El Gavilan

by Craig McDonald

  Shaken, she walked as fast as she could to her car, limping slightly and wincing from the pain in her ankle. She got in her car, turned the air conditioner up high and read Shawn’s note again:

  Patty,

  Congratulations on the engagement.

  Jesus, but you move on fast.

  Seems like not two weeks ago you were sucking my cock.

  Me, I won’t be using my own mouth for a while, or so the doctors say.

  Guess it’s a good thing I’m a writer, huh?

  One night. If you’d waited one more night to kick me loose, none of this would have happened to me, you know.

  It’s your fault, P. It’s all your fucking fault.

  So thanks, Pat. It’s been a hell of a short ride, lady.

  Wish I could say you were worth it.

  You know, it’s evidently so bad—my face I mean—that I can’t even get them to let me look in a mirror. So I figure myself for a monster now.

  Thanks, Patty. You changed my life, ’Tish.

  Maybe someday I can return the favor. I’ll be giving it a lot of thought as I’m stuck here like this.

  About all I can do now is think, thanks to you.

  All best,

  (The former) Shawn O’Hara

  Patricia wadded up his letter, then, hesitating before throwing it out the window, she unfolded it and read it again. She wondered about the last lines of the letter. She wondered if they conveyed a real threat. She smoothed the note, folded it up and slipped it into her purse. She couldn’t imagine showing it to Tell with that dig about fellatio.

  The bastard. The goddamn self-centered monster.

  While she waited for the idle to kick down on her car, Patricia pulled out her cell phone and called information. She asked for a non-emergency number for the Horton County Sheriff’s Department. She thought about asking Tell for help with Luz, but he was shorthanded and focused on the murder investigation. She jotted down the number and called the Horton County Sheriff’s Office. When she identified herself, she was surprised to be passed directly along to Able Hawk.

  Able said, “Patricia—a pleasure. Congratulations and my best to Tell. Have to say, the night I met you two, I was sure you two were the couple. I’m thrilled for you both.”

  Patricia thanked him and told him about Luz. “Could you send someone to kind of watch me while I pack her stuff, Sheriff? There isn’t much there, so it shouldn’t take long.”

  “No, Patricia, I won’t do that,” Able said. “Better you swing by here and drop off her keys. If that pimp of hers has threatened her he could be watching her place. Like as not, he is. I don’t want him seeing you and getting focused on you as a way to get to her. I’ll send a male and female deputy out to gather Luz’s stuff. They can make sure they’re not followed and get her belongings to her. I’ll have them drive her to the airport or bus station too. See she’s not followed.”

  Patricia said, “I can’t thank you enough, Sheriff.”

  “Able. And we’d be more than even if you could get her to give me the name of this pimp of hers before she blows town. Not that I’d try to force her to testify. I just want to know myself. Can use it to start building my own case against the low bastard.”

  Patricia said, “You and your people won’t confront Luz about it today or tomorrow? You’ll just get her stuff and see her safely out of town?”

  “On my soul,” Able said. She could hear the excitement in his voice. “You know this son of a bitch’s name?”

  “I do. It’s Tomás Calderone.”

  “I owe you a hell of a wedding present,” Able said.

  * * *

  Patricia dropped off Luz’s keys at the Horton County Sheriff’s Department, then drove home, Lucinda Williams on the car stereo. She played Lucinda’s moody “Minneapolis” over and over, almost calming herself from the fallout of reading Shawn’s vile note.

  Once home, she curled up on the couch and tried to study for a test, but found herself too distracted. Her mind kept turning back to Shawn and his last letter. Restless, she turned on her computer, pulled her glasses back on. While her computer booted up, she got some saltines and a glass of 7-Up, hoping to settle her stomach.

  When her home page came up she learned she had three e-mail messages waiting. She opened the letter from Salome Lyon first, already smiling. “Just checking to see how you and your man are doing, Patricia,” Salome wrote. She continued, “And Chris and I are wondering if you two have come to any decisions about the chief’s job here. And about us being neighbors. And Chris says Cedartown needs a ‘top-shelf Mexican restaurant.’ So please call me when you get this, sister, yeah?”

