Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “I’m guessing nobody would be able to afford it anyway, Mr. Skoll,” Decker snapped back at him. “And, on that subject, perhaps we should discuss the fates of the two other pharmaceutical concerns you previously obtained. They’re both in bankruptcy now, is that correct?”

  “Through no fault of mine, Madam Chairman. Those companies were severely overleveraged and my attempts to right their ships by raising specialty drug prices came too late.”

  “The numbers suggest otherwise. The numbers suggest that you were the one who leveraged both companies in order to pay off investors of several other failed investments you had made on their behalf. You used price gouging to overstate their actual worth and then borrowed against that increased line without putting a single dollar back into the companies.”

  “Those allegations are both unfounded and unproven.”

  “Not for long, Mr. Skoll,” Decker reminded, “if the U.S. attorneys in four different states have their way—and that’s not to mention an investigation already under way by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Looks like you’re going to be spending a lot of time in hearings like this one, sir.”

  Skoll took the wad of gum from his mouth and let the camera see him stick it under the table at which he was seated. “Speaking of which,” he said, rising, “my time is valuable and I’ve wasted enough of it here already. I need to get back to work.”

  Decker rapped her gavel several times to still the crowd’s audible reaction to Skoll’s indignation. “What is Lot U-two-five-seven-F?”

  Skoll froze in place behind his chair.

  “Do you need me to repeat the question, sir?” Decker asked him. “I believe this coding in question indicates a drug for which a clinical trial is being conducted at Redfern. Is that correct?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “So do you deny knowledge of, or any association with, a clinical trial for a drug known as Lot U-two-five-seven-F?”

  “I do deny it, because it’s none of your damn business.”

  Decker smiled smugly. “I’d remind you, Mr. Skoll, that I’m here to do the people’s business.”

  “If that’s what you’d like to call it.”

  “One more time, Mr. Skoll: what is Lot U-two-five-seven-F?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And you say that under penalty of perjury?”

  “I say that because it’s the truth, Madam Chairman. And standing here being berated by you doesn’t make it any less so.”

  “Then perhaps you should take your seat again,” Decker suggested, to a smattering of chuckles in the gallery.

  Skoll remained in place. “Not if it means continuing with this farce.”

  “This committee hasn’t excused you yet, sir. We’re called the Committee on Oversight for a reason, Mr. Skoll, and that would seem to be something you’re badly in need of. And I’ll ask you one last time, what is Lot U-two-five-seven-F?”

  “And I’ll tell you one last time that it’s none of your business,” Skoll insisted, hoping Decker and the other committee members couldn’t see the cold sweat beginning to soak through his shirt. “I was called here today to testify about drug pricing, which I have done in good faith. I wasn’t prepared for questions about any clinical trials my company may or may not be engaged in.”

  “This committee has taken the liberty of expanding the scope of its investigation. We would, of course, be happy to revisit this matter at another time,” Decker said, eyes boring down on Skoll from the dais.

  “There’s no matter to revisit, because there’s no such thing as Lot U-two-five-seven-F at my company.”

  “Then I suppose you have nothing to worry about on that end, do you?”

  Skoll wished he’d had something witty to say, some harsh retort held on his tongue like a sharp knife ready to poke flesh. But all he could think of was how Congresswoman Sheila Decker could possibly have learned of the existence of Lot U257F, and how many others might be aware of its existence as well. Because if they knew everything …

  “Mr. Skoll, I would ask that you take your seat, so this hearing may continue.”

  “No,” Skoll heard himself say to Decker. “No.” Repeating it louder. “I will not take a seat and you can continue this hearing without me.”

  The gallery broke into a chaos of voices as David Skoll made his way toward the exit to the accompaniment of camera clicks and whirs.

  “I’d strongly advise you to reconsider this decision,” Decker’s voice blared, her gavel rapping constantly against the hard wood to still the disturbance in the hearing room.

  Unable to help himself, Skoll stopped just short of the door and, before a bevy of cameras and a packed gallery following his every move, he gave Congresswoman Decker the finger.

  14

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Smirking now, Skoll pressed forward out the door. He felt his phone vibrate with an incoming text he didn’t read until he made it through the milling crowd and into the back of his limousine.

  Skoll’s hand trembled. He had to remind himself to breathe as he reread the message. Then he pressed out the number of the person who’d texted him and listened to it ringing. The clamminess he’d felt in the committee chamber had stayed with him, so he reached up to lower the air-conditioning in the limo’s rear.

  “Is it contained?” Skoll asked as soon as he heard the click of the line being answered, not waiting for some perfunctory greeting.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” the voice said back to him.

  “Why’s that unfortunate?”

  “The two latest victims both lived in the same apartment building.”

  “Oh, shit…”

  “That was my thought. Texas Rangers evacuated the complex. Homeland Security’s involved.”

  “Texas Rangers, Homeland Security,” Skoll said, shaking his head. “How about the Sixth Fleet, maybe the Eighty-second Airborne—are they on their way, too?” He felt his phone vibrate and checked the screen for the caller ID, immediately recognizing the Texas exchange. “I’ve got to take this other call. I’ll ring you back.”

