“You get him?”
“He’s gone.”
Raylan and Nora went north behind the property, running along the alley to the next block. Sirens shrieked in the distance, filling the quiet morning with distress.
•••
With the flashlight wedged between his shoulder and the backpack, lighting the way, he crawled on his hands and knees through the cinderblock tunnel that was eighty feet long. At the end he climbed up a couple steps, lifted the metal grate, and stuck his head through the opening. There were two men in green vests, US MARSHAL in white letters on the backs, standing on the driveway, holding shotguns.
He waited until they moved closer to the house, climbed up into the garage, lowered the grate into position, and went through the side door. He could feel the morning sun on his face moving down the alley behind the houses, taking his time, fighting the urge to run till he heard shouting behind him and took off.
With no idea where he was going, Rindo went left on Driftwood and right on Sixth Street. He could hear sirens as he ran across a baseball field at the elementary school. Still running, he cut between two houses on Aurora Drive and saw a van pulling out of a garage.
Thirty-Two
Wiggy saw the dude sprinting across the street, coming toward Lori’s driveway. A few seconds later the dude was standing in front of the van, aiming a pistol. Wiggy hit the brake, dude got in the front passenger seat, put his backpack on the floor, pointing the gun, saying, “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Where you wanna go?”
“Anywhere, just drive.”
He stepped on the gas, turned right out of the driveway, drove a few blocks, waited for a cop car, lights flashing, to pass on Eighth Street. What in hell’s name was going on? He glanced at the dude with the gun and said, “They’re looking for you, aren’t they? What’d you do, you don’t mind my asking?”
The dude didn’t answer, kept the big revolver pointed at him.
They turned left on South Imperial Avenue, and it was a straight shot to the freeway. He didn’t think the dude would give him any trouble. What the hell for? Then the dude surprised him, took out a vial and did a one-and-one.
Wiggy didn’t like to be under the influence when he was transporting a load, but he was tired, and it sure looked good. He glanced at the dude. “Hey, how about giving the driver some?” Dude glanced at him, eyes rolling back, getting off. “Think of it this way, I’m kinda doing you a favor.”
Dude stuck the gun between his legs, unscrewed the cap on the vial, dipped the spoon in. Wiggy leaned over as far as he could and the dude put the spoon under his nose and blasted him off.
Awhile later the dude said, “What’s in back?”
“Load a cargo,” Wiggy said, rushing, heart pin-balling in his chest.
“What kinda cargo?”
That was some good blow. He was almost too fucked up to talk. Took a couple breaths, got it under control. “The human kind. Got eleven illegals, wets back there, hoping to find a new life in the United States of America.” Wiggy let out a breath. “Hell, you look Mex, might know some a them.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes, and Wiggy, on top of the buzz now, said, “Since we’re sharing blow, talking, and are sorta buds, what’re the police after you for? I mean you don’t want to tell me that’s fine too.”
“Taking out some motherfuckers try to steal from me.” He said it like he was telling time, no expression, no emotion.
“Oh…well, hey, sure, I understand. Who could blame you?” Wiggy was wondering why he opened his big mouth. It was the blow talking, not him. He had to be careful with this dude, try not to get too friendly, get in his business, piss him off.
•••
“All I can tell you,” Big Country said, glancing at Raylan in the rearview mirror, “we got lucky. Woman driving to work saw Rindo aiming his gun at some teenager in a van pulling out of a driveway on Aurora Street, called the PD, who called us. Turns out the house is being leased by a forty-eight-year-old former ex-con named Loreen Rondello.”
Raylan said, “What’s her claim to fame?”
“Did federal time, three years for trafficking illegals,” Big Country said. “My guess, she’s still at it. Someone brings a load in from Mexicali, drops them off at the Rondello residence. Teenager in the van stops by, picks them up and takes them to San Diego, Riverside, Chino, LA, wherever the hell they’re going.”
Big Country turned left on Aurora Drive and left in the third driveway. They got out of the car and walked to the front door. Raylan could see a woman looking out the window at them and heard dogs barking in the house.
“I’m gonna go around back,” Big Country said, “make sure she doesn’t try to run on us.”
Raylan knocked and the door opened a crack. He identified them. “I know who you are, what the hell do you want?”
Nora said, “Are you Loreen Rondello?”
“No, I’m Angelina Jolie, you don’t recognize me?”
She might’ve been good-looking twenty years ago, but now she had a wrinkled face and a rotten disposition to go with it. Nora said, “Ms. Rondello.”
“It’s Lori.”
“We understand you had a visitor this morning,” Nora said. “Young man driving a blue Ford Econoline van was seen in your driveway six thirty-eight this morning and was carjacked at gunpoint by a fugitive with a stack of murder warrants against him.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Lori took a box of Marlboros out of a Levi’s pocket, tapped a cigarette out and lit it, blowing smoke at Raylan. He fanned the stream and stepped back. Lori swung the door open now. “Where’s the other one? There was three of you.”
Nora said, “You’re not concerned about your friend’s welfare?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Raylan said, “What was in the van? You’re not still transporting illegals, are you?” He paused. “Know what’s gonna happen if you’re convicted again?”
