by R. A. McGee
“Sometimes assholes get what they deserve.”
Mateo stood up, bouncing with energy. “Can you teach me more?”
“Boxing?” Clark said.
The boy nodded eagerly.
“Sorry bud, it’s a little late right now. I’ll tell you what. You go clean up and get some rest, and I’ll see if I can teach you a little more tomorrow. Deal?” Clark held his hand out.
“Deal.” The boy shook it with a ferocity that surprised Clark. Then he raced out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Clark smiled for a few moments after the boy left. The smile slowly faded and Clark moved the couch back into its place and bellied up to his kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of vodka staring him in the face.
Eschewing a plastic cup, Clark pulled straight from the plastic bottle. Several moments later, it was empty.
Clark walked over to his bed, kicked off his shoes, and lay down, ready for the night to take him.
It was a new night but the same dream as always. Clark couldn’t move and Samantha’s face wouldn’t stop melting. He was helpless, and all he could do was wait for it to be over, and pray it wasn’t a night where the dream was on repeat in his mind.
Thirteen
“I think it’s a good deal,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. “You did really well.”
“Well, you found it,” McHenry said. “I wasn’t looking to buy so soon after selling, but I needed to get out of the company apartment. I need a little extra room.”
“You’ll get it. A two-two in that area? Great buy. It needs a little elbow grease, so if you need references for good contractors, you just let me know, okay?”
“Thanks, Cynthia. It was nice working with you,” McHenry said, then hung the phone up.
No sooner had the phone settled in the cradle than there was a knock at his door. “Come in.”
Lucy Gordon walked into his office. A petite girl with the blackest possible hair, she hid her face behind a pair of oversized, thick-rimmed black glasses. As always, she had an oversized tumbler of coffee. “Do you have a minute?”
“For you? All the time in the world.”
Lucy waved a manila folder. “I have a few things I need you to sign off on. Equipment, work orders, stuff like that. My team needs a couple new servers to replace our old ones.”
“How come every time you come in here you want something, Ms. Gordon? Have you ever slowed down for a minute, taken a break?”
Lucy had a confused look on her face. She closed the folder and shrugged her shoulders. “No, not really.”
“Sit with me. I want to talk about you for a minute.”
Lucy sat on the worn couch opposite McHenry’s desk. “About what?”
“How you’re holding up.”
“Regarding?”
“Clark.”
Lucy exhaled and leaned back in the couch. “Miri has been doing a good job running the team. She’s great, right?”
McHenry nodded.
“It’s just… it isn't the same when he’s not here. I don’t really know how to describe it. I miss him, you know?”
“I expected him to be back by now. Since he’s not, I sent Miri to talk to him. Maybe she can bring him back to us.”
Lucy whistled. “He’s not gonna like that.”
“Why? He’d run through a wall for her.”
“Sure, but he wanted to be left alone. He’s smart, he’ll know you're trying to manipulate him.”
“I’m not trying to manipulate him,” McHenry said, “I just want to make sure he’s safe and comes back to us in one piece. Besides, even if I was—”
“The ends justify the means,” Lucy said, repeating McHenry’s oft-said phrase.
“I’m glad someone pays attention to me around here.”
Lucy sipped her coffee and didn’t reply.
“It’s actually good that you stopped by. I need something from you.”
“Sure.”
“If Miri needs any tech support, I want you to assist.”
“That goes without question.”
McHenry stood, shifting his weight onto his painful hip. “The thing is, I’d like for you to keep this between us for now.”
“But… why? Anyone would be glad to help Clark and Miri.”
“I don’t want all of Blackthorn to know that I’m using our resources for this. It’s best if we just keep it between us. Okay?”
“Sure, McHenry, whatever you need,” Lucy said, pushing her glasses back up her nose.
“I knew I could count on you. Let me know the second you hear anything. I’m very interested to find out just what the hell is happening down there.”
Fourteen
The sunlight streaming through his ratty curtains woke Clark. Disoriented, he went for his pistol first, then his phone. Nearly noon and he felt like he hadn't slept a moment of the night.
He brushed his teeth with a bottle of water, then rinsed his face off with the remainder. Lingering for a moment at the kitchen table, he stuffed the gold-plated 1911 into his back pocket and the Glock in his waistband.
Clark made his way down the staircase and through the laundromat. He stopped and looked at the occupant of a hard plastic chair in the waiting room. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“Since I woke up,” Mateo said. “Are we going to box?”
“Not now, kid. I have some things to do. Maybe when I get back. Savvy?”
“What is savvy?”
“It’s like, ‘you understand? You get it?’ A friend of mine likes to say it.”
Mateo nodded. “Savvy.”
Clark tousled the boy's hair and made his way out to the Jeep, peeling out of the parking lot and driving the familiar circuit to his favorite café. It was a bit of a risk, it being so close to the hotel where Pascual had been killed, but Clark felt confident no one would find him there. After all, he had used it as a surveillance location for countless hours, before and after he’d “worked” for Pascual.