  The second e-mail was a spam offer for painkillers.

  The third was a mystery. It was labeled “Good news, Patricia!” The sender was someone named Wendy Fahy. Wendy? Patricia knew nobody with that name. The message included an attached photo, a jpg titled “nuface.”

  Patricia clicked on the e-mail and read, “Heard you were just by, Patricia. So, like I wrote, no mirrors here, but I just conned my current nurse into loaning me her cell phone so I could check my office voicemail. Her phone is a camera phone. She was changing my bandages and was called out for a moment. Isn’t that lucky? See attached jpg to see what you did to me, you Mexican cunt.”

  Patricia clicked on the attached photo. She looked at the ruin of Shawn’s face. She held down her bile long enough to close the file completely—so she wouldn’t have to confront that image ever again. Shawn had virtually no nose—just an implied cavity covered by the flap of dangling skin that had sheathed the bones and crushed cartilage of his nose. What was left looked a little like Lon Chaney Sr.’s nose in The Phantom of the Opera. Like what Michael Jackson was supposed to have left after all his gone-wrong plastic surgery. Shawn’s mouth was sunken where his missing teeth should be, like that of an old man with his dentures out. The missing teeth shortened the appearance of Shawn’s jawline and made his chin more prominent … even pointy. His head was swollen far beyond its normal size and his cheekbones were uneven … like someone had sawed his head in half vertically and misaligned the two pieces trying to put Shawn back together. His bruised and swollen eyes were hateful slits.

  The file closed but the image wouldn’t leave Patricia. She stumble-crawled to the kitchen sink and threw up twice. She turned on the tap, sloshing water on the mess to move it down the drain. She cupped more water into her hands and washed out the taste from her mouth.

  Patricia hung over the sink, breathing deeply through her mouth until her stomach settled. She took deep breaths until her heart rate regulated itself and the black spots left her eyes. Then she pulled out a glass and a bottle of tequila. She started to unscrew the cap, then hesitated.

  What if she was pregnant? It seemed a crazy thought, but it wasn’t yet noon and might explain her repeated bouts of vomiting. Rattled as she was, the impetuous notion took hold in a funny way. Almost made happy by her sickness now—viewed in this new light—she sealed the bottle, and put it back under the sink. Patricia thought about Salome, who was also trying to become pregnant—despite Chris’s resistance—and called her. It would be good to hear Salome’s voice, to talk to her.

  THEN

  Sophia looked at the scraggly Christmas tree—the last on the lot and already drying out. She’d dragged the fir up four flights of steps, shedding needles all the way. They’d be finding those dried needles on the stairs well into the following summer; still tracking them into the apartment in July.

  Even decorated with second-hand ornaments and handmade construction paper decorations—strings of popcorn—the tree looked … bare. Forlorn.

  The hours dragged on; the other children fell asleep. Thalia lingered. Her little girl didn’t look so little now. She was already in a training bra, already becoming more womanly.

  White people’s Christmas music on the radio: Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas.”

  Thalia said, “Is there really a Santa? Really?”

&nb
sp; Sophia, unable to fib it away this night, said, “Honey, of course there is no Santa. It’s a thing we say to give children hope.”

  Sophia bit her lip, felt a pang as she saw the change in Thalia’s expression. She’d presumed Thalia had already dispensed with Santa Claus—saw through the myth and just wanted final confirmation. It was a catastrophic deduction on Sophia’s part.

  Thalia twisted the knife. “Anything you want to tell me about God and Jesus, Mother?”

  FORTY TWO

  Able had stopped home for lunch. He’d run upstairs to make some calls away from the station. Using his home phone, El Gavilan had set the ball rolling against Tomás Calderone.

  He’d given the name over to his new Italian cohorts. They said they didn’t run women themselves anymore, but they knew some others who did. When Davey James assured Able there’d be no county expense of burying Calderone in some county-funded potter’s grave, Able had said, “Huzzah.”