“Marshals, FBI, regular dumbass cops in uniform, you’re all the same. Any bullshit scam you can pull, you do it. Who needs evidence? You just start making it up. You just start slinging it.”
“Anything happens to that kid, it’s on you,” Nora said. “What’s his name?”
“Jerome Dentinger, goes by Wiggy.”
“Why Wiggy?” Raylan said. “He sell product himself, or is he just wigged out?”
“Your name was Jerome, I think you might want to change it.”
“What’s he to you?”
“I knew his mother. She passed when he was a baby. I’ve taken care of him on and off for fifteen years.”
“Where can we find him?”
“The Slabs. Lives in a little trailer out there in that god-forsaken place. I can’t tell you why.”
As they approached the painted rock formation, Big Country said, “This is Salvation Mountain, the entrance to Slab City.” He stopped the SUV and read the painted words under a simple cross.
GOD IS LOVE
SAY JESUS I’M A SINNER PLEASE COME
UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART
Nora, in the front seat, looking out the window, said, “What is this place?”
“General Patton had the concrete slabs poured as barracks foundations,” Big Country said. “It was Camp Dunlop. He chose this stretch of earth to play war, get his troops ready for combat, ready to face the Germans in Northern Africa. The climates are similar. When the army pulled out, they left the foundations. There’s no running water, no electricity, no way to grow food.” Big Country pointed. “Four miles or so that way is the Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Range. The Navy uses it to drop bombs, fine-tune the skills of their pilots. And I understand the SEALS train somewhere over there.”
Raylan looked out the window at assorted RVs, trailers, campers, and vans strewn ac
ross the flat arid acreage. He could hear the sound of a motorbike with a busted muffler somewhere in the vicinity, and then it came airborne over a hill, a teenage slabber with sand-covered goggles landed and drove off toward the mountains.
Nora said, “Who would want to live out here?”
“In winter, retirees come, set up camp, and soak up the sun,” Big Country said. “They aren’t paying utilities and no one’s charging rent. Some of them are squatters, collecting disability and social security, living life in the slow lane. And like Jerome Dentinger, there are the coyotes. Locals who know the trails and roads through the Chocolate Mountains and where the Border Patrol checkpoints are at. It’s an industry.”
•••
Wiggy, just back from San Diego, was sitting in an aluminum lawn chair, his boney ass hanging through the middle where three straps had ripped. In spite of the 120-degree heat, he was comfortable under the camo netting, playing Axiom Verge, when he saw the SUV park next to his trailer. No one living in the Slabs, none of the regulars drove anything that new. He watched the three of them get out and come over to where he was relaxing after a long day, surprised one of them was a foxy dark-haired girl could’ve been a sister to one of the wets from earlier.
“Jerome Dentinger,” a slim guy in a cowboy hat said. “US Marshals. We’d like a word with you.”
Wiggy turned off the game and put the Playstation on the floor of his trailer and walked out from under the netting. “What could the law possibly want with me?” Wiggy working a length of rubber band between his teeth, dislodged a nub of hamburger meat he’d eaten earlier, and spit it out.
“The hell’re you doing?” the big marshal said.
“Cleaning my teeth.”
The woman made a face. “Do it later, some other time, okay?”
Wiggy dropped the rubber band. The cowboy handed him a piece of paper. “I’ll bet he looks familiar. Man puts a gun in your face you tend to remember him. I’m surprised he didn’t shoot you.”
“Yeah, I picked him up hitchhiking.”
“In someone’s driveway, I hear,” the cowboy said. “That’s got to be a first.”
“Seemed like a decent guy.”
“Describe decent, will you?” the cowboy said. “We’re on the fugitive task force.”
“You know—friendly, minded his own business.”
“While he was pointing a loaded gun at you, huh?” the cowboy said. “But you think he was decent. I think you’ve got a twisted view of mankind.”
The woman said, “Where’d you take him?”
“Seely.”
The cowboy said, “What’s that?”
“Little town, seven, eight miles west of El Centro,” the big marshal said to the cowboy. Now he locked his gaze on Wiggy. “Son, are you fucking with us? Cause if you are, there’s a cell in county with your name on it.”
“No, sir. I dropped him off at the Seely Club.”
Wiggy wore rubber bands like bracelets on his skinny wrist, had a habit of pulling on them and snapping them. He did it without even thinking.
The big marshal was shaking his head. “Will you knock that off?”
“Doesn’t make sense,” the woman said. “Unless he was being picked up there. Rindo gets out of a hotspot, goes somewhere we’d never expect.”
“Where’d you take the load of wets?” the big marshal said, surprising him.
“What?” Wiggy squinted looking at the hot afternoon sun. “Why do you think I’d be mixed up in that?”
“You mean cause you’ve already been caught twice, spent three months in the El Centro youth lockup?” The big marshal grinned. “That’s when you were underage. Now you’re an ad-ult, can mix it up with the big boys. Open the back of your van for me.”
“It’s open.”
