kilograms of fentanyl. Reynaldo Juárez has the story.”

  The report opens with a voice-over and a shot of several small, taped plastic packets. Fentanyl is sold in micrograms. The street value of this haul was a couple million dollars. A Captain Crunch, or something like that, is praising all of Texas law enforcement, right on up to the governor, for the teamwork and dedication that led to this arrest. No, the Captain’s name is Kuntze, not Crunch.

  They show the suspect being led from a low brick building toward a police cruiser. Ramón Ramírez has a little swagger. He looks perfectly at home in handcuffs. They don’t have to push his head down to get him into the back of the car. He just ducks right in on his own. He knows the drill. According to the news report, he’s got a string of minor offenses stretching back seven years. He’s served a few stints in jail—thirty days here, sixty there—but he’s never been in prison. Whoever he is, he’s low-level. Disposable.

  I’m wondering how Ramón, the Texas native, wound up in the airport with Anna Brook. The reports Ed sent me about Ramírez seemed a little off. Parts of the record were missing, parts were blacked out, and the cocaine bust that should have resulted in a felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. If the guy was an informant, could Lomax have picked him up on the case he was working down here?

  The news cuts back to campaign coverage. The two candidates for governor drive their points home through endless repetition to crowds of supporters across Texas. Patty Rice and her benefits for all. The candidate of mercy. Jumbo Throckmorton and his tough stance on crime. The candidate of justice. The world needs all it can get of both.

  “What has Patty Rice done for Texas?” Throckmorton thunders at a podium in the middle of a high school football field. His supporters are also on the field. The turnout wasn’t big enough to fill the stands. “Patty Rice gave us new regulations when she was in the state senate. She made it more expensive to run a business. She made it harder for the state to turn over illegals to Immigration. She gave away your tax dollars to take care of people who won’t take care of themselves.”

  Patty Rice, on stage at a school auditorium in Arlington, brags she did all that and more. “Jumbo Throckmorton was a good director of public safety,” she says. “Yes, crime, and especially drug-related crime, went down on his watch. I give him full credit for that. But the issues facing Texans today—trying to get by in a service economy, trying to earn a stable wage and get decent health care, funding a public school system that will educate kids for better jobs—these are not his issues. Jumbo Throckmorton is a one-trick pony. His answer to everything is jail and deportation. Even the drug trade has moved beyond him. Prescription opioids are killing more Texans than illegal drugs, and Jumbo Throckmorton is not the man to stand up to Big Pharma. He is the property of Big Pharma, of Big Oil, Big Money, big everything. They call him Jumbo for a reason.”

  I like the sparring between these two. They’r
e like a couple of fighters who really can’t stand each other and don’t want to miss a single opportunity to land a blow. I can tell Throckmorton is the kind of guy who likes his women in dresses, with long hair and lots of makeup. There’s no place for someone like Patty Rice in his world. A woman beyond her childbearing years, with short, feathered hair and pantsuits, who makes no attempt to be alluring but has a relentless focus on issues and getting things done. I can see she gets under his skin, the way she sticks with him, blow for blow. He can’t quite shake her off and he can’t put her down for the count. Every fighter’s had a few opponents like that. You don’t realize how much they take out of you until the days after the bout.

  I know I have insomnia when I’m watching reruns of political interviews at six a.m. Now Throckmorton’s on CNN, up against an unfriendly reporter, a young dark-haired woman whose questions focus on all his weak points: the economy and unemployment, affordable health care, budget cuts, and race relations. It’s like Rice handed the reporter a description of the Democrats’ agenda and now she’s asking the Republican why he’s not fulfilling it.

  Throckmorton handles it well. He bends every answer back to his talking points, which he delivers in a smooth, easygoing manner that’s both folksy and tough. He’s like a super-sized John Wayne. The lawman you trust but never want to cross.

  When she comes to the topic of immigration, he really hits his stride, talking at length about how much the Latino community has contributed to the culture and economy of the state while throwing in little digs all along the way at the illegals.

  Then the interviewer says, “One thing we haven’t touched on yet is terrorism, which has been very much in the news lately, with 188 lives lost in what appears to be a terrorist attack on a US airline.”

  Throckmorton rocks back a little in his seat, wiping his hands on his pants in a subtle show of fatigue.

  “You’re known for being tough on crime,” the interviewer says. “Do you see terrorism as a threat to Texas? And what is the state doing, under your leadership, to combat it?”

  “Well, terrorism is a big problem,” he says. “While the state plays a part in monitoring and enforcement, the scope of the problem is… it’s really a national problem. An international problem. Which is why our federal government dedicates so many resources to surveillance and intelligence.”

  “Do you think they’ll find the people who took down that plane in California?”

  “Well, it looks like they already have,” he says with a laugh.

  “The FBI has a suspect in custody,” the reporter says, “but he hasn’t been charged.”

  “All right, look,” Throckmorton says, “this case has nothing to do with Texas.” He seems a little testy.

  “I didn’t say it did.”

  “We’re here to talk about pressing issues. About why Texas needs four more years of Jumbo Throckmorton and can’t risk the mistake of electing a California liberal like Patty Rice—”

  I cut it off there. I’ve had enough for one night.

  At six-fifteen I send an email to Bethany and Leon. Give me all you can on Sheldon Brown and Franklin Dorsett, on Midland-Odessa Custom Hauling, Martínez Resort Services in Galveston, and Ramírez Resort Services in Corpus Christi.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, but I know I was out by sunrise, when a little unfamiliar buzzing sound woke me. I blinked a couple times, turned away from the window, and went back to sleep.