  Able walked down the stairs to the smell of bacon and eggs. Sofia was at the stove. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Hawk,” she said. “But Luisa is so useless in the kitchen at the best of times, and much less so now.”

  “It’s Able,” Able said. “And it smells wonderful. We should all do this every day.”

  “I’m sorry it’s breakfast food, but it’s what I could find,” Sofia said.

  “It smells delicious,” Able said. A notion seized him. “You and me and the little one, this evening, after work, let’s go to the store and do some shopping. Get these cabinets filled up proper.”

  Sofia smiled and handed Able a cup of coffee. He sipped it and said, “Now I know where Thalia learned to make it so good. Thought I’d never taste its like again.” He looked around and said, “Where is that little girl?”

  Able heard, “Boo!” and felt tiny arms squeeze his leg. He ran his hand over Evelia’s head and sat his coffee cup on the counter. He realized, suddenly, he could set something on the counter. There was surface area there again. Everything was shining and orderly.

  Able pretended to pluck a new quarter from behind Evelia’s ear and then pressed it into her tiny hand. He said, “I’m thinking maybe Saturday we could take this little gal to the movies. Give the lovebirds some time alone before they have that little one of their own to contend with.”

  “That could be very nice,” Sofia said.

  A floorboard squeaked. Able looked over his shoulder at Amos. His grandson said, “Got the computer prepped. Just give me the word and we’ll get your blog updated, Grandpop.” It was a weekly routine.

  Able sipped his coffee, savored it. His other hand was still combing through Evelia’s shiny black hair. “Think we’ll give it a rest this weekend,” Able said. “Just don’t have a hankering to say much right now.”

  Sofia, sliding the spatula around the pan of eggs said, “Have you or Chief Lyon learned anything more about that red pickup truck? The one in the film?”

  Able scowled and said, “Red pickup truck? Film? What film?”

  * * *

  Tell Lyon was quizzing the manager of the hotel where one of the murder victims, Esmeralda Marquez had worked. “I’m curious about something,” Tell told the manager—a smallish, bald, overweight man of perhaps sixty. He wore several rings on the fingers of his left hand including—God—a pinkie ring. Tell said, “The police reports indicate there was footage from your exterior security cameras that recorded Esmeralda leaving after her shift, getting in her car and driving away.”

  “Uh, yeah. That’s right,” the manager, John Rook, said. “I remember that.”

  “Thing is,” Tell continued, “someone tampered with Esmeralda’s car. They cut halfway through the timing belt. You know how those things work—they drive damn near everything in those engines. Messed with like it was, it was only going to carry her a short ways up the road, just as it did.”

  “I remember that too. That her belt was screwed with.” Rook twisted his pinkie ring. “But I’m not seeing your point, Officer.”

  “Haven’t made my point yet,” Tell said, watching him play with his rings. “Here we go. Because of the way the belt was cut through, the sabotage to Esmeralda’s car had to happen in your lot. The car had to be sitting just where it was when your security cameras filmed her leaving from her shift.”

  “Makes sense …”

  “So your cameras had to have recorded an image of whoever it was using a shimmy to open her locked car door and popping the hood to cut that belt. Or the camera had to have recorded an image of some son of a bitch sliding under her car to do that.”

  John Rook chewed his lip. “Yeah. Fuck yeah! It should have.”

  “So why isn’t that reported anywhere—what was filmed?”

  Rook shrugged, looking perplexed. “That’s a question for the cops. I never watched the films. They took them.”

  “Who took them? Which agency?”

  “The Vale County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Pierce himself came by with one of his men—skinny, mean-looking bastard—and took that tape. When I didn’t hear about any arrest, I just figured there was nothing useful on the tape. You want to know more, you’re going to have to talk to Walt Pierce.”

  “Yeah,” Tell said, seething. He slammed his open hand down on the counter. “Damn it,” he said, his hand stinging. He looked at the worried-looking manager. “It’s not you. Thanks for your help, pal. And please forget that I was ever here.”

