Southtown tn-5

by Rick Riordan

  Before I could ask what it was, I heard a groan from the roof below us. A man’s voice said, “Hell.”

  “Stay here,” I told Jem.

  I lowered myself over the railing. Stirman had done it. How hard could it be?

  I dropped.

  Stupid, Navarre.

  I lost my footing immediately and slid down the slick roof. I would have gone over the edge and into the skylights below had I not caught the wet bottom rung of a service ladder. Slowly, I managed to crawl back up to where Sam Barrera was lying on his back, his arm bent underneath him at an ugly angle.

  “Damn bastard,” he muttered. “You get him, Fred?”

  I sat next to him, too exhausted to correct his ragged memory. “Yeah. I got him.”

  That seemed to comfort the old man. He put his head back and let the rain fall on his face. Police were popping up in all the windows of the museum now-SWAT team members on the skywalk, aiming assault rifles at me.

  “Thanks,” I told Sam, “for trying to save us up there.”

  “Did I do that?”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “I always was pretty damn brave,” Barrera said. “I don’t know about taking the money, though. It feels wrong.”

  “Maybe it is,” I admitted.

  “And the baby?”

  I looked at him, and asked carefully, “What about him?”

  “Did your wife get him out okay?”

  I was silent for a long time as the police moved in, DeLeon now visible above us, not looking happy, or in any hurry to call off her firing squad.

  “Yeah, Erainya got him out,” I told Barrera. “The baby is fine.”

  I looked up at Ana DeLeon in the broken glass and neon. I raised my hands in surrender.

  25

  The plane was a twin-engine Cessna, so old no self-respecting drug-runner would use it anymore, but it could still make the flight to Mexico below radar in under an hour.

  The pilot waited in the drizzle on the tarmac at Stinson Field. He checked his watch. His client was late.

  It was a crummy night to fly, but anticipating his payment made him feel better. He imagined the money in his bank account. He would make separate cash deposits, space them out carefully, keep them under the mandatory reporting limit.

  He was deep in thought about a comfortable retirement when somebody put a gun to his back.

  Long after the police took Erainya Manos away, Pablo had waited in the ventilation shaft.

  He expected the woman to sell him out. Any second, the muzzle of an assault rifle would poke its way into his hiding place.

  But Pablo kept waiting.

  When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he crawled out. No one was waiting in the storage room to ambush him. His gun was still lying on the floor by the window. They hadn’t even bothered bagging it for evidence.

  Why would the police leave the scene so fast?

  He checked the magazine. Still loaded, minus the bullet Erainya Manos had fired to rattle the police.

  Dangerous, he had told her.

  It’ll throw them off balance, she said. When they find out I fired the gun, they’ll relax their guard about everything. They’ll believe I’m alone.

  He hadn’t trusted her, but he’d gone along. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t surrender. He couldn’t bring himself to kill her.

  He crept down the stairs, spotted two uniformed cops at the front entrance. They looked bored, like they’d been put there to keep people out. They weren’t paying any attention to the inside of the building.

  Pablo slipped out the back, onto the loading docks.

  The rain felt good on his face, but he told himself he would never make it across open ground. There were probably still snipers on the surrounding rooftops. His shoulder blades tensed for the bullet he expected in his back.

  He jogged down a dark alley. Nothing happened. He made it three blocks away, came out next to St. Paul Square. A bunch of tourist rental cars were parked on the street. He strolled down the line, glancing casually through windows. A Dodge Neon had the driver’s keys just sitting there on the front seat.

  Too easy. Had to be a trap.

  The police would surround him as soon as he turned the ignition. The engine would explode. Something.

  But he got in, started the Neon, and pulled away from the curb.

  By the time he got to the highway, he was crying like a child.

  He had come that close to killing Erainya Manos, and she’d been telling him the truth.

  The pilot found himself facing a young Latino with cobwebs in his hair, ragged clothes, dirt and scratches on his arms like he’d crawled out of a collapsed building.