  Skoll took a deep breath and swapped out the new call for the old one.

  “I watched the hearing on television,” greeted the voice on the other end of the line. “You looked like shit.”

  “I’m flying back this afternoon. Can we talk then?”

  “Sure, we can, Davey, and we can talk now, too. See, your note’s come due.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve got a deal!”

  “That’s right, we do. Next time I’d recommend a more careful review of the terms.”

  “Look, I’ve done everything you asked.”

  “And now I’m gonna ask for more, Davey, on account of demand exceeding supply. Means I need that supply upped. You know, capitalism at its best.”

  “I’m under federal scrutiny. They could have a warrant to listen in on all my calls. Let’s meet up when I’m back.”

  “Give me a time.”

  “Tonight,” Skoll told him. “My place.”

  “Works for me, Davey,” said Armand Fisker.

  PART TWO

  “Here lies he who spent his manhood

  defending the homes of Texas.”

  —epitaph on the gravestone of Texas Ranger William “Bigfoot” Wallace, 1817–1899

  15

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Guillermo Paz stood at the edge of the shadows darkening a tight alleyway next to a boarded-up building across the street from Miguel Asuna’s body shop on the east side of the city. He’d originally planned to begin watching over Dylan Torres, the oldest son of Cort Wesley Masters, tomorrow. But something had made him come here late in the afternoon, just as the light of the day began to bleed away.

  Paz had been dispensing toilet articles in sample sizes that had been donated to the Catholic Worker House, when the thought struck him like a slap to his spine. He got those feelings often, having inherited a kind of second, even third, sight from his mother, who everyo
ne in the Caracas slum he’d grown up in thought was a bruja, or witch. They stayed away from her as a result, even the most hardened criminal element afraid to cross Paz’s mother, lest they risk a spell being cast against them, or worse.

  Paz had to admit he’d been scared of his mother for a time, too, right after the first instance he’d witnessed her abilities truly on display.

  * * *

  He’d been ten years old when he’d found his first priest bleeding to death from a knife wound suffered for trying to help the local impoverished lot the gangs sought to control. He held the man’s head in his lap, his own tears falling onto his robes, as the man took his last breath. He closed the glazed eyes and crossed himself the way the priest had taught him, silently swearing to avenge him. Then Paz went about collecting the bread and vegetables the man had died for that had spilled out of the grocery bags when he fell.

  He’d found his mother crying when he returned to the tiny, clapboard house with a tin roof they shared with his four siblings, having been struck by one of her visions she called desfallecimientos, which was Spanish for spells.

  “I didn’t steal it,” Paz said, laying out his small share of the food the priest would’ve allotted him. “I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine.”

  “But you’re going to take plenty in the years to come,” his mother told him. “You’re going to take more lives than I can see. Your fate was sealed today and now I see why, just as I see the blood staining your clothes.”

  Paz looked down at his shirt and pants. They were still moist with blood from where the priest’s wounds had leaked onto him.

  “I didn’t hurt anyone, madre,” Paz insisted.

  “But you will, you will hurt many, more than you or I can count.”

  “I’ll find another priest,” he said, refusing to let himself cry. “I’ll pray.”

  “It won’t matter,” said his mother. “The smell of blood will be forever strong on you, Guillermo.”

  * * *

  And, true to his mother’s words, it had been, until the day he first crossed paths with his Texas Ranger. He’d spilled plenty of blood since, but the smell of it no longer clung to him the same way.

  Paz had begun his vigil today, because a vision of Dylan Torres had struck him while he was passing out those toiletries. The young man’s image had popped into his head and hadn’t moved. That wasn’t a good sign, among those with which Paz had familiarized himself, building his own lexicon for the sensory perceptions that set the world around him crackling with static electricity that prickled the surface of his skin.

  True to what he’d sensed, a black, extended-cab pickup truck began edging its way into his field of vision. It had windows tinted so dark, they reflected the last of the day’s sunlight like mirrors. The steel bed was black, too, the tires extra wide, and the loud engine made the truck sound like a race car revving. Both rear quarter panels were decorated with Confederate flags, whether painted on or decals, Paz wasn’t sure. He thought he was looking at a cliché come to life, this batch of human excrement right out of central casting.

  Paz backed farther into the shadows of the alley to avoid being seen, finding himself next to a Dumpster overflowing with chunks of what had been the boarded-up building’s brick façade. He wondered what new sign would hang over the door once the renovations were finished; he had trouble picturing something like a Starbucks moving in here. More likely a bodega or food joint that accepted EBT cards and featured a sectioned-off check-cashing station way in the back.

  Paz watched the truck slow, brake lights flashing on and then off again when it passed Miguel Asuna’s shop. It continued on, the driver accelerating with a screech of his tires when a pair of Latino boys rushed across the street, jamming on the brakes just when it seemed he was intent on running them over.

  Paz thought he heard laughter coming from inside the cab.

  Just then, some of Miguel Asuna’s workers emerged from his body shop. They carried themselves uneasily, their shoulders stiff, maybe from glancing back over their shoulders too much. Illegals for sure, afraid to report harassment at the hands of the likes of the men inside the black truck.

