Duke City Hit

by Max Austin

  Ryan turned away, looking out the window at the passing houses. They’d driven south off Central and were creeping through a residential area, Vic giving lots of room to the bicyclists who zipped along the street.

  “This area is mostly rental properties,” he said. “They call it the Student Ghetto. Charming, huh? It’s actually an interesting neighborhood, a real mix of houses and apartment buildings and people. Some nice grassy parks. These big old elm trees.”

  Vic hung a right onto an even narrower street, which ended at the boundary of a large cemetery. The graveyard was dry and barren on this side. Across the way, they could see lawns and trees.

  “People pay extra to be buried in the irrigated zone,” Vic said. “Class warfare, right to the end.”

  They stopped in front of a stucco cube of a house that faced the cemetery. Thudding music came from inside, so loud that the Cadillac’s windows vibrated with the noise.

  “What the hell is that?” Ryan said.

  “That’s Kirk’s place. He likes his music loud.”

  “No shit. What about his neighbors?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Don’t they object?”

  “People don’t really fuck with Kirk. Not if they know what’s good for them. Give him twenty minutes on a computer, and he can wreck your life.”

  Vic took his phone from his pocket and started punching buttons.

  “As you can see,” he said,” there’s really no point in ringing the doorbell.”

  He held the phone to his ear.

  The thunder inside the house abruptly stopped.

  “Hello, Kirk. This is Vic Walters. Are you seeing people today?”

  A pause.

  “We’re right outside. I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Another pause.

  “Okay.”

  He put the phone away, saying to Ryan, “He’ll see us now.”

  As he climbed out of the Cadillac, Ryan felt as if he were going to meet the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain. The mysterious Kirk.

  “So you’re going to introduce me this time, huh?”

  “The two of you could do business in the future. It’s networking.”

  The door opened as they reached the front steps, and a head poked out. The man’s round face was red with exertion, and perspiration glistened on his forehead. He wore a black goatee and tiny round eyeglasses. His head was shaved on the sides, but long on top, the hair pulled into a ropy braid. He wore a black T-shirt peppered with holes, faded jeans sawed off at the knees and Doc Martens that laced halfway up his shins. He was Ryan’s age, maybe even younger.

  “Come on in.” He was out of breath and his voice was raspy. “I was just getting my morning exercise.”

  They stepped through the door into a dim living room decorated in death-metal posters and electronic gear. Three computers sat on makeshift tables along one wall, and another wall was given over to stereo equipment, including stacks of black concert-sized speakers. A lumpy brown sofa slouched against the far wall, but the center of the room was kept clear. By the scuff marks on the hardwood floor, Ryan guessed Kirk spent a lot of time being a one-man mosh pit.

  Kirk offered coffee, but after one look into his grimy kitchen, Vic told him they’d already reached their caffeine limit.

  “How you been, Vic? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Same as usual, except I got a big surprise recently. I found out I have a, um, son. This is him. Ryan Mobley, meet Kirk Arnheim.”

  Kirk held out a fist for Ryan to bump.

  “I can see the resemblance,” he said to Vic.

  “Yeah?”

  “The eyes. He’s definitely your offspring.”

  Ryan wasn’t sure what to say to that. Maybe he’d been better off when Vic didn’t introduce him to people.

  Vic told Kirk he wanted to buy Ryan a full package of identity papers “as a gift.”

  “That’s very forward-looking of you.” Kirk pushed up his thick glasses. “Normally, that would cost you a grand, but for your kid, only eight hundred.”

  Vic smiled. “A bargain.”

  “Because you touched me with your warm family story,” Kirk said.

  “You’re a sentimental fool.”

  Vic pulled a roll of money from his pants pocket and peeled off eight bills. He handed them to Kirk, who put them in his pocket.

  “Come over here and we’ll take your picture.”

  He stood Ryan in front of a blank white wall, then turned on a floodlight that was clamped to a beam on the low ceiling.