  The pilot tried for calm. He raised his hands. “I got nothing you can rob, partner. Unless you want an airplane.”

  “Actually,” the Latino said, “that is exactly what I want.”

  The pilot blinked. “ You’re Will Stirman?”

  “You know the Calabras airstrip, south of Juarez?”

  “Sure.” The pilot didn’t feel the need to mention he’d flown heroin from that airstrip a dozen times. “You have my hundred grand?”

  The Latino smiled. He nudged the pilot’s nose affectionately with his gun. “Actually, senor, there’s been a slight change of plans.”

  Will Stirman found his money, right where Navarre said it would be.

  The black duffel bag was lighter than when Will had packed it, eight years ago, but that was to be expected. Fred Barrow must’ve used a good half million.

  Will stuffed a couple of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, rezipped the bag.

  He had one last score to settle.

  He climbed the wooden stairs out of the basement, the knife wound in his shoulder throbbing so badly he could hardly think. He found an intact section of roof to stand under. Rain was blowing through the skeletal remains of the house. The dark hills around him smelled of wet juniper.

  Will called the SAPD. He was pleasantly surprised to get a connection so far from the city. He told the dispatcher he was the outside accomplice who’d helped Will Stirman escape, and now he had a guilty conscience. He gave her enough details about the jailbreak to be sure she was taking him seriously. Then he told her where they could find one of the missing Floresville Five. A hunting cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. He gave her directions.

  Will hung up, feeling satisfied.

  With any luck, his guess would be right. The Guide might be stupid enough to lay low there. He might have thought Will had forgotten about the Wisconsin property, which the Guide had shown him once, years ago-his little retirement dream house. But Will never forgot a good hiding place.

  He walked back to the main road in the dark-a good half mile, through mosquitoes and mud and brambles. Down toward the river, the only visible light was a kerosene lamp glowing in a curtained window. A caretaker’s cabin, maybe. Will avoided it.

  He hadn’t seen another human being for thirty miles, since he exited the main highway. Every farmhouse had been dark, every road abandoned. Anybody crazy enough to ignore the evacuation orders, Will wanted to stay clear of.

  He climbed into the truck and stared at the empty seat next to him.

  You failed Soledad, Navarre had said. You let the past stay buried.

  The words weighed on Will’s heart.

  Eight years ago, he had taken the coward’s way out. He’d never tried to find out what really happened to Soledad’s baby- his baby.

  He’d assumed the worst, nursed his anger, promised himself that he would get revenge in the long run. But he’d stayed silent. In his most secret thoughts, he’d been relieved not to be a father anymore. Relieved the child was gone. And his guilt had fueled his anger.

  Now… what had he accomplished?

  He’d left hardly a ripple on the lives of his old enemies. He’d had a chance to settle his debts, salvage something from the past. But here he was again, doing the only thing he was good at-running away. He never had Soledad’s courage for staying put
.

  Would she forgive him?

  Maybe if she’d seen Jem Manos’ face…

  Will started the truck’s engine. He set the duffel bag next to him. All his pleasure at finding the money had drained away.

  He realized bitterly that Navarre was wrong on one count. He would not die on the outside. Will Stirman was too good at hiding and running. Nothing could catch the Ghost.

  He would make it across the border, then eventually down into Central America. He would get the shoulder wound treated and live to a ripe old age on some tropical beach, alone, dreaming every night about the people he had killed, waking up every morning with no one, remembering the face of Jem Manos, and wishing he was not a coward.

  A distant rumble rattled the truck’s windows. Will thought at first it was thunder, but the rumble didn’t die. It grew louder, building toward a crescendo. Thunder didn’t do that.

  Will put the truck in drive and eased forward, toward the bridge.

  In his headlights, the Medina River was doing strange things. It was churning with foam, waves sloshing over the road. The ground was shaking.

  Will looked upriver. He could see nothing but that single yellow light on the hillside.

  He turned on the radio. Static.