  22

  October 5

  I sleep till ten and am on the road by ten-thirty, heading north toward Dallas. The radio is reporting that Obasanjo’s mother and father have been taken into protective custody after receiving death threats. The car rental company where his father works was firebombed overnight. Someone sent a brick through the window, followed by a Molotov cocktail.

  The restaurant where Obasanjo’s mother works announced it will close indefinitely, in response to threats that its owners fear will be acted on. “We’ve been getting calls for days,” the owner said. He has a deep, gravelly voice. “On the phone, on our Facebook page, on Yelp. After last night, we’re not taking any chances. The safety of our employees and customers comes first.”

  Then it’s on to Delmont Suggs. The Feds have located and surrounded his Idaho compound.

  I turn the radio off as I near the Dallas city limits. The news is starting to depress me, like those lists I used to make to antagonize that priest back in Brooklyn. My lists of all the things God was doing wrong. Only those things seemed confined to the neighborhood. The drugs and violence and crime were products of poverty. Now the whole country’s in distress.

  Sheldon Brown’s house northwest of Dallas is even bigger than Katie Green’s. Stopping at the driveway gate, I can see it’s a sprawling stone monstrosity that could have ten or even fifteen bedrooms. I give the car some gas and roll slowly down the road. The driveway is a giant semi-circle with an iron gate at either end. The gates are a hundred yards apart, and they’re both wide open. Between them is a high hedge that hides all but the top of the house.

  Stopping at the second gate, I see two cars in the drive, up near the house: a big black Mercedes and a white Ford pickup. I turn into the driveway, and the wheels of the Malibu crunch along through the yellow pebbles. There’s no one in the yard.

  I park behind the Ford. It’s waxed to a brilliant shine and decked out with chrome wheels, chrome bumper, chrome mirrors, and when I get around front, I see the big chrome grill. This is a show truck, not a work truck.

  I go up the steps and ring the bell, but no one answers. So I take a walk around the side, looking into a couple of ground-level windows as I go. The place is sparsely furnished, but what’s there looks expensive. The rooms are so big, it would take a few truckloads of furniture to make the place look lived in.

  An iron fence around the back yard turns into a stone wall about thirty feet before it reaches the side of the house. The wall has a stone arch whose black iron gate matches the fence. It’s open, so I go through.

  Out back is a kidney-shaped swimming pool with a bar at one end and a cave and waterfall at the other. Between the pool and the house is a stone patio with another bar and a grill. Giant French doors with copper mullions lead into a huge back room that looks like a ballroom.

  At the near end of the pool, just in front of the cave entrance, a short, shirtless guy with a chest and shoulders carved from gleaming ebony is dragging a net on a twenty-foot pole across the water. He’s caught a purple bikini bottom. Or maybe they’re panties. He’ll have to haul them in before he goes after the four brown beer bottles on the pool bottom. One of the lounge chairs near the far end of the deck is covered with a beige towel. The round imprint in the middle of it and the glass of soda and upside-down novel on the table beside it tell me someone was sitting there just now.

  I catch the pool cleaner’s eye and nod. He doesn’t seem concerned that I’m here. “Anyone inside?”

  “Just the usual folk,” he says. “They in playing cards.” He nods toward the house, then gives me a little up-and-down look, like he’s trying to see how much I’m worth. “If they expecting you,” he says, “just go on in.”

  Then I see the body that belongs to that imprint on the lounge chair. She comes out through the back door in a green bikini and makes her way along the edge of the pool back toward her chair. I follow twenty feet behind. She has broad hips, pale, creamy skin, and little dimples on either side of her spine, just above the bikini line. She knows I’m following her.

  When she reaches her chair, she picks up the glass of soda and turns around to watch me get an eyeful of her as she sips her drink. Those broad hips have always been a weakness of mine. She has a flat stomach with a smooth, indented line right down the middle, and heavy teardrop breasts that go a little off to the sides, with a wide valley between them.

  “You here for the card game?” she says.

  “I came to talk about some business.”

  �
��Whose business?” she says, and I can tell by the stupid flirty look she gives me that she’s not too bright. She’s got reddish-brown hair that goes a little past her shoulders, hazel eyes, and a mouth that’s too small but somehow still turns me on. She goes on sucking at the straw, real slow, and I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes up on her face. Those hips are like magnets.

  “Sheldon Brown’s,” I say.

  “You know he’s dead,” she says, with a pouty girlish face. “Or don’t you have a TV?” She puts her drink down and sits on the lounge chair, knees up and spread a little too wide, with one foot on either edge of the chair.

  “You look a little pale to be out in this sun,” I say. Usually, no matter how good looking a woman is, the minute I find out she’s stupid, the attraction ends. In this case, however, part of me is willing to make an exception. Unfortunately, that part is taking all the blood away from the part of me that does the thinking.

  “I’m not trying to tan. Just enjoying the scenery.” She’s watching the guy across the pool with the twenty-foot pole.

  “Kinda hot out here,” I say. “Don’t you think?”

  “Is it? I guess it is. Duluth doesn’t get this hot, even in July. Are you a cop?”

  “No. What if I was?”

  She shrugs. “They usually come by in uniform.”

  “Who’s inside?” I ask.

  “The usual hangers-on.”

  “And you?” I say. “Are you a relative of the deceased?” The line of her legs, from the knees down to the insides of her thighs, keeps sucking my eyes back to the strip of green fabric that just barely covers what I shouldn’t be looking at.

  “Long-term guest,” she says. “You gonna fall asleep?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Your eyes keep dropping.”

  I run into a lot of people in my line of work, and I’ve met more than a few like her. Usually, I’m immune to them. She has the scent of boredom all around her, of lazy days spent waiting for some new pastime to fill the empty hours between waking and sleep. Something just memorable enough to make today stand out from yesterday.