  Tell stepped out into the hot sun. His cell phone rang. He checked the number: Able Hawk was trying to reach him. Tell thought about it, then decided to ignore the call for the present time. If Able called right back, he’d answer. Otherwise Tell decided he’d get back to Able on his own timetable.

  He swung into the cab of his SUV and rolled down the windows until the air kicked in.

  Across the road, sitting between two big Ford pickup trucks, Vale County deputy Luke Strider sat in own pickup truck, smoking a cigarette and flicking ashes out the window, watching Tell.

  * * *

  The roadside dumpsites were easy to reach and uninteresting—nothing revelatory there. The only thing Tell gleaned sitting parked in his truck where he deduced the bodies had been dropped was how little traveled the roads running alongside the particular fields were. In that way, the sites made sense in terms of disposing of corpses. And they indicated that whoever did the deed knew cars passing by were damned rare. But that was hardly useful information.

  The last site, the stream where Esmeralda was dropped, was harder to reach. Tell was bathed in sweat by the time he heard the gurgle of the stream. Mosquitoes had bitten his neck and arms. The way his luck was running, he figured that one of the little bloodsuckers would probably be carrying West Nile Virus.

  He was startled by the ringing of his cell phone again. It was made more jarring by the solitude under the shade of the trees; by the sound of the stream and the birds and the trill of crickets in the weeds by the creek. He checked the number: Able Hawk calling again.

  Tell took a deep breath and said, “Hey Able.”

  “Hey, partner.”

  Uh-oh. Tell could already tell the tone was set for the call.

  Able said, “What’s this about a fucking surveillance film and a red truck? I thought we were sharing information, cocksucker.”

  “I wasn’t deliberately keeping it from you, Able. Things have just been moving so fast. Every time I was about to pick up the phone to call you or tell you, something else got in the way … Amos’s possible arrest, for instance.”

  “So fucking talk to me now, buddy,” Able said. “Fill me in now, and all the way up.”

  Tell did that. Able said, “Clever find on your part. Too damned bad we didn’t consult first before you saw that old guard at the industrial complex. I knew that bastard was ex-Vale County Sheriff’s. We might have found a way to get those security tapes without him tipping Pierce. So how long until we get a rundown on those possible plates?”

  “Should have them in a couple of hours or
so,” Tell said. “Meet me at my HQ in two hours and we’ll look them over together.”

  “You just redeemed yourself, Tell. Where are you now?”

  Tell told Able Hawk about his morning’s investigation. He shared with Hawk the taped evidence he deduced must have existed depicting the tampering that had been done with Esmeralda Marquez’s Hyundai.

  Able said, “Walt does seem to be amassing himself a mess of film. We’re going to have to confront him on all that eventually, just to move this thing along. But we need more to hang our hats on than we have. At this point, he can just stonewall us too easily. Presuming we don’t catch some other breaks like that baseball film you found. That really was good work, Tell.”

  The sheriff hesitated, then said, “In the interest of full disclosure, and to encourage you in the future to reciprocate with more, you know, alacrity, I should tell you I did your lady a favor this morning.” Able told Tell about Luz and about the pimp’s name given him by Patricia. “I’ll keep her out of it of course,” Able said. “Patricia stays invisible through this,” he said. “But old Tomás? ’Tween us, for him there’ll soon be consequences.”

  “Don’t need to hear you say it, Able. But thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep it secret. And thanks very much for helping out Patricia.”

  Able said, “Just repaying a favor. Now get your ass out of that godforsaken creek bed, Tell, and get back to my country. I don’t like you in that other cocksucker’s county alone.”

  Tell was soaked in sweat again when he reached his cruiser … and covered in fresh mosquito bites.

  Deputy Luke Strider, parked in his red pickup behind a billboard, watched Tell Lyon leave, headed back toward the county line. He called Sheriff Pierce to report all that he’d seen, then drove into New Austin himself.

  FORTY THREE

  Patricia hung up the phone, feeling better after thirty minutes of talking with Salome.