  “Don’t squint,” Kirk said as he looked through the lens of an expensive-looking Nikon.

  “I can’t help it. I feel like I’m staring at the sun.”

  “Same lighting they use on the flashes at the motor vehicle department. It’s why nobody’s ever happy with their driver’s license photos.”

  He fired off a few shots, then killed the floodlight. Ryan blinked as his eyes recovered.

  Kirk set the camera on the computer desk. “Come see me in a couple of days. I’ll have ’em ready.”

  “Excellent,” Vic said. “Thanks, Kirk.”

  More fist bumps all around.

  Once they were back out in the dazzling sunshine, Ryan said, “You know some interesting people, Vic.”

  “Kirk’s one of a kind.”

  As they got into the Cadillac, the music roared to life inside the house.

  Ryan thanked Vic again for spending the money on him, then asked where they were going next.

  “That’s everything on my to-do list,” Vic said. “How about I take you back to your motel?”

  Ryan tried to keep his disappointment from showing.

  “However,” Vic said, “I would like to take you and Miss Tina out to dinner tonight. My treat.”

  “That would be nice, but you don’t always have to pick up the check.”

  “Please. It’s my pleasure. What kind of restaurant would you like?”

  Ryan smiled. “One where you don’t know everybody in the place.”

  “That’s a tough one, but I’ll think of something.”

  Chapter 24

  Vic spent the afternoon at home, communing with his computer. Lucky Penny Bail Bonds had accounts with several search agencies and credit companies, paying good money for easy access to information. Credit reports, arrest records, court documents, banking histories, newspaper libraries—most anything was available for a price. Vic’s laptop was outfitted with a connection to the office computer system, so he got free access. Another perk of his rent-free apartment.

  Doing the sort of research he normally left to Penny, Vic started with Harry Marino. He quickly learned:

  —Marino was born in Philadelphia, but moved to Phoenix when he was in high school. He excelled on the swim team, which was mentioned in the brief news reports about his death. How did such a good swimmer drown in his own pool? The coroner was doing an autopsy.

  —At an age when his peers were tooling their way through college, Harry was building a small empire. He owned several companies, including one that supplied fire extinguishers to businesses all over Phoenix. At the time of his death, he sat on the boards of a bank, a solar energy company and a software corporation.

  —He also was involved with several charities, and helped organize a golf tourney to benefit disabled children. Maybe it was part of his cover.

  —He’d never been arrested, at least not as “Harry Marino.”

  —He had an excellent credit rating, and accounts with some of the finer stores and galleries in Phoenix and Scottsdale. His house was paid off, and he appeared to be set for retirement.

  —Harry had never married and left no heirs. Only some friends, who apparently resented his death.

  Nothing Vic uncovered would indicate Harry Marino was anything but what he seemed, a successful bachelor with ties to local business and some good causes. No wonder Penny hadn’t turned up his connection to the cartels. It must be buried
deep.

  Vic couldn’t find any solid cartel connection to Joaquin Zamora, either. Zamora had a few arrests on his record from when he was growing up in El Paso, but they were kid stuff: auto burglary, assault, public drunkenness.

  By the time he moved to Albuquerque, ten years ago, Zamora was in his thirties and he’d already made a fortune. Vic assumed the money came from distributing drugs after they’d crossed the border into the United States.

  Vic found few photos of Zamora. The best one came from a charity event, where he’d been photographed with his wife, Rosa, by a local slick magazine. The wife, beauty-queen gorgeous with a glistening mop of black hair, wore a glittery gown and red lipstick that framed a big white smile. Zamora had his arm around her bare shoulders. He wore a tuxedo clearly tailored especially for him. A goatee clutched his strong chin. His black hair was slicked straight back, and his eyes were narrow slits.

  He was looking right into the camera. He wasn’t smiling.

  Pissed off about getting his picture taken, Vic thought. That sounds like a drug dealer. He wondered if something bad happened to the photographer after the picture appeared in the magazine.