As a precaution, Clark parked the Jeep three blocks further west than he normally did, and took the back alleys to the restaurant. It had rained, and there were puddles in the cobblestone alleys. The heat had made the air humid and there were several smells that Clark didn’t recognize.
He made it to the café, and sat for a few minutes before his regular waitress walked over and smiled at him. “Lo normal?” The usual?
Clark nodded, then looked over at the front of the hotel, trying to see if there were any unusual people or activity.
The waitress was back in a few minutes with two bottles of Coke, no ice, and a basket of chips and salsa.
“Thanks, but I only need one bottle.”
“Yeah, but what am I gonna drink?” said a husky, familiar voice from behind him.
Clark didn’t need to turn around—he’d have recognized the voice anywhere.
“I was wondering when you’d show up. I’ve been watching this place for hours.”
“I was sleeping.”
Miriam Banks stepped around him and took the seat in front of him, across the table. “Were you?”
“Was I what?”
“Sleeping. It sure as hell doesn’t look like it.”
Miri, on the other hand, looked as put-together as she always did. Her long hair was smoothed and pulled back, and her olive skin didn’t need any of the tan it would get while in Mexico. As usual, Clark caught himself looking at her eyes a bit harder than he should.
Miri had heterochromia, a condition that gives a person two different-colored eyes. One of her eyes was light brown, the other icy blue.
“You come all this way to shit on me?” Clark said.
“No, just making an observation. You look terrible. When’s the last time you shaved?”
Clark shrugged.
There was a comfortable silence at the table. Both drank from their bottles. Clark looked at the front of the hotel and tried not to notice his friend staring at him.
“McHenry send you?�
�
“He’s worried about you.”
“He wants me to come back. He figures you’re the only one who can get me to come in without getting their head ripped off.”
“He’s not stupid,” Miri said.
“No, but he is manipulative. ‘The ends justify the means,’ like he always says. He’s just using you.”
“It doesn’t matter, I wanted to come and find you,” Miri said. She reached across the table and touched Clark’s burned hand. “You were supposed to call. I told you I’d help you. You know I don’t have an agenda.”
“I know.”
“You look like hammered shit. You smell bad, and I’m pretty sure this hand needs some medical attention. You can’t be like this.”
“Like what?” Clark said, pulling his hand away from Miri.
Miri fixed Clark with a hard glare. “A whiny little bitch.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Why is that, Czerny?”
He winced.
When he’d first met Miriam, she was determined to get the pronunciation of his first name right.
“Just pretend the ‘z’ is an ‘h’. Czerny,” he’d told her half a dozen times.
His first name was his mother’s maiden name. She was from the then-USSR, and had met his father, a black American GI, in Europe during the early eighties. They’d gotten married and had Clark shortly thereafter.
His father was a believer in the “Boy Named Sue” naming convention. The name not only pleased his wife, but he figured it would make his boy tough.
After Clark’s mother had walked out on her family when he was just a boy, he’d never been a big fan of his exotic first name. It made him think of her, and he wasn’t interested in remembering someone who’d abandoned him.
When Miri said it, she made it sound like she was cursing at him.
“I asked you why it’s easy for me to say,” Miriam said.
“Because you don’t like people. You don't want anyone in your life. I was happy and that’s weird to you. You can’t understand why I’m upset.”
She reached out and took his hand again. Clark tried to pull it away, but Miri clamped her hand on his and wouldn’t let go.
“Look, asshole. No one says you aren’t allowed to grieve. That’s a normal part of the process. I’m heartbroken for you.”
Clark looked down, unable to meet his friend's eyes.
“What’s not normal is for you to squat in Mexico, killing every drug trafficker and cartel bozo that you even suspect to have been involved.”
“Why not? I’m doing the world a favor.”
“Yes, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors,” Miri said.
There was silence at the table. Any flash of anger Clark felt had subsided. Miri was right. She was always right.
“So what? I just come back to Blackthorn, like everything’s kosher?”
“What do you know about kosher?” Miri said with a smile. “Listen, if you have a plan, I’m all ears. If not, I’m bringing you home. At least throw you in the shower for a couple days. You’ll thank me.”
“I do have a plan,” Clark said softly.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I finally know who killed Samantha.”
Fifteen
“So you work for this César guy?”
“I’ve never done anything he wanted that didn’t serve my purposes. Fortunately, he just wanted me to kill Pascual’s guys. I was gonna do that anyway, so I figured why not join up and learn as much as I could about both cartels? The whole ‘keep your friends close’ shit that McHenry’s always talking about.”
Miri played with the empty Coke bottle, looking into the distance. “So that’s what you’ve been doing down here all this time? Working for a drug cartel?”
Clark held up two fingers. “Two, actually.”
She nodded. “Working for Pascual as well, aren’t you? Playing them against each other.”
Clark didn’t answer.
“It’s smart. A little brazen, but it’s the best way to keep tabs on everyone.”