  It occurred to him then what might be happening-what they’d said on the news.

  But that was impossible.

  The roar filled his ears.

  He looked north again, and this time his heart nearly stopped. The horizon was curling toward him, the earth lifting up like the edge of a carpet.

  For a moment, his hand drifted toward the stick shift. He could punch the gas. He could run for higher ground.

  Then a sense of calm came over him. He realized Navarre had been right on every count. So much for the uncatchable Will Stirman.

  He killed the truck’s engine and got out. He wanted to be standing on his own two feet for this.

  The yellow light on the hill comforted him, letting him know he wasn’t alone.

  He heard Soledad’s voice: Maybe I’m what was lost.

  He remembered her last kiss, and waited to be scoured away with all the other ghosts of the land.

  The Cessna flew above the South Side, angling into the rain.

  Pablo did not relax his guard, but he couldn’t help watching the lights below-the great expanse of San Antonio, and south: the smaller towns of Poteet, Kenedy, and there, Floresville. He was almost sure he could see the prison.

  He had no money. No resources. Nothing but a gun and a pilot who would betray him at the first opportunity.

  But the airstrip was secluded in the mountains, in territory he knew well.

  He had already used the pilot’s phone to make a call to El Paso-to an old friend who would relay a message to Angelina. It was risky, revealing his location like that. What Angelina would do with the information, he didn’t know. Perhaps she would be waiting for him. Perhaps the Mexican police would.

  He had sent her instructions many times in his letters-always indirect references that she alone would understand. If she’d read the letters, if she wanted him back, she would know what to do.

  She was to tell her friends and family to look for a yellow cloth tied around the front porch post-the kind people left out for soldiers overseas. That would be her signal to them-the only goodbye she could give-to let them know she had disappeared on purpose, gone to join him.

  Pablo wondered if she would do that.

  The Cessna climbed higher, above the flooded farms and the dark ranch land of South Texas.

  Pablo thought of El Paso, and his wife’s face.

  For the first time since Floresville, since the last morning circle when he’d joined hands with his five brethren and Pastor Riggs, Pablo prayed.

  26

  That bastard Will Stirman stole my truck.

  While I was busy getting chewed out by DeLeon, and the paramedics were tending to Sam Barrera, and the police were fanning out across every square foot of riverfront behind the museum, Stirman crept around the side of the building-exactly where it was most suicidal to go. He found my F-150 by the river, found the extra key I kept in the wheel well, pulled away over the Grand Avenue Bridge and disappeared.

  It was twenty minutes before I noticed the truck was missing and we figured out what had happened.

  By then, Stirman was long gone.

  That same night, two hours later and twenty-five miles northwest of town, in the lightest rainfall of the month, Medina Dam broke.

  The old McCurdy Ranch was right in the path of forty billion cubic feet of water. Century trees were uprooted. Boulders disappeared. New gorges and ravines were carved into the rock, and the cabin of Gloria Paz was reduced to a concrete slab and a few dark gold cinder blocks.

  I don’t know what happened to Gloria. I’d like to think she got out, but somehow I imagine her standing on her front porch with her shotgun and her tin cup of goat’s milk and coffee, her milky eyes staring north as the wall of water came toward her. I imagine her smiling, thinking of her long journey on the Green Highway.

  Perched on its high hill, the McCurdy ranch house itself was spared.

  I didn’t need to go into the basement to see that Will Stirman had been there. The tarp had been stripped off the abandoned building supplies. Dug out from the middle of the lumber and paint cans was a lockbox-now busted open and empty, a box the perfect size to fit a duffel bag full of cash.

  Fred Barrow was the San Antonio businessman who had purchased the McCurdy property. The mildewed fishing painting over the mantel was one of his, just like the ones hanging in Erainya’s study.

  After shooting Will Stirman, Barrow had only lived a few weeks, but in that time he had managed to buy the land, set up a trust, and allow Gloria Paz a safe place to live for the rest of her life. Barrow had planned to use his stolen millions to cleanse and remake the murderer’s ranch. A feeble, guilty gesture, but I knew Fred had been trying to put the victims’ spirits to rest, to make amends.

  This did not make Fred Barrow a good man. It did not excuse the way he treated Erainya, or make me sorry that the asshole was dead. But he had redeemed one life, one small cinder block cabin. He’d been remembered as honest by an aging blind woman. It made me wonder if I could’ve done any better with dirty money.

  Much to the Fugitive Task Force’s relief, Will Stirman’s body was found forty miles downriver. The Green Highway had, for once, reversed course, its cleared lanes providing the path of least resistance for thousands of tons of flotsam swept south by the flood. Many of the dead were never recovered, their bodies buried deep under a new geological layer of silt and debris. But Stirman’s body was easily identified-tangled in downed power lines, his arms wrapped around the cables as if he had intentionally held on-as if he wanted to be sure there was no public doubt about his death.

  My truck, being heavier, had not been carried quite so far. It had melded into a sandbank half a mile downstream from the McCurdy Ranch entrance. Only the back fender showed.

  Will Stirman had found his money. He died reclaiming something from Fred Barrow. But the duffel bag was not in the truck, nor on his person. Whatever was left of Stirman’s seven million dollars floated away in the flood, and is still buried somewhere in the South Texas landscape.

  The final incidents in the Floresville Five case were pretty unsatisfactory for law enforcement. The first was a shoot-out at a Wisconsin hunting cabin where an unidentified man resisted arrest, opened fire on police and was killed by an FBI sniper. The slain man was not, as originally thought, one of the escaped convicts, but he fit the description of an Anglo who had been seen in the company of Elroy Lacoste and Luis Juarez in Omaha. Perhaps he was one of Stirman’s old associates. Embarrassed police were still working to establish his identity.

  The fourth convict, C. C. Andrews, was discovered when rain eroded his shallow grave in an Oklahoma riverbank. A farmer went out to dig some new fence posts one morning and was startled to find a dead African-American
in an expensive Italian suit floating in the middle of his creek.

  This left only one escapee unaccounted for-Pablo Zagosa. Publicly, police remained confident of his eventual capture, but when pressed, they admitted they had no solid leads. Pablo’s estranged wife in El Paso had disappeared, and family members said it was because she feared her husband’s vengeance. But this did not explain the yellow cloth police found tied to Angelina Zagosa’s front porch rail. Privately, Ana DeLeon told me the Task Force was baffled. They were starting to reconcile themselves to the idea that Pablo Zagosa might be the little fish that got away.

  As for Dimebox Ortiz, he was spending a few nights in the county jail, but he was confident that his brother-in-law would eventually soften and bail him out. And I was confident I would be bounty-hunting him again soon after that.

  Saturday, two days after the Medina Dam broke, the sun blazed down at the Lady Bird Johnson YMCA field.

  After six billion dollars in damage, thirty-seven lives lost, the attention of the network news, the president, the governor and the National Guard, the floods decided they’d had enough fun. Like spoiled children, they went off to throw a tantrum somewhere else.

  Jem manned the goalie box in his yellow vest.

  The rest of my team clumped midfield around the ball as the Saint Mark’s coach yelled orders to his kids about crossovers and wings and a bunch of other maneuvers I’d never heard of.

  “Get ’em!” Erainya yelled next to me.

  Which pretty much summed up our strategy.

  Technically, parents weren’t allowed on the players’ side of the field, but Erainya had decided she was now my assistant coach.

  The Garcia twins slammed into each other, but got up before the ref could halt play. Jack fell down in one of his slide-into-home kicks, shooting the ball straight toward the Saint Mark’s guards, who just shot it right back.

  “I love this,” I said. “So much more relaxing than a firefight.”

  Erainya said, “Huh.”

  Her dark eyes glittered as she scanned the field. “All right, honey. What’s that kid’s name-Peter?”