  Vic noticed one other thing about the photo. Behind the handsome couple, looking uncomfortable in his tux, was a sweaty guy with a thick neck. He wasn’t identified in the caption, but Vic assumed he was a bodyguard. How many of those guys did Zamora have on the payroll?

  The photo was three years old. Zamora must’ve gotten more careful about cameras since then.

  The searches on Zamora didn’t come up with much from business or corporate records. He owned a couple of car washes, but they’d account for only a fraction of his wealth. His credit history was almost nil. Another sign of drug dealers: They pay for most everything with cash. Most have more cash than they know what to do with.

  According to county tax records, Zamora paid two million dollars for his hacienda in the North Valley nearly a decade earlier. That apparently had been some sort of cash transaction, too. No record of a mortgage.

  Vic now had a better picture of the two men, but hadn’t really learned much that was helpful. Both were wealthy, and both certainly could’ve come into their money by illegal means. But were they drug traffickers? Did they work for the cartels? Nobody had ever said so publicly, as near as Vic could tell. If the cops were onto either of them, they’d kept mum about it, even after Marino’s death.

  He wondered where Penny was getting her information. She seemed to know a lot more about these guys—after the fact—than Vic could find from computer records. Too bad she hadn’t snapped to the cartel connection before she accepted the contract on Marino.

  Too late now. Harry’s dead. His friends are angry. Vic got the feeling this thing was just getting started.

  He cleared the search history and started over, searching for Lisa Mobley in Tucson. Her obituary was one of the first things to turn up. She was indeed survived by a son named Ryan. Other facts matched, too: her career as a nurse, her battle with cancer.

  He searched for Ryan, but didn’t turn up much. The kid had no criminal record and his employment history was meager. The clincher was a photograph from the Arizona Daily Star. It had appeared nine years earlier, but had been reposted repeatedly by a local karate teacher. The photo showed a teenaged Ryan, dressed like Bruce Lee, kicking a board held by a couple of Asian guys. Vic blew up the photo on the screen, large enough to see that it was two inch-thick boards breaking under Ryan’s foot.

  “Son of a gun,” Vic muttered.

  In the background, in the front row of the bleachers, sat Lisa Mobley. She’d been caught with her mouth open, cheering Ryan on. She was older than when Vic knew her and her hair was cut short, but it was definitely Lisa. He stared at the photo a long time, zooming in on her face, then on Ryan’s. He could see his own face reflected in the screen, and it felt as if they all merged there.

  Finally, he stood and stretched. He’d been at it for hours. He bent to pick up the laptop and put it away, then remembered one more thing he needed to accomplish while online.

  Dinner reservations.

  Chapter 25

  Vic had ridden the Sandia Peak tram a dozen times over the years, but he still got a kick out of it. The view at sunset, when western clouds glow orange and red, can’t be beat.

  He and Ryan and Tina and two dozen tourists packed into a tram car the size of a small bus, standing room only with windows all around. Dangling from steel cables that stretch more than a mile to the crest, the car glided above jagged rocks and canyons hundreds of feet deep. The tourists pressed against the glass like kids at an aquarium.

  Turned out Tina was afraid of heights, poor kid, and Vic felt bad when she went pale. But he and Ryan stood close to her in what Ryan jokingly called “a Tina sandwich” and that seemed to help.

  She was better once she got solid ground under her feet again, out in the fresh mountain air, the icy wind whipping her red skirt.

  “You know,” she shouted over the wind, “it doesn’t help that they call the building at the end of the ride the ‘terminal.’ ”

  “I feel the same way about airports,” Vic said.

  Tina clutched her denim jacket closed with one hand and held her skirt in place with the other as she and the men hurried to get indoors. Stairs and boardwalks led from the terminal to the High Finance Restaurant, which perched on an overlook with a view of the entire sparkling city, the snaking Rio Grande and the sun-streaked horizon. The elevated walkways were swept clean, but snow dusted the evergreens.

  Vic charmed the young hostess into giving them a table by the windows, and they settled in with menus and cocktails.