“When Samantha was…” He trailed off, then cleared his throat and tried again. “When it happened, I had it pinned down to one of the cartels. Torres worked for both of them, and when I killed him, I knew they wouldn’t be happy. My original plan was to study them for a while, then, once I got to the bottom of which cartel was involved in the bombing, kill them all.”
“Obviously that didn’t happen.”
He shook his head. “I was here for a couple weeks, poking around, and one day César saw me and recruited me.”
“Just like that?”
“More or less,” Clark said. “I figured, why not use his organization to my advantage? I knew it would be tough to get to Pascual while he was in Mexico City, so I wanted to draw him out. Cause such a big war between the two cartels that Pascual would have to come to the border and keep an eye on things.”
“And it worked.”
“Yeah. By the time Pascual came up here from Mexico City, almost thirty of his guys were dead, and I pinned the whole thing on César and his boys.”
“Thirty? McHenry said the news put the tally at twenty.”
“You know I keep track.”
Miri nodded. “So, more than twenty.”
“Pascual was getting worried. His numbers were getting low and I was pinning it all on César. I went to him like I wanted a job, told him I could give him info about César, and he jumped at the chance.”
“So what’s Pascual going to do about his manpower problem?”
Clark drew a finger across his neck. “Not much.”
Miri slowly exhaled. “So you’ve been playing both sides, killing their men, and stirring up shit. That the long and short of it?”
“I feel like the plan I just told you was way more complicated… but yeah. If you want to put it like that.”
“How can you be sure César ordered the bombing?”
“I can’t be, but it doesn’t really matter,” Clark said.
“Why not?”
“Because I was always going to kill him. Whether Pascual was telling the truth or not is irrelevant. If he did it, he’s already dead. If he didn’t, there’s only César left. My plan was to stay for a few weeks more, completely dismantle his organization from the inside.”
“Plans change. When’s the soonest you can hit César?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, I’d have to scout things out and figure out the best time to—”
“Bullshit.”
“What?” Clark said.
“You’ve been down here long enough. I’m sure you’ve already thought about how to kill him a thousand times. I’m not letting you stay down here for weeks trying to sort this shit out. You have the rest of the day, then I’m dragging you back, whether you like it or not.”
“I’m not coming back to Blackthorn, Miri. I quit. I’m done.”
“Fuck Blackthorn. I don’t care if you come home and wait tables the rest of your life. But you need to stop this madness down here. You finish up and then we go back. Got it?”
Clark opened his mouth to argue, but Miri shut him down.
“Don’t,” she said.
Clark smiled. “I was wondering if you’d help me.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Clark spent the next twenty minutes filling Miri in on the details of the plan, arguing around her objections and considering blind spots she mentioned. It felt good to him; working with his old partner left him with the feeling, at least for a while, that nothing had ever changed and all was right with his world.
When they were done, the pair walked to Clark’s Jeep, careful not to step in anything in the rank alleyway.
Clark looked at his watch. “I’ll see you in a couple hours?”
“I’ll be there.”
“And you’re gonna do it?”
“I said I would,” Miri said.
“All of it?”
“Stop asking me,” Miri said, her fac
e growing red.
Clark laughed and hopped into the Jeep. He gave Miri a ride to her rental, a red Ford Ranger pickup truck that looked a decade old.
“Okay,” he said. “See you soon.”
“I can’t wait,” Miri said sarcastically.
The pair looked at each other, but neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. Clark put the Jeep into gear and drove away, trying not to look in the rearview mirror as Miri disappeared.
Sixteen
Clark sped through the town, homing in on the compound where César lived. He pulled through the gate, past the sentry with the Rottweiler, and parked his Jeep next to the flashy Escalade.
The air handler outside was running hard in the house, trying to combat the effects of the unseasonably warm weather. Clark heard a ruckus coming from the dining room and found a group of men sitting around the table, in various stages of intoxication.
There was César at the head and Sammy to his right. Five other men sprawled out around the table. When Clark walked in, César stood on wobbly legs and raised his outstretched arms toward him. “Mr. Barnes.”
“Looks like I’m missing a party.”
“Yes, you are, and you are the guest of honor.”
Clark nodded and felt heat creeping up the back of his neck and head. All the time he’d worked for César, he’d managed to keep his emotions in check. Undoubtedly, César was a scumbag piece of filth, but it had been possible for Clark to believe that Pascual was who he was after, and keep a straight face. Now, the feeling that he was likely talking with the man who’d ordered the love of his life killed was nauseating.
“Is there anything you want to tell us about yesterday? Anything that may have happened that we would be interested in?”
Clark nodded. He retrieved Pascual’s gaudy pistol from his back pocket and walked around the table to César’s place. He set the pistol down on the placemat in front of him.
“And what is this?” the man with the ponytail said, picking it up gingerly and looking at it.
“Pascual’s.”
“Then it was you. I know I told you to kill him, but I never expected such quick results.”