The big marshal walked over, swung the doors open, and backed away. “Jesus Christ does it stink in there. You been carrying dead meat or what?”
“Fertilizer,” Wiggy said, winging it.
“Fertilizer my ass,” the big marshal said.
“Homeowner in EC’s trying to grow tomatoes, you believe that?”
“Not for a second,” the big marshal said. “It’s a human stench. Border patrol finds these people wandering out in the desert, brings them to the detention center. We’ve got to pat them down, people haven’t touched soap and water for weeks, a stench that gets in your nose—that’s what the back of your van smells like.”
“Since we all know the illegals are gonna keep trying—let me ask you something—should we leave them out there to die?” Wiggy said, looking out at the vast sunbaked landscape. “Or should we try to help them, give them a chance to have a better life?”
“They’re breaking the law,” the big marshal said, staring at him.
Wiggy, staring back, said, “So what?”
•••
Big Country glanced at Raylan. “Let’s have a pow wow.”
They stood next to his G-ride.
“Who is this kid,” Raylan said, “the Slab City philosopher?”
Big Country said, “You want to take him in?”
“What for,” Raylan said, “cause his van smells?”
“Jerome’s sympathetic, wants to help these poor people,” Nora said.
Big Country frowned. “Three hundred a head buys a lot of sympathy. Tell me what the hell we’re doing out here, will you?” Big Country gave him a dirty look. “You believe what the kid said?”
Raylan said, “What difference does it make?”
Big Country went back to Wiggy standing next to the van. “Show me your hidden compartment.”
“What hidden compartment?”
“Where you put the wets or drugs when you cross.”
Wiggy’s face was blank.
“I can have a tow truck here in twenty minutes, we’ll find it,” Big Country said. “We’ll tow it in, take it apart. Or you can save us all a lot of trouble.”
“I bought the van in the condition it’s in. If there’s a hidden compartment, I don’t know about it.”
“Let’s cut the bullshit, what do you say?”
The kid pressed a button under the driver’s seat and the cargo floor raised up on hydraulic hinges, exposing a space that eight people could hide in.
Big Country glanced at Raylan. “Want to bring him in?”
Raylan shook his head.
“Well I guess this’s your lucky day.”
Thirty-Three
Rindo’s gonna let us know where he is,” Raylan said. “It’s part of the game. He thinks he’s smarter than us.”
“Based on everything that’s happened,” Nora said, “I think he is, too.”
Big Country had just dropped them off in the hotel parking lot.
“Let’s have a drink,” Raylan said, “what do you say?”
“I’m not going anywhere till I take a shower. I feel like I’ve been wandering in the desert for days.”
Walking in the lobby, Nora said, “Listen, I appreciate you putting me up last night, but I have to get my own room.”
“You breaking up with me?” Raylan said. “Might be a new record. In high school Jessica Witkowski gave me the axe after going steady for a day and a half.”
“What did you do?”
“I wouldn’t give her my ID bracelet.”
“Don’t worry, your ID bracelet’s safe. Let me share something with you. I work for a federal agency. I have to reconcile all my expenses when I’m out of town on a case. Now they’re going to challenge me if I’ve spent too much, or not enough. I can hear my supervisor asking why there are missing hotel charges on my per diem.”
“Tell him—”
“It’s a her,” Nora said, cutting him off.
“Tell her you slept in the car to save money.” Raylan said it straight and grinned.
“I thought I would get my own room, come down, visit you.” Nora seemed embarrassed now. “If that’s okay.”
•••
At the restaurant dinner table an hour later, Raylan said, “Why were you at your partner’s house the night he was killed?”
“Why’re you bringing this up again?”
“I get the feeling you’re hiding something.”
Nora held her wine glass by the stem, giving him her full attention. “It had been a long day, sitting code on a house where Rindo was supposed to be hiding. Turned out he wasn’t there. It was sorta near Frank’s, where I’d left my car. So we stopped by to use the bathroom, have something to drink.”
“Didn’t you tell me Frank was married?”
“His wife was out of town on business. She worked in sales for a software company.” Nora sipped her wine. “Anyway, we had a couple cocktails, and I didn’t think I should drive. I was going to call an Uber to take me back to my apartment, and one thing led to another.”
“Was that the first time?”
“Yeah, but I saw it coming, I think we both did.”
“I have to tell you this doesn’t sound like you, sneaking around while the guy’s wife’s out of town.”
“I wasn’t sneaking around.” Nora paused. “Why do you presume to know what I will and won’t do?”
“I’m just saying I think there’s more to it.” Raylan combed his hair back with his fingers. “What were you doing in your partner’s house?”
“Having an affair.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “You don’t do that.”
“What do you mean? I did it with you.”
“That’s different.”
Nora forced a grin. “Why, cause it’s you, and you think you’re better than everyone?”
“No, cause I’m not married and I’m not with the Bureau, and that makes it okay.”
Nora sipped her wine, staring at the table.
“What happened?”
Nora looked uncomfortable, fighting herself to tell it. She held her wine glass, waiting while the waitress put chips and salsa on the table, and asked if they were ready to order.
Raylan Goes to Detroit Page 20