  “Got to be careful drinking up here,” he said. “We’re ten thousand feet above sea level. At this altitude, a little alcohol goes a long way.”

  “Really?” Ryan rattled the ice cubes in his glass.

  “The air’s thinner,” Tina said. “Feels like you can’t quite get your breath.”

  “You’ll get used to it in a while,” Vic said. “People ski up here all day. Very few keel over dead from the altitude.”

  “ ‘Very few’?”

  “Hardly ever happens,” Vic said. “Good thing, too. Long way to the nearest hospital.”

  “I bet they’d send a helicopter for you,” Ryan said.

  “It’s always pretty windy up here. Might not be safe for a chopper.”

  “You ever flown in a helicopter?”

  “Couple of times. For work.”

  “I’ve never been on one. What’s it like?”

  “Noisy. Nice view, though. You fly much lower than we are right now. You can see right into people’s yards, see ’em sunbathing by their pools.”

  The waiter arrived, and conversation switched to steaks and salads. Once that was done, Tina said to Vic, “It must be interesting. Your work.”

  He exchanged a loaded look with Ryan.

  “I’m just a paper-pusher. The exciting stuff like you see on TV, the bounty hunters? That’s hype. Most of those guys get their jobs done pretty quietly. They’re not geniuses, maybe, but they know how to find people.”

  “What happens when they find them?” Ryan asked.

  “Exactly what you’d expect. Handcuffs and cops and an immediate downturn in lifestyle.”

  Tina laughed.

  “They don’t try to run?” Ryan said. “Or fight back?”

  “Most bounty hunters carry stun guns and pepper spray. They can be very persuasive.”

  “Sounds exciting,” Tina said.

  “Not really,” Vic said. “It’s a lot of sitting around in cars in bad neighborhoods. Or sitting in front of a computer, checking credit reports and stuff like that. Once in a while, something unexpected happens that gets the adrenaline pumping, but even then, it’s mostly up here.”

  He tapped a finger against the side of his head.

  “Guys get jumpy and hurt themselves. Or shoot their partners. That’s why I always worked alone. I tried to empty my mind befor
e I walked into every situation, so I was open to whatever happened and not taken by surprise.”

  “Ah,” Tina said, “so you were a bounty hunter.”

  “For a few years,” Vic said. “When I was a young man like Ryan here, full of piss and vinegar. I soon learned it was much safer to work at a desk.”

  “Safer how?”

  “People never shoot at me at my desk,” he said. “But whenever you go knocking on doors, there’s always that possibility.”

  “Have you ever been shot?” she asked.

  “No, but I came close a few times.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got lucky.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Not over dinner. Please.”

  “We’re not eating yet.”

  “Soon.” Vic signaled the waiter for another drink. “And some of the things I could tell you, they’d turn your stomach.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I’ve volunteered at Legal Aid. I’ve seen a lot of heartache already. A lot of the dark side of life.”

  “I’m sure you have, my dear,” he said. “But it shouldn’t touch someone as sunny as you.”

  She flashed him a smile. Her teeth were very white against her coppery skin, and she wore her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, which accentuated her high cheekbones. Vic had a lifelong attraction to such Latina beauties. Yet another reason to love the Southwest.

  “You’re planning to be a lawyer, right? That’s what Ryan told me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve got to be careful. As an officer of the court, you can’t associate with unsavory characters.”

  Vic waggled his eyebrows at Ryan, who frowned at him.

  “Unsavory?” she said. “You mean people like your clients?”

  “I was talking about bounty hunters. But the criminals, too. You can’t let that stuff get on you.”

  Ryan slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll protect you from the mean old world.”

  “I can take care of myself, thank you.” She jabbed him with an elbow. “And I think the world’s not as dangerous as you two pretend.”

  “Danger sometimes turns up in unexpected places,” Vic said. “Before the food gets here, I’ll tell you one story from my younger days. A little lesson in human nature.”