  Paz watched the big truck reverse with a squeal of its oversized tires, then grind to a stop when it drew even with the four Latinos who’d emerged from the auto body repair shop. It crawled down the street in rhythm with the pace of the workers who did their best to ignore it, even though Paz heard ugly taunts being tossed out of the truck’s passenger side.

  Paz was thinking seriously about intervening, when Dylan Torres emerged through the same door, still wearing his coveralls and pulling his arms through a jean jacket. He stopped to light a cigarette, another thing his father Cort Wesley Masters would likely put the boy over his knee for doing, and then tossed it aside when he spotted the black truck’s brake lights and his fellow workers moving in a tight cluster even with it.

  Uh-oh, Paz thought, even before he saw the pistol flash in Dylan Torres’ hand.

  16

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Dylan jogged up even with the driver’s-side door and rapped on the blacked-out window with the butt of the Glock 17 nine-millimeter pistol one of Miguel Asuna’s illegals had given him.

  Dylan had just started banging again when the truck jerked to a halt and the window slid down. The pungent scent of weed washed over him, the driver sneering from behind a set of hooded eyes slowed by the joint he and his posse had been sharing. The stench of rank perspiration trailed the smoke out of the cab, strong enough to turn Dylan’s stomach.

  “What the fuck you want, spic?” asked the driver, whose hair was almost as long as Dylan’s.

  “I’m only half spic.”

  “Guess that means we need to hate you only half as much,” the driver said, drawing a laugh from the truck’s three other occupants.

  Dylan held the pistol low by his side, a round already jacked into the chamber, making sure the driver could see it. “Why are you bothering them?”

  “Who,” the driver wanted to know, “your spic brothers?”

  “Half brothers, remember? I’m only half spic.”

  “So is it the spic half sticking up for them?”

  “It’s the white half holding the gun.”

  “So how exactly are they gonna deport only half of you?” The driver jammed the truck into park. “I say we carve you in half, one little ball on either side. Hey, how do they say ‘little balls’ in Spanish?”

  Dylan looked down the street, the workers he ate lunch with every day just about to turn the corner, meaning they were almost safe. “Why don’t you step out of the truck, so I can whisper it in your ear?”

  The rear window on the driver’s side slid downward and an acne-scarred, greasy-haired kid about Dylan’s age propped a sawed-off shotgun on the sill. Kid had a round fat face and jowls so big they hung off his face. So ugly Dylan had to look away.

  “Why don’t you drop the gun?” the driver said, tapping his own revolver on the gleaming finish of the truck’s door. “Nice piece. Better yet, hand it over and we’ll call things even.”

  “Why don’t you come out here and take it?” Dylan said, still holding the Glock low.

  His words sounded brave, but he was cursing himself for not noticing the driver work the .357 into position. His father would kill him for that, if the driver didn’t.

  The driver grinned, his tiny eyes looking even smaller. “No, you’re gonna hand me the gun, real slow and careful, and in return we’re gonna let you keep those little balls of yours.”

  “Cajones pequeño.”

  “Huh?”

  “Little balls in Spanish. You wanna step out of that truck and suck them?”

  Dylan was ready to fire as he said that, barrel tilting upward from his hip. The driver had started to right his pistol, the kid in the backseat raising his sawed-off out the open window.

  Then something hit the truck’s hood with enough force to leave a huge dent. In the next instant, the windshie
ld exploded, and Dylan saw what looked like a brick wedged into the shattered glass.

  “What the fuck?” the driver squealed. “What the—”

  Two more bricks left huge dents in the roof before he could finish, clangs sounding from impact in the cargo bed, before one sailed through the open rear window, grazing the face of the greasy kid in the backseat. He grunted, almost lost hold of his sawed-off, and lurched forward to get it back in his grasp.

  Boom!

  The blast must’ve deafened those inside the truck, the shotgun shell tearing a horizontal divot down a long portion of the quarter panel.

  “Shit!” the driver bellowed. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  The sky was raining bricks now, the truck under some indescribable siege that left the driver jerking it into gear and screeching off from the onslaught, bleeding smoke from its tires.

  Dylan cupped his balls through his coveralls in his free hand, hoping the driver was watching him in the truck’s side-view mirror.

  “Eat this, asshole!” he yelled out, kicking aside one of the stray bricks that had seemed to fall from the sky.

  17

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Ranger,” D. W. Tepper had said, as soon as he arrived at the now evacuated apartment complex, “if they outlawed shit in the whole state of Texas, you’d still find a way to step in it.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Captain.”

  Tepper took a box of Marlboro Reds from the pocket of a suede jacket swimming with fringe. Caitlin recalled it had been a gift from the grandson of Buffalo Bill Cody. “Say, does this apartment complex allow smoking?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Caitlin told him. “I was too busy evacuating the residents.”

  “Our friend Jones arrive yet?”

  “He wouldn’t say where he was when I reached him. Only that he was turning around and heading our way.”

  “Yeah, half of Homeland Security would be out of a job, if it wasn’t for you.” Tepper popped a single cigarette from the box and stuck it in his mouth. “